“Hey Kiddo!” Dad yelled from the porch of the beach house.

Travis let go of my hand and bolted towards him. As soon as he was in reach, Dad swept him up in his arms and Travis started giggling.

“What’s that you got? A new one?” Dad asked.

“Yes. Dis one izzzza Camaro!” Travis held the tiny black car in his hand up and started whipping it through the sky. “Vroooom!”

“A Camaro? Wowwwww! Is that the kind of car you want when you grow up?”

“Maybe! I don’t know!” Travis whipped the car around more, moving it like a plane making aerial maneuvers. “Swisssssh!”

“Cars can’t fly, Travis!”

“Fly? I know dey can’t fly!”

“Thanks Daddy,” I said when I caught up to them. “I’ll be back in an hour or so. I really need to get some shopping done before I go back to work, and it would take me hours if I had him with me.”

“It’s okay, darling. Go ahead. Travis and I will have fun, right? Hey you wanna play ball?”

“No!” Travis squirmed in Dad’s arms and he let him fall to his feet. “I wanna race!” He jumped off the porch and started running towards the sand.

“Hey! Be careful!” I yelled.

“I got him!” Dad ran off the porch and started chasing Travis across the sand. They looked like they were having a lot of fun.

“I’ll be right back!” I yelled again as I headed back towards my Toyota Corolla.

I drove towards the department store/grocery store hybrid. I needed to pick up a few new clothes for Travis, some work supplies, and enough food to last us for a week.

Once I arrived and parked, I took another look at myself in the mirror. The skin around my eyes was dark and sunken in, but I did the best to hide it with cheap makeup. The green, sleeveless jumper I was wearing was made of thick linen, and my hair was halfway down to my ass. I needed a good trim, but when would I have time for that? Basically, I looked like a mom. I was actually the first time that I realized that I looked exactly like my mom, or at least what I remember of her—before she got sick from the drugs.

I shook my head back and forth, pulling myself out of my thoughts. I will never let that happen to me. I will never let Travis grow up without a mommy.

As I stepped out of my car and found myself walking into the Department store, even that thought was still haunting me. I wouldn’t let Travis grow up without a mommy, but I was letting him grow up without a father figure. Sure, he had Grandpa to hang out with sometimes, but it wasn’t the same. It wasn’t like living with a male role model under the same roof and observing his habits, understanding what it meant to be a man.

In some way, he had it worse than me, because if I stayed alone, he may never have the chance to have a Daddy, while I had a good 14 years with my mom.

I had tried online dating, and it was usually the same story. If I posted pictures with my kid or said in my profile that I had a son, I rarely got any messages. If I didn’t mention anything about children, I would get overwhelmed with messages, and waste time chatting with them until I dropped the single mother bomb on them. They were usually polite about it, but their interest slowly fizzled away and we quit talking shortly after they found out.

There were a couple of exceptions. I went on a date with one guy who had a kid of his own. For some reason, that was a little weird for me, but he was also divorced twice, which was even weirder. He seemed like a good guy, and I tried my best to make something out of it, but the energy wasn’t there, maybe because I had never married myself, and maybe because I couldn’t get over the fact that I wanted to meet someone who I could experience marriage with for the first time together.

Then there was Nick. He was the same age as me, good-looking, never married, and no kids. He seemed totally fine with the fact that I had a son, and I was giddy, not only for myself but because he seemed like the kind of guy that Travis could look up to. The possibility of a step-father really seemed there.

Boy was I wrong.

After the 3^rd date, when I was really considering introducing him to Travis, I slept with him and that was it. For a couple days after, he feigned a little interest in me, kept saying he was busy, and then sort of faded away. I saw him online on the dating site for weeks after that, so I knew then that he was just one of those guys who was telling girls whatever they wanted to hear in order to get in their pants. That hurt my pride enough that I gave up the online dating thing and just hadn’t been in the dating scene since.

I picked up my shopping basket and headed straight for the office supplies section of the store. I pulled a package of pens off of the hanging holder and sat them in the basket and started rummaging through the notepads, trying the find the perfect one to take notes for my Customer Service calls.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed man stealing glances at me. He was wearing a park of dark slacks and a grey, wool sweater that crawled up his neck a bit but wasn’t quite a turtleneck. He had clean, salon-styled black hair and cleanly shaven face set on a strong jawbone. He touched a binder as if he were about to pick it up and then jerked his head back, glanced at me again, then turned his face all the way towards me.

“Excuse me. I’m sorry,” he said.

I straightened and touched my hair, a little startled by the sudden attention. “Yes?”

“I don’t usually do this, but I just couldn’t help but notice you and wanted to say hi.”

“Oh, uh…” I glanced around, feeling shy. “Well, hi.”

“My name is Gary.” He held out his hand to me.

“Layla,” I said and shook gently.

“Sorry again. You’re just really pretty. Do you have a boyfriend?”

I ran my finger over my ear as if I were putting hair behind it, but I’m not sure if there was any loose hair that I needed to take care of. “No, I’m single.”

“That’s hard to believe, but it’s good news for me, I hope. Maybe you could give me your number and we could meet up for coffee some time or maybe even now if you’re free?”

“Oh sorry, I’m really pressed for time now, but you can have my number if you want.”

The man smiled, and his teeth were pearly white. He had a beautiful smile and a kind but mature face. I imaged that he was around thirty. Strange how an 8-year age difference seemed so small when I was 22, yet a 4-year age difference seemed so large when I was 18.

He pulled out his phone, slid it to his contact list, then handed it to me. “I’m guessing that you live out this way?” he said as I typed my name and number into his phone.

“Yeah, just a few miles actually.”

“Great. I’m not too far from here myself.”

“And what do you do?”

“I’m a Customer Service representative, but I’ll be working as a pharmacist in a few months.”

“Is that right? Are you just waiting up to finish college—you look about college age—or just waiting for the position to open up?”

“Actually, I have to take care of my son. Right now, I work from home, but I’ll be able to work away from home when he starts preschool.” I handed the phone back to the man.

“Oh,” he said and pursed his lips together. “You have a son?”

“Yeah, 3 years old, my pride and joy.” I smiled.

He looked a little deflated. “Well, that’s interesting. You don’t look like you’d have kids.”

That comment was almost a little offensive, but I had heard it a few times already and grown used to it. “And what do mothers usually look like?”

“I don’t know… ummm.” He scratched the back of his head and gave me a little smile. “Just not as cute as you, I guess?”

“Yeah, okay. Thank you,” I said, still trying to remain polite.

“But hey!” He slid his phone in his pocket and took a few steps backwards, bumping into a lady’s shopping cart who had appeared while we were talking. “Ooops, sorry,” he said to the lady before turning back to me. “I’ll call you sometime, okay?” He pointed his finger at me and winked.

“Yeah sure.” I gave him a brief nod. I won’t count on it.

There was a lot to being a mom, and being a single mom was particularly hard. Not just because it was my sole responsibility to provide a great life for my kid, but because having a kid seemed to make everything else in life seem further and further out of reach.