Free Sample
Preview from chapter one
Boredom is a powerful force, one that bends your mind like heat warping glass, softening what’s ethical or sane until every edge shimmers and runs. That day, I was waiting for my mother on a splintery green bench in Fairview Park, rehearsing my smile for when she saw me before she saw what I was doing. She didn’t know about the profile I’d made for her, or the photos I’d found in her closet, or the fact that her “suitor” had already been rescheduled three times and that the fourth would never actually arrive. She didn't know, in other words, how much I enjoyed orchestrating her disappointment in advance.
She rounded the curve in blue heels, clicked to a perfect halt, and scanned the empty path with all the coiled anticipation of a housecat at an open window. My cock grew hard at the way her face set itself, braced for pleasure she feared as much as craved, a look I’d watched since I was young enough to hide under tables and spy her through the angled legs of bored grownups, desperate for someone to notice how badly she needed to be humiliated.
Tonight was going to be so much fun.
"Hi, Mom," I called, standing. I kept the tone light, almost rehearsed, because that was how she liked her reality, as plausible as her makeup and just as easy to wipe away if things got messy.
She started, eyes wide, and then relaxed into the sly, self-erasing smile that came standard issue for mothers of sons like me. "Nathan," she said, holding her purse like a shield. "You startled me!"
"Surprised to see you here. The park isn’t exactly the safest place for a woman on her own," I lied, digging my hands in my pockets to hide what was threatening to tent the front of my jeans. "Good thing I happen to be here to keep you safe."
“Oh.” Disappointment and panic warred in her eyes. “Oh, I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you. I was just… taking a quick exercise.”
“Then I’ll walk with you,” I said, throwing my arm around her shoulder and pulling her down the path. “And it’s no inconvenience, honestly. What kind of son would I be if I let my mother get assaulted because I wanted to rush home and play Xbox?”
The night was humid, vulturing its way into all the wrinkled places between us. We walked side by side, my mother’s perfume caking the air with citrus and guilt. Birds shrieked at dusk, drowning in the chatter of their own pack; but the park was empty, really, just me and my mother and the fake rendezvous waiting for her at a café that did not exist.