“Sorry… Tina. It’s just how my mom raised me. She’d never let any of my friends call her by her first name, thinks it’s disrespectful.”
“You know I don’t see eye to eye with her on a lot of things, and this is one. ‘Mrs. Barnes’ always makes me think of Tom’s mom Marion. So, please, call me Tina, and maybe after you and Drew get married, you could call me ‘Mom’, and you can see whether you like being “Mrs. Barnes”, either. Same goes for you, Duke. ‘Mrs B.’ makes me think of Happy Days reruns, and I’m not that Marion, either.”
“You expect me to marry Drew, too, Tina?” Duke joked.
“Oh, you,” she answered, as she pulled four more slices of toast from the toaster, buttered them and put them on two more plates, with scoops of egg and strips of bacon, handing one to me, and taking the other to the table, where we both sat down.
“So what’s your plan for today, Mom?” I asked, before taking a bite of bacon.
“Cleaning up from the party, then resting up. I’ve got to work tomorrow.”
“I thought you got bereavement leave?” I asked.
She shrugged. “I do, but it’s not enough days to let me just stay off of work until whenever we can do the memorial. I’ll save the rest so I can handle those arrangements whenever the autopsy’s done. It’ll be good to keep busy while we’re waiting for that, anyway.”
~~~~~
We wrapped up breakfast, then I said goodbyes to Patti and the guys as they headed home, then I went to Mom in the kitchen, and quietly said, “About last night…”
“Drew, I’m sorry if I invaded your privacy,” Mom began. “But your door wasn’t fully closed, and I could hear the two of you from my room. I started to come down the hall just to close the door, but when I saw you…”
“It turned you on?”
“Yeah. I think you saw how much.” she sighed.
I took a breath, before saying, “Me, too, Mom. I’ve never had an audience before, especially one as hot as you looked at that moment. It turned me on, and fed into one of the best… sessions… I’ve ever had with Patti.”
“You’re not mad?” she asked.
“No,” I answered, giving her a smile. “Maybe being turned on by Patti kept me from being embarrassed, but I didn’t feel anything like that. It just added to what I was already feeling, do you know what I mean? It actually worked out great for me, although I will try and make sure the door’s shut next time. Does it bother you that you watched us?”
“Not like I would have thought. You both looked so beautiful together. You really love her, don’t you?”
I nodded. “I do. We’ve been together two years so far, and I really can’t imagine my future without her in it,” I said. “We haven’t talked that much about getting married yet, while we’re still in college and aren’t sure whether our careers could pull us to different parts of the country, but after what you said at breakfast about her being ‘Mrs. Barnes’, I think it will come up as a topic pretty soon. And I know she was envious of your bracelet, so jewelry is something I’ll have to look into.”
I paused a couple of seconds before saying, “If Dad’s death is going to teach me anything, it’s that life is too short to play with ‘what ifs’, either with the past, or with the future. Instead of worrying about how the future might split us apart and letting that keep us from making a commitment, we should focus on making sure it doesn’t. I want the kind of relationship you and Dad had, with Patti.”