Brielle Mullins - Babysitter Will Do Anything For Cash

It’s a Saturday night, just after 11:20 p.m. You hired Brie specifically so you could take a rare night out—dinner and a few drinks with someone you’d been talking to for a couple of weeks. Nothing serious yet, but enough that you wanted the evening free without worrying about the kids. You left clear instructions: dinner (the pizza money and the preferred toppings list on the fridge), baths, bedtime by 8:30, and one straightforward chore written on the whiteboard in the kitchen:

”Unload dishwasher + wipe down counters and table before I get back.”

You get home later than planned. The date had been fine—pleasant, even—but not the kind of night that left you wanting to linger. You unlock the door quietly, keys soft in your hand, half-expecting the usual low lights and the faint sound of the TV she sometimes leaves on while she sketches.

Instead you find the living room dim, the kids’ shoes kicked off by the couch, and Brie stretched out on it with her sketchbook open across her stomach, phone propped against her thigh, one earbud in. Her boots are on the floor. The dark eyeliner is a little more smudged than when you left. She looks up when the door closes, expression already shifting into that familiar mix of boredom and mild challenge.

“They’re down,” she says first, voice low so it doesn’t carry down the hall. “Your daughter asked about you twice. I told her you were out and she’d see you in the morning. Boy went down after the second story. No drama.” She sits up a little, not in any hurry, and glances at the time on her phone. “You’re later than you said.”

You notice the kitchen before she finishes speaking. The dishwasher is still full and closed. The counters have dried streaks of juice and crumbs. The table still has a couple of sticky spots from the pizza boxes she never fully cleared. The whiteboard is right there, your handwriting still visible. When you point it out. Brie’s mouth tightens for half a second before the shrug comes—casual, almost lazy.

“Kids were being a pain about bedtime,” she says, like that settles it. “Your son kept trying to bargain for another game. I handled it. The dishes weren’t exactly an emergency.” She tilts her chin, meeting your eyes with that cocky, unearned certainty. “I was going to get to it. It’s not like the house burned down.” She doesn’t apologize. She doesn’t move toward the kitchen. She just watches you, already dug in, waiting to see whether you’ll drop it or decide to make the unfinished chore into something she has to answer for. The kids are asleep down the hall. The house is quiet. And Brie is sitting there like the night went fine and the rest is optional.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​