It's What Best Friends Do

"That's at least four times in less than two weeks, Tom," said Carol, returning the phone to its cradle on the kitchen wall. She sat back down at the dinette table, where she was having coffee with her son before both of them headed off for work. "Don't you think that's a bit much?"

The call had been from Carol's next door neighbor, Sandra Parsons. Sandra was a divorcee, not quite 50, about the same age as Carol. Sandra's grown son Paul had recently accepted a six-month reassignment to his company's Head Office in another city, leaving Sandra without a man around the house, at least temporarily.

Carol had been widowed several years earlier. Her husband had been a pal of Sandra's ex-husband, in the way that men are who borrow tools from each other and who talk over the property line fence with a beer in one hand and a rake in the other. Now both of the husbands were gone from the women's lives, and now their sons were the men the women counted on for help around home.

Tom and Paul had grown up together. Because they lived next door to each other, and were always in the same grade at school, they'd been best buddies for most of their lives. On the day Paul packed up his car and headed out of town to his new work assignment, he'd taken Tom aside to talk to him privately.

"I'd like it if you and your Mom could sorta keep an eye on my mother, Tom," said Paul. "You know, just make sure she's OK while I'm away. I don't want her to get too lonely. Since my Dad left she's gotten very used to me always being around for her."

Tom agreed. It's what best friends do for each other, he thought, and he'd be happy to do it for Paul. Tom made a point of stopping by Mrs. Parson's house the very next afternoon, to tell her that he'd be happy to help out with 'man stuff' around the Parsons house if she ever needed that kind of help. She'd thanked him for his kind offer. Recently she'd been getting quite a lot of that kind of help from Tom.

"Sandra wants you to help her move a sofa or something tomorrow," said Carol. "I'm beginning to get a bit concerned about this, Tom. She seems to need your help an awful lot. You probably wouldn't have volunteered to help her if you'd known how much she was going to demand of you."

Tom laughed. "I do my full share of the chores around here, Mom. Why should you care if Mrs. Parsons gets me to do a little heavy lifting or whatever over at her place in my spare time?"

"It's the 'whatever' part that bothers me, Tom. I don't know all of what Sandra asks you to do for her over there, and I don't care really, but it doesn't look right for an eligible bachelor like yourself to be spending a lot of time in the home of an unattached woman old enough to be ... well, she's my age, for heaven's sake."

Tom laughed again. "C'mon, Mom, don't let your imagination run away with you. I don't know what you think Mrs. Parsons and I are up to, but it's nothing you should be worried about. Why would I mess around with some neighbor lady when I've got the prettiest gal in the county living right in my own home?"

"I'm serious, Tom," Carol said, belying her own words by laughing at her son's teasing. "Sandra is a good friend," said Carol. "I like her. And I don't want the neighbors gossiping about her ... and about you, either."

"OK, Mom. I'll tell Mrs. Parsons about your concerns for her welfare when I'm over there tomorrow. My guess is that she'll have a good laugh about it. Maybe she'll want to tell you herself not to worry your pretty head about it. End of discussion."

Tom leaned over to kiss his mother's cheek. Carol couldn't help smiling at her son's references to her attractiveness. Tom had obviously inherited his father's gift for sweetly subtle flirtation, and her son's gentle teasing added significantly to her enjoyment of her morning coffee. She loved things that Tom said and did that brought back pleasant memories of her late husband. There were moments when she could swear she could see her husband's eyes when she looked into her son's eyes, and at those moments she knew that if she wasn't Tom's mother she could easily have fallen in love with him just as she had with his father.

Tom gulped down the last of his coffee, got up from his chair, said a quick goodbye to his mother and headed off for work. On the drive across town he wondered if his mother would ever directly question Sandra about the nature of his occasional help efforts over at the Parsons house and, if she ever did, what Sandra's reply might be. He addressed Mrs. Parsons as Sandra now, as she'd asked him to, but only when he was helping out over at her place. He knew that Sandra wouldn't be totally upfront and candid with Carol about Tom's duties at the Parsons house, because some of what she asked him to do was exactly the kind of help Carol was afraid the neighbors might turn into ugly gossip.

Tom had been fucking Sandra Parsons for almost two months now, on about the same routine schedule that her son Paul had been fucking her for two years.

Sandra had made it clear to Tom on his first visit to her place that his tasks there would include giving her at least two orgasms when she was in the mood for sex, a duty her son had performed routinely until his recent job relocation. On that first day, minutes after Tom learned about Sandra's ongoing incestuous relationship with her son Paul, Tom also learned that sex with a woman much older than himself could be as good or better than any sex he'd ever had with women of his own age. From that day on, Tom had a different view about his relationship with his best friend, Paul. And a different view of his relationship with his own mother, Carol.

Tom remembered that when he and Paul were in their teens, Paul would sometimes joke with Tom about how 'hot' Carol was and how much he'd like to fuck her. Once Tom got over his shock and disgust at this idea, he got back at Paul by saying that if Paul ever tried such a thing he'd have to fuck Paul's mother in revenge. The idea of fucking each other's mothers became something of a running joke between them for awhile, and then the joke got old and was never mentioned again.

Neither of them could have known back then that both of them would someday get the chance to fuck Paul's mother on a regular basis, and Tom couldn't have known back then that learning about Paul's incest with Sandra would affect the way he looked now at his own mother.

Until he discovered what an avaricious sexual creature Sandra was, Tom hadn't given much thought to the sexual desires and needs of women much older than himself. Now that he was fucking Sandra regularly, the thought that Carol, his own mother, might conceivably have sexual desires and needs of her own arose in Tom's mind for the very first time. He understood now that Sandra had found someone, her son Paul, to look after her sexual needs after her husband split. But what was his own mother doing about that sort of thing? Was it any of his business? Should he make it his business to find out?

He thought he might one day ask Sandra about this, but in fact it was Sandra who brought the subject up first.

* * * * *

The next afternoon Tom helped Sandra Parsons shuffle her Living Room furniture around a bit. After he'd positioned the sofa exactly where she now wanted it, Sandra spread some towels over it to protect the upholstery, took off her clothes, and then took off Tom's clothes. Tom fucked her on the sofa for awhile. And then she fucked him on it for awhile.

Tom loved saddling himself between Sandra's upraised thighs and simply thrusting into her as deep and as hard and as fast as he could. He thought that Sandra must be pretty close to his idea of an ideal fuckmate. She liked sex of the simple, no-nonsense kind, where both parties know exactly what they want to get from it, both know how to get it, and neither of them stops until they've both gotten it. And she was good at it. She knew how to work her vaginal muscles to grip him, almost as tightly as he could stand it. Luckily no one could hear Tom's deep grunts and Sandra's high-pitched squeals as their orgasms approached, and their combined roars on those rare occasions when they managed to climax together might possibly have frightened anyone within earshot of their debauchery.

Sandra didn't demand a lot of variety in her sex games, but she knew how to spice them up in simple ways that added at least a bit of spontaneity to her routines. For one thing, she would get Tom to fuck her wherever they happened to be for the chores she'd asked him over to help out with, as soon as the last of the work was done. They'd done it on the floors of several different rooms, bent over the edge of a kitchen counter, standing up in a shower enclosure, on the Dining Room table, on top of the clotheswasher as it went through its most violently vibrating cycle, and once in her garage in the back seat of her car.

"Do you mind if I sometimes call you Paul when we fuck?" Sandra once asked him, her way of confessing how much she missed having sex with her darling son. Tom laughed and told her she could call him anything she wanted if it made it better for her. Better for her always meant better for him.

And then Sandra told him, "You can call me Mom if you want to, Tom. I'd like that, you know."

Tom was a bit shocked by this, not only because her request was bizarre but because it was so deliciously nasty. He quickly learned that, "Do you like sucking my cock, Sandra?" didn't sound nearly as exciting to Tom as did, "Do you like sucking your son's cock, Mom?"

It became their regular routine, both of them playing the game of pretending to be mother and son. Sometimes they were Sandra and Paul, and sometimes they were Carol and Tom. And one day Sandra upped the stakes a little more, by asking Tom the question he'd been carefully avoiding asking himself. She asked Tom if he would really like to fuck his own mother. Tom blurted out, "God, yes!" without a moment's thought, somewhat shocking himself by the complete lack of hesitatation in his reply.

"I think I should have a talk with your mother, Tom," smiled Sandra. "My guess is that Carol is more than a little horny these days, and I don't think she's fully aware of the options available to her."

She told him what she planned to tell Carol. And she told Tom what he should do if he really wanted to feed the sexual hunger that Sandra believed Carol must have been suffering, perhaps for a long time.

* * * * *

Sandra invited Carol over for dessert and coffee one evening in the following week. After several minutes of small talk that relaxed them both, Sandra got right to the point of her having Carol over for a chat.

"Tom tells me you have some reservations about him helping me out around here," Sanda began.

"Well, not exactly reservations," Carol said, knowing that this was a bit of a lie, "but I was afraid that the neighbors might misunderstand what he's doing here ... you know ... so often ... and sometimes for hours at a time."

"Ah, I see," said Sandra. "What do you think they might misunderstand?"

"Don't pretend you don't know the answer to that one, Sandra," said Carol, smiling to show she knew when she was being teased. "You're an attractive single woman. You're living alone, now that Paul is away for awhile. Having an attractive young man over here a lot of the time may get rumors started that you're having Tom over here for ... you know ... for sex."

"Do you think Tom and I are having sex, Carol? And more to the point, do you think it's any business of our nosey neighbors if we were?"

Carol was stunned. She had expected Sandra to be outraged by Carol's implied accusation, and to protest her innocence vehemently, but instead Sandra was calmly sidestepping the issue as if it was nothing for anyone to be concerned about.

"Well, it's certainly my business if people think you're fucking my son!" said Carol, realizing too late that the use of the f-word was unnecessarily rude and probably hurtful to her friend.

"Is it really?" smiled Sandra, her composure apparently unruffled by Carol's choice of words. "Tom is an adult, Carol. He knows how to behave when he's a guest in the home of a neighbor lady like me."

There was a long and rather awkward silence.

"I hope you're not jealous of me, Carol," said Sandra quietly.

"Jealous? Me?" gasped Carol. "Why would I be jealous of you?"

"Oh, I don't know," mused Sandra. "Perhaps you're afraid that your charming son Tom has found companionship next door instead of right at home?"

"We're talking about sex, Sandra! Not companionship."

"I'd rather not play word games, Carol. You're upset because you suspect that Tom may in fact be having sex with me ... fucking me ... secretly. Am I right about that?"

"Yes," admitted Carol almost in a whisper.

"And would it be so terrible if he was?", said Sandra. "We're all adults here, and no one's suspected of cheating or committing adultery, so what's the big deal?" Carol said nothing, so Sandra went on. "Like you, I find myself without a husband at this point in my life, and Tom hasn't got a girlfriend or some other outlet for sex that I know of. Is it that you're angry that Tom may have chosen to have sex with me instead of you?"

"WHAT?" gasped Carol, almost shrieking. "Do you think I'd want to have sex with my own son?"

"I think you'd be crazy not to want to, Carol," said Sandra quietly. "But I can understand why you would choose not to. If Tom and are were having sex, maybe we'd be doing you a favor by not forcing you to do something for him that you'd prefer not to do."

"This is insane!" said Carol. "You certainly wouldn't think of having sex with Paul!"

Sandra said nothing. Carol just stared at her, wide-eyed, in amazement at Sandra's silence which seemed tantamount to a confession of engaging in incest.

"Would you?" asked Carol, hardly believing what she was asking. "I'm not talking about secret fantasies here. We've all had those. I'm talking about really ... doing it ... I mean ... would you ... really?"

"I don't think I have to answer that," said Sandra. "We're talking about Tom here, not Paul, and maybe you should have a talk with Tom about this."

"Yes, I think I should," said Carol. "I'd better go now."

Sandra walked with her to the door and, seeing how upset Carol was by this whole matter, also walked the short distance between their front doors with her. She gave Carol a hug before saying goodnight to her and watching her go inside, but Carol's mind seemed a thousand miles away and she didn't even seem to notice Sandra's gesture of genuine affection.

* * * * *

Back at home, Carol sat down at her kitchen table and thought about all the things that Sandra had told her. And about all the things that Sandra had not told her but which she felt she had correctly deduced for herself.

Tom happened to pop into the kitchen for a late night snack just then, and saw his mother sitting there with what looked like a stunned expression on her face. He thought she might have been crying, or that she might now be on the verge of tears.

"Ah, my guess is you've been talking with Mrs. Parsons," he said. "About me, perhaps."

"Yes," Carol said. "She told me everything ... at least I think she did."

Tom got a glass of milk and a couple of cookies, pulled a chair over close to hers, and put an arm around her shoulders as he sat down beside her.

"I love you, Mom," he said softly. "You know that I love you."

She rested her head on his shoulder. "I know you do, sweetheart."

Tom wrapped his arms about her and gave her a gently protective hug.

"Sandra pretty much admitted that she'd had ... you know ... been doing it ... with Paul," she said.

"Yes, I think they've been having sex now and then for quite some time," said Tom, going to work on his snack and trying to sound matter-of-fact about the whole business.

"I never suspected a thing," said Carol. "I thought she was getting along somehow without sex since her husband left her. Like I've been doing."

"And how could you have suspected anything, Mom? You don't know what goes on behind the closed doors of any family on this street, do you?"

"No, I guess I don't," said Carol.

Tom had finished his snack. He waited a moment before speaking.

"And no one on this street knows what goes on behind the closed doors of our house, either."

Tom felt Carol's body suddenly tense in his arms as she grasped the implications of what he was saying.

"I'm here for you if you need me, you know that," he said very softly.

"I know that, darling," she said.

A moment later, she said, "Things might have been different if we'd had a talk like this some time ago." That sounded to Tom like his mother's last words on the matter for tonight.

"I'm going to bed, Mom," said Tom, getting up from his chair. "Are you going to be all right?"

"Yes, I'm fine. Good night, dear."

Tom bent and kissed his mother on the cheek and then, lightly and briefly, full on her soft lips. "Good night, Mom," he whispered, and went off to bed.

Carol went to bed a few minutes later, but sleep evaded her.

Mental images kept rushing into her mind, shockingly lewd and wildly exciting ones. She saw her friend Sandra completely naked, her legs raised and spread wide apart, openly inviting her son Paul to bring his fully erect cock to her eager pussy, and the two of them fucking like crazed incestuous animals. And a moment later she saw Sandra wantonly opening herself again, this time offering her mouth and her pussy to Tom's rockhard cock. Carol imagined herself being in the same room with them, watching them fuck, and seeing something like pity in their eyes when they paused for a moment and turned to look directly at her. Tom seemed to be begging her to let herself be part of his lovemaking.

Soon Carol was touching herself down between her legs and clutching a pillow to her breasts as if she was holding a lover in her arms. When a powerful orgasm arrived, sweeping her up and carrying her away, she held the pillow against her face to muffle her cries of pleasure and the repeated mention of her son's name which escaped her lips.

* * * * *

An hour later she was still very wide awake. Almost as if under some hypnotic spell that was controlling her actions, but knowing full well what she was doing, she got out of bed and walked from her bedroom out into the hallway.

She hadn't bothered to slip a robe over her shoulders. She had on just a short nightgown, which barely reached to the place where the underslope of her buttocks met the tops of her thighs. She walked to Tom's bedroom door, and rested her hand on the doorknob. She took a deep breath, and turned the knob as quietly as she could. She entered her son's totally darkened bedroom and guickly closed the door behind her to shut out the soft glow of the nightlight in the hall.

She stood still, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. Soon she was able to make out the shape of her son's body under the white sheet on his bed. Apparently he felt no need for blankets at this time of year. He was breathing deeply and steadily, and he seemed to be in a very deep sleep.

Carol paused to think about exactly what she should do next. She hadn't thought this thing through very well, she realized. Maybe she'd thought that Tom would be as wide awake as she was, waiting eagerly for her to come to him, and that they would just fall into each other's arms, without either of them having to say a word, and have wonderfully satisfying sex until dawn. That apparently just wasn't going to happen.

She walked to the side of Tom's bed, the side that seemed to have more room left for her. She gently lifted the corner of the bedsheet and slipped into the bed beside her sleeping son. Tom's breathing continued in its serene rhythm. His was lying on his side. His head resting on the pillow was facing her, and she knew that if he suddenly awakened and saw her there he'd be in for something of a shock.