This story jumps back and forth between two characters' point of view. To make it easier to follow, whenever the PoV shifts, I put the characters name in bold. All characters are over 18 and everything is fictional. Hope you enjoy!
Victoria
I'm probably the luckiest woman alive. I just turned 40, but I still have my health and healthy living has kept me in the same shape as I was when I was 20. I have a nice home in the suburbs. My husband is a wonderful man who loves me dearly and takes good care of our daughter and me. He even uses my full name, Victoria. I don't mind when people call me Vicky, but I prefer Victoria.
Mandy, my baby girl, has grown into a beautiful, brilliant, self-reliant and kind woman. She's 19 now, and living at home while she goes to college. She's majoring in aerospace engineering. Yeah, my baby girl's going to be a rocket scientist.
Of course, not everything is perfect. Not long after Mandy turned 18, we hit a rough patch that threatened to tear us apart. If I'm honest, it was pretty much all my fault. Mandy opened up to me, revealed some things she had kept secret and I, well, I didn't handle it terribly well.
Mandy came home from a date one night and ran straight to her bedroom. That didn't bode well, so I went to check on her. My heart sank when I heard my baby girl weeping through the door. She had been dating this girl for a few months, since shortly after her eighteenth birthday. The girl seemed really sweet, so I held out some hope that my baby's first major heartbreak wasn't too terrible a betrayal.
I knocked lightly, then opened her door. We had a family policy that if you need privacy or just want to be left alone, you lock your door. Otherwise a closed door just gets a knock before entering. I sat down on the bed and just held my baby girl close, letting her cry on my shoulder. Mandy would talk when she was ready. After a while, I'm not sure how long, Mandy looked up at me and said, "Mommy, Nichole and I broke up."
I kissed her forehead and stroked her hair. "I'm so sorry, baby. You want to talk about it?"
She paused; I think she was looking for the words to express herself. Finally she let loose a torrent of words, "Nichole's amazing and I absolutely adore her. I'm not in love with her, though. She's fantastic and anyone would be super lucky to have her, and I know I'm stupid for not being able to be happy with her. I'm in love with someone else, though. Have been for a long time. When I met Nichole, I thought I'd be able to get over the other woman and be happy. I couldn't, though, and it wasn't fair to her, and it wasn't fair to me, and now I've lost her and I know that the woman I love will never love me, not like that, and it just hurts so bad, Mommy."
"Baby, how could anyone not love you to bits? You're gorgeous, you're funny, you're kind and you're brilliant! You're literally perfect in every single way. Have you told this mystery woman how you feel?"
"No, she's an older woman and, um, she's married. I think she's unhappy because her husband's not fulfilling her needs, though."
My daughter wanted to have an affair with a married woman. For the first time in her life, I was disappointed, and I'm afraid I didn't do a good job of hiding it. I pulled away from my daughter and said, "You want to have an affair with a married woman? Wreck her marriage?! I raised you better than that."
"No, Mommy! I don't want to wreck her marriage. Her husband's a wonderful man and I'd never intentionally hurt him. It's just that I love her so much and I want her to be happy."
"I hate the thoughts of you getting a reputation as a homewrecker, and you certainly deserve better than being someone's side-piece, but if you can't move on otherwise, you should tell this woman. Hopefully she'll tell you she's flattered, but not interested." Then I got up and left my baby girl crying.
Mandy
I had just broken up with my girlfriend and I managed to disappoint my Mom. I had never seen disappointment in Mom's eyes when she looked at me, and seeing that was what hurt the most. My world was ending, and I wished I could just lie down and die. Instead, I just sat there, my heart aching, thinking I might throw up as a river of tears carried mascara to deposit on my face.
"Just tell the woman how you feel." Easy for her to say. Hell, it would've been easy to do if "the woman" was just some random woman and there weren't really any repercussions. What do you do, though, when the woman that you love is your Mother? If I tell her, not only does the woman that I love confirm that she doesn't feel the same, but now Mom thinks I'm some kind of weirdo perv. And worse, she'd probably tell Dad, and then he'd not only think I'm a weirdo perv, he'd hate me because he'd think I was trying to steal his wife. So I just sat there and cried. Then I laid down and cried and cried myself to sleep.
Over the next few days, I realized that Mom was right. She usually was. Now I just had to figure out how the Hell to initiate that discussion. There was always the direct approach, but somehow I didn't feel like, "Hey Mom, I really love you. Can I please eat your pussy? Pretty please?" would go over well.
The next Saturday, Dad was going golfing with his buddies. It was now or never. "Mom? Do you have a moment? Can we talk?"
"Of course, baby. I'm sorry for how our last chat went. I want you to know that I love you, and will always love you, no matter what."
"I love you too, Mom. That's what I wanted to talk to you about." Mom looked confused. "The older woman, the married woman, the woman that I love is you. It's always been you. You were the woman who made me realize that I'm a lesbian. No one has ever made me feel the way you do."
Mom sat and stared at me in silence, processing what I had just revealed. Then Mom erupted, "Have you lost your mind?! I'm your Mother! That's incest! That's so wrong!" It was out. I was a sicko perv who wanted to fuck her mother and Mom knew it and was disgusted. I ran up to my room and we avoided each other for days after. Mom couldn't bear to see me, and I fully understood. I knew it was probably just a matter of time until Mom kicked me out of the house; I just hoped I could crash with one of my friends.
Victoria
I fucked up royally. My baby girl shared with me a secret that had really been bothering her and I handled it about as badly as anyone possibly could. I was shocked and responded harshly, breaking my baby's heart. I followed her up to her room to apologize; I needed her to know how sorry I was and that I loved her. I knocked, then tried the door. It was locked. She didn't come down again that day.
The next morning, I was relieved to see Mandy's door was open. That relief quickly turned to panic when I found that she wasn't downstairs. I gave everything I had to claw together a veneer of calm before asking my husband, "John, have you seen Mandy?"
"Yeah, she just went out for a run. What's wrong, Victoria?"