Page 7 of To Save Him

 

 

 

Chapter Three

 

FIVE AM COMES early when you’ve only slept a couple of hours and those precious moments were spent in a restless state.  Brandon was still foremost in my mind as I forced the cobwebs from my brain.

But I also found myself anticipating seeing him again.

Oh, this was not good…not good at all.  But I couldn’t help myself.  Since we had a guest, one I was starting to care about, I got in the shower first.  I had a bathroom attached to my bedroom, so it was easy enough to do, but I could feel the effects of no coffee.  The shower was nice, but I was moving slowly.  No caffeine, no walk, and no sleep were a horrible combination.

So I decided to make a pot of coffee and felt relief that everyone was still in bed when I poured the first cup.  I went back to my bedroom and took care of my makeup and hair, and by the time I was done, I could hear signs of stirring in the house.

Annabel, as always, was the first up, and I heard her singing in the shower.  I began rifling around in the kitchen, trying to decide what to make for a group breakfast.

I settled on pancakes and sausage and started the little links frying in the skillet while I began glancing through the day’s newspaper.  By the time six-thirty rolled around, I was knocking on JR’s door, urging him to get up a few minutes early for a hot breakfast (rather than rushing through his usual bowl of cereal).  It was then, while I stood in the hallway, that I heard the doorknob to Gabriel’s room turning.  For a fleeting moment, I felt a touch of panic and hope at what seemed surreal, but I knew before he exited that I would be seeing Brandon and not my firstborn exiting the room.

Fortunately, he was wearing a pair of gray sweatpants, but he was without a shirt.  Ordinarily, that would be all right, but considering that I was now full of a strange consuming inferno for this young man, part of me felt like a dirty voyeur.  It took seconds for the female part of my brain to register that he was rock hard, had a nice six pack and abs, and had a huge black tattoo covering his chest.  At that moment, glancing away from his beautiful body with a guilty look on my face would have made him unnecessarily uncomfortable, so I made eye contact instead and said, “Breakfast in a few minutes if you’re hungry,” before rapping on JR’s door one last time.

A thin sheen of perspiration clung to my upper lip as I turned away to walk back downstairs.  Brandon said, “That sounds great.  Thank you.  I’ll be there in a little bit.”  He headed toward the bathroom and I hauled ass down the stairs.

Fortunately, Annabel was still in her room putting on makeup, so I was alone in the kitchen for a few more moments with my less-than-innocent thoughts.  Brandon had looked a little sleepy, but that look on his face etched in my mind only added to the embers smoldering in my core. Bedroom eyes, my mother would have called them.  But those few seconds had revealed so much more—I knew now that he didn’t have an ounce of fat on him—and I recalled from that glimpse upstairs that he also had a tattoo on one of his upper arms.  To determine the details of either tattoo, though—what the artwork represented—would have involved a level of gawking I wasn’t comfortable with.

A few minutes later, I was cooking pancakes on a hot griddle.  The sausage was now piled on a platter on the table, along with butter and syrup.

Annabel arrived first in the kitchen, but she only had a sausage link with a cup of coffee.  I didn’t even ask her if she was going to have more, because I already knew she would tell me she didn’t want that many simple carbs.  As was her usual morning routine, she nibbled her breakfast slowly while texting Liam and maybe a friend or two.  The peck on the cheek she would give me when she left that day would likely be the most interaction we had, and that was fine.  I knew Annabel was becoming her own young woman and I wanted to be there when she needed me, but I wasn’t any good at pushing affection.

I’d probably become icy since the death.  If not, I was certainly numb.

JR and Brandon came down the stairs together and I had to catch my breath at the sight of them together.  It felt like old times—or more like the way things should be.  I had to grip the counter to steady myself.

Fortunately, Brandon was wearing a shirt.

JR didn’t even ask.  He simply grabbed a plate and started piling on the food.  Brandon said, “Smells great, but would you mind if I got some coffee first?”

“Not at all.  Help yourself.”  Oh, my God, I could feel it inside—the strangest sensation.  I hadn’t felt this way since I’d been a teenager.  It was a foreign feeling of lightness and unbearable giddy happiness.

Happiness.

I let that sink in for a few moments.  That emotion had become so alien to me, I almost didn’t recognize it.

And then I felt shame.  Even though I didn’t know Brandon’s age, I knew I was quite a bit older.  I should have been thinking of him in a maternal fashion, not like some desperate, deprived—depraved—woman.  Not like acougar.

I chastised myself in my mind, mentally cautioning myself to get it under control.

Brandon managed to find the cups and filled one with hot java before sitting at the table.  The kitchen was one of my favorite rooms in the house, especially in the morning when, aside from dreary days, it filled with bright light from the large windows facing east.  In that room of mostly white with accents of country blue and splashes of stark black, people felt warm because the room was so inviting in the daytime but even at night.

As if the aroma of sausage mingled with maple syrup was calling to him, Brandon said, “Okay, I’m ready.”

“Coming right up.”  I took an empty blue plate off the counter and used the spatula to pick up two pancakes.  I asked JR, “Did you get enough to eat?”

“I think I want one more pancake, mom.”

My son had been going through another growth spurt and had been eating more of late.  I knew my tendency since Gabriel’s death had been to substitute food for love when it came to my children, and awareness was a good thing—but I wondered how to change that, how to once more become the mother I needed to be.  My mantra,life is for the living, reminded me thatJRneeded me.  He needed me present and parenting, not simply feeding him just because it was the easiest thing for me to do.

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