LESS THAN NOTHING
1164 Words
Rosa only lasted about eleven minutes after getting home before she stopped pretending she wasn’t completely wiped out.
She sat at the kitchen table with her tea, asking me a few questions about the night... how Willa slept, if she ate okay, any problems — and I answered everything while watching her eyes get heavier by the second. By the time I got to “she went down fine around eleven,” Rosa was nodding like she was half asleep already.
“Go sleep,” I told her. “We’re good here.”
“I’m fine,” she said, which was such an obvious lie that even Willa shot her a skeptical look from the high chair.
“Rosa.”
She glanced at Willa, who held up a puff like evidence. Rosa sighed and pushed back from the table. “Two hours, just two hours and I’ll come back down.”
“Take as long as you need, seriously.”
She paused in the doorway and gave me that warm, tired smile. “There’s leftover rice in the fridge. Help yourself to anything.” She said it so casually, like I actually belonged here.
“Thanks,” I said softly.
She headed upstairs. I heard her door click shut. The house went quiet.
Just me and Willa again.
“Okay,” I said to her. “Now what?”
She threw a puff on the floor and stared at it like it was the most interesting thing ever.
“Right, obviously.”
We made it through the next hour and a half without any big disasters, and I was calling that a win. Willa had her usual mood swings... wanted to be held, then put down, then screamed because she was put down. Classic baby stuff. No logic, just big feelings in a tiny body.
I was on the floor stacking the rings again...her favorite game was apparently “destroy whatever Astrid builds” when the front door opened.
Dax walked in with his gym bag, still buzzing from practice. His hair was damp, there was a grass stain on his knee, and he smelled like cold air, sweat, and that deep kind of tired that sits in your muscles. He looked… good, annoyingly good.
His eyes went straight to Willa.
Not to me at all, just her.
She made this happy little sound when she saw him... different from the grabby one she gave me. More like oh, it’s you. She held up a ring toward him.
“Hey, bug.” He crouched down, took the ring, and turned it in his hands. “You being good for Astrid?”
She patted his arm with her little hand.
For a second, his face went completely soft... this private, unguarded look full of so much love it almost hurt to watch. Then he stood up, and the mask was back. Just regular Dax again.
He finally glanced at me. “She eat?”
“Bottle at six, cereal at seven-thirty. She’s been down here the whole time.”
“Diaper?”
“Twice.”
He nodded, checked his phone, dropped his bag by the stairs, and moved around like I was just part of the furniture. Not mean, exactly. Just… not really seeing me.
I sat on the floor and told myself it didn’t sting, but it stung a little.
He came back from the kitchen with a water bottle, scrolled his phone again, and then, almost like an afterthought, looked at me.
“We leave in twenty minutes,” he said. “Be ready.”
“I’m ready now.”
His eyes dropped to my hoodie and the lovely spit-up situation. Something flickered across his face, but he didn’t say anything. Smart move.
“Twenty minutes,” he repeated, then headed upstairs.
I heard his door close, then the shower start a minute later.
I looked down at Willa, who had ditched the rings and was now studying a piece of carpet fluff like she’d discovered gold.
“Twenty minutes,” I muttered to her.
She looked up at me.
In twenty minutes I’d be back in that parking lot, slipping through the side entrance, turning invisible at school. Or worse... visible in the wrong way, the way Brynn and everyone else had already decided I was.
I thought about splitting myself in half every single day. This house, this warm little life with Willa… and then school, where I didn’t exist to him.
I got it, I really did. But it still sucked.
He came back down in twelve minutes instead of twenty, fresh clothes on, hair still a little damp and messy in that hot, effortless way. He stopped in the kitchen doorway, looked at me, then Willa, then the clock.
“Rosa’s sleeping,” I said. “I can leave Willa in the playpen until she wakes up...”
“No, it’s fine. I texted her. She set an alarm.”
“Okay.”
“You ready?”
“I said I was.”
He paused, staring at me for a second. “At school...”
“I know.”
“I’m just making sure...”
“Dax.” I looked him right in the eyes. “I get it, we don’t know each other, we don’t talk. No eye contact and we don’t exist to each other. I understand the deal.”
He went quiet. Something shifted in his expression, something I couldn’t quite read.
“Good,” he said finally.
He grabbed his bag and headed for the door.
I stood there in the kitchen holding Willa on my hip, listening to him unlock the car outside. I’d spent the night in his house. Changed his daughter’s diaper at five forty-five in the morning. Sat on his floor for hours keeping her happy. Got covered in her spit-up twice.
And the second we left this driveway, I was less than nothing to him.
Willa grabbed my nose with both hands, full serious grip, and blew a big spit bubble right at my face.
I blinked at her.
She let go, patted my cheek gently like she was trying to comfort me.
“Yeah,” I whispered, smiling despite everything. “At least someone here likes me.”
She made a happy little sound, like she agreed.
I set her in the playpen with her ring toy, the soft elephant, and her chewable board books. I fixed her blanket the way she liked it and made sure the baby monitor was close.
She looked up at me with those big dark eyes, all milk-drunk and trusting.
“Okay. This part is real,” I told myself. “Everything else might be fake, but this is real.”
“Be good, baby girl. I’ll be back.”
She grabbed her elephant and waved it at me.
I picked up my sad old bag and walked outside to get in the car with a boy who wasn’t allowed to know me.
- Writer
