And then Stevie began to sob. Unexpectedly Lee reached out to grab her hand. He gently squeezed it, despite the conversation’s lurid direction. ‘Mum, surely you know that things are different now…’
‘When I met Ray, he brought it all back out. These… daydreams I had… started to fill me with guilt and remorse again. I wondered at times if I was some kind of dangerous offender just waiting to happen.’
‘You’re definitely no sex offender, mum,’ Lee intervened and then scoffed at hearing himself say that. How much more surreal could this day get? ‘Well,’ his cheeky sense of humour teased, ‘you haven’t had any complaints at least!’
Was she now laughing, or was she still crying? The harsh gasp from her trembling lips didn’t seem to imply offence, otherwise she’d have batted him around the head to let him know. And no matter how Stevie tried to smile to signify that she was earnestly trying to laugh, the crying would not stop.
Lee waited; let his mother wipe the tears from her eyes until it came. ‘This wasn’t just some phase. I had to accept that. This was who and what I was and the fact that I gave into it so easily made me wonder about myself, and Ray. I never hurt anybody, but I came close…’
Everybody had their own “thing” though. Lee knew that.
He was a good judge of character, and knew the difference between right and wrong. If nobody was injured or directly negatively impacted, as everybody said these days, then it wasn’t wrong. So who was it that his mother had come close to “hurting”?
7
The day had darkened considerably. Out of nowhere came leaden clouds threatening rain and it wasn’t long before it came. At that time Stevie’s son thought it best to put away the brandy and make coffee, leaving his mother sitting in the conservatory, peering into the deepening greens of the back garden’s private paradise.
She hadn’t felt so cold and stone-heavy in a long time, not even the day Ray announced his departure from their marriage. She was telling her son about things no ordinary well-adjusted parents would ever share with their kids, and it left her feeling like a palpitating lump of hot, worthless flesh.
‘Here you go, mum,’ Lee whispered from her side. Where did he come from? She was so lost in the thrumming between her ears that she hadn’t heard him coming back. Again he surprised her with a gentle kiss on the cheek, which seemed out of place considering the questions their shared revelation posed.
And really, Stevie was adamant that she did not deserve his kindness, his understanding, or anything so good. The rain was at a steady patter, quiet enough on the glass roof that she wouldn’t have to summon the courage to raise her voice so loud.
‘Ray wanted me to have sex with you.’
And then for so long, that steady patter was the only sound in the world. Now it was his heart in his throat as he tried to fit that sentence somewhere within reality’s twisted designs but all he found was panic.
His expression suddenly slack and with eyes wide open; ‘What?’
‘I’m sorry, it’s true.’ That’s all she had. And that was the end of that, at least for the meantime.
She had attempted to apologise again later, maybe in the hopes that she could say more, but found that she didn’t want to talk about Ray, let alone to make excuses for herself. In an awkward retreat Stevie called herself a monster.
Despite her best intentions to bring her confession to a close it had gone horribly awry. Stevie had wanted to tell him that Ray’s fantasy, to have her seduce her own flesh and blood, was the greater reason their marriage quickly collapsed. She wanted to put it all on him, and that would have been the easiest way out, but no…
‘I am a monster,’ she insisted when Lee even tried to defend her honour. After all she hadn’t done anything wrong. ‘I’m glad he’s gone and not coming back, but that doesn’t excuse my behaviour.’
‘Maybe you should talk to the therapist about it,’ Lee suggested, because there was no other solution that he could see. His mother certainly wouldn’t listen to anything else he had to say.
That mortified her more than anything. ‘No, never – I’m not being put on some pervert list or sent away.’
‘You don’t know that’ll happen,’ Lee argued, but she wouldn’t hear it. Finally he relented, and then resolved to understand the stress of her position; especially since she had confessed all of this to him. ‘No, okay nobody has to know,’ he relented. ‘You’re safe with me!’
Stevie’s panic wore off eventually, and with that she sighed a breath of relief and thanked him. Imagine though, she thought, what life would become if those that knew the family would discover these things about her?
That made her realise the weight she had placed on Lee’s shoulders, and that was not fair. ‘Well handled yet again, Stevie,’ she whispered in the bathroom mirror after washing the ruined mascara from her eyes.
8
‘I’m so fucking done with Dave!’
Lee read the message over and over again. Kit, the tattooed alt girl from TK Maxx, was making it obvious the past year that – if things were somehow different – she’d fuck him in an instant.
But Kit, who was also not his type in any way other than physically, was more than a handful in ways that Lee was not prepared for. Emotional dependency sprung to mind, which was not an attribute that applied to relationship goals, even if he wanted one.
And Dave…
Lee was never a fan of Dave, and didn’t want into his business. Dave was a strange one – the type of lad who saw himself as twenty-years older and about a hundred pounds brawnier than he was. Dave liked to play dress up and to pose as a biker, though he caught the bus to work.
‘What’s up?’ he replied, hoping that this would be short. Sopranos wouldn’t watch itself!
‘I swear he’s fucking somebody else,’ Kit replied immediately. ‘I’ve had nothing the past two weeks and all I see is him flirting with that slut Stephanie Weathers.’
‘Have you asked?’
‘No, why would I ask?’
Because you think he’s cheating!’
‘Omg I couldn’t deal with it if it was true.’
‘So you’re just going to pretend?’ Lee pushed. ‘Leave him then.’
What did he care?
‘And then what?’
‘Go get laid?’
‘Oh yeah, with who,’ she asked, and on the end of that, dropped a winking emoji.