The woman is middle-aged. Forty-five, for those of you who can't relate to a character unless you have the exact number of times the earth has gone round the sun during their existence. She has wavy blonde hair, haunting blue eyes, and a face that most would describe as attractive, if not gorgeous. In a younger woman her looks might have been described as cute. On a woman her age, her face looks caring, friendly, even matronly. Her skin is smooth and pale, and she is always reminding herself that she needs to get a tan. She worries too much. In truth, her pale complexion completes the impression of an ordinary mom, and perhaps this is the reason I choose her.
The rest of her body helps, too. Her arms are slender and her sizeable breasts have only just begun to sag, a sight which gives her a pang every time she is naked in front of the mirror before going on one of her many fruitless dates, thought she knows she should be proud of her breasts. In her low-cut sweater and her pencil skirt -- her standard attire when she goes to the retail firm which employs her as a human resources executive, she looks particularly fetching.
Maybe this is why so many of her dates are with middle-aged men in her firm who see a forty-five year old single mom, are attracted to her looks and personable demeanor, and assume such a woman must be desperate. They are partly right, but Carol is not an easy woman to please. Perhaps one shouldn't blame her. Before a plane crash killed him seven years ago, she was married to a man who was, in all senses of the word, perfect. Handsome, intelligent and caring, her husband had met her when she was when she was twenty-three and he was twenty-seven, and the proverbial sparks had indeed flown. Within the year they were married, and the thirteen years that followed were bright and cheerful, the source of tons of happy memories, and an adorable baby boy.
She longs for the intoxicating mix of romantic bliss and satisfying companionship her marriage had afforded her, but finds that none of the men she dates can match up to Jason, her deceased spouse. Most of them are too self-absorbed for her liking; almost all are careworn and almost none have anything resembling a personality. Her easy charm wins her many people she can hang out with, but the only person whose company brings her anything resembling intimacy is her son, Peter.
At nineteen, Peter is a smart and ambitious young man who has just completed his first year at college, where he is majoring in economics. The last two weeks have been a relief for Carol -- she finally has her baby boy back with her after a whole year. Sadly, even though Peter is very close to her, much closer than most sons are to their mothers, his raging hormones seem to pull him away from his mother towards his girlfriend, with whom he has spent much of the two weeks he has been back at home.
"Mom, I'm going out." Peter bends down and kisses his mother on the cheek from behind the sofa she is curled up on. His gaze inadvertently falls on her breasts, which are visible underneath the loose blouse she is wearing, but he checks himself and averts his eyes.
"Bye, honey. Be safe." Carol turns her head and kisses him on his chin, a gesture she makes when she is feeling especially affectionate. She gazes up at her handsome son, pats his cheeks once and ruffles his hair, this last gesture evoking a wince on Peter's part as his carefully engineered hairstyle is disturbed by this display of maternal affection.
"I will. And you have fun too. You should go out on a date or something. A pretty lady like you shouldn't be sitting home watching TV."
"That's very kind of you, Pete, but your mother is an old woman now."
"No! Forty-five is not old! And anyway, what happened to that guy you went out with last weekend?"
Carol shrugged.
"That's okay. Dump 'em if you don't like 'em."
Carol smiled. "Don't flatter me so much. It makes me nervous. Makes me think you're softening me up so I'm not angry the next time you do something wild."
"Hey, it's just me and Jenny. We're two well-behaved teenagers. We're not gonna do anything wild." There is a trace of satire there that Carol chooses to ignore.
"Good. Now leave your mom alone."
"Bye. I'll be back by midnight, I promise."
As Peter exits the apartment he moved into with his mother shortly after his father's tragic death, he feels a slight pang of guilt. His mother needs his company, even though her fear of upsetting him prevents her from saying it. He resolves for the umpteenth time to spend more time with the woman who invested so much into raising him even after he was left fatherless, trying her best to shield him from the shock of losing one parent by working as hard as two parents.
Determined that her son and she would continue to enjoy the lifestyle they always had, she worked clocked sixty-hour weeks at work while attending every PTA meeting, and each of her son's debates and football matches. Moving into a smaller apartment had been prompted more by convenience and a desperate need to get away from the presence of her dead husband which lingered all through their former residence, than by economy.
But Peter is nineteen, and he has needs. Jenny is a girl he met shortly before leaving for college, and they decided to continue their relationship even though they knew they would be a thousand miles away from each other in their respective colleges. Now that he is home, a single hour spent not having sex with this beautiful, witty girl is an hour wasted. His thoughts of his mother are replaced with thoughts of a more lascivious nature as he heads for his girlfriend's house, where she is to be alone for the whole of next month, owing to her asshole parents deciding to take a second honeymoon at about the same time their daughter came home from college for the first time.
Her parents' callousness irks Jenny, and Peter is vocal in voicing his agreement while inwardly feeling intensely grateful to his girlfriends' parents for their absence. It is thanks to them that he has an empty house and a lonely girlfriend at his disposal, and he has been making the most of his little windfall.
Jenny hugs him at her door, her pert breasts pressing against his, and kisses him lightly on the lips. Peter can feel her nipples through her t-shirt. Jenny is wearing no bra, usually a sign that she is eager for sex. At five feet seven inches, Jenny is only a couple of inches taller than him, and her lithe and slender body complements her slightly oval face.