3. Addy #2
I smile, small and tired. Then it fades again.
“I can’t go home,” I say before she can suggest it.
Luci’s quiet.
“Okay,” she says, and I love her a little more for not pushing.
“I can’t,” I repeat, because I need her to understand. “Not like this. I can’t go back and let him be the reason I blew up my whole life for nothing. I just… I can’t.”
“You don’t have to explain it to me,” she says. “I get it.”
I swallow around the lump in my throat. “I’m looking at nanny agencies. Maybe live in positions. Something that solves the job and housing problem in one shot.”
“That’s smart.”
“Thank you. Please note this moment in family history.”
“I’ll embroider it on a pillow.”
I snort.
Then she says, more gently, “You’re really going to stay?”
I glance around the room, at my suitcases, the bedspread crime scene, the little notebook where I’ve started scribbling agency names and possible rates.
“Yes,” I say. And this time, when I say it, I mean it. “I’m going to make it work.”
“That’s my girl.”
We talk for a while after that, mostly nonsense, which is exactly what I need. Luci fills me in on our mother’s latest passive-aggressive message and a man she met last weekend who described himself as “spiritually flexible,” which apparently means unemployed and into mushrooms.
By the time we hang up, I feel steadier.
Still broke, furious, one inconvenience away from screaming into a bath towel, but steadier.
I open my laptop again and get serious.
I start with agencies that mention household placements, long-term positions, relocation assistance, and family support.
I update my résumé, tweak my cover letter, and send inquiries.
Then I start filling out forms with the kind of determination usually reserved for revenge montages and women in legal dramas.
Name.
Experience.
Preferred schedule.
Open to live in?
Yes.
Open to travel?
Yes.
Special skills?
I hesitate over that one, then type: Experienced in childcare routines, meal prep, emotional support, behavior management, household coordination, and creating calm environments.
It sounds very polished.
What it really means is: I can get marker out of a sofa, soothe a tantrum, make dinosaur-shaped toast, remember everyone’s appointments, and keep your child alive while you try not to lose your mind, but apparently, there’s no box for that.
Two hours later, I’ve emailed six agencies, applied for four listings, and started a spreadsheet because when life is in ruins, color-coded organization is sometimes the only form of control left.
I reward myself with vending machine chips and another bottle of water.
Living beautifully.
Around four, I force myself out of the motel because if I stay in that room any longer, I’ll fuse to the mattress and be discovered weeks later by housekeeping with a laptop balanced on my knees.
Chicago greets me with a crisp breeze off the lake and the kind of skyline that looks like it was built by overachievers. Glass, steel, and brick, and impossible confidence, all rising above streets that seem to hum with purpose.
It’s annoyingly beautiful.
I hate that Bryce brought me somewhere beautiful, that he lied, that a tiny, stupid part of me still wants an explanation that makes sense.
There isn’t one, and there probably never will be.
So I walk.
Past coffee shops, office buildings, and people who look like they know where they’re going. Past a dog in a little sweater that probably costs more than my current dinner budget. Past a florist, a bookstore, a corner deli.
The city feels alive in a way I can’t quite describe.
Restless, bright, indifferent. It doesn’t care that my life imploded, and strangely, that helps.
Because maybe that means I get to build a life here without my heartbreak becoming the center of the universe.
Maybe I get to just be one more person in a city full of people trying to figure it out.
I stop outside a café window, eyeing the pastries like they personally betrayed me by costing eight dollars each.
Inside, everyone looks warm and well-adjusted.
I go in anyway.
If I’m going to reinvent myself, I can at least do it with caffeine.
The girl behind the counter has a nose ring, a messy bun, and the kind of expression that suggests she has seen everything and judged most of it correctly.
“What can I get you?” she asks.
“Something inexpensive that will emotionally stabilize me.”
She nods like that’s a perfectly normal request. “Drip coffee.”
“Beautiful. Love a practical queen.”
She smiles at that, and ten minutes later I’m sitting by the window with a paper cup and my laptop open again, using the café Wi Fi like the determined little economic refugee I am.
I search one more round of agency listings. One catches my eye. Prestige placements, high-discretion households, long-term domestic staffing, and excellent salary for qualified candidates.
That sounds intimidating in a way that suggests marble countertops and rich people with alarming expectations, but also, importantly, money.
And then I see it.
Live-in nanny placement available. Immediate placement required. Private family. Chicago. Long-term preferred. Childcare experience essential. Must be adaptable.
I sit up straighter.
“Well,” I murmur to myself, “hello, gorgeous.”
The posting is vague in that rich people way that makes me assume either incredible benefits or a family secret in the attic. But the agency looks legitimate, the pay range is good, and live-in solves the problem I'm currently trying not to have a nervous breakdown over.
This could work. It could actually work.
My pulse picks up as I click through to the application.
I upload my résumé, fill in the forms, attach references, and write the kind of cover note that makes me sound calm, capable, and emotionally resilient.
When I hit submit, I sit back and stare at the screen. Hope's a weird feeling after humiliation. Fragile, sharp-edged, easy to distrust. Still, it’s there.
I check my inbox.
Nothing yet, obviously, because life isn't a movie and agencies aren't waiting breathlessly for my arrival.
Even so, I feel better. Better enough to order a muffin. This is called growth.
By the time I leave the café, the sky is starting to turn that pale evening gold that makes the city look softer around the edges. I walk back toward the motel with my hands in my cardigan pockets and my brain busy in a way that feels constructive.
I can do this.
I can find work, can stay, can build a version of life here that has absolutely nothing to do with Bryce.
The thought carries me all the way back.
But the second I open the motel room door, the loneliness hits again.
I set my bag down, kick off my boots, and sit on the bed with a sigh. Then, because I’m apparently determined to keep hurting my own feelings, I pick up my phone.
I don’t open Bryce’s profile.
Growth.
I do, however, open my photo gallery by accident, or maybe by habit, and there he is in older pictures, smiling at me in restaurants, on sidewalks, at farmers’ markets, in all those bland happy moments that now feel like evidence from a crime scene.
I swipe past them quickly, jaw tight.
Then I stop.
Mixed in there, from the airport and after, are the pictures I took when I got to Chicago. The skyline through the taxi window. My suitcases by the motel bed, sent to Luci with the caption don’t panic. A blurry night shot from the plane.
And then…
I freeze.
There’s a photo I don’t remember taking clearly. More of an accidental snap than anything else. It’s dark, taken low, mostly seat and shadow, and a slant of lamplight from first class.
But there, just in frame, is the sleeve of a pilot’s uniform. A strong hand resting near an armrest. The edge of a jaw. Salt and pepper at the temple.
My stomach drops in the most ridiculous way.
The man from the plane.
I stare at the image for too long. At the stranger who kissed me like he meant it. Like I was worth wanting instead of just a mess to discard.
My whole body warms with the memory before I can stop it. His voice, his hand at my jaw, the low certainty of him.
Then the immediate need I’d let myself fall into afterward because I was hurt and reckless and furious and maybe wanted one thing, just one, to belong only to me and not to Bryce’s destruction.
I press my lips together.
Well…
That happened, and it was insane, and I’m definitely not going to sit here romanticizing a man whose name I don’t know and whose entire role in my life was “disturbingly hot emotional spiral.”
Still, the memory remains.
I lock my phone and toss it onto the bed.
“Focus,” I tell myself.
Because what am I going to do, hunt down a stranger from a plane? Ask the airline for the seating chart?
Absolutely not.
I need a job, not a relapse into bad decisions.
I get up, wash my face, and sit down with my laptop one more time to check my email.
There are two automated confirmations.
One polite rejection.
And then…
One real response.
I blink.
Open it.
My pulse starts to climb.
It’s from the agency attached to the live-in position.
Thank you for your application, Adeline. Your experience appears to be a strong match for a family currently seeking immediate placement. We would like to schedule an initial screening call tomorrow morning, followed by an in-person interview if suitable.