Tipping Point

I came downstairs to see Dad lying on the couch that made up the right side of the horseshoe while Mom sat on the back couch. Dad had a blanket pulled over his body, his head on a pillow, and his remote in his hands. It looked like they were binge-watching an original series, foreign but not dubbed. The show had subtitles.

I walked around the left side of the couch that made up the back of the horseshoe and sat down on the other side of my mother. Mom looked at me and smiled. I smiled back. Mom had changed into a pajama dress, which looked like an overgrown baby blue T-shirt with a cloud print. She sat staring at the TV and leaning against the couch's armrest. Her long legs were visible from the mid-thigh down thanks to the light from the TV, not that there was much light. Not that I was looking. Not really. I was looking at Mom so that I could mouth the words, I'm sorry, but my mother was my mother, and a person couldn't help but notice the smoothness of her swan-like limbs.

Since Mom wasn't turning her head toward me, I concentrated on the movie, turning in her direction every couple of minutes to see if I could get her attention. I couldn't. Which kind of sucked since I didn't want to sit through a subtitle-laden TV show just so I could make nice, but since those damn subtitles held her focus, I sat, and I sat, waiting and hoping that the episode would come to an end.

Coming downstairs to apologize for something was not new to me. I was still in my jeans and shirt, and in my pocket, I had slipped my phone. I reached down into it, pulling it out and lighting up the screen as I nestled into the corner of the couch across from Mom. I swiped and swiped, and Dad said, "That phone better be on mute," so I killed the volume as I looked up at him, but he wasn't looking back at me.

I looked at Mom, who was looking at me, and I mouthed the words, "I'm sorry." She smiled, but her eyes dropped to my phone, and her smile tightened.

I shrugged.

What had she expected?

Mom swung her gaze back to the TV, and I looked back at my phone. I texted Jenna, who returned my text, but we didn't have much of anything interesting to say. We fed each other live updates of our situations, and after sighing in silence, I decided to go back upstairs for some phone sex, and that's when I noticed something different about Mom.

Mom's left hand lay on her thigh, just beyond the hem of her sleeping dress. The hem no longer lay in the middle of her thigh. Her fingers, which were curling and uncurling in near slow motion, had pulled her dress up along her leg so that it now rested between the middle of her thigh and her hip. She kept scratching at her leg, and the hem continued to rise, but only on her left side, the side furthest from Dad. Not that he'd noticed, lying on the side couch as he was, on his back with his eyes glued to the subtitles flashing across the screen.

I looked at the profile of Mom's face, watching as she stared straight ahead, and then I looked down, where her fingers continued to pull the hem of her pajama dress upward. She slid her hand to the side of her thigh, her long fingers inching beneath the hem while her fingertips slid across her skin, and the TV's whitish-blue, sometimes silver-gray light, flashed over her body.

My cheeks flushed.

Mom took a deep breath, and my eyes moved upward, traveling up her body and taking in her flaxen hair, so golden and bright that even in the near darkness, it shined like a beacon of light. My eyes shifted across her body, making the short, sideways journey to her breasts, where they rose and fell with her deep breaths. I saw, for the first time, the way her sleep-dress molded to her form. My cheeks grew hotter, almost burning, and my heartbeat rose as goosebumps sprouted across the surface of my arms. Below my waist, things warmed, causing my cock to stretch and my scrotum to tighten in a pre-hardening ritual that I quickly recognized.

I was now looking at my mother's breasts and the way her cotton nightdress slid down the upper slopes of her tits and curved around, covering her nipples, which had grown stiff and hard sometime before I had laid my eyes on them. And they were stiff and hard, pointing outward like two solid eraser nubs that I couldn't remember sucking on as a newborn, but Mom had claimed that I had. What a weird thought. The dress continued downward, clinging to the round underside of her tits where they connected to her sternum and sides, the fabric shooting straight down her stomach and over her thighs.

Had Mom always worn pajamas that outlined her body as though drawn to her skin? I didn't know, but I couldn't believe that I wouldn't have noticed this kind of sleepwear in the past. Mom's head twitched. I lowered my eyes to my phone, though that guilty look that crossed my face whenever I felt bad punched me right in the nose. I knew it was there, that caught-in-the-headlights look that screamed, I'm GUILTY of something.

Fuck.

Mom made a noise that sounded like a sigh with a shiver running through it. After a second, I looked at my mother again. The skirt of her nightdress lay beneath her butt, leaving her dress draped across her thigh at an angle. Mom shifted, first her shoulders, and the motion swung into her ribs and sides, then her hips. As she scratched at her thigh, still moving the hem of her dress, Mom looked at Dad, who had his eyes fastened to the TV, and then she lifted her butt and made a quick scratch of her cheek that pulled her hem behind her small, round, and pear-shaped butt.

What the fuck was going on?

Mom's head twitched again while I was still thinking about my question. Mom saw me, and I saw her. My heart thumped hard against the underside of my chest, like a man bracing his weight against a door with one hand while delivering hammer blows against its face with the other. Mom smiled. It was a quick action before she looked back at the TV. My mouth went dry because when she had smiled, her eyes had flickered downward, and so had her chin, in such a way that she could only be saying, Have a look, without having to say it aloud.

I'm not stupid.

I'm not slow.

But was I imagining this?

Why would my mom do this?

How beautiful?

As beautiful as you.

That was a question she had asked, followed by the answer I had given. I stared at her naked thigh, with the hem of her dress pulled up to her waist as it curved in a sideways U around her butt. The silver-white light from the TV highlighted the side of her cheek, and my cock hardened so fast I released a groan from my lips.

Mom's lips kind of puckered, then parted, then closed. For a second, her profile had that caught-in-the-headlights look that I had worn minutes earlier, but then it was gone. I had to get out of there. I said nothing as I turned forward on the couch, then rose while tilting to my left and away from my mother and father, hiding my bulging jeans as I quickly walked out of the living room and into the connecting foyer and headed up the stairs.

"Goodnight," I called.

Dad mumbled something.

Mom said nothing.

Once in my room, my pants came off, but my boxer briefs stayed on. I had my phone in my hand, the lights were off, and I was sitting in my bed, texting Jenna and asking her to call me so I could hear her sexy voice.

Before she could text back or call, I didn't know what she was going to do, my door opened. I jumped, and I grabbed the pillow to my right and slammed it over my rock-hard cock, which made me grunt. Mom had stuck her head into my room, but she didn't bother turning on the light. I set my phone face down on the bed.

"Mark," Mom said, "I'm not mad about earlier."

"I know," I said.

"I want you to think about what could happen to you if you do anything with Jenna." Mom paused, and I heard her take a deep breath. "Try, for me, for one week, to abstain from becoming romantic with her. Just try for one week, and maybe some good karma will come your way."

"Good karma?" I asked, unable to keep the laughter from my question.

"Yes," Mom whispered. "Maybe you won't be fooling around with Jenna, but there has to be something in this house that can keep you distracted until you understand the responsibility that comes with having sex."

A buzzing lightness rushed through my body, and I licked my lips, thankful for the darkness.

"Okay?" Mom asked.

I had to take a deep breath before saying, "Okay, Mom," but I couldn't hide the tremor in my voice.

"Goodnight," Mom said. "Love you."

"I love you too," I said as she closed the door.

I looked at my phone, and it only took me a second to decide that phone sex and face time didn't fall under the category of romance.

Less than five minutes later, one of the strongest orgasms of my life tore through my body, leaving me feeling weightless and boneless, my muscles made of jelly. I slept well that night.