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★☆★☆★
Being a single mom was the single hardest thing I had ever done in my entire life. I was glad to have the regular “day job” – but putting her in daycare everyday just about killed me. She was already a stubborn baby, and literally starved herself until I could pick her up after work, to which my breasts were about to explode by then. The daycare provider was frustrated that Ashlynn wouldn’t take a bottle of breast milk from her. I didn’t know what the solution was, so for now, I just did what I could. She was a fat baby, so clearly she wasn’t starving.
Jason came by to see her a couple times a week, as I wasn’t willing to let him have her for any extended period of time. I was already beginning to fret over having to give her up for overnight visits, or God forbid, days or weeks at a time while she went to stay with him and Aimee. They had moved in together, and were planning on getting married. It would be too hard to be away from my baby.
My supervisor’s voice broke me out of my musings. “Cates, do you have anything to add to the meeting?”
I looked around; it was me and four other secretaries at this meeting, along with our boss. I’m sure I looked sheepish, and just replied, “No, sir.”
After the meeting let out, another secretary, Cara Reid, stopped me in the carpeted hallway that would take us back out onto the prison compound. She laid a hand on my arm and I looked at it, then up into her eyes. It was then I noticed her eyes were a really awesome shade of green.
“You okay?” she asked.
Now, I barely knew Cara. She was another secretary who worked at the adjoining prison camp we had for low-security offenders, so I barely saw her, but she was part of our “team”, so to speak, and was required to go to meetings once a month with us. This was the first time we’d really had an in-depth conversation.
“Yeah, I’m fine, why?”
She smiled and slid some short blonde hair behind her ear. “You look stressed. Or tired. Or both.”
I nodded. “I am all of those things.”
We began walking. She had her black prison jacket zipped up over a green shirt and some black slacks. She looked pretty put together, while I felt like total crap in wrinkled khaki pants and a black T-shirt I was also hiding under my prison-issued windbreaker.
Sympathy laced her voice when she said, “If you need someone to talk to, you know where to find me. I think our babies are around the same age. It’s hard being a working mom with a small baby. I know how it is.”
Yes, but you’re not a single mom, I wanted to say, but didn’t.
As if she could read my thoughts, she added, “Being a single mom is even harder. I’m finding that out.”
I was shocked. “Oh, I thought you were married.”
She forced a smile, but I could see sadness in her eyes. “Not for long.”
I felt bad for her. Here we both were, now in the same boat. I had been thinking that I needed to make some new friends, and now it seemed that God – or karma – or the universe was throwing us together. Turns out becoming a secretary wasn’t so bad after all. I certainly needed a friend, a fellow mother who understood what I was going through, and it seemed Cara did now, too.
I found out later Cara had not only lost her husband to divorce, but her now ex-best friend too. What a pig.
***
“Oh, my God, are you serious?” Cara asked, her lips paused around her wine glass.
I watched in longing as the red liquid sloshed in her glass and then into her mouth. My eyes slid back to hers and I smiled. “Yes, I am serious. You haven’t lived ‘til you’ve played C.O. for a couple of years.”
She snorted and said, “No thanks. I get pulled enough to do hospital trips and junk. I’ll keep my crappy little office and even crappier pay.”
We both laughed, and I again looked at her wine.
“Is something wrong?” she asked, staring at her own wine glass.
I shook my head and sighed. “No. Just wish I could have some wine.”
She raised her eyebrows. “When are you gonna wean Ashlynn?”
I shrugged and popped a chip piled high with salsa in my mouth. After I swallowed, I said, “She won’t let me. I’ve tried everything.”
Cara tsked at me. “Who’s the parent here?”
I snorted and drank some of my caffeine-free Diet Coke, jutting my chin at my tiny daughter. “I think she is.”
We both looked over at the floor where Ashlynn and Cara’s son, Aiden, were playing with a bunch of wooden spoons and bowls. We had laughed when we realized how these things kept the kids more occupied than any expensive toy could. Aiden loved to bang the spoons against the bowls... and my furniture... and Ashlynn liked to put the bowls on her head.
On our first lunch out together, we had discovered that Ashlynn and Aiden were less than a week apart in age. Now that they were both over one, Ashlynn, had been walking for two months, while Aiden was still teetering on furniture, almost too scared to take a step. It didn’t seem to bother either one of us, though. Whenever Ashlynn would take off, Aiden would just get down and fast-crawl after her.
Ever since that first girl-date, Cara and I had become fast friends. Going to lunch, calling each other, hanging out on the weekends. Cara’s divorce was finalizing and she seemed grateful to have a friend to lean on, as she told me she had lost all of who she thought had been friends during the divorce.
***
“Anderson asked me out,” I said into the phone as I worked on my computer from my office.
“What!” Cara squealed in my ear. “Seriously?”
I nodded. “Yep. What do you think?”
Even though I couldn’t see her, I could tell she was probably either chewing her lip or drumming her fingers on her desktop. “I don’t know. He’s cute and everything, and while I do love a strong manly-man, he’s a bit too macho, if that makes sense.”
My eyes got big and I grinned. “That’s exactly it. He’s hot, and I could tell his body is smokin’ under his uniform, but I get the feeling he likes to boss women around.”
“What makes you think that?” she asked. “I just think he peacocks around too much. I haven’t really seen him be bossy toward women.”
I snorted. “Well, I’ve seen him with inmates. He treats them like shit.”
She was quiet for a minute before she replied, “Uh, so do the rest of the staff around here.”
I sighed. “That’s true. Maybe just one date?”
“It can’t hurt, I suppose. Just don’t sleep with him. That would be way awkward at work if it doesn’t work out.”
I laughed. “Okay gotta go. I’ll keep you posted.”
“Bye.”
I hung up and worried my lip. Sadly, I did kinda want to sleep with Anderson, even if it went nowhere. This dry spell I was in was ridiculous. I hadn’t been with anyone since Jason. What was wrong with me? It seemed becoming a mother had sucked all the sexy right outta me. That’s just not right, I thought. I was definitely gonna go out on a date with Sean Anderson, just for some sort of validity that I was, indeed, still desirable and maybe still hot. I might just sleep with him to scratch my itch.
If he wanted me, that was. I was also self-conscious of my body and the awful scar that now stretched along my bikini line, like the hideous smile of the Joker. And it wasn’t like I’d had time for the gym lately. When I wasn’t working, I had Ashlynn. She was pretty clingy, and even when Jason came to see her, she would cry and not want to leave my side.
This made Jason mad, but I wasn’t sure how else to handle it. I blamed the breastfeeding. Maybe she didn’t want to be away from her food source? I had let Jason and Aimee take her for a few hours here and there, but they always came back exasperated that Ashlynn was unpleasant and whiny. She was a one-year-old baby. I had no idea how to change her personality. Even though she was clingy, when we were at home, she seemed happy and well-adjusted. She would laugh a lot and was beginning to say little words like mama and bye-bye.
I wandered out into the housing unit to find an inmate to sign some papers and Sean Anderson was sitting at the officer’s desk, looking cute. I smiled at him. “Hi.”
“Hi, yourself. You think about what I asked?”
I nodded and put on my most flirtatious smile. “Yes. When are you not working?”
“My days off are Thursday and Friday this quarter.”
I smiled. “Perfect, my ex comes to get my daughter on Friday nights for a few hours.”
“It’s a date then.” His salacious grin did not go unnoticed by me.
I smirked and awkwardly walked back to my office, totally forgetting the entire reason I had gone into the unit. The inmates had watched our entire interaction, and even though they couldn’t hear our conversation, I knew they knew what had gone on. A few of them were already whispering and smiling.
God, they were so damn nosy!
Soooo. It turns out that when someone is cute and attractive, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re attracted to the person. This was the case with Sean Anderson.
Sean was all tall, dark and dangerous, with his pale green eyes and a cocksure attitude that made you look twice. His prison uniform was always pressed clean and his boots shined to a fault. I could tell he was probably in the military at some point, which, of course, turned me on more because I’m such a sucker for that shit.
Well, I used to be anyway. I didn’t even know what I liked anymore.
However, that smug attitude was a bit much for me. Again, he was cute, but there was something missing there. That was so the story of my life.
He took me to a nice enough dinner, and afterward, we walked around this small pond in the town I lived in. He had even grabbed my hand and had a flirtatious look in his mossy eyes. I’m sure I flirted back, because that was just my nature. I used to have friends ask me how to flirt, to teach them how to flirt. I had no idea how. It came naturally to me, and even if I wasn’t into a guy, I still flirted sometimes.
Sean dropped me off at my house and with a smile and sigh, I bid him goodnight.
He smirked down at me. “You sure you don’t want to invite me in?”
I bit back a grin at his cute lopsided smile, and said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t. Thank you for dinner, though.”
He looked a bit disappointed, but thankfully he did not push. “So I’ll call you, okay?”
I nodded. “Sure, Sean. See you at work.”
And with that he was gone. I closed the door and leaned my back against it. I felt guilty, and thought maybe I should give him a second date to see if maybe there was something there, but in the end, I decided that stuff couldn’t be forced. I wouldn’t settle.
I just couldn’t.