Home!
There’s no place like home…
A long day at work, dinner and drinks leading to yet more drinks, and 8pm felt more like 11pm. Stevie was so tired. Her body ached. As good as the company was she could not wait to get home and relax. Wasn’t that what everybody wanted, other than to not have to wake up and work another day?
Well everybody wanted different things, and some people liked to make it clear — such as Dennis, the office mail man. Stevie had gratefully given him the slip, before he made fools of the both of them. Walking into central, she managed to hop straight onto a train in time, and found a row of empty seats, which she took full advantage of.
The train ride back was thankfully quiet and uneventful, too. Nobody bothered her, or dared to steal her out of her weary reverie, as some hopeless man often might.
And still the faintest light radiated from the horizon looking out over the river as a brooding twilight rain began to spatter the windows. Twenty minutes passed as she sat deep in thought. Alcohol had that effect, along with coaxing certain inhibitions out of the way.
She found herself thinking of her son, Lee, and wondered what he’d be doing now. It would be nice if he was at home, at least. It wasn’t good to be home alone after a drink. She wasn’t particularly drunk but loneliness under the influence was still unpleasant.
Lee also had a way of making her forget how tired she felt sometimes. Just his presence made her feel good. And likewise, just the thought of him made her happy. Like her deeper thoughts, the docks faded into the distance behind her as home came closer.
And as the tunnel taking the end carriage’s passengers deeper into the suburbs whooshed around them, the lights predictably flickering and failing, temporarily immersing them in sinister darkness, Stevie closed her eyes momentarily and clicked her heels together.
‘We’re not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy,’ her inner voice harped. Silly — Stevie had never been in Kansas. Wherever the storm had taken her in life was her home.
Ironically, as the doors parted before her at the local station, the wind and rain were there to push her the rest of the way back to the house. Wet and cold, she was at least grateful to see his bedroom light on.
It only took a moment for Stevie to recognise Blackmail the Universe thumping familiarly through the ceiling from Lee’s bedroom. What’s hers was his and classic Megadeth was no exception — the Megadeth before Mustaine and Metallica’s feud led to trendy posturing and comparatively soft rock.
Still, hearing Megadeth blaring from his bedroom system sub-woofers made her laugh to herself. It might only have been workout music to him, eight or nine times out of ten, but he did not look the part.
Never in his life had he worn a denim cut-off camouflaged with band patches and buttons. He didn’t have a tattoo or a piercing either, and he never grew his hair long.
She threw her jacket over the banister and climbed the stairs, announcing her return with a tired and bewildered look, her hair damp and blown halfway over her face. Twenty lbs in each hand, Lee stood there topless, his arms and chest rippling as he worked through the curls.
Weary but transfixed nonetheless, Stevie slumped tiredly onto the edge of his bed and watched a moment. ‘Fwoar,’ she voiced her approval loudly over the music. ‘Look at all those lovely muscles.’
‘Looking a bit windswept,’ Lee observed, his skin glowing with perspiration. He’d been at it a while but showed no sign of stopping.
‘I need a favour,’ Stevie said and lazily wiggled her suede-booted feet. They were so tired and sore. ‘Can you unzip me, please?’
Lee carefully set down the dumbbells on the place mat at his feet, dutifully approaching his mother to kneel at her feet. Carefully he unzipped her boots and helped her slip out of them, one at a time, as she groaned her appreciation.
‘I’ll grab a quick shower before you finish here and put out fresh towels for you,’ she said, more or less thinking to herself. What else? Had he eaten? ‘Did you cook for yourself?’
Lee shook his head. ‘I’ll eat in a bit,’ he dismissed, preferring not to work out on a full stomach.
‘I’ll make you something then. Let me know when you’re going to have your shower, and I’ll get it started.’
Stevie stood up and kissed him on the lips, sneaking her hands out to tickle his ribs before laying a light smack on his hard flat stomach. Laughing, Lee flinched and pulled away. ‘You sexy boy, you,’ she remarked before grabbing her boots to leave.
A sudden sharp pain stung her right butt cheek then, from out of nowhere, and it came with a loud whipping crack. Reeling, Stevie turned back to see him grinning, laughing, cowering away as the palm of his guilty hand now reddened.
‘Cheeky fucker,’ she scolded. Her blushing face was a picture of surprise — not all bad. Nobody had spanked her in such a long time, and she hadn’t expected it from him. All of a sudden she was lost, her thoughts scattered.
After her long day and the brief but unpleasant encounter with the unexpected weather, a hot shower and a warm towel was nothing short of luxury. Stevie liberally moisturised her naked body as the last of the shower’s steam escaped through the partly opened bathroom window.
Something had motivated her to shave her pussy that evening too, and she had done away with the lot, now leaving her bald and smooth and feeling all the more naked for it. One foot hitched up onto the edge of the bathtub, now she carefully applied some of her son’s aftershave balm, ever so slowly rubbing it in a little deeper than was necessary.
She had to dismiss herself before she would get carried away and forget the time. Lee might have been waiting for her to finish. Dutifully replacing the towels, she slipped into a pair of soft pink cotton pyjama bottoms and a white cotton tank top, before making her way downstairs.
‘Protein,’ she said to herself thoughtfully, bee-lining for the kitchen to search the fridge. And come to think of it she was a little hungry herself, post-drinks. Lee wouldn’t be long now. She could hear him getting undressed in the bathroom directly above.
Utterly stuffed, Lee put down the fork on his empty plate, nothing remaining other than a drop of garlic and parsley butter and the slight kerb of seared fat that he’d sliced from the side of his ribeye steak.
Having heard of the day’s events, and the advances of Den the mail man, he groaned gratefully of his sated appetite and sat there a moment before gathering the plates and taking them to the sink.
‘Digest first, love,’ Stevie insisted, but to no avail. Quietly she observed that her nipples were poking out through her tank top and pulled the garment down at the bottom to see how the fabric stretched over her boobs — never a bad time to appreciate what she had.
‘I wouldn’t mind. I can laugh it off. I often have to,’ she continued on the previous matter. ‘But he wasn’t taking the hint. I could have slapped him one!’
‘Maybe you should have,’ Lee suggested as he sped through the washing. At the kitchen sink he was all elbows. Stevie watched, her eyes trained on his working triceps, bare and shadowed against the overhead light.
He was wearing sweatpants and a nicely fitting vest, which showed off his strong torso. At his shoulders his laterals were quite pronounced, even through the thick cotton.
What was she talking about again?
‘Well the moment he thought he was in with a chance I realised I’d made a mistake leading him on.’
‘But the moment it became obvious it was just a joke, he should have accepted it,’ Lee justified.
‘Hmm,’ Stevie agreed, nodding.
‘So you don’t like him, then?’ he joked, towelling off the plates and pans.
Stevie didn’t have much to think about. ‘I preferred him before he got lonely and desperate,’ she admitted tiredly. ‘When he was with someone else and I was just another face at the office.’
They retired to the warmth of the living room, Lee following his mother and secretly appreciating the shape and sway of her behind. ‘So, you’re not even going to take him up on a one-off?’
‘What?’ Stevie responded as though she had been insulted.
Lee laughed. ‘Hit it and ditch it?’
‘Nooooo,’ she protested. He laughed harder. ‘What kind of woman do you take me for?’
Lee sank into the sofa, watching how his mother picked up her Kindle and clutched at it before she too sank into her seat beside him, drawing her feet up to keep warm beneath her.
‘Okay,’ he accepted with a lax shrug of his strong bare shoulders.
‘I might like sex more than most, but I don’t use people for it. I think I’ve already said that,’ Stevie said defensively. ‘Besides, yeah, he’s a bit of a tit!’
Again Lee laughed, reaching for the controls to the television. On the periphery of his vision, his mother flipped open the cover of her Kindle book and then cursively peeked up at him. ‘Put on whatever you want,’ she said. ‘I’m just going to do some reading…’