Tara, Chapter 2

bu Chrestomathist

I am terrible at describing how people look, at least original descriptions. What I do is associate people with celebrities, someone similar in body type and appearance. The student teacher I brought off in her car at school looked like and was built like Jena Malone (eat-a-sandwich skinny, very young looking... mmmm). Rachel was kind of like a pissed off Maggie Gyllenhaal, in appearance and build. Donnie Darko Maggie Gyllenhaal, who was a bitch, not Stranger Than Fiction Maggie Gyllenhaal, who was adorable... Get it? (If you're wondering, it doesn't really work for me, probably because I'm too familiar with myself to make a superficial association. The best I can do is say that as a 14 year old I was built a little heavier than, and in the face looked a little like, Alyson Hannigan, without the red hair, which I would kill and die for.)

When you picture my mom, picture Lisa Ann Walter, you know, the maid in the Lindsay Lohan version of the Parent Trap, or Tom Cruise's friend who doesn't make it on to the ferry in War of the Worlds. She's (Mom, I mean) a little heavier, as I'm sure I will be at her age (when I was 14, she was 38), her face has striking lines and features, she has dust colored hair like I do. She has an ample bosom, which I still wouldn't call mine, and definitely not when I was 14. She has a very smoky voice — literally, she smoked from when she was 12 until she got pregnant with me — which nonetheless squeaks and cracks when she's excited. She has a very throaty laugh, that makes you want to join her. She's a remarkable woman, someone you remember meeting.

She raised me by herself from the time I was a baby, and now that I have one foot at least in the real world, I admire everything she did to make it happen. She made a very good living as a software consultant specializing in one particular kind of software that hospitals use to do something or other, which kept us moving around a lot when I was a kid. She would oversee the installation, testing and launch of the new software somewhere, then move on to another hospital in a different part of the country (usually) after a year or two or three. After eight or nine years of that, when I was 10, she took a job in the area where we'd started out and where her family remained, in northwestern Indiana. I think she felt safe coming back there once my dad was no longer in the area. He ditched us when I was two months old and died when I was around nine. I never saw him in between. I'm ok with that.

So we two lived in a very nice house, too big for us, with a hot tub on the deck outside. My mom and I always had our "girl time" in the hot tub — and boy, does that have double meaning now, but I'll get to that in a minute. After dinner almost every evening, Mom would take a glass of wine and me out to the hot tub, and we'd soak for 20 minutes or so, and we'd continue the evening's dinner conversation. Or we'd just stare up at the sky, at the stars if it was winter, at the bronze dusk if it wasn't. I felt closest to Mom during our hot tub time.

So you can imagine that when I was 14 and she got this boyfriend, Todd, who would a couple times a week come over after dinner and take my place with Mom in the hot tub while I was relegated to my room, I was a little upset about it. I suppose it's not unusual for a teenage only child with a single parent to resent the boyfriend or girlfriend who intrudes on things, and Mom didn't act like it was a crisis when I would get all passive-agressive about Todd, she just smiled sadly and changed the subject.

By then I was riding my wave of "you're not supposed to" thrill at its crest. I'd given hand jobs (i.e., more than one) in that very hot tub after school and before Mom got home. I'd gotten myself off in there numerous times (go jets!), including once after dinner while waiting for my mom to join me. I finished just in time, and in a hot tub, looking flushed isn't unusual, thankfully. But the idea of Mom and this Todd person getting busy in the same water made me mad. I didn't even know for sure whether they did, but I could imagine. I decided to Take Back the Hot Tub. And my Mom.

After I'd made this decision, when it was thankfully me and my mom with no Todd in the hot tub, I would gradually, very gradually, start getting a little closer to, and a little more affectionate with, Mom during our 20 minutes' girl time. After five or six Todd-free hot tub sessions I was to the point where I was sitting next to her, actually sort of smashed up against her like there wasn't room for two on the bench (though there was). She didn't mind, she'd put her arm around me or whatever was comfortable. I had started getting downright flirty with her, tickling her when I could muster the courage, but also just teasing and laughing and acting more like her date than her daughter. I don't know whether she thought it was strange, she kept it close to the vest if so.

Soon enough I decided to go for it and I hugged her, just from the side at first, still just affectionate, nothing untoward. She hugged me back smiling. I broke off and resumed my place at her side for a few minutes, then I swooped around and hugged her again — straddling her this time. By now she must have thought something was weird, but she hugged me back, and still smiled. I nuzzled my face into the crook of her neck, and she responded by rubbing my back. I let my lips brush her neck, and I felt her stiffen. So there, I thought, I either break this off and we sit in extremely awkward silence for a while, or I push it. With the Todd situation and my "you're not supposed to" rush reaching wind tunnel proportions, I decided on the latter.

I moved my face up as though to kiss her full on the lips, and hesitated, cocking my head slightly and considering her beautiful face. She had one eyebrow slightly raised and looked confused, which was preferable to her being angry. I slowly moved in and kissed her on the cheek, losing my nerve a little and smiling warmly, like I was just being daughter-to-mother affectionate, still, nothing weird going on here! She smiled again, and with a stuttering motion moved in and kissed me on the cheek back.

I hugged her close again, thrilled and relieved that I'd gone that far, but I wasn't done. From our hug I moved my hands so they were cupping her face. I probed her eyes with mine, leaned in, and kissed her softly, mouth very slightly open. No response, except for a noticeable increase in her rate of breathing. I pulled back slightly then dove in again, kissing her more meaningfully now, mouth opening and shutting, kissing her lips like the objects of beauty they were. Involuntarily, my hips began to hump her belly slightly, which made me nervous, so I kissed with more vigor to distract her — and Mom began to kiss me back. Maybe she still thought we were just being affectionate, maybe she was getting into it, but can I just say: My mom is an awesome kisser.

I moaned appreciatively, and our tongues were together, tasting and pushing each other. I felt Mom pull me closer, which just increased the pressure on my pussy, and a thrill ran through me. My fingers were tangled in her hair now, and we kissed like lovers for what I believe was several minutes. I didn't have a lot of practice kissing, and I was self conscious about that, and about how small and thin my lips seemed connected to my Mom's full and soft ones. I was also both appreciating the full softness of my mom's bosom pressed into my body, her breasts soft and warm, and conscious that I was flat as a board. (Not quite, but compared to Mom.) I must admit that she didn't seem to mind: She made out with me like I was her longtime, adult lover, and I felt a swell of pride intermigled with my mounting horniness.

Eventually we stopped. We didn't say anything to each other, but we both smiled, embarrassed smiles, but no reproach from her, and I was relieved. We emerged from the hot tub in silence and spent the rest of the evening that way.

I was terribly excited about what I'd done, and especially that Mom had seemed to be so into it, too. So imagine how crestfallen I was when Todd showed up the next night, and I was excluded from hot tub time. Oh well, this was a long campaign I'd undertaken, not a single battle. The next night, no Todd, and I was half expecting Mom not to want to do the hot tub with me. I needn't have worried. This time we weren't in the tub for more than five minutes when I sidled next to her, straddled and encircled her and we made out. The night after, we weren't in the tub three minutes. The next night, Todd; the night after that, she got in the tub, and I got in on top of her, and for a glorious half an hour straight we sweated, panted and kissed passionately.

I hadn't touched anything besides Mom's face, head and back, and she hadn't touched anything but my back, and truthfully, our "girl time" was so wonderful I would have been happy if it had stayed just the way it was. And it did for a while, it just crept out into the dry house as well.

After a few of our new "girl times" Mom came home from work and I greeted her in the doorway with a kiss on the cheek. The next night, same thing. The night after that, a kiss on the lips. Post hot tub TV time, which wasn't every night if I had plans or Mom had something to do, but was often enough, went from her in her easy chair and me sprawled on the couch, to both of us on the couch (that's right — she decided to sit on the couch!). That turned into snuggling together like at first in the hot tub. Then it evolved the way the hot tub had — a quick kiss on Mom's cheek, a kiss on her lips, then we were making out on the couch, the TV forgotten, me sprawled on top of her, trying to play it as cool as possible and not to hump her raw.

We never talked about it back then. I didn't want to — what if it broke the spell? I had yet to reach Mom's limit, wherever that was. We were at the mall one Saturday, standing in line at an Auntie Annie's, and I got up on my tiptoes and planted a kind of inappropriately wet kiss on Mom's mouth. She didn't blink — in fact, she responded, kissing me back, right there in the mall. So if she had a limit, I was kind of farther off than I would have expected.

As much as I enjoyed the kissing, I did want to take things farther. There was no "you're not supposed to" thrill like foreplay with my mother, plus, I had such deep and genuine love and affection for her. But I was kind of chicken. Not so much that I would be rebuffed, rather, I was afraid that (like talking about it) going farther would break the spell, bring her to maternal reality. I was also still annoyed at Todd, who Mom wouldn't stop seeing. (I guess I don't know what I expected, but I was still irritated.) As it turned out, to finally take our new "girl time" activities to the "next level" — and take care of the Todd situation — I would need help.