I look up.
She’s poised. Holding a grocery bag. Smiling and unphased.
“Hey, Mom,” Eli says, voice flat as a brick wall, his pants still covering the southern region of his manhood.
I freeze.
My breasts are on full display.
I want to die. But instead I smile. Because that’s what you do when you’re naked and afraid, in the woods and meeting a man’s mother.
“Heyyy, Momma” I wave, sounding like Felicia from Friday. “How you doin’?”
A Little Nudity and Nipples Ain’t Never Bothered Me
Eli
As if this morning couldn’t get any more humiliating, my mother—five foot nothing and still capable of reducing fully grown men to trembling idiots—decides to drop in unannounced while I’m naked and post-coitally dazed.
She squints with that look that says she’s forming jokes I won’t be able to live down if I tried.
“Who’s your friend, Lee?”
Fuck.
“Give us a minute, will you, Mom?”
“What? I grew up in the seventies, baby. A little nudity and nipples ain’t never bothered me.”
“Eww! Mom. Please.”
Max snorts a laugh, and I whip a sock at her head from behind like a petulant child. “You’re supposed to be onmyside,” I grumble as she follows my mother into the house, still giggling.
“I’ll just be in the kitchen while you two get yourselves together,” my mother calls over her shoulder.
I shake my head, trying to gather what remains of my dignity and mutter to Max, “Sorry about this.”
She shrugs. “It’s fine. I’ll have questions about why she called youLeelater.”
“Let’s not and say we did,” I reply through clenched teeth.
“Not a chance. It’s short for Leroy, huh? Your middle name?”
“Shut up,” I say, shaking my head. But fuck, how the hell did she guess that so easily?
“Make me!” she laughs, strutting toward the guest room.
Once I’m dressed and not holding my underwear as if I was cosplaying as Tarzan, I head to the kitchen where my mother is unloading her latest homemade concoctions like a farmer’s market on crack. Glass jars and recycled bottles full of lavender and citrus, something that smells vaguely like cake batter, and the damn berry body wash she’s always bragging about. The one Max just fell in love with.
She hums, organizing everything in my cabinets. “What brings you by, Mom?” I ask flatly. “Without calling, no less?”
“I can’t drop by to see my youngest son? And since when have I ever had to call first?” She pauses and gives me a look. “And when was the last time you had a cute girl over?”
“Mom—”
“Oh, hush. I’m just giving you a hard time. I know my son. The jilted gigolo who can’t bear to allow himself to be happy again.”
“I really wish you and Drake would stop calling me that. It’s getting old.”
