One Step Ahead – Part 1
This story will take a long time to get to sex. This Part 1 has almost nothing sexual in it, it’s completely back story. If you want to read more about sex then please wait for Part 2, I do plan to get to that but it’s easier for me to write if I include all the details that lead up to the sexual parts.
Stick with me and hopefully I can make ya happy. 🙂
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Three things have happened in my life that have shaped who I am. The first thing happened when I was 10 years old.
At the time I hadn’t given much thought to my life or my family. I don’t think any 10 year old has beyond the random assignments that they’ve gotten in school requesting they describe their lives. All I knew was that I had a dad who loved me and a mom who loved me.
My life took a dramatic change for the worse in the winter of my 10th year. It was a gross December day and there were forecasts for snow and ice starting in the late afternoon so school was only supposed to be in for a half day so my mom came to pick me up at noon.
We didn’t live too far from the school, only about a 5-10 minute drive, but my mom couldn’t wait to start talking to me while we drove home. She had been planning a trip for our family to go to Costa Rica for Christmas to get away from the cold and snow and she was excited to tell me some of the new trips and tours she had learned about.
We were driving pretty slow because the snow had already started and while it was mostly melting when it hit the road the conditions still weren’t great. While she was telling me about a scuba diving trip she wanted to go on we saw the car in front of us start to take a turn, lose control, and drift off the road and hit a tree.
My mom immediately shouted in shock then pulled over and turned to me to say, “Stay here I’m going to go make sure everyone is ok!”
I was pretty excited by the whole thing, it’s not every day a kid sees an accident right in front of them. My mom had run up to the car and had their door open. She hadn’t helped the other person out of their car, it looked like they were pretty shaken up but ok.
Then my life changed.
I saw a pickup truck coming around the bend from the other direction. It was going faster than was safe and when it hit the turn it kept going straight…straight toward my mom and the other car. I threw myself against my seatbelt, screaming at the top of my lungs for my mom to move. Screaming for something, anything to happen.
My mom couldn’t hear my screaming and didn’t turn until the driver of the truck started honking wildly. It was far too late. The truck plowed into her and the car.
My mother and the couple she was helping were all three killed. The truck driver was completely uninjured.
He called 911 and I guess that people showed up. My memory is pretty much a blur. I remember my dad holding me back at our house. I think he was crying. I know that I was. Mostly what I remember is not being able to STOP remembering watching the truck as it continued on its unstoppable path.
The next year or so after that is also a blur. My dad wouldn’t let me ignore my school so my grades didn’t suffer after the first few weeks, but I wasn’t doing anything else either. My dad did nothing but work and come home to me. We did things together, but neither of us had our hearts into it. My friends moved on, stopped talking to me, stopped trying.
A little over a year after the accident my dad’s attitude started to change. He started to live life again. He started to cheer up. It wasn’t quick but over a few months he was able to drag me out of my own stupor. I realized that even if I didn’t have a mom at least I still had a dad. Those were some of the happiest months of my life. A few times a week my dad would leave work early and we’d go do something, anything. Maybe just watching a movie, maybe going to a game (I used to love with Hockey and he got me back into it), anything.
After about half a year of that my dad dropped a bombshell and my life changed again.
My dad sat me down to tell me what had pulled him out of his misery. He’d met another woman. It didn’t occur to me right away to be angry with him. It seemed to make sense to me. He needed someone to take care of him the way he was taking care of me.
The bombshell was that he was marrying her. When I was 12 years old I found out I was going to have a new “mom”.
I remember the first time I met her in complete clarity. I was frustrated with my dad but trying to accept it. My life had been so much better I was trying to give the person who helped turn my dad and I’s lives around a chance.
No one else had met her yet either, not my aunt and uncle or my dad’s friends (mostly from work). My dad had told her that he didn’t want her becoming part of a life until he felt that I was in a place to accept her into the family, and that meant not meeting anyone in his life at all. He wanted to make sure that I was going to be ok.
The first time I met her was at dinner. My dad had our cook make a meal then sent everyone home so that the three of us could eat it. I hated her. I couldn’t help it. She was TOO friendly, TOO happy, TOO cheerful, but I could have forgiven her for all of those.
I hated her because when my dad left to use the restroom she leaned over to me, looked me in the eyes, and said, “Honey, I can’t wait to be your new mother!”
I tried to ignore it, I tried to let it go, but it burned inside of me.
Everyone else loved her. Absolutely loved her. Told my dad how perfect she was. They got married and everyone was happy for the happy couple.
I was 13 When she moved in with us. Mostly I just ignored her. At first dad tried to include her when he’d spend time with me, but he figured out that I preferred just the two of us.
Since my dad had less time for me I was forced to start trying to make friends again. I reconnected with most of my old friends but it wasn’t quite the same with any of them.
Being a 13 year old boy isn’t easy at the best of times, but any child who has felt like they’re mostly (or completely) alone in the world will tell you that it feels like nothing in the world is worse than that. I started hitting puberty pretty early, I was 5’7″ at 13 and it didn’t seem like I was about to stop growing. My dad was there for me to talk through it, but it was an especially hard time to feel so alone.
I don’t know exactly when it started but at some point the real reason for me hating her with the true passion started: she started to tease me. It wasn’t much at first. My dad worked a lot so there were plenty of afternoons and nights where we were the only ones in the house. She would do small things like bend over directly in front of me and show off a little bit of cleavage, or always bend at the waist when picking something up.
The worst thing about it was that I couldn’t ignore it. No, that’s not quite true. The worst thing about it was that I didn’t WANT to ignore it. I would look forward to it. I hated myself for it, I hated wanting it, but I would eagerly try to see more. I never wanted to do it overtly, I hated the thought of her knowing how much I liked it, but I couldn’t help trying to see more.
I guess I should say a bit about her here, so you know what this woman looks like. She was 23 when my dad married her. She isn’t very tall, 5’4″ on a good day, probably about 5’3″. She has black hair, completely black, with wavy. Not curly or straight, but that sort of inbetween wavy look. It was natural to her, I’d see her plenty of mornings with no makeup or anything else and it was still that way. I didn’t know her exact cup size, I thought of checking her bras but I couldn’t bring myself to do it, so I’d guesstimate that she was a 32D, but a smallish D.
Throughout this time I never started to like her. She didn’t bring up being my mom again, but there was a constant edge of disrespect. She’d treat me as if I were a small kid (I know I was only ~13-14, but much younger than that) or make fun of me for needing help on my homework.
I think that if we’d had a different relationship the way she treated me could have been fine, but both of us knew how much I hated it.
As time went on the physical teasing got worse. It became a normal thing for her to wear nothing but a long t-shirt or one of my dad’s dress shirts.
Growing up my parents’ rule had been I did my homework (or any schoolwork, papers, projects, etc) at the dining room table. I always did the same thing and my step mom took full advantage of it. She used to come down with a book to “read and spend time with you”.
I distinctly remember the pain of being eager to do my homework and the self-loathing when I would later relieve my frustrations in my room.
One of her favorite things to do was to stand next to my chair and lean over on the table to watch me do my homework. This would pull her shirt up and I’d have an eye-level view of her ass, covered by nothing but whatever panties she wore that day.
If I ever touched her in the smallest ways she would freak out and yell at me, call me names, and tell me never to touch her. That didn’t stop her from touching me. She’d brush my leg, shift her weight and just so happen to have her ass swing into my arm, have her breasts drop too low and rest on my arm, etc.
I hated myself for how much I loved that brief contact.
My life took another dramatic change shortly before I turned 16. My dad had taken me to see a fight and afterwards we were getting some food.
While we were eating my dad blurted out, “Jason, I don’t know an easy way to say this to you, I’ve already waited too long to say it, but I have cancer. I’ve had it for over a year now, and it’s not going to go away.”
I just stared at him, fork frozen on the way up, “You have cancer? You have CANCER?? You’ve had it for a YEAR? What do you MEAN it’s not going to go away??”
“I was diagnosed with it a few months after your mother died. I didn’t know how to tell you at the time the the doctors told me that I had a 80% chance for a full recovery so I thought I’d just not tell you, and let the doctors do their work.”
I was still having trouble absorbing it. He told me the type he had, how they’d thought it was cured, but he just went in for a checkup and found out that not only was it back, it’d already spread throughout his body.
“The best the doctors can do is extend my life by 2-3 months. They want to start me on chemo this week. I’m not going to let them. I’ve done some research and there’s no way I’m going to survive. I’m quitting my job and I want to enjoy my last few months while I can and go out without being miserable while stretching my life on.”
“What do you mean? You’re giving up? You can’t just lay down and die! You have to fight! Maybe you’ll live!” I shouted at him.
I couldn’t help myself. I understood his choices but I didn’t agree with them. I thought there had to be a way. He and I had made it through my mother’s death, we could make it through anything.
“Jason, listen to me, I know this is hard but I’ve been over all the options. It’s going to end this way and I can literally do nothing about it. I’d rather enjoy the time I have left than suffer unnecessarily.
“Son, listen to me, I know that you’ve always had problems with Mindy since before we were married. I think it’s only fair that you understand my choices.
“I’ve never moved on from your mother. She was the love of my life, my heart, my everything. Losing her destroyed me, and, I’m sorry to say, I couldn’t bring myself to move on.
“When I met Mindy it was as if I was watching myself from outside my own body. She made me LAUGH. I don’t know how, but she broke through. I know you saw the difference in me
“I’ve never considered Mindy to be a replacement for your mother. I’ve never even thought of her the same way. This is important son, and I know you don’t want to know all of this about your father, but to me Mindy has been my best friend, the closest person to me, but just that, just a friend.
“She could never replace what your mother meant to me and I’ve never wanted to have anything to do with another woman. I married Mindy to be married to my best friend, but I need you to understand that I married her so that it would be easier to take care of her, not to replace your mother. I never have and never will love Mindy the same way.”
I was reeling. I’d had two huge revelations made to me. I couldn’t handle the second one. I asked my dad more questions about his cancer, acting as if he’d not told me a thing about my step mom.
The next few months passed in a blur similar to after my mother’s death. My dad had already “gotten his life in order” and spent time making sure everything would be ok. He passed his company to his brother so that he could spend time with Mindy and I. He died just a few months after telling me he had cancer. I don’t know why, but it didn’t crush me the way that my mother’s death had. I suppose it’s because I knew it was coming.
During those few months Mindy was completely differently with me. She, like me, seemed resigned to it. She wasn’t happy, I was actually surprised how much it seemed to hurt her, but she was supportive of his decision to not try to make it drag out for a few more months.
After my dad died it came time to read his last will and testament. I suppose I should mention, my dad was extremely rich. Not richest man in the world rich, but rich enough that when Forbes made their annual assessment he was at least worth evaluating. He and my uncle had started a business that had ground to be a Fortune 500 company and both of them had done very well for themselves.
I was to get everything, excepting an annual stipend that would go to Mindy if she preferred to move away. My dad’s wish was for Mindy and I to live with my aunt and uncle at least until I turned 18 and collected my inheritance.
I saw no problem with this, I didn’t particularly want to stay in the house with all the negative memories anyway. We arranged to start the move. I was an orphan but I was happy to at least have some family left that cared enough that they would take me in.