A Lovely Date
My mother sits down in the booth across from me, readily awaiting our smoothies. We arrived no more than a few minutes ago, ordered, and are now patiently seated. We’re at the only decent smoothie place in miles, which just so happens to be located in the middle of a mall. I have a feeling my mom is going to pivot this smoothie outing into a full-on mall day, but who knows?
“So… Sam. You’ve been out of the house a lot recently. Is that because of your… new friend? What was his name again?”
Fuck, I totally forgot the bogus name I gave her. “Uhhh... Maurice?”
“... I thought it was Steve?”
“Oh… well y’know, I’ve got more than one friend. Way more.” That’s a lie. At least when it comes to male friends the real amount is 0.
“Of course.”
Our smoothies are brought to our red and white colored booth by a kid 2 or 3 years younger than me, and she launches right back into the questions.
“How about girls? Any cuties?”
“Uh… no. Not right now, anyway.”
“Really? Not even one?”
I scratch the back of my neck, letting out a nervous laugh, “Nope, not even one.”
She leans back in her chair and sips on her smoothie, giving me an idle stare. “Have you… taken to wearing perfume by chance?”
“...What? No, why?”
“Sam… you can stop lying now.”
“Lying? Me? No wa-”
She puts a finger to my lips. “The truth, Sam.”
I’m stumped. What the hell do I do now? The only thing I can do is stare at my feet and not say anything.
“Sam. Look at me.”
My eyes turn upwards to her face.
“I’m your mother, and I’m worried about you. You went from my lovable couch potato to Never-around Ned in no time flat. You leave for days on end and come back smelling like girls. If there’s something bothering you, tell me.”
“... nothing’s bothering me.”
She gives me one last penetrating stare, before saying “Fine. Just… remember that I’m always here for you, okay?”
She gives my hand a gentle squeeze, then goes back to her smoothie. The table descends into silence as we both work on our drinks.
That was awkward.
Well… I guess it’s kind of her job to be worried about me. I can’t exactly just tell her about the game I’m currently embroiled in, and I don’t exactly want to make things up to placate her. I tried that already and look where that got me. I’m glad she didn’t grill me any further, but I get the feeling hiding things from her is only going to get harder from here on.
We finish our smoothies, bin the cups, and make our way back out into the main concourse of the mall. It’s pretty crowded today, what with today being the last day before school starts back up and all.
At this point, I’m ready to leave. We got our smoothies. Mission accomplished.
My lovely mother has other plans.
“Come on Sam, We’re already out and about, let’s go try on some clothes!”
“... okay.” There’s no point in arguing. I know her at least that well.
So, we make our way from store to store, trying on different articles of clothing.
“Oooh, those pants look great on you!”
“They’re just jeans.”
“And they look good on you.”
She spins me around, examining every nook and cranny.
“They really hug your butt nicely.”
I can’t help but feel a little gross, hearing that from my own mom. “Seriously?”
“We’re definitely going to buy those.”
…
“What do you think about this blouse?”
“It’s… very low-cut.”
“I know, I think it gives a little too good a view of my girls.” She squeezes her chest together between her arms to emphasize.
“Mom!”
“What? Half of the world have ‘em, no reason to be ashamed.”
…
“Alright, this is the last store. Promise.”
“You said that 3 stores ago!”
“For real this time.”
I let out a sigh.
We step into a store that focuses heavily on high-end clothes and is quite a bit more pricey than the other stores we’ve been in. My mother is the head of R&D for a major cosmetics company, and we have a small fortune left by my father, so we’re not exactly struggling financially. Still, I can’t help but balk at some of the prices. It’s literally thousands of dollars for a single jacket. There are wallets with price tags 10X higher than any amount of money I would store in them.
“Do you really want to shop here?”
“You really need a suit, Sam.”
“But these are… a little much.”
“Oh hush, we’re not exactly in dire straits financially. Plus, don’t you have a birthday coming up?”
My birthday is in a bit more than a month. “Yeah, but I don’t need a several thousand dollar suit!”
“I think you could do with one. We have a big, fancy dinner coming up and I want us to both look our best.” She never told me about any upcoming dinner. I’m gonna need to ask her about some specifics after this.
“... fine.” If she wants to waste her money on me, who am I to stop her?
She waves to an assistant, who brings me to a fitting room. I’ve never really done anything like this before, so I just follow the assistant’s instructions and stay silent. I spent most of my life as solidly middle-class, so fitted suits weren’t really realistic for me. After my dad died, my mom really put her nose to the grindstone to provide for us, which resulted in several promotions in short order. I don’t know our specific financial situation, as she keeps that mostly to herself, but I do know that over the course of about 6 years her salary nearly octupled. We still live like we’re middle-class… but I have the feeling we’re not.
I leave the fitting room, and out of the corner of my eye see something. my head whips to a flash of blonde that just walked past the store.
She’s short, probably about 5 feet tall as a generous estimate, and can only be described as consummately beautiful. Her face has sharp, model-like features, as well as a tasteful mole placed to the upper-left of her lips. Her frame is… absurd. Despite being so short she has a rack as big as Carolyn and is about as curvy. I would suspect she'd had surgical improvements if her clothes weren't revealing enough to show that she definitely hasn't. What catches my eye, however, isn’t any of this. I pull up the photo of my target and place it alongside her.
It looks like I've found Sofia.