Page 37 of A Second Chance

Damn, she was good. She employed a subtle way of finding out if he was running out and leaving her daughter with a one-night stand. “Sounds good,” he said without hesitation. And he meant it.

“Creamer?” she smiled up at him.

“Please.”

***

Gwen drug herself down the steps, she’d slept like the dead and still felt like it. Almost nine, she hadn’t slept this late in years. Her mom had a canvas laid flat on the kitchen table, a bucket full of buttons and a bottle of glue. She appeared lost in arranging the buttons on the canvas. Last week, it was shards of glass that she was gluing, so at least this was safer. Less chance of bleeding on the project.

“Button art this week?” she asked.

Natalie looked up. “Hi, sweetheart. Did you sleep well?” She looked back down, decided she liked the arrangement, and added glue.

“I did.” Gwen opened the fridge and rummaged for the yogurt she’d hidden from Avery.

“I met your young man this morning,” Natalie said. Gwen froze with her head in the fridge and wished she could fit inside. “He’d apparently gotten an early call for a job,” she continued. “I sent him off with one of the travel mugs. He said he’d bring it back.”

“Mom.” He’d sent her a text about the Ellis Diner.

“What? He seems like a nice boy, respectful, a tradesman. Did you have a good time with him?”

“We went to the Harvest Festival yesterday,” she replied. “It was fun.” Her mind traveled back to what they’d done to each other in the bed and needed to stay in the fridge a while longer…although her body heat might spoil the dairy.

“Are you going to close the fridge sometime?” her mom asked.

“I think Avery stole my yogurt.”

“I think you’re distracted.”

Yeah,thatwas an understatement. She hadn’t brought a boy home in years and the first time she has Jason spend the night, her mom wakes up at the crack of dawn. “It was an expensive name brand one,” she complained.

“He wore a condom, right?” Natalie continued, undeterred. “Safe sex is important. And pregnancy isn’t the worst thing that can happen from unprotected sex.”

Her mother said the word “sex” way too much. Natalie forever the free hippie always went with the flow, never settled down, and didn’t conform to society. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t horrifying to have a mother that didn’t come equipped with the embarrassment gene. When her mom became a traveling midwife, she and Avery sometimes had to go to childbirths with her – that’s the best birth control ever for a pre-teen girl.

“Yes,” she replied, giving up on the yogurt and closing the refrigerator.

“Good,” she nodded, rummaging through the buttons in the bucket. Where does one even get that many buttons?Gwen wondered. “How was the sex? It’s been a while for you.”

Gwen hit her head on the refrigerator door with athunk.

“It has been,” she continued. “And women have needs, it’s perfectly natural.”

Her current need was to extricate herself from this conversation.

“It’s true,” she continued. “Your sister’s been much happier since she started having regular orgasms.”

Gwen screamed, clamping her hands over her ears she marched from the kitchen and up the stairs. Halfway up the second flight, she spotted Avery at the top, staring.

“What on earth is all the yelling?” Avery asked.

“Mom is talking about orgasms.” And no one should have to hear these words coming from their mother. Gwen reached the top and faced Avery.

“She found out about Jason, huh?”

“Met him in the kitchen this morning and sent him off with a coffee mug.”

“Could have been worse.”

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