A mother's love

Chapter 21

The danger of what she was doing never entered Brenda's mind. She was at home in her apartment and the choking loneliness that she had anticipated earlier was worse than she'd feared. She sat at her kitchen table and moved her dinner around on her plate, leaving most of it uneaten. She stood under the shower for an hour, hoping the running water would wash away any yearning her body had for Brian's touch.

As the seconds, minutes and hours ticked by, Brenda found herself increasingly unable to protect herself from thoughts about how much she was missing Brian. At 11 p.m., the hour that she had been dreading, her urge to go to him started to overpower her and it became obvious to her that she wasn't going to be able to stop herself from going to see him.

After so many hours of torment, Brenda couldn't remove her hands from Brian's face or her lips from his lips, the longing that she'd felt for his touch could not be satiated in a matter of seconds, and to feel Brian responding with the same outpouring of love made it impossible for her to separate herself from him.

They didn't make love that night; Brenda didn't give a thought to them making love, there were too many important things they needed to address for them to allow all of their time together to be used up by their physical hunger for each other. Without their lips separating they made their way over to Brian's bed, a single which they could only fit on by laying on their sides facing each other and squeezing close together. The walls in Brian's house being thin they could only speak to each other in the softest of whispers.

"I shouldn't have told you to leave, that was wrong of me, you came to me for help and I should have given it to you instead of making everything about me."

"I don't care that you asked me to leave; all day I've been mad at myself for not disobeying you and staying, worrying that you would hate me for my fecklessness."

"Hate you? How could you think that I would hate you when we love each other so much? What happened this afternoon was just a fight, all couples have them."

"There were times today when I was afraid that I'd lost you, that you wouldn't forgive me for choosing to stay at home in case my mother needed me instead of coming to spend the night with you."

"Wanting to take care of your mother is not something you need to be repentant about; I love you so much that just the thought of not being with you is more than I can take, and the compassion that you have for your mother despite all that she's put you through is part of the reason I love you so much."

"You may be right about me making a mistake by giving a second chance to having a relationship with my mother; we've barely said two words to each other all day, I'm starting to think that maybe too much has happened for us to start over."

"I don't trust your mother, I don't trust her and I don't care about her, all I care about is you, I don't want to see you getting hurt by her which I have no doubt is exactly what is going to happen if you allow yourself to believe that she's changed; she's still the same woman who's responsible for the scar on your arm, I don't know how you could ever think of forgiving her for that. Every day I think what if that pan hadn't fallen on your shoulder, what if it had fallen on your head and that hot oil had scarred your face, this beautiful, precious face," Brenda said to him, stroking his cheek with her palm, "Brian please, I am begging you, just forget about your mother and leave with me."

Tears spilled from the corners of Brenda's eyes and ran across her face as she pleaded with Brian for the second time to think better of the decision he'd made and to love and trust only her, to which Brian responded for the second time "I can't do that." He put his arm over her, placed his hand behind her head, pulled her crying face against his chest and silently vowed while he held her to find a resolution to the situation that had arisen with his mother that alleviated Brenda's concerns about him getting hurt and that didn't imperil their relationship.

ThatBrian was assuming the responsibility of consoling her for the first time intheir relationship in an extraordinary role reversal went unnoticed by Brenda. Thelove that she felt for him was terrifying. Sharing even a small portion of himwith not just his mother but with anybody was unacceptable to her. She was longpast any notion of restraint, of maintaining a small but definite space betweenthem to stop them from becoming too deeply involved as lovers. She had brokenevery rule that she had set, and she didn't care. Lying next to Brian in hisbed that night, safely ensconced in his arms, Brenda declared to herself thatnothing would stand in the way of she and Brian being together and free.