‘Thank you, Mum,’ Sweeney said.
‘She’s just on the exercise bike,’ Ronnie supplied. ‘She’ll ring you when she’s off.’
‘Okey dokey.’ Having had many puffed phone conversations with her mother on one kind of exercise equipment or other, Sweeney much preferred to chat when Connie was done.
‘I just wish,’ Ronnie continued, switching the conversation back to Fin, ‘that there weren’t so many off-colour comments. I’m not on board with those, darling.’
Sweeney watched as Fin’s eyebrows practically hit his hairline and he almost choked on the sip of tea he’d just taken as he sat up in alarm. She pressed her lips together hard to keep from laughing.
Oh, this was going to begood…
*
Fin sent a horrified look in Sweeney’s direction as he sat forward, plonking the mug down. Clearly, from her barely suppressed laughter, she was going to be no help. ‘You really shouldn’t read the comments, Mum.’
‘I’ll say. I mean… they’re really quite scandalous.’
Which was a massive understatement. His mother wasn’t a prude. She’d married into an Irish/Australian working-class family with a working-class affection for the kind of words not often spoken in polite company. Hell, Fin’s grandmother—who was a tiny little bird of a woman—could swear up a storm in sign language, which somehow made the words seem even louder.
Ronnie had also been a public librarian for almost forty years and, to cap it off, she’d worked most evenings of her lifebehind a bar.
She’d just never been one much for cussing herself.
Fin would argue she had never needed to. His mother adopted a certain expression when she was unimpressed that stopped most people in their tracks. It had certainly stopped him from pushing the envelope too far throughout his childhood. His father had affectionately called it herfuck around and find outlook.
And neither of them had been game to do that.
‘Listen to this one. From hot-to-trot-88. Love a man who is good with his hands. I’m pretty good with mine too. Bonus for you, no gag reflex.’
Her eyes popping, Sweeney snort-laughed, quickly muffling it with a hand over her mouth as Fin glared at her and lamented the fact that hedidhave a gag reflex, which was unfortunately threatening imminent activation. ‘Mum.’
‘And this one from smut-princess-polly.’
Oh boy. This was not going to be good. ‘Mum.’
‘Hey, honey,’ Ronnie continued unabated. ‘I need a good fingering and you look like you have the means. DM me.’
‘Mum!’
Collapsing back against the chair, Sweeney laughed so hard there was no possible way her hand was going to contain the noise. Fin shuddered, knowing there was no possible way he was ever going to scrub his mother sayinggood fingeringfrom his memory banks.
Between that and her ruined vagina, this trip had been brutal on his future sex life.
But she carried on blithely like she hadn’t just doomed him to a life of repetitive self-pleasure. ‘I know we’re supposed to be veryyou go, girlnow and we’re not supposed to shame women for expressing themselves sexually because of course they should be able to do that but … why do it on a social media platform? I mean, does that even appeal to men?’
Fin just wanted this conversation over but, as it hovered there in the growing silence, it appeared the question was not rhetorical. Years ago, on his tenth birthday, his mother had sat him down and spoken to him about wet dreams. It had been one of the most embarrassing moments of his life.
This waswayworse.
‘Yes, Fin,’ Sweeney said sweetly, a devilish expression on her face, ‘does that appeal to you?’
He narrowed his eyes at her. Sweeney was having too good a time at his expense. But the twitch of her lips and the sparkle in her eyes was hard to resist, and he found himself smiling despite the awkward situation. ‘Do not encourage her,’ he mouthed and completely surprised himself by also signing it.
Pressing her lips together, she tapped two fingers to her forehead in a salute.
‘Not particularly,’ he said finally.
Not the public declaration of it, anyway. The fingering bit? Fin was up for anything a woman might want to do between the sheets.
