Jenny (Babysitter's Club 5)

My voice was a dull monotone as I stared into his eyes. I was punishing him for not remembering me, nothing else. I expected nothing from him. I’d decided sometime while standing in his children’s nursery that I would take the road less traveled. I won’t interfere in his life.

I will disappear from his life as easily and as cleanly as he had disappeared from mine. “Goodnight!” I moved towards the door heading out into the night, but I wasn’t fast enough to avoid hearing his wife’s epithet, “bitch!” I didn’t even so much as cringe.

“Lauren that’s enough, what’s gotten into you?” I closed the door softly behind me and stepped down off the steps, pulling my winter coat around my shoulders as I started the walk to my home. The door opened behind me, and he called out.

“It’s a bit dark out, wait a minute, and I’ll walk you home.” I didn’t look back when I refused his offer. “That won’t be necessary, thanks.” The stupid tears followed me all the way home.

Lauren was like a woman possessed. In fact, she’d become obsessed. For days after, she’d pepper me with questions about Jenny. Then she started asking the women in the neighborhood about her in subtle discrete ways.

I put my foot down, though, when she started stalking her on social media. “What’s it hurting? I’m just trying to get as much information as I can on the person who’s going to be babysitting our kids.”

I knew she was full of shit because that night of the party, when she was riding my cock in bed, she’d once again sworn that she would never allow the girl past our door.

“Do you wanna know what I found out about her?”

“Not necessarily no.” I kept going over the design I was working on.

“Liar, you think I didn’t notice that night? You’ve never fucked me that hard before. You were thinking of her, weren’t you? You were fucking me and pretending it was that bitch.”

She threw something at me, which thankfully bypassed my head as I stared at her in open-mouthed amazement. Should I even answer her asinine accusation? I just shook my head and went back to my design.

“See, you can’t even deny it.” It was the tears that made me relent. As pissed off as she was making me, I hated to see her cry. There wasn’t an ounce of truth to what she was saying though; was there?

I don’t recall thinking about Jenny while I was fucking her, but maybe subconsciously? Nah, not true. “Babe, you know I love you. I love our girls. I love our life. Why would I want to mess that up for a fling with a teenager?”

I was trying to show her reason, to bring her back from wherever she’d gone in her head that was making her bawl her eyes out like I’d stabbed her in the eye with a fork.

“But she’s not just any teenager, is she? She’s the girl who’s been in love with you all her life. I see the way she looks at you, all moony-eyed.”

‘Then you’ve seen more than I have because I don’t recall us saying more than two words to each other.”

“Tell me you love me more than her.” She was acting like she was drunk. I picked up her coffee mug and sniffed.

“Hey, give that back to me.” She made a grab for it, spilling some over the desk where she was sitting going through the computer.

Too late, I’d already smelled the gin. I glared at her unbelievingly. “Are you kidding me?” I stomped out of our shared office and headed into the kitchen, pulling the fridge door open with growing anger. There were only two bottles of expressed milk in there.

I slammed the door shut with a loud curse. She came and stood in the doorway with red eyes and trembling lips. “What the fuck, Lauren? What’re the girls supposed to have when they wake up in the morning? Those two bottles in there will be done with their midnight feedings.”

“The girls, the girls, is that all you care about?” I bit into my lip so that I didn’t say something horrible, something that would shape this thing into something much worst. I ran my hand over my head furiously as I wondered just what the fuck had happened to my life.

Jenny

I was surprised to hear from Lauren again a few weeks later. I’d thought for sure after that night and subsequent sightings out and about in the neighborhood that she was pretty much done with me. It was obvious that someone had told her about my childhood crush.

Was it him? Somehow I don’t think so. The thought of the two of them laughing at me behind my back was a bit more than I could take, and I’ve already taken plenty.