Chapter 10 Willa
TEN
WILLA
“What does a banana do when it sees a chimpanzee coming?”
Summer and Lucky just stare ahead, frowning. Shane bites his lower lip and shrugs his shoulders.
“The banana splits!”
Shane shakes his head, smiling. The twins just keep staring ahead at the chimpanzee exhibit.
Tough crowd. We’re at the LA Zoo for a fun Saturday outing, but something passed between Summer and Lucky at the meerkat exhibit, and now they’re having what Shane refers to as a “twin fight.” It reminds me a lot of the fights that Nico and I had when I was five and he was nine, but quieter and more intense.
Minus the name calling and wet willies. Summer is two minutes older than her brother, and she milks it for all it’s worth.
They both napped on the way here, since it took an actual year to get to this Griffith Park location from the Palisades.
So, I thought they’d be in a better mood.
But nope. They’ve been complaining about the animal poo smell—which I personally like and find quite relaxing and earthy—and they don’t feel like walking, but they also don’t want to be rolled around in rented strollers or carried like babies.
Not even the highly un-Margo-approved churros are floating their boats.
Shane muttered to me that it will blow over eventually, but I won’t give up that easily.
This is one of the nicest zoos I’ve ever been to, and it’s a beautiful spring day, and I’m happy to be here with Shane (who is wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses and looks exactly like a handsome star who’s trying to go incognito), and I want everyone to be happy.
“What did the banana say to the chimpanzee? Nothing! Bananas can’t talk! Wokka wokka. No? Not even a little smile?”
All of a sudden, for no reason that I can see, Summer whacks her brother on the head with her churro. Lucky basically growls into her face, and it turns into a shoving match. I grab Summer, Shane grabs Lucky, and we pull them apart.
“Hey!” Shane says. “Knock it off.”
“She started it!”
“You started it by being a poopie doopie head!”
They both scrunch up their faces and stick their tongues out at each other.
Shane and I signal to each other that we’re going to separate them for a bit.
“Come with me, little lady.” I take Summer’s hand and drag her away. “We do not hit people with churros or shove them when we’re angry,” I say to her firmly but quietly. “Got that?”
“He’s so dumb!”
“I don’t think he is, but why don’t you tell me why you’re mad at him.”
She stops in her tracks, throws her churro on the ground, balls her little hands up into fists, and growls just like Lucky did.
“Okay, you know what?” I pick up the big stick of deep-fried dough, take her hand again, toss the churro into the nearest trash bin, and pull her over to a nearby bench.
“Sometimes when we’re really mad at someone, we can’t find the words to talk about it right away, and that’s fine.
But we have to find other ways to get rid of the anger that don’t hurt anyone or anything. Do you feel mad?”
“Yes!”
“You feel it all over your body?”
“Yes! And it’s his fault!”
“Well, let’s figure out a way to get that mad feeling out of your body.”
I hop up from the bench. “When I feel angry, I do this.” Fortunately, I’m not wearing tight jeans for once, so I jump around on the pavement in front of her and kick and punch the air with absolutely no regard as to whether or not any other zoo patrons are watching me, because fuck ’em.
This is an important life lesson. And then I just fling my arms around while jumping up and down. “This feels really good!”
Soon, Summer is jumping up and down and kicking and punching the air next to me.
“Good! Don’t you feel better?”
She’s smiling now.
“Now fling your arms around like this to get rid of the rest of that energy!”
She does just that.
I stop jumping. “Better?”
She stops jumping and nods her head. “You’re weird.”
“Yes, I am. But you aren’t mad anymore, are you?”
She shrugs her shoulders and then shakes her head.
“Good. I feel great. And you know what I feel like doing?”
“What?”
I look around quickly to make sure I’ve got room, and then I do a cartwheel.
I’m fucking awesome at doing cartwheels, and I’ve got so much pent-up sexual energy that I will do literally anything to work it off so I don’t start dry humping their dad’s leg in the reptile house.
I execute a perfect cartwheel, except that my blouse drops to my neck while I’m upside-down.
Fortunately, I’m wearing a bra. Unfortunately, it’s not a family friendly bra.
I pull my shirt down as soon as I’m right side up.
“I saw your undies!”
I swing around to see if anyone else saw and find Shane standing about twenty feet away, with an expression on his face that is caught somewhere between what the fuck is wrong with you? and show me that fucking bra again right now.
I regret nothing.
“You know how to do a cartwheel?” I turn to ask Summer, but Summer’s eyes have lit up and she gasps when she sees something that is not me.
“Abby, Abby, Abby!” She runs over to a little girl who’s walking next to a woman who is blatantly eye-fucking Shane.
“Yaaaaah!” the little girl who must be Abby exclaims as she runs over to Summer and they jump up and down in front of each other. Lucky runs over to them too, and there doesn’t seem to be any trace of animosity left between the twins.
I, however, have very quickly developed some animosity for this blonde woman with blown-out hair and a fake tan, probably fake boobs, and tight white jeans—I mean come on… Tight white jeans at the zoo on a Saturday afternoon?
I take a seat on the bench and monitor the kids in my peripheral vision while keeping a closer eye on this woman who keeps tossing her hair, putting her hand on Shane’s arm, and throwing her head back when she laughs.
She must be a single mom. Well, isn’t that cute.
A single mom and a single dad at the zoo. How fucking perfect.
I thought it was so funny how overprotective Shane was being when his personal trainer was flirting with me at the house the other day, but this feels really shitty.
I mean, that’s probably what he needs—a rich, fake-boobed single mom who probably used to be married to some other actor.
Shane keeps glancing over my way, but he’s wearing sunglasses so I can’t see his eyes, and he is such a friendly guy that I cannot for the life of me tell if he wants me to rescue him or not. Because I would very much like to rescue him. Or rescue myself from this terrible situation.
Shane waves me over to come join him. I’m by his side in less than two seconds.
“This is our new nanny, Willa. Willa, this is Abby’s mom,” he says, and I can tell from the way he says it that he doesn’t remember her name.
“Hey, Willa,” she says, offering me a limp handshake. “I’m Jillian.”
You used about three too many spritzes of Calvin Klein Obsession today, Jillian, but you have a vintage bottle—good for you. “Nice to meet you, Jillian. Looks like the twins are pretty fond of Abby.”
“Yes, they get along great. Well, you should bring the twins over for dinner,” she says, touching Shane’s arm again.
Somebody came to the zoo on a single dad safari.
Can’t say I blame her. “I bet you could use a good home-cooked meal.” She whips out her phone.
“How about next Saturday? We can take the kids to a matinee first. Make a day of it.”
“Actually, you can come to our house if you want—the two of you. We’ve got a nice view of the sunset at dinnertime.”
Our house.
He puts his arm around my shoulder, just for a second, but he makes a point. “Willa here is kind of an amazing cook. She uses a ton of butter, but we like it anyway. Dinnertime is fun at our place.”
Our place.
“You’re welcome to join us sometime.” I give her my best hostess smile.
Us.
Jillian’s coral-stained lips are sticking to her bleached-white teeth, but I can tell she wants to kill me, and I am fine with it.
“Yeah, we’d love to have the two of you over for dinner. Sometime.”
Jillian puts her phone away. “Fantastic. Sounds fun. Let’s go, Abby! Time to go! Great to see you, Shane.” She nods at me, grabs her daughter, and strides away in her four-inch mules.
“Can we see the giraffes now?” Lucky asks. He and his sister are holding hands, and it’s pretty much the cutest thing I’ve ever seen.
“Let’s go find those giraffes,” Shane says.
All I really want to do is drag him to the reptile house and dry hump him, but I get a shot of the twins holding hands in front of us to send to their mother later.
“Well, I sure hope Jillian takes you up on your offer,” I say as we stroll down the path to the giraffes.
“Sorry. I didn’t know how else to get out of that.”
“No, I think you chose the perfect way. Happy to be your friendly domestic cockblocker.” I give him a side-glance.
He’s grinning, and he’s so hot in that baseball cap and those sunglasses, but instead of dragging him to the reptile house, I bump against his arm with my arm. Classic move from the handbook of seduction techniques for eight-year olds.
He does it back to me. And then he rests his arm on my shoulder again. Not in a sexy way—in the way that my brother would. But still. We’re in public. We’re with the kids. I’ll take it.
And then I hear his back pocket vibrate. He uses his other hand to check who’s calling. When he removes his arm from my shoulder, I know immediately who it is.
“Yo, superstar!” I hear my brother say. Talk about a cockblocker. He must have sensed that a man was touching me.
“What’s up?…No, we’re at the zoo, actually. Wanna join us?…Oh yeah, is that next week?”
I catch up to the twins so Shane can feel free to converse without me eavesdropping. “What’s your favorite animal here so far?” I ask them.
“Lucky!” Summer says, lifting their connected arms up in the air.
“Summer!” her brother says.
“Awww, you’re my favorites too!”
Shane catches up with us, sliding his phone back into his pocket. But instead of putting his arm around me again, he walks on the opposite side of the twins from me.
“Is my brother coming to join us?”
“No. He was just calling about his show next Friday.”
“Oh yeah… Are you going to that?”
“I mean…are you going?”
“Well, one of us should probably look after these guys, right? You should go.”
“But you haven’t had a night off yet.”
“I just started working for you.”
“You probably haven’t seen your brother play in ages, though.”
“No. I haven’t.”
“You should. He’s great live. The Hotel Café is a great place to see him. You go.”
I keep looking over at him, but he won’t look at me. “Okay. I’ll go.”
“You should. You should go out. Take your friend.” He nods, like he’s trying to convince himself.
“You really don’t have anyone else who could babysit them?”
“Nah. You go.” He nods again, still not looking over at me.
“Okay. I’ll go.”