Another excerpt from my eBook, Ms. Single Mama Uncensored… you’ll notice this post, although originally published on my blog, is completely re-written and expanded in the book.

The Biker

Discovering I still had it in me

Originally Posted on June 8, 2008

I’m not sure which scared me more – the Biker or his Harley.

“C’mon, do you think I’d ever let anything happen to you? And you’re gonna love it!” He was very persuasive for a guy wearing a leather vest and a bandana.

He’d been asking me to take a ride for months and I’d been refusing, until now. Maybe it was because everything – him, this place and these feelings – they were all so frightening, so different from the life I’d left behind. When I left my husband, I moved everything I owned into a storage shed. Our cute little apartment in the city neighborhood I had loved so much was now bare, with the exception of the TV, the mattress and the kitchen supplies.

When I met the Biker, I was taking Benjamin for a walk down the gravel road leading to my mother’s house. Instead of strolling past boutiques and coffee shops, I was now dodging bugs and cursing the silent forest surrounding us. Eventually, I would learn to love the country and recognize the beauty in that noisy silence, but, at the time, I was still trying to wrap my head around it all. Rocks from the gravel were sticking to my shoes. I was scraping my soles on the stroller wheel, when I heard voices— male voices. Then, the dogs came.

Leaping out of the brush, they were running straight for the stroller and Benjamin. I drew a quick breath and managed a yelp or two while jumping in front of the stroller, bracing myself for whatever these dogs were about to do.
“Hey! Get down— NOW!”

The dogs came to an immediate stop at the sound of their owner’s deep, husky voice. My baby’s head was intact and standing in front of us was a man who looked like he could have squished any of my city boys into a tin can. He wore camouflage pants, a red bandana and a brown and blond beard, which hit just above his belly. So not my type.

“Sorry,” he said. As he commanded the dogs back, I could see the flames of a campfire in his yard. Around it sat three older, graying men in a circle, sharing tales. I glanced at the driveway. Three bikes.

Bikers. They were real bikers.

“Hi,” I said, “I’m Alaina—I just moved in with my mom, down the street.”

“With the little guy’s dad?” he asked.

“Oh no, we’re alone. His father and I are separated.”

“Well, anytime you want to stop by and just chill, let me know. I’m always here and, if I’m not, the dogs will be inside.”

Later, my Biker would tell me how crazy it had been to see me walking down that road, how stunning he had thought I was, standing there in my sweat pants and ponytail. But, at the time, I had felt far less than stunning, so I cut the conversation short and kept pushing Benjamin. I just hoped the Biker hadn’t noticed the baby goo stains all over my shirt. And, even though he wasn’t my type, I had felt his eyes on me and I wanted to feel them again, to see them again.

Soon, Benjamin and I would be visiting the Biker and his campfire at least three or four nights a week. I needed to escape my mother’s house and he needed some company. We would lay Benjamin down on a blanket and let him crawl around, or the Biker would bounce him on his knee and tell me how much he wanted a son of his own someday. Our goodbyes at the end of each night lingered, both of us unsure how to ask the other out. I had completely forgotten how to do this and didn’t even know if I could—and the Biker could sense it.

After three months of friendship and awkward flirting, I came home from work one day and found flowers waiting for me. The card read, “I’d like to take you out to dinner Beautiful. Love, the Biker.”

—–

“What are you waiting for? I’m not going to bite,” he patted the back of his bike.

Our dinner had come and gone and I was finally going to ride with him. When the bike took off, I shrieked a little and wrapped my arms around his chest, clutching my hands together and pressing my head into his back. I lost myself in his scent, in the wind splashing up against my face and, then, in the sunset.

“Look, look at the sky,” he shouted over the bike’s roar.

“Yeah, I see. It’s unbelievable.” And so was this moment, just the beginning of what would be a long, long dating road. But I was ready for the ride.

Read what happened next in Part 2: Sex as a Single Mom of Ms. Single Mama Uncensored.

Related posts:

1. Big Tease
2. The Biker
3. To find a prince you might have to kiss a lot of frogs.