Chapter 20
Nova
Something is wrong.
From the minute I unlock the door, I can feel it. There’s this unnerving prickly feeling at the back of my neck. The air is just too quiet, too heavy.
Moving cautiously, I step over the threshold and peer into the living room. Nothing seems to be out of place there.
“Mom?” I call out as I inch down the hallway toward the kitchen. No response.
I stop and peek into the laundry room and the washroom. Looks normal.
But when I step into the kitchen, I stumble upon a sight that sends me immediately into panic. “Oh my god!”
My mother is at the kitchen table with a black scarf wound tightly over her mouth. She’s been stripped down to her bra and panties, and is tied to the chair. When she sees me, her eyes go wide. She’s shaking her head back and forth in warning, her messy blonde hair whipping into her face as she pleads with me to leave, to run away, to save myself.
“Don’t worry mom. I’ll get you out of this.”
As scared as I am, there’s no way I’m leaving my mother here naked, shackled and alone to face the psychopath who did this to her.
Thinking fast, I grab a knife off of the kitchen counter and I drop to my knees behind her chair. Employing all my strength, I use the blunt blade to saw through the fibers of the rope binding her wrists. She protests through her gag, rattling the chair as she wiggles back and forth. I shhh her. “Be quiet, mom. You’re gonna get us both killed.”
Powered by adrenaline, I slice through the binding, one fiber at a time. My arms grow tired and there’s sweat sliding down my armpits, but I have no intention of giving up. I’m almost done, she’s almost free, when I hear heavy footsteps and ominous whistling approaching the kitchen. Just like in a clichéd horror movie.
Oh god. The bad guy’s back.
I fall to my butt, cowering behind the chair, holding up the knife defensively. I curse myself for not having worked faster to cut the binding. Now, it’s too late. My mother and I are both going to die…My eyes squeeze shut as I curl myself into a little ball and wait for that fatal blow.
“Cricket?”
Huh?
I peel one eye open and look up in the direction of the familiar voice. I blink a few times to adjust my vision to the perplexing sight.
My dad is standing over the chair where mother is being held prisoner. My chest shakes with relief. “Daddy, quick! Help!” I grab the knife and resume my frantic and ardent mission to free the woman who gave me life.
My father flips his head back and laughs, his big brown belly shaking with each cackle.
That’s when it hit me.
“Wait…You did this to her?” I didn’t have the perfect family growing up. My parents always had issues. They fought with a fierceness that often shook this house to its foundation. I knew that they loved each other so that’s why I couldn’t understand why they fought and why they broke up. And the custody battle was the worst.
No wonder so many people my age are majorly fucked up. Knowing that you were the subject of a bitter, costly, years’-long court battle will either make you feel a heaping amount of guilt or it will turn you into an insufferable narcissist.
But despite the explosive nature of my parents’ relationship, I am utterly appalled by the idea that my own father could be callous enough to hold captive the mother of his children against her will.
Tears run down my face as I flail my limbs and shout a string of obscenities at him, cursing him for being a monster. With a crooked half-smile, he dawdles toward the refrigerator. Meanwhile, mom wiggles about in her chair, frantic to be set free.
Taking all the time in the world, he grabs a pair of scissors from the top of the fridge and cuts off the gag before unbinding her hands. She twists her mouth in all directions, loosening out the discomfort.
She turns on me with a glare. “What are you doing here?!”
“Uh, you’re welcome, mom. Good to see you’re grateful that I saved you from your ex-husband who apparently has become a kidnapping psychopath.” The woman is unbelievable.
I jump back protectively when my father pulls a gun from his holster and spins it around his finger as he calmly—
Wait—why does my dad have a holster?
I pause for a minute to re-evaluate the situation in front of me. My father is shirtless in a pair of brown pressed trousers with a single black stripe down the side. There’s a six-point badge on his belt. And handcuffs. And a bottle of lube!!!
My mom grunts. “The only thing you ‘saved’ me from was another life-altering orgasm. I hope you’re proud of yourself, young lady.”
I’m standing in place but my stomach roils with motion sickness. “Argh! Are you two roleplaying?!”
The innocence of my childhood goes up in flames. It was all a lie. It was all a lie.
The Easter Bunny is a cross-dresser. Santa Claus is lactose-intolerant. I just walked in on my divorced parents having sex with each other at the table where I ate my Fruity Pebbles yesterday morning.
I stand up and start pacing the floor. “Oh my god oh my god oh my god.” I rub my eyes again and again to erase the memory.
Concern covers my father’s face. “Cricket?”
“Do not ‘Cricket’ me, dad. Not now.”
My parents share a look.
“Maybe, I should leave the two of you alone. To have a mother-daughter talk about this,” he suggests.
I stop for just long enough to glare at him. “Yeah, dad. That’s a good idea.”
Shoulders shaking with laughter, my father ducks out of the kitchen, the spurs on the backs of his cowboy boots clicking the floor with each step.
I spin to my mother and shoot daggers her way. “What the hell is going on here?”
She gives me an impish grin. “What can I say, love? Me and your dad are reigniting the old flame, getting to know each other again.”
“But I thought you hated each other. Two days ago, you were wishing male pattern baldness, among other things, on him.”
She shrugs. “Well, when I saw him at the wedding last night, we started talking and I opened my mind up to the possibility that I may have been wrong about him.”
“Jeez, mom. But do you have to reignite the flame at the kitchen table? Come on!”
She shrugs. “We had the house to ourselves. Nadia got on a flight back to New York first thing this morning. And don’t think I didn’t see you sneaking out of the wedding last night with that strapping piece of man-meat you brought with you yesterday.”
"Charlie's just a friend, Cleo."
She shakes her head disbelievingly. "Everybody's just a friend until you're queefing on his chin in a parked car behind the gas station off of Cumber Street. Take it from a gal who's been there."
"Oh my god. I really, really don't want to hear that story.”
She sighs breathily as she fans her flushed face with her fingers. She’s obviously reliving the memory. “Girl, you have no idea the things you’re missing out—”
“Mom, if you could keep it together right now, that would be great.”
“Nova, honey. You’re overreacting.”
“Do you understand how traumatic it is to walk in on your mother bound and gagged at the dinner table?”
"The minute you decide to stop being a prude, you can benefit from the world of experience I'm eager to share. Here you are stumbling in at seven o’clock the morning after and you want to deride me? While you’re wearing your half-ripped dress from last night?”
“Mom…”
“No! Where are your dress straps, Nova? Tell me. Where. Are. Your. Dress straps?”
Well, Charlie ripped them off last night before he pulled my pussy onto his face. But that’s not something you tell your mother.
Her expression softens. “Don’t be a hypocrite, babe. We’re only human. We’re all just tryin’ to have a few mind-blowing orgasms before we curl up and die."
Having a few mind-blowing orgasms before we curl up and die…the true meaning of life according to my mother. Profound and deceptively simple. What have the philosophers been beating themselves up over for all these centuries?
I hold up a hand as I walk away. “Y’know what—I’m not having this conversation right now. I’m gonna be late for work.”
Have a few mind-blowing orgasms and then what? Feel like shit the next day? When the reality hits that you just fucked one of your best friends, the biggest player in the universe? When the memory of his hot, naked body replays in your mind even as you’re promising yourself that you’ll never have him again?
No, my mother is wrong. Being with Charlie last night was a mistake. A mistake that changes everything.
…Yet still, a mistake I want to make again and again.