Page 48 of The Nanny Game Plan
“All that for football?” Mimi says with such utter disdain that we all laugh, and Grammercy snatches her up, hugging her tight as he says, “That’s my girl, you know what’s what,” in French.
I think that’s what he says, anyway. My French is rusty, and those two semesters of college were a long time ago.
But as Grammercy gathers Elly close with his other arm, whispering something else that makes her blush, I think maybe it’s time to brush up on my French. And my romancing skills. I can’t put them to use with my nanny, obviously, but sooner or later, I’m going to meet another woman who makes my chest light up, and I want to be ready.
I’m ready to start living again, not simply surviving.
And what better time to start than tonight?
Thirteen
CLOVER
The dashfrom the family holding pen, down the hall to the ladies’ room, is a blur of damp-haired hockey players, reporters, staff, and puck bunnies angling for a chance to sneak into the team’s inner sanctum, but I barely see them, and I don’t make eye contact.
I keep my eyes on the ground and my feet moving.
I’m a woman on a mission, my grip on my cane so tight that the golden shark head bites into my palm. My leg isn’t hurting that much tonight, but at this point, my cane is a security blanket. And right now, it’s the only thing keeping me from vibrating out of my skin.
I can’t think straight.
Hell, I can barely breathe, not until I’ve pushed through the heavy restroom door into the bleach-scented silence.
Alone. Finally, alone.
Thank God.
Relief hits me like a physical blow. It’s almost painful, the sudden slackening of tension that leaves my knees feeling like goo. I stagger to the far side of the line of sinks, propping mycane against the wall before bracing my hands on the counter and sucking air.
What the fuck is happening?
And why does itkeephappening?
Yes, I’ve been a more emotional person overall since the accident. But having your entire life turned upside down, your dreams threatened, and your future as a mostly whole human being put in jeopardy while you deal with chronic pain will do that to a girl. And I’ve found ways to manage. Stalking the internet for clues with Plato, my hacker bestie. Meditation. Long baths. Zoning out to reality television. Screaming into Nutasha’s soft, stuffed squirrel tummy with rage when the reality that the asshole who did this to me is getting away with it scot-free gets to be too much.
Messy, yeah. Kind of. But I was coping. Healing. Working through my feelings while getting my shit together.
But ever since I moved into Dean’s garage, everything has changed. It hasn’t even been two weeks, but I feel like a completely different person. An unstable person. A person who can’t control the surges of emotion that rise inside me when I get a boots-on-the-ground window into how intense it is to be a parent who’s trying to help your kids heal from this kind of loss.
The biggest loss.
Every time I see one of the people, I’m coming to care for struggling, faltering, then rising to fight their way back to each other with such love, my lungs forget how to function. I can’t stop comparing their journey to my own. The girls’ dad to mine. The strained, sour quiet in my childhood home to the joy and tears and shouts and laughter and love in theirs.
I know comparison is the thief of joy, but it’s not that. After a lot of soul-searching, I realized that I’mnotjealous or resentful. Not even a little bit.
I’ve actually come to feelmoreempathy for my dad than I did before. My father isn’t a Dean Kate kind of man. He’s not a guy who was ever comfortable with his emotions or physical affection or telling people how he feels. I honestly don’t thinkheknows how he feels most of the time. But he loves me. Deeply. In his own quiet, largely oblivious sort of way.
He isn’t a bad man; he just wasn’t built for fatherhood.
But Dean is, and the girls are so lucky to have him.
I’m so happy for them, it makes me want to cry. A lot. At least once or twice a day, I have to fight the urge to break down. To break down for them, and maybe for…me? And for Dean and my father and all the lost mothers, who never got to live their lives or their dreams. And all the people in the world who have no idea what it’s like to be held tight and safe in the circle of a healthy family.
To be loved by even one person with a heart as big as Dean’s.
“No,” I mutter aloud, shaking my head at myself in the mirror. “You can’t.”
I can’t fall in love with him. Ican’t.
