A Mother and Son Love Story (With Sex)
This story concerns Ryan, a young man whose overwhelming social awkwardness is impacting on his ability to function as an adult. He has dropped out of college and has no job and his mother is becoming increasingly concerned about him.
I hope you enjoy the story and I look forward to comments, as always.
Sylviafan
Caroline stretched her fingers out, seeking the handle of her son's bedroom door, pressing the metal lever with her fingertips and shouldering the door open. It wasn't the way she normally opened doors in her house, or anywhere else for that matter, but this morning she was encumbered with an armful of clean, pressed laundry. She could have knocked of course, with her knee or something, or called out to Ryan to open the door, but she knew that he would be oblivious to the world, headphones clamped to his ears, Xbox console in his hands, thumbs flying, slaughtering hordes of invading Vikings, or aliens, or killer robot soldiers.
She dumped the pile of clothes on his bed and started to sort them out, ready to put away. Ryan had his back to her, sitting at his desk in front of the window that looked out onto the big back garden. But now her turned and saw his mother, alerted to her presence by some sixth sense, or maybe something more prosaic like a reflection in his monitor or the faint air movement as the door opened. He put the console down on the desk and tugged off his headphones.
'You didn't knock,' he said. It was a statement, rather than an accusation. Ryan didn't really do confrontation.
'I did,' lied his mother, 'you just didn't hear.' They looked at each other and Caroline grinned and Ryan gave the little tight smile that was the closest he generally got to expressing happiness.
'Just leave the stuff on the bed, Mum. I'll put it away.' Ryan didn't really want his mother poking around in his wardrobe and chest of drawers and he certainly didn't want her investigating the drawers in his bedside cabinet.
'Ok, sweetie, if you're sure,' she replied, doubtfully. She'd spent half Saturday morning ironing the clothes in the pile and was reluctant to see them stuffed willy-nilly in a cupboard or just left on a chair. She reached out and ruffled her son's thick, brown hair. It needed cutting, she noted, he was beginning to look a bit like Sideshow Bob.
'Thanks, Mum,' said Ryan, by way of a polite dismissal, and watched his mother as she turned and walked out of the bedroom, his eyes on her rounded buttocks as they moved deliciously underneath her tight denim jeans. The bedroom door closed and he sighed and turned to his desk again.
Downstairs in the kitchen, Caroline made herself a coffee and sat at the pine table sipping it and thinking about her son. It was over two years since he'd dropped out of university and since then he'd done virtually nothing with his life except play computer games and watch television. Unemployed except for that disastrous time she'd insisted he get at least some sort of a job and he'd spent two days flipping burgers at McDonald's before going off sick, permanently as it turned out. It wasn't as if he wasn't clever, his school grades had been great, and he'd got a place at a decent university, reading maths.
It was easy to dismiss his behaviour as late-adolescent laziness, but Caroline knew that the truth was more complex and rooted in long-standing emotional issues. It had seemed to start at puberty, or around that time. It hadn't helped that Ryan's particular transition into adulthood didn't start until he was nearly fifteen, by which time all his male friends and classmates seemed to have developed seven-inch penises, facial hair and voices like Lee Marvin. That had definitely been traumatising for Ryan and it hadn't helped that his father, David, had taken the piss out of him for being a late developer, mimicking his high-pitched voice and associating it with being effeminate.
Caroline had been furious; for the first time in her marriage she had really let rip at her husband, and afterwards she had compensated for his cruelty by pouring love and affection on her only child. David had responded by telling her she was overprotective and mollycoddled her son. 'He needs to become a man,' he had insisted. 'To stand on his own two feet.'
And Caroline got that, she really did. But when he came home day after day in tears because the other boys had bullied him what was she supposed to do? He was a nice kid, a nice person; the apple of his mother's eye. She'd hated watching him change from an outgoing, happy, confident twelve-year-old, who represented his school at soccer and cricket, into a shy, awkward, desperately introverted twenty-year-old who had arrived home unexpectedly in the middle of the academic term and announced that he wouldn't be going back to university.
His father's scorn and contempt had been the last straw. Caroline had realised that she not only didn't love him anymore, but she didn't even particularly like him. She offered to leave and take Ryan with her, but David had gone instead, with an alacrity that suggested he had something else waiting for him. Which, it had turned out, he had.
So now, two years down the line, it was just her and Ryan in the big, detached house on the executive estate in the leafy suburbs on the edge of town. And that was fine because Caroline's job as the HR director of an engineering company paid well and the mortgage was manageable. But it wasn't fine because her son, the love of her life, was lonely and unhappy and he didn't seem to have the emotional equipment to survive, let alone thrive in the world. She took a sip of coffee, but it was cold and she pulled a face and just then, the doorbell rang.
It was her friend Christine from next-door-but-one.
'Hi, Caroline. Wondered if you fancied a jog around the park.'
They ran together a lot, especially at weekends, though Caroline didn't really count it as running, it was too slow. But they could talk as they jogged and it was nice to get out of the house for an hour or so. She changed into Lycra pants and top, texted Ryan to say she'd be back in an hour, and the two of them trotted off down the road towards the big park at the bottom of the hill with the river running through the centre.
'Any news from the bastard?' asked Christine as they went through the park gates and headed for the bandstand. It was how she habitually referred to Caroline's estranged husband.
'Not a peep,' she grinned.
'How's Ryan?'
'He's fine,' replied Caroline, evasively.
'Still in his bedroom all day?' she asked.