“How many?”Iask.
“Ten,” Liam spits out as if we’re on a tightschedule.
I count them out carefully and drop ten into his bowl. Immediately, Dylan drops his hands and lifts his spoon as if none of thishappened.
How is Samantha so put together and calm? I feel like my heart might explode right now, not knowing what else I’m going to mess up with him today. The last thing I want to do is hurt thispoorkid.
I head over to the pantry and grab the binder. I’m trying to memorize this thing as quickly as I can, but it’s obviously not fast enough. As I open it to re-read her notes, Liam sits down with Dylan at the table and scrolls through hisphone.
I know Samantha isn’t going to ride my butt about not having this binder memorized yet, but there’s something inside me that pains for Dylan. I don’t want to be just another failed nanny experience for him, which I’ve already set out to do by almost drowning when he needed meyesterday.
I lean over the counter, keeping my back to Dylan and Liam as I drag my finger slowly down the pages, trying not to miss any of the bullet points—such as: he needs grape juice at three o’clock each afternoon. Ech. What kid likes grapejuice?
I glance over my shoulder to check on Dylan, and not so surprisingly, I find Liam staring directly at my ass. I was going to ask about the grape juice, but to get his attention, I would need to clear my throat or think of some other way to distract him from his staring issue. I hold my stare, waiting for him to notice that I’ve noticed him, but I’m sure it’s been like thirty solid seconds. This is becoming uncomfortable for me, and I’m not the one staring atanass.
He emits an exaggerated sigh and looks back down at his phone as if he didn’t notice I caught him staring. Ohhh, we’re still playing. How could I forget when I’m losingthisgame?
“Done,” Dylan says, dropping his spoon down onto the wooden table. He looks up at the clock and over at Liam. “Can I play for ten minutes before I have to getready?”
“No, no more video games this morning. You’re only supposed to be playing for an hour a day, which means you’ll burn your time for later if you do that.” That’s what thebooksays.
“It’s ten minutes,” Liamargues.
“I’m following Samantha’s rules,” Iretort.
Liam rolls his eyes at me and looks back at his phone. No wonder Dylan loves him so much. He’s the king of breaking the rules, Igather.
“You suck,” Dylan tells me as he pushes away from the table. The scraping of his chair against the floor sends a chill up my spine. Geez. Easy, kid. Just to drive his point home, he slams the chair against the table before storming out of the room. “You suck. You suck. You suck.” He continues all the way up the stairs until I hear hisdoorslam.
“My God, it’s ten minutes,” I shout after him. “And, I don’t think you should be using that language.” I realize I’m yelling up the stairs to him, and he’s either ignoring me or can’t hear me. Either way, I’m wasting mybreath.
“Yeah, it’s ten minutes,” Liam reminds me. “Not worth the fight you’re about toendure.”
“I don’t think I’m going to endure any fight,” I tell him. “He just stormed off to his room. It seems like the fight is overtome.”
Liam snickers, but holds his gaze firm on the screen of hisphone. “Okay.”
The snicker kind of says it all, though. Dylan is totally upstairs playing thestupidgame.
I storm up to his bedroom and give Dylan the decency of knocking once before opening the door. Sure enough, he’s setting up the game. “I just told you no,” I say, calmly. “You need to listen to me when your parentsaren’there.”
“Parent,” he corrects me. “Daniel isn’t anyone’sparent.”
“He loves you, though,” I tell him, immediately regretting my words because I don’t know if that’s trueornot.
“No, he doesn’t. He loves my mom, sometimes.” That’s a little heavy for a ten-year-old.
“Okay, fine, play the game for ten minutes,” I tell him. I hate giving in, but Liam might be right about picking my battles with Dylan. I want him to like me, but at the same time, I don’t want him to walk alloverme.
He doesn’t say thank you or seem to appreciate me giving in, so I leave him to his game and head back downstairs, feeling like I have an “L” stamped on myforehead.
“Told you,” Liam says as I walk back into thekitchen.
“Shut up.” I open the fridge and grab anorange.
“Why did you change out of your bathing suit? You know Dylan has training in an hour, right?”Liamasks.
“I’m letting it dry off so I don’t get a chapped ass like you probably have right now. As if I answered my longing question about Liam and his assiness, I widen my gaze and lean toward him. “Ohhhh, is that what yourproblemis?”
