I pulled the highchair around to the stools, sat on one, and started feeding my son.
I did it while also watching Joker. So I saw him season the browning meat with salt, pepper, and dried basil. I also saw him peruse my meager spice collection like he was looking for something.
“What do you need?” I asked.
“Red pepper flakes,” he answered.
“I don’t have those.”
He turned to me. “Don’t like a kick?”
“I do. I just…” I shrugged. “Actually, I just eat what I eat as long as it’s fast. I don’t spend time on it because I don’t have that time or the energy.”
There was that, of course, but also dried red pepper flakes cost money and were unnecessary, thus they were not in my cupboard.
His jaw flexed and he shut the door on the spices.
I concentrated on feeding Travis, who was banging his fists, one that had a set of humongous plastic keys in it, against the highchair tray.
But I did this talking.
Or, maybe, semi-interrogating.
“You know how to cook?”
“Yeah.”
“Self-taught?”
“Learn or earn.”
I looked to him, loaded baby spoon in the air. “Learn or earn?”
He kept his eyes to the spoon he was using to push around the meat. “Learn or earn my dad bein’ pissed. He liked his food. I learned to make what he liked ’cause I wasn’t big on the consequences.”
I drew in breath to calm the tumult of feelings his disclosure caused and forced my tone to nonchalant, like I was asking the weather, when I noted, “So, no mom, and your dad wasn’t all that great either.”
“Hitler wasn’t all that great. My dad was a dick.”
My gaze shot to him. He must have felt my horror because he looked at me.
“Relax, Butterfly. It’s a joke.” He held my gaze. “But my dad was a dick.”
I nodded, thinking he didn’t want me to make a big deal of it, even though it was a very big deal, so I looked back to Travis.
Only then did I say softly, “I’m sorry, Joker.”
Joker didn’t reply.
Okay.
He was being forthcoming. He wasn’t avoiding me. In fact, he was doing the opposite. He also seemed taken with Travis. Not many men (I assumed, I hadn’t tested this theory) wanted to hang with single mothers and their babies. They certainly didn’t claim said babies at every given opportunity. Not if they only intended to be friends. Or, essentially, bum a meal.
And he was calling me Carrie.
Hope flared and I made a decision.
It was time to explore.
I cleared my throat and shoved strained peas into my boy’s mouth.
He spit them out, I scooped them up and shoved them back in, saying ultra-casually, “So, that pretty brunette you were with on Saturday. Is that your girlfriend?”
“Stacy?”
Her name was Stacy.
Ulk.
“I wasn’t introduced.”
Travis banged the keys against the tray.
“Not a girlfriend.”
My heart leaped.
Joker continued, “Decent woman. Until she gets slaughtered. Then decent goes out the window seein’ as she has no problem gettin’ behind a wheel when she’s shitfaced. She got that way Saturday, knew that shit would go down, so I took her home.”
The hope started burning so bright I didn’t check it when my head snapped up and I asked, “That’s it?”
Joker looked from the hamburger to me.
“That’s it, Carrie,” he said gently.
He said it gently.
And he was looking at me in a way that told me he wanted me to believe those words.
“Oh,” I whispered.
I said no more.
Joker didn’t either.
But we stared at each other across my kitchen and the new way he started looking at me made my skin start tingling.
“Moo mah!” Travis cried.
My head jerked down to him. “What, baby?”
He banged the keys against the tray. “Gah!”
“Did you just say ‘moo mah?’ ” I asked, meaning, did my son just call me Mommy?
He banged the keys and kicked out his feet.
He wanted more peas.
Well, he didn’t want more peas. He wanted to be done with peas so we could get to the peaches.
I gave him more peas but after I did, I looked back to Joker, and I knew when I did, I was smiling brilliantly.
“I think that was my first Mommy,” I shared with glee.
“Sounded like that to me,” Joker agreed.
But I was staring at him feeling even more glee.
Because for the first time since I’d met him, he was grinning.
He wasn’t biker handsome.
No.
He was biker amazing.
I wanted to get up and jump up and down, for a number of reasons.
Instead, I shared, “I think that’s early.”
“Kid’s a genius.”
I smiled bigger.
“He’s gonna say somethin’ else, you don’t fill his belly,” Joker warned.
I looked down at an irate Travis. “Sorry, googly-foogly.”
“Bah, bah, bah!” he snapped.
I grinned at him and gave him more peas.
Joker opened a cupboard and grabbed a box of spaghetti.
And I sat on my stool, in my dinky apartment filled with its magnificent furniture, yet again experiencing something new. Another something I hadn’t felt before Joker rode up the shoulder of I-25 and into my life.
Normal.
Average.
A woman feeding her child while a man worked in her kitchen to feed them.
The way it should be.
The way I’d always wanted it to be.
The only thing I really wanted for me.
And my baby.
* * *
I sat on my couch, feet up in the seat, knees to chest, arms around my calves, eyes on the TV, nervous as could be.
This was because my son had a belly full of baby food and formula, and not long after, decided to call it a night.
He was in his crib in my room.
And I had a belly full of spaghetti Joker served me, and not long after, he decided we were going to watch TV.
So we were sitting on my couch, watching TV.
During dinner, conversation hadn’t been free-flowing, mostly because Travis curtailed it, as was his wont. But things had been pretty easy.
Until Joker had invited himself to camp out in front of the television and then did just that.
I’d gotten Travis down and joined Joker.
Now I didn’t know what to do.
Men could be friends with women, this was true (though I had no men friends, still, it was true, I’d seen it on TV).