I rode the bus to the café, climbed off, and waited just outside. It was a Saturday morning, and Bristol was alive. Students were everywhere, gamers with baggy t-shirts and long shorts, glamorous women with expensive handbags, determined students with glasses and tons of books cradled precariously in their arms, and then the non-students, the single mothers pushing prams and the men in suits with sausage rolls from the bakery in one hand and their smart phones in the other. The street where Mom wanted to meet me was one of the quieter ones, but I could see through the glass that the place was still half full. I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself. But her body, the way she moaned, the way we had just done it . . .
I shook my head, as though something as simple as that could shake the thoughts of this woman away. “Yeah right,” I muttered, heart still pounding with the thought of her, palms sweatier than if I’d just spent two hours at the gym. Mom didn’t seem to notice, however—Annabelle Finch was wearing a colorful dress that made her look like an aging hippie (in a good way). Her hair was long and flowing and only tinged with slight bits of gray here and there. She rose to her feet with her long dress flowing around her like an aura.
“Eli,” she smiled. “You made it!”
“Yeah, Mom, I made it,” I said.
I loved Mom, of course I loved her, but she did lean toward the melodramatic at times. Take right now, for instance. Her face did not only light up at the sight of me. It was like a supernova exploded behind her eyes. Light bloomed from the sockets and exploded out of her. She seemed like the happiest person in the world. One of my roommates in first year had jokingly asked: “Your mom is on drugs or something, right? I’ve never seen someone so happy.” I’d told him that she wasn’t, but I understood why he thought she might be.
She threw her arms around me in a huge embrace and kissed both my cheeks. I wiped them and made an urghhhhhh sound, which made her laugh, as it always did. When we sat down, I was a bit calmer. My heart was still beating quickly, but I was able to relegate it to the background. The setting was not appropriate for the kind of thoughts I was having. I pushed myself into the room, into the moment. But always, in the backgrounds, a constant stream of thoughts ran through my mind:
I didn’t get her name. She was so damn sexy. I wish I could see her again. Who was she? She could be anybody. Maybe that’s why it’s so hot. Why, why didn’t I get her name?
“You seem distracted,” Mom said. “Is something wrong?” She tilted her head in that you-can-tell-me pose.
“The party finished late,” I said. “That’s all.”
“So nothing’s wrong?”
“Nope,” I lied. Except that I met the sexiest, horniest, dirtiest woman in the world last night and had the best sex I’ve ever had and I don’t know who she is! But that’s not the sort of thing you tell your mother, is it?
“Goodie!” she exclaimed, clapping her hands together. People from the adjacent tables turned their heads. Scenes from childhood filled my mind, of my mom being way too loud in public places. It had embarrassed me when I was younger, especially in my early teenage years, but I had gotten used to it now. I didn’t shrink in my chair, as I would have back then. “Because I have some news!” she went on, in the same chirpy tones.
“Oh, yeah? What news?”
“I’m seeing somebody!” she laughed, flashing her teeth. “His name is Andrew, Andrew Wright. He lives in America, but he’s down here for some business thingy—I don’t know exactly. I’m not exactly the business type, you know.”
She looked at me expectantly. She often looked at me—at everyone—like that, with an expression that waited for laughter. And then you felt that you had no choice but to laugh, because she was looking at you so seriously. I laughed the fake laugh I’d perfected throughout childhood. She nodded, apparently pleased, and launched forth into her description of the man. Even if she was annoying, and she was, a little, seeing her so animated, so alive, was infectious. I found myself smiling with her.
Andrew was a businessman, but he liked art. They had met at Mom’s art show last year, when he’d been in Bristol for another ‘business thingy’ and had kept in touch via web chat since then. Now he was in Bristol for the whole summer: he and his daughter. “I want you to meet them,” Mom said, her eyes bright with excitement. I smiled back. I couldn’t help but smile back. “Please, please, say you will!”
“When is it?”
“Tonight.”
“Tonight!” I hadn’t any particular plans. I was just surprised by how short she’d left it. But I shouldn’t have been, I thought after my initial shock. Mom didn’t just look like a hippie. She was pretty hippie-ish in her outlook on life, too. I nodded. “Of course I will,” I said.
I couldn’t say no to her when she was this ecstatic. It would be like shooing a yapping puppy away. But I would have said no in a heartbeat if the woman from last night had somehow found me, if she had somehow gotten my phone number and texted me. Yep, in a heartbeat.
That woman . . . in my mind she was like a never-ending explosion of fireworks. Every time I thought of her I got hot.
And I didn’t get her goddamn name!
Jessica