Don't Leave Home

Job Opportunity

"And I will be your safety

Oh, don't leave home"

(Dido, Don't Leave Home)

The bills have been piling up upon your table as if they had a life of themselves, and a headache came up every time you looked at them. You were just fired from you last job and had low expectations on getting a new one in little time, especially when you were not as experienced in that area and had your time reduced because of your studies. You loved what you were learning there and didn't want to quit, but you were running out of money and if this situation didn't change, soon you would be forced to leave this passion aside.

Only a miracle would save you now, but unfortunately you didn't believe in miracles, at least not as much as you believed in bizarre coincidences...

Just like the one you faced that night, when you were lying on your bed with your notebook, scrolling through the hundredth site you sent your resume to with no hope to find something reasonable, until your eyes widened in front of that advertisement: a babysitter was needed, not so far from your place and with weekly payment.

You thought of that and raised an eyebrow: receiving money every week was tempting, but your own experience as a former babysitter wouldn't let you forget how tiring was to take care of children, and you weren't willing to go back to this kind of work. But you were running out of options, so that you tossed your pride aside and decided that this job would be yours.

As you've re-read it to analyze the available information, you couldn't help thinking that the advertisement was so concise that it became mysterious: the only concrete things it contained concerning the child themselves was that they were a boy and was less than one year old; apart from that, there was the name of a man, an address and a phone number. You took note of everything and left it beside your bed to call him the next morning.

***

You checked the phone number more times that you could count to convince yourself that you didn't type it wrongly, but it didn't work: you tried to call it two, three, ten times, but no one would answer it. At first you thought it was too early and decided to wait until one or two hours passed and tried again, but the result was the same.

You sighed. It was too good to be true. You were about to give up when you remembered the address along with the number. You checked it, and since you didn't have any appointments for that day, you picked up your bag and went out to find it.

***

Only when you were in front of the house, pressing the door bell, you started to consider the risk of your decision: you were at a neighborhood where you didn't know anyone, alone, knocking on an unknown person's door because of an advertisement with high probability of being fake. The house's resident was taking too long to answer the door and everything were silent around there; your nervousness was growing as the seconds passed.

You were thinking that the worst thing that could happen now was to have a person actually opening the door and revealing that everything was a prank when you heard the handle being turned and held your breath. So, there was someone living there. Now you just had to wait for their revelation.

When the door was opened, you took a step back, more because of who you found behind it than because of any prank that might have been prepared for you, for the man you saw there could be everything but not the type to make that kind of thing.

He opened the door wide, showing off the corridor behind it, and leaned on its frame, arms crossed, waiting for you to explain the reason for your visit. That attitude, you thought, would be seen as petulance if it came from any other person, but not from of that tall, serious guy dressed in a black leather jacket, with his dark hair with almost three months of uninterrupted growth, a scar on the right corner of his mouth and the lack of concern or surprise in his green eyes while measuring what he had before him, making you hold your breath.