Be warned - this story is fairly long. I hope it gives you something to read over the holiday.
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Mom and Jen were already home when I arrived late from college. I had taken the Greyhound, trying to save money, but traffic had been heavy outside Washington and I arrived late. As soon as I walked through the door they started up. Where had I been? Why was I so late? Didn't I know we were supposed to be on the road by now?
I grinned and shrugged and said take it easy and took the keys to the SUV off Mom, kissed her on the cheek, kissed my sister on the cheek and said, "Don't worry. I packed for the trip. I've got everything I need and I'm ready to go."
"Now?" Mom said, surprised.
"You said we need to be on the way. Are you ready or not?"
Mom nodded and we went out to the Jeep and I backed out from the drive and turned right, to the south, which was, I thought, a good omen. It was two weeks into December and in Columbus, Ohio, a light snow was falling and the temperature had been below freezing for weeks. We had a fourteen hour drive ahead of us even if we didn't stop. It was 4 p.m. on a gray Sunday afternoon and we planned to drive overnight and into the next day, all the way to Pensacola, FLA, where my Mom's best friend Debbi and her husband Jack and daughter Bella would be waiting for us on their catamaran.
I went to college in Washington, my sister in Baltimore, and even though we were less than an hour apart we only ever saw each other when we came home. That was a little more often than it used to be since Dad died in the Spring of the year before. Neither of us liked to think of Mom sitting at home on her own so we tried to get back every chance we could.
She seemed to be coming out of it now. For a while she did little but stare at the wall. Then came bouts of crying. Six months in she had an unaturally bouyant mood but that was just a rebound, and after nine months she was quiet and withdrawn again. But over the summer she seemed like she was coming to terms with it, and when Jen and I had spoken earlier in the week we both hoped this vacation might be a turning point.
It had been four years since Mom had seen Debbi and Jack. When Dad was alive we used to meet up almost every year. They had been best friends in college, the two girls and two men sharing form rooms, getting together and forming a lifelong bond. We used to go out to visit at least once a year, down to Florida where the heat melted the ice out of our northern bones.
Then Dad got ill, and the illness took a long slow toll on him before the end. None of us had felt much like a vacation. I was the eldest and had gone to college a year before my sister. She was eighteen months younger, but the way our birthdays worked out only a year behind in school. I had been away when Dad died. Jen had been at home, and I knew that had been a tough time on her.
Now, maybe some sun and warmth was going to do us all good.
As I turned onto I-70, which would take us all the way to Louisville where we planned to stop for a late dinner, I said, "Pick some tunes, Mom. You can even choose something for yourself."
She was sitting in back, but still managed to lean over and punch me on the back of my shoulder.
"Hands off the driver," I said.
After a couple of minutes she passed a CD over and Jen slipped it into the slot on the dash and a moment later the unmistakable opening rif started and a southern voice said "Turn it up" as Sweet Home Alabama chugged out. I looked across at Jen and she rolled her eyes, but we both liked the song and from the back Mom said, "You two just shut up and let an old woman wallow in nostalgia."
Up front we both laughed. It was not as if Mom was that old. She had married Dad young, had me when she was barely eighteen, then Jen arrived before she was twenty. Now her next birthday would take her into her forties. That had been the other topic of conversation between Jen and me on the phone: how could we get Mom dating again. Neither of us knew how to raise the subject, and we had batted it between us for twenty minutes without coming up with any answers.
I had tried raising the subject last time I was home, just me, Jen was still in Baltimore but I had managed a long weekend and taken the bus back to Columbus. I had steered the conversation, not very subtly, around to whether she had any men friends yet.
We had been standing at the sink washing our plates after dinner. Mom had taken her soapy hands out of the water and put her arms around me. She stood about five-five to my six-two and her head came somewhere on my chest.
"Why would I want to date, Will?" she muttered against my shirt. "You're my man now. I don't need anyone else."
I could feel the way her breasts flattened against my belly, the stiff edges along the undersides of her bra sticking into me. Her head was turned sideways against my chest, the top of her head under my chin. I could smell the scent of her shampoo and the scent of her and grew suddenly uncomfortable as I felt my cock begin to thicken in my pants. She was hugging me so tight I couldn't turn to one side or she would know something was up, but I didn't know if she would be able to feel my response if we stayed this close, so I concentrated on thinking about something else, anything else, and prayed my body didn't betray me.
It was not as if I had thought about Mom that way before. Well... not often, anyway. She had always been hot, slim and pretty and bright and when teenage hormones kicked in she was the available fantasy figure; but it had always felt kind of wrong, and kind of exactly like a fantasy, something that was never going to happen. I had had the same thoughts about Jen too when she started to blossom, with the same attitude. Nice to look at, bad to touch.
I let Mom pull against me, making no move to disentangle myself and eventually she drew away and looked up at me, her wet hands on my arms leaving my shirtsleeves damp.
I knew she was waiting for a kiss. We kissed a lot: Mom, Jen, me. Even Dad when he had been around, though he would not kiss me, but there were always a plenty of hugs. I knew if Mom glanced down she was bound to see the bulge in the front of my pants so I leaned over and popped a little kiss on her cheek.
She stayed where she was and pouted.
I waited a moment to see if she was joking, then knew she wasn't so went back down and kissed her lightly on the lips.
"Better," she said, smiling now. "You know you're not allowed to stop kissing your Mom, however old you get."
"OK, OK," I said, picking up the drying cloth.
~~~
We stopped just the other side of Louisville for dinner. The sun had gone an hour before and we found a diner off the interstate in Sheperdsville. We were back on the road inside the hour and Jen took over behind the wheel. Mom changed places and sat beside her in front, and I stretched across the back seats and tried to catch some sleep. I didn't expect to, but after a while listening to the tires on the road everything drifted away and the next thing I knew I was suddenly woken by silence and sat up to see we had pulled into an all night truck stop.
"Wha's time?" I mumbled.
"Just after one," Jen whispered. "Mom's gone to sleep and I'm about to so I need to change places."
"S'cool," I said. "Give me a minute to come round. And I need to pee."
"That's why I stopped here. I've already been."
