Page 17 of Man Flu

“I’m just kidding,” Cora says, dryly. “I already know his name is Logan, and he’s your term.”

“Temp,” I correct her.

She shrugs her shoulders. “Same thing.” Cora sighs and looks back over at Logan. “Do you know he was a baseball player?”

How did I produce this kind of spawn? “I may have noticed it on his resume,” I say, realizing Cora has no clue what a resume is.

“Yeah, Logan and I are going to play when I’m better. I told him I’d kick his butt.”

“Cora, we don’t talk like that,” I remind her. Why am I constantly reminding her how to not be like me? I feel like I read something when I was pregnant about every child being born as a cave-person, and it’s our job as parents to teach them how to act like civilized human beings in the twenty-first century. Considering I still haven’t figured it out for myself, how the hell am I expected to raise another human to act civilized?

“Sorry, I’ll just beat him good,” she corrects herself.

Oh, please stop, child of mine.

“Well, that sounds like fun, but Logan has a job to do,” I say, trying to place some separation into this playing house situation we seem to be in at the moment. I don’t know a thing about Logan, other than the simple fact that he’s gorgeous and good with kids. I can take a simple guess that he’s every woman’s dream man, and I’m not part of a crowd he’d enjoy choosing from. Plus, I’m his boss, and I shouldn’t even be having this internal dialogue thing going on. Shut up, Hannah.

“Does he work all day and night?” Cora asks.

“So, I’m going to head back into the office now,” Logan says, pointing toward the doors. “How did the meeting go?”

“Oh, I’m pretty sure I blew it,” I tell him.

His lip quirks downward, seemingly bummed. “Sorry about that,” he says.

I kneel at Cora’s side and pull her into me. “It happens.” To me—the mother of one, the wife to no one, and a woman with the kind of luck she should have a black cat named Lucky.