Wet Between the Cheeks

Your mom could feel the ball weighing heavily in the palm of her hand. Her feet stood together, one tightly to the other, in anticipation of her first step. Her fingers probed the ball’s open holes and she could feel the pressure as real as any physical weight on her shoulders or head. Let’s make it all ten, she told herself. Here goes nothing.

The weight of the ball left her fingers and met the smooth floor with eagerness, and persisted forth with the sound of its rolling being its own soundtrack.

There's no taking it back now, your mom thought. What's done is done.

The ball, following a physics all its own now, curved its way down the lane, and to your mom’s surprise, struck the pin second to the center at just the right angle to knock over all the others, leaving nothing standing.

Before the pins even had time to settle, your mom spun around to applause. But as she did, expecting the bowling alley equivalent of a set of fully-loaded bleachers filled with fans, she turned to see that the witnesses to her sudden shift towards good luck were few.

You clapped on next to your dad’s friend, Doug, who sat there smiling. “You knocked ‘em all dead!” he said, cheerfully. “Way to go! You’re a real natural. Right, guys?” He looked down at you and your cousin, the two of you sat there clapping for your mom.

“Where is everyone?” your mom asked.

“Uhh,” your dad’s friend said. “I think they’re in the washroom.”

Just as he said it, your mom looked past him at the glass doors in the front which swung open to the sight of your dad and your auntie coming back into the building as one. When your dad saw your mom looking at him, he looked away, not slowing down as he came towards her, then he looked back up at her and forced a smile.

Your mom’s sister walked straight back to the chairs, not making eye contact with anyone, and your dad followed behind more slowly. His face dynamic with a slight tinge of red. Your auntie came and kneeled down next to your cousin. “Did you have your turn yet, sweety?” she asked, whispering at him as if the rest of you weren’t there.

“No,” he said.

“Okay good,” she said. “Because I want to see you destroy those pins. Deal?”

“Auntie got a strike,” your cousin said.

“Really!” she looked up at your mom and smiled. “Way to go, sis.”

Your mom forced a smile. To which your auntie gave a little giggle, and then she turned back to look at her son.

“You should have seen it,” said your dad’s friend. “It was perfect.” He looked up at your mom, her big blue eyes, but the lack of reciprocating joy within them made him look away.

He watched her as she walked back to the seat, and he watched as your dad kissed her on her cheek. Your mom took the kiss passively and they both sat down. The two of them sat there, side by side and looking straight ahead. Your mom filling her seat. A a moment, she lifted her hand and grabbed his silently. Doug watched as your dad’s hand sat there limply. With time he tightened his grip around her fingers in reciprocation.

Your auntie was the first to cheer as you went up to roll, and you smiled nervously. Everyone joined in with the jubilee soon after. They cheered as you squatted down and winded the ball back under your legs, and then rolled the ball forward along the ground. Their cheers were the soundtrack to your ball immediately sliding into the gutter and down the lane to the dark abyss behind the pins.

Your mom had the final roll of the night, and she ended it all off with a whimper. Her ball tilting slightly to the right and knocking over the corner pin, leaving it to lay lonesome, the soul broken heart among superiors, before the steel arm came down to lift the others in pursuit of disposing of the one.

If you weren’t there to best her at this noble distinction, she would have had the lowest score of the night. Your cousin came after. Then your dad and your auntie, in that order. Doug must have done something good for somebody somewhere, because this night he had a string of uncharacteristic good luck, leading to by far the highest score out of anyone. He had thought about making comment along the lines of a guardian angel caressing his ‘balls,’ guiding his shots towards the ‘hole,’ knowing that the adults would get a chuckle out of it, and knowing he wasn’t running the risk that you or your cousin would understand the joke, but he chickened out. And he kept chickening out on telling it until the time to make that joke had passed. He sat in the lost moment alone.

You looked up at your abysmal score silently. Your mom looked up at it, then down at you.

“That’s okay sweety,” she said, leaning in next to you playfully. “You’ll knock it out the park next time.”

She then turned to your dad.

“So, ready to hit the hay then?” she asked. “Or should we get Liz to babysit?”

“Sorry honey,” your dad said, looking down at his watch. “I have to head back to the office.”

“The office. Why?” your mom asked. Her voice fraying slightly along its edges.

“It’s…” he stopped, as if thinking about it. “It’s just some thing I have to do.”

“Okay,” your mom said. “If it’s work related… I guess you have to. Do your ‘thing.’ Liz!” she said, calling over to her sister. “Guess you’re our ride home.” She shrugged her shoulders, not eager to bother her sister.

“Me?” your auntie said, as she hoisted her purse up onto her bare shoulder. “I was going to ask you if you could take Jonathan to your place for the night.”

“What?” your mom asked, again fraying at the edges of her voice. “Where are you headed?”

Your auntie blushed and looked down at her shoes. “Just on a date.”

“A date?” your mom asked, not meaning to sound skeptical.

“Yes, a date.”

“Ah, I wondered why you smelled so nice. Whose the lucky guy?” your mom asked.

Your auntie blushed again, this time harder. “Just some guy.”

“I assumed as much. What’s his name?”

Your auntie looked down at her shoe, then she kneeled down and wiped dirt off of it with the back of her finger. She then stood up looked off, almost as if she hadn’t heard the question. Then she looked at your mom again. “So who’s going to give you a ride? I don’t want you blowing money on a cab.”

Your mom thought about it for a moment, then she slowly turned her head to look at Doug. He sat on his chair still, as if the game were unfinished, looking back up at her blue eyes.

“Yes!” he said, blushing. “I can take you.” He smiled. He fidgeted in his seat, and his face was shiny and moist under the harsh lights of the alley.

“And Jonathan too?” your aunt asked.

“Of course,” he said. “The more the merrier. I have room.”

Your dad leaned in and kissed your mom on her cheek. “So I’ll see you later tonight then, sweety.”

“So you’ll be home while I’m still up?” she asked.

He looked over her shoulder at the empty lanes. “I’m… I’m not really sure,” he said.

“Okay,” she said, and she looked down at her clasped hands. “If not tonight, I’ll see you in the morning then.”

“Of course,” he said.

“Of course.”

He patted you on your head and then left. The rest of you got up and went shortly after. Your mom barely heard her sister saying goodbye as she split from the rest of you in the parking lot. Or rather, she heard it but it didn’t register.

“Oh,” she said, startled when it did. “Goodbye Liz.”

Your aunt smiled awkwardly at her, and then looked at the rest of you. “See you guys.” She turned around and left for her car, a red convertible that stuck out as a lone beauty in the banality of the parking lot.

As your mom was turned, watching her sister get into her car, Doug watched her from behind. Your mom turned back around as your auntie pulled out of her spot, and she caught Doug’s eyes, which he quickly turned away. “I’m parked over here,” he said, and pointed, doing it in a way that was seamless with his sudden shift in body weight.

He went and you all followed.

It didn’t take long after Doug pulled out of the parking lot for your mom to start asking questions.

“What was up with them?” she asked.

The car was silent. Doug turned onto the highway and merged into traffic without saying a word. You and Jonathan sat in the back silently.

“Did you notice?” she asked, underlining her question.

“Notice what?” he said, and scratched the side of his face.

“They were being weird, weren’t they?”

“Who was?”

Your mom looked at the road ahead, then back up at the side of his face. “The space martians,” she said sarcastically.

He looked back down at her, then, after reluctantly pulling his eyes out of locking with hers, he looked back at the road. His face was blushing and moist.

“That strike you got was amazing,” he said.

She was staring at the side of his head. Not understanding how he couldn’t see what she was seeing. “Thanks,” was all she said. A visible bead of sweat fell down the side of his face, illuminated by the various headlights of oncoming traffic.

The car was silent for a few more minutes. Your mom sighed to herself.

“So you didn’t notice then?”

“Notice what?” he asked.

“Cory and Liz. You didn’t notice how weird they were being?”

He held his steering wheel tightly. “Weird?” he asked.

“Yeah, weird.”

“In what way?”

She looked into the rearview mirror, and saw you sitting there, staring back at her through the reflection. She looked down at her hands. “Never mind,” she said. And she looked back out at the street. The rest of the ride was silent until you reached your home.

As your mom walked down your lawn, you and your cousin on either side of her, Doug watched from his driver’s seat as she went. After your mom guided the two of you in from behind, she turned around to take one last look at her chauffeur, and maybe to nod as a show of gratefulness, but he turned away quickly, put the car into drive, and drove off. Your mom stood there for a moment, holding onto the doorknobs on both sides of the door with each respective hand, then she leaned inside and closed it.

As your dad’s friend continued down the street, now alone, he looked down at the empty passenger seat. He looked back at himself in the rearview mirror and saw his own red face. His mouth was dry. He lifted his hand from the steering wheel, exposing a section of it shiny with moisture, and he turned on the radio. Jessy’s girl by Rick Springfield came on. “I’ll play along with this charade. There doesn’t seem to be a reason to change. You know I feel so dirty when they start talking cute. I wanna tell her that I love her but the point is probably-“

He furrowed his brow before shutting off the radio.

The rest of his ride home was silent

He parked his car in his garage, which was messy with automotive tools, and then he entered his empty house and fell asleep on the couch watching tv. The light, changing in color and intensity, shined on him as he slept, illuminating his furrowing brow and occasional listful moments of serenity, which both, as if in a dance, persisted with eachother well into the night.

Your mom fell asleep before your dad got home. It was dark. When she woke up, it was light and he was in the shower. She waited there, her head on her pillow, staring at the wall, waiting for him to come back to the room, happy to see him. But when he did, she could sense, even without looking at him, that he was in a hurry. So she lay there, facing the wall, staring at it, until your dad buckled up his belt and left the room.

After a few more moments, staring at the wall, she noticed a strange smell. Like something sweet. As she sniffed a little more, it smelled faintly of aftershave or cologne, but it was almost too sweet, like perfume. She followed the smell, rolling in her bed, before realizing it was coming from the other end of the room. She sniffed her way, crawling along her sheets, towards the chest-of-drawers, and as her upper body floated above the floor, her hands on the edges of the mattress, she realized that the smell was getting fainter now. She pulled herself backward, her head now over the bed, her butt resting on her heels, and as she took another whiff in passing, she realized it had gotten stronger again.

She leaned her head down and smelled her shirt, and when she realized, as she should have suspected, that the smell wasn’t coming from her, she got lower towards the sheets and began smelling. And she followed the scent until she found its largest concentration.

She stared down at the source. And it stared back up at her, lifelessly. It was your dad’s pillow.

You sat in the living room, crashing action figures into each other with aggression. The sounds of the clicking plastic worked in harmony with the sound of mugs sliding along the kitchen table, the source of which was out of your sight.

“You know what I mean?”

“Only too well,” your mom said.

“He’s just… I can’t believe him sometimes. It’s like I married somebody from the chess club. The way he is, you wouldn’t think he was the highschool quarterback back in the day.”

“I remember,” your mom replied.

“It’s good you do. Apparently he doesn’t. It’s like when his figure and hair went so did his manhood. Now all he talks about is Civil War stuff. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. It’s insufferable. He wants to buy a Yankee uniform for those reanactments that all those headcases take part in every year.”

“It’s good you do. Apperently he doesn’t. It’s like when his figure and hair went so did his manhood. Now all he talks about is Civil War stuff. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. It’s insufferable. He wants to buy a Yankee uniform for those reenactments that all those headcases take part in every year.”

“Yeah. He asked me if I wanted to go out two weekends ago. So I say ‘yes,’ excited, getting all dolled up for a date, lord knowing it had been a few Christmases since the last one, and you know where the man took me?”

“Where?”

“To the museum!”

“Huh,” your mom said, sounding distracted.

“Oh!” her friend said. “Speaking of dates, how did yours go?”

“Oh,” your mom said and smiled. “How did you know?”

You sat in the living room as they talked, looking at the scuffs and chipped paint on your plastic knight.

“I go by there all the time. Not to the diner, but that theater that’s across the street.”

There was a silence for a moment. Almost an awkward amount of silence.

“The theater?” your mom asked, breaking the silence.

“Yeah. The one in the strip mall.”

There was more silence.

“I saw you guys.”

“Saw us?” your mom said. “At the bowli-“

“Yeah, at the diner you guys were at across the street from the theater. I could see your husband and you sitting at the table.”

There was more silence. You held the knight on the edge of the coffee table. He hung perilously over it. And then you grabbed the black knight and you thrust him against the silver knight’s chest, pushing him off the table, leading to him to fall to the carpet below.

Your mom’s friend began talking again: “I saw the back of your head, and I was like ‘is that who I think it is?’ And then your husband came and sat down. The two of you… ughh… you guys make the cutest couple.”

There was more silence. The black knight stood on the edge of the coffee table, his arms up in celebration.

“Oh by the way,” her friend began. “Where’s the new car? In the garage?”

“… the new car?” your mom asked, sounding faintly disoriented, and even more so, reluctant.

“Yeah, the one you left in,” her friend asked, in a tone that was in complete odds with her own. “The red convertible. It was gorgeous!”

There was more silence.

“’Lucky you,’ I thought. A new car. And on top of it all, a husband that still takes you on dates.”

You made the black knight leap off the table and body slam his silver foe, who lay there looking up at the ceiling with his dead eyes. You made a “pkschhhuuu” sound with your mouth.

“I guess that’s what happens when you’re beautiful. Your husband is still absolutely obsessed with you, and not Ulysses S. Grant or some other skeleton. I could see it in his eyes, even from across the street. Just the glow he got when he looked at you and sniffed your wrist. You both leave in your two cars, as I sit eating what’s left of my popcorn in our minivan, then I go home to Carl sleeping on the couch, while shows about aliens and pyramids play in the background. You ruined my night, you know.”

There was even more silence, which was then interrupted by your mom going “huh…” and that was all.

“Anyways, have you been watching Big Brother?” she asked with intensity. “The backstabbing in that show, it’s unbelievable.”

Your mom managed to find a way to get her to shoo fifteen minutes later. After she did, she sat at the kitchen table, silently. You yawned as you looked down at your action figures as they all lay on the floor, their arms outstretched, staring up at the roof, their eyes all lifeless.

Your dad came home late that night. He had been doing that a lot lately. When he came into the kitchen he said “hi sweety,” and looked at the clock.

Your mom looked up at him, as she sat at the kitchen table. “You want anything to eat?” she asked.

He didn’t look into her eyes as he spoke. “No,” he said. “I ate at work.”

“Oh,” she said, and she got up and moved towards him. She grabbed him from behind, pulling him close to her with her clasped hands around his stomach. His backside resting at the upper edge of her pelvis. After they both stood there for a bit, your dad pulled at his tie. Your mom grabbed his hand mid motion and slowly guided it behind herself at about waist level, and pressing it, palm open, onto her butt, feeling his full palm embracing it, flashing back internally to the first time he had touched it, over ten years ago when they were both young, and the look of glory and relief after it, realizing he had finally gotten to that moment he had always wanted. The moment he had dreamed about while he watched her get up to use Mr. Markus’s pencil sharpener in Pre-Calculus class. She held his hand against her butt cheek, breathing hard into his back. Remembering the moment his young hand went from limp, to finally taking its first squeeze, feeling his joy with him, both for him, and because of him, flattered she could have that effect on anyone, never mind him with his dimpled smile.

And as she held his hand in that same spot, twelve years later, living in the glow of that memory, she had realized something about this moment. He wasn’t squeezing.

The sound of you making an explosion noise with your mouth floated in from the living room, cutting the moment in two. They both looked out of the kitchen doorway, even though they couldn’t see you from around the corner. She then looked back at the side profile of his face and said “do you want to tuck him in early?” knowing what that implied to him. The code amongst the two of them. That language that parents developed to work their strange games, around and beyond their offspring, keeping their little habits as far away from the proximity of their innocence as the universality of death and taxes, tucking their deeds in pockets of specific space and time within a gothic nook beneath the surface-lustre of suburbia.

“Um,” he said. “I don’t know…” She stood there, holding him. “I’m a little tired,” he said.

Your mom, with her chin resting on his shoulder, stared blankly into the darkness outside the kitchen window, which was framed by the white of the window pane.

As she sat in the darkness, wrapped in the covers of her marital bed, she listened as your dad read you a bedtime story down the hall. It was about Peter Pan and Never-Never Land, where nobody grew old, and magic never died. She knew by the time he had reached the last page that you had already fallen asleep.

Your mom, facing away from her open bedroom door, began to let her palms, facing upward, crawl down her back. She let them go that way until she felt the waist of her underwear, which she let them dip underneath, feeling the size of her butt-cheeks against the back of her hands. It had been a while since she had felt them. Really felt them. The only time she touched them was while washing them in the shower. And as she felt them, their soft fleshy shape, she was shocked to feel with her fingers the same blemishes she saw appearing on the cheeks of her face whenever she looked into the mirror.

She stared at the wall as she pulled her hands out and then let her thumbs dip underneath her waist, dragging her panties down to her calves, and then pulling her hands back up underneath her pillow, working her panties off with her ankles and feet until she was free of them. She kicked them down into the bottom corner of her bedspace. She thought about letting her hands wander back down to feel those blemishes, but then she thought against it.

I guess it comes with being thirty, she said. I’m a few days away. She thought about her sister, six years younger than her. He won’t mind, she told herself. When he feels it, all nice and ready for him under the sheets, he won’t be able to resist. I still get looks. And those are just the looks I get from in front. Who knows how many I get from behind. Honestly. I’d probably get guys trying to talk to me more often if it wasn’t for my ring.

She heard your Spider-man lamp being clicked off. She pushed her ass outward as she listened to him sneaking out of your room, slowly closing the door. She stared at the wall, smiling to herself in the darkness as she heard each of his steps down the hallway. I’m going to knock him dead.

The sheets covered her surprise entirely, so that he could come upon it through touch, and touch alone. She heard him come up behind her and then nothing, as if he was standing at the doorway of the room. Then she heard him step inside, and heard the ruffling of his clothes, as each article, from his socks to his pants to his shirt, came tumbling off to the floor.

She smiled as she felt her section of the covers lift and the boxspring mattress depress underneath her. And then the covers came back down, and the mattress stabilized. And she lay there, staring at the wall, waiting.

And she waited. She waited to feel his flesh touch hers. Waited for the realization of her nudity beneath the cover of fabric and darkness. A brush or a press. Anything to get him to notice. And to awaken that part of him. To feel it expand in his boxers against her waiting flesh. And as she waited in the dark, the grin on her face slowly started to fade. And then she lay there, staring at the wall. She pushed out her butt more, feeling her sheets rub against the sides of her cheeks and hips, but she made no contact with anything resembling a male body.

And she turned around to barely make him out, facing the other wall in the darkness, his hands pressed together between his knees. He hadn’t even touched her. He lay there in the dark. Alone.

Your mom turned back around, and stared at the wall. And she continued to stare at it even as your dad began snoring.

She opened her eyes to that section of wall, now illuminated by daylight. She heard the shower and felt the fabric of her sheets against her nude buttcheeks. This was the first time she had ever woke up bottomless without making love the night before. It was the first time she had ever woke up bottomless without being held in his arms. The first time she was woke up bottomless without him asking for seconds.

He’s busy with work she thought to herself. If he would have felt it, he would have wanted it. He just didn’t feel it. He used to beg you to not wear anything down there at the lake. It wasn’t that long ago. Don’t overthink it. You used to fight him off when he tried to kiss it. He gave up but that’s because you never gave in. ‘Let me eat it,’ he’d say. Eat it. Imagine that. Eating a butt. He still wants it. He never stopped wanting it. You get plenty of looks. And that’s from in front. From behind they probably stare.

As her mind drifted, her hands, without her wanting them to, had drifted down to her cheeks. She grabbed them in her palms. How long they have they felt this way? Like your hands. Dryer. Less taut. And your feet. Not as smooth. And the cheeks on your face. Is it possible that they’re all… not… what they used to be… but you still get looks. Everywhere you go, they keep looking at you. And that’s from the front. And it’s still a big butt. I can feel it in my hands now. It’s big. And it’s even softer now. And when you turned 27, he slapped it and told you ‘it gets better every year.’ It can’t get worse than that three years later. Can it?

“Can I eat it?” he asked her on the morning of her 27th birthday.

“No,” she said, as she twisted around in bed to meet his gaze. “But you can kiss me.”

He looked at her lovingly, as if she were the most beautiful thing in the world, and he leaned in to kiss her.

And as their lips were pressed close, she could feel his mischievous hand gliding down the small of her back. And just as it reached her behind, she slapped it playfully, and he, just as slyly, pulled away.

Her butt rattled the closet door mirror as it slammed into it, your dad grabbing your mom by her throat softly. And then exciting her as his hand found the back of her knee, lifting her left leg up. “You’re not getting away from me that easily.”

“You’ll wake up our son,” she whispered, the longing in her face betraying the sentiment. Only saying it just so she could watch him burst through that obstacle, uncaring, overcome with his need. His need for her. It excited her every pore. Her foot hanging carelessly in the morning sun, reflected flapping in the mirror, as he thrusted into her. And his need to take in her face as he took her body. His love for her forehead, chin, and nose mirrored in his face the love his hands had for her thighs, hips, and calves.

She didn’t cum that time. She rarely did. But she still remembers fondly with joy of watching him, feeling him next to her, as he finished inside of her. His thrusts gaining in intensity and number, before reaching an apex, and then continuing on, slowing down with each go, until he stood there, sweating, euphoric, his naked body pressed against hers. Her calf and foot still hanging off the pedestal of his fingers, which still cradled the backside of her knee.

“Now can I get ready?” she asked rhetorically.

“Sure,” he said, and set her leg down. Her foot coming back down to hardwood.

He kissed her a few more times on the lips, to which her heart fluttered within, though her face showed no sign of it. And then he got up and went for the drawer. And as she looked at him from behind, she smiled to herself knowing that she had him believing it was her that was doing him the favor. Somehow, she was just that good of a liar. A fox, he always called her, but in more ways than one.

Though she couldn’t have been too sly. He had managed to make her jolt with a surprise slap on the right cheek. She pulled herself away in an instant. “27 years,” he said. “It just keeps getting better every year.”

Later that day, when all the guests were over, he kept looking over at her in her dress. Everyone was. But he would look up at her face, and she knew what he wanted. And later that day, he pushed her from behind with his hand on the small of her back, in a way that nobody noticed – nobody but Doug, who was much fatter in those days - and they both went back to the privacy of their bedroom, where your mom stabilized herself against the dresser mirror with both hands outstretched, looking back at her husband thrusting against her from behind, her ass electric against his pelvic nook, enveloped by it, the only thing that could envelope it. She watched him through the reflection as he looked down at it. It shaping and reshaping against his aggression, fascinating him infinitely. As if he still couldn’t believe, after all these years, that it was his to have. That it always would be.

Doug sat at the dining room table, as your parents’ friends and family chattered around him. He was red in the face, and his brows were furrowed. Everyone except him watched as Liz got up to put on a new record. She bent over the recently dusted milk box full of records, and then delicately put on the one she chose. It was Rick Springfield’s Greatest Hits.

As she sat back down across the table from Doug, one of the houseguests came to sit down beside her. One who had been talking to her earlier. One who had watched closely as she changed that record. Liz pressed her toes on the supporting metal underneath the table as she listened to the man’s jokes, and she laughed politely, as Jessie’s Girl played in the background.

As Liz, so similar to her sister, but never her as far as Doug saw it, sat there, the object of another man’s fruitless throws, her body, so much like her sisters, but still not her’s (again, as far as Doug saw it), Doug’s mind, though he tried to keep off it, drifted back to whatever it was that the sounds of Rick Springfield were drowning out. Your mom was in that bedroom with your dad. And they were doing something that required the privacy given to them by the wall behind Liz and her suitor. Doug stared over their heads at it. It stared back, blankly.

“And he’s loving her with that body, I just know it,” said the record player.

And as Doug scraped the legs of his chair along the floor as he got up to leave, your dad fell face first into your mom’s back, moaning with pleasure. And your mom watched him, in the mirror’s glass, with a smile as he did. Her ass cradled against his body tightly. Squeezed with the weight of his desire, his final pumps, sweet and sour things for the two of them. She doesn’t remember if he thanked her or not (“thank you, babe,” as he slowly pushed himself off of her, reluctantly, needing the warmth of her body, but knowing he had to leave it be for the sake of his status as civilized man), but she smiled to herself that night, knowing that she had succesfully kept from him that even though she never showed it (she rarely ever had orgasms), she was the one who had the most to be thankful for. Men could never know. Women needed that power over them. Even if just to protect themselves with.

As your mom heard the shower turn off, she turned to look at herself in the chest-of-drawers mirror. She couldn’t see the blemishes from this distance. From here, she looked like she had close-up on her 27th birthday as Rick Springfield came muffled through these very walls, intermingling with the sound of smacking flesh and hushed whimpers. She forced a smile out of herself, and she thought she looked magnetic. You still got it, she said.

Then her face dulled again, deep in thought. And she turned around in the bed.. Her body was facing away, but she was still looking back at it in the mirror. And after taking a deep and reluctant breath, she pulled away the covers.

When her naked butt, big and soft and white, sat there, openly, she started to smile again. I can’t see any of those blemishes. At least not from this far. She slapped herself on her right cheek and was surprised by the attractiveness of its jiggle. Long time no see, beautiful, she said to it. No wonder you still get looks. Even if you are almost 30.

She heard your dad step out of the shower with a squeek. And she smiled. When she heard the hair dryer come to life, she knew almost to a tee the exact moment when your dad would step into the room.

She heard your dad step out of the shower with a squeak. And she smiled. When she heard the hair dryer come to life, she knew almost to a tee the exact moment when your dad would step into the room. it.

You’re giong to give him what all those guys who give you looks wish they could see.

She poked it out more, leaving the covers laying over top of her side to frame the sight, to draw his attention to it the first moment he looked into the room.

Look at it, she thought. He won’t be able to resist it the very moment he sees it. He’s going to be late for work by the time he’s done with it.

She imagined him shaking as he held her from behind, his pleasure hers, and her heart swelled. And then her eyes went wide in her reflection as the thought occurred to her.

I’m going to let him eat it.

It was too much. So much she thought she’d burst.

He’s been waiting for twelve years. And now I’m going to let him do it.

It was like she could hear music and she wondered at how it would feel. His pre-shaven 5-o’clock shadow rubbing within that spot the way it rubbed against her cheek in a kiss. His breath. And his tongue. And the impossibility to see his face as he did it all. To see his joy. She could only feel it. Feel the boylike pleasure she should have given him years ago as it danced within her most private place on the flat of his tongue and the tip of his noes.

She began to tingle down there, and she looked back at it. And she thought about how close it had always been to him. She had never thought about it until just this moment, looking right at its reflection. Just how small the distance between where his head and it rested. The surreal proximity between him and his most desired possession, and the much-larger distance between him and his chance of having it. For years. The part of her, that she now looked directly at, that she cared so little about, that she had only just last night noticed the blemishes of due to years of disregard and neglect. These troublesome cheeks. A mere fact in the tableau of her life. A never-approaching oasis in the lives of others.

Why hadn’t she done this for him at twenty-five? Or at twenty-f-… her thoughts were interrupted by an intrusive bit of information. Liz is twenty-four. Each syllable of it sent a shudder of unique frequency, a menacing chord-progression, down her spine and thighs.

Your mom could see her sister in the red dress she had been wearing to the bowling alley, with her high heels that brought out her figure. Your mom looked at her own butt sitting there in the mirror, naked, unadorned. Your mom could see her sister getting out of her red convertible, in her red dress, and stepping in through the glass doors of a diner. And then she could see her sitting there, next to her purse. And she could see her hands clasped together on the table, smooth and soft and unwearied, and then the hands of a man, with a wedding ring glowing under the light on his familiar finger, coming into sight to clasp hers. And then those hands lifting hers up towards their owner’s unseen face.

Your mom looked at her ass, sitting there, naked, unadorned, in the bland light of the morning, while the bathroom door opened up, the blowing of the fan within now real through the open door, as if it were billowing out with the steam. And just before her husband could step into the room, she threw her sheets back over her nudity.

When he came in, he caught her eyes looking coolly back at his. He looked down at the ground, his face going red. Your mom turned around and stared into space, with her head on her pillow, listening to his body being made decent behind her. His chest and his hips. His thighs and arms, all being covered, along with all their possibility, by the buttoning and zipping of his strong hands, as she lay there, open-eyed, looking at the light on the wall.

She saw those tiny, soft hands. Sitting there on that table. Then those strong hands gently grab them.

She could hear him buttoning up his shirt.

“I could see it in his eyes, even from across the street. Just the glow he got when he looked at you and kissed your wrist”

She heard him slipping on his suit jacket.

“Just the glow he got when he looked at you.”

She heard him tightening up his belt.

“Just the glow he got when he looked at her.”

He zipped up his fly.

“Sweety,” he said.

Your mom twisted around, her eyes wide with something within them. He had been looking down at his tie, so he hadn’t noticed.

“I’m going to check again to see if Kyle can cover for me. But if he can’t, I’m going to have to go to Montreal for the weekend with Steven to meet the guys from the firm I was telling you about.”

Your mom looked at him, silent, motionless.

“If I have to go, I won’t be back until Monday morning. Early Monday morning.”

She thought she could hear the pain in his voice as he said it. But then he continued.

“Is that going to be a problem?”

She looked him into his eyes. He had managed to look back into hers without looking away for the first time in a long time. “A problem?” she asked.

The image of balloons and a little box wrapped in paper next to a cake, and a house full of friends and family flashed in her mind.

“Yeah,” he said. “There’s nothing you need help with this weekend, do you? You can hold down the fort?”

And that was when she had realized it. He had forgotten.

“No,” was all she said. “I’ll be alright.” And she turned around and lay her head back on her pillow.

And as he said “good, good. I was afraid I had forgotten about something we had to do this weekend,” her sight began to get blurry.

“Okay. And if I’m going this weekend, Jack will buy the tickets at lunch. I’ll be flying out right after work. That’s if I’m going. So if I do, I’ll see you on Monday. Okay, babe. Call me if anything comes up.”

A single tear rolled down her cheek. She wiped it away subtly. “Okay,” was all she said. “Have a good trip.”

He put his fists and right knee on the bed, causing her to sink deeper, he kissed her on her cheek, and then he got up of the mattress, causing it to uncompress slowly. By the time time it had uncompressed completely, he had left the room.

She was now alone. For the first time in her life. She knew that now.

And she was going to be alone on the day she left her twenties, in an empty house, with just you and her to celebrate.

The front door slammed.

Her solitary tear found its friends and they all fell to the pillow below.

She would have spent the whole day there had it not been for you. She heard you getting up out of bed, so she wiped the tears from her face, turned her pillow over to its dry side, prepared your breakfast, readied your backpack, and walked you to the car.

As the two of you drove, you listened to the radio. Time by Pink Floyd came on and your mom quickly switched to another channel. A country song played in its place. She drove on, looking out at the road, feeling nothing, thinking nothing. Just existing within a limbo. You sitting silently next to her.

And then, as often happens, she began hearing, as if it were an instrumental song up till then, the lyrics to the song that was playing: “She can't put her finger on single lipstick stain. Perfume doesn't linger in his shirt. There's no matchbook in his pocket with a number and a name. So why does she still hurt?”

Your mom looked out of the driver side window and took in a deep breath. Feeling her throat get thick.

“Cause a woman knows when there's another woman. She can feel her all over her man. A woman kno-“

Your mom shut the radio off.

She managed to grab herself, only by the strength of her concern over how you’d feel seeing her crying, and she managed to talk without any cracking in her voice, as if to prove to herself that she could. “Hey buddy,” she said, inquisitively.

You looked up at her.

“I was thinking. Do you maybe want to go to Jonathan’s tomorrow?” She had asked you it without considering who it was she would have to sit across from as you played with your cousin in their living room. But it was too late to take it back now.

“Sure,” you said.

“You’d like that?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay,” she said. “Jonathan’s it is.” And then as she pulled up to your school entrance, she said coldly “Jonathan and Aunt Liz’s.”

You opened the passenger door.

“Have a good day at school, buddy,” she said as you hoped out of the car.

“Have a good day too, mom!” you said, and slammed the door.

“I will,” she said as she sat in the empty car. “I’ll try.”

Your mom sat at the kitchen table, her stomach churning as she held the phone to her ear, listening to the sound of ringing.

When Liz answered, she immediately regretted her promise to you, or at least regretted following through with it. Regretted not forging an excuse.

“Hey sis, what’s up?”

“Hey Liz,” your mom said. “I just have a quick question for you. Are you doing anything tomorrow?”

“I’m busy tomorrow,” she said quickly.

Your mom sat there, holding the phone. “Busy with what?” she asked.

“Oh, a nosy one,” she said, slyly.

Your mom thought about asking her “what’s his name,” as a joke. But she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She knew it would be the crack in the dam that would lead to the deluge.

“Are you free Sunday?” she asked instead.

“Um…” said Liz. “I’m going to be occupied then too. Why, what’s up?”

Unlike your dad, it was normal for your mom’s sister to forget everything. Your mom’s birthday was included within that ‘everything.’ So your mom didn’t question it. She didn’t even bother bringing it up.

“I was wondering if you wanted to have a little playdate with the kids.”

“Oh,” your mom’s sister said.

“Is that a problem?” your mom asked.

“It’s just that I’m going to be out for the weeken-“ Liz stopped her sentence dead in its tracks, as if catching herself. Whether from realizing she said something she shouldn’t have said, or that she had said it to someone who shouldn’t have heard it. “I… umm…”

Your mom sat there, staring at the kitchen table, the phone pressed to her burning ear.

“Listen,” Liz continued on the line, as if talking quickly to keep your mom from thinking too hard. “I’m dropping Jonathan off at mom’s before I go. Your little guy can stay at his grandma’s with Jonathan and you can have your weekend off. Right?”

Your mom was silent, staring at the empty table, the one she had been wiping clean for ten years.

“Right?” Liz said a second time. This time, not rhetorically.

“Yeah,” your mom said, mercifully. “I think I’m going to do that.”

She pulled her phone from her ear and hit end call, and she dropped it to the kitchen table.

She put both her hands to her face. And any and all of her sadness, as profound as it was, had no room to shine in this moment, as it was now all smothered by the red edges of rage. Her sister’s stupid voice as she caught herself. Her husband’s excuse that would have likely worked if his partner in crime had only been half as savvy. She couldn’t decide on who she hated more now. Her clever husband who had, in her 30th year, misplaced his knowledge of the day she was born among so many other footnotes in his life. Or her stupid sister who had never remembered it to begin with, instead decorating her calender with the content of her TV guide.

And for the first time, coming to her all at once, as if some sentient force within her was working to ratchet up her fury, the thoughts and implications of what it looked like, in all its gruesome detail, appeared before her mind’s eye for the first time, without filter or symbolism. She could see her sister’s shapely naked form, her smooth skin and feminine softness, as she stood, vulgarly, on all fours on a bed in a hotel room tucked away somewhere, or in the cabin of some treacherous coworker, as your dad, from behind, thrusted into it with all the energy and flare that your mom knew so well. Pulling Liz’s hair into a ponytail with his fist, as she whispered in her smoky voice, confidently, “yes. Yes. Harder. Harder!”

Her sister, just on another one of her adventures, another saga of her messy life, the scraps of which lay carelessly throughout responsibilities and hopes of all her friends and family. Her popularity and coyness a shield against all concern. Her nudity and her youth not just the impetus for, but the escape through which, she would use, with or without having knowledge of ever using it for either. How could she? She had never been anyone else except for Liz. She was trapped within the tragedy of her own existence, floating through air like cotton in sun. Skinnydipping in the river of being, her only conscious thought the feeling of the cool water against her skin. What else was there?

Her body, under bright light and with the full and ungaurded sound of slapping, with your dad enjoying his predicament. His trade. The mother of his son, who shared half of his genetics, for the mother of his nephew, who shared none. The bliss of his first-love for the thrill of his sister-in-law. His wife’s ass for her sister’s. The woman whose soul his had fallen into and merged with for the woman whose soul came up against his like oil against water. Just pure animal lust, for a woman that shared all with your mom except for her youth. He had left her alone on her birthday weekend, not to get away from her for who she was. He had left her alone on her birthday weekend to get away from her for when she was. He was traveling back in time. And she couldn’t go with him there.

And at this point, her thoughts dulled, and the scarlet hue of her fury had gone from red to purple and from purple to blue, and she cried into the nook of her arm at the kitchen table until it was time to pick you back up from school.

She had picked you up, packed your things, and dropped you off at grandma’s, where a plate full of cookies and Jonathan were waiting to greet you in the living room. And then she drove back home.

As she climbed into bed, the thought that tomorrow she’d no longer be a twenty-something any longer made her cold. She stared at that old familiar wall. In the darkness, you couldn’t see its flaws. In the dark, all was equalized. Except by touch.

She thought about the feeling against her palms and fingers in the shower. The feeling of an overly-ripe peach. She was alone in the house, but she thought about him standing in there with her. The sensation of his hand coming down to feel it. When was the last time, she thought, almost without emotion, as if she were scanning the days and weeks to find that exact moment. The sensation of his rough hand. His inability to keep his hands off her. Her hips, buttocks, and back. His erection resting against the upper-curve of her ass, sometimes falling against the line between each cheek. His always-thwarted attempts at kissing it the way he did her face.

When was the last time he got on his knees, she thought. When was the last time he had tried for it?

She lay there, curled up, staring blankly at the wall, her face unjudging now, open even through its sadness.

When did he start to notice it… was changing?

She hadn’t realized the extent to which she was clutching onto her pillow.

He would have noticed long before I would have.

She thought about him getting down on his knees, as she tried to force him back up, protesting with a smile as she did, and then his smile fading at seeing it, noticing for the first time that it wouldn’t always be what it once was. It had already started to change. Was it a crack? A mark? A wrinkle? Or was it something no one could put their finger on, they just knew what it was when they saw it. And they knew the future it implied.

And when she forced him back up, smile still on her face, his was gone. And she had only been walking through life on the fumes of a confidence that was no longer in step with her reality. Had she been withholding what she, at some unknown point or other, had no choice but to give?

At 24, she had walked into the pool locker room with her friend, who spanked her butt playfully when they rounded the corner. Her friend, while talking about how her husband, the former highschool quarterback, was getting fat and bald, removed her bathing suit. Your mom removed her onesy. She spanked your mom’s butt, now naked, again, and said “I guess it’s not so bad. The fatter he gets, the less likely I have to worry about him having any chance with you.”

Your mom gave herself an embarrassed smile, but her pride still shone through, no matter how hard she tried to keep hold of it. Her friend stood close to her, her hand still on her butt. Your mom let her feel for a bit longer, before breaking away to start lathering herself up underneath the metallic showerhead. Your mom looked back to see her friend staring at her, and she was grateful that the showers were half-full of other women, all at various ages, shapes, and sizes. Not that anyone else there would draw your mom’s friend’s attention away from her, but that their presence would keep her from going too far; getting too handsy, or trying to make the mistake of breaching the sacred line that separated friendship from something more.

But even still, a part of your mom, as she stood there, lathered in soap under that warm stream, thought about bending over to lather up her calves, just to give her friend the sight she wanted but couldn’t ask for. But she finally thought against it.

And the two of them stood there, bathing. And the silence between them was unbroken until your mom’s friend said “Wow! Will you look at her!”

Your mom turned to look, and when she did, she froze.

“She’s like your spitting image. But bigger.”

Standing across the room, between two larger ladies that stood under streams of their own, was a young 18-year old woman, facing the wall, just starting to lather up her body under the showerhead. She had long blonde hair, that was wrapped up into a bun. And as she washed, she rubbed the soap along the small of her back, working her way down, until she was lathering her large, shapely, backside.

Your mom looked over at her friend, who was glaring at the young mystery woman. Your mom looked back at the girl, and as the girl turned around, your mom turned back to face the wall.

“Do you have a sister?” her friend asked, still looking in the direction of the girl. “She looks just like you.”

Your mom didn’t answer. She just said “don’t stare,” to which her friend pulled her eyes away from the young woman, as painful as it was for her to do. Your mom stared ahead at the tiles on the wall, as she rinsed her chest in the warm stream, her back getting cold.

After a while, your mom turned around to see that her sister was no longer there.

When they went to the lockers to go get changed, your mom held her underwear in her hands. She looked over at her friend, who looked at her, then looked down. And, without much forethought, your mom turned away, and bent over while lifting her legs up to step within her panties. She pulled them up over her butt, and only then, she stood upright. She turned around to see her friend looking into her purse, not paying attention to her.

Your mom lay there, staring at the wall in her marital bedroom. And rather than see its blank canvass, she instead saw that golden butt looking back at her. Like hers in every way, except bigger, more shapely, dimpled, and younger.

And she thought about that shapely thing, bent over the red sheets of a hotel bed, your sister looking back at it, giggling devilishly, as a man with a wedding ring on his finger, which glimmered under the bright lights of the room, pressed his face joyfully between its cheeks, only pulling his face back moments at a time to enjoy seeing his fulfilled dream up close.

Your mom was too exhausted for tears. Instead she fell asleep.

She woke up under a midday sun, having overslept, only waking up now due to the sounds of her phone ringing on the kitchen table. Her panty-clad butt jiggled in the hallway mirror as she forced herself towards the kitchen on bare feet.

On the face of her phone, which was traveling along the table through the strength of its own vibrations, was a picture of a young woman who looked just like her, smiling in a world without weight or gravity. Under that face was a name: “Elizabeth”

Your mom felt a dropping motion in her soul. It was as if she had forgotten everything in the peaceful limbo of sleep, and failed to pick it all back up again in her rush to answer that intrusive ringing, and it was only now, in this second, that she had been reminded of it all, and all that came with it.

Your mom hit answer and put the phone to her ear. “Hello! Liz,” she said groggily.

“Did I wake you?” Liz asked, embarrassed.

“No,” your mom said.

“Because it’s noon.”

“You didn’t wake me.”

“Okay good,” she said. “Because I have a huge favor to ask you.”

Your mom stood there, not saying a word.

“Hello? You there?”

“Yes,” your mom said. The frustration in her voice so subtle it failed to survive the ether between your mom’s microphone and her sister’s phone speaker. “I’m listening.”

“Okay, I don’t want to bother you with this. If I was home I would do it myself, but I’m not and Doug doesn’t have the key to my house and…”

“Yes,” your mom interrupted. “What is it?”

“Can you drive my car over to him. It’s having issue…”

“Yeah,” your mom said, interrupting again. “No problem.”

“You’re the best! I know it’s out of the way, and…”

“It’s not a problem.”

“It’s just that I had totally forgotten. He told me he’d fix it this weekend, but it skipped my mi…”

“I get it. I get it. I’ll drive it over as soon as I can.”

“Oh, that’s great, sis. I knew I could trust you.” Suddenly, at odds with the rhythm of her speech, she stopped for a second. And in that brief fraction of a moment, your mom could hear a male voice. It was faint, and it was indistinct. But it was there. And unlike usual with her sister and the men she went off to meet, your mom knew who this mystery man was. The voice cutout as soon as it started. All ambient noise did, as if Liz had quickly covered up her microphone with her fingers. After a moment, she came back, accompanied by the unassuming ambient noise behind her. “Thanks so much again, sis. I couldn’t have done it without you. But what will you do to get ho- I guess Doug will have to drive you back in his car. Yeah, that makes sense. Let’s go with tha-“

“That’s fine,” your mom said, and hung up the phone.

She placed it down on the table, shut her eyes, and took in a deep breath. She then opened them again, exhaled, and stood up. She made herself instant coffee and toast, which she ate and drank quickly, and then she grabbed a towel from the cabinet and wrapped it around her waist. When she got into the bathroom, she threw the towel onto the shower-curtain holder and looked at herself in the mirror as she removed her panties. The mirror only went down to her shoulders. That was part of the problem, she thought, as she looked at her near-thirty face. It’s why I never noticed.

The warm water fell over her form. And for the first time she deliberately, and with focus, felt her backside in the shower with her hands.

After feeling its weight, its size, its firmness, and its texture, she sighed.

Nothing good lasts forever, she thought, and then she lived within the aftermath of that thought scrubbing between her cheeks with her hand. The wet sound of water against her flesh, the soapy reverberations as she went through the motions, a process she couldn’t let go of, no matter how much things changed. The young, the old, the male, the female, the attractive, the ugly, all had to clean themselves back there. Whether they did it to keep themselves beautiful, or just to keep clean. The load was the same.

Her upkeep with ritual continued even after she stepped out of the shower, with her applying cream to her thighs and calves in her room, and applying makeup to her face in the mirror. She did both without turning on the lights. After she was finished, she looked at her mirror-image.

The show must go on, she said to herself. The show must go on.

When she got to Liz’s house, she peeked into the garage to see her sister’s red convertible sitting there, alone in what was, minus her, a completely empty house. Your mom was about to step into the garage with her sister’s keys in her hand, but she stopped before her first step, seeing her own warped reflection within the shine of the car. She shut the door and went back inside the house.

She opened the door to Liz’s bedroom, finding nothing there except for a mess. Your mom pulled open her dresser drawers, one by one, digging deep inside to try to find something approaching a journal or diary. Any sense that probing into her sister’s thoughts and secrets was a betrayal, even if it occurred, wouldn’t have stopped your mom. After all, she had been wounded first. Everything she did from here on out was a response. An act of preparation or self-defense.

As she dug through the lowest drawer, and therefore the one most likely to hold what she was looking for, she had to brush aside various pieces of lingerie. Frilly material brushed through her fingers as she looked for her prize, and her greatest fear; pieces designed to emphasize and improve upon, through the process of drawing attention to, the body of any woman who wore it.

And as she did, without stopping in her rhythm, she thought about the lingerie your dad had bought her four or five years ago, which had been sitting in a box in the closet since then. And she realized she would never know what she looked like in it in her prime. And as her hands probed, two tear drops fell on her wrist.

After looking under the bed and in the closet, your mom decided that even if a diary existed, she wouldn’t torture herself by traveling through the hidden world within its pages. It was bad enough that she knew the jist of why her life was falling to pieces before her, she didn’t need to examine each nut and bolt, everything her sister did that she couldn’t, and everything your dad did which she would never let him do.

Even still, a grotesque image, one beyond any she would have hung her conscious thoughts upon, flashed in her mind, both sight and sound, only for it to be purged from thought as quickly as it intruded.

Your dad had an impressive and receptive body full of places to please. And your auntie wasn’t shy.

Your mom rocketed back into the garage, speedwalking to the driver’s-side door. She grabbed onto the red frame of the convertible and stopped. And then she took a deep breath and got in. She sat in the driver’s seat, grabbing the steering wheel. She sat there for a moment, in the driver seat of her sister’s car, both hands gripping the curvature of that wheel.

And then she grabbed the garage door opener hanging from the stem that held the mirror in place, and she opened her path to Doug’s house, and she put the car in reverse. As she pulled out onto the street, she hit the button again, and she drove off. The door closed shut, leaving the house empty with nobody there to make a sound.

Liz’s diary sat there, splayed open, face down on the living room coffee table, where Liz had left it carelessly. Your mom had passed by it on the way to Liz’s bedroom. It sat there, unobscured, as your mom burrowed furiously in the bedroom through her sister’s life, and it was unmoved and unnoticed as she passed it again on her way to the garage. It lay on the table, in plain sight, as the convertible passed by outside the window, its truths open to the face of the coffee table, Liz and your Dad’s memories, and no one else.

Doug stood in his garage, pacing back and forth, wringing his hands, as circles of sweat, now small, though he feared their increase in volume, sat underneath his tingling arms. He had been told that your mom was coming with Liz’s car and rather than wait inside for his doorbell to ring, he chose to instead wait there for when she’d come.

He felt a churning within, but he also felt a tingling warmth in his limbs and stomach. He thought about your mom getting out of that car. He thought about the way she’d lean on the paneling as she asked what was wrong with it, and how he’d answer her, using everything he knew, showing just how much he knew. And he knew that she would be sitting next to him in the passenger-seat of his car, alone with him. For the very first time. Alone to talk. And to laugh. And to… and to take her back to her home, where her family lived and her future was known. Where she slept in a bed with his best friend, who knew the ins and outs, every jiggle, twitch and bend of her body, and exactly what it sounded like to hear her whisper his name. And as Doug entertained these thoughts, he started to feel cold again.

He looked down at his watch. Then he looked out of the garage window. Then down at his watch again. He looked over at his barbells, and he thought about doing some more reps, just to tire out his fidgety nerves. But he knew that would only make him more sweaty, something which he desperately wished to avoid.

As he paced around more, his routine was cut short midstride, as he stopped to hear a car pull up onto his driveway.

He didn’t even stop to look out the window, instead going over to his door and hitting the switch. The garage door creaked open slowly, and slowly in turn, Liz’s car, piece by piece, came into view. And at the end of that rainbow, your mom’s face, framed in its perpetually examined-over features, by her golden hair.

She was the only person he would forget to smile to upon meeting. But when she began to smile, awkwardly and with something off within her features, he reminded himself to reciprocate.

“Come on in,” he murmured beneath his breath, as he ushered her in with an arm gesture.

He guided her to the blank spot in front of the door. She parked there mechanically, and when she put the car into park, turned off the engine, and looked down at her hands on her lap, Doug realized that she had her mind on something. He felt the pang of guilt and responsibility within him, and he feared what was to come next.

Why me, he thought. He looked down at his watch, and then back up at her.

She turned to look at him, almost as an afterthought, as if she realized he had been in her own world for too long. She smiled awkwardly. To which he smiled back, just as awkwardly. And they both looked at eachother for a moment, each set of eyes looking into the other, and then Doug looked away.

“So,” he said, as he looked over at his workbench. “What did your sister do this time?”

Your mom thought about it. “I don’t know,” she said. “No one told me.”

“Well,” said Doug. “Knowing her…” he stopped himself, unsure of what to say.

“I guess you’ll just have to text her and ask. She didn’t tell me.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “I already know.”

“That was fast.”

He looked over at your mom to see her smiling. And he felt the warmth come back to him. “I’m just that good I guess.”

She giggled.

“No,” he said. “Your husband told me.”

Your mom was shifting right, towards the passenger side door to get out, as she heard him say it. She stopped for a second, looking down. And Doug looked at her, then back down at the ground and up at the roof. He began stretching his arms as your mom continued again, getting out of the car. And then he cleared his throat.

“Yeah, it’s nothing too serious,” he said, his voice hoarse. “It’ll take me a night, I think. At most.” He looked down at his watch, then back up at the car. “Maybe I should take a look at it now. Just to check it out.”

Your mom stepped aside, and he grabbed the door from her, his hand inches from hers, and he stepped into the car, moving over the shifter, and into the driver’s seat. As he looked at the analogue speedometer, he was startled to hear and feel your mom getting into the passenger seat next to him.

He kept his eyes on the speedometer. Then he sat back, and looked over at your mom, who was also looking at the speedometer, curiously. Then she looked back at him. And he looked down at the shifter. He grabbed it, feeling it in his hands, and he pushed on it lightly in either direction and then let go.

“So?” she said.

He looked back up at her. “Um,” he started. “So what?”

“What’s wrong with it? Can you fix it for Monday?”

“Oh,” he said. “Oh yeah, that won’t be too much of a problem. It’s a routine issue. You know how your sister drives.” He looked over at your mom’s face, which was alive with humor, and he smiled in turn. “She tends to do things without thinking about the consequences.”

Something changed in your mom’s expression not long after, and she looked back down at her hands.

Doug had realized he had said something he shouldn’t have. He sat there, not knowing what to say. Not wanting the burden of it. Wanting her there next to him, but not wanting the weight that came with it. If only it were any other weekend.

They both sat in the silence for a moment. Then Doug looked at his watch again.

Your mom suddenly spoke. “I know you know,” she said, still looking down.

He sat there, bottom lip hanging open. He was as still as stone.

“You’ve probably known for a while.”

“I…” he started, not able to finish.

“How long did you know?”

He didn’t know what to say. What to do. Whether to deny or to confirm or to stay silent.

She looked up into his eyes. “How long?”

He took a deep breath. “For about a month,” he said.

“But it has been going on for longing than that, hasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he said. “It was in the works for months.” He looked down at the steering wheel he held in his left hand. He wished he could drive himself out of this situation. But wherever he drove, she’d be driving with him.

“’In the works,’” she repeated, looking back down at her hands. “It’s been a work, alright. Don’t I feel stupid.”

He looked back over at her. “You’re not stupid,” he said.

“Oh,” she said with dry sarcasm.

“I mean it,” he insisted. “It’s not your fault you were tricked. It’s not exactly the kind of thing that people are conspicuous about.” He looked ahead at the door to his house. “I mean, you found out eventually, right?”

“Through no help of my own.”

“Oh? Who then?” he asked.

“A friend.”

“A friend?” he said.

“She saw them together at a diner on the other end of town.”

“I see.” He looked down a the steering wheel.

“And Liz.”

“Liz told you?” he asked, incredulously.

“She wasn’t trying to,” your mom said. “She was just… being Liz.”

Doug laughed to himself.

Your mom looked over at him suddenly. “You’re laughing!?”

He looked over to see her eyes, wide, glaring at him, almost causing him to shrink in his seat.

“My husband and my sister are sleeping with each other, and you’re laughing about it?”

He sat there, staring at her. Not moving. Not making a sound. His face crimson. His mouth open in shock.

She looked down at her hands. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s not your fault.” More silence passed, an indeterminate amount. “What were you supposed to say? You weren’t going to just betray your friend by telling me.”

He just sat there, as if he couldn’t believe that this was the situation he had been thrust into. His back was almost leaning against the driver side door, and he was looking at the side of her face. As more time passed, his eyes began to wander from the side of that face, beautiful in its melancholy, down to her shoulder, bare to him now as her mouth. And then he wandered down further, down her chest and her side, down to her hips, her thighs, her calves, all the way down to her boots. And he stared at those boots, one over the other.

And then she spoke again. “I’m getting old.”

He sat there silently for a moment. Then his expression tightened, as if he just registered what she had said. “Old?” he responded. “You’re thirty.”

“Not yet,” she said. She realized then that he had remembered her birthday.

“And you’re old?”

“Well, I’m not young anymore.”

He glared at the side of her face, her beauty, only expanding in her sadness. “What do you mean?”

She looked over and into his eyes. “If I wasn’t getting old, why am I being replace-“ her voice cracked as she said it, and she put the back of her hand up to her mouth.

He was now seeing a side to her he never had, and though he knew it was selfish, it thrilled him. Having her sitting next to him, her lips quivering, and her soul bare in the privacy of his own garage. Entrusting him with thoughts that he could tell, through some subtle twitch in her being, she had not shared with anyone else.

He sat there for a moment, unsure of whether he should proceed. He looked her into her eyes, every part of her there next to him, alone and pressing him for answers. The full weight of her, every pound, not just a way yonder abstraction. But a real object applying gravitation pressure on the leather seat next to his, a source of wondrous sights, sounds, smells, feelings and tastes sitting within the chrome frame that had delivered her to him. And those eyes. Those beautiful eyes, now unfolding new beauty in their sadness. He couldn’t stop himself. They begged him for an answer. And an answer she was about to get.

“I don’t know,” he said, somberly and seriously. “It doesn’t make sense to me.”

She was looking at him, breathing, with the back of her fist pressed into her mouth.

“I don’t know why anyone would think they needed to do better than you. I don’t get how someone could ask for much more.”

She stopped breathing.

Her eyes were as wet as they were wide, and she looked into his, silently, until she sucked back the sadness, her mouth still strangely covered by the uplifted back of her hand. Her eyes now locked on him, waiting patiently for his next word.

“I was very happy when I heard you were coming,” he said, looking down at the shifter. “And then I remembered that you were with him. My best friend. Like I had forgotten somehow.”

She looked at him, the sweat forming on his forehead. That face that she had known for as long as her husband’s. Her husband’s features glowing. His inert like stone. Her husband’s being expansive, a universe unto itself to her. Doug’s just a brick wall, a point of space and time that contained within it nothing that rubbed against her curiousity or spare thoughts. The bead of sweat now dripped down the side of his head, and she followed it with fascination, as it bypassed that distant look on his face, which she then examined with focus. She saw his lip quiver as he spoke.

“The father of your son. The man who held your body close to yours for over ten years.”

She saw his one arm up on the steering wheel, and she examined its tattoos. She could smell his cologne. She could feel his nearness. For the first time she felt small next to him. Even feminine. And though she dare not even think the word, the one that started with ‘Y,’ she felt it creeping up on her too. She put her hands together between her kneecaps.

She knew the weight of the ball that had begun rolling, and she knew its direction. And still, not being able to stop herself, she spoke.

“Why doesn’t he want me anymore?”

He sat there, unsure of how to go forward. His path blocked by some sort of forcefield. Some force of habit toward a higher virtue that wasn’t really a virtue at all. It sat on his tongue, fastening it to the floor of his mouth. Her body sat there, beside him, vulnerable and within reach. Its beauty static, though the situation was new. The incongruity, though an inch before greatness, tied him by the wrist to the post of his own expectation and inability to believe he was here.

He sat next to his best friend’s wife, both silent. Both stewing in the heavy broth of that question: “Why doesn’t he want me anymore?”

When he reached the bottom of his inner-mind’s well, he felt only the stone of the floor, he had nothing to lose. He spoke.

“Because he’s a fool.”

When he saw your mom taking in breath, her eyes lifting subtly, he continued. “He doesn’t’ deserve you.”

She looked over at him. “It’s because she’s younger than me.”

He looked into her eyes, his penis getting hard in his pants, the tip of it pushing through the veil of his learned helplessness, puncturing it, freeing himself, penis, testicles, and all. “So he’s going to trade the most beautiful woman in the world for her sister?”

She kept her eyes locked with his. The leather seat below her was the throne of her newly-assigned title, and the flurry of thoughts in her mind the tiara. She had to push now, not allowing appearances to be so, wanting to confirm the gold of her crown and throne, wanting to believe everything he said. Wanting to believe everything he claimed to feel. She persisted. “What about her pretty face?”

He kept his eyes locked on hers, wanting her to know his intensity. “She doesn’t have your big eyes.” He sat there in the aftermath of his compliment, as if prepared to rest on its laurels. But then, with a sudden burst of intolerance against his meagre lot, he continued. “She doesn’t have your nose or mouth either, or your chin or your forehead.” He glanced at each feature as he mentioned them, drinking them all in as your mom watched his eyes. The desperation in each syllable as if he were awash in a sea of her beauty that poured forth, overwhelming him, rather than sat passively to be admired. And it was only now that she realized her grave crime, of which she knew she was guilty and had been guilty for many years: tearing him apart with her very being. She had been dynamite in his life, a wrecking ball that scattered the structure of his soul and restructured the nature of his dreams and fantasies.

But this knowledge, or rather being on the verge of believing it, rather than allow her to slip and fall to the tides which thrashed perilously below, instead drove her to not only resist, but to prod in paradox, begging some unknown force for her belief and knowledge to meet and become one. “What about her raspy voice?” she asked.

Doug felt both infuriated and thrilled at the challenge. He looked at her sternly, pinning her in place with his eyes, so there was nowhere for her to hide, not from the truth. “Is that better than sounding like an angel? That’s what it’s like when I hear your voice. Do you know that?”

Your mom sat there, caught in jagged place between curiosity, fascination, and shock. She continued her probing: “What about her happy-go-lucky… fun… and her bubbly attitude? And just how fun she is to be around?”

“Yet when I’m around her, I don’t feel butterflies or tingling. Whenver I’m near you, even if I know you’re nearby and I can’t see you, I feel like I’m on fire.” They were just words. He wished he could give her the fire he felt, help her feel it. Help her know what it was like.

Your mom, feeling the heat of a new flame all her own, sat there, staring into his eyes, his staring back into hers, and she realized she was one step away.

“What about her ass?” your mom asked, her voice thin.

“What about it?” he said.

“What about its size, and its shape, and just how soft it is? What about… its dimples?”

“I wouldn’t know,” he said.

Your mom sucked in air.

“I’ve only ever looked at yours.”

They both leaned in.

She had only ever kissed one other man before. But this strange mouth, unlike any she had felt or tasted, had been with her available, and what’s more, wanting, for all these years. His tongue danced along with hers, and she could feel his vibrating thrill, even against her own. She had remembered, only faintly, what it was like to kiss someone who was this excited for it. It had only happened once before. And she knew that the anticipation was for what was to come next.

He had her head below him, which all its features, now in unison with, and reflecting his desire back at him. His tongue probed her mouth, that undiscovered country, and met her welcoming tongue. He opened his eyes to see hers closed in bliss, and he saw the details of her face up close, so foreign now, the context changing everything. This moment he thought would never come, and now it quivered beneath him as his cock hardened against its thigh. This absolute bliss, delivered to his garage door. He couldn’t believe it was happening, how it looked, felt, and tasted. And that it was his senses that were filled with these beautiful impressions, both familiar and new.

And as his hand lay against the side of her chest, he lets it fall southward and down toward the center of her body, down her stomach, and feeling the fabric of her pants between her thighs.

When she stopped kissing him, and began to look down, he pulled back lifting his hand away from hers. And then she looked back up at him, to which he froze. And then he felt her hand grab his.

She placed it back down where it was, and looked back up at him.

There was an ache in her eyes. That bowling over, where man became woman, and woman man, supplanting the usual order of lust and desire, which remained static but for these tiny moments. These pockets within life that fill men’s memories like lost treasure. Those moments when the woman needs the man, and the man, living his whole life for these, then delivers, his body and soul electric to the woman who beckons him against her, and fills from head to toe with his pleasure.

She didn’t say anything. Doug was a name she had known, to speak it would be to downplay the moment. Names carried baggage. They were anchors. But your mom was lost in the storm of something new. The man before her’s features became anew, as if he were a new man. His body a chance for salvation. And she didn’t dare speak, at least not with words that were common between them, knowing those would destroy the purity that found itself between their two bodies and minds. All she knew and wanted to think about was that there was a naked body beneath those clothes, full of flaws and beauties, and the flesh of that body longed for the flesh of hers.

When she finally did break the silence, after moments looking into his longing eyes, all she knew deserved to be whispered was “what do you want me to take off first?’

He glared down at her, his quivering body exciting her. His need for her, allowing her to dissolve within a bliss that all women wanted but rarely found. When she figured he couldn’t speak, she gladly prodded him on. “Any part you’d like. Anything.”

Instead of speaking, he moved his palm away from her crotch, and let it slide over her thigh, which moved softly beneath him, and he did it all while keeping his eyes locked onto hers. His palm rounded her thigh and he found the spot where her bottom and the car’s leather met. And that’s where it stopped, his eyes focused on and into hers. He barely blinked.

Her chest became warm within, and she had to restrain herself from showing her joy, which was too intense to be let known. “Okay,” she said, and she grabbed his hand and moved it away.

And once she had the room to maneuver, being freed from his body’s pressure against hers, she twisted around, and got up on the seat with her knees, and leaned over the headrest. As soon as she was facing away, knowing she couldn’t be seen, she smiled. Then the image of her husband in the shower, his face dropping, as realization set in, flashed in her mind. Her smile disappeared.

He stared at it, big and round in its fabric. He had seen it, watched and admired it, for so long, and now it was here, right before his face, a foot away. And she waved it at him. “I’m all yours,” she repeated, showing him encouragement, mostly as a way to psyche herself up, hoping she wouldn’t regret it.

He hooked his fingers into her waistband greedily. And when he gained the leverage he needed, he pulled downward.

“Oh god!” she heard from behind her, and she couldn’t help but nibble the middle knuckle on her finger in joy. His face was so close to it. He had chosen it first because he wanted it most. She had only realized now just how much he wanted it. Just how much he still wanted it. And now that he had it, just how lucky he felt. She had only received that reaction once before, over a decade ago, in her husband’s father’s pickup truck, your dad having never seen nude female buttcheeks before then, and your mom never showing off hers before that night. But today it was no different. She had changed, but the reaction, when seen with fresh and desiring eyes, hadn’t. In other words, it was as good as new.

She waved her nudity in his face, celebrating it with him, excited for it be witnessed and enjoyed as much as he was excited to witness it. And he pulled her pants down to her knees, as if he wanted her large unbroken cheeks and crack to have no quarter or hiding place, as if it would be snatched away from him in a moment’s notice. But it wouldn’t. It would be there for him. And she needed him to know that. Needed him to know she couldn’t stop him now, she had melted from his touch. She needed him to know that she had become his unguarded playground. She needed him to have his fun. And she would do anything to give it to him. To give him his perfect day. To give him his perfect woman.

And when he manhandled and pushed her by her cheeks to position her, she knew that he had figured it out, the male need to adjust and position all things in his environment to suit his needs, it was that ebb and flow as an objects of man’s desire which was at the root of all feminine pleasure in lovemaking. And she was going to push back into that as much as she could. Encourage him through her malleability and willingness for all things. Make him feel his power, and deprive herself of any she had left.

He examined it, running his open palms against her left cheek, feeling its smooth texture, not believing that it was really there, available to his touch and sight. Almost in disbelief that it wasn’t a dream. That it actually exists, and what’s more, exists as something naked to his sight in this moment.

“He must love to eat it.” he said, eager to probe into the life behind that bedroom wall, his mortal enemy.

She could feel his breath against her cheeks. And she was thankful for the set-up to the next beautiful truth.

“No,” she whispered. “I would never let him.”

Doug groaned to himself. And then he brought his face toward it.

When she felt the sudden wet push of his tongue in between her cheeks, she gasped, and leaned forward. And when she realized that he wasn’t going to stop, no matter what sounds she made, she felt herself getting wet. She pushed back into his intensity and felt the space between her cheeks filling with his face. His nose, the first to do so, pushing against the line where her two cheeks meet, and his tongue, now probing the thankful embrace of her hole. His chin and his cheeks as leverage to keep her ass open so that he could get at any part in between her two cheeks with ease. His tongue occasionally going from the bottom of her vagina, all the way up through her crack, alternating between the wall of each cheek, over her thankful butthole, and up and out toward the small of her back and into the open air, licking the space where her crack ended, teasing himself with it, before returning to the fullness of long crack and heavy cheek that it implied below.

It took a while for her to remember that this Doug that ate at her body, tasting it, and devouring it, living in it, was the same Doug she had know since she was a teenager. The way he chewed at the space between her cheeks, forcing all it had to give from it, while also servicing it, gratefully, like its slave, had your mom floating in the ether between two waves of emotion, regret for not presenting herself for this purpose sooner, and pride for holding out this long. Holding out for Doug and Doug alone. Depriving it from the adulterer who her defilement worked to defile in turn, and saving it for one who had proved his worthiness of it, making him worthy as a result. His tongue fit for the sensation of it. A sensation she swore now her husband would never know. A sensation, or sensations, with a library of nuance, which would exist solely in Doug’s mind, and would be carried about with him wherever he went. She wanted him to know the feel of her cheeks and crevice the way one knows the capital city of various states and countries. It was the only worthy revenge. An avenging action only a woman could make good. And the just desserts that only a man could deserve.

She felt young again. Her husband’s best friend gave that to her after her husband, through his silence and subterfuge, had robbed her of it. Your mom was indecent and being serviced within her sister’s car. And she swayed her ass back and forth hypnotically, feeling Doug’s tongue jostle wetly within, in jubilee of this tarnishing of the soul of the car’s interior. Knowing that the raunch within her cheeks, and the raunch within her sister’s car, would flatten her husband and sister’s shadows respectively along the the rocks of their jealousy and disgust. Imitating their likely actions in that very car, in mocking pantomime, and in genuine sexual bliss, each mutually enforcing the other. Her body a weapon. Doug’s tongue a weapon. The targets, their shadows. And in this, a sexual chemistry neither party knew they would have. A sexual coupling derived from the angst of the aggrieved, rather than from the careless and cruel whims of those aggrieving.

“Doug,” she said, going electric within at the knowledge that she had said his name out loud. “I never let him eat it like this.” She looked back, catching his head of hair swaying in her peripheral. “He begged for years. Enjoy it. Do…” she turned back around and stared ahead at the garage door. “Do what he never could.”

And to that, he became like an animal against and within it, tearing its sanctity to shreds with his lips and tongue, his lungs ejecting sensual air, an ode to her beauty in the indecisiveness ejaculations of his voicebox. Your mom was now soaking with her own love between her thighs, feeling his tongue massaging the longing ache of her butthole, not realizing, after all these years, that it needed this massage, its nerves groaning in pleasure as the probing tongue poked and caressed it. Her stomach tingling unbearably with every lashing and push of his wet instrument, playing her, in sensation rather than tune, to an auditorium filled with her unbelieving senses.

“Doug,” she said.

“Yghh” he said, causing a tickling within the fat of her cheeks.

“I’m getting so wet.” She panted to herself. “Can you eat the other thing?” She had never asked for it before. She had never felt comfortable. But now, with her partner in crime behind her, she said it devoid of any shame or embarrassment. “Eat my pussy.”

But he wasn’t listening. Or if he was, he wasn’t caring. He just devoured what was before him as if it was the only thing to exist, losing all track of time or place, not wanting to leave the fulfillment of his greatest joy. Its beige-pink reality too apparent to make room for words.

She reached back with her palm and felt for his face. When she found it, she pressed against his forehead, forcing him to back up from the warm embrace of her cheeks.

As she turned around to face him, she said “the last time he ate me out down here, I was twenty-one. Get on the floor.” She pushed him out of the car, and guided him down to his knees. She then pulled her pants down from her kneecaps, and removed both her legs from them. Then she sat over him, as he looked face-to-face at the flower between her legs.

Her thighs were soaked, and she wore that wetness like a badge for him. “It’s never been this wet,” she said. And she meant it. “Please,” she begged. “Doug.”

Doug, she thought. My Prince Charming, Doug.

His eyes were wide with aggravation and need. Her thighs were thick and soft, as he had seen them from the few occasions she had been around him in her jean shorts. Days of wild madness which made him curse the moment he thought, prematurely, would never come. And here he was, his head between both thighs, and the candy that sat between them waiting for him to taste. To wake up from this dream would be to live a nightmare. He had made it.

The same tongue that probed the hidden place between her cheeks, now ran soft and wet against the open and familiar flesh of her own legs. Her flower dampened nearby in anticipation for what would come when the rest of her thighs, knees, calves, and ankles were dealt with. Her naked ass, wet with sweat and sweet saliva, sat flush against the seat of her sister’s car, grinding into its leather in a slight circular motion. Your mom a vulgar totem, the living vanquishing of the sanctity of that car, a title she took pride in as she felt those lips approach the end of their journey.

He couldn’t believe the taste of those thighs, and he licked at the exact spot where her wetness ended, and her dryness began, feeling both against each side of his tongue in competition with their texture and implication. He could smell his intended target to his right, and he longed, though knew better than to rush, to put his tongue within that sacred place, violating its exclusive gate.

When he knew he had her on the ropes, he took the plunge.

Your mom groaned with sudden pleasure as he penetrated, and then she vibrated their, her legs spread open, vulgar and plain in the light, as her husband’s best friend made her whole with his tongue. He worked to bring her that trembling she longed for, that which she had found so hard to reach the lower rungs of and grasp.

Doug felt her around his tongue. And he pressed his nose against her pubic region and he got in deep. He didn’t need more than this, but he knew more was coming. And he longed to give her that moment of explosive trembling and euphoric waves, to feel her against his chin as she disappeared into that sudden and momentary eternity for which a woman becomes her true and necessary conclusion. He had no idea what his best friend was capable of, but he wanted to beat it, whatever it was. He wanted your mom’s body and soul to be his for just that small moment. Her pale calves, knees, and thighs objects he could claim to be his own. There was only one way.

And as he started to feel her tighten along the thighs, he knew he had made it. And she knew what was coming, and was determined to get out of its way and let it be. Because what it was, with or without her input, was the best she knew she’d ever have. She was prepared to let your dad be second fiddle, knowing it would tarnish everything. Knowing it would be, whether he’d ever know of it or not, the brick thrown through the final stainglassed window of their wedding. And as Doug worked his magic, her head fell back in anticipation for the wave that was only now forming beneath her. The wave that she would ride into a new universe and stage of her life.

When her left thigh pressed against the side of his head, as her right leg extended out, her toes grabbing at the passenger-side door, her knew it wasn’t over yet. He needed to drive the point home, and he did so through persistence and aching delivery, which he applied unceasingly, even as she screamed and pushed both her palms against his head, as if to get a grip or be lost out along the squall. He still continued, not giving her a break from the torment of her own pleasure, even as she vibrated into a gelatinous magma around him.

He felt the car door come against his side, as your mom pulled on the doorhandle with her toes, not realizing what she was doing. He still wouldn’t stop or slow-down his rhythm, which he knew was needed to overshoot whatever mark stood on the horizon.

Your mom was completely unaware of all form and language, as she disappeared within an oblivion of sensation and joy unlike any she had ever known. A certain spot in space and time vibrating with a glory unquenchable, as if it were being reached rather than being created then, as no one could imagine such a thing not always existing. As the waves of infinite forms and textures started to subside, the source of that beautiful glory started to assume a position along her own shape. She could feel it in between the area where her vagina and butthole met, two parts of her she was now re-made aware of again, as if they were lost for countless eternities. And she looked down at the tongue, coming from the joyous face, that brought her such illuminating bliss.

And when she seen that face, still trying to milk her for every moment of soul-shattering glory she could muster, even as the joy subsided into the beautiful nook of leaf-shaded memory, she felt an overwhelming urge that was eager to aggressively embody itself in her.

“Stand up,” she said. “Take off your pants.”

He backed off, pushing the door back off him as he did.

“Come on,” she said. “Get them off. I want you in my mouth.” She knew what she had to force herself to say next. “I want to suck on your cock.”

He got up and undid his belt-buckle with bubbling anticipation. And he unzipped himself and let it all fall to his knees. His cock didn’t need any coaxing. It was already as hard as his chin was wet.

She got down on her hands and knees, slouching towards her target, which twitched at her in its sturdy longing. And she was so intent on leaning into it, that she was shocked when she felt two hands grab the back of her head.

As she felt the pressure push her toward her destination, she saw it ready itself to enter.

The warmth of that mouth, as sweet as the honey evoked by her angelic voice. His gut against her forehead, knowing it didn’t matter any longer. He had arrived at that point where a man’s flaws became his greatest virtues. Her need to feel him thrusting inside her mouth a testament to how every part of him had become her holy wine. His body gaining a magic beyond itself through the copper-smelling alchemy of the force of his personality and the sweetness of the moment.

Your mom felt his soft gut against her forehead, and his pubic region against her nose, and they were like the ambrosia atop of it all, making that piece of meat sweet as it slid through her mouth, filling it entirely, the knowledge that she held the source of his pleasure atop her tongue, as powerful as any responsibility that could ever be given, and one that filled her with a meaning unlike all others.

“Ughhwagnnasheeit” she said, as she pressed her palms flat against each side of his pelvis. She pushed him off and out of her, leaving his cock, wet and twitching, free from her humid embrace. “I want to see it she said.”

He poked it out at her. “You like it?” he asked.

She pressed her palms against his balls and the lower part of his shaft, causing his cock to rise up, the tip touching his gut. She then licked at it playfully, and pulled her head back to look at it. “It’s beautiful,” she said.

“Yeah? You like that cock?” he whispered huskily.

“Does that answer your question?” she said.

He stood there in ecstasy, looking down at her.

“I want your cock, Doug. It’s all I want.” She laughed to herself. “Doug’s cock. I want Doug’s cock.” It was a thought that never would have occurred to her, as if she wasn’t even aware that Doug had a cock to want. And now it was all she could dream of. It was the point in space and time at which Doug received the most beautiful of bliss, and she wanted herself to be there, to make it happen for him. To be his dream girl giving him his dream fuck. She had never been as singularly focused on giving pleasure before this moment, and it was a burden she welcomed and felt invigorated, and aroused, to take on.

As she filled herself with him, she thought about whether her husband had ever had his cock sucked in this car. She could imagine her sister with her mouthful, on her husband or anyone else, and it motivated your mom to suck harder, knowing that in order for justice to be served, Doug had to receive a pleasure not only comparable, but better. Your mom’s tongue had to do what her sister’s couldn’t. Their beauties clashed within the twilight of this moment, furiously, with only one open spot for victory, and no prize for second-place. She had to pull out every stop.

She pulled it out of her mouth, and then said, as she held it throbbing in her hands, “And yes Doug, I like it more than his.”

Doug grinned devilishly down at the back of her head.

“And I want to suck it. I love sucking your cock. I’m your cocksucker.”

Doug felt himself creak with energy, and he grabbed the back of your mom’s hair, and said “well suck it then,” in an intense grunting whisper, and he thrust her face forward over his throbbing beauty.

Your mom could feel Doug’s intensity, above and beyond any she had ever felt from her husband. His sudden aggression, unlike anything she had known or could expect from him, was the testament to the strength of his lust for her. She had only ever seen your dad’s nether-region, and now looking at Doug’s in all its newness, vulgar and strange, but enticing in its masculine form, and the taste of his cock sour in keeping with it. His smell filled her awareness and she took it in knowing her face was bathed in it. Her husband’s smelled less potent. His pubes less thick. His thighs less pale, and his balls less dark. Doug was like a new roller coaster ride. Not just an adventure, but a memory that she would be holding onto for as long as she’d be a conscious witnesser of the world, and all that existed within it.

Doug felt the sensation of her humid mouth and thrust into it at his own pace, deciding how’d she take it for her, making it known through his thrusts that it was his decision to make. He felt a healthy rage, once from years of need and wishing, which he now exercised on her, as if he were trying to get back at that awful song. And he’s loving her with that body, I just know it. But now it was him who was loving that body. And he was trying to beat his conception of what that had meant for all this time. He wanted his loving of your mom to be all that one could imagine and cringe at, acting as if your father would one day see it, wanting to unload it all. Almost punishing your dad for the weight he left on Doug’s shoulders, the need to protect a lie. And he knew that this was the only punishment worthy of that lie. That lie and all its ugly consequences. Liz and your dad’s little scheme was the best thing that had ever happened to him. He was fucking himself out of his sorry box using your mom’s face. The faster he thrusted, the faster his escape.

Your mom felt herself being pulled towards him, and she gladly went, feeling the intensity and power of his demand, giving into it without caveat. Accepting his aggression in place of the perfect youth she could no longer offer, the 21-year old self whose mouth would never envelope his cock of any age, or any cock of any age except for one.

Her current self, almost a decade older, sat there on her hands and knees, worthy in her act of pleasing cock, renewing her with the gift and mercy, that she was still in that loop, the one all women desired to ride the rings of. She never felt this will for subservience before, but now she reveled in it. It took the dizzying heights of a new man, the woesome lows of heartbreak, and the unsure and frantic footing of perceived-inadequacy to bring her here, but as she felt that cock slide against her tongue, she knew she wanted to be nowhere else. Not now. Not ever. She closed her eyes and received cock in her mouth through a void. A cock which ended her loneliness that existed in all measures but proximity. Her soul alight as her mouth was stuffed.

In this moment, Doug thought about you. He thought about what you’d do if you had seen what was happening now. It was a quick thought, and a quiet one, but he had thought it. And he felt no guilt for thinking it. It wasn’t his job to keep the moment pure. It was his job, and his lucky break, to for once in his life feel real joy.

Your mom felt your dad being fucked out of her with every thrust. She wanted him fucked back from husband to roommate, and from roommate to simply the father of her son, nothing more. Doug’s cock, the only other she had ever known, was doing it, tearing the pain from her heart in ironic intensity. The humidity and texture of her mouth had become a hotbox for revenge. And every nerve on Doug’s cock was a node for victory, which your mom gladly received and stimulated.

She let her nose run through his pubes, a touch she was thankful for (your dad having none), and she felt not only Doug’s cock, but the full shape and being of his pelvis area, thighs to bellybutton, rejuvenating her with each thrust. And the more he took, the more she enjoyed. The look, the smell, the feel, even the sound, and of course the taste, all new. And in their newness, all better. She was all better.

But after a few more moments, both sharing and contributing to each other’s bliss, your mom knew that in order for her beautiful defilement to be complete, there was that final step. The thing, that unspeakable thing, which her husband and sister were possibly doing at this very moment.

She put her hand out and pushed against Doug’s hip, which was still in the habit of thrusting back and forth. Then she put her other hand out and did the same to the opposing hip, and she pushed with power to get him to stop.

Once his cock cleared the refuge of her mouth, she said with a hoarse voice: “I want you inside me.”

They stripped eachother naked in a fit of kisses and proclamations of intense arousal and joy. They demanded each other’s nudity, angry at each other’s clothes, he for the sight of your mom’s naked form, and she for the knowledge that she had been alone with his.

The passenger seat on Liz’s car had to go, and Doug flattened the backrest. Your mom straddled him, jerking off his anticipating cock as she kissed his eager and unbelieving face. As much as she wanted it, and as intensely as she powered toward it, on the moment of truth, something had slowed her down considerably. And he looked up at her, knowing what was to come just as she did, but she hesitated, glaring down at him, knowing he deserved it, but also knowing that there was no road back from where they were both going.

And then she thought about that hotel room, with her two betrayers in it, their bodies writhing in joy, and she knew she had nothing to lose.

She sat on the tip of his cock, feeling its strength, and then, slowly, she let it push its way, inch by inch, inside her, until she was sitting completely, her ass flush with his lap, filling it like liquid in a bowl.

She sat there for a moment, looking down at his face, not believing what she had just done.

And then his insistence came in like a knight in shining armor through foliage and broken sunlight, guiding her by her hand to where she needed to go next, where her destiny demanded. “Bounce, beautiful.”

That was the only encouragement she needed.

At first, all she could think about was how mechanical it was, her ass bobbing up and down in rhythm. And then she thought about how this was the very act that created you. And after that, catching herself mid-thought, she thought about Liz. And she thought about how Liz always had lived in the moment, and how herself, in contrast, was always in her own mind, trapped behind its bars, the perpetual spectator, as if her eyes were windows that the real her looked out of.

Snap out of it, she thought to herself. Now, before you miss it.

And like the clearing of an ear, all her senses came alive, and she felt her cheeks smacking against the rock hard embrace of his pelvis, as his hard cock went up and down inside her body, filling her with its girth.

And with that, on the wings of her infidelity alone, she came.

The miracle it was, the two of them being alone, having no one to wake up through the sounds of their lovemaking. The sounds she made as she twitched on top of him, being open and free unlike any she was able to make before, was like a blessing in the form of dew and tears. She could hear her ass smacking against him, loud and full, and she wanted to make it louder. So she bounced harder, not believing what sounds it made, not knowing her own ass as well as she did now. Her husband never hearing just what it was capable of. His best friend experiencing and knowing more. The light of his garage, bright and without shadow. Her body clear and open and her cumming fuckface known in all its nuances.

Orgasm overlapped orgasm, until the act of counting them, which she would have no wherewithal to do to begin with, had been made impossible. She was a quivering, bouncing mess. His quivering bouncing mess. And in that moment, she didn’t need to be anything else. She would gladly be defined then, and remembered for all eternity, as a woman with a large ass bouncing on his cock, even if it were immortalized in ivory for people to witness with wine in their hands and hors d'oeuvres gliding between them on a plate.

His joy had no words. It had no facial expression, idea, or color. He had hovered around that ass from a distance, its longing satellite, sad in his barren world. Her beauty, so close, but distant as a photographed world wonder to his touch. Like the pyramids to a poor boy in London in a world before airplanes. He had now been buried as a pharaoh within those ancient bricks of soft flesh. He sat like Nebuchadnezzar in the Hanging Gardens, as if in a jungle of beige and pink, a goblet of wine in his palm, admiring what he sat within and what lay before him, not worried about what came before, or what came after. Just happy in the eternal now. An eternal now which would never die.

Your mom’s eyes flashed with sexual joy above him.

And with that, he began to thrust.

“Keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going,” she said with rising speed and intensity. “Ughh, I’ve never cum this many times! You fuck so good!”

And that’s when he knew. He had beat his mark, the marks left in the sand by Ozymandias, which preceded themselves in imagination. And now that he was there, in the exact longitude and latitude of these wonders, all he saw was clean sand in all directions, its hue a golden-beige broken only by an oasis of pink, no masculine phallic landmark to break the perfected femininity of the rolling desert, which now jiggled as it fell through his fingers like sand.

And it was then that he knew he had earned his right to finish.

They orgasmed one last time within and against eachother. Your mom’s body vibrating once again, and his for the first time, feeling himself emptying, he quickly pulled out and let the remaining volleys empty against the sweetness of her ass which took it without say. As she felt herself being ornamented from behind, she whimpered, trying to hold onto some degree of shape and existence, fearing she’d be lost in the bliss and never escape.

And as he began to slow down until his final nut met her crack, and she began to feel the contentment and glow come to her, maybe for the first time, she fell to his chest below.

They laid there then for a while, eyes locked on one another, gaze to gaze as flush as flesh to flesh. Their nudity shared. Their vulnerability shared. Their treachery shared. And their victory shared. Their bodies shone with a slight hue of purple, an artifact of the setting sun, which came in daintily through the window.

She looked up at him with a grin. “You have permission to do this to me any time,” she said. “I never knew it could feel this good.”

He just smiled back down at her, a confidence in his visage unlike any he had ever shown. “I’ll have to take you up on that,” he said.

Your mom looked back down and rested her head on his chest. She sighed. “I couldn’t think of a better way to spend my 30th birthday.”

She sighed again. Doug, looking up at the roof, lifted his arm to look at his watch, only to see the tanline on his wrist where his watch should have been. it He let go of her shoulder and reached down to the flooring of the car, and fished around with his fingers against the mat. When he felt the cool metal in his hands, he lifted it up until the face of his watch was in front of his gaze.

He put the watch back on his wrist, and then he began to get up.

Your mom looked up at him. And when he caught her gaze, he said “I should drive you home.”

“Or,” she started, playfully. “We can just lie here instead.”

“I’d love to,” he said. “But I have some where I need to be unfortunately.”

“Okay,” she said, and she got up and away from the comfort of his chest and stomach and began to get dressed, standing on the concrete of his garage floor. Before she could get her pants back on, she felt Doug’s hand pinch her bottom. She turned around to see him winking at her, and she smiled.

As your mom dressed, Doug distracted himself with his phone while waiting. Once they were both decent, Doug opened his garage, and the two of them went out to his car. They sat next to each other, your mom smiling at the horizon, now beautiful against the setting sun. And as they drove off, the venue of their moment together sat there as the garage door closed over it like a red curtain.

Continued on page 2

https://bluvelvet99.wixsite.com/website/post/wet-between-the-cheeks-page-2