Who Names The Colors

Pandora's Box

December 2013

Do you ever stop worrying about your kids?

This was the question Jo asked herself as she laid in bed waiting to hear a key in the door. She knew that Ethan had his own place. Lived on his own under his own power for a year and a half. Jo was also under no delusions that he stayed home all the time while he was there, far away from her. So far, he had shown enough responsibility. No calls from the university with issues, she sees the Uber charges when she puts in his monthly play money. Ethan is doing better than she could hope. Jo just didn't know any better when he was at school. He went out and she only knew about it after the fact.

But tonight she was painfully aware that the boys were off to some party at a school friend's house. Ethan had been excited about seeing Alissa again. He'd nudged Harry while he thought Jo was too busy with her hands in soapy water to see his eyebrow raise. Jo wondered who was most excited about Alissa, was she a 'friend' of Harry's or Ethan's? Jo didn't remember her name from their time at college at all. Harry had not looked all that enthused about Alissa, but that could just be boys ribbing each other about not getting past the sniffing butts stage. She didn't imagine eitherof the young men in her kitchen had too much trouble. As long as they were respectful, which Ethan had better be.

If she had ever gotten a call about unsolicited dick pics, she may have wrung his neck. As a single woman, who had tried not a few dating apps and was reasonably attractive, she'd had her own unfortunate incidents. 'Really hot for a mum.' Pfffft, she was lovely full stop thank you very much.  And starting a conversation with, 'how old are you?' Or 'do you trade pics for pics?' was annoyingly common. No, no, nope. Jo had started sending 'I don't send nudes' as her second message before she deleted the apps altogether. This was all before Colin, almost four years ago. She couldn't imagine it had gotten any better. It had caused her to go on some rants. She was fairly sure that Harry had been there when she'd lectured Ethan on consent and the reality that dicks out of context are not sexy and do not in fact cause panties to drop.

"You have to engage her mind before you can expect her to be interested in that part of your body, Ethan!" Her son had just rolled his eyes. His sexual education had been an ongoing talk that started with anatomy at about 7, then covered feelings when he hit puberty, and focused on pleasure and how it and emotion intersected when he was old enough to process all of that. Boundaries and consent and how to act after a hook-up (not nonchalantly but honestly) were also covered. She'd foregone the talk tonight. She just hoped she had done her job well enough by now.  But Jo was sure she had not covered every temptation ever. She tried to keep up, and keep current, but she really didn't know what it was like to be so young and have so much information at your fingertips. Maybe they needed to have another talk about how porn sex was not like real sex, mostly not even good sex.

She's been worrying about tonight since they showed up at the house . Her boy and his best friend. Best looking friend. Every time she saw Harry, he was getting more like a fever dream. Or maybe she was just aware of him in a new way. He'd been a sweet kid for so long, but that unbuttoned purple plaid he strolled in with showed way too much ink for her comfort. Maybe she should have a talk with herself about temptation.

Ethan and Harry had come in together around noon, two days before Christmas, and did that thing that teenagers and very new twenty somethings apparently still did:disappeared into a room and didn't surface until food was offered.

Zoe had asked for 'boys' multiple times before Jo gave in and sent her to the top of the stairs to knock.

There was a bang and shuffling and laughter before they opened the door and Jo wondered if they were smoking in there. She'd have to talk to Ethan about that too, more temptation. I mean, if they came down red eyed she'd let it pass, they weren't driving. If his pupils were blown out, that would be a different story. When he started going out, he'd gotten the standard safety discussion about drugs. Party drugs especially. But the lengthy pause before he answered the door for Zoe indicated there was clean up going on up there.