AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I am, but it smells wonderful nevertheless.”
Ricky sat down at the kitchen table with his beer and rested for a minute. I could tell he was tired, as if his day had been brutally hard and long. I wondered if he’d had to fight any actual fires that day, but I decided not to ask.
“Thanks,” I replied.
“So, you got to meet Katy?”
“Yeah, I did. She seems really nice,” I said.
Ricky was periodically glancing at his phone. “Yeah, she said she enjoyed meeting you when she dropped off Zoe. She said that you were wonderful, which coming from her should give you the highest compliment. She is very picky about nannies.”
I smiled. “Wow, that is great news to hear. Tell her thanks.”
I finished making dinner and put the dishes on the table so that we could all start serving ourselves. I felt strange eating dinner with them, but Ricky and Zoe both seemed to want me there. And it was good food, even if I do say so myself.
“Wow, this is fantastic,” Ricky said. “It might be the best spaghetti that I’ve ever tasted. What is your secret?”
“Oh, the secret is something my mother taught me. It was actually passed down from her mother as well. When the spaghetti is boiling, you sprinkle garlic powder, just a dash, into it every three minutes. Then you alternate that every two minutes with a dash of pickle juice. It gives it that little something extra, even if you don’t actually taste it.”
“Interesting,” Ricky said.
“It’s really good,” Zoe added.
“Thank you, sweetie,” I replied. “If you eat it all up then you will grow up to be big and strong.”
Zoe took this opportunity to flex her muscles and give us her tough face. “Super Zoe!”
I laughed. “We’ve created a monster over here.”
“Oh, she knows she will kick butt wherever she goes one day,” Ricky said.
We finished dinner with plenty of conversation, most of it directed by Zoe. She first told us both about her best friends at school, Shelby and Lynn, who I hadn’t heard anything about yet. And then she went on to say that when she grew up she was going to be a ballerina, but she also wanted to be a ninja.
“You can be both?” I asked.
“Yes, silly. Ninja’s like the dark, so I will do that at night and then I’ll be a ballerina during the day.”
“Cool. You have to study a lot to do those things.”
“Nah, they are easy.”
Zoe was such a sweet girl, and I could tell that Ricky really enjoyed the way we bantered back and forth together. It was a fun time. Zoe was a strong, very capable little girl with a wondrous imagination. I hoped one day I would have a child just like her. At twenty-five, I was well aware that my biological clock was starting to talk to me regularly. I hated that it was, but I had been thinking a lot about having kids one day and having that fantasy life with the perfect husband. Sitting there eating dinner with Zoe and Ricky felt so right.
After dinner, I helped clean up everything, and then I started to leave. I was putting my jacket on when Zoe hugged me and said, “No. I want you to stay for story time.”
I looked up at Ricky. “What do you think? Should I stay for story time?”
“I think that would be a wonderful idea,” Ricky said.
I took off my coat and smiled at Zoe. “Ok, let’s read that story.”
“After your bath, sweetie,” Ricky said. “So get crackin’.”
“Ok, daddy!” Zoe said.
She ran upstairs to the bathroom and a moment later I heard the tub running. I found myself trying to think when I’d been able to bathe by myself and actually be trusted to get myself clean. The last family I worked with had a ten year old boy who still needed to be talked to through the door to make sure he did everything. It was weird.
Ricky led me upstairs after a few moments and we waited in Zoe’s bedroom for her to be done with her bath. “She is one of those kids who would take two baths a day if you let her,” he said. “She has a phobia about not being clean enough. At times, I wonder if I should get her tested for OCD, but I’m hoping it’s just her being conscientious.”
