5. Leah
5
LEAH
I elbowed my way into the DeRossi house. Grocery bags hung from my arms, lined up to my elbows. No way in hell was I making a second trip. I glanced at the time on the microwave as I eased the bags onto the kitchen island.
I had two hours before I needed to pick up Gio from soccer camp and Ellie from a young writers’ workshop at the library. I flipped through the house binder, checking my to-do list to see which tasks I could complete before picking up the kids and taking them to the Lawsons’ house.
The beginning of the month was always busy. The kids I nannied—twelve-year-old Giovanni DeRossi and eleven-year-old Eloise Lawson—had packed schedules that kept them active in the summer. July was particularly hellish. August and the predictable schedule of the school year would be a reprieve.
Beyond caring for the kids, I took care of most domestic tasks for the DeRossis and Lawsons. I preferred sticking with the title of ‘nanny.’ It was simpler for people to understand than a house manager or family assistant .
The door opened and closed, and I looked at the clock again. Maddie DeRossi wasn’t supposed to be home until seven or eight tonight, and her husband, Luca, was out of town on business.
“Leah?”
I smiled at the voice. “In the kitchen,” I called.
Kylie popped her head around the corner. “You know you can make two trips, right?”
I laughed and pulled the new air filters out of the bags. “Never. Were you over at Kristin and Will’s house?”
Kylie’s older sister and brother-in-law lived next door to one of the families I worked for. It was like a cul-de-sac of billionaires.
“Yeah,” she said as she started unloading the rest of the bags I had brought in from the hardware store. “Geez, they have you changing their air filters?”
“If it has to do with the house or the kids, I get paid handsomely to do it.” I opened the pantry door and pulled out a folding step stool. “Besides, I’d rather change air filters and lightbulbs than deal with engaged couples all day long.”
“Touché. I swear, all logic and sanity go out the window when there’s an engagement ring.” Kylie massaged her temples. “I miss the honeymoon already.”
I laughed. “Lucky you. Not all of us can take off three weeks to traipse around Europe.”
“ Two weeks in Europe,” she clarified. “One of those weeks was in Paris, Arkansas , for Bryan’s family reunion. Not the Paris with the Eiffel Tower and the most amazing carbs. We traded croissants for casseroles.”
I snickered. “You look happy.”
Kylie let out a deep breath. “I am. It feels like we can finally settle down. The months leading up to the wedding were chaotic. And the honeymoon was fun. I have so many photos to show you from the trip, but I’m ready to just be married and enjoy the mundane with Bryan.”
“It seemed like y’all had fun at the wedding, though.”
She smiled wistfully. “It was a dream. And I can’t thank you enough for everything you did. Bryan and I were talking about all the work you and Logan did the week of the wedding. Y’all were a godsend, and we owe you big time.”
I shook my head. “It was in the job description. World’s best maid of honor at your service.”
Kylie laughed. “Seriously, Logan will be back in town at the beginning of September for his birthday. We want to have you guys over for dinner as a thank you.”
My heart did a little flip at hearing his name. “Logan’s coming back to town?”
“Yeah. Kris convinced him to let her throw a big thirtieth birthday bash for him. He’s always been weird about birthdays, but he agreed to it. Probably because it’s his deadline or whatever.”
“What do you mean?”
Kylie worked it over in her mind for a moment. “This stays between us?”
I mimed locking my lips.
“When Will started dating Kristin, he really helped Logan. I mean, don’t get me wrong—he helped us all. But Logan had never recovered from what our parents did until Will started coming around. Will tutored him so he could get his grades up enough to graduate. He helped him get into college. Will, Logan, and Bryan work together now. Lo always felt guilty about everything Will and Kristin did for us, and he got really intense about not letting them down.”
I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Logan since the wedding, but it had been six weeks of radio silence. Hearing Kylie talk about him and say his name fed the addiction I had worked so hard to sober from.
“What do you mean?” I asked, hoping for just a little more.
She shrugged. “Little things, you know? He didn’t drink before he turned twenty-one. He always drives exactly the speed limit. He’s so frugal it’s annoying. He never dated anyone long enough to get serious because he didn’t want to get distracted from school or work by a relationship. He’s the youngest VP in the company’s history and he’s on his way to becoming a partner. He stopped gaming when he went to college because of one less-than-stellar grade. He literally doesn’t have any hobbies anymore. It’s weird. Like he’s a robot or something.”
I thought back to the guy at the wedding who had been straitlaced but easy-going.
“And Kristin and Will haven’t talked to him about it?” I asked.
Kylie shook her head. “I’ve tried to get them to call him on his shit. I’ve tried to call him on it. I don’t think he ever fully processed everything we went through when we were kids.”
I felt for Kylie. I felt for her and all her siblings—Kristin, Logan, Hunter, and Zoey.
Their parents had gone to prison when we were in middle school. They had been dealing drugs and sold to a kid in Logan’s class, who had overdosed and died. Their world had turned upside down.
I remember Kylie and Logan missing school because social workers were trying to get in touch with their oldest sister, Kristin, who had been away at college.
Before it happened, Kylie and I had regular sleepovers at her house. After her parents’ arrest hit the news, she and her siblings had to move out of their house and into a single-wide. My mom put a stop to those sleepovers.
Kylie could come over to my house, but I wasn’t allowed to go to hers. Almost all of our friends’ parents made the same decision mine had. She suffered from having her social life cut off. I couldn’t imagine what Logan had gone through at that time. Kids were cruel, hormonal sociopaths.
Kylie waved her hand, silently dismissing the depressing turn of conversation. “All Logan told me is that he has to make it to thirty without ‘messing up,’ and that if he does, he’ll have made it. Whatever that means.” She rolled her eyes. “He’s annoyingly perfect these days. I hope he does something crazy when he turns thirty and goes back to normal.” She offered a sad smile. “I miss him. I know he always wanted to get away from Beaufort and leave all this behind, but Chicago is so far.”
“Then count me in for dinner when he’s back in town,” I said as I situated the step stool beneath the one ceiling air vent. “We’ll make him have some fun.” Maybe round two of the kind of fun he and I had indulged in already.
The kitchen vent was my least favorite to change. Lint and dust always fell on my head. But at least it was the only one in the ceiling. The rest were wall vents.
“Do you need a hand?” Kylie asked.
“I’m good,” I said as I climbed onto the step stool and reached up, unlatching the grate cover.
A gray dust clump fell on the tip of my nose. I huffed and blew it away from my face as I reached up and pulled the old air filter out. The kitchen spun. I grabbed the top of the step stool to steady myself.
“Whoa—” Kylie rounded the island. “You okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said as I set the old filter against the stepstool and paused to breathe. That was the second time today that I had gotten lightheaded. “I probably need to eat something before I go pick up Gio and Ellie.”
She tilted her head. “You look pale.”
I picked up the three-pack of new filters and tore into the plastic packaging. “I was sick last week. Must’ve picked up something from the kids.”
“That’s weird. Usually, kids don’t get that sick in the summer.”
I shrugged. “They’re in camps and stuff. Same little germ factories.”
Kylie laughed. “Don’t think you’re getting out of the impending interrogation. You got away with not giving me the details of your hookup after the wedding because that weekend was hectic, and then Bryan and I flew out for the honeymoon.” She slapped her hands on the slick stone countertop. “Tell me! Who was it?”
I rolled my eyes as I climbed onto the stepstool, shoved the new air filter in place, and closed the cover. “It was me enjoying a little rebound sex. That’s all.”
“And you haven’t seen her since?”
I cut my eyes at Kylie.
“Him since?”
I laughed and shook my head.
“Come on, at least give me a hint!”
“I’m not telling, because it doesn’t matter. It was a little...stress relief that I didn’t have to buy batteries for.”
“Come on,” she whined. “You tell me everything. Just a first name?—”
My stomach lurched. I didn’t hear the rest of her sentence because I was running to the kitchen sink as the measly breakfast of a banana and a bagel that I had downed made a grand reappearance.
Cool hands pulled my hair away from my face as I heaved again. Kylie turned the water on to rinse out the sink as I braced my hands on the edge.
“I think that’s it,” I rasped as I hung my head over the sink.
Kylie waited in the kitchen while I slipped upstairs to the guest room I slept in when I stayed with the kids overnight. I had a stash of toiletries in the attached bathroom, so I didn’t have to haul them back and forth from my apartment.
When I came back down after brushing my teeth and swishing mouthwash, Kylie was holding a slim, white package.
“How do you feel?” she asked.
“Better,” I said with a heavy exhale as I started rummaging around the bags for the lightbulbs so I could change the blown ones in the hallway. “I don’t know what happened. It just came out of nowhere.”
Kylie lifted an eyebrow. “You said you were sick last week...”
“Yeah, but I probably got it from the kids. Like I said.”
“Were the kids sick last week?”
“Well, no. But sometimes viruses don’t present the same way for everyone. They could have been asymptomatic.”
Her expression was kind. “Leah.”
I found the light bulbs and opened the box. “Maybe it was food poisoning.”
She handed me the white package in her hand. “Go take the test.”
I froze. “How did you pull a pregnancy test out of thin air?”
Kylie lifted her Mary Poppins purse. “I keep them on hand. You’d be shocked at how many brides find out they’re pregnant right before their wedding day.” She pushed it toward me. “Go take it.”
“But I?—”
“Take the damn test, Leah. Seeing the negative will make you feel better. Do you remember how many times you had to hold my hand while I took pregnancy tests because I was freaking out?”
There were normal friends, and then there was the type of friend that joined you in the bathroom while you peed on a stick to tell you that everything would be okay.
We were the latter.
But there was one big problem.
What if it wasn’t negative?
Because I had only slept with one person who could have made this happen. And it was my best friend’s brother.
I took it out of her hand with trembling fingers and headed for the bathroom. Kylie waited by the door while I took the test and set it on the counter while I washed my hands.
The three-minute timer she set on her phone chimed, and my stomach flipped, souring with anxiety.
It was going to be negative. We had used a condom. I was overthinking everything.
“Leah, you have to actually look at the result,” she said when I stalled and started collecting the bathroom hand towels to throw in the laundry.
I twisted a towel in my hands. “I can’t.”
Kylie reached for the test.
“No!”
She held her hands up. “If you’re not going to look at it, then I will. And when it’s negative, you have to tell me who you hooked up with that has you this freaked out. I’ve never seen you like this before.”
Time moved in slow motion as she flipped the test over and peered at the results window.
Kylie clapped her hands over her mouth.
Two pink lines stood out, clear as day.
She let out a shocked breath. “You’re going to tell me who it is, right? I know I said you had to tell me if it was negative, but...”
I shook my head. I couldn’t tell her.
And I certainly couldn’t tell him.
Logan Solomon had earned his perfection and deserved to leave his past behind.
I couldn’t bear to be his mistake.