I wake up to the noise of my phone vibrating on the bedside table.

I open my eyes and quickly close them again when they’re blinded by the sun streaming in through the gaps in the blinds. Parker really needs to get some curtains.

I grab my phone and turn to face the empty side of the bed where Parker slept last night. It’s still warm, so he hasn’t been up long.

The message on my phone is from Tami.

Take it last night went well!

I’ve had worse nights, I reply, with a winky face.

Bruce is coming round today. Any chance you could hang out at Parker’s until the afternoon?

Sure.

There’s no way I want to be around to listen to any of that. Besides, I have no intention of going anywhere. Last night couldn’t have gone much better. I’d planned on having Parker punish me first, before initiating sex again later at night or in the morning. In the end, he’d been the one to bring me into his bedroom where we had sex without any ropes, handcuffs, whips, or toys.

Not that it was vanilla. There was plenty of dirty talk, and my chest still has evidence of when he coated me in his essence after the second fuck. Last night’s sex was more adventurous than anything I’ve done with other men, but by our standards it was normal. Calm. Romantic.

I already feel a stirring between my legs that has me wishing Parker were still in bed next to me. Olivia’s laugh from downstairs reminds me that parents don’t always get to choose when they get out of bed.

Last night’s clothes aren’t exactly suitable for breakfast with a small child. Fortunately, I came prepared. I sneak out to the car and come back with some sensible clothes. And some panties.

“Morning,” I say cheerfully, as I walk into the kitchen. Parker forces a smile, but he looks exhausted. We didn’t exactly get the full eight hours last night, but I feel like I’ve slept for days. He has more to worry about than me, though. He’s selling his business, which I assume is a big deal. I can’t pretend to have a clue what that involves, but it seems safe to assume he’s going to be working late a lot over the next few weeks.

At least he won’t have to worry about Olivia. She looks much brighter this morning, and is almost back to her usual self.

“How are you, Olivia?” I ask formally. She likes it when I talk to her like a grown up, although it can be hard to resist the temptation to squeeze those adorable cheeks.

“Better,” she replies. “Can we watch Octonauts today? I haven’t watched it in ages.” She draws ‘ages’ out for so long that she runs out of breath. I miss the days when a week seemed like ‘ages.’

“Carly isn’t working today,” Parker tells Olivia. “She has to go home.”

“Oh, it’s okay. I don’t mind staying. I’m not in the right mindset to edit my script right now, and I’m so excited to watch Octonauts.”

Parker only shrugs in response. Shit, I forgot. Weekends are his to spend with Olivia. He probably doesn’t want her propped in front of the television with me all day.

“We could do something else,” I suggest. “How about going to the park?”

“I like the swings,” Olivia says cheerfully.

Parker smiles at his daughter, but he’s obviously not happy with that suggestion either.

“Why don’t we go to your house?” Parker suggests. “I could do with a change of scenery, and it would be cool to see where you live.”

“It’s not really childproof.”

“That doesn’t matter. Olivia’s not a baby anymore.”

“Thing is, my house is kind of occupied for most of today. Tami has a ‘friend’ over.”

Which just so happens to be a great excuse not to have Parker over. I need to sort my shit out at home. The place is a mess. I keep Parker’s home infinitely tidier than I do my own. It’s been so long since I’ve had to worry about having a man over—or even a friend who isn’t Tami—that I’ve let myself get into a slump. I’m not going to bed tonight until my room looks at least vaguely presentable.

“Fine,” Parker replies sternly. “Don’t worry about it.”

“What about next weekend?”

“I said, don’t worry about it.”

“Is something wrong?” I ask. “Is there a problem with the sale?”

“The business is just fine. Look, I don’t want to keep you here any longer than necessary. You’re not on the clock today.”

“I told you, I don’t care. What’s going on?”

“Nothing’s going on. I just think we should be careful.”

“Careful? With what?”

“We shouldn’t mix business and pleasure like this. During the day, you’re Olivia’s babysitter. What we do at night needs to stay completely separate.”

It’s like my world is collapsing in on itself. I don’t know when it happened, but at some point I allowed myself to forget that Parker was my boss and that I was only Olivia’s babysitter. It felt like so much more than that. Some days, Parker and Olivia are the only people I see. They became a huge part of my life without me even realizing it.

“I don’t want to quit,” I reply. I’m not sure whether I’m talking about my job or the sex.

“And I don’t want you to quit. Like I said, we just need to keep the work and the fun separate.”

He won’t even look at me as he talks. Clearly, last night meant jack shit to him. Maybe he was just tired? Maybe he couldn’t be bothered to give me the full dom treatment and that’s why we had sex in his bedroom?

After all this, he’s just a typical man. The second things threaten to get serious, he runs away. I should have known. I met him at a sex party. He got me off while we watched another couple. Parker doesn’t do normal.

“Fine,” I reply angrily. “I can do that. From now on, I’ll keep the fun real fucking separate. So separate, you won’t even notice it.”

I’m not sure that makes any sense, but it’s all I can come up with in the heat of the moment. I turn to storm out, slightly ruining the dramatic effect by grabbing a breakfast bar from the cupboard on the way out.

How dare he? How fucking dare he talk about being careful. I still have his cum inside me from last night. It’s a bit late for careful.

I hear Olivia crying just as I slam the front door behind me. I’ve never raised my voice or cursed in front of her before. I’m not quitting. It’s not Olivia’s fault her dad’s a selfish jackass.

I head straight home to grab my laptop and quickly leave again before Tami gets out of the shower. She has a fun day ahead of her. Tami and Bruce aren’t even going to try and become an item. According to Tami, Bruce is definitely not ‘the one,’ but he’s a welcome distraction while she keeps looking. I pitied her when she first told me that. I’d found an awesome guy, and I wanted her to find one too. Now I’m jealous. I wish no part of me thought Parker was ‘the one.’ I wish we could just fuck at night and keep that totally detached from feelings during the day.

The only good thing to come from all this is the completed first draft of my script. I take my laptop to the only coffee shop near me that has the magic combination of parking and spare tables, and make myself at home.

Focus, Carly. Don’t let this mess ruin your dreams.

I take a deep breath in through my nose and loudly exhale through my mouth. I catch a few curious glances from other customers, but I ignore them.

Tami’s suggested edits are brilliant. She was clearly sugar coating it the other night. My script has plenty of problems, but most of them are easy fixes. Quite a few conversations need to be shortened. That will take some work. I struggle to find the line between avoiding obvious exposition, and giving the audience enough information to understand what’s going on in the characters’ heads.

That’s what makes screenwriting so difficult. It’s easy to point out bad writing; Lord knows there’s plenty of it, both on the big screen and the small screen. I used to laugh when I heard clunky dialogue, but now I get it. Clunky can be bad, but at least it gets the point across. Too much subtlety can ruin a movie if it confuses the audience. The odd piece of bad dialogue only ruins part of a scene.

My mind is more fried than Parker’s breakfast, so I can’t come up with anything creative. I focus on the easy victories instead, moving through the script and deleting parts marked up by Tami as unnecessary. She’s right—I included tons of prose that would be more suitable to a novel than a screenplay. It’s hard enough to write a story; I don’t need to play the role of director and actor as well. Besides, it just makes me look arrogant, as if I know how to direct the actors better than an experienced director or the actors themselves.

The problem with the easy stuff is that it doesn’t take long to fix. I’m barely on my second cup of coffee when I’m faced with the first real challenge—the sex scene. It doesn’t feel right anymore. It’s clear the scene is more about me than my character. No wonder Tami was worried when she read it. Amber is strong, and she’s not looking for a relationship. At this stage, Clyde’s more into her than she is to him. I take out all the crap about her looking for intimacy, and leave it as a hot, sexy scene that ensures the movie needs to be R-rated.

That’s all I can do today. My brain won’t let me come up with anything remotely creative, so I give up. I’m back to where I was when I started this script. I’m sure some creators can write when they’re miserable—some of them probably thrive on it—but it’s becoming rapidly clear that I am not one of those people. I need to be happy, or at least relatively free from stress.

The most frustrating thing is that I have no idea what went wrong. Last night, Parker and I were having what I thought was phenomenal sex, and the next we’re arguing because he doesn’t think we should mix business with pleasure.

I’m tempted to put it down to the stereotype of men being afraid of commitment, but Parker was the one who invited me to the beach and on a date. He didn’t have to do either of those things. He’s even been married before. Although look how that ended. His ex-wife was murdered and he nearly ended up in prison. That would be enough to put a lot of people off commitment. That’s no excuse for talking to me like he did this morning.

I’d like to think he’ll apologize, but the look on his face when I stormed out this morning didn’t suggest that an apology would be forthcoming.

This whole situation is horrible, but I’m not going to let it affect Olivia. I’ll turn up for work tomorrow and be the best babysitter I can be. She deserves that, even if her daddy doesn’t.