Chapter 3

The next two days were torture for Jennifer. Aghast at her own behavior, she had run to her bedroom and cried for what seemed like an eternity. It was only after she calmed down, showered and redressed that she could emerge from her room. The thing she dreaded most was seeing Ryan. She didn't know what she would do or say, how she would apologize, what he must think of her. Thankfully when Jennifer came downstairs, she found her son had gone out.

Sitting at the kitchen table with a freshly made cup of tea, Jennifer took stock of the events of the afternoon. "What the hell got into me?" she thought. "Was I that hard-up for some kind of sexual contact? That couldn't be it. I wouldn't have done that in front of Ryan for that reason. Would I? NO WAY!" Jennifer's brain continued to spin out ideas for nearly an hour. Finally her concentration was broken by Ryan's return home, which was the worst thing she could imagine in the world at that moment.

"Hi Mom," Ryan said as he entered the house through the kitchen door.

"Oh, Hi Honey!" Jennifer said with obviously manufactured enthusiasm. "What have you been up to?"

"I went over to Jason's."

"Oh! That's nice! How has he been?"

"Fine," Ryan said as he gave Jennifer a puzzled look.

"What?" she said in mock surprise. "What's with that look?"

"Mom, what is your problem? What's wrong with you?"

"What do you mean? What are you talking about, Ryan?"

"You're acting weird, Mom."

"Well, I'm sure I don't know what you mean. Just because I show an interest in your friends? What's..."

"Mom!" Ryan interrupted. "Will you stop it?" Jennifer took a deep breath, then exhaled.

"I'm sorry, Honey. I just don't know how to say I'm sorry for what happened before. It was so wrong and you totally didn't deserve it." Ryan noted that his mother threw in words like 'totally' once in a while, to seem cool.

"Mom, it's over, O.K.? Don't worry about it. Just forget it. It was no big deal."

"Ryan, it was totally inappropriate for me to do that in front of you." There it was again, 'totally.' "It was just ... it was..."

"Seriously ... do we have to talk about it more, Mom? It's really O.K. I won't do it anymore and you won't either. O.K.?"

Jennifer pondered his response. It didn't seem to her that her son was upset by what had happened. She thought that maybe kids are more resilient than she realized. And perhaps, while her behavior was drastic, it really did nip Ryan's behavior in the bud and shock him out of his weird acting out.

"O.K., Honey. I understand that it would make you feel uncomfortable to talk about it." Jennifer felt nervous relief. "I mean, it was like, we both did something awkward for the other, you know? Like, it was..."

"MOM!" Ryan jolted his mother out of her anxious state. "Really ... can we stop?" Jennifer took another breath.

"O.K. Thank you, Sweetheart."

Jennifer gave her son a peck on the cheek and a hug. She felt grateful that, while she had gone off the deep end for a while, the results seemed to be positive. That is, until she want to bed that night.

Although she wanted nothing more than to put the whole sordid incident out of her mind and get a good night's sleep, Jennifer found herself hopelessly tossing and turning.

"What is my problem?" she thought. "I should feel so relieved that I ought to be able to sleep, for crying out loud!" The weary mother sincerely wanted to forget the events of the day. But hard as she tried, her mind kept flashing back to the crazy scene.

Jennifer saw herself in the living room, legs splayed in the presence of her teenage son. She fought hard to rid herself of the image. There she was ... slumped down, legs apart, hand in her panties. "Stop it!" And there was her son, just a foot away, in a similar position. He had her panties, she had his briefs. "No more!" She whispered the words audibly this time.

While she was wrestling with her newly uncovered demons, Jennifer's hand absentmindedly caressed her stomach, then traveling to her navel, and below, finally finding its way to her panty line. While her brain did its very best to rid her thoughts of her outrageous act, her hand paid little attention. Before Jennifer's head caught up with her hand, she had a finger slipping up and down her moist labia.