Worth It

(40) Not Okay

Cameron

"She asked you if you were going to stick your penis in her butt-hole?" Hearing those words from your mother, even at nineteen, always makes you want to just crawl in a hole and die. At least, that's how it feels for me.

"Mom!" I exclaim, while taking the dish my mom just cleaned from out of her hands, drying it and putting it away.

"What?" Mom looks at me, temporarily stopping what she's doing with the dish soap. "I'm only asking as a mom. I mean, we don't normally talk about your sex life. Why would she ask about this?" And then, it's like a light bulb goes off.

A little background: My mom is a therapist, so she listens to people's problems all day and has gotten real good at reading between the lines. "When your..." She washes the dish in her hand as she sees my expression of horror, trying to make me feel better. It doesn't work. "Fornicating." Yep. That word makes it so much better mom. You're absolutely right. Not.

"You do it doggy-style?" I can tell she is waiting for my answer. I take the dirty dish from her and as I dry it, I nod ever so slightly. "Okay and what about her question caught you so off-guard? It sounds like a normal question to me."

"But we were in the middle of-"

"Fornicating?" Mom interrupts.

"No." I shake my head. "I mean, things were getting pretty heated, but no we didn't... fornicate."

"Ah. I see." Uh-oh. My mom has this expression about her. The kind that says she's trying to pass for casual, but she just came across something and she doesn't want to scare me into leaving.

"Did you ever think that maybe she caught you off guard?" She stops washing dishes and leans on the counter, her hands gripping the back of the counter top. "That you're so used to sex being nothing more than sex and with this girl-"

"Zara." I supply.

"Zara." She nods once in approval, almost like she likes the way the name sounds to her. I do too. "You weren't so focused on release. You wanted the foreplay, like making out and all that stuff because with her, it's about more than release. It might just be about physical connection as much as it is about emotional connection." Oh, no. Now, my mom has a shadow of a smile across her lips. This isn't happening to me. I've never fallen in love before. Not even with--

"You know, after Jenna died," My mom starts gently and I cringe when she says that name, but undeterred, my mom treads on. "I thought you'd never move on. You were so lost and I was so worried about you."

"Mom!" I snap, not being able to hear another word. "This isn't like that! This isn't fucking love! She could be anyone! Okay? It wouldn't fucking matter!" I explode on my poor mother, not being able to hear all her therapy speech blabber.

More gently, I say, "I'm not one of your patients, so you don't have to give the usual therapy spiel about how there's hope. About how I'm not as broken as I think." I shake my head. "You didn't see her mom. You weren't there when I found her just lying there in the bathtub! Not fucking breathing! Her blood was splattered all over the bathtub and some even cascaded on the carpet, mom! The fucking carpet! And on her naked thigh was the knife she used."

My mom comes over to me and grips me in the kind of hug only a mom can give. The kind that promises safety and security. She gently wipes away the tears I didn't know that were there with her thumb, but it's all in vain because fresh tears replace them and before I know it, I am crying freely and my mom is hugging me as if she can squeeze life back into me.

As if she can repair all my broken with a simple hug.