Chapter 15 Javier
Fifteen
Javier
I could tell Octavia was glad the summer had come and my schedule was freer, because she was eager to request days off. This was a part of our contract: During the summer, she was allowed to have two days of the week off if she desired. And desired she did.
Octavia’s first day off was on a Tuesday. I wondered what she did when she wasn’t with us, so much so that I took it upon myself to let Aleesa run in the backyard, just so I could get a better view of the guesthouse.
Not that I could see much inside it.
And not that it was any of my business.
I saw her, though, lying on a towel on the grass outside, sunglasses covering her face, her golden-brown skin glistening, probably from sunscreen. A book was in one of her hands, the other tucked beneath her head.
She wore nothing but a yellow two-piece bikini. I remember thinking yellow paired really well with her skin. I wanted to see her in more yellow.
“Tava!” Aleesa started running toward the guesthouse, but I caught her and tossed her over my shoulder like a bag of potatoes.
Absolutely not.
I was hardly the type of man to wander around outside unless it was to use the pool, sauna, or hot tub. And we weren’t dressed in swimming attire, so . . . how was I going to explain myself to Octavia if she caught us?
“Just mind your own business,” I muttered to myself as I carried a whining Aleesa into the house.
There was something that was really getting to me.
Now that I was home more, I noticed that whenever Aleesa was napping and Octavia was waiting for her to wake up, she was on her phone a lot more instead of reading. Reading was her go-to thing. Every break she had, I had caught her reading.
But not lately.
She was either texting or scrolling through Bobble—a useless app that loved reporting the latest celebrity drama—or another app. And call me whatever name you want for being so nosy, but I recognized the name of the other app she was using.
Spark.
Spark was a dating app. And I only knew that because my sister, Catalina, talked about it all the time. Apparently, it was great for matching people for perfect ongoing hookups . . . or one-night stands.
Something about Octavia having that app bothered me more than it should have. Was she looking for something ongoing . . . or a one-night thing? Was she currently talking to someone?
The next day Octavia took off was on a Thursday. I noticed her leaving when I looked out the window of Aleesa’s playroom. It faced the front yard and cobblestone driveway. Octavia kept her car parked there, but on this particular night she was taking an Uber.
She wore a skintight red dress and high heels. Her hair was pinned up, a few locs hanging around her heart-shaped face. And she had those jewels in her hair again, the ones that made her appear ethereal, like a woman from another planet, too beautiful to belong in a simple place like this.
She was already beautiful, but there was something about the twinkling of those jewels, or the shells or the beads, that did something to me. I wanted to touch them. Tug on them. Feel her hair run through my fingers and . . .
No.
Not the nanny.
I watched her climb into the back seat of the Uber and leave. Afterward, I felt a little annoyed. Probably because I knew she was going on a date.
A date with some guy she had met on Spark.
And that she would most likely be drinking if she needed an Uber.
And that if she was drinking, she was expecting something to happen with whoever this guy was.
But again, her personal life was none of my business.