What Happened With My Son After the Gym

I’m forty-seven years old and, though it may sound vain, I’m still in good shape. I walk an hour a day, I go to the gym four times a week, and my mother’s genes gave me wide hips, a bust that still turns heads, and an ass that my husband, before he left, used to call “the only reason to come home.” Now I live alone with my son Bruno, who just turned nineteen. He’s an athletic guy, broad back, arms he’s been working on since he was fifteen. Until that March afternoon I had never thought of him as anything other than my son.

I came home from the gym drenched. I was wearing a black athletic set that clung to everything: leggings tight to the ankle and a top that pressed my breasts up against the neckline. I’d left my sweatshirt in the car because it was hot even for late winter. I went straight into the kitchen, my tongue dry with thirst, and opened the fridge looking for water.

“Hey, Ma. Lots of cardio?” Bruno was sitting at the bar, eating cereal, barefoot, in shorts and a white T-shirt.

“Quite a bit,” I answered without turning around. “They told me cardio and weights will sculpt my figure faster.”

“You know what else is good cardio?” he said, and by his tone I knew something was coming that I didn’t want to hear.

I closed the fridge door with the bottle in my hand and looked at him over my shoulder.

“What?”

“Sex.”

I felt the heat rise to my face. Not from the neck up: from my chest, from my navel, from a place that had been dead for years. Bruno was staring at me, with a barely crooked smile, waiting for my reaction. It’s not what he’s saying, it’s the way he’s looking at me, I thought.

“Bruno, I’m your mother. Comments like that are not okay.”

“I know you’re my mother. And I know you’ve been alone for almost three years. It’s not disrespect, Ma. It’s what I see.”

I set the bottle on the counter. My hands were shaking a little. I told myself it was low blood sugar after my workout, but I was lying to myself.

“And what exactly do you see?”

“I see a woman. I don’t want to see that, believe me. I’ve spent months trying not to see it. But you put on that clothes and go back and forth from the gym and I…” He set the spoon down on the bowl and lowered his gaze. “Forget it. I’m sorry.”

I should have walked out of the kitchen. I should have gone and taken a shower, put on something that covered me, called my sister to come for dinner and break the silence that had filled the house since Mauricio left. Instead, I took three steps toward him.

“Come here.”

Bruno lifted his head, hesitated, and got down off the stool. He’s been taller than me since he was sixteen. I hugged him awkwardly, one of those motherly hugs that give permission to feel without having to say what you feel. I ran my hand down his back, stroked the nape of his neck the way I used to when he was little and got scared during storms.

And then I felt it.

His erection pressed against my hip, hard, urgent, impossible to hide through the thin fabric of his shorts. I froze. Bruno did too. Neither of us was breathing. Let go of him, I told myself. Let him go, say goodnight, go upstairs to your room.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured against my hair. “I’m sorry, Mom, I can’t help it.”

“Don’t move,” I said, and my voice came out rougher than I wanted. “Don’t move yet.”

I lifted my hand to his cheek, drew back a little to look him in the eyes. He had his father’s eyes, dark and stubborn, but the mouth was mine. I ran my thumb over his lower lip. Bruno closed his eyes.

“Do you want me as a woman?” I asked, and I knew I was already crossing something that couldn’t be uncrossed. “Not as your mother? As a woman?”

He nodded without opening his eyes.

“Say it.”

“Yes. I want you as a woman.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’ve been sure for months.”

I drew a breath. The kitchen smelled of my sweat, of morning coffee, of the lemon detergent I used on the tiles. Mother things. Home things. And I was about to throw all of that out the window.

“One condition,” I said. “Just one. This does not leave this house. It doesn’t go out the door, it doesn’t go in a message, it doesn’t come up over beers with your friends. If this thing we’re going to do exists, it exists between the two of us and nobody else. Is that clear?”

“Crystal clear.”

“Swear it to me.”

“I swear.”

I let go of his face and pulled the zipper of my top down halfway. Bruno swallowed so hard I heard the click. I took his hand and guided it to my neck, where a drop of sweat was running down toward my cleavage.

“Start there.”

***

He kissed me like a boy who had never kissed an older woman. Hesitantly at first, hungrily after a few seconds. He licked the salt from my skin, gently sank his teeth into my trapezius, and ripped a sound from my throat I hadn’t made in years. I held on to the edge of the counter so I wouldn’t fall.

“Your neck smells like you,” he said against my ear. “Not like perfume, like you.”

“It’s sweat, Bruno.”

“I don’t care.”

He pulled my top all the way down. My breasts were exposed to the yellow light of the extractor hood, still firm despite the years, nipples raised by the cool air and by everything inside me. Bruno looked at them as if he had never seen any before. Maybe he hadn’t seen any like these. He brought his mouth to them slowly, as if asking permission, and moved over them one by one: tongue, lips, teeth careful not to clamp down too hard. He sucked around them first, then more firmly, until my hips pushed forward looking for more pressure. I buried one hand in his hair and with the other I spread my top enough for him to take all of me into his mouth, hot and awkward at first, getting surer with every second. I felt the dampness of his tongue slide over my areola, the brush of his nose against my skin, the small tug of his lips when he sucked my nipple and left me shaking.

“Like that,” I told him, almost voiceless. “Yes. Don’t stop.”

He looked up for a second, his mouth still on my breast, and stared at me as if he were trying to memorize me. Then he moved to the other breast, just as hungry, just as attentive. He licked me, sucked me, cupped the other one with one hand and held my waist with the other so I wouldn’t pull away. I was already wet between my legs, soaked with a heat that embarrassed me and made me want more at the same time.

“Slowly,” I said. “We’re in no hurry.”

But inside, beneath the skin, everything was moving fast, where nothing could be controlled anymore.

***

I took him to the living room sofa. The kitchen was too exposed and the bedroom too much ours: the bed where his father and I conceived him. The sofa was the neutral place, the one used for Netflix, for arguments, for long calls with my mother. I was going to stain it in a different way now.

I took his T-shirt off. He had the body I’d found myself imagining each time I ran into him in the hallway after a shower: broad shoulders, defined abs, a thin line of hair disappearing beneath his shorts. I ran my hand over his chest like it was a map. His skin was warm, taut, and under my fingers I felt the quick beat of his heart.

“Have you been with many girls?” I asked.

“Three.”

“And did they teach you how to do things right?”

“I don’t know.”

“We’ll see.”

I pushed him onto the sofa, sat in front of him, and slowly pulled my leggings down, giving him time to look. Underneath I had a black thong on. My thighs, still damp from training, shone under the lamp. Bruno was clenching his fists on his knees as if he didn’t know what to do with his hands.

“Touch me,” I said. “You won’t break anything.”

And he touched me. He started at my calves, slowly moved up my thighs, ran his fingers along the inner side where the skin is thinner. By the time he reached the fabric of my thong, I was soaked, and it wasn’t sweat. Bruno parted the fabric with two fingers and, before touching me, looked up at me. He asked permission with his eyes. I nodded yes.

The first touch made my knees buckle. I gripped his shoulders. Bruno leaned his head forward and started using his tongue. He did it slowly, exploratorily, like a boy learning. Then more confidently. Then knowing what he was doing. He opened me wider with his fingers, pushing them only slightly between my already slippery folds, and his tongue hit me squarely in the center, long and insistent, circling and dragging moans out of me that got dirtier and dirtier. I told him what I liked with words and with my hand on the back of his neck. He obeyed and surprised me: more pressure, less pressure, a small suction on the clit that made my back arch, a movement down below that took the strength out of my legs. His tongue went in and out, lingered, returned, and I felt the heat rising up to my throat.

“Bruno,” I gasped, “look at me while you do it.”

He lifted his eyes without taking his mouth away. That finished me off. I clutched his hair with both hands and let the orgasm run through me completely, standing there in the middle of the living room with the lights half dim and my son’s breath between my legs. My thighs trembled, my stomach clenched, and I had to bite my lip not to cry out too loudly. He didn’t pull away until I pushed him back a little myself, still licking, still sucking, until he left me sensitive and wet like an open wound.

***

When I was steady enough to stand on my own again, I made him lie back and sat on top of him. I pulled down his shorts and underwear in one motion. Bruno held my waist with both hands as if he were afraid I’d change my mind and leave. I wasn’t leaving. I was already too far from any place I could come back to.

I guided him myself. Slowly, letting him feel every inch, looking at his face so I wouldn’t lose sight of who he was and who I was. Bruno closed his eyes, opened his mouth and let out a sound I had never heard from him, a sound that wasn’t from a son. When I settled onto his cock, I felt how hard he was, how he opened me little by little, how my body wanted more even though he still wasn’t all the way inside. I braced myself with my hands on his chest and lowered myself until he was fully inside me, inch by inch, feeling the hot stretch, the deep friction, the delicious pressure that filled me completely. He ran out of breath and dug his fingers into my hips.

“Look at me,” I repeated.

He opened his eyes. And then I started moving.

I rode him with my hands planted on his chest. I felt our sweat mix, the smells of both of us becoming one in the sealed living room air. Bruno held my hips, set the rhythm when I let him, let me set it when I wanted. He rose and fell beneath me with each thrust, filling me to the core, rubbing me inside in a way that made me lose my balance. I leaned forward and sucked his mouth, swallowing his gasps, and he answered by gripping my ass hard, sinking his fingers into the flesh as if he wanted to hold me inside him forever.

There was a moment when neither of us spoke. Just breathing, just the sound of the leather sofa, just my name — not “mom,” my name, Camila — coming out of his mouth like a forbidden word he had just learned. I moved faster, harder, feeling the base of his cock brush me with every drop and that heat rising again from my belly. Bruno spread his legs to hold me better, helped me with his hands, pushed me a little forward and then back until he found the angle that made white spots appear behind my eyes. I grabbed his face and kissed him hungrily, saliva, tongue, lips swollen from friction.

“Warn me,” I whispered in his ear. “Warn me before.”

“I won’t be able to much longer.”

“Inside.”

Bruno clung to my back, pulled me hard against his chest, and came with a tremor that ran through his whole body. I felt the heat fill me and knew, in that second, that I hadn’t felt anything like it in years. It wasn’t the orgasm. It was the urgency with which someone wanted me. The way he tightened under me, the frantic pulse of his body, the hot spill filling me from within while he broke apart with a muffled groan against my neck. I stayed still for an instant, breathing in his semen and my own tremor, feeling how it was still throbbing between my legs.

***

Afterward we stayed in silence for a long time. Me on top of him, still not separated, his hand in my hair. When I spoke, I spoke with my forehead resting against his.

“This doesn’t happen again.”

“I know.”

“I mean it, Bruno. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Not ever.”

“I know, Mom.”

I cried a little. Not from sadness. From fear. From relief. From that dizziness that comes from having thrown away a piece of the game that was never meant to be thrown away. Bruno wiped my tears with his thumb and said nothing. He did the right thing.

I got up, put my top and leggings back on without looking at him. I went upstairs to shower. I washed myself three times. I sat on the bathroom floor and stayed there until the water ran cold.

That was a month ago. Bruno kept his word: he doesn’t push, doesn’t touch me, doesn’t look at me differently in front of other people. But when we’re alone, when I pass by freshly showered in the hallway, when he crosses paths with me in the kitchen in the morning, there’s a second, barely half a second, when his eyes linger on mine a little too long. And in that half-second I wonder how much longer I’m going to hold out before I’m the one asking him to go back to the kitchen.

I don’t know how to go on. I don’t know whether I’m still a mother. I don’t know whether I want to answer myself.