Taking the Edge Off – Part 2

‘It’s hard,’ she said finally. ‘Love is hard. You learn from your pain and move on and don’t make the same mistakes, at least not more than ten or fifty times until they’re worn to nothing. You go get some sleep. Weekend tomorrow!’

She didn’t sleep for a long time. She lay awake in the night listening to her heart hammering with all the power of her love, her dread, her guilt and her uncertainly all at once.

And the anger at the way any girl would treat her boy – she could not begin to fathom what kind of urban trash brought their child up to act that way. Her love may have become unconventional to say the least, over the past month, but she had taught her son to respect women as the women they were.

Now what was that worth? In his eyes, no woman would be worth half as much as his mom. They wouldn’t have that promise of unconditional love, nor the bond they had. And then her mind strayed to the sex between them that one fateful day.

Oh lord the sex!

And by now she was well aware that it hadn’t been some cold, heartless demonstration of human biology and the physical instruction leading to sexual intercourse. It had been sex, no matter how shortlived, and no matter how refrained and awkward.