Baby Crazy
by Pan
Chapter 1
Shirley beamed as her son crossed the stage. Mikey had just turned eighteen, and for a while she'd been worried he'd graduate at all. For the first half of the year he'd been buried in his room - at first she'd assumed it was drugs or video games, a standard teenage distraction-slash-vice...but the few times she'd investigated, she'd found no evidence of anything like that.
Instead, it was like he was...researching. He had piles of textbooks, but not relating to the subjects he was studying at school. Neurolinguistics, psychology, books on human behavior and social dynamics, even some stuff about evolution - the most bizarre selection of topics. She'd wanted to ask him what he was doing with those books, but didn't know how to bring it up.
It wasn't drugs and it wasn't anything expensive or harmful, so against her instincts, she decided to leave it.
That had been the right choice, it turned out. Just a few months later, everything turned around for her son - he'd suddenly shot to the top of every class (even gym, which he'd never shown any interest or aptitude in). It was like everything had clicked for him, and all of a sudden his every class had become easy for him.
Shirley never even saw him studying.
When parent-teacher interviews had rolled around, she'd been delighted to learn that each of his teachers raved about him. Mikey had always been shy...no, not shy. Awkward. None of his previous teachers had ever used the word, but it had been there in the subtext.
But just as quickly as he'd become an expert scholar, he'd apparently developed an extraverted streak, because each and every teacher almost tripped over their words to talk about how much they enjoyed having Shirley's son in their class.
"He's charming and personable," was a phrase she heard from more than one teacher. That exact phrasing, in fact.
"He's my favorite student," she heard from a few more. She thought there was some rule about not picking favorites, but perhaps that was no longer a consideration.
It was odd; she hadn't noticed a change in Mikey's personality at home. But it seemed that it had finally happened: her son had blossomed.
When he reached the center of the stage and taken his scholar, Mikey had paused and searched the watching crowd for his mother. She gave a half-wave, and he smiled as he made direct eye-contact with her, and out of nowhere, a thought popped into Shirley's head.
He's not my baby anymore.
The moment she thought it, she could feel the weight of the thought. It was undeniably true, of course - Mikey hadn't been a baby for a long time. But now he was eighteen, graduated, and apparently bloomed into quite the charmer.
He wasn't her baby anymore.
For the first time in eighteen years, Shirley didn't have to worry about looking after her son. It was a feeling that she would have expected to make her happy - but instead, she felt a strange sense of loss. She'd spent eighteen years taking care of someone else, and suddenly they were no longer dependent on her?
She should have felt free.
Mikey had been an accident. She'd never told him that, she'd never so much as hinted at it. When she'd realized she was pregnant, Shirley had decided that it was her responsibility to raise him. She'd been in her early twenties at the time, and already a rising star at the law firm where she worked...but even though her career had taken a hit, she'd never regretted her son's existence.
Alan, Mikey's father, had married her - more out of duty than love. And despite the lack of fire between them, they'd made it work. Raising a child was never easy, but they made a good team. The pair had easily settled into a marriage that one could only describe as comfortable.
If she'd dug deep into her soul and really asked herself the question, she might have found resentment - her life had been on a particular trajectory before her son's birth, and getting pregnant had completely derailed it.
But Shirley wasn't the kind of woman to dig deep into her soul, and so the question had never come up. God had given her a child, and she'd done what she had to do, raising him to the best of her ability...despite the fact that she'd never wanted a child. Neither of them had.
And so now that he was graduating (with honors!) she should have felt free. She should have felt like her life was back on track. She should have felt free.
But instead, she felt empty.
He's not my baby anymore.
Alan was sitting next to her, and as Mikey left the stage and rejoined the student body, he shot her a look.
"You doing okay, hon?"
She just nodded, and he turned his attention back to the stage.
They took Mikey out for a celebratory dinner that night. They weren't the only ones - just a few tables over, Shirley spotted another graduating teenager. He and Mikey didn't acknowledge each other, so she assumed he was from a different school, but when she looked at the boy's parents, all she saw was pride.
And then she noticed - it wasn't just the three of them. The mother of the other student was cradling a newborn baby.
Shirley's eyes widened. In the months after Mikey had been born, she'd kept waiting for the maternal instinct to hit, but it never had. She loved him, of course, but she'd never felt...well, like everyone had said she was supposed to.
It hadn't been until Mikey had hit his teenage years that Shirley could truthfully say she'd felt a connection to him. When he'd stopped being a kid and started being a
person
- someone she could talk to, share TV and movies with, spend time together without feeling like she had to act as his nursemaid.
She and Alan had gotten through their son's baby years with gritted teeth, not overflowing hearts.
But now, looking at the mother and her baby, she was suddenly hit with a wave of nostalgia.
Alan had been like that, once. So tiny that she could hold him in one arm. So sweet and innocent and precious. So...dependent on her. She hadn't liked it at the time, but now...
Now, all of a sudden, she felt like she'd give anything to have that time back.
Shirley turned back to her family. Mikey caught her eye and shared her smile, almost as though he knew what she was thinking. They exchanged a short, silent nod, and Shirley returned her attention to the questions her husband was asking Mikey about college.
That night, when Shirley joined her husband in bed, she felt frisky. Over the years their sex life had almost completely dried up - now, sex was a monthly affair at best, and usually it was Alan who initiated it.
Again, if she'd reflected on it, she would have realized how unsatisfied she found their sexual encounters. A few kisses was Alan's idea of foreplay, and within five minutes he was finished. No, she was lucky if he was still
awake
five minutes later.
But Shirley wasn't the kind of woman to think about such things. And so she hadn't noticed her own libido fading away over the years. Her small collection of sex toys lay forgotten in a shoebox in the closet, her collection of saucy romance books sat on the shelf, unread.
She hadn't masturbated in five years...which meant it had almost been that long since she'd last had an orgasm at al.
But that night, she was the one to initiate. As soon as she got into bed, her hand was down her husband's pajama pants, her mouth on his, and before she knew it, they were rolling around on the sheets, tongues tangling and hands exploring.
As per usual, it was merely minutes before Alan finished - this time before she could even get him inside her.
"Sorry," he grunted, before getting up to fetch a towel. When he came back, he was surprised to find Shirley naked, stroking herself, rubbing his cum between her legs.
"Do you like this?" she purred when she noticed where her husband's attention was. In just under nineteen years of marriage, she'd never done something as 'naughty' as this, and she was rewarded by the sight of his erection rising once more.
"What's gotten into you?" he asked, before a knowing look came into his eye. "Ah. Free at last?"
"Mm-hmm," Shirley replied, trying to ignore the aching feeling in her stomach at the thought. "Free."
He's not my baby anymore.
"C'mere," Alan said, grabbing his wife's hair and pulling her in for a kiss. A few minutes later, he was inside her, and her eyes were closed in bliss.
