Jake lay in his bed, staring unblinkingly at his ceiling fan. It moved too slow to possibly be providing any real wind, but still he focused on the rotation of the blades. Anything that would help him clear his mind he clung to. He counted the rotations and focused on nothing else. He was trying hard to embrace cognitive white noise.
244...
245...
246...
Jake counted, but his eyes began to water.
247...
248...
Tears rolled towards his ears now.
He clenched his eyes shut and cursed himself.
You see, just a few hours ago Jake pounced his mother in a moment of weakness for both of them. Their lips met and a mother comforting her son evolved into a mother and son locked in a lovers embrace, their lips parted and tongues danced. While Amanda had let it progress for a while, she had to fight to renew the boundaries she had set prior to that evening. She had told Jake that they had to ignore what happened. However even Amanda knew it'd be hard, for herself as well as for Jake. When Jake had lied and said that his girlfriend, Karen, had dumped him, she immediately went to comfort him.
From their hug Jake pushed boundary after boundary until they were trading kisses and he grabbed at her body like an animal. He was too lost in the throes of passion to stop and truth be told Amanda was not resisting in the slightest, until she did. Amanda was admittedly a little tipsy, and she had always historically been at her most irie with Jake's father when this was the case. Maybe it was Jake's resemblance to a younger version of his father, but Jake took after her more. Unbeknownst to Jake though, Jake's father had been feeling his age more and more lately. He was 8 years older than Amanda and had met her when she was 18 at the college they were attending. While Jake's father, Aaron, could still manage to get Amanda to a strong finish, the marathon nature of their love making had progressively become harder for him.
This caused their recent dry spells to reach record new lengths in their marriage. It used to be that in the early days of their relationship Aaron and her were nearly chained to the bed. She struggled with the recent spat of no sex, not that she was willing to cheat, but this is not the normal infidelity that married women tend to come up against. And as such, she had given in to her own desires, not once but twice.
When Amanda had enough clarity to stop, Jake scarcely provided a chance, responding to each protest with a further advancement. His hands traveled from her butt, to her chest and finally right into her leggings where he began fingering her. And this fingering was skillful. Maybe their shared genetics gave him some sort of preternatural awareness of where she wanted to be touched, Amanda thought, but more than likely he just had that one move and got lucky.
Still, Jake quite literally forced her hand and that hand slapped Jake hard across the face, knocking him out of his lust-drunk trance. Then the reality set in and Jake felt a pit of absolute shame coalesce in the bottom of his stomach. He sat alone downstairs for about an hour after his mother had stormed off to her bedroom. Jake laid in his bed contemplating this whole staring at his ceiling fan.
Jake pulled his phone towards his face to check the time yet again and it was 1:45AM, meaning Jake had been trying and failing to fall asleep for nearly two hours now. The shame he felt was immense. He never wanted to be the kind of man who forced a woman to have to yell at him to stop. He thought himself more and better than that. He tried hard not to fault his mom, though she had responded earlier by kissing him back. Jake would lie awake for 2 more hours before passing out of pure exhaustion.
At the same time, Amanda lay awake in her own bed, contemplating her own failures as a mother. However she could not shake the feelings of pleasure. She had almost gone back on everything she told Jake they needed to uphold after the night she had given him head. She hadn't even sorted out for herself if she had truly cheated on her husband. Could it be considered cheating? She was sure it was, but those thoughts would often be encroached by her reasoning. Maybe it's just a mother helping her clearly frustrated son, she told herself. Amanda knew better however. For there was a very specific reason that she wanted so hard to not let things advance with Jake. And that reason was what made it so easy for her to engage in such perversions with her son. Every family has secrets, something she had told herself yesterday when trying to justify them having to hide the fact they had an encounter as they carried on for the rest of their lives.
Amanda got up from her bed and went to her closet. She produced, from the bottom underneath a pile of luggage and other random boxes a woman keeps things in, a wooden box with an ornate keyhole. She sat the box on her bed and went to where the key was kept, inside her jewelry box taped to the underside of one of its miniature drawers that held unmatched pairs of earrings that she had lost. She unlocked the box on the bed which was about no bigger than a shoebox. In it was a handful of old envelopes from two-day photo development shops you used to be able to find in department stores. There also were some polaroids in an unmarked envelope as well.
Amanda's hands shook as she opened the envelope and pulled out the polaroids which were facing the wrong way. She closed her eyes and braced herself, turning over the photos. The first one, was of a naked group of people, lounging carefree in a sunroom. She leafed through them, one by one. More photos of a family relaxing around naked. Then photos of an older woman from the bunch in lingerie. This was Amanda's mother, Carla.
Carla was a taller Spanish woman of fairer skin, and definitely where Amanda had inherited her lower half. From her perfectly portioned calves, hips, things and ass, from her waist down she was nearly a dead ringer for Amanda. It was no doubt a favorite of her father, who began appearing in the polaroids now too next to Carla. This was David, an American businessman who had met Amanda's mother while on a trip. He cut a tall, strong figure, which when she was younger reminded Amanda of a cowboy. The next photos weren't overly sexual. Just some boudoir shots of her mom, and her dad sort of goofing around naked. Embarrassing photos one may find if they ever were to inherit stuff from their parents. However, the photos started to tell a different story.
The next envelope was taped shut, but the tape and envelope were yellowed and old. The tape itself was now brittle and the old adhesive gave out immediately. The contents of this particular envelope were the ones she had the locked box for. This one contained more polaroids, but now the photos clearly had Amanda's older sister posing nude in several shots. She was wearing her college sweater dating these photos somewhere in the late 90s when her sister had transferred colleges during her sophomore year. This was Melissa, Amanda's free spirited and wild sister.
Amanda was 6 years younger than her and she had no idea whatsoever that this was going on, probably worried more about finishing high school. The photos then started to include Melissa and Amanda's mother in provocative positions. Some in lingerie, some completely nude. Some were of the two of them bathing or showering together. These were taken by her father, no doubt. Some had her father and Melissa embracing on the bed, completely nude.
Eventually the risque photos, which as an outsider may have just seemed like a swinger couple hooking up with a college girl, became more sexually explicit. There was a Polaroid of Melissa with what must have been their fathers dick in her mouth. Amanda's eyes began to tear up and she continued to flip through the photos. The next were of her dad on top of her sister as her sister wrapped her legs around him. Then some of Amanda's mother in between Melissa's legs, followed by photos of them locked in a 69.
This was the secret Amanda's family had held. Amanda had only found out a little before her 18th birthday. The memories came flooding back. She remembered discovering the incestuous affair of her parents and sister. She remembered catching them in the act, even if they didn't realize she had caught them. Amanda lived with this knowledge for months and months before saying something.
Once Amanda had graduated high school and was attending college she eventually revealed that she knew. But this did not destroy the family. In fact, it had made it stronger, for eventually Amanda had joined them in their relationship, making it truly a family affair. For a while it was good and it worked. Amanda remained close to her parents, right up until their tragic death a few years into her marriage to Jake's father. It was around when she and Aaron had started dating seriously that she called off the affair with her parents. It's not something she wanted Aaron to ever learn of, and her parents understood completely. Her sister, however, never really respected her wishes and kept attempting to bring her back into it.
Eventually Amanda had to cut her off completely and did so until well after Jake was born. Only then did Amanda soften and agree to let Melissa back into their lives where Melissa, though still wild, agreed to behave. Even after agreeing, Melissa still wasn't at every family function or event, even with her own children. She was divorced for a few years now and seemed to not care. Amanda suspected that Melissa had a relationship with her adult daughters the same way that their parents before did with the two of them.
