You were sitting at the kitchen table when he told you he was moving to Hollywood to follow his dream of becoming an actor. He ate beignets you made from scratch. Smacking his lips as remnants of the powdered sugar dotted his chin. You smiled, even though you felt like you’d been gut-punched.

You wondered how you got to this point, lamenting over a man twenty years your junior. You never dated younger men. You guessed you could call it dating. Netflix. Chill. Cooking dinner together. Church. You hadn’t dated in forever when you played around on an online site, putting an age range of forty-five to fifty-five. Your friend Lita said to lower the age and live a little. Dewayne popped up. The rest was right swipe history.

You could put Café Du Monde out of business, he said.

You blushed. You’d heard it before. You worked as a tax analyst for the state of Louisiana and were the go-to dessert maker for special occasions. You learned from your grandmother, Maw-Maw Irene. She tucked her recipes and secrets in her heart, divulging them to you when she believed you were worthy.

Last night, a smidgen of sugar lingered in his beard that scratched between your thighs, feeling so good your soul left your body. You should’ve known it, whatever it was, wouldn’t last. Nothing good ever did. _

_When you first met, you told him you were old enough to be his mother.

He smiled. Is that right, Ma?

You wanted to tell him not to call you Ma, even if it was slang young people might have used nowadays. It hurt too much because that’s what your son used to call you. When you had a son.

Hey Ma, your son would say, home from school, snot-nosed and shivering as if he’d walked a mile when the bus driver had let him out front. She could’ve dropped him off at the corner, reminding you of that fact every chance she got.

You think back on those days as if they were yesterday instead of yesteryears — two decades. Dewayne stared at you with LL Cool J lips and eyes that turned insides to liquid. He was thirty. Your son would be thirty on April 1, in two days. When April Fool’s Day rolled around, you always felt like the joke was on you.

The years blurred. Your therapist called it dissociative amnesia, blocking out information associated with traumatic events. That accounted for most of your life. Especially after Maw-Maw Irene died, leaving you to raise yourself at fifteen. But there were things you wished you could forget: Your son, at ten years old, coming home from school to find you passed out. He ran outside and flagged down the same bus driver you’d given the expensive gift cards to every Christmas. You woke up in the hospital dodging questions from protective services. You were knocking on thirty when the state declared you unfit for motherhood after years of reunifications and relapses. A white couple adopted him and moved to Texas.

You and Dewayne sat on the sofa, him tickling your fingers. He often talked about moving to California. His cousin lived in Los Angeles and said he could crash on his couch. It did not surprise you he was leaving. Still, you were losing someone who plugged a hole in your heart. What would stop it from leaking like a rusty faucet once he was gone?

Months into your relationship, you told him about your son. He told stories of his mother, mostly absent from his life. Like you, she got her shit together.

His fingertips felt like cotton on your skin. He asked when you would open a bakery, and you laughed, although he was serious. You can’t work and run a bakery at the same time. And you can’t quit your job. It was the first one you had stayed in for over five years and got benefits and bonuses. You couldn’t give that up for a dream.

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You think about that conversation long after he departs to California. Besides the occasional sexting, you don’t hear from him. But his words permeate your thoughts like clovers in summer grass, despite efforts to weed them out. You finally rent out a booth in a flea market. Your sales climb and you sell out.

One day, you are watching a Lifetime-ish movie — a mother-daughter love triangle. You catch your breath as Dewayne appears on the screen. You smile like a proud mom.

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