Behind Closed Blinds

First things first, this chapter and the next do NOT portray sexual intercourse. Folks who have been kind enough to keep up with this series so far (and wait patiently for the more recent instalments) will no doubt be more used to its majorly sexual nature. It's been pretty straightforward so far. I think some might agree with the term "two-dimensional."

The following two chapters I wrote purely for the sake of better storytelling and later emotional payoff. They don't have that heavily sexual theme, which I wanted to be more spontaneous, well-earned, and ending as unexpectedly as a Friday 13th sequel.

The series was set to end by Chapter 6. I recently lost all my work, a year's worth, near a hundred word documents of stories that I had slowly built up until I was ready to start flinging them at you thick and fast. How life laughs at our plans.

Anyway, here it comes, written in a couple hours, raw and unedited.

1

Unaware of the time I awoke to a familiar digital ping. The rudely insistent vibration of a text message followed from the sideboard. I hadn't paid attention to the time before falling back asleep with Sara snuggled tightly into my side. I could now hear her tinkering around in the bathroom cabinet, no doubt with her eyebrow pencils, eyeliners, and mascaras. I dreaded the day being late and so opened my eyes to the bright day beyond the bedroom blinds with a groan, and manoeuvred my feet out onto the floor.

Phone already forgotten, I stood up and stretched, reaching for the ceiling with the tips of my fingers, hands and feet paired close together, and made fists of both, grimacing at the delicious crackle and creak of recovered muscles and rested joints. On my way around to the door beside my mother's side of the bed, I caught the time -- 10:38am, not so awful.

'Mmm-hmm, good morning again,' she purred as my arms snaked around her at the bathroom sink. She was already dressed, casual but sexy as hell in a tight pair of faded jeans that highlighted her ample but heart-shaped butt, and a tight black bodysuit that showcased her impressive front shelf with a sheer mesh preview.

From behind her I continued to just hold her, pressing myself against her, and with my cheek to hers we smiled at each other in the mirror. She smelled like citrus and peaches. I inhaled deeply, savoured her, and then with a playful swat I smacked her lightly on the bum and turned to start up the shower.

'You look fantastic, mum,' I complimented. 'Out to impress?'

'Oh you know, lunch date with the MILF next door,' mum teased. 'Gossip to catch up on,' she teased further when I didn't answer. 'I don't know if you've heard, but I'm planning to set her up with this sweet young thing...'

The shower on, I drew the splash guard out and stepped in under the warm water, groggy and yet grinning from ear to ear. As far as her teasing had gone so far, there was not much to it. It was decided already to let it happen by itself, but not without a good hard push from mum's end.

'Oh yeah?' I asked playfully, lathering a handful of shower gel between both hands before going straight for my ripening armpits. All the while she had plonked down the toilet seat and now sat there taking me all in. 'Who's that then? Do I know him?'

Sara seemed for a moment more content with just watching. And why not? There was no doubt in my mind what she saw in this shameless late morning display -- a fit and virile twenty-nine year old toy-boy dripping wet from head to toe, soap suds and bubbles oozing everywhere, adhering to every visible muscle on his torso.

All too aware I reached for the shower gel bottle once more, lathered up, and slowly began to soap up my tender and slightly swollen genitals, making a steamy show of it for her. Mum was now struggling to snap out of it, her eyes fixated as I lathered the length of my cock and then pulled back along the shaft to really get under the skin with one hand. I freed one hand up then to gently massage my testicles, before removing the shower head from its brace to rinse off.

'He's a real stud muffin,' Sara said after a lengthy absence from reality. At that I snickered before taking another dollop of shower gel and vigorously scrubbing my face. Temporarily blinded, I heard her stand up, open the bathroom cabinet, and replace her makeup box on the lower shelf, before sitting back down again.

'Enjoying the show, mum?' I asked when she didn't continue to talk to me. Eyes shut tight, I threw my face under the cascading warm water and rinsed again before applying another handful of gel between my buttocks.

'Mmm-hmm,' was all I got out of her at that point. 'Just sitting here and wondering if she's as much the sharing kind as I am,' she added, now chuckling to herself.

'Seriously for a moment though,' I reluctantly snuck in, opening my stinging eyes to meet hers, 'this isn't going too fast is it? You don't think she'll crap out?'

My mother was sat smirking at me through the steamy splash-studded window of the shower screen. I was too preoccupied right then to realise that she was watching my cock grow to a semi-erection as the fingers of one soapy hand swirled around the smooth sensitive perimeter of my rectum. Hell, I was too preoccupied receiving pleasure from doing that to myself to realise I was doing it in front of her.

Sara shook her head with maybe too much confidence. 'This isn't something to be rushed, is it? Maybe I've been too eager to make it happen. But...'

Again, I unhooked the shower head and proceeded to rinse off, enjoying the sensation of the water jets hitting my back door just the way I liked it. I turned around and gave her a head-on view of my soaked posterior, and threw in a playful wiggle.

'Butt???'

'A very nice butt indeed,' mum chimed in.

'But?'

'But it is going to happen,' she replied. 'Just trust nature to take it's course. And trust your mother.'

'I fully trust my mother,' I assured her, now fully rinsed off. I turned off the shower and stepped out onto the foot towel I had placed on the floor. Eager to meet me, she stood, bath towel already open and inviting. I stepped but a foot into her arms and accepted it around my shoulders.

'Careful or you'll have me dripping as well,' she warned.

'Don't worry, I won't ruin your makeup,' I said through a faceful of towel as I began to dry myself off. Dryly she chuckled to herself again. I realised then, that wasn't what she'd meant. Grinning I shook off my bath towel, braced her by the shoulders and planted a wet kiss on her lips.

'Brush your teeth, darling,' my mother said before finally leaving.

2

Feeling fresh from my teeth to my toes I wandered naked through the first floor of the house and into my old bedroom. Yes, my mother and I now slept together, but it wasn't even a question that my belongings remain where they always had.

Bare bones, we were happily engaged in a consensual adult sexual relationship. There didn't need to be a conversation about such details. We were smart enough to avoid building on any telltale signs that might have been more obvious to any outsiders than we might comfortably have reason to comprehend.

I kept my clothes there, and all other belongings. And besides, my mother's wardrobe was ample enough that adding my own would only result in her moving her own things into my room to compensate.

That day I dressed down in jeans and a brown plaid flannel shirt, sleeves rolled to three-quarter length to negotiate the undecided weather. Whereas the sun was coming on strong lately, there was a chill coming off the river.

When I went back to our bedroom to grab my phone and check my messages, that last thought suddenly seemed quite ironic.

"Steven I'd like you to drop by my office, I think there are a few things we need to talk about," was the sum of it. I'd ditched the old bastard's number weeks ago. It seemed only a matter of equal treatment ever since he'd done a number on me. It was the least I could have done.

The old bastard in question being Carol's dad, who had forced me out of my job after SHE had cheated on ME!

Was it panic I was suddenly feeling? I could sense my anger flaring. My breaths were too shallow and slow one moment and then both rapid and deep the next, inconsistent and unhelpful as my stomach tied itself in knots and my mind filled with a multitude of nasty things that I wanted to scream at him. I felt nauseous. My mouth was suddenly dry, tasted metallic.

'Derek?' I texted back. 'Anything you think you have a right to say to me you can say it in text. It'll probably all get the same two-word response.'

I hit send and suddenly wanted to throw my phone at the open window. Instead I tightened my fist around it and fought internally to think of something unrelated.

'Sideline the bastard, just like he did to you,' I thought to myself, and actually earned myself a hint of satisfaction. And then-

Ping!

Derek, again! There was another message from an unknown number, a different number, but for the time being I ignored It in case this once-suppressed nastiness might spill over and start ruining everything else.

"I probably deserve it too," Derek's follow-up read. I had to read it twice to be sure I wasn't seeing things. "But I mean it. Come by the office when you're free, I'll let you say what you have to say, but we should talk."

Introducing Derek Stephenson, ladies and gentlemen. Sixty years old, father of five, solicitor and cold, calculating son of a bitch. For the record I had tried hard to like Derek beyond empty platitudes, beyond brevity, and beyond obligation. For a man whose rich bread and butter was won by dutifully caring for the protection of others, he showed all the emotional intellect of a vulture.

It pained me to no end that, despite gaining their blessing in getting engaged to their second youngest daughter, that both Derek and his wife Margot somehow felt otherwise and ether unable or else unwilling to open up beyond shallow social etiquette and strained platitudes. Affection was not their thing, I had accepted that as being the way some folks just are.

I had laid it down to being part generational and part upbringing. Both typically took after their Boomer parents. Margot was a dying breed, a dutiful housewife whose only links to the outside world were her husband's armchair politics, the BBC, and the gossip of her mostly absent Catholic sisters. Derek on the other hand had to be in control of everything to justify his place in life. For Derek, sentimentality was for stiff silences, which he bought from his own grown-up children with cold hard cash. And for that matter, love did not seem to come into it at all. At least I hadn't any evidence to support him being a soft old shit on the inside.

I had wanted to like him, I had worked hard to find ways to even instil a little pride in him. Simply put, he'd already been through the wringer with three of his daughters married. Been there, done that, I need employees more than I need sons in law.

Margot did not think for herself. She was a mouse -- as mortified at the idea of a future son-in-law trying to be friends with her as she was the time her middle child Charlotte had saved up her father's bribes to pay for a boob job.

Of course, back then, before the stress of working for an old man impossible to please, and then suspecting that my fiancee was not the woman I thought her to be, it had all been a comedy of errors to me. I had thought the both of us, Carol and I, were in on the joke.

As it happened, I was the only one not in on the joke. The punchline being that her entire dysfunctional family could not have cared less even if they'd tried.

And now the son of a bitch who'd dealt the so-called coup de grace, putting me out of their cheating daughter's misery, was asking me what exactly?

My mind was a mist of red -- anger, confusion, uncertainty... guilt?

I bet right there and then my own left testicle that this was more about Carol than it was about him, which as you'd know if you knew Derek, was a hell of a gamble. Derek had never attempted to buy my silence in the past, unlike with his five daughters. But he had been under the impression by the end that he had negotiated ownership of my soul.

The question was: Was I about to allow myself to be hooked and reeled in to whatever this was, just so that I could prove myself right?

Well, I had a lot of time on my hands and a mean streak to lay to rest. A mean streak that I didn't believe belonged to me, that had no place in my heart, and needed to be returned to its rightful owners.

So I asked myself another question: If I went down this road, would I be tempted with revenge?

I felt nothing upon wondering such a thing. No thought came to me. I was either stalling, or this whole thing rearing its ugly head from out of nowhere once again had rendered me dumb.

'Sure, I'll drop by,' I quickly texted, aware enough that my fingertips were doing the thinking for me by that point. 'I can be there at five.'

"If you must," came the delayed response. As I had waited, I perused the message from the other unknown number. The dolt that I was, it came to me that my mother had texted me Elaine's number, but I hadn't yet saved it to my contacts list.

Wanly I had smiled at the contents of the message, but I was too troubled now to give it the attention it deserved.

"I'll let Margot know I'll be home later than usual," came the message that broke the more favourable reverie of the two. So that was that. I really was about to shove my head into the lion's mouth and dare it to bite back. And for all the games played in the past, I was going to make sure I deserved it.

3

Noon struck and I was filled with something I didn't like. My chest felt inflated in a way that made it hard to breathe. I wasn't holding in my breath and yet I felt full of air to the point of straining, like a football fit for a hard kicking.

One moment I had been righteous to the point of cocky. Now I was beginning to feel the dread of walking into something that I had every right to win, but not the qualifications to ensure that I would.

I stood in the hallway just at the porch door, beyond which the sun continued to shine, and I stared myself down in the mirror opposite the coat rack. 'Ever the stoic,' I quietly berated myself, and out of the grimness of my fighting scowl, I resigned with a deep sigh and smiled at myself.

Phone in hand once again, I called my mother. Dial tone gave way to the sounds of a busy café -- a dozen background conversations from which the unmistakeable music of teaspoons against china tinkered and chimed.

'Hello love, is everything okay?' Sara asked and her soothing voice came through as musical as the throng taking place beyond.

'Hi mum, everything's fine here,' I replied more out of obligation than anything. More enthusiastically I asked, 'how's your date with the hot MILF next door?'

'Mmmmhh, very promising,' she near moaned in response. 'You know how these cream teas can be -- sweet lips, sticky fingers, slippery tongues!'

I began to laugh, but not as loud as my mother. Reflexively I strained an ear to hear for a reaction from Elaine, but couldn't make one out. 'Mum, I got a text from work. I have to pop out over the water...'

After a sudden pause once my words had set in, mum's voice came back more serious in tone. 'Oh? What about?'

'Wasn't very clear, I'm afraid,' I replied, still trying to sound positive. 'But, err... let's say if I were to twist off Derek's jam jar-shaped head and throw it into the river, would you still wait for me to get out of prison?'

A precursor to admonishment, her warning tone said everything when all else she did was utter my name. 'Steven?!'

'I'm just going to go talk to him,' I promised. 'And some of the choice words I've got in store for him will decide whether or not he's capable of human emotion. That's all!'

'Darling, is this really a good idea?'

'Mum, it's his idea not mine, so probably not. I promise, I'm just going to go and see what he has to say. And chances are I'll laugh in his face, but I feel like I really need to do this.'

Another pause came. More background muttering and interpretive crockery percussion.

'Just don't incriminate yourself.'

'Love you, mum,' I chirped. 'Please let Elaine know I have her text and I'll reply when I can.'

'She knows,' mum replied simply. And with that, 'love you too, baby!'

In the following silence I slipped my phone into the back pocket of my jeans, checked for my wallet in my right pocket, and reached for the door.

4

"I wonder why Sara's looking flushed and smiling ear to ear this morning," read Elaine's text message, signed with a wink emoji and three X's.

I'd chosen to take the trains to meet Carol's dad at the office. On the train into the city centre underground I had plugged my ears and listened to a few songs to keep the mood light. From there the next train took me across the river, and once the signal came back, I received another message.

Thinking to myself that Derek had best not have backed down before he got more than he might have bargained for, I felt more than relief when I was met with a picture message from mum.

I felt a rush of southern blood as my eyes feasted on the both of them posing for a selfie at Emily's Patisserie -- mum smiling up at the camera lens and most likely aware that she was threatening to bust out of the mesh fortified plunging neckline of her bodysuit.

Elaine had done something different with her hair since the last time we had met. Her lush salt and pepper hair was as long as it was ever, and still wore it with a side-part, but now with the right side of her head shorn close, as was the growing trend amongst artistic types, punks, and girls who either batted for the same team, or both.

I found myself fixated on her, wondering had she done it to hint at her secret side, or had one of her daughters done it for her. A means of bonding, trying something new, maybe.

She sported an intricate and larger than life tattoo of a rose across the right side of her neck, adorned with thorns and other more subtle patterns, which extended from the trap of her shoulder and ended just beneath her earlobe. Both that and the tattoo complimented each other greatly, I thought.

As I recall she'd had that tattoo maybe ten years, and that she'd had done after accompanying her youngest daughter Anna to her own first tattoo appointment. It left me wondering if nobody other than my mother and I knew about her bisexuality.

I had known Anna to a fair degree. Being next door neighbours doesn't always ensure close relationships, even if you're on good terms with their parents. I guess we all just go about our own lives and see what luck brings us, but I had never had a bad impression of Anna. She was just a girl who kept herself to herself, and otherwise didn't hang around home often.

What if, I wondered, Anna knew about her mother? Maybe the door swung both ways? Maybe Elaine had such a close bond with her daughter that embracing such a thing as a young girl's sexual orientation had led to Elaine herself going down that same path later on.

Maybe I was just hyper-sexed, obsessed with the act so much that I saw the potential in everything. But my mother and Elaine hugging cheek to cheek and smiling for their selfie spoke volumes of things that were definitely no figment of the imagination.

I was inspired. I opened up Elaine's earlier message and, after adding her to my contacts, I replied: 'Love the photo, love what you've done with your hair. Mum's smile is still a mile wide. Might be wondering how much cream she can get in her all in a day lol.'

"LOL."

'Tell me I'm wrong lol.'

"Thanks for the compliment honey. Do you really think so? Anna did it for me."

What can I say? Sometimes a wild guess is worth as much as a well-informed one.