It wasn’t my imagination

I awoke the next morning earlier than I usually did that summer. I had worked my ass off during my first three years of high school, and I was going to coast through my senior year, which meant that this would be my first summer off in a long time. Thoughts of returning to my slumber came to me, but in the end, I rolled out of bed, put on my basketball shorts and a T-shirt, and headed to my hallway bathroom to finish waking up before I headed downstairs.

The downstairs has a wraparound floor plan, with the living room to the left, followed by the dining room, then the kitchen, then a hallway that leads to a laundry room, the garage, a great room, and then back to the foyer, staircase, and front door. The great room has a piano, a pool table, a bar, but I don't spend much time in there....

I entered the kitchen at seven in the morning, with the sunlight shining onto the breakfast table through the white curtains hanging over the bay windows. Dad was still home. He wouldn't be leaving until about eight in the morning. Mom worked from home, using her advanced degrees in education to create specialized curriculums for private schools while also selling lesson plans that covered kindergarten through high school graduation to teachers over the internet. She did well enough that Dad often joked about retiring early, by about twenty years.

In the kitchen, I found Dad sitting at the table, reading his newspaper with his back to the window and the sunlight shining onto his paper. Mom was wearing a lavender robe made of silk with the belt looped once, and the two halves met at the center of her body. I noticed it dropped down to the middle of her thighs--something I wouldn't have noticed before last night. I would have seen it, but I wouldn't have noticed it.

"Good morning," Mom said, giving me a smile and even without makeup on her cheeks, and lipstick on her... lips... she still looked beautiful.

Dad's paper fluttered with that crunchy, flappy sound as he snapped it low enough to look at me. "You're up early."

"Good morning." I shrugged and looked about the kitchen and breakfast nook as Dad lifted his paper. "I'm just up."

"Sit," Mom said. "I'll make you breakfast."

"Cereal is fine," I said, taking a seat.

"I said I'll make you breakfast," Mom said.

I sat at the end of the table, to Dad's left. To the left of me was the kitchen island and Mom, who was cooking what smelled like French toast with her back to me and her lower body hidden by the kitchen island.

I looked away from her, thinking, Last night was weird.

When Mom turned around from the stove, she set my plate on the kitchen island and picked up the maple syrup. I looked at her, but she looked at Dad, and as she did, she seemed to become lost in thought. Her eyes never drifted in my direction. She held the syrup in her right hand while her left arm came up, and her fingers slid between her robe's lapels. Rubbing motions followed, almost caresses, and as she pulled her fingers out of her robe, she caught her lapel, pulling her robe open to the left. I had to work saliva back into my mouth as the golden-hued upper swell of my mother's left breast came into view.

Holy shit.

Mom still hadn't looked at me. She stared at Dad's paper, and then she looked down long enough to pour the syrup onto my breakfast before raising her head and looking at Dad once more. She set the syrup down, then reached up with her right hand and slid her fingers beneath her left lapel and rubbed the top of her left breast, with her palm on the outer edge.

Holy shit again.

I watched in silence as her breast moved, not a lot, not even a jiggle, just back and forth with the motions of her fingers. Her hand came away, and her fingers curled around her right lapel, and she pulled that side open, creating a narrow V down the center of her cleavage. Mom shook her head as if ridding herself of whatever thoughts had been running through her mind, then she picked up my plate, walked around the far end of the island and toward me with a new gap in her robe that I had to struggle not to stare at--but wasn't staring the point?

This wasn't my imagination.

Mom was showing herself off to me.

Holy, motherfucking-shit.

Dad read his paper, and I ate, glancing at Mom as much as I could without turning my head to stare at her. Maybe I was supposed to look, but she was still my mother, and I still had a girlfriend. Despite the warmth flowing through my heart and into my skin, turning it red due to my mother's good intentions, a little corner of my mind wanted to curl into a ball and close its eyes. I could hear it chanting, This is weird. This is wrong. This is weird. This is wrong. Lucky for me, the chanting's volume faded with time, as though someone was lowering the volume of a stereo with the unnaturally slow but continuous rotation of its dial.