‘I just,’ he paused, ‘I never felt a connection. Girls my age are just so shallow. They expect the world, they seem so immature and-I don’t know-the last few times…’
‘I thought teenagers were all about the sex,’ Marie reflected. ‘Sex and music and getting drunk…’
‘It’s different now,’ he said struggling, ‘you don’t know what part of your private life isn’t all over Facebook. I don’t want that. I want to just be myself without having to act up to some social expectation or other!’
‘Yeah,’ Marie looked back. She hated to think about it so recklessly then, and without parental filters, but what a woman like herself wouldn’t do for a strong young virile man to make up for lost time. She took his hand in hers while he was processing what he had said to her and gazed lovingly into his eyes. ‘I think it’s time for bed. Have you decided? Couch, bed or share…’
‘I’ll take the couch, don’t worry.’
She wanted to ask him something. When he went to get up and away from the table, Marie held onto his hand and pleaded with his eyes with a badly practiced smile.
‘Completely up to you,’ she started.
‘But…’
‘I was thinking,’ she paused, ‘I never got to hold my baby.’
Rob understood. The smile he offered back melted her heart.
‘It wouldn’t be weird, would it?’ she asked.
‘No, I’d actually like that,’ he affirmed.
She wrapped her arms around him, snuggled up from behind, and as her long lost son drifted off to sleep in the arms of his stray mother, their fingers entwined and she kissed his shoulder, enraptured by how good it felt to have him here, so intimately close.
And alone finally that night, her heart pounded at her breast, pressed softly to his back. She wrestled with her overwhelmingly strong love for him, as though she really had known him her whole life, and also as the thing she had spent her life yearning for. She did not think such strong feelings would become so mutual, let alone so quickly.
He was not just the son she gave to a better life. He had become the man of her dreams. Nobody on earth made her feel this way!
5
Sunlight filtered through the vertical blinds and a soft breeze caressed her gently awake. Content she lay in the arms of her little man, who was so much bigger than her. She felt safe and loved and happy, for the first time.
She opened her eyes to be greeted with her son facing her, still sound asleep, and soaked in his beauty. Face to face, their breaths collided, tickling her nose.
Marie regarded him wondrously, amazed that she had created him. And recalling the previous evening, it was remarkable how alike they were in personality, despite having been separated at birth.
Careful not to wake him, she kissed his forehead ever so slightly and smoothed his brow with the softer back of her hand. He opened his eyes, taking moments to focus, before looking right back at her with a grateful smile.
‘Hi, honey,’ she greeted. ‘Did you sleep well?’
Rob nodded. ‘How long have you been awake?’
Mischief glimmered in her eyes as Marie thought what came next.
‘Long enough to fall in love with that gorgeous sleeping face,’ she giggled and began planting big wet kisses all over him. ‘That’s for not giving me the snogs you promised.’