“So, there’s food in the refrigerator and she needs to go down for a nap at about 2, but don’t let her sleep for too long or she’ll never get to sleep tonight.” Salina said as JC and Vanessa watched her grab her belongings and open the front door to her apartment. “Oh, and she’ll probably ask for ice cream after you feed her, but she definitely doesn’t need any. So, nothing sweet and also”“
“Salina, you’re giving me a headache.” JC interrupted her. “We’ll be fine. Go, relax with Jen, don’t worry about us.”
She sighed. “I know, it’s just been a long time since I’ve left her with someone besides family members.”
“I know, but it’s me. I won’t let anything happen to her.”
“True.” She took in a breath. “Ok, I’m going now.” She leaned over to kiss both of them before grabbing her purse and heading out the door.
She was going to pick up Jen and the two of them were going to have lunch before using the spa day that JC had given her as a Christmas present. Three weeks had passed since they had spent Christmas together and she had been working non-stop ever since. JC had all, but moved into her apartment and their relationship was progressing nicely.
JC turned to Vanessa. “So, what should we do, munchkin?”
“Incrwbwls.” She said drooling over her shirt as she said it.
He reached out to wipe the drool with her collar and question her. “I’m not hip to the baby lingo there, kiddo. You wanna do what now?”
Vanessa sighed and climbed off the couch and toddled over to the TV stand to retrieve a DVD before handing it to JC. “I have.”
JC looked at the cover. “Oh! You wanna watch The Incredibles?”
Vanessa nodded and attempted to climb back up onto the couch, but only succeeded in falling back onto her bottom. Her bottom lip quivered and JC could tell that she would start wailing at any minute so he bent down to scoop her up into his lap.
“Aww precious. Are you okay?”
She nodded with her bottom lip sticking out as she pressed her face into his chest. “I faw.” She mumbled.
He smiled down at the little girl and kissed the top of her head. “Ok, honey, I’m gonna put your movie on and then I’ll make you a sandwich, k?”
She nodded as he lifted her off of his lap and sat her on the couch as he stood up. “Kay.” She responded.
He turned on her video then headed into the kitchen to make them both PB&J sandwiches. After he was finished he got a soda for himself and poured some milk into her sippy cups. He knew Salina didn’t normally let her eat her food on the couch, but he didn’t want to pull her away from her movie and he figured that’s what he was for, to let her do things her mother wouldn’t.
“Ok, sweetie, here’s your sandwich.” He handed her half of her sandwich and set the rest on the coffee table before sitting down next to her and starting to eat himself. He had taken only one bite when his cell phone rang.
“Yo!” He answered and took another bite.
“Joshua,” his mother scolded. “That’s how you answer your phone?”
“Nope, but I saw it was you and I knew you’d get mad.” He joked.
His mother chuckled. “How are you, honey?” He stood up and went to talk in the kitchen so he wouldn’t disrupt Vanessa’s movie.
”I’m good. How are you? Dad? Heather?”
”We’re all great. What are you up to today?”
“Salina and her assistant went to the spa. So I’m babysitting Vanessa.”
“Oh!” His mother gushed and he rolled his eyes. “How is that cute, little baby?”
“She’s fine. She’s watching a movie and eating her lunch right now.”
“You know, we all really like them, Josh. Salina’s great and Vanessa is just too adorable.”
JC placed his soda can down on the counter. “Yeah, they are great. I’m glad you approve, mom.”
“Is this serious?”
“Mom, we’ve only known each other for like a month and a half. How ‘serious’ do you think it could possibly be?”
“Well, I only mean do you think this will go anywhere? You know you’re not getting any younger.”
JC out right laughed at that. “Is that your not-so-subtle way of saying you want some grandkids?”
”Well, not tomorrow, but if you start looking for someone to settle down with then I’ll have some eventually.”
“Well, when I’m ready to settle down, I’ll let you know,” He said before feeling a tug on his jeans. He looked down and stopped mid-sentence. “Hey, munchkin, uh….what’d you do there?”
Vanessa looked up at him with tears in her eyes as she tried to get the peanut butter from her sandwich out of her hair. “Is stuck!” She cried
“I see that.” He was at a loss for words. “Uh, ma?”
“Yeah, honey?” His mother asked over the phone.
“Hypothetically, if a kid had peanut butter in her hair, how would one get that out?”
“JC! You put peanut butter in her hair?!”
JC rolled his eyes. “Yes, mom, I put it in her hair.” He responded sarcastically. “Why would I do that?”
“Joshua Scott, I don’t know who you think you’re talking to, but”“
”I’m sorry. How do I get it out?”
“I don’t know.”
“How can you not know?! You’re a mom. My mom! Didn’t one of us do anything like this when we were little?”
“Well, Heather stuck a lollipop in her hair once, but I just cut it out. She had a big chunk of hair missing for awhile.”
“I can’t cut her hair! Salina will kill me!”
“Well, why don’t you try washing it out?”
JC grabbed up Vanessa and headed to the bathroom with his mother still on the phone. “Wash it out…right.”
He turned on the water and started a bath for her. “Okay, is there like a rule about whether or not I can see her naked?”
“She’s a baby, Josh, and you’re babysitting. It’s not exactly child pornography.” His mother sighed at her son’s ignorance when it came to children. “I take back the thing about grandchildren. Any kids you have will be dead within the week.”
“Hey!” He exclaimed lifting Vanessa and setting her into the water.
She immediately started screaming and a startled JC looked up and, panicking, dropped his phone into the water.
“Shit!” he said reaching into the water to find it scorching hot. “Fuck!”
He immediately lifted Vanessa out of bath and set her on the floor as he turned off the water. Vanessa was now crying softly while grabbing at her feet.
He looked at her sadly. “I’m sorry, Nessa.” He said picking her up and holding her against his chest as he quickly reached in and grabbed his phone. He dropped it on the floor and turned the water on cold to cool down the bath. “I’m kinda new at this baby-sitting stuff. I told your mom we’d be fine and already things are a mess. She hasn’t even been gone for an hour.”
The child remained silent as he turned off the water and tested it making sure that it was okay to set her in. She was resistant at first, but JC was able to get her in and wash out the peanut butter without incident.
By the time Vanessa’s bath had finished and JC had dressed her, she had fallen asleep and JC laid her in her crib before heading to the living room to clean up the big mess they’d made.
Three hours later, Salina was actually shocked to walk into her apartment see JC and Vanessa sitting on her couch watching a football game and cheering.
She watched from behind the couch as Vanessa, standing on the couch with JC’s baseball hat on, screamed “Boom!” every time the players tackled each other and laughed hysterically.
“Couches are for sitting on, not jumping.” Salina interrupted as she hugged Vanessa from behind and kissed her cheek. She turned to JC. “You’re a bad influence.”
“Mama, look!” Vanessa pointed just as another player was tackled. “Boom!”
Salina sighed before walking around the couch to sit between her boyfriend and daughter. She leaned against him and he kissed her head. “Little girls are supposed to be obsessed with dollies and mermaids, not sweaty, fat men running into each other. Should I be worried?”
JC shrugged. “Well, it’s the Patriots, honey. I mean if it were the Lions, I’d be worried. How was your spa day?”
“It was wonderful! Just what I needed. Thank you.” She kissed him as Vanessa jumped up and down again. “You know, I half expected one of you to be dead when I came back home.” She said grabbing her daughter and pulling her to her chest.
“We had a great time, didn’t we, Nessa?” JC asked and the little girl smiled up at both of them.
Vanessa lifted her foot. “My owie?”
Salina looked concerned as she grabbed her daughter’s foot, but saw nothing there. “What happened to your foot, baby?”
JC cleared his throat. “Uh…we, uh, had a little bath accident, but she’s fine now.” He said quickly.
“What kind of accident? Why were you giving her a bath?”
“Well,” JC let out a nervous laugh, “I made her a PB&J for lunch and I guess she didn’t like it or something cause a whole lot of it ended up in her in hair. So I gave her a bath, but the water was too hot, so she got hurt. But-but she’s fine now, see…boom!?” He cringed waiting for her to explode.
She looked at him before looking at Vanessa and back to JC. She tried to hide the huge smile threatening to grace her face, but couldn’t as she let out a huge laugh. “Are you serious?” She asked between breaths. “Wow, only to you, Joshua Chasez.”
“So, you’re not mad?”
She ceased her laughter and took a deep breath. “What for? She’s fine. Besides, in all honesty, all I wanted was for my daughter to still be alive when I got back.”
His eyes narrowed. “That’s horrible, Salina.”
She laughed again. “I’m sorry, baby, but you’re not the world’s most experienced baby-sitter.”
“Well, regardless, we had fun today.”
The next few weeks flew by in a flash with Salina and JC both being extremely busy. They only actually saw each other on weekends and the nights that JC slept over at her apartment. Both were preparing for JC’s album release and Salina was busy handling phone calls for the rest of her busy clients.
Salina rolled over, out of JC’s arms, as her alarm blared loudly from her bedside table. Shutting it off, she placed the heels of her palms to her eyes before sitting up and sighing.
“Babe, it’s 5am. Go back to sleep.” JC said as he rolled over, turning his back to her.
“I can’t,” she whispered. “Grammy nominations come out today. I need to be at the office to answer the phone when it starts ringing about Justin.”
“So sure he’s gonna get nominated?” JC smirked.
“I got an email yesterday. I already know he’s gonna be nominated. Trick of the trade, honey, don’t tell anyone that I told you about that.”
He turned over and stared at her. “Does that mean you guys know if we win before we do also?”
She nodded and yawned as she stood up. “Usually, yeah.”
”What a bunch of liars!” He called after her as she walked into the bathroom and turned on the shower.
“Hey,” She called from the bathroom. “Do you think you can take Vanessa to daycare for me?”
“I guess, yeah.”
”Thank you so much! It’d be horrible trying to get her up right now.”
As Salina walked up to her building she looked up to find Jen balancing two cups of coffee and smoking a cigarette.
Salina shook her head and took her cup of coffee. “You’d rather risk 2nd-degree burns than give up your cancer stick for one morning?”
“It’s a large part of my life,” Jen remarked as she put it out.
“However short it may be.”
The two women walked into the building and rode the elevator up to their floor together. Once there, Salina took a deep breath as she settled herself behind her desk and prepared herself for the long day ahead of her. She opened her email and decided to get her morning press clippings out of the way before she was bombarded with phone calls, making it impossible to get any real work done.
She had gotten through The Los Angeles Times, the Hollywood Reporter, Entertainment Weekly and The New York Times when she looked up to see her email being flooded.
“It’s been announced,” she whispered to herself. “Jen!”
“Yeah?” She called back.
“Can you get Justin on the line for me?”
“Yep.” She waited and threw her papers away before she heard Jenn call to her again. “I have Justin!”
“Hey, honey.” Salina greeted the tired man.
“It’s fuckin’ 4am. What could possibly be this important?”
“Oh, yeah, I forgot about the time difference. Well, you were nominated for three Grammy Awards, important enough for ya?”
“You know, this would be a really cruel joke to play on someone this early in the morning.” He said sitting up in bed and rubbing his eyes.
“I’m not joking, J. You got it! I’m sending you a copy of the email now.”
“Seriously?!”
“Yep.”
“Sweet! Oh my God, I’m so excited.”
“I figured. Before you freak out, I need a statement from you.”
“I don’t care. Just say thank you and congrats to other nominees,” he said as Cameron rolled over and glared at him. “I gotta call my mommy. Talk to you later.”
Salina laughed lightly as she began to write her clients’ statement and get the rest of her work done for the day.
At 2 p.m. Johnny walked into her office carrying a salad from the deli down the street from the office.
“You have to eat sometime,” he commented setting it before her and taking a seat. “So, how’s everything going? You overworked?”
“No, actually, everything’s been kinda slow.”
“Well, good cause I was wondering how you feel about taking on Challenge for the Children this year. You and Jen, maybe give her some more responsibility.”
“Uh, sure. I mean, what exactly needs to be done?”
“Well, the guys want to do it in Miami this year. We’re kinda hoping to go all out for this one since honestly, it’ll probably be the last one.” Salina nodded silently. “So, you’d need to find venues to hold the games & parties; celebs to participate; hotels; caterers, etc. It’s a lot of work that’s why I’m asking you early.”
“Yeah, I can do that. Definitely and I’ll have Jenn handle a lot of it. I think she’s gonna be great by the way.”
“Yeah, me too,” Johnny sighed and stood. “Did you talk to Justin yet?”
“Mm-hmm, I called him with the news this morning.”
“He’s ecstatic.”
Salina waved her arms around at all the boxes cluttering her office. “This is all for him. Congratulations presents.”
“You’re gonna have it sent to L.A.?”
She shrugged. “Some of it. I’ll go through it all to see what he might actually want.”
Johnny nodded. “Well, I’ll have past information about Challenge sent over. Thanks so much for doing this Salina. Melinda would handle it, but she’s swamped with new artists we’ve just signed on.”
“No problem. Thanks for thinking of me.” Johnny smiled at her and left.
Salina let out a breath before going back to her work. When Salina was finally able to pick up her daughter at six she found Vanessa crying in the corner of her classroom.
“Nessa, baby, what’s wrong?” She asked as Vanessa turned away from her and pouted.
“Mama fogot.”
“Oh, honey, I didn’t forget you. I could never forget you. I was just distracted at work. Mommy’s sorry. Do you forgive me?”
“No.” She whined.
Salina looked at Vanessa’s teacher who had walked up to them. “I’m sorry I’m late.”
“It’s no problem. She’ll get over it. This happens often with our single parents.”
Salina blushed and quickly collected Vanessa and her backpack. She blinked away her tears as she drove home.
The one thing Salina had always feared about being a single parent was that she wouldn’t be able to provide Vanessa with everything that a child deserves and it seemed that was exactly what she was doing.
Story Tags: boyfriendjc jc justin hospital tabloids joey chris lance solojc
