Angela Johnson placed the laundry basket on her hip and started up the stairs from the basement. It had been a long day already, and she was pleased that this final chore was nearly finished. It only remained to deliver the piles of folded clothes to her son Max' room, and then take the rest to the master bedroom.
As she passed the open door of her husband Gus' study, she could see him peering at a spreadsheet on his desktop. She smiled to herself exasperatedly. She had told him it was probably time for him to get reading glasses. Many of his friends had already done so, being in their early forties, but he was so proud of his appearance that he hated to give in.
Still, she knew that he had reason to be somewhat vain. She loved the way his brown hair framed his long thin face, and his intense eyes never failed to give her shivers deep down, where it counted. She went on by, knowing not to disturb him when he was at his most concentrated. He was never short with her, but she knew she wouldn't get anything out of him more than grunts.
Max was much the same as his father, she mused as she started to climb the stairs to the second floor. Intense, handsome, the eighteen-year-old had an almost preternatural ability to concentrate on something that fascinated him. The young mother thought lovingly of her only offspring. He had turned into a really wonderful human being. Not to say that he hadn't had his rough patches; who doesn't, in those difficult teenaged years? But now he had become a genuine, polite, thoughtful person. It was true that he seemed to have some difficulty with getting dates for some reason, but she felt sure he would get over that in time.
Angela paused on the landing to push her hair back behind an ear. She loved the way her hair looked, and took great care of it. Golden blonde (and naturally so, despite what some envious soccer moms had implied; she had the other hair to prove it), she generally wore it in a neat ponytail. But now, her bangs needed a trim. She reminded herself to make an appointment in the morning.
Preoccupied with these thoughts, she walked down the second floor hallway to Max' room. The door was closed, and as was the custom in the Johnson household, she politely knocked. Not hearing an answer, she knocked again, a little louder, and then turned the doorknob.
The sight that met her eyes burned like a sunflash onto the backs of her eyes. In fact, in later years, she was astonished at how readily she was able to recall even the slightest details of the scene. The room was dark except for the light that emanated from the computer monitor. Max was sitting in front of the screen with headphones on, from which she could hear a driving beat. His chair hid most of him from her, but his broad shoulders, bare, stuck above the top of the chair. His dirty blonde head was looking intently at the screen, in a strange parody of his father's position one floor down. His right hand was in his lap and seemed to be moving back and forth.
And then the picture on the screen forced its way into her consciousness: a pixie like redheaded girl was kneeling on her hands and knees, her behind towards the camera, her face looking back towards the photographer with a mischievous smile playing on her lips. She was only wearing the briefest of panties, merely a string down the valley between her buttocks. And in fact, as could be expected, there was no pretense of covering her various charms. Her anus winked out a deeper pink than the pale skin of the rest of her bottom, and the beginning of her labia could be seen peeking around the little pouch of the g-string. She had her hand next to those pouting lips, one finger slipping underneath the fabric of the panties to tease around her sex.
With a gasp, Angela Johnson dropped the laundry basket. In the same instant, Max, sensing the change in the light guiltily grabbed his boxers and pulled them up his legs, vainly attempting to stuff his erection back into concealment. He looked, terribly embarrassed, over his shoulder, and seeing his mother's horrified expression, whipped around and closed the internet browser. He wanted to shrink into a tiny ball.
"Mo-ooo-ommm," he whined, sounding miserably like an immature brat. He heard her grab the basket and slam the door behind her. 'Oh, shit,' the teenager thought, 'why in God's name did that have to happen to me?' His erection had subsided enough, so that he was able to get his boxers the rest of the way up. He got up and lay in his bed, feeling more ashamed than the time he accidentally knocked his Dad's antique pipe collection off of the mantelpiece.
Outside, her heart pounding, his mother leaned against the wall, one hand pressed against her mouth. She knew that nothing could prepare you for the moment you discovered for sure that your child was not only grown, but in fact a member of the sexual human race. In fact, she had known that he had been masturbating for years, because Gus had told her.
In fact, the Johnson household was open about a lot of things. Max had been encouraged to approach either parent with any questions he had about sex or about girls, and he had taken advantage of that trust to discuss things with his mother, his father, or both, that many parents never had the good fortune to be able to clear up with their children. He had asked Gus about the unhappy tendency of the male sex organ to erect itself at inappropriate times. He had asked Angela about breasts when he was eleven years old and whether they hurt.
That being said, the Johnsons took their privacy very seriously, and parents and son had not seen each other in the nude for years. Angela still recalled with a pang the moment that Max had said with intense dignity as a nine year old that he could bathe himself perfectly well, thank you very much. And it had been years before that that she had had to take him to the restroom for the last time. Sure, there were times at the swimming pool, or the beach, where more than the usual amount of skin was seen, but it had never been overlaid with a sense of sexuality.
And now, Angela Johnson was astonished to realize, the sight of those manly shoulders, broad from his competitive swimming, even in the peculiar light of the computer monitor, had caused a familiar rush of warmth to her center. With an impatient shake of her golden hair, she forced her thoughts away from that disturbing reaction, and taking ahold of herself, decided to start separating the laundry in her room.
*****
"Gus, you'll never guess what I saw this evening."
Angela and her husband were getting ready for bed that night. He was in his pajama bottoms, washing his face, while she sat on the toilet clipping her toenails. She had on a blue cotton cami and a matching pair of blue boy shorts. Her hair was falling in front of her face as she bent forward over her left foot.
Gus felt a surge of happiness at the fact of this lovely woman in the bathroom with him. It never failed to astonish him that she had chosen to spend her life with him. He considered himself to be, on the whole, an average guy. True, he had done well with his career in engineering, and they had a comfortable lifestyle because of it. And yet, when he looked at himself in the mirror, what was there to even remark on? He knew for sure that there had been men far more attractive than he who had been courting Angela at the same time. And yet she had picked him.
Even now, twenty years after their first date, she was a beautiful woman. Leaning over her foot, he could see the slim curvature of her hips, and that achingly sexy space between her shorts and her cami where her waist peeked out. She had lost nothing in that time, despite carrying a baby (and losing another pregnancy).
"Mmm?"
Angela looked up at him in the mirror.
"I accidentally walked in on our son, jerking off," she said. He realized that, despite the joky tone of voice, she was upset about something. He raised his eyebrows at her.
"What did you do?"
"Oh, honey, I don't know," she replied, looking back at her foot, but with the toenail clipper unremembered in her hand. "I think I kind of panicked, really."
"Angela, you didn't yell at him?"
"No, no, no," she shook her head. "No, I just kind of hightailed it out of there."
