Some of the girls eat out for lunch break. Fun, but as we only have an hour — and that includes getting there and back — it has to be a place with fast service, which means pre-prepared food. Plus the costs add up. Others eat in the lunchroom, Dreary. Others, at their desk where they can do email. We’re not supposed to — IT probably can tell — but as it’s in our lunch break, nobody’s going to get into trouble. But even still, that makes nine hours at your desk.

Shannon and I, we eat as we power walk. Lots of loops from which to choose, depending on our pace.

That’s when we figure things out. Better than relying on a husband, for sure. Been there. We each have a teenager as a reward, her Stevie and my Aaron. We’ve lots to compare notes about.

“So tell me, Holly, what you think,” she says. “Girls texting Stevie 24/7. Sharks circling a seal pup, how I see it.”

“Aaron’s the same,” my thought. “Left his phone out and I saw the selfies. Very selfie, some of them.”

Next week, the subject comes up again. We’re walking fast. Fast for us, anyway.

“Texting is so dangerous. They need to learn about actual dating, you know, the steps and everything,” Shannon tells me.

“Totally agree,”

Knowing I would, she already has an idea. “Maybe we need to step in. Keep them safe.”

“Like they’re going to listen to us?”

“Stevie might to you. Aaron, to me because we’re not their mothers.”

This I have to think of for a moment. “And we give him the gentlemen-open-doors speech?”

“Plus whatever.”

“But those two won’t go for it.”

“Let them think it’s their idea. We need a plan.”

Mom had been running late and there wasn’t much for dinner, so let’s go out, she said, so I said, how about Pizza Supreme, and she said she’d known I’d say that.

We’re just getting seated, when in walk Stevie and his mom. Almost the same story, why they’re here. Me and Stevie talk about school and our moms, about whatever, but when I mention band, Stevie’s mom overhears and says that she played clarinet, and pretty soon, the two of us are swapping band stories.

Same for Stevie and Mom, except it’s about word games. What you can say about word games, I’ve no idea.

Waiting for our orders, Stevie’s mom says if we call them Holly and Shannon, everybody will think we’re there on a double date, not with our mothers, which we think a good idea.

Shannon — as that’s what she said for me to call her, us being on a date — says we should go get salads and grabs my hand, but Mom and Stevie are in the middle of some word puzzle and she says to go ahead. It feels a bit weird being tugged around by my buddy’s mother but nobody knows us.

That’s when her front bumps my arm, but she must not notice, as there it stays there as I load up on olives. It’s one thing to chitchat with your buddy’s mother; it’s another for her arm to rub across your arm while she loads up her plate with raw vegetables.

Back at our table, Mom and Stevie have scooted together to write letters on the placemat, leaving ‘s mom — Shannon, I mean — and me to talk music, except that she’s so close that our knees touch and I’m thinking about things other than band.

Aaron’s idea of going to the mall wouldn’t include me, but I make it happen, and in front of Macy’s, 4:40, right on schedule, who should arrive but Shannon and Stevie. Why, imagine that!

“Small world!” says Shannon, “Another double date with these two, I guess.”

We moms chat while our boys talk about sports shoes, and in heading for the food court — “Gotta’ feed us,” we tell them, “but we’ll pay.” — I pull Stevie aside to ask what style Aaron might like for his birthday. “You can show me now and we’ll meet the others at the tables?

It works like a charm, and I take his elbow as he points out what’s in style, his arm crossing me as he shows me his favorites, my turning his way helping. The footwear seems way overpriced, but that doesn’t seem to matter.

When we make it back to the court, Shannon and Aaron aren’t to be found, but pretty soon they’re there, and I sense that she, too, has had a measure of success.

A few days later I bring up the subject with Aaron “That was fun, wasn’t it, running into Stevie and his mom at the pizza place, then again there at the mall. Looked like you and she have stuff in common.”

He says that she’s OK.

“She doesn’t go out much, you know,” I mention, as if the same doesn’t apply to me. “Next time we should make it more like an actual date. You know, a double one.”

He looks at me oddly.

“You being Stevie’s friend,” I add, as if an afterthought. “You could maybe give her a snuggle, even,”

“Me?”

“I doubt she’d mind.”

The four of us help set up for our troop’s Spaghetti Supper — a spaghetti date our mom’s call it — and when Stevie’s mom has to squeeze behind me, she slides across my back. When she returns, same thing. She’s got great boobs.

Mom grabs Stevie to look for a folding stool, and as I’m helping his mom slice bread, her hands being busy, she has me brush the crumbs off the bib of her apron, but it’s good that she turns away from the other kitchen workers for me to do it.

“How about a little Italian beso for my helper?” she asks after I’ve brushed her off. It’s kind of fun, a kiss from somebody else’s mom, and a pretty friendly one, at that.

When Mom and Stevie return, he’s grinning, though they couldn’t find the stool.

Me and Stevie think it’s great when his mom snags tickets to the Wolves game and they say that we can take them on a sports date if we explain all the ref stuff.

When they pick us up, Stevie’s mom at the wheel, I go around to the back to get in beside Mom, but she says that as Shannon’s my date, I should sit up front, and Stevie with her.

At the game, I thread us a path through the crowd with Stevie’s mom behind me. Literally on my back, actually, holding onto my shoulders. Not bad, I tell myself, her boobs into my back every time we step forward.

The game’s a good one, but you can’t win them all. You can, however, get hugs from your buddy’s mom when your team scores. On the way out, it’s Stevie, my mom, his mom and me last, and I sneak an-around-and-up feel when we’re bunched up, the back of my hand at the same time feeling Mom’s bra straps.

Getting back in the car, our moms say that this being a sports date means they get goodnight sports kisses. Absolutely, we agree, whatever that means.

What makes it a sports kiss, I guess, is how they kiss us back. Like Mom said, maybe she needs a snuggle now and then, me making our kiss sort of a French she seems to find fun.

Driving home, I peek at the back and there’s Stevie, rubbing Mom’s boobs, maybe also what makes it a sports thing.

When we pull up at our place, Stevie’s mom lets me feel her up, too, my mom probably seeing, but hardly in a position to say much. Totally awesome, us guys feeling up each other’s mothers, everybody knowing.

Mom says that Stevie should walk her to the door, which makes me some time to do it some more, this being a double date. When we were at the spaghetti feed and then the game, I’d done it through her apron, and then her Wolves sweatshirt, but here in the car, I’m on her bra.

When Stevie comes back, he gives me a grin. Bet he got inside Mom’s.

Back inside, we’re ready for bed, but Mom wants to watch the late news, and once we sit on the sofa, she flops her head on my shoulder and she’s out like a light. Maybe Stevie got inside her bra when he took her in, but now she doesn’t even have one on.

On Monday doing our walk — medium fast as our adipose tissue is getting ahead of us — Shannon grins how fun it was, our boys taking us to the game. I agree, though it was us paying for it.

“Pretty smart to call it a sports date, you think?” she points out.

“They bought it,” I agree.

She gets to her point, how fun she knows it was for Stevie.

“Meaning?” Not that I can’t guess, but I want to be sure.

“He masturbated, anyway.”

“Really?” not expecting to be this sure this quick.

She slows her pace. “They think we don’t have ears. Maybe all of us did, you think?”

“Did what?”

“It was fun for us girls, too, right?”

This takes me a minute. “Maybe let’s just talk about walking faster.”

We’re almost back and I ask. “Did he feel you up?”

“Aaron? Duhh.”

“I mean Stevie. Aaron got me while we were watching the news. I was asleep.”

She smiles big. “We get home, I plop down on his lap and say I need a shoulder rubs and he misses hearing ‘shoulder.’”.

Pretty wild, in addition to our double date, Stevie pulling it off on Shannon at their place afterwards, and Aaron on me at ours. More than we bargained for, for sure.

“Grin and bear it, what they say,” Shannon’s thought. “Maybe in my case, grin and sit on top of it, though, and in yours, grin and fall asleep.”

Next weekend, Mom says we should do a movie date with them. Girls’ treat.

Mom lets me drive and Shannon scoots in beside me. She’s easier to think of as Shannon now that we’ve sort of made out.

Walking into the theater, Shannon’s on my elbow, boob right against me. Mom takes Stevie’s arm the same way. As Stevie’s crossing her back and forth, I try the same on his mom and get away with it.

I like that Shannon — I’m starting to think of her more on a first-name basis — holds my hand once we sit. Mom was right about her appreciating a little cuddling, as when I put my arm around her shoulder — the movie having started, so it’s darker — she rests her head on my shoulder as I locate a bump.

Not that I already don’t know something about nipples, of course, but unlike Mom around the house, Shannon probably knows I’m there on purpose. But as Mom said Shannon might need a snuggle, now and then, she lets me stay until the couple in front are finished having sex.