Note: This continues the story begun in "Mom and I Get Even"...
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Breakfast the next morning was the last big meal Mom had planned before Thanksgiving, as we usually ate light for lunch and dinner the day before. She made Eggs Hollandaise, hash browns, wheat toast with jam and coffee.
It was the smell of the coffee brewing reaching my bedroom that woke Angie and me. We shared a quick shower, washing each other amid the occasional caress.
We offered our help when we got down to the kitchen, but Mom was nearly done. Angie and I poured ourselves coffee. Dad came over from his workspace in the living room when the food was done.
Despite the revolution of the day before, we kept conversation over breakfast intentionally light.
Angie needed to head home after breakfast. She gave Dad and I long hugs and Mom an even longer one, followed by a kiss. "Thank you," I overheard Angie whisper.
After Angie went out the door, Dad returned to his office setup and it was just Mom and me in the kitchen. "Is there anything I can help with today, to make tomorrow easier, Mom?"
"Not really," Mom answered, shrugging. "I put the turkey in brine before I made breakfast. Everything else has to be done tomorrow morning. Today's really just about relaxing for me, doing that bag of laundry for you. Tonight, I'll spend with you. Your dad is meeting up with Aunt Jilly, now that we've ended our pact."
"Dad mentioned they were lovers, last night." I said, realizing how much I still had to learn about my parents' hidden past.
Mom smiled. "She was more than that, for both of us. Jilly was my college roommate and she and her husband Sam were our first spouse swap, before Tommy was born. Then she became my first female lover, one weekend. Sam was a cop and died responding to a robbery, when you and Jessica were both two. Jilly turned more and more to Stan for comfort, with me joining them maybe one time in four, when I could get a babysitter. She introduced us to our first swing club after that and eventually opened her own."
I said, "I realized that Dad must have stopped being involved with her because of the pact and she stopped coming around after that. What reason did Dad give her for ending things?"
"Oh, she knows the real reason, because we explained it to her together. She tried to talk Stan into allowing the incest to happen. She will realize what it means that Stan is back in her bed, too. She expected she would have to wait for you boys to get married and be off-limits to me before the pact would end."
"Another person who knows about our incest," I said.
Mom replied, "We've never kept any secrets from Jilly. If polyamorous marriages were legal, we would have married her as a triad and we would have raised you three kids together. Of any of our extramarital liaisons, she and Sam were the only ones we truly felt love for, the only lover I truly missed once the pact began. I considered making her the exception to the pact, but it wouldn't have cost your dad enough unless he gave her up, compared to what he was asking me to give up."
"That's why she stopped coming around, because she was off-limits to Dad? Dad only said it didn't work."
Mom said, "We all tried being platonic friends for a little while, but she and your dad didn't have much of an existing friendship before we started to swap, compared to her and me being roommates. She stopped coming around because she realized it was too tempting for him. It's not like we were her only lovers, running a weekend swing club at that time, with her parents watching Jessica. For Stan, it was hard to be around her and not be able to touch her the way they both wanted."
I nodded. If I had to resist touching Aunt Jilly after being her lover, I would have had trouble, too. It's what scared me the most about getting involved with Mom - maybe having to give her up some day. "Why aren't you going with Dad to see her, then?" I asked.
"Because I want to spend tonight with you, now that I'm able," Mom answered. "I can have my reunion with Jilly once you go back to school. That's if your dad doesn't get her to come for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow, since her club is closed. I know how you used to look at her, too. Care for a shot with her? Maybe go to her club this weekend, along with Angie?"
"Would I care for a shot? Are polar bears white?" I joked. "Mom, I used to think of Aunt Jilly as the redheaded version of you. Once I learned that she's not actually blood related, it became more acceptable to fantasize about her than you, so both of you headlined my sex dreams. I even had a few where you were lovers and I was the third in a threesome. Now I have to wonder if my subconscious recognized something my conscious mind didn't."
"Is Angie interested in swinging?" Mom asked.
"Yeah. We opened our relationship before we returned to school. She already thinks we'd fit right into swinging," I answered. "She wondered if you and Dad still had contacts in the swinging scene, but I didn't realize Aunt Jilly runs a club. I'll check if Angie wants to go. Friday night, I assume?"
"About six o'clock for dinner, if Jilly has a table for us. Otherwise, the sexy part starts around 8, with various mixer activities as other people arrive. I'll get your dad to ask Jilly if you and Angie can come. You and I would have to avoid physical contact with each other, of course. More than a few regulars there are old friends of Sam's from the police force, who would recognize you as my son."
I agreed. "Even if we were among total strangers, having other people witness us being intimate is just a bad idea. So would talking about it around them. I'll be careful, without looking like I'm being careful."
Mom chuckled. "Well, get started on your laundry and I'll talk to your Dad before he leaves, to see if he can arrange it. You've got at least three loads there, right?" she asked, pointing at the duffel that was still sitting next to the front door from the day before.
"About that much. Do you want me to wash the sheets on your bed, too?"
"Change your bed first, since I figure we'll use it tonight. Do mine last, if you have the time. Five loads in one day might be too much."
I went up to my room, stripped the bed and threw that load into the washer, then sorted the laundry in my duffel into three small baskets. I remade my bed with sheets from the linen closet, then switched the sheets to the dryer and started the first load of my clothes. Mom came into the laundry room and said, "Dad's going to ask Jilly about both dinner tomorrow and the club for either Friday or Saturday."
"Okay," I said, hopping onto the counter next to the sink. "My bed's remade and I have a load of my clothes going in the washer and the bedding is now in the dryer. Want me to strip your bed now and remake it, while I'm waiting for this load to finish, or wait? Even if I don't get around to washing your bedding?"
"Thanks for offering, baby, but I changed it already while you were upstairs."
"Am I still your baby, after yesterday?" I asked.
Mom stepped between my legs and ruffled my hair, then placed her hands on my hips as I crossed my legs behind hers. My arms went over her shoulders. She briefly kissed me, before answering, "Yup. You can be both my baby boy and my lover, without contradiction. We added being lovers to our relationship, we didn't exchange one role for the other. I'm still your mom, you're still my younger son. Unless being called 'baby' bothers you because you're 21 now?"
"I'm okay with that, Mom," I answered. "I'm just feeling a little nervous about the consequences, I guess. The cliche is that incest is a line you can't uncross. You might have been thinking about it for a while, but I basically raced across at the first opportunity and now I've got to think it through."
Mom said, "Derek, it truly is a cliche. There is no line, no permanent change unless that's your expectation going in. Monogamous couples who are friends first and then expect intimacy to be forever often make the mistake of neglecting their friendship, then can't rebuild it if they break up. Open relationships at least acknowledge that intimacy can be a temporary thing, which can help preserve those friendships. But incest is also different in that it needs to be kept secret, so maintaining the family relationship in public becomes critical. Most of the people who get caught fail to do that. They either let the intimacy show in public in one way or another or they limit their contact in public and that gets noticed, too. Once you recognize that we can't be each other's soulmates and shouldn't even act like it in private, it actually becomes easier to cease intimacy at some point in the future, because we never stop treating each other as family."
"Is that how it worked, with Grandpa?" I asked.
Mom nodded, then said, "Yeah. And with your uncle Mark, although we were involved for a shorter time. They both moved on to other relationships, so we returned to being just family, with some cherished memories in the back of our minds that we don't bring up often. Neither Aunt Bonnie or Grandma Bridget knows any of it, by the way."
"But you told Dad," I said.
Mom shrugged. "Well, when Stan proposed, I was still involved with my dad and hoping to continue, so I revealed the incest and asked for Stan's permission. He wasn't accepting of either the incest or open relationships at the time. He made me choose and I chose him. I don't regret that decision. By the time Stan changed his mind about open relationships and gave me permission to fuck other men, Dad was engaged and Mark was married, so I didn't even ask for Stan's permission to get involved with them again, because I had no doubt they all would have said no. Incest didn't come up again until Tommy turned 16, when your dad expressed his opposition well in advance of Tommy turning 18. He knew I wouldn't act before then. You needed to be adults first. Stan suggested closing our relationship, so we'd both give something up. The pact was born."
