Chapter 11

On Monday, I squirmed in my Science classroom seat, jittery while waiting for Tiffany to arrive. Would she be able to tell by looking at me that I had made love to her mother? I used to think her mother thought I was a pervert for ogling her daughter. Would Tiffany think I was a pervert for having sex with her mother?

Why was life so complicated? Why did Tiffany have to have a steady boyfriend? If not, we could have been a couple and everything would have been right. No! That wasn’t true. My date with Mrs. Johansson was nothing like the dates I had with Tiffany. I had been infatuated with Tiffany, lusted for her, but I now knew the difference between that and love. Yes, I was sure I loved her mother. Not because of the sex. That just added spice to our love.

I stiffened when Tiffany strolled into the classroom. She sat at our table with a frown.

Uh oh.

“Sorry about me missing our date,” Tiffany said, “but I’m going steady now. It happened all of a sudden.”

“No problem. I’m happy for you.”

And I was. I had no interest in Tiffany any longer and, of course, I didn’t date her again. Even after she broke up with her steady boyfriend. I dated her mother. Which was complicated because Mrs. Johansson didn’t want to tell Tiffany about us until after graduation. Even then we knew it was going to be awkward, but not as weird as it would be sitting in class together knowing her mother was my girlfriend. That’s right, my girlfriend. We had fallen in love.

Mrs. Johansson and I dated on the sly. Like teenagers going behind their parents’ back. Except in the reverse. Well, for Mrs. Johansson it was the reverse since she was going behind her teenage daughter’s back. I wasn’t a teenager, but I was going behind my parents’ back, not ready to tell them I was dating a woman thirteen years my senior. A woman with a daughter a few years younger than me. A girl I went to school with. A girl I had dated. When I was with Mrs. Johansson, however, she didn’t seem older than me. But she was. My parents would think that was— Shit! I didn’t know how my parents were going to react. That was the problem.

I no longer went over to Mrs. Johansson’s house now that I wasn’t dating Tiffany. Except for a few study sessions and lab projects to work on with Tiffany, but that was even worse. I was so near her mother, yet I couldn’t hold her or talk to her, other than a “Hi, Mrs. Johansson.” I couldn’t even call her Abby. Sometimes our eyes met and I saw the longing in hers, and I’m sure she saw the same in mine. We both feared that Tiffany would see it.

On our dates, I picked Mrs. Johansson up away from her house. She drove to a remote place and hulked in the shadows like a criminal. I couldn’t pick her up at her house. And we had to drive far away to just go to dinner or dancing. We couldn’t risk being seen by someone Tiffany knew. And we couldn’t spend time in her house or mine. I rented hotel rooms which made us feel dirty, especially because we checked out a few hours after we had checked in. But once we were in each other’s arms on the hotel bed, all that was forgotten. We made passionate love, both of us trying things for the first time. In that sense we were like lovesick teenagers, learning about sex from each other.

High school graduation finally arrived.

I was dressed in my graduation gown and cap. My parents doted over me. They were so proud. After the ridicule and bullying I had faced when returning to school after my recovery, I had wanted to drop out of school. I had begged them to let me. I had told them that with the insurance money I was set for life so I didn’t need to go to school. I was so young back then that running away was the easiest solution. Thankfully, they had made me go to school. And now I was graduating.

At the conclusion of the graduation ceremony, everyone stood around chatting with relatives and friends. My parents were with me and glowing when fellow students came up to me and gave me a handshake or pat on the back. Some girls even hugged me. I was so different than that invisible boy in a shell they had known at the beginning of the school year.

My smiling mother started to ask, “Aren’t you glad—?” when a girl’s screaming cut her off.

“Cody! Cody!” Tiffany shouted as she ran up to me, silencing my mother. “We did it!”

Tiffany flung her arms around my neck and pressed her lips to mine. I stiffened and didn’t kiss her back. She let me go, jumped back, and gawked at me with a confused expression.

“Yeah, we did it,” I said. “No more Science.”

Tiffany tilted her head to the side. “I liked going to Science. I liked being your lab partner.”

I turned to my parents. “Mom, Dad, this is Tiffany.”

“It’s about time we met,” my mother said. “That’s the problem with being the mother of the boy. The girl’s mother meets the boy when he picks her daughter up for a date.”

“Mom, we’re not dating,” I said.

“But you were. And I never got to meet Tiffany.”

I noticed Mrs. Johansson watching us from a short distance away. I was trying to figure out how to introduce her to my parents when her lips puckered in a kiss and she smiled at me. I assumed she felt the awkwardness of it as well and remained where she was.

“I gotta run,” Tiffany said, excitedly, and dashed off to another friend.

It was summer, so people were at the community swimming pool again. But I didn’t sit on the lounger I had claimed the previous summer. I took one on the other side of the pool, sliding it next to Mrs. Johansson’s. We spent the time under the shade of the umbrellas, talking about the novel she was working on and everything else, except the elephant in the room. How to tell Tiffany and my parents about us. Tiffany would even wave at me. I was no longer invisible and she didn’t see anything strange about me sitting with and talking to her mother.

One day, Mrs. Johansson reached into her bag on the floor next to her lounger and handed me a hard cover book.

“This is the novel I was working on last summer,” Mrs. Johansson said. “The one I wrote while staring at you here at the pool. What did you call it? With a funny look. You were my muse and my publisher said it’s the steamiest book I ever wrote and it’s selling like hotcakes. Read the dedication in the beginning.”

I opened the hard cover book and flipped through a few pages until I found the dedication page. It read: “To the hunk of my dreams and the love of my life.”

I blushed and snapped the book shut as if someone walking by would read it and know it was me.

“My publisher wants more like it,” Mrs. Johansson said. “With you in my life, that won’t be a problem.”

I no longer ogled Tiffany or any other girl or woman in their skimpy bikinis at the pool. My eyes were always on Mrs. Johansson. Staring at her breasts, I knew what they looked like naked. The color of the flesh and the areolas, and the dark nipples. But it was her prominent mound that held my longest gaze. And Mrs. Johansson knew it because I had talked about it when we caressed one another’s body while making love. I had confessed how it turned me on more than once as I stroked and kissed it. Mrs. Johansson sometimes teased me at the pool by placing a folded pool towel under her butt as she lay flat on her back. That elevated her pelvic area which made the mound more pronounced. I would instantly get hard which thrilled Mrs. Johansson. One time she glanced around to make sure no one was looking and stroked two fingertips over her mound.

“Stop that!” I whispered. “You’ll make me come.”

A wicked smile formed on Mrs. Johansson’s face. “Let’s go back to my house and make love. Tiffany will be here for hours.”

Of course I agreed.

The swimming pool was at the clubhouse which was walking distance to both of our houses, although in different directions. We gathered our belongings and Mrs. Johansson left first. I waited a few minutes before following. When we were out of sight of the pool, I ran until I caught up to her. Soon we were inside her house, ripping our clothes off, leaving a trail to her bedroom of our discarded bathing suits, cover-ups, sandals, and other belongings.

A naked Mrs. Johansson sat on the side of the bed with her feet on the floor and her knees spread wide. She stroked her mound like she had at the pool, but now there was no bathing suit covering it. My twitching cock stood out in front of me as I watched her with lust.