by Jamie Knight
He moans and pulls me close to him. I can feel that I’m about to cum, and I can’t help but let myself go with him.
I cry out, “Yes, oh yes! Mmmm.”
This obviously excites him, and he thrusts deeper. I moan out his name and he tightens his hold on me. I can feel our bodies shuddering as we cum together.
I have never experienced anything like this before. I feel weak and emotional. He lets me lay there in his arms for a few minutes. Gradually, I recover and after a little while, my wild and crazy emotions calm themselves. I feel something that I have never felt before.
I feel amazing and genuinely happy. I don't want these feelings to end. Derek sits up in bed and looks at me. I'm surprised again when he asks if I really need to go home.
I feel then that I need to be completely honest with him, so I tell him, "I have a son. He’s waiting for me at home. I'm sorry for not mentioning it to you earlier. I was just worried and a little scared."
I’m still scared – that I ruined everything between us while it was just getting started. I could tell that this wasn’t just about physical pleasure – we have a real emotional bond, and I should have been completely honest with him sooner. I hope he can understand.
He reaches for my hand and holds it.
"It’s fine. I want to take care of you and your son. To be perfectly honest, I don’t want to let you out of my life now that I’ve just met you. I will do whatever it takes to keep you happy and with me," he says. “I know it’s fast, and seems crazy, but I believe that something was telling me I was going to meet you. My life was not making me happy, and now I feel… happy. I don’t want to let you go now that I have you. Ever.”
His words seem to take us both by surprise, but I think we are both glad that they were said. We sit there quietly a few moments. Finally, I look over and smile at him. He seems puzzled but smiles back at me.
I squeeze his hand softly and tell him, "You have made all my dreams come true. I’m going to have the happiest Mother’s Day ever tomorrow, and it’s all because of you."
His smile gets even bigger and I think he even starts to blush a little.
Eventually, he says, "No, it’s all because you’re so wonderful."
I smile at him. He lets go of my hand and pulls me back into bed. We lay there cuddling and kissing and giggling like two teenagers. I smile to myself and think that this is the way it’s supposed to be.
Chapter 9
Jocelyn
It’s Mother’s Day and I couldn’t have asked for a better one. Aunt Barbara, Maxim and I are at the park. Maxim loved swinging and now we’re having a picnic – although Maxim is only eating his normal diet of breastmilk and fruit pouches.
“Here, I brought you a gift,” Aunt Barbara says, taking a small box out of her purse.
“And I brought you a gift!” I laugh, reaching into Maxim’s diaper bag to find it.
We smile as we open each other’s gifts, only to find that we’d gotten each other pretty much the same thing – silver necklaces. The one I got her is in the shape of a heart, and the one she got me is in the shape of a bird, because Maxim loves a nursery song about a bird that goes, “tweet, tweet, tweet” until the baby falls asleep.
“This is perfect!” we both exclaim at once. Then, laughing, we add, “How did you know?”
I can’t believe how my Aunt Barbara and I have become so in sync so quickly. It’s like we’re sisters, instead of her and my mom.
As if reading my thoughts, she says, “I know it’s an important day for you – your first mother’s day – and I think it’s sad my sister isn’t participating, so I wanted to make sure it would be special.”
“It really is,” I tell her. “And I so appreciate all your help with Maxim. I know that you’re like a second mom to him, and we both really appreciate it.”
“It’s so sweet that you’d say that,” she says, tearing up. “I do view him as like a son to me, and it makes me mad that…”
She drifts off, until I look at her and say, “What? It’s okay; you can tell me.”
“…that I was never able to have kids of my own and my sister was, and yet she treats her own kid and grandkid like shit. Life doesn’t seem fair, sometimes.”
“I’m sorry, Aunt Barb,” I tell her, taking her hand in mine. “I didn’t know that. I just thought you hadn’t found the right guy to have a family with yet. You’re still young!”
She’s my mom’s younger sister by quite a bit – Uncle Bob is in between them, as well as another brother, Uncle Steve, who lives somewhere in Chicago or somewhere, and with whom no one keeps in touch. My mom had me young herself – a fact she never failed to bitterly remind me of – and so my Aunt Barbara has to be only somewhere between thirty-five to forty or so, if I had to guess.
I don’t want to be rude and ask. Part of her has always seemed very young to me – she looks young, for one thing, and is hard-working and inspired, running a crafting business from her own home, which is how she manages to be available to watch Maxim while I’m at the bakery. But another part of her is so responsible and caring that she seems older, if only because she’s so matronly.
“You’re mostly right,” she says. “I never tried to have a baby because I thought I should wait until I found the perfect guy. I’ve since realized that the perfect guy doesn’t exist. And, through you, I’ve learned that a mother’s love is all a baby really needs. But in the meantime, I’ve had issues with my periods and have been diagnosed with a condition that makes conceiving difficult. If I want to have a baby, I’m really running out of time, and I don’t know that it’s even possible.”
She sighs, then says, “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be depressing on Mother’s Day! I really am so happy to have you and Maxim in my life!”
I’m not depressed, but I just feel bad for her, and I’m hoping that talking to me about it makes me her feel better, because she’s helped me so much.
Chapter 10
Jocelyn
“It’s no problem,” I tell Aunt Barbara, still feeling a little shocked, and fixated on this new information I’d just learned about her. “I’m sure there are treatments you could undergo, and even use, you know, sperm donors, on your own…”
“Yeah, I’ve thought about that,” she hastens to add, as I nestle Maxim against my breast for another nursing session.
This boy can eat, and he had started getting fussy, letting me know it was time again.
“I go back and forth, sometimes thinking that I should just wait and see if it’s what fate has in store for me… if I meet any kind of decent man, if we decide we want a baby, you know, the old-fashioned way… but other times, I see how you and I work it out together and I think, well, I could be a modern mother!” my aunt continues. “I could go choose a sperm donor and get IVF. Or I could even use a surrogate or adopt. Those options are expensive but I have savings. The business has done well with its online Etsy orders and there isn’t much for a single woman to spend a ton of money on… other than now that I have Maxim to spoil rotten, of course.”
She coos at him, and he smiles at her, while still nursing.
“He’s very lucky to have you,” I tell her. “And you’re right, you still have time to decide. There’s no rush.”
“Yeah, he’s really all I need, anyway,” Aunt Barbara says, with a resigned yet contended-seeming shrug. “And whenever I start to think about how mean my sister was to you, I just think, well, it’s her loss and my gain, because I love little Maxim! But I know it must be hard for you…”
She trails off again.
“Oh, God. I’m so sorry! It seems I can’t stay away from sad topics today!”
“It’s fine,” I tell her. “Obviously, I was already thinking about my mom, anyway, this being Mother’s Day and all. Can’t really avoid it, so might as well talk about it.”
“True,” she nods.
“I have no idea what made her so evil,” I tell her. “Any insight?”
She hesitates, then sighs, as if her telling
me this was long overdue but also as if it’s time.
“Our family has just been through a lot, and I think it turned most of my siblings into assholes. I know you’ve only probably gotten a glimpse of it from Uncle Bob, who has both his good sides and bad, and you’ve certainly seen your share of it from your mom. Our other brother, Steve, is the worst one of all, and things with him are so bad that, as you know, none of us ever see or talk to him. He became an alcoholic and may have drunk himself to death by now, for all I know.”
I nod, sadly thinking it sounded familiar. My mom had her own struggles with the bottle, while lecturing me righteously about never drinking, doing drugs, or having pre-marital sex. I sometimes wondered whether she was in denial about her own problems, or just didn’t want me to repeat them – she had married my dad young, due to being pregnant with me, and they did not have a good marriage.
In fact, they straight up hated each other and only stayed together for the sake of appearances at their church, which didn’t believe in divorce. Now, looking back, I think it was a bit of both but mostly my mom just didn’t want her perfect image being shattered by having a pregnant teenage daughter.
“Our own parents were very cold to us,” Aunt Barb explains, and my ears perk up, because I never knew much about my grandparents on my mother’s side, both of whom are now deceased.
My mom moved away from Pittsburgh when I was a baby because my father was from Bloom and he had only been out here for work. They were closer with his family – who I got the feeling her family had always hated – and didn’t keep in much contact with her own after she left.
“There were alcoholism issues there too, and abuse, and we kids just did what we had to do to survive. Whenever I get mad at your mom – or any of my siblings – I just remind myself that they came from the same awful environment I did, and they can’t really help but be this way,” she finishes.
“Yeah, but you turned out so nice, compared to them,” I say.
“We can’t really choose what personalities we come with,” she tells me. “I mean, maybe to some extent, we can, but I think I was just ‘blessed’ or ‘cursed’ with the gift of kindness, whichever way you want to look at it. Your Uncle Bob is business savvy and got rich off of driving a hard bargain—”
Don’t I know it, I think—
“—your mom has her religion and her close-knit religious community to lean on—”
—and the bottle, too, I think—
“—and your Uncle Steve was some kind of hippie who believed in letting life just happen to him and going with the flow. He had no desire to care about anyone else or how his behavior affected us, but that in and of itself was a protection mechanism. A way to cope. So, sometimes, I think maybe that I’m too nice – that if I were able to get out from under the weight of caring about everyone else’s problems more than my own, that maybe I’d have had a better life. But then I look at little Maxim and know that means I likely wouldn’t have had him in my life, so, I think everything is turning out exactly as it should.”
I think so, too, I think, as I try to surreptitiously check my phone, since what she said obviously made me think about Derek.
Sure enough, there’s a text from him, which must have come in when we were playing on the swings, because I had been checking all last night and this morning.
My heart leaps as I read it.
Happy Mother’s Day! I hope you have a great day, beautiful. You deserve it!
And then there’s an emoji of flowers to accompany the words.
I quickly text him back, Thanks. So far so good!
Apparently, I’m smiling, because my aunt asks, “What’s the good news in your text messages?”
I look up at her, taken aback and not sure if I should tell her about Derek.
“Ummm…”
“Come on!” she guesses. “You met someone. I know that look anywhere. And don’t think you can hold out on me. I just spilled my guts to you; it’s your turn to let me know the scoop.”
“Okay,” I laugh, because she does have a point. “Well, I know this is ridiculously fast, but I just met him yesterday, at…” I pause, not wanting to tell her all the sordid details, “…the bakery. He came in and it was like, love at first sight, as crazy as that sounds.”
“That doesn’t sound crazy at all,” she says. “Some people are with someone their whole lives and never feel that feeling.”
“That’s true,” I tell her, thinking of my mom.
Suddenly I’m really glad it didn’t work out at all with Maxim’s dad and me, or else I never would have met Derek. I might have been stuck in a miserable marriage like my mom and dad.
I feel my phone vibrate in my hand with another text, so I look down and see that he says, “Any chance we can meet up? I already miss you.”
My mouth turns to the side in a half-smile, half-frown, as I look at it.
“What’s Romeo have to say?” my aunt asks.
“He wants to meet up,” I tell her.
“Well, tell him to swing by!” she says. “No time like the present for him to meet Maxim, and me, right? We’ll see if this is really meant to be, by how he reacts to the three of us. A lot of men can’t handle that kind of pressure, and you’d rather find out now than later, after you’ve invested more into the relationship, right?”
“True,” I tell her, thinking that my aunt is a genius.
But mostly, I’m just happy for the permission to see Derek again, on what was supposed to be a day spent alone with Aunt Barb and Maxim.
“If you don’t mind meeting my milk monster and my aunt who helps me with him, you can come by Memorial Park,” I text Derek back.
“MIND? I’d LOVE to!” he quickly responds.
I smile big now, not trying to hide it.
“I really hope you like him,” I tell Aunt Barb.
“If you like him, I like him, honey,” she says with a smile. “And I can tell you do. I haven’t seen you look this happy in a long time.”
She’s right about that – but she doesn’t know just how much I like him – or more.
Chapter 11
Jocelyn
Not even thirty minutes later, Derek shows up, and he’s not alone. He’s brought along an adorable dog. And some flowers.
“Hello, gorgeous,” he says, giving me a kiss on the cheek and handing me roses.
“Hi,” I say, while my aunt raises her eyebrows approvingly.
“And these are for you, if you’re her aunt?” Derek asks, looking suspiciously at Aunt Barbara. “Jocelyn told me she was here with her aunt, but you look way too young to fit that description.”
“Well, thank you,” Aunt Barbara says, as he places some daffodils in her arms. “I’m not that much older than her.”
“I can tell,” Derek says, and then holds out his hand to him. “I’m Derek.”
“And I’m Barbara. It’s great to meet you.”
And then Derek looks down at Maxim, who is sleeping in my lap, and says, “And this must be Mr. Handsome. At least, that’s what he looks like to me.”
“Thanks,” I tell him, smiling. “His name is Maxim.”
“Maxim. A name fit for a warrior.”
His little terrier dog is jumping all around, half barking, half whining, wanting his attention.
“And this is Squeaky,” he says. “He’s not as cute as Maxim but he’s all I’ve got.”
“He sure is adorable,” I say, while Aunt Barbara nods.
Derek takes a ball out of his pocket and throws it, which is the only thing that gets the dog to be quiet. He goes bounding after it and then gets it. It’s a toy that squeaks in his mouth and we can hear him bringing it back.
“He loves that toy so much that I named him after it,” he says. “But anyway. It’s a lovely day. Happy Mother’s Day.”
He sits down on the blanket and Aunt Barbara pours him some iced tea.
“Would you like a sandwich?” she asks. “We already ate but we have extra.”
�
��Sure,” he says, and after he bites into the turkey and cheese sandwich she hands him, he winks at me and says, “I was starving.”
He’s being rather subtle, since my aunt is here, but somehow I know this means we worked up more than just an appetite last night together.
“Well, glad I could help you out,” I tell him, trying not to blush.
“I know you two probably want some time alone together, so I don’t mind taking Maxim back to the house while you guys go… wherever,” Aunt Barbara says, clearing picking up on our innuendo despite our attempts to hide it. “There’s a Baby Einstein episode he and I have been dying to watch.”
“Thanks!” I tell her. “But there’s no rush yet.”
“There’s certainly not,” Derek says, as Maxim begins to stir. “I want to spend a little time with this guy. And with Aunt Barb!”
I pick up the baby while Derek throws the squeaky ball across the park again, so that his dog takes off after it. Maxim opens a still-sleepy eye at Derek and then immediately smiles.
“He likes me already,” Derek says, with a smug, boastful grin on his face. Then he looks down at Maxim again and coos softly, before he says, “Well, hello there, little guy.”
Aunt Barbara smiles at me as if to let me know she thinks I’ve got a keeper. But I already knew that! I know that the way I met Derek was less than traditional but I’m so happy I did.
Maxim starts cooing back at Derek, who says, “You’re a happy little guy, aren’t you?”
“Just wait until you see him on the swing!” Aunt Barbara says.
“I’d love to!”
Derek stands up, having scarfed down the sandwich, and starts throwing away our trash, in between sending the ball flying to Squeaky a couple times. Then he snaps a leash on him and we head over to the playground area of the park.
“It’s a little tricky, to fit him in here,” I say, starting to raise my arms up, with Maxim still in them.
“Here, let me try,” Derek says.
He takes Maxim out of my arms and lifts him into the swing, buckling him into the safety straps with ease.