“Cadence asked if I’m going to the fair this weekend. I said I’d ask. Can I go momma?.”
Jo got her hands on either side of the red plastic trolley, her feet are balanced at the bottom while I push her around and do the shopping. Most of the kids in Kanla do it so I don’t stop her.
After work today I picked Jo up and brought her to the shopping center not far from the hospital where I work. It’s a Friday afternoon and payday, so the place is packed.
This weekend is the Barbeque weekend, for the entire town. Some do theirs at home but most folks in Kanla prefer to go to the kid’s fair. There is live music from local bands, kids rides and lots of stalls but also a ten-dollar entrance fee. Something which I just don’t have to spare at the moment.
I haven’t had the heart to tell my kid no as yet, more so now when she is looking at me with those eager grey eyes of hers.
“We’ll see Jo, let’s get this shopping done and head on home, then maybe later we can talk about the fair while we eat ice-cream.” I smile as her face breaks into a huge grin, damn my kid is pretty.
It’s not the last time that I think to myself that I did well. Really good.
I make a zooming sound and pretend I’m running while I push the trolley with Jo still on for the ride. I turn the corner and my movements instantly stop at the sight before me.
My momma once told me that sometimes a past needs to stay where it is. And other times you pretend it’s still in the past when it’s somewhere dangling in the future just waiting to sneak up on you. Somehow you just avoid facing it, you deny that it is still very much there in your present too.
As I stand here on the corner of the sixth aisle in the grocery store I see a past that happened a little over three months ago because I have avoided it in all aspects of the word. It is now my mother’s words ring true again.
Over three long months have gone since my brief encounter with him. He tainted me in one weak moment when I succumbed to my needy flesh. When I gave in to the pull I felt toward this man. Then he ripped it away without a backward glance.
It was that night that I found my story behind the man named River because that night he didn’t just shatter me, he made me bath in a river of regret until I drowned.
I’m sure it’s a couple of seconds that pass by even though it feels like forever as I stare into his cold blue gaze.
Lauren stands next to him with a basket in her hand also still, quiet. She looks breathtaking in the long floral dress and her red hair falling down her back. River stands next to her with his distressed jeans, white Henley and imposing form, forever the protector.
The ripple of hurt suffocates me yet I bid it stay inside. I urge myself to accept reality for what it is, reality is truth. They look meant to be.
They are meant to be.
I was just passing to this man. The woman who couldn’t even make him come.
I turn my vision to the Italian biker and two female bikers watching them as they each push a trolley down the baking section oblivious to the tension in the air.
Jo turns her head and spots River. She jumps off the trolley way too quickly and rushes off to River throwing herself into him.
Unfortunately, while I avoided River, Jo felt no need to do the same. She spots his bike in his driveway on odd occasions and rushes off to talk to him. He has been taking her out for the past two months.
I never question it, and he never minds so there is nothing more to say.
I have accepted that my kid and he are close. I also accepted that he will never be mine.
I push my trolley forward ready to be done with this before my emotions bleed through my eyes.
Before River, my life seemed like it was going in the direction I wanted it too.
After a brief encounter with the man, I thought it all through and took a step back and what I saw was a lost woman who learned how to survive in the middle of the ocean with all the dangers lurking around.
I saw a woman who though lived to see another day would never learn to swim to shore.
A light whistle snaps me out of my dark reverie and I look up into brown small eyes attached to rich olive skin.
The Italian biker smiles a sexy smile,
“Yo mama. You are one fine looking woman.”
My brows arch seeing this charming man standing so tall right next to me. His steady gaze alert yet playful.
And I can’t help the words that leave my mouth, “A fine-looking woman like me and a sexy guy like yourself will make one hell of a night.”
The small smirk on my face is my giveaway that I’m joking but the heat in his eyes that turn smoldering before my own tells me he ain’t.
He licks his lips,
“Who says we got to make it just a night when I can easily make it a month.” My eyebrows shoot up and before I can even reply he wraps his fingers around my hand I have on the trolley,
“Names Knight, want to go out on a date?”
My mind instantly goes back to River when he asked me out and the churn in my gut makes me sober. I’m about to refuse when familiar hands wrap around my waist, pulling me closer to a chest I have only been close to twice. Once in this very same position.
“She’s taken.” Those two words hit me like a bucket of cold water and a bag of ice. Knight looks to me then to River before he nods and saunters off.
I wriggle out of his grip as Mrs. Cary turns into the aisle, the woman takes one look at the bikers and a glimpse at me before she turns her trolley around.
I spin around and poke the asshole in his chest.
“Who the hell do you think you are, coming and laying claim to me like I’m one of your whores. You had your chance you weren’t man enough to take it now it’s over.”
I make a move to push him when he grips my arm, his angry eyes seeping into mine,
“I gave you three months to get over your shit Hannah. If you good to flirt with another man then you fucking good to be with me.”
He leaves me thereafter, with my kid’s hand in his and I just stand there thinking ‘what the fuck’.
I don’t have to question the safety of my kid, I know River will keep her safe.
I don’t understand what just happened. I don’t get where he is going with this. I thought he moved on, I thought he found his keeper in Lauren. I never thought the biker wanted me.
I try to think if I missed something if maybe I wasn’t looking closely enough but all I can see is the hurt he left in me. All I can feel is the pain that he didn’t see that day when turned his back on me.
I’m not sure how I make it home. I’m not sure when I even get here. I just know that River will be back with my daughter soon.