Free Courting Mrs. McCarthy by Ian Thomas Malone Page B

considering his conflicting lingering emotions for Sarah. Being asked to babysit was just a matter of being in the right place and the right time. Her words that night could also be written off as the byproduct of tequila and loneliness.
    But all three of them together over the course of a week? They couldn’t all be ignored. Nathan wasn’t ready to count fate out on this one. He could tell himself to let it go, but that wasn’t going to happen and he felt like something was telling him not to.
    The thing that really had him all tied up was a rather obvious fact that was swept under the carpet in fantasy land, but was the first huge and perhaps immovable roadblock. Jackie had three kids and he now knew their names and faces. The husband part wasn’t as much of an issue given the whole out of sight out of mind mentality, and had Nathan known about their marital troubles, he would’ve considered it more of a moot point.
    He found himself in a state or moral disgust with himself. Were the feelings left over from Sarah or was it more than that? He tried his best to shake his lustful feelings toward the woman whose children he had babysat for. Children he cooked dinner for and watched TV with. The whole thing felt wrong, but also in a weird way it felt oddly right.
    He tried to think of other things, but those feelings weren’t going away, like fate was moving him closer to this woman. He thought of Mrs. Buchanan’s advice not to act on impulsive feelings, but to wait them out. He would have a sign soon enough from her if she was serious about wanting him to cook for her. He told himself that it was okay as long as Jackie made the first move. The ball was no longer in his hands.
    This method of thinking slowly allowed him to fall asleep.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 11
     
     
    School was a nightmare the next day. The last day of classes meant that nearly everyone was in a state of impatience for the day to be over, but none as much as Nathan. He felt hung over despite not having anything alcoholic to drink. His fatigue was worse than he could ever expect from a night of simple, yet troubled sleep.
    When he finally managed to fall asleep, he ended up oversleeping as he’d forgotten to set an alarm and slept through Griffin’s numerous wake up texts. He had also missed out on an invitation to wake-and-bake with Griffin, who looked amused as he sat across from him in the cafeteria.
    “You look like shit,” Griffin observed. He was eating a cinnamon roll without a care in the world. The cafeteria was full of students freaking out over the end of the year even though finals were a few days away. Nathan was not really in the mood to talk.
    “Late night studying,” he replied. This was a half lie, as he had been studying his future prospects with Jackie.
    Griffin seemed skeptical, but he didn’t linger on Nathan’s reply. “I don’t remember you being such a scholar. Anyway, one of Ralph’s friends who goes to boarding school is having a party tonight, are you in?” He said it without making it sound like a question.
    Nathan showed no signs of enthusiasm for this invitation. One of the few saving graces for him that morning was the idea that he could sleep it off later in the day. He had not been expecting a party the weekend before finals.
    “Ugh, what a bad weekend for a party. I don’t know, man. I barely slept last night.” This was behavior generally uncharacteristic of him, and Griffin could see right through it.
    “Oh, come on. It’s Friday night. We’ll go have a few beers, play some pong, and then leave if you really want to,” he said. Seeing the unconvinced look on his friend’s face, he added, “Megan can pick us up so we don’t even have to spend the night.”
    This was a surprisingly reasonable offer from a boy who was stoned in school by himself on the last day of classes. “Fine, but if it’s boring or I want to leave, we’re going, and you’re not going to pull any of your