Busted

Cami Delmore had never looked more beautiful. Chocolate brown hair, strawberry red lips, icy blue eyes, and a body deserving of the many bikinis she wore in these modeling photos. Owen Finley sat in front of his computer clicking through these photos while having a wide-awake wet dream. Something about this felt so wrong, yet it was so right. This was the perfect way to wake up in the morning. Every day, pictures of Cami making his life so wonderful. And then…

“Owen!” shouted a feminine voice from the bedroom doorway. The teenager turned around and covered himself up with his hands while his stepmother stared him down with a look of shock and seriousness. “Breakfast is on the table. It’s oatmeal and honey. Come on down before it gets cold,” said Cami before shutting the bedroom door.

“Come on down? Is she kidding me?” panicked Owen as his arousal went flat. He scrambled as fast as he could to find clothing for the day. Black jeans? Check. A Green Day T-shirt? Check. Sneakers? Check. He never dressed himself so quickly in his lifetime. Was there time to eat the honey oatmeal? “Fuck the oatmeal, I’m out of here!” he said to himself.

He grabbed his backpack and bolted toward the door, but stopped midway knowing Cami’s judging eyes would be zeroed in on him throughout the morning. His hand trembled on the doorknob at the thought of being scrutinized by her. He’d probably never get an erection again, nor would he want one. Maybe his balls would be cut off with an olive fork. Maybe his dick would be broken with a meat tenderizer. Maybe his face would be slashed open with a butcher knife.

“Oh god, oh god, oh god…” Owen murmured while trying to think of a better escape route. Of course! The window! He snapped his fingers at the idea and made a beeline for the fresh air outside. He didn’t care if it was a tall drop to the outside; he jumped anyways. A sore ankle was better than being castrated by his own stepmother and it was the former he got. He hobbled and limped towards the bus stop looking like hell.

The whole school day was nothing but a numbed out blur. Math homework? What math homework? Gym class? Who needs that? US history? The revolutionary war actually happened? No shit! Owen almost got in trouble in class several times for his incessant shaking. The laughter from his various classmates made him tremble that much harder. But when asked about his quirky behavior, he kept giving false answers and otherwise remained tightlipped. He kept looking down at his own crotch to make sure he didn’t get an erection in the middle of a lecture.

By the time the school bus dropped him back off at his house, Owen took his sweet time getting to the front door. The front door? He couldn’t go there. Cami was probably waiting for him with a pair of surgical scissors. These thoughts brought a weakness to his stomach and jitteriness to his legs. Where was the goddamn ladder when he needed it? He snapped his fingers once again as he remembered it was in the tool shed.

He heaved the clumsy metal object towards his bedroom window and became winded after the anaerobic exercise for the day. Owen’s heavy breathing was for more reasons than that. He tried so hard to calm his stomach down and shake the feeling back in his rolled ankle. By the time he actually started climbing, the ankle pain flared up like a burning building, almost to where he fell off several times. He hurried as fast as he could up the metal device and successfully made it through the window.

Owen’s energy was completely sapped from his body and all he wanted to do was lie in bed and sleep it off. If he never woke up again, it would mean never having to talk to Cami. Mission accomplished. Not one awkward conversation was had. Not one genital was snipped. Not one more look of anger from the object of misplaced affection. Or at least so he thought.

“We need to talk,” was the quote the snapped him awake. Sure enough, Cami was standing right there in his doorway with her arms folded and her face emboldened. Now Owen really started to sweat. His eyebrows shot up to the ceiling while his eyeballs moistened and trembled. This was it. He was a dead man. He crawled backwards toward the window only to have Cami yell, “Hey!” at him several times and drag him back inside by his ankles.

“Let me go, damn it! Let me the fuck go!” shouted Owen, but nobody could hear him and he wasn’t going anywhere with Cami pinning his legs together on the bed. He tried screaming some more. “I’m sorry! I’m fucking sorry! Now please let me go!” It was no use. Cami held her hand over Owen’s mouth and the only other screams that came were capital M’s. He could thrash around all he wanted, but there was no escape from what he perceived to be a trip to the gallows. Owen couldn’t help but let a few soggy tears out.

And then Cami’s demeanor changed when she removed her hand from Owen’s mouth and instead petted his puffy black hair. She whispered, “It’s okay” to him over and over again until the stepson stopped shaking. His tears wouldn’t stop coming, but he was at least calm enough to sit on the bed and have a real conversation with the new family member he masturbated to this morning. He couldn’t even look her in the eyes. He kept his head down and allowed his tears to stain his jeans.

“Owen? Look at me,” she said, finally getting his semi-relaxed attention. “I’m not mad at you.”

“You’re not?”

“Not at all. I was more worried about you than I was angry. You left this morning without eating your breakfast. Come here,” she said while hugging her crying stepson around the shoulders. “You don’t need to be afraid to talk to me. I may not have given birth to you myself, but I’m still your mother. Nothing will ever change that, do you understand?”

Owen wiped the tears away with his wrist and sobbed, “Yeah, I guess so.”

“Look, I know you don’t take kindly to being embarrassed and that’s okay. You’re a sensitive guy and I respect that. But we need to talk about what happened this morning. I saw what you did and I saw who you were doing it to. Can we please just talk about this and not avoid each other anymore?”

Snorting snot up his nose, Owen said, “Fine. Let’s talk.”

Cami hugged her stepson some more and rocked him back and forth while she talked. “There’s nothing wrong with masturbating, Owen. It’s perfectly normal. Everybody does it whether they like to admit it or not. I bet there’re some preachers in our neighborhood who do it too even though they don’t say anything. I’m sorry I walked in on you like that. I’ll knock next time, okay?”

She kissed him on top of his head and rocked him some more. “But here’s the part I want you to understand. You and I can never be together that way. You know that, right? It would tear our family apart. Your dad would divorce me and he’d never forgive either of us. On top of that, you’re only fourteen years old, Owen. You’re way too young to have sex, let alone with someone my age. I’ll still be your mother and you’ll still be my son. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Owen’s cheeks burned a bright red as he whispered, “I’m sorry, Cami. I really am. I feel stupid right now…”

“Hey,” said Cami while pointing her stepsons chin up with her delicate fingers. “You’re not stupid. I don’t ever want to hear you say that again. You’re a teenager. This is what teenagers do. You’re just figuring out the world around you. And that’s okay. Besides, it’s not my place to tell you what you can and can’t fantasize about.” She pointed at his head and said, “What goes in on here is nobody else’s business but your own. Your mind is the last sanctuary you have.”

Owen’s jaw stopped convulsing and he could actually get words out this time. “I don’t know, Cami. I’m taking this sex ed class, right? And I don’t even want to ask anything in front of everybody because they’re a bunch of giggly assholes. Besides, the teacher won’t stop talking about abstinence and STD’s and shit. Yeah, like that’s going to do a lot of good. I’m already fucked up as it is!” Owen’s last sentence was punctuated by him kicking his own backpack and Cami holding him even tighter to calm him down.

“Sounds to me like you’re not getting a real education out of that class. I want you to listen to me, Owen. Forget everything that teacher taught you. There’s more to sex than just getting green stuff on your penis. There’s more to romance than waiting until you’re married. That’s all bullshit and it doesn’t work. If you see a girl at school that you like, don’t be afraid to introduce yourself to her. Treat her like an equal and she’ll treat you the same way. I should probably have a talk with the principal at your school.”

“No, Cami, you can’t do that! If the rest of the school finds out you…”

Cami shushed her stepson three times and petted his hair some more. “Nobody else has to know that I talked with him. It’ll just be a one on one conversation. They shouldn’t be teaching that abstinence crap anyways. It’s not realistic. There’s a lot they’re not talking about that they should. Do you even know how to use a condom?”

Owen shook his head and Cami sighed in disgust. “Yeah,” she said. “I should definitely have a talk with that principal. In the meantime, you’ve got homework to do. I’ll leave you alone and let you do that. And remember, if you have any questions that you don’t want to share in front of the class, you can share them with me. Okay? I love you.” She kissed him on the head again and proceeded towards the bedroom door. “Good talk tonight, son. Let’s do it again sometime.”

“Uh, Cami?”

“Yes?”

“C….could you not tell dad about what happened this morning?”

Cami smiled and made a lip-zipping motion to solidify her silence. She then waved at him and closed the bedroom door behind her. Owen plopped backwards on his bed and breathed heavy sighs of relief. Embarrassment still clung to him tightly and the tears still hadn’t dried up. But at least now he knew what he needed to do. He slowly picked his exhausted body off the bed and proceeded to delete all of Cami’s pictures from his computer. “I need this family. I love her too much for this bullshit,” Owen said to himself.