My suspicion was confirmed a minute later, when I received another email from my mother entitled, Please don’t open the last email.
I clicked and read the new message:
don’t open the other email. delete it. i sent you the wrong one. here are the right set of pictures
I opened the file and saw that it was mostly the exact same pictures. But less. The nude pictures at the end had been removed. I could only imagine how humiliated she must have felt by sending me the wrong images.
My mother could be clumsy with technology sometimes, and I was sure that she would never make that same mistake again.
***
She came home with a relaxed aura. I had never seen her so laid back before. The brief vacation had worked wonders. She smiled more, she was more upbeat, and she laughed a little more often.
Her body also had a nice tan. I couldn’t remember seeing her so tanned before. It made her look different and less corporate. It gave her a more free-spirited look. When she wore a tshirt around the house, I saw that the tan looked equal around her body. I didn’t see any tan lines, which meant that during her trip, she had plenty of time to tan all-over.
I wondered if her breasts were the same way. I wondered if she sunbathed topless with her law firm friends.
***
Saturday morning. I woke up and went downstairs around 10 am, which was my usual time.
When I went to the kitchen, mom had just come from the backyard, through the sliding door. She was barefoot, wearing shorts and a bikini. She used a towel to cover her chest when she saw me. Then she gave me an awkward smile.
It was the first time I had ever seen her in a bikini top in person.
Another thing that made it weird was that I knew exactly what her breasts looked like from the pictures she sent (which I must have looked at over a million times). I hadn’t deleted the pictures she sent me. She had never mentioned it since accidentally sending it to me. Maybe she was too shy to bring it up. Or maybe she just didn’t mind?
We both said ‘good morning’ while we were in the kitchen. She moved the towel around and tied it around her chest, as if she had just taken a shower. When she did that, it gave me a brief glimpse of her bikini covered chest.
Her skin tone looked even. There weren’t any tan lines around her shoulders or upper chest, which meant that during her trip, she probably sunbathed topless. It was an arousing thought.
“Were you tanning?” I asked.
She smiled, “My new favorite hobby, if you can believe it.”
Just then, I had imagined my mother tanning in our backyard. We lived in a nice quiet residential area, near a hiking trail. That meant that we didn’t have any neighbors behind us. So she would have no problem tanning in privacy.
“Well, you look great. Nice tan. It makes you look different.”
The look on her face changed. She obviously appreciated my comment.
“I know. It does. It makes me look younger.”
She went to the fridge and grabbed some juice which she poured in a cup. I watched as she drank it, thinking to myself how good she looked.