Chapter 12

"Trent? Randy's on the phone," my mom said.

My towel almost slipped out of my fingers as I turned quickly, dropping my boxers so I could clutch the towel with both hands. I hadn't been too worried about it a second ago, but now she stood in the doorway of my bedroom, smiling at me. I'd just come out of the shower and Mom had opened my door without even knocking. She'd been acting kind of funny lately.

"Aren't you going to talk to him?" she asked, holding out the phone and shaking it.

"Yeah, um..." I nodded, crossing my room and blushing. I was basically naked, damp and still dripping water down my shoulders.

Mom had just begun to undress after coming home from work. She wore her charcoal skirt and white blouse, her jewelry too, but not her blazer. She'd undone all the buttons except for one, down by her belly button, and I could see her cream colored bra and the swell of her breasts beneath the lace cups. Up until a few weeks ago, I'd never seen my mom's underwear, at least not while she was in it. Lately, it seemed like we were always bumping into each other at awkward moments.

Like this one.

"Bring my phone back when you're done," she reminded me, still smiling, but her eyes were kind of intense. She always made me feel like I was in trouble.

Okay," I agreed, watching her turn around. I peeked around the corner to see her walking away. She had a nice butt, except I sorta didn't want to notice.

Mom hadn't pinned up her hair that day. She wore it loose around her shoulders and she'd been doing that more and more as well. It made her look sexy, especially when she turned her head to look at me just before she went into her bedroom. Like she paused for just a second and then she was gone, but my dick was still hard. When had that happened? I frowned at the tent in my towel, blushing even more, except it was too late for that. She must have seen it.

And why would Randy call me? He hated me now. First he'd gotten mad because I loved his sister, Julie, and then he'd gotten really pissed when I broke up with her. We'd almost gotten in a fight over that, a real one. I hadn't spoken to her at all, not since that night at Bambi's house, but Randy had told me I'd broken her heart. I believed him too, since mine felt pretty mangled, but I was starting to get over it, I hoped.

"Randy? What do you want?" I asked, closing my door again.

"I'd like to speak with you," a woman said. "Tonight."

"What?" I almost dropped the phone. "Mrs. Collins?"

It was Randy's mom! Julie's mom too, obviously, and the very last person on Earth I ever expected to talk to on the phone. She hated me! Or at least, she used to not like me very much. Neither she nor my mom wanted Julie to be my girlfriend. She didn't even want me coming to their house anymore and I'd practically lived there for years. It had hurt, even though I didn't like to think about it. Why would she be calling me? Maybe because she was so darn happy that I'd broken up with Jules? Yeah. Like she wanted to bake me a cake and celebrate. Get real.

"Can you come over this evening?" she asked. "It's important, Trent."

"I don't know," I answered. My brain felt like mush. "I have to ask my mom."

"I'd rather you didn't," Mrs. Collins said. "I'd like to talk with you alone first."

"But..." I blinked, feeling really confused by that. She wanted me to keep a secret from my mom? She was a mom! Like supermom, really. I mean, she could have been on Nickelodeon, one of those perfect television moms, you know?

"Tell her you have to do something with Randy," she suggested. "A project for school."

"I can't tell her that," I protested, just because this whole deal freaked me out. I didn't want to go to her house.

"Don't tell me you've never lied to your mother, Trent," Mrs. Collins said, sounding very cool about it. Like arctic cool, not the good kind. "Seven o'clock. Alright?"

"Yes ma'am," I replied, and good manners are instinctive when you know you're in trouble.

"Good." She hung up and I stared at the phone for a second.

A few minutes later, after putting on boxers, jeans, and a t-shirt, I brought the phone back to my parent's bedroom. The door was open and I walked in without thinking. Mostly because Mrs. Collins was still on my mind.

"Here's the phooo-oh!" I froze, staring at my mom's butt. She wore only a pair of cream colored panties, like her bra, with lace around the waistband and her thighs. My mom didn't have a flat butt, believe me. She looked pretty mouth watering, actually.

"Trent!' She pretended to look surprised, turning to face me and covering her naked breasts with one arm, or at least hiding her nipples. I'd seen fake surprise before, like when Dad gave her a diamond bracelet on her last birthday, and she wasn't very good at it.

"Sorry." I dropped the phone on the bed, and left quickly.

The good thing was that I'd forgotten all about Mrs. Collins. The bad news was that all I could think about was how beautiful my mother looked and how awesome it had felt when I'd fucked her. Twice. That's when she'd started acting strangely, but not right away. I mean a couple days later, starting with odd looks. Then she started smiling at me sometimes, for no good reason. Now she was forgetting to close her bedroom door? Not likely, but I wasn't sure what it meant. I mean, I could almost guess, but my mom wouldn't flirt with me. No way!

Would she? Mom had sworn me to secrecy, and even more than that -- She'd made me promise that we'd never, ever speak of what happened. It hadn't happened, that was her plan. Maybe she'd changed her mind, but why would she do that? She loved my dad and he loved her, except I hadn't heard them having sex last Saturday. That was their date night and while I tried not to notice, it could be a little difficult to ignore, but they hadn't had sex in three weeks, so far as I could tell. Not since the night they'd come home drunk and Dad hadn't had sex with her at all, only me.

It was weird and I wanted to worry about Mrs. Collins just so I wouldn't look so guilty when we had dinner. Mom acted like everything was perfectly normal. Dad asked me about school. Every time he opened his mouth, I expected him to say, "So ... You fucked your mom, huh?" But he never did and that only made it worse for some reason.

"I made reservations today," he told Mom. "They were pretty hard to get. I think every dentist in the state's going to be there."

"Reservations for what?" I looked between the two of them.

"Convention," Dad explained. "The same one we go to every year."

"Don't worry," Mom said to me. "I asked Mrs. Keller to stay with you again."

"I'm fifteen," I reminded her. "I don't need a babysitter."

"Oh, you just might, Trent." Mom laughed lightly, and that got a funny look out of my dad. She cleared her throat. "The convention's in Reno, that's too far away to leave you by yourself."

"She's right," Dad agreed. "We're going to be gone all weekend. You'll be fine."

"When?" I asked, frowning because Mrs. Keller was about a hundred years old. The year before, she'd tried to make me go to bed at eight o'clock.

"End of the month," he replied.

"Eat your vegetables, Trent." Mom pointed at my plate with her fork. "You're too thin."

"Are you feeling okay?" Dad wondered. "You look a little warm."

"I'm fine," I said, dropping my eyes beneath my mother's barely there smile. Like a secret smile, and she'd been doing it all through dinner.

"Is everything okay between you and Lisa?" he asked, changing the subject. "I haven't heard much about her lately."

"She's okay." I shrugged, not even wanting to talk about my girl problems. I had one sitting just a couple feet away.

"Maybe Trent's found a girl he likes even better," Mom said, looking her husband right in the eye. "Someone a little older. That would be nice, don't you think?"

I'll say one thing for my mom, she didn't have a cowardly bone in her body, but that only made me all the more aware of my own weakness. If that's what feeling guilty is, I mean. That's what I suffered from. I felt guilty for what I'd done to my mom, as well as dumping Julie, and all my other girlfriends. Lisa and especially the twins, Angie and Stacy, they were all mad at me, although I hadn't seen them for a couple weeks. After having too many girlfriends, now I only had one, and I actually felt kind of lonely. That's a sucky combination too, believe me. Guilt and loneliness, I hated it.

I hadn't been to Randy's house in over a month and it felt both strange and familiar standing at the kitchen door. It hadn't occurred to me to use the front door, but at least I knocked. When we'd still been best friends, which wasn't so long ago, we never knocked on each others doors. We'd just walk in, but not anymore.

"Hi Trent." Mrs. Collins smiled at me. "Come inside. You must be freezing out there."

"No. I'm okay," I told her, but the kitchen did feel a lot warmer.

The house was surprisingly quiet too. I'd expected to see everyone, or at least Randy and his dad. I'd totally understand if Jules didn't want to see me and to tell the truth, I felt sorta glad that she wasn't standing right there.

"Take off your shoes," Mrs. Collins said. "We can talk upstairs."

"Upstairs?" I must have looked pretty confused. "Um ... Where is everybody?"

"Let me have your jacket," she said. "Sam took the kids out for ice cream and a movie. They won't be back for a few hours."

"Oh." I waited until she'd draped my coat over the back of a kitchen chair, and then followed Mrs. Collins towards the stairs. I knew that house as well as I knew my own, but I didn't have a clue what was going on.

It became very strange when she led me into Julie's room. I felt like a criminal returning to the scene of the crime. I'd had sex with the girl, taking her virginity right there on the bed. It was all made-up and pretty now with a pink bedspread and pillows, some stuffed animals and all that. Jules had a nice bedroom, like any other girl's, I suppose, but probably neater than most. Her mom was completely serious about keeping her house clean.

"Let's sit down here," she said, patting the bed beside her. "Don't be shy, Trent. I've known you since you and Randy were in second grade together."

"Yeah," I agreed, swallowing hard as I sat down on Julie's bed. I kept my hands in my lap, looking down as Mrs. Collins crossed her legs.

She wasn't cute and hot like Bambi, or cool and beautiful like my mom, but I'd never call Mrs. Collins ugly. She wasn't even plain, but probably attractive to guys her own age. I mean, I was fifteen, so most women in their thirties were just ... women. Unless they were special for some reason, like Bambi or my mom, I didn't really notice them very much. Sexually, I mean, and I'd never imagined my best friend's mom as desirable. She was like my aunt or something, except she wasn't.

And we were alone in Julie's bedroom and that had never happened before. I'd never noticed the way she smelled before either, and it was nice and flowery, but not very strong. I saw her legs too, because she crossed them right in front of me and mostly Mrs. Collins wore pants around her house. She always seemed to be wearing jeans or sweatpants, or sometimes shorts in the summer, but now she wore a brown skirt and a yellow sweater, one of those V-neck kind. She wore nylons, so her legs looked tan, except the rest of her seemed very pale, and she even wore some make-up. Reddish-brown lipstick.

She looked sort of ready for a date and I didn't want to stare at her legs, so I looked someplace else. But then I realized I could see the tops of her breasts, or at least a hint of them. I glanced at her face and she was looking at me, but we weren't saying anything. For about a minute we just sat there and it felt like an hour. My stomach started to knot up and I felt warm. I kept waiting for her to talk to me, but what if Mrs. Collins was waiting for me to say something? Maybe she knew I fucked Jules. She must have. Why else would she bring me to her daughter's bedroom? I remembered a story I'd read in school about this guy who's heart started beating so hard the police could hear it, and they knew he killed this other guy and ... My heart was pounding pretty hard!

"Are you nervous?" she finally asked.

I jumped at the sound of her voice and nodded quickly. "Yeah ... Yes ma'am. A little bit, I guess."

"You should be. Do you know why I wanted you to come over?" she wondered, and I shook my head.

I didn't trust myself enough to lie out loud. The woman definitely knew I'd fucked Julie and she probably wanted to kill me. Except why was she being so nice? And why didn't she kill me in front of my parents? They probably would have helped her. I could just imagine my mom going thermonuclear at hearing I'd been having sex with a thirteen-year-old girl. Not just any girl either, but one I'd known since she was in kindergarten. I mean, that's like saying I'd fucked my own little sister or something.

What if Julie was pregnant? Yeah, I'd been thinking about that too, only I didn't want to admit it. That was the abyss beneath my feet, as my English teacher would say, and I'd never had much use for poetry, but now I did. It had seemed like so much fun before, knocking up Julie, and she'd been trying just as hard as me! That had been her idea, except now she wasn't my girlfriend, but the baby didn't know about that -- If there even was a baby. I prayed that wasn't why I was sitting on her bed next to her mom, but if conception is a gift from heaven, like they say at church, then God probably isn't real big on people trying to return them.

"Julie's pregnant," Mrs. Collins said, watching my face closely.

"Oh." I didn't know what else to say. Maybe I should have apologized or acted really innocent and asked her who the father was ... Like Jules was the biggest slut in 7th grade, so it could be anybody's? She would have killed me for sure.

"You're not surprised, are you?" She stared at me. "Well, I can tell you that it surprised me, Trent."

"I'm sorry," I whispered. "It was, um ... an accident."

"Really?" she asked, not believing a word of that. "Don't you know where babies come from?"

"Uh..." I cleared my throat and looked at my hands.

"Julie told me the two of you had sex every chance you got," she continued. "That was the plan, right? Get her pregnant so you could be her boyfriend?"

"I guess so," I admitted, reluctantly. Jules had confessed? Ouch! "I love her."

"You broke up with her," Mrs. Collins said, and then she actually laughed. "I mean, you pretended to break up with her at first, but then..."

"We broke up for real," I said, knowing that's where she was going.

It must have been obvious, the difference in Julie before and after I'd dumped her. I hadn't been there to see it, but I knew Jules and how badly I must have hurt her, especially if she was pregnant. I'd sorta been expecting the news, but it still made me feel numb, not happy like I'd imagined while we'd made love.

"Why?" Mrs. Collins asked. "Because she's pregnant?"

"No." I shook my head. "I thought I liked another girl better."

"I see." She nodded. "That happens. Kids your age change their minds more often than they change their socks."

"I didn't change my mind about Julie," I protested, suddenly feeling angry at myself.

I'd never talked about it with anyone and I wished the woman would get mad and start yelling or something. Isn't that why I was there in the first place? I deserved it. Whatever she wanted to say or do to me, I'd deserve it and not because I'd gotten Jules pregnant, but because I'd lied to her. I'd promised to be her boyfriend forever and then I'd traded her for Bambi.

"Do you still love her?"

"Yeah." I blinked and then wiped at my eyes. I'd started crying without even realizing it. "I love her more than anything."

"And her baby?" Mrs. Collins asked. "What are you going to do about that?"

"I don't know," I sighed.

"I'm sure you don't," she agreed. "Neither does Julie, but..."

She paused and after a few seconds I looked up to see her face. She looked like Julie, or the other way around, I should say, but not as much as a lot of mothers and daughters do. They had the same pretty, brown eyes though, definitely. They were warm the way my mom's weren't, comforting, even though I knew the woman must have hated me. or at least, she disliked me a lot. That Mrs. Collins seemed reasonable, almost understanding, wasn't helping. She would explode sooner or later and the wait was becoming unbearable. I felt so tense my right leg was bouncing on my toes and I could stop it, but only for a few seconds at a time.

"Let's forget about the baby for a while," she said. "What if you could be with her again?"

"She hates me."

"Probably," Mrs. Collins said, rubbing salt into the wound.

She put her hand on my knee, the bouncing one, and I almost bolted off the bed. My leg stopped twitching and I rubbed my sweaty hands together, staring at her fingers. She didn't do anything else and she probably found my nervousness annoying, but her gentle, motherly touch wasn't going to make me feel better. Whatever sort of punishment this was, I couldn't take it anymore. I opened my mouth intending to tell her I had to go home.

"I could let you try and make-up with her."

"You would?" I lifted my head quickly. "You'd let me be her boyfriend?"

"I said I could do that, but I'd want something in return."

"What?" I wondered, feeling my heart surge, although it had no good reason to do so. "I'll do anything you want."

"It would have to be our secret." She squeezed me knee, punctuating her seriousness.

"Okay."

"The biggest secret of your life, Trent." Mrs. Collins stared into my eyes and I didn't flinch. I already had the biggest secret of my life, nothing she could say would ever top the fact that I'd fucked my mom.

"I won't tell anyone anything, I swear."

I had no idea what she could possibly want, or why it would have to be a secret. If it meant I could be with Julie, that's all that mattered. I could make-up with her, I just needed a chance. Bambi had tricked me, like seduced me or whatever. I hadn't been able to think because she'd been so busy having sex with me, but now I knew the difference. Sex wasn't the same thing as love, they weren't even close, except when I was with Jules. I really hoped Mrs. Collins wasn't going to ask me to kill somebody. I mean, obviously she wouldn't, but that was the only big secret thing I could think of, and only because as a little kid I'd watched way too many movies I probably shouldn't have.

Yeah, I was being kind of stupid, but I felt like somebody had put my emotions in a blender. I had all of them mixed up inside me.

"What, um..." I licked my lips. "What do you want me to do, Mrs. Collins?"

"Make me pregnant," she said. "I want a baby."

"What?" I stared at her with my eyes wide and mouth open. That didn't make any sense at all, but nothing else had made much sense either.

"We've been trying for six months," she explained. "My husband's sperm count is so low ... We were going to try artificial insemination, but it's expensive."

"Okay." I shrugged, not having a clue about what I should say.

"But since you knocked up Julie," she said with a smile, "you could knock me up too. Our babies would be close to the same age, enough so most people wouldn't know the difference, and they'd at least share the same father."

"Uhhh ... Why?" I asked. "I mean, you're married."

"Let me worry about that," Mrs. Collins said. "I'm close to the middle of my cycle. We'll have sex everyday this week, before and after you go to school."

"Okay."

"If I don't get pregnant," she warned me, "the deal is off. Next month will be too late. Knock me up and as soon as I know for sure, you can talk to Julie again."

"What's wrong with next month?" I wondered. It didn't make a lot of sense to me.

"Julie's less than a month pregnant and I want our due dates as close as possible," she said. "I want people to think I'm having twins."

"But people are going to see her," I protested. "She has to go to school and..."

"I'll home school her," Mrs. Collins told me, but it all sounded pretty crazy to me. How could she hide her pregnant daughter? Bambi had sent hers all the way to Texas and...

"You're not going to send her away," I said. "Are you?"

"Julie?" She smiled at the idea. "No. Of course not, but she is going to be grounded for the next nine months."

"Really?" I almost laughed, but the woman sounded serious.

"Word will get out," she admitted. "It always does, but I'm less worried about her reputation than her happiness."

"I guess so," I sighed, and sometimes mothers had their own logic about stuff.

I didn't even pretend to understand what she meant. If that was true, why couldn't Jules be my girlfriend before? And if Mrs. Collins just wanted a baby, well ... She was getting one already. I mean, she could take care of her daughter's baby and raise it as her own. But probably it's not the same, since she wouldn't actually get to be pregnant and maybe that's what she wanted, but it all flew way over my head. I was still trying to wrap my brain around the idea that she wanted me to fuck her.

"So..." Mrs. Collins drew a deep breath. "Do we have a deal, Trent?"

"Alright." I nodded, feeling very much like the fifteen-year-old boy I was. "Yeah, uh ... It's a deal. Are we going to, um ... You know..."

"Make a baby?" She cocked her head, teasing me as I felt my face warming. "Yes. We're going to start right now. Take off your clothes."

"Some ground rules first," she said, standing in her blue panties and matching bra.

I lay naked on Julie's bed, but my cock wasn't very hard yet. I felt too nervous, frightened, self-conscious, guilty -- Take your pick. I couldn't even bring myself to play with my dick and it just lay there beneath the woman's thin, smiling gaze.

"Firstly, I'm Mrs. Collins to you," she said. "Not Carol or any silly pet names you might think of ... I'm Mrs. Collins."