Ben (The Sherwood)

“Okay. Ben…”

“What Mom?” I asked.

“I love you too and your beautiful daughter.”

“Thanks, Mom. We love you too.”

Chapter 6

I mozied about the store with Asia’s carrier in the back of the shopping cart, just browsing the baby stuff. Beneath the cart I had already stuffed two big boxes of baby diapers in her size.

I was near the baby shampoos and lotions when a new mother stopped me. How did I know she was a new mother? I was getting good at scoping these women out. Baby in the carrier wasn’t much younger or older than Asia. Hard to tell when they are this age.

The mother was still carrying a little baby weight and she wore a baggy outfit trying to cover those few extra pounds. Something comfortable. The last clue this woman was as tired as me.

“You look exhausted,” she informed me starting a conversation which happened frequently if I stopped at the store with Asia on my way home from Mom’s house, after work.

“She’s not sleeping well,” I replied.

“You need this purple baby bath and lotion. They are live savers,” she told me. Was it for me or the baby, I wondered? “So soothing.” I almost bought two bottles of each. Anything that would bring me, and Asia relief was a lifesaver.

“I use it too sometimes,” she informed me. I almost laughed out loud when she said that because I had been thinking that very thing. I might just try it.

That’s when she deposited the two bottles in the seat of my cart where I had a couple of cans of formula sitting too. She winked at me. “You’ll thank me later.”

“Thanks,” I told her and went looking for more things.

I grabbed a package of wipes and was about to put them in my cart when another mother with her baby sitting up in the seat in her cart snatched it out of my hand. “Oh honey, you do not want to use that on your baby. Mommy sent you shopping, didn’t she? She forgot to tell you which brand to get,” she said.

I scratched my head. How do I answer that question? I’m a single dad, raising my daughter because her mother is nineteen and ran out on her. She tricked me too because I’m an idiot. I smiled at her and kept my thoughts to myself.

She peeked in the carrier. “Oh, she’s gorgeous, just like her Daddy,” she cooed.

I was used to being flattered by women not usually in front of my daughter. “I…uh…thanks,” I muttered.

She smiled at me. She was pretty, too. Blonde. Nice figure. The last Mommy was cute too, but I wasn’t interested in women right now. Not just any woman that is. I was interested in Asia and maybe the beautiful blonde that still worked for my dad at Ike’s.

“Buy these,” she held them out to me.

“What’s the difference?” I asked.

She pointed to the package. “Fragrance free. See, right here.”

I nodded. “No fragrance.” But the purple stuff had a fragrance. Lavender scent. I held up a bottle. “Is this okay?”

“Yes, that is perfect. It soothes the baby.” That’s what the first Mommy had told me too. “Sometime

s Mommy, too.” She winked at me and I chuckled.

“Thanks,” I said and moved Asia along. I needed more blankets. I couldn’t keep up with the laundry, so I was getting her more blankets, more sleepers and more onesies because inevitably my daughter spit up or peed on multiple items a day and she had a lot of them but needed more.

I grabbed a package of blankets. “Not those,” I turned and there stood Disa Riley. The woman who had been haunting my thoughts and my dreams more so since that kiss.

She took the package from me and handed me another one. They were softer, I discovered running my thumb over the fabric. “Those women were flirting with you, Ben. You didn’t flirt back. Has the man whore lost his touch?”

I flinched at her insult. “That’s not nice,” I said.

She looked at me. I thought she might apologize then she looked in the cart. “You have Asia.” She touched her cheek. Then she looked at me as if she were waiting on an answer. “I thought you weren’t seeing her,” she said.