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“Shh,” she urges, her eyes darting in my direction.
I smile at her when she notices my eyes are open.
“Sorry,” she mutters as she pulls Sutton from the rollaway crib. “I didn’t mean to wake you. I’m not super stealthy like you are. I have a hard time being quiet.”
I roll my lips between my teeth to keep from smiling. I’m very aware of just how loud she can be.
She looks away, telling me I wasn’t as quick to hide my response as I’d hoped I was.
It’s only fair after the way she mentioned how tight I’ve held her wrists last night. I still feel guilty for the things I did in the bathroom last night because of how close the kids were, despite them all being asleep.
“I just keep sticking my foot in it,” she mutters before urging the boys out of the bed to use the bathroom and wash their faces.
“My face is fine,” Luca grumbles.
“Take your clothes with you so you can change out of your pajamas,” she says rather than arguing with the child.
I roll over, my back toward the bathroom so I can face more in her direction. Despite knowing I’m awake, she doesn’t bother turning on the light. The room is cast in a haze of filtered light coming in around the edges of the curtains. I swear hotels purposely make it impossible to block out all light because they want everyone who stays to be up with the sun and out of the room soon after.
“Can I turn the TV on, Aunt Mila?”
She whips her head in Jace’s direction, and I know the significance of what he just asked. Luca is quick to add the aunt when speaking to her, but Jace hasn’t. I’ve only been around the kids for a little over two days, but Jace has always addressed her by her first name only.
“Of course you can,” she says, bending from her spot on the bed and scooping up the remote from the bedside table to hand to him.
I smile when she shoots her eyes back to me, knowing that little interaction means so much to her. She may not know it, but she’s doing an incredible job with these kids. Her lack of finances after having to pay for her sister and brother-in-law’s funeral and suddenly becoming responsible for two additional kids doesn’t make her a bad person. There aren’t many people who would be able to be thrust into that situation and come out unscathed. I hate that there’s an unspoken but very loud part of society that deem poor people unfit to be parents. Parenting is more about love and nurturing than anything else, and most people are doing the very best they can.
I close my eyes, trying to urge my erection to go away, grateful that the bed closest to the door, the one I’ll always choose when I have someone in the room to protect, is also the bed closest to the bathroom.
My deep breaths mix with the sound of Luca coming out of the bathroom and Sutton getting annoyed while Mila changes her diaper.
Jace urges his brother not to change the channel when it’s his turn to wash his face and get ready for the day.
I realize I’ve dozed once again when the door to the room is pulled open.
“What are you doing?” I say, sitting up in bed when I see Mila at the door with Sutton on her hip and the boys right behind her.
“Going down for breakfast.”
“No,” I say before my brain can process a way to not make it sound so authoritative. “Let me get dressed.”
“I’m capable of handling breakfast,” she says in that stubborn tone that makes me wonder how long she’s had this independent streak.
The girl who always tagged along with Carlen, Janet, and I when we were teens always seemed a little helpless. She always wanted me to open a jar for her or help her carry groceries from the car. She called once when she and some friends were at a movie and they thought some creepy guys were paying a little too much attention to them. Carlen and I didn’t hesitate to go get them, but by the time we showed up, the guys had lost interest and disappeared.
“Things are different now,” I tell her as I shove the blankets back and sit on the edge of the bed.
She must be incredibly irritated because her eyes don’t spend as much time sweeping down my body as they did that first night when I was done with my shower.
She bends, letting Sutton off her hip, and the boys don’t seem the slightest inconvenienced as they rush back to the other bed, the sound of a cartoon playing a second later.
I grab a change of clothes from my duffel before heading into the bathroom. I’d like another shower just to help me wake up, but Mila would probably end up leaving the room the second I turned the shower on.
I can’t blame her irritation. There aren’t many people who can imagine all the terrible things that happen in the world, and unfortunately, I’ve heardI never thought it could happen to metoo many times to count. Even people with a healthy sense of self-preservation, who take precautions, are sometimes victimized because very few people are actually trained on how to react when those things arise. They spend a lot of time trying to avoid the situations altogether, which isn’t bad, but it only covers half of the problem.
Breakfast is a little disappointing for everyone. The waffle machine is broken, which breaks Jace’s heart. The yogurt is of no interest to Sutton. Luca is annoyed, probably more than he should be, that there’s apple juice but no orange juice. The kid chose apple juice yesterday. This is why kids are so damn difficult. Their wants change in the blink of an eye, so fast, it’s impossible for anyone to keep up with them.
Mila only picks at her food, but I can’t force the woman to eat.
