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I laugh once, bitterly. “Not great. Um, in fact, I’m mostly sure we’re going to break up.”
“Fuck.”
“Pretty much. I’ve never been so mortified and scared in my life, Aria. It was like, one minute, I’m embarrassed and I know I’m about to be fired, which—fine, I’ll be okay as far as work goes, but it still bothers me. And then the next minute, I’m wrapped in a sheet at Cormac’s window, watching on as the twins’ little red-faced screams shatter me. Cormac and Abigail both had clothes on, so they raced out there to be with them and zipped out the door before I could even get dressed. God…” I can’t help it. Tears puddle in my eyes and make the bar wavey.
“I’m so sorry, Lily.”
“And you know the weirdest part? It’s not that they abandoned me naked in his bedroom—considering the circumstances, I’d have been mad if theyhadn’trun out the door with the kids.”
“Of course.”
“But the weirdest part is, while I was watching them scoop the kids up and take them to the hospital, this absolute horror of a situation unfolding…I realized that this was my greatest fear.”
She frowns prettily. “Well sure, sweetie. A hurt child is every…wait. You’re not their parent.”
“Exactly.”
“Oh.”
We’re quiet for a few minutes as that sets in for her, too. Then I add, “Months ago, I thought seeing my restaurant burn down was the worst thing that could ever happen to me. All my hopes and dreams going up in smoke without a thing I could do to stop it. Now, when I look back at it, I realize how naïve that was.”
“It sounds like you are a little too attached to them.”
“I’m not a professional nanny. I don’t know how to keep myself from feeling like this, Aria. It’s all a fucking nightmare.”
She nods. “My therapist calls it enmeshment.”
“Hmm?”
“You know how my mom has no boundaries and always wants to be the cool mom or the cool grandma?”
“I still remember when you caught her wearing your cheerleader uniform and saying she could totally be another high school student if she just dressed the part.”
Aria rolls her eyes and laughs. “Yep. Well, the lack of boundaries isn’t good for anyone except my therapist, who helps me to disentangle our relationship at eighty dollars an hour. Thank god for health insurance.”
“Yikes.”
“My point is, you’re right. You don’t have the training most nannies have, so you don’t know how not to keep yourself from enmeshing yourself with the family and into the mother dynamic, since Abigail wasn’t around. Given that you’re dating their father, I’m sure that makes it even easier to cross those emotional boundaries.”
“Sounds about right. You’re therapist is smart.”
She nods. “So, what now?”
“I have no idea.”
“Well, what have you been up to?”
I blow out a deep breath. “Not a lot, to be honest. I’ve been trying to process what happened. Figure out where we went wrong, over and over. I mean, the kids were already asleep in the living room before he tucked them in for a nap. We were…doing what we were doing, and then Abigail barged in. Seconds later, the scream that will forever haunt my dreams.”
“Wait—why did Abigail barge in?”
“She came to see them and I guess went up to Cormac’s room. But my car was there. That makes it weird that she barged into his bedroom, right?”
“I don’t know their dynamic, Lily. Lots of exes have keys to each other’s places, especially the amicable ones. It’s probably not the first time she’s traipsed all over his place.”
I sigh. “Maybe I don’t know him as well as I thought I did.”
“How do you mean?”
