Dear Readers, I started the last chapter and wrote through this one intending to break them up when finished. I try to break the chapters after Friday night events, as that has been the theme. The previous chapter worked out, but this one ran long and I had to cut it before getting to Friday. Events are planned out for the next few weeks so I hope to get those chapters out quicker than recent ones.
Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the story!
Note: There is a synopsis of the story up to that point in Chapter 10 for longtime readers to refresh their memories if needed. New readers I would like if you started at the beginning.
Onedragon
*****
I slept long and deeply.
As worn and sore as I should have been, I woke feeling exhilarated. A wide grin crossed my face and I didn't resist it. I felt on top of the world! A warm, wonderful place filled with love and beauty, not the cold desolate wasteland that was at the actual top of the world.
I casually trotted downstairs.
Mom coughed loudly and I looked to where she was sitting. My brother and sister were engaged in a game with her. She pointed to her neck emphatically. I stared at her in stupefaction. Then it dawned on me. Mom's words of last night hit me. The hickey that she claimed she had given me. I put a hand to my neck and turned back upstairs. I went in the bathroom and studied the reddish mark standing out on the side of my neck. Mom entered behind me with a jar of make-up.
"You can cover it with this until you get some time away from the family so you can then make up a story about a ... remarkable ... girl that gave it to you." Mom glanced at the floor when she used the description I had called her last night.
"Make-up?" I questioned with disdain. "What about a bandage?"
"If you put on a bandage big enough to cover that, your dad would wonder who tried to slit your throat!"
"But make-up?"
"Actors wear it all the time, newscasters, even the sports guys!" She declared.
"But ..." I protested.
"Or do you want to explain to your father, or Johnny, even little Jojo, about how you got a hickey between the time when they went to bed last night and you got up today?"
"Umm ..."
Maybe it wouldn't be too bad. It's not as if I was going anywhere today. Oh, wait. That was the whole point of my explanation. I had to get away to give this 'remarkable' girl time to give me a hickey. Damn!
"I thought so. Here let me apply it. Try not to rub it or to get it to wet."
"Like sweating while I'm with my remarkable girl?" I leered at mom.
"Yes. No sweating for you." Her grin in reply glowed.
Mom quickly applied the concealer to my neck, which I learned was with what she was covering me.
"There. As long as no one looks too closely."
"Can't I just pretend that I have been hiding it and have had it for awhile already?" I pleaded.
"You may have to if this doesn't work." Mom patted my neck again. She didn't seem too confident in the job she'd done.
"Maybe you should just hide in your room like you usually do." She suggested.
"Would you care to join me, beautiful?" I looked deep into those green pools.
"You know we can't." Mom broke my gaze.
"That didn't seem to stop you last night."
"That was ..." She started.
"Don't say it was different. That was magical. Incredible, stupendous, awesome, breathtaking ..."
"Okay. Stop. I get it. I was there too. I feel the same. I don't know why, but I am so ... enamored with you Jeremy. That you are my son, my remarkable son, just doesn't seem to matter. Not in the grand scheme of things."
"But what about dad?" I didn't want to bring up my father, but he was the pink elephant that hung over us no matter where we were or what we were doing.
"Honey. I don't know. I'm the one that is lost here. You know what you want, even when your mother tells you otherwise!" She glared at me, but it quickly turned playful. "Your father also knows what he wants, even if he doesn't show it most of the time because he's too involved in that silly sport. I'm the one that doesn't know what I want."
"Yes you do mom. Your problem is you want me, but you also want dad. You can't have both and that's tearing you up."
"That sums it up pretty well."
"We should get back downstairs before the other two wonder what we are doing."
"Luckily they wouldn't think anything like what we
are
doing." Mom sighed without any relief.
"And let's keep it that way." I stated. It would crush me for Jojo to find out I was having sex with mom, even if Jojo wasn't sure what sex even was yet. She would all too soon enough.
Mom's look at me told me she was thinking along the same lines. That stung me, that what I was doing caused her pain was a knife in my gut.
Mom left me standing there studying her handiwork. It was a bit discolored from my surrounding skin but far less than what lay beneath the make-up cover. The fact that I wanted to shout from the rooftop that mom had given me a hickey while we had had explosive sex was lost by the additional fact that it had been my mom and thus I had to keep it secret.
Maybe I should just spend the day playing video games. Or I could text some friends. If I still had any after my neglect of them. What I really wanted to do was spend the day with mom! Even spending time with Aunt Jessica now paled beside her sister. Aunt Jess may have the better figure, but there was something about mom that had just clicked with me. And not just the fact that she was the woman that gave me life.
I didn't want to spend the day holed up in my room. I wanted to get out and enjoy life. But I didn't want to push my luck with my neck either. I'm sure that is the type of thing that dad would notice right away, even if he didn't realize other things going on in the house. Dad was normally very perceptive and could deduce the truth about a great many things. Except for probably the biggest thing in his life.
I hadn't had breakfast yet so I had to go back downstairs.
"You're back." Mom stated plainly. Johnny and Jojo were now playing the game without mom. She was paging through a magazine. Like she was killing time. Until I returned?
"I need breakfast." I stated just as plainly.
"Breakfast? It's close to lunchtime." Mom answered.
It was only ten thirty!
"Do you want me to make you something?" She appeared ready to leap to her feet. That she wanted to make a meal for her ... what did she call me last night? Her lover, seemed so sweet. It made my footsteps light. However, I didn't want her slaving away for me. I was eighteen and fully capable of feeding myself. If I was forced to it.
"No, don't get up mom. I'll find something." I went in the kitchen. What I found was cereal. I might have preferred one of mom's big breakfasts, but there was no way I could manage that! Cereal was easy. I even cleaned up the milk I spilt!
"You're going to have cereal?" Mom questioned when I walked into the living room with the bowl.
"It's what I wanted." I declared my lie.
"Really? When I've seen you devour half a cow." This drew a laugh from my siblings.
"I can have another bowl." I defended my decision.
"Okay." Mom let it drop.
The problem was, I'm sure she knew my whole thought process anyway. That I didn't want her to get up, my inability to do much more in the kitchen than boil water and make toast. I might have even managed some scrambled eggs. Or, that I just wanted her to relax. Mom's slight smile confirmed my suspicion. My mother knew me all too well!
