My Mother's Boyfriend

20- Dirty Thoughts

Maya

“Love you,” I laugh the words out, knowing my brother would hang up even before the words were completely out of my mouth.

We had been on a video chat, and I had been helping him with his homework. He claims all is well on his end, but I can see my brother is frail. Something is bothering him, and he does not say it.

It cannot be my grandparents- my real ones from my mother’s side, because they still do not know. I have been video-calling them once every week now and most of the time Anthony and I would join the call together, so it would not seem strange that we call at different times.

Once my grandmother queried about why my room looked differently and I responded quickly that I repainted it. She accepted it.

I do not know how to tell them I am married to the beast. Hopefully, I won’t have to. Maybe I can convince them that I would remain a spinster forever- this could only work if they never return here and if my father continues to stay alienated from our family members.

It’s been several days since the event Alejandro threw for me and called it my birthday surprise. I would not call it great, but I guess it was okay. The people were all his folks. I knew nobody there. The only good thing about it was my brother. But I would have preferred to spend the day with him alone. Minus the whole Noimichael clan. And now I have to sit through another one. Valentine’s dinner.

But that’s not what has me on edge. It’s my dirty thinking.

It was the birthday party. Since that night I have barely been able to sleep. Barely been able to hear my professors’ lectures as well. My brain keeps going back to that night-

BEEP

Packing my bag, when I hear the quiet alarm go off, I walk outside the library to wait for Ramon. Peter is always with Alejandro now, so I only get glimpses of him here and there.

Ramon is my new driver and is loaned to me for now because my mother-in-law is not in the country. Usually, he is always beside her, just as I have noticed each member of their family has one or two particular men that stick to them like glue. Currently, ‘mama’ is off receiving some new information about her husband’s death.

I overheard them chatting about it last week. They suspected that the plane that my dead father-in-law was on board had been a ’hit’.

Live by the sword and die by the sword, right?

I did not know the man, but I know his family and this family is bad. Like blood-sucking vampires. If the earth ridded itself of one, I say good riddance then. Everything about this family is black. And rotten.

At the Noimichael’s residence, I greeted everyone as I knew I was supposed to, dutifully, before heading up to my room where I left the clan to their conversation that had almost all members of the household bunched inside the largest sitting room. No doubt still about the plane crash.

The last thing I remember doing was soaking in the tub.

***

Tingles run up my shoulder to my neck when I feel someone’s body heat behind me and I spot Alejandro in the huge wall mirror inside, a mere second before breath blowing against my skin. It’s too far away for me to see his facial expression, but from here, it looks exotic the way his head is bent towards me.

His eyes are on me.

The conversation between his younger blood relations and myself had been about the planned trip one of them was having to another country, with a couple of others from his study group.

Involuntarily, my eyelids close as I revel in the sensations before reopening them. It must have been the alcohol, the happiness of today from seeing Anthony, the soulful music, the darkness, the warm glow of the light- maybe all that caused my reaction to him. I am completely happy for the first time in a long time today and it was because of him.

“Uncle Ale,” I hear Carlos, the sixteen-year-old, gasp out but more in awe. It's the 'player or baller' tone used when you catch someone being hanky-panky. Admiration from the young boy to his role model uncle. The young boy is a cousin of the family and going through puberty. His voice is in the high and low stages, but his fashion sense is drip.

“Zio, (uncle) I hear from another, and another giggle follows. Two others smile and shake their head at us, and one mutters, “Still in the honeymoon phase, uncle?”

My cheeks heat up from embarrassment. Though it has been a few weeks already, I never get used to it when someone mentions anything remotely similar to what a lover’s relationship should be like, with Alejandro and myself.

“Mi Tesoro, (my treasure) I’ve missed you,” I hear him say and I feel myself blushing when his lips kiss my neck from behind and my eyelids grow heavy when they remain there, his body pressing a bit onto mine from behind as a glass of wine is brought into my eyesight.

He’s said similar words to me before when we are in the company of others, but never has Alejandro touched me this intimately. It makes me wonder who he is doing this display for. This thought clears my murky mind a bit.

Taking the glass from his black blazer-covered arms, he holds onto his glass while the now free from my glass one, closes around me and I stiffen a bit despite liking the touch of him. I shift from one foot to another. To say I am uncomfortable with how my body is reacting to him is an understatement. I would rather puke right now than have him touch me again- he moves again, and I feel his lips on the other side of my neck. “You didn’t miss me, cariño?”

Paralyzed is what I am. I like what he is doing but I wish it wasn’t him doing it.

“Guys leave us alone,” I hear him say and I lift my cheeks up just as I practised showing a wide and friendly smile.

Inhaling deeply when his hand expands over my stomach causes chuckles from the two girls and the group of giggling youngsters left us alone. Not practising here in the heat that burns inside me.

But the crazy man does not stop, and I wonder again who he is doing this for since his mother and the others are long in bed. It’s mostly the young ones who are here and they hate it when they see old people- well I am not old, but Alejandro is. He’s ten years ahead of me- which isn’t old ‘old’ but still old.

“We never danced,” he says, and I open my mouth to say yes, we did at our wedding, but he beat me to it. “Our wedding does not count.”

Despite not being able to see his features from the distance between the mirror and us, I can’t tear my eyes away from what I see. He is hopelessly attractive, and I could feel the mischief clouding me as his fingers moved on my stomach through the material of the dress, he bought me.

His reflection in the mirror shows a man who has eyes for no other but the woman he has in his arms. I like what I see, and I want that dream.

As if reading my racy thoughts, he slowly turns me around and pulls me closer to him, the hand he has on my stomach, now on my back. My breath catches when my body presses against his.

Something warm spreads inside me before setting off a string of tingles. Even stranger...lower down... I feel moist.

***

My eyes open then, waking me from the devilish thinking I have developed, and I hurry out of the cold tub water, ashamed of where my unconscious thinking had been. And even more, of whom it had been.