When I was eighteen, Mom sat me down in this very kitchen and explained what she called “freeuse.” Not as a kink, she said. As a practicality. She was a single mom. I was a young man with needs. And we lived under the same roof. Why pretend? Why waste energy on awkwardness and denial when we could simply… use each other? Freely. Without asking. Without performance. Without guilt.
She turned, knife in hand, and looked at me.
She stepped even closer. Her hand came up, and she pressed her palm flat against my chest, right over my heart. “This house has always had two sets of rules, baby. The ones for company. And the ones for us.” When I was eighteen, Mom sat me down
“Kell?” Her voice came from the kitchen. The same warm contralto that used to read me bedtime stories. And, later, the same voice that whispered the rules of our arrangement when I turned eighteen.
“You look tired,” she said.
“Don’t ‘Mom’ me in that tone,” she said, but her voice was low, warm. “You know the word that stops everything. You haven’t said it.”
She tilted her head. Then she smiled. That slow, knowing smile I remembered from the summer after high school. The one that said: I know what you really need. I was a young man with needs
She reached down and unbuckled my belt with the efficiency of someone who’d done it a thousand times. Because she had. Just not in three years.
“You remember the rule?” she asked.
I swallowed. “It’s been three years.”
By Kell Fire