“Matt is a good person, and I know that he’ll be patient and work with you. He’s just looking for someone he can trust. I trust you with my life, so I know I can refer you and feel good about it,” she said looking at me with genuine eyes. My beautiful friend with long flowing black hair, perfect little nose, cheekbones that celebrities pay for, and brown smooth skin looked like a glowing angel as she smiled at me.
“Awe, thank you Dana. I know you love me, but—”
Dana put her hand up to halt me from continuing. “If there’s one thing about you, it’s that you have a good heart. As far as the job, you’ll figure out the rest once you get there. How hard can sitting with a ten-year-old be? All you have to do is be nice, let him do what he wants, as long as he’s not doing anything wrong, of course. You can handle this with no problem, Tasha. I know you can.”
“Oh, ye of much faith,” I said and tilted my glass to take another drink. I thought long and hard about Dana’s offer. She was asking me to do something I’d never imagined doing. Be responsible for someone else’s kid.
“I have faith in you, my friend. You know I aim to impress my clients, so you won’t do anything to get fired, again.” Her response was a mixture of a question and a statement.
“Are you seriously depending on me not getting fired, after losing my last, I don’t know, say ten or eleven jobs? I think the jury is back in. Me and people, just don’t play well together.”
“Tasha, just make it work. For you and for me, please…”
“Alright Dana, for you, I’ll try. And, it’s not like I don’t need the money,” I said and drank the rest of my drink while staring at the card.
In the pit of my stomach, I felt this job would end in a hat tilt just like the others had. Th
en, I would go live in the perpetual black hole of failure that had become my life. This time, I would not only have let myself down, I would be letting Dana down too.
Have a little faith, Tasha. A tiny voice pushed through the growing cynicism that had taken root in my spirit. I was going to try for Dana…and for my landlord’s sake.
“Be there tomorrow and don’t be late,” she told me.
“I’ll be there, just tell me what time.”
No one in my circle of family and friends, other than my best friend, Dana, knew I had been job hopping since being let go by the lucrative celebrity blog that I helped build. I didn’t tell my Aunt Clara or Cousin Destiny that my column got hijacked and stopped generating money, because of the influx of content thieves and new blogs columns similar to mine. I’d been thrust back into the workforce and trying to find a spot that fit for me. So far, nothing I’d done with my creative writing degree had worked out for the long term.
When I came out of my thoughts, I noticed Dana scrolling through her phone. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m trying to get Matthew’s schedule organized. His name is Matthew Wilde, by the way. He has several out of town meetings coming up, so he will need you to be with his nephew quite a bit over the next month. That’s if you guys hit it off at the interview tomorrow. I’m looking at his schedule, so I can schedule you a time for the interview.” Dana was a personal assistant to people with pockets deep enough to pay her for tasks that would seem effortless to most people, like keeping one’s schedule in order, calling ahead and making sure the person they’re to meet will be there on time, and setting reminders for important events. Her motto was ‘time is your money, so leave the petty tasks to me.’
“This job requires an interview? No Dana, I don’t want to mess this up for you,” I said.
“Your other jobs, you messed up because you didn’t have your best friend’s reputation on the line,” she said, and her well-sculpted pecan colored face went deadpan. “So, this is different. More is at stake.”
“I know.”
“So, be there at eleven tomorrow with a resume, and make that money girl.”
“I’ve got you, Dana,” I said and gulped down the last of my drink.
Hopefully, I was right. I wanted nothing more than to live up to my word and not make a mess of working for Matthew Wilde. Plus, I needed desperately to make enough money to cover my monthly bills. Sitting with one of Dana’s client’s snotty nose nephews couldn’t be that bad.
Chapter Two
Matt
Boys Night Out
The noisy diner echoed the sounds of the customers as I glanced at my nephew, Cody, and watched him take a bite of his French fry. I was reminded every time I looked at him of how much he looked like my sister, Marisa. Sure, he had some features of his father, Tony, but mostly it was Marisa I noticed when I stared at him. I remembered the day I got the call that his mother, my sister, had been killed in a car accident. When I arrived at the hospital, the devastation continued. His father also didn’t survive the wreckage. Along with the heart-wringing hurt of losing my only sibling, the huge responsibility of raising her son landed in my lap like a huge boulder, one that I’d never shirked and took on with love and compassion from that day on.
He looked up at me and his face held a smirk. “What Uncle Matt?” he asked, casting a shady grin that I’d come to recognize.
I shrugged. “Can’t an uncle look at his favorite nephew?” I asked, grabbing a fry from Cody’s basket and popping it into my mouth.
Cody rolled his eyes. “Of course, since I’m your only nephew,” Cody sarcastically stated. “Just looked like you had a faraway look in your eyes. That’s all.” Cody nonchalantly took a bite of his sandwich and glanced in my direction.
At ten years old, he was way too smart for his own good. Of course, it helped that he had to grow up awfully fast…too fast, for my liking. I didn’t want to tell him that I was thinking of his mom. It’d been two years since their car accident and not a day went by where I didn’t think of her. Cody seemed to be the stronger of the two of us, and I hated having that pressure on him.