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“What do you want to wear today, Jayden? Dinos? Cars?” I asked, approaching him and helping him to sift through his mountain of clothes.
“I wan’ cars!” he answered with joy. “Mommy, can I have cars?”
“Of course, baby,” I told him. “You can have whatever you want.”
After I finished helping him get dressed, Jayden decided he wanted to go show Granny his clothes, so he hurried to my mom’s room while I went downstairs to get started on his breakfast. At the same time, I prepared my lunch for work and thought long and hard about the whole Spencer situation.
My mom was so important to me that I couldn’t risk any gossip about her just for the sake of some sordid fling with Spencer. After all, I was lucky to have a mother who loved me and was willing to help me raise my son. I knew a lot of people who wouldn’t do that for their children. There’s no way I’d have ever been able to work and raise Jayden at the same time. After all, Mom even altered her work schedule to help me! She started working half days on Tuesdays and Thursdays so that I could work and she could pick up Jayden from pre-school for me. Honestly, she was an angel. She was totally my rock and I didn’t want to jeopardize that for some guy I barely knew, even if he was Jayden’s dad.
Once Jayden’s scrambled eggs were ready and my lunch was all packed, my mom walked into the kitchen holding Jayden’s hand and they were both grinning wide. As soon as Jayden saw me, he came running over and wrapped his arms around my leg, giving me a big hug. I smiled. Jayden was the center of my world now. No matter what, I had to put him first.
I leaned down and picked him up and hugged him tight. “I love you, little man,” I told him before heading over to the dining table and setting him in his booster seat. I proceeded to help him feed himself spoonful after spoonful of eggs before cutting up some fruit for him. Jayden, however, wasn’t quite as interested in his nutrition as I was.
“Eggy, eggy, egg, egg!” Jayden cried excitedly as he mashed his spoon into the dish over and over until the scrambled eggs became very, very scrambled. “Egg scramble. Scramble the eggy.”
I tried so hard not to laugh. “Jayden, your food is for eating, not playing,” I told him, even though I couldn’t help but enjoy how much fun he was having.
“I eat the egg,” Jayden said with a serious face, staring in my direction. “I play with the egg!” he screamed once more before jamming his spoon so hard against the dish that it clattered and the egg spilled over the edges.
Despite the mess, I couldn’t help but laugh. It was something so profoundly innocent and wholesome that I was reminded once again of how lucky I was and how excited I was to see Jayden grow up. I knew he was going to make a great adult one day.
When Jayden’s breakfast was finally eaten, after a lot of bribing and persuasion, I cleaned up the mess and grabbed his little rucksack along with my own before heading out the door. Dropping him off at pre-school was easy. Jayden was always so excited to go and play with his friends. It was easier to leave him now than it had been at the start, but I always still felt a pang when I left him behind.
It was just a ten-minute walk to the grocery store and I arrived with more than enough time to spare. I intended to go and check who else was working today in the hopes of seeing Dahlia, but when I went into the staff room, the only person waiting for me there was Colin. Colin who had asked me to go on a date with him just yesterday. My heart sunk and I prayed to any and every god that he might just ignore me.
The gods were not kind to me that day.
“Rylee! You’re bright and early today. That’s just what we like to see in all our employees!” he greeted me in a far too cheerful voice for nine in the morning.
“You know me, Colin. Ever the overachiever,” I told him, feeling like a fraud.
What kind of overachiever dropped out of college?
“Well, since you have a few minutes before you start, would you mind coming to the back room and helping me with pricing a pallet of canned soup?” he asked with a hopeful expression. “Jesse the stock room boy just called in sick and I don’t have anyone I can call in.”
I hesitated for a moment. I wasn’t sure I relished the thought of being alone with Colin for a long period of time, but it would also be a nice break from the check outs. “Sure,” I told him eventually and shrugged. “Why not?”
