Chapter 3

Mom and Lilly took turns waking me through the night, taking a few moments to ask me how I was feeling and talk for a few moments. After the third time, it was a little annoying, but I remembered the doctor saying that I’d be irritable and tried not to snap at them for waking me each time.

The next morning when Mom came to check on me, I was already awake. Between the naps and the full night’s sleep, I was fully rested for the moment.

“How do you feel Sweetie?” she asked, coming to sit with me. I’d had a small smile on my face and was lost in thought when she came in.

“Uh, good, I guess. The headache’s not AS bad today. I still hurt a lot, but there’s not much I can do about that. I suppose you’ll have to tell Donald about the accident, huh?” I asked, deliberately using his name instead of calling him dad. I was still angry at him and had decided that if he wanted that title back, he needed to earn it. I wasn’t optimistic about his chances.

She nodded softly. “He’ll want to know and the hospital visit goes through his insurance at work. Better to hear it direct than find out from someone from his human resources department. Is there anything that you want me to tell him specifically?”

I thought about that for a moment and shrugged. “Don’t tell him about Lana. Just tell him I’m home and comfortable and he doesn’t need to do anything. If I decide to have anything to do with him, it’ll be on my terms. I don’t want to see him before I have the ability to leave the room when I’ve had enough of him.”

“Any particular reason you don’t want him to know that you have a girlfriend?” she asked with a smile. “I’d have thought right now you’d want to twist the knife by letting him know how much better things are without him here.” She had a knowing look on her face.

I shrugged. “That might be fun for a moment and I might find a way to do that down the road, but right now, I don’t want him to know. When he left, he gave up the right to know what happens here.” I plucked at the blanket for a moment before looking at her again. “So what are we going to do now?” I asked, clarifying what I meant. “I mean, you always stayed home with us and he went to work. How are we going to manage for money with him gone? I know he made good money, so I’m sure there’s some saved up, but that’s his too, isn’t it?”

Mom smiled and patted my hand. “Don’t worry about it Sweetie,” she said brightly.

“I think that ship has sailed Mother,” I said dryly, giving her a more serious look. “I might not know all the intricacies of how the world works, but I learned accounting from Donald, sitting in his office while he worked at night. I understand revenue and expenses. Do we have a plan or do we need to figure it out?”

She snorted a laugh. “Of all the things your father could have taught you, he chose finance,” she said ruefully. “Typical. Alright. I do have a plan. I have a lot to do over the next few weeks, so I might have to lean on your sister to keep an eye on you until you’re well enough to get around on your own.”

I nodded in agreement. “I don’t think Lilly needs to give up her whole summer, but I’m sure Lana and Becky will hang out when she’s out with her friends. For that matter, I’m sure Patty would be okay with me spending part of the day next door propped up on their couch.”

“Patty?” she said with an arched eyebrow. “Since when are you on a first name basis with Mrs. Powers?” she asked, emphasizing her proper name to convey her opinion.

“Yesterday,” I told her. “When we were at the hospital, she helped me get dressed while you were talking to the doctor. She wanted to ask about me and Lana and told me I could call her Patty.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “I see. Alright then. Did she give you any indication how she felt about how close you and Lana have gotten?” she asked a little too casually.

I blushed with embarrassment at the thought of telling my mother about what Patty had said. “Without being indelicate, she was really happy that I’d told Lana how I felt. She felt like we’d be a good fit together.” I congratulated myself on glossing over the comments she’d made about my erection while still including the sentiment in the conversation.

“Did she?” she asked, a little surprised. “I would have thought that she’d have been concerned about the difference in your age and Lana’s. Or how it would color your friendship with Becky. That’s something you need to be aware of too. You spend a lot of time with Becky. She might be hurt if you start coming to see her sister and not her.”

I didn’t really see the problem and I told her that. “Becky’s been teasing me about the way I acted around Lana for years. She knows how I feel better than anyone. If she’s going to be hurt by anything, it’ll be that she needs to find something else to tease me about, but I suspect that she’ll just change how she teases me about how I act around Lana now.”

She nodded and sighed. “We never did quite get around to giving you the formal talk about sex,” she said, clearly dreading the topic. “Normally I’d tell your father to sit you down for it, but with things the way they are now, you’d rather hear it from just about anyone else. This is going to be an awkward conversation for both of us, but we’ll do our best with it. Let’s start with the basics. You’re smart enough to know that boys and girls are ... built differently.” She paused to give me a chance to answer her and I decided to let go of one of the few secrets I had from her.

“Mom, I’m aware of the anatomy. I’ve seen the porn that Donald had downloaded in his office downstairs. It was particularly ... visual. And I have a couple of magazines. Between them and the movies he had, I’ve got a rudimentary grasp of how things work mechanically. We also took the health class last year. They talked about diseases and pregnancy. They also said not to have sex at the end of practically every sentence. ‘Here’s the penis. NEVER TOUCH IT!’ ‘That’s a vagina. YOU MUST NEVER GO THERE!’ Mostly they talked about puberty and the changes that occur, but they spent about 4 minutes one class talking about birth control and condoms. Does that help move the conversation along some?” I asked with a little smile, hoping that she didn’t lose her mind over the pornography I’d just admitted to.

She nodded and I realized that she was blushing a little too. We were both embarrassed about the situation, but she composed herself and kept going. “Okay,” she said. “We should probably go over some of what you’ve seen and talk about the difference between that and reality. Where do you keep the magazines?” she asked.

I reluctantly pointed to the desk drawer. “They’re pushed to the back under some old scribblers,” I told her, certain that this was the last time I was going to see the two magazines I’d paid an older kid to get for me last year. He’d charged me $20 each for them and at the time it had seemed like a bargain.

She rummaged through the drawer and came back to the bed with the two of them. She opened the top one, a Hustler that I’d pored over endlessly. I knew it mostly by heart at this point. I was turning red as she turned the pages slowly, looking at each page thoughtfully without saying a word. When she got to the end of the magazine, she saw the ads for phone sex, adult toys, DVDs and a couple of websites.

Finally she put that aside and looked at the next magazine. This one was an issue of a magazine called Club. She paged through it, her face showing no emotion as she looked at each page showing models masturbating, having sex with men, other women and sometimes both. There had even been a model in one of them that had been peeing. The look on her face was one of unrestrained lust frozen on the page as the stream of urine splashed on the pavement of a driveway in a burst of droplets in every direction as she squatted, her thighs spread wide.

When she was finally done with each of the magazines, she closed them and took a deep breath, composing herself again. “Well, I have to say, I wasn’t prepared for THAT,” she said, smiling a little to tell me that she wasn’t angry. “I thought that you might have a Playboy or two stashed away. This is ... a lot to take in.” She paused and blinked a little before starting again with a rueful shake of her head. “Okay. You’re a lot more dialed-in to the mechanics of sex than I thought. There’s a few things that I want to make you aware of though. First is that a lot of those poses are extremely exaggerated, probably for the sake of the camera so they could get a better visual. Most sex doesn’t require quite the level of gymnastic achievement that they show in there. In fact, I can’t imagine some of those positions are particularly comfortable for either of them.” She paused to open one of the magazines again and to my mortification, she stopped at the scene of the girl pissing on the concrete driveway. “As for this, I can tell you that at no time in my experience has a trip to the bathroom ever caused a reaction like that. I think most women will agree. I’m sure you’re aware of the feeling of relief when you finally get to a bathroom when you really need to go, but this is either some really good drugs or a plastic smile. Most girls don’t get turned on by things like this.”

Mercifully, she closed that page, moving on to one of the pages of people engaged in sex. She pointed to a picture of a man licking the pussy of a particularly large-chested blonde. “You see what he’s doing there?” she asked and waited for my nod. “Oral sex is something that a lot of people aren’t willing to do. They don’t like the taste or they can’t get past the idea that it’s where people urinate from or whatever other issue they have. They find it disgusting.”

“I don’t,” I said defiantly. “It’s no grosser than kissing on the mouth at the end of a date. After all, no one stops after dinner on a date to brush their teeth or use mouthwash, right? So what’s the big deal? The camping survival books say that it’s okay to drink pee in an emergency when water isn’t available. It’s probably less gross than eating liver.”

She smiled and gave a little chuckle. “No, I suppose there aren’t many people that take a toothbrush with them on a date. At least not for that reason and that’s a good attitude to have. I suspect you have this magazine to thank for normalizing urine, but that’s a whole other discussion that we probably won’t have to have.” She tapped the magazine again and flipped pages till she found what she was looking for and turned to a page with a close-up of a woman’s spread pussy. “I’m gonna give you a beginner’s course in what to do if and when you find yourself asked to do that for a girlfriend.” She took several moments to detail all the parts from the labia and clitoris to the opening and even describing how to kiss and lick the crease between the thigh and the outer lips.

“Pay particular attention to the clitoris, but be gentle with it because it’s very sensitive. Trace circles around it with your tongue, like this,” she said, tracing her finger around the clit on the page, going slowly and I was reminded of how Lana had swirled her tongue around the head of my cock the night before. If I hadn’t been already painfully hard at that point, the thought would have brought me to full attention, but the sight of my mother stroking her finger over the image like that was so erotic that I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d ever done that with another girl before.

“The girl will tell you what you’re doing right and when you’re straying from what she wants. You can use this same technique with fingers too if you find the taste too much for you or if she’s on her period. That’s another thing you should be aware of. Girls still get turned on when they’re having their period. It’s a little messy down there, but that doesn’t mean that the parts stop working. Now, another thing you can do to please a woman is to wrap your lips around her clit and suck on it softly. Just the area I’ve been circling. Just close your lips around it and suck softly, then you can flick the clit with your tongue, but again, you have to be gentle. If you go too rough, it can feel painful for the girl. You can do the same for a girl’s nipples although they can take a little more rough treatment than you should apply down here.”

She went on, teaching me about all the things I could do to pleasure a woman with nothing more than my mouth and I paid complete attention.

When she felt like we’d beaten the topic to death, she flipped back to a page where a woman was eagerly sucking on a cock. “I somehow doubt that you’re interested in learning to do this?” she said questioningly.

“Not really my thing,” I said simply. “I think there’s a couple of guys at school that are into that sort of thing, I never thought much about it.”

She nodded. “Then I’ll give you advice from what to do when getting one. That’s a much shorter discussion. Enjoy the ride and keep your hands to yourself,” she said simply. “Tell her what you like, warn her when you’re close to cumming and never, EVER grab her head. If you push too deeply, she could gag and end up throwing up all over you. I doubt you want that to happen and she’ll most likely never do it for you again if you force her head down like that. That’s if you’re lucky. More likely, she’ll never speak to you again.”

She glanced at the clock on my night table and sighed. “Your sister will be up soon. I should start breakfast. I think you’ve got enough to think about for one day. We’ll have another talk later and you can ask any questions that may occur to you. We’ll also look at that download collection your father had if it’s still in the office. I’m sure that was even more instructional.” She smirked and leaned over to kiss me on the cheek before she left to go start breakfast.

She’d left the door open, so my original plan to relieve my discomfort was shot. I lay back and tried not to think about sex in any way, willing my erection to go away so I could start my day. It seemed to take forever, but slowly my erection wilted to sulk at being ignored for so long and I breathed a sigh of relief. I went to get out of bed and realized that she’d left the magazines with me. I wondered if she’d left them on purpose or if she was planning to confiscate them later. I grabbed my crutches and picked them up, dropping them in my desk drawer, but not bothering to hide them this time. Everyone in the house knew where they were now. Hiding them seemed silly.

I went to the bathroom to relieve my bladder and washed my hands before tackling the stairs. I shifted both crutches under the one arm to descend the stairs and made my way to the table a little more smoothly than the day before. I was surprised and pleased, thinking that I might be getting the hang of it after all.

Lilly still hadn’t appeared so I mentioned the magazines to Mom. “I was surprised that you left them with me. I figured you’d have confiscated them when we were done talking.”

“Well we’re not done talking,” she pointed out, amused before continuing with a shrug. “What would be the point? You clearly know how to get more if you want them.”

“Not really,” I admitted. “The guy I knew goes to a new school now so I don’t see him any more. I guess I could find someone else or order from one of the ads in the back of the magazines I have, but I couldn’t exactly have them delivered to the house and I don’t particularly feel like wandering around the school asking people if they have an older brother that’d do the shopping for me.”

She nodded and we let the topic drop while she made a big breakfast. She didn’t do it every morning, but with everything that happened, she’d decided to go all out and I wasn’t about to tell her not to go to the trouble. Lilly drifted into the kitchen a few minutes later and dropped into a chair next to me with a yawn. “Mom, please tell me we don’t have to wake him again tonight,” she said thickly. “I’ll do it, but I feel like I didn’t get any sleep at all.”

“I think we can all sleep tonight,” she said lightly. “Your brother said he feels a little better today and the pamphlet they gave us at the hospital stressed that the first 24 hours were when most problems showed up. We’ll see how today goes and decide tonight.”

I decided to change the subject and asked Mom about what her plan was in the post-Donald household, remembering that our conversation on that topic had taken a left turn.

She smiled a little and set plates in front of the two of us before returning to the stove to collect her own bacon and eggs. “I’ve been thinking of returning to teaching for a few years now. You two are old enough that you don’t need me around here full-time to pick up after you. You both started doing your own laundry this past year and you keep your rooms neat enough. The rest of the house might need a bit of extra tidying, but we’ll see if we can’t split up a few of the extra chores and if it gets to be too much, we’ll see if we can find a housekeeper to come in once a week to help tidy up.”

I nodded and asked what she’d be teaching as we ate, mostly keeping up the conversation, but interested too. Lilly and I had both come to her for homework help in the past. I knew she had been a teacher, but had given it up when I was born.

“Kindergarten or high school. They both have a similar skill-set,” she said dryly. “Probably high school though. There’s no shortage of wide-eyed college grads that think they love small children and want to teach those classes. A fair number of teachers are leery of teaching teenagers. There’s a feeling among some teachers that by the time they’ve reached high school, there’s been too much damage and too much neglect from years in the public school system. I have to make some calls this week and see if there’s anything available, but I’ve got a few favors I can cash in to bump my way up the line if there is one.”

“So I might end up with you as a teacher this year?” I asked, not sure how I felt about that.

“Maybe,” she admitted. “If you’re not comfortable with that, I’m sure we can get your schedule adjusted so that we don’t have to do that though.” She sipped her coffee while we ate and Lilly asked if she could have some. She’d been wanting to try it for ages, but had never been able to convince either parent to give her that much caffeine at once. Mom looked at her and her lips thinned as she considered her before finally nodding. “Just a little though and ONLY because last night was rough on you. This is not going to be a regular thing. You’re too hyper as it is.”

She got up and poured a half a cup, diluting it with a generous splash of milk. She added sugar and then set the cup and the sugar dish in front of Lilly, suspecting she’d want to sweeten it more. “What about you?” she asked, obviously feeling permissive today.

I shook my head and instantly regretted the motion and the greasy breakfast at the same time. I swallowed hard and hoped the nausea would pass soon. “Maybe once school starts,” I allowed. “Right now, I’m supposed to rest. Coffee will just keep me awake when I should sleep.”

She nodded and put the pot back into the coffee maker. “Alright. I’ve got some calls to make this morning. I need to talk to a lawyer and see about getting back to work. You two have anything to do to entertain yourselves?”

Lilly said she was going out with her friends if Mom didn’t need her and she told her that she didn’t.

“I’m probably gonna hang around the house today. I was supposed to have a baseball game at 10, but I can safely say I’m not gonna make the rest of the season.” I felt a little dejected about that. I’d liked playing and the thought of spending the rest of the summer sidelined made me realize that I was probably going to be bored a lot of the time. Even with Lana to occupy my thoughts, I couldn’t expect her to give up her summer to sit with me. Suddenly I felt restless. All the things I wanted to do with Lana were going to have to wait until I could walk again. I couldn’t even go to the beach with her. The thought of spending a perfect day with her on the beach led to pleasant thoughts of her in a bikini and I clearly got lost in the daydream because the next thing I know, Lilly was calling my name. “Sorry, what?” I asked, rousing myself from the fantasy and irritably reminding myself that it was just a fantasy until just before school started and maybe not even then.

“Geeze, you were a million miles away,” she said. “I can imagine what you were thinking about.” She smirked and sipped her coffee.

“I was thinking about all the things I wanted to do this summer,” I said flatly. “Can’t do most of them without two feet to stand on.” I’d finished breakfast and got to my feet, setting my crutches under me. “I’m gonna go poke around the basement,” I announced before anyone could respond to what I’d said.

I moved over to the basement stairs and carefully navigated to the bottom without killing myself and poked around the rec room we had down there. I spent a fair bit of time down here with Becky on rainy days and during the winter. The pool table had a piece to put on top of it to play ping pong and there was a nice couch with a big-screen TV for watching movies. That took up most of the basement. There was a bathroom, furnace room and the office. I hobbled my way to the office and tried the knob. “Asshole,” I muttered when the knob refused to turn. I stood on my good leg and dug in my pocket for my wallet, pulling out a gift card that I’d used up and kept for some reason. I was about to slide it into the doorjamb when I heard someone on the stairs. I looked over and saw my mother at the foot of the stairs. “Hi,” I said lightly. “The idiot locked the door before he left. Wanna see a magic trick?”

She rolled her eyes at the news that he’d locked the door and then came over to see what I was up to curiously. “Feeling a little down about being stuck around the house this summer?” she asked as she came to stand beside me.

“A little. It wouldn’t be so bad, but with a girlfriend, there’s about a hundred things that I’d want to do with her. And no, I’m not talking about what we were discussing upstairs. Well, that too, but I can’t even go to the beach with her. The sand isn’t exactly made for crutches. I can’t take her to the carnival or even go for a decent walk with her. It’s just frustrating.” As I was talking, I took the gift card and slid it in between the door jamb and the door, wiggling it to wedge it in where I needed it to be as I pulled the door toward me and then pushed on it, giving the card some room to bend a little at a time. When I felt it was in far enough, I gave a flick of my wrist and pushed the door open.

My mothers eyes got wide when the door opened. “Where did you learn to do that?!!?” she asked, unnerved.

I moved into the room and flicked on the lights. “I read about it in a book. It didn’t tell how to do it specifically, but a little trial and error on my bedroom door and I got the hang of it. It’s come in handy and no, I’ve never used it for anything underhanded, but there were a couple of times that I forgot my keys and used it to get into the house while you were out shopping and, of course, it helps in getting into the office when someone locks the door.” I smirked. “At the risk of getting a lecture about language, it takes a special breed of asshole to lock rooms in a house he doesn’t live in any more.”

“Definitely not his most classy moment,” she conceded, “but try to keep that kind of talk under wraps at least until we get everything figured out and legally settled. He can still exercise his parental rights as much as the court lets him until we settle.”

“I will,” I promised and looked around the room. “Why would he bother to lock the room up?” I asked as the question popped into my head. “He didn’t keep anything valuable here that I know of. He looks like he packed up all his papers. The computer is gone from the desk, so there’s really nothing that anyone can get into unless he’s got something stashed in the room that he didn’t have a chance to pick up before he left. You think?” I asked, turning to her, curious about her input.

She shrugged and looked around with me. “I suppose there’s only two ways to find out. Search the room and ask him directly.”

“I’ll search the room. You said there were some phone calls you had to make. I’ll come get you if I find anything worth mentioning,” I promised.

She nodded and looked around the room with a sigh. “We should probably figure out what to do with this room soon. It shouldn’t sit idle.”

“I figured you’d use it for an office when you started back to work,” I said, surprised.

She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. I have an idea what to do with it, but for now, take your time, don’t push yourself and I’ll come down with lunch if you haven’t given up by then.”

I nodded, wondering what she was going to do with the room if she didn’t want it for an office. I put the thought out of my head and started looking around for likely places to hide something. I started with the desk, sitting in the office chair my father had probably spent a fortune on and looking around. The surface was cluttered with trash that hadn’t been worth taking, but I sifted through it carefully, wondering if there was something there. Old receipts, Rolaids wrappers, printed emails related to work and a few dog-eared sticky-notes that didn’t mean anything important were all I found. I dumped each of them in the trashcan as I read them and dismissed them. After the desk surface was clear, I pulled out the drawers, finding the same detritus. After a moment, I reached under the desk and ran my fingers along the underside looking to see if there was anything taped in place. Feeling nothing, I got up and went out to the furnace room for a flashlight, undeterred. I pushed back the chair and carefully slid to my knees, crawling under the desk and shining the light around for signs of something hidden there. I pulled out the drawers and looked underneath and even shone my light into the empty space behind them before I satisfied myself that the desk was clean. Just to be thorough, I also searched the underside of the office chair and finally found something interesting. There was a flash-drive tucked into a gap in the lining. I smiled and put it in my pocket to check out later.

I looked around the room all morning without finding anything else, but I hadn’t given up my search by the time Mom appeared at the door with a plate of sandwiches and a pair of sodas. “Come sit on the couch and take a break,” she said with a smile. “We can fill each other in.”

I nodded and put the book I was looking through back on the bookshelf sticking out slightly to mark where I’d left off. I followed her out the the rec room and we sat on opposite ends of the couch with the sandwiches between us. “How did your calls go?” I asked, taking a bite from a sandwich.

“Not bad at all. There IS a teaching job at your school if I want it and that very much depends on how comfortable you are with having your mother hanging around your school.”

“I’m fine with it,” I said lightly. “Honestly, the closest I ever come to getting in trouble is when I disagree with my English teachers. Mr. Orychuk was the worst of those, but unless he’s moved up to teach high school, I don’t have to worry about him.”

She nodded. “I remember that incident. He reprimanded you for using profanity in a creative writing assignment. I haven’t heard a repeat complaint, so I presume that you’ve learned your lesson.”

I grimaced. This had been a sore spot for me. “I don’t feel like I did anything wrong,” I said truthfully. “Stephen King uses profanity in his writing and he’s a respected author. They’re recognized words in the English language and it was an English assignment. The only lesson I learned is that some people are too weak to even read those words without feeling threatened by the implications. Mostly I’ve cooperated out of pity for his delicate sensibilities. I hope my English teacher this year will be better. Or at least that they won’t assign any creative writing if they’re not prepared to face creativity.”

She smirked. “That’s certainly one lesson to take away from that event. Sometimes people in authority impose rules that don’t make much sense to the people that have to follow them. Sometimes they do actually make sense and sometimes that reason is nothing more than to protect their ‘delicate sensibilities’. You don’t have to like it, but unless you end up self-employed, you’ll have to take that lesson out into the working world. In any case, that’s just one of the calls I made today. I also called a lawyer about the divorce and I have a meeting tomorrow morning to discuss the details. I’m taking your sister’s pictures with me for a little extra meat.”

“I may have something to add to that,” I said with a grin, reaching into my pocket. I produced the flash-drive and told her where I’d found it. “I think there’s more to be found in the office though, so I’ll keep looking. This was small and easy to grab if you knew where it was. He could have pocketed it easily while he was cleaning out the office. So he either forgot it, decided it wasn’t important or that we wouldn’t find it. Regardless, I’m gonna keep looking this afternoon, but I want to look over the contents of the drive before I do. It should be interesting if he was hiding it in his office chair.”