By the time I finished getting my stuff together, and baking the cupcakes it was four am.  I passed out right there at the kitchen island, parts of me still covered in frosting and cake mix.  Lucinda was the one to wake me up.  She was laughing as she swiped a piece of frosting off my face, but I couldn’t seem to find the energy to smile back at her.

“Áspero primera noche?” Rough first night?

I had no idea what she meant, but I nodded in response to her question anyway as I miserably staggered to my feet.  Then I was knocking on Austin’s bedroom door, my eyes half open.  “Get up.” I grunted.  “Up.”

He didn’t come to the door, so I pushed my way inside.  “Austin,” I muttered, when he didn’t move out from underneath the covers.  “C’mon, school.”

“Mmmmmm,” he groaned.  “Five more minutes.”

“Now.” My tone became stern.  “I’ve been up baking cupcakes for your class all night.  I’m not in the mood for your games right now.”

“Are they funfetti cupcakes?” He moaned.

It was the first thing that got me to genuinely smile since I was forced to wake up.  “Some are.”

He threw the covers off of him.  “Is Justin taking me to school?”

I huffed.  “No.”

He was silent for a moment as he stared at me.  “You have icing in your hair,” he giggled.

I grabbed up at my hair and wiped at it for a moment.  “I know.  There’s a lot wrong with this situation right now, and I’ll fix it later.  Right now though, I need you to get up.  I swear, after school I’ll do whatever you want.  Maybe we can take Davey to the playground or something.”

“Okay, Abbey.”

It was so weird.  He was being nice, when just the previous night he seemed like he hated my guts.  I didn’t know what to make of it, I only knew that something was finally going right for me since I’d taken on the job as Justin’s...whatever I was.  I could have called myself a nanny, except it looked like I was about to do a lot more than just watch the kids.  It seemed like I was the person appointed to do all the shit that Cheryl wouldn’t do.  It sucked, and I knew it.  The only reason I had stayed, was because Charlene absolutely forbade me to quit.

“Are you serious!” She squealed as I angrily packed my suitcases the night before.  “Justin Timberlake!”

“He’s the most pompous asshole I’ve ever met,” I grunted as I slammed my suitcase closed and sat down on the bed.  “He doesn’t give a shit about anybody but himself.”

“Yeah, but still,” she said, seemingly still in a daze as she sat down beside me.  “He’s like, the most powerful guy in New York.  Seriously, they said he’s been giving Trump a run for his money.  I’m sure if you prove yourself doing this nanny stuff, he’ll definitely give you a marketing job!”

“Doubtful.”  I muttered.  “You should meet this guy, Char.  Really, I’m surprised he even looks at me when he talks to me.”

“Well, he’s a socialite.”

“What the fuck does that have to do with anything?” I scoffed.  “He’s human.  He shits and pisses and farts too.”

She laughed.  “At least they can say his shit is worth a million dollars.”

“Oh God,” I rolled my eyes and pushed myself up from the bed.  “Really, Char? I need you to tell me to not go back, that he’s a jerk and that I can find a better job.”

“Yeah, I could tell you that,” she nodded.  “But I’d be lying.  Seriously, Ab...fifty grand a year to babysit those brothers of his? That’s insane.  You’d be crazy not to take it.”

She was right.  It was the one fact that was keeping me from quitting...money.  I needed money.  “What if I like...slit my wrists or something, or hell, slit his throat?”

“Well, at least we could say you gave it a good, sporting try,” she giggled.  r32;

“You’re so ridiculous,” I scowled.  “I can’t believe you want me to go back to that tyrant.”

“Abbey,” she sighed and got up to join me, gently placing her arm around my shoulders a moment later.  “It’s not just the job.  I mean, I really think this could be good for you.  You’ll get out more.  You’ll be living in a different environment, and be really busy with all those errands he makes you run.  It’ll get your mind off of...the past, you know?”r32;

I pulled away from her, and continued to stare across the room.  “I’m not focused on the past.”

“You suck at lying.”

I knew I did.  There was no getting past her as far as... Braeden went.  She knew I still thought about him every single day.  Woke up wondering what happened to him every single day, and went to bed with that same thought in the back of my mind.  I still loved him, I couldn’t deny that, but at the same time it had been six years.  Six years of him being gone.  He wasn’t coming back.  They’d pronounced him legally dead.  His parents had signed off on the papers, even though I threw a fit...called them and begged his mother to reconsider.

“It’s time we all moved on,” she told me gently.  “Abbey, you know this is for the best.  He would have wanted us all to have closure.”

I cried for days.  Days and days.  I kept the curtains drawn, wouldn’t come out of my room, wouldn’t eat.  Charlene had to force me to snap myself out of it, especially since I lost my job and everything.  I mean, it wasn’t the best job.  Just retail, something to pay the small rent I gave her every month.  I just couldn’t live after that blow.  I was convinced my life was over.  I mean, before that I always clung to the hope that he would find his way home...that somebody would find him and get him out of that hell.  But then it was just like...everybody gave up.  They closed his case soon after the papers were signed.  There was a small memorial service held back in Brighton, which I didn’t attend.  That was it.  Braeden was gone and I was alone.

Strange, there was a time in my life where I thought I would never, ever be alone.

We met in high school.  His family had moved to the states from Toronto, due to his father’s career.  I hated him at first.  He was cocky, a jock, who was immediately accepted into the popular crowd.  I wasn’t one of them.  I had my own set of friends, and we did our own thing.  I wasn’t a nerd, but I wasn’t a prom princess either.  I think maybe...that was what he liked most about me.  Two weeks went by, I saw him around, and it took him that long to get up the guts to talk to me.  He always told me it was the bravest thing he’d ever done, talk to me.  I would always laugh and tell him he was silly, but in reality I was melting inside.

We dated all four years of high school, and when I decided to go to state college, he decided to go into the Reserves so he could pay for law school later.  I thought it was a decent choice.  His parents weren’t made of money, and law school wasn’t cheap, so we all agreed it was the best option for him.  

Things were good those first three years after high school.  He got deployed a couple of times, and yeah, I worried, but my Braeden had always been strong and quick on his feet.  He always came back to me safe, and I always thought of him as immune to the bullets and horrors of the military.

Then, at the beginning of my senior year, September of 2001, the unthinkable happened.

Braeden had been home from a long tour, but when he saw the footage of the World Trade Center attacks on television he told me that he wanted to re enlist immediately.  I was horrified.  I told him he was crazy, that he’d just gotten back and didn’t need to go anywhere.  All he kept saying was that he had to help his “brothers.”

“You can’t go,” I shook my head harshly as I held him close to me.  “The world is falling apart right now.  You’ll...you’ll get sent to Afghanistan.  I know you will.”

“Abbey.”  He took my hands in his and pressed his forehead against mine.  “I know you think it’s dangerous.  I know that.  But...this is something I have to do.  Please, try to understand.”

I couldn’t understand.  I couldn’t understand why he would want to endanger his life when we were so close to finishing up things and getting married.  It was like, the military had brainwashed him into making him think he was a necessity.  I couldn’t change his mind though.  I knew that, clear as day.  “I can’t lose you,” I whimpered as I pressed my face into his chest.  “I can’t.”

“You won’t.”  He reassured me, while rubbing my back.  “Abbey, I promise.  I’m coming back.  We’ll be a family. I just...this is something I need to do, okay?”

So I let him go.  I spent two more weeks with him, said a tearful goodbye to him at the airport.  He kissed me long and hard, and promised me he was going to marry me as soon as he got back.

I never saw him again.  They said he went missing in action two weeks into his tour, while on a mission in the mountains of Afghanistan.  I managed to finish school, somehow.  I really have no idea though, because I was such a mess.  Something inside of me forced me to focus on schoolwork.  I passed every final, graduated with a 3.0 GPA.  A month later I packed my bags and came to live here in New York with Charlene, because she was the only one I could thing of that could possibly understand what I’d been through, since she’d known me even longer than Braeden had.

It’s been six years.  I’ve barely been able to hold down a mediocre job, let alone find one in my field.  I guess it was depression.  It had to be.  If it hadn’t been for his parents signing the papers, I doubt I would have bothered trying to a job at Goldman Sachs.  I’d still be sitting in her apartment, begging for Braeden to magically come back into my life.

But that would also mean I wouldn’t be dealing with Justin Timberlake, asshole extraordinaire, on a daily basis.  

You would think things would have gotten easier after that first day.  After I dropped Austin off at school that morning, I started to think the first day had just been a test to see how I dealt with lots of pressure.  Surely, nobody could expect that much out of somebody every day?

Oh, how wrong I was.

Justin likes to leave lists.  Lists, and lists, and more lists, and he doesn’t care if I have to drag Davey along with me while I complete them either.  I even asked him about that.  I told him it can’t be good for Davey to go to all these different places with me, in which he told me that  ‘his shrink wants him to get out as much as possible.  Errands are good.  They teach him responsibility, at least...they should be, if you’re doing your job right.’

By the way, his shrink happens to be that “tutor” that Justin mentioned the first day.  She’s not so bad, we actually get a long pretty well.  Francine says she likes that I’m spending time with Davey, that he seems a lot less tense now than when she first started meeting with him.  Her theroy is that he needs somebody maternal in his life, and I guess since Justin isn’t exactly parent of the year, I’m the next best solution.  One day I asked her why it is that he didn’t talk.

She became serious.  “I probably shouldn’t tell you that,” she said softly.

“Oh.” I nodded in understanding.  “Well, that’s okay.  Justin probably...”

“When his parents were in that car wreck,” she began softly.  “Davey was in the car.  Justin told me he saw everything.”

I couldn’t speak.  It was just too horrible to think about.  Davey is such a timid kid, and I still can’t imagine the kinds of images that flash through is mind on a daily basis.

The lists have included everything from grocery shopping, to dropping off dry cleaning, and everything in between.  For whatever reason, he really loves having Lucinda stay in the house and clean all day.  He’s real weird about that too...everything being spotless.  He hates dust, and he hates when his things are out of place.  One day Austin had moved something, I don’t remember what it was, but when Justin came home I remember him moving it back exactly into place, an annoyed expression on his face the entire time.  OCD? You betcha.

So, what’s it like to be jolted out of your sleep by your half naked boss at 2am?  Let me just say, it was the last thing I ever expected.  When I first snapped awake, I thought I was dreaming.  There Justin was, standing in my doorway in nothing but his boxers.  I stared.  I stared like a fool because...damn.  Just damn.  If he wasn’t such a dick, and I could have stopped thinking about how much of a bastard he was, I wouldn’t have been able to deny that the man was gorgeous from head to toe.  But he was a dick, a complete dick.  Apparently it was my responsibilty to make sure the kids didn’t catch him in the middle of fucking some hoe in the middle of his living room.  Hell, why couldn’t he have just gone into his bedroom to do that?

I yelled at him, and fully expected him to send me packing the next morning.

But...then Davey talked.

I think the two of us are still in shock.  It’s weird seeing Justin so...happy? I guess that’s what he is.  I mean, he’s treated the boys really well today.  Quincy picked us up and when we got to the zoo, Justin took Davey by the hand and bought both the boys and...get this, me...cotton candy.  Weird.  I was freaked out.  At first I wouldn’t eat it because I thought he might have laced it with something.  It was only when he caved in and bought one for himself, that I began to consume it, realizing I was being ridiculous.

It was good, the first genuine thing he’s done for me in the two weeks I’ve been working for him.

I won’t hold my breath though.  I’m sure by the end of the afternoon his old, shitty personality will have returned.

“You’re doing a good job,” he tells me as we stand and watch some rhinos moving across the terrain.  “I doubted you briefly but...I was wrong.”

I glance at the boys.  Davey is watching the animals intently while Austin has seemed to find more pleasure in sticking his cotton candy to the banister.  I let him.  “I think they laced your cotton candy with something.”

He chuckles as he sucks some of the candy off of his finger.  “Hey, Davey talked.  That’s saying something.”

I shrug.  “I didn’t do much.”

“Yeah but still, you know...I just want to say thanks.”

I look at him, feeling so damn confused.  Is he actually being nice right now?  Is that even fucking possible?  “Can I ask you something?”

He shrugs, and turns back to the view of the rhinos, as he ruffles Davey’s hair.  “I guess so.”

“What’s with you?”

He looks at me, his mouth half open, studying me for a moment as if he has no idea what I’m saying.  “What?”

“I mean you walk around like you’re fucking immortal or something.”  I huff.  “If you acted like you are right now, more often, I think things would get easier for them, you know?”

He just shrugs.  “Contrary to what you may think, I never have free time like this.  Today is the exception.  It’s a special day...today.  I’ve forwarded all my calls so I could have a day out with them, uninterrupted.  Normally, my life is a twenty-four hour business free for all. I barely have time to think, or do anything that’s not related to the firm, and when we get home today, I’ll probably have to hole myself up in my study for four hours and return all the calls I missed.  It’s part of running a successful business. I understand that you don’t get it.  Most people don’t.”

I sigh, and gaze out at the terrain, remembering the fact that he had plenty of free time to fuck that girl in the living room last night.  “They aren’t bad kids, you know?  They deserve to be loved.”

It’s silent for a few moments, and then he whispers.  “I know that.”

“Then why can’t you make more time for them?  Look, I’ll sign Austin up for soccer if you agree to come to his games.  I looked into it.  It’s only once a week on Friday afternoons.  He’ll have practice, but I can go to those without you.  I think that’s a fair deal.”

I stare at him, and he stares back at me like he has no idea why I’m pushing this.  Then, instead of agreeing or disagreeing he simply takes Davey by the hand and says: “C’mon Dave, lets go see more shit...I mean, stuff...”

He brushes past me.

“Justin.” I grunt as he walks away from me.

“He doesn’t care.”

Austin is at my side, ripping the empty cotton candy stick into pieces as we walk along.  I snatch it from him and throw it into a nearby trash can.  “Stop it.”

“Well, it’s true,” he mutters.  “He’s only here because Davey said a few words.  Nothin’s changed.  He’d rather be on the phone or out with his friends.”

He walks on ahead of me, and into the Reptile House behind his two brothers.  Crazy, he’s just a kid and he has Justin all figured out.  He’s smarter than Justin thinks he is.  It’s just...really sad, because he’s still so young.

“Hey Abbey!”

I snap to attention, and see Justin waving me over from the entrance to the Reptile House.  I groan slightly, but still go over.  

“Get the kids to stand still so I can take their picture,” he orders me.  “I need a picture for my desk.”

“Oh? Are you sure you can fit that in next to all your important paperwork?” I gasp.

He scowls.  “Just get them together,” he mutters and adjust the Yankees ball cap that’s been covering his mess of curls.  It’s really interesting to see them without all the gel.  They’re a little bit puffed out, but not too out of control, and...he didn’t shave today either.  He has that small amount of stubble around his jaw line and under his nose.  I remember Braeden used to get that all the time...r32;

Shit.  No.  Not now, Abbey.

“Come on guys,” I say, trying to smile.  “Austin go over there and put your arm around Davey for a picture.”

Austin rolls his eyes.  “I told you the zoo was boring.”

“Austin Michael,” I say, narrowing my eyes as I place my hands on my hips.  “Come on, set a good example for your brother.”

“Ugh.”  He drags himself over to where Davey is standing, and turns him around so he’ll face away from the lizard cage.

“Okay guys,” Justin has me step aside as he pulls his digital camera out.  It’s obviously brand new, because it still has the brand name tag hanging off of it.  He doesn’t seem like the type that would have had a use for it before his brothers came to live with him though.  “Smile.”

Davey grins a mile wide, while Austin flashes the most sarcastic smile I’ve ever seen.  I recognize it.  He has the same one that Justin has, and part of me wonders which of of their parents they inherited it from.  Justin takes the picture, and smirks afterwards as he gazes back at it.  “Perfect.” He decides.  “Abbey, you know how to get all this stuff uploaded and printed right?”

I shrug.  “I guess I could figure it out.”

“Good.  Get a frame for me or something too.  Something nice, crystal maybe.  Waterford.  You can go to Bloomingdales.”  He shoves the camera into my hands as he makes his way over to some guy who has come in to do something with the lizards.  He starts talking to him, and the guy seems hesitant at first, but then Justin pulls out his checkbook, and says: “how much?”

We spend the rest of the morning and an early part of the afternoon on a private tour of the zoo, complete with some animal interaction that I doubt anybody else has gotten to do before.  Davey even gets to sit on a giraffe for a few seconds, and I don’t think the kid has had this good of day since he came here. Austin too, although he’s been trying to act like he isn’t phased in the least.  I’ve caught him in a couple of smiles though, especially when one of the zoo keepers perched a tropical parrot on each of his shoulders.  I took a great picture of that and showed it to Justin.  He laughed and said: “frame that one too.”

“I want to go to Disney.”  Austin says as we pile into the car at the end of our visit.  “Justin, will you take us to Disney?”

“Lord buddy,” Justin chuckles as he fastens Davey’s seatbelt and then his own.  “That’s a big trip.  Maybe next year.”

Or never.

“Liar.  We could go right now.  You have the money,” he scowls and crosses his arms.  “You just don’t want to go.”

“Austin...” I begin.

“You can’t always have what you want,” Justin snaps before I can calmly explain things to him.  “Spoiled little shit.  I just got you a private tour of the zoo.”

“That was for Davey,” he mutters.  “You never do anything for me.”

“I do plenty for you,” he grunts.  

“You won’t come to soccer with me,” he points out.

“My career is more important than watching some stupid soccer game in the park,” he grunts.  “Abbey will go.  That’s why I hired her.  Now just sit there and shut up.”

I see Austin’s eyes tear up, and his nostrils flare before he turns his head away, puts his iPod headphones in, and stares out the window.  Soon, the Escalade begins to move, and I wait until I hear the sounds of Davey drifting off to sleep before I say something.  

“You’re too harsh with him,” I tell Justin, certain Austin can’t hear us with his music playing.

“He needs to grow up.  Disney...I mean, fuck, what does he think? I can’t just put my career on the back burner to wander around an amusement park for a week.”

“He’s a kid.”

“So you fuckin take him,” he mutters.  

“You’re angry, you know that? I can tell.  You take everything out on him, Justin.  Is it about your parents, and what happened?”

He looks at me, a strange, almost angry expression on his face.  “How much do you know? And who told you?”

I suck in a breath.  “Austin told me some, and Davey’s shrink has been talking to me as well.”

“Well that shrink needs to learn to keep her mouth shut,” he grunts.  “I expressly told her that...”

“I spend a lot of time with Davey,” I cut him off.  “I think it’s good that I know some of this backstory.”

He pinches the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger.  “Fine.  You know what you know, but I’m not discussing this anymore with you,” he chuckles, irritated.  “Just mind your business and do your damn job, okay?”

He lowers his sunglasses down over his eyes.  I’ve seen him do it from time to time, even in the house, he’ll put them on once in a while and wander away from me.  It’s so weird.  At first I thought it was because he was an ego maniac, but now...I’m not so sure.  

I think his parents’ death has affected him in a major way, and he’s way too closed off about it.    I doubt he’s talked about it with anybody, and in turn, he prevents Austin from talking about it with him.  That makes Austin angry, makes him act out.  

Something has to be done about this.  Quickly, before it all backfires and Austin does something regrettable.

I realize that Justin and I might just have a little bit more in common than I originally thought.  I mean, we’ve both lost somebody close to us.  Maybe I can get him to open up about it, make him understand that it’s important to help Austin through it rather than shut him down about the subject.

What am I saying? I can’t even get the guy to a damn soccer game, but I’m going to get him to spill his deepest feelings out to me?  Negative.  Snap out of it Abbey...

It’s not worth the effort.