Second Chance
"His ex's mother reaches out after the divorce. She says she wants to apologize for how her daughter treated him. What she really wants is what she's wanted for years—him."
The text comes at 2 AM.
Unknown: This is Diane. Lauren's mother. I heard about the divorce. I'm sorry.
I stare at the screen. The divorce was finalized three months ago. Lauren and I haven't spoken since she threw a coffee mug at my head and told me she wished we'd never met. Her mother sent a Christmas card the first year we were married. Nothing since.
Me: Thanks. How did you get my number?
Diane: Lauren left her old phone at my house. I found it in a drawer.
Diane: I know this is strange. But I've been thinking about you. About how she treated you.
Diane: You deserved better.
I should leave it there. Polite acknowledgment. Move on.
Me: It wasn't all her fault.
Diane: You're sweet to say that. But I know my daughter. I saw how she changed after the wedding. How she pulled away from you.
Diane: I tried to talk to her. She wouldn't listen.
Me: There's nothing to apologize for.
Diane: Can I take you to dinner? To apologize properly?
I should say no.
Me: Sure.
I remember Diane from the wedding.
She was heavy then—not as heavy as Lauren complained about, but substantial. Soft in the middle, thick in the thighs. She wore a navy dress that showed too much cleavage and drank too much wine and told me, during the mother-son dance we did as a joke, that her daughter was "lucky to have someone who looks at her the way you do."
I didn't know what she meant.
I do now.
The restaurant is Italian, dim and quiet.
Diane is waiting at the table when I arrive. She's bigger than I remember—three years and a divorce of her own have added weight to her frame. She must be two-sixty now, maybe two-seventy. Her gray-blonde hair is shorter, curling around her face. She's wearing a red dress, low-cut, her enormous breasts spilling over the neckline.
She's fifty-four years old.
She looks like she could eat me alive.
"James." She stands, pulls me into a hug. Her body is warm and soft against mine. Her perfume is something expensive. "Thank you for coming."
"Thanks for reaching out."
We sit. We order. We talk.
About the divorce—hers and mine. About Lauren, the selfish daughter neither of us understood. About her ex-husband, who left her for a younger woman. About loneliness, and regret, and the things we wish we'd done differently.
"I should have said something," she says, three glasses of wine in. "At the wedding. I should have pulled you aside and warned you."
"Warned me about what?"
"About Lauren." Her eyes are wet. "About how she uses people. Gets bored with them. Throws them away."
"You couldn't have known—"
"I knew." She reaches across the table. Takes my hand. "I've watched her do it since she was a teenager. Collect boys, drain them, discard them. I saw her doing it to you, and I said nothing."
"Why?"
She looks at me. Really looks. Something shifts in her expression—something hungry.
"Because I wanted you for myself."
I should leave.
I should pay the check, thank her for dinner, go home to my empty apartment and pretend this conversation never happened.
Instead, I'm in her car, parked in the back of the lot, and she's crawling across the center console toward me.
"I've thought about you for years," she breathes. "Watched you at Christmas dinners. At birthdays. Wondered what it would be like—"
"Diane—"
"Tell me to stop." She's straddling me now, her weight pressing me into the seat. Her dress has ridden up. Her thick thighs are bare. "Tell me, and I will."
I can't tell her to stop.
I don't want her to stop.
"I used to listen to you," she whispers. "Through the wall, at Lauren's apartment. When you would fuck her. I'd put my hand between my legs and pretend it was me."
"Jesus—"
"She never appreciated you. Never made the sounds I would have made. Never—"
I kiss her.
She moans into my mouth—deep, grateful, starving. Her tongue is wine and need. Her hands are in my hair, on my shoulders, everywhere at once. She's grinding against me, her wet heat soaking through my pants.
"Please," she begs between kisses. "Please—I've waited so long—"
I reach between us. Find the zipper of my pants. Free my cock.
She doesn't hesitate.
She rises up, pulls her underwear aside, and sinks down onto me.
She's nothing like her daughter.
Lauren was thin, clinical, treated sex like an obligation. Diane is present—gasping, moaning, her whole body responding to every thrust. Her cunt is hot and wet, gripping me like she's afraid I'll disappear.
"Fuck," she hisses. "You feel even better than I imagined—"
I grab her hips—so much flesh, so much softness. I pull her down harder, and she cries out, her head thrown back, her massive breasts bouncing in my face.
"That's it—that's it—god, James—"
She rides me in the backseat like a woman possessed. The car rocks. The windows fog. Her dress is bunched around her waist, her belly pressing against mine, her thighs clamped around my hips.
"I used to dream about this," she pants. "Dream about stealing you from her. Being the one you came home to. The one you fucked every night—"
"You wanted me that badly?"
"I wanted you desperately." She clenches around me, and I groan. "Still do. Can't you feel it?"
I can feel it.
I can feel how wet she is, how hungry, how her body is trying to pull me deeper. I can feel years of fantasies collapsing into this single moment.
I can feel myself falling.
"Make me come," she begs. "Make me come on my ex-son-in-law's cock—"
I reach between us. Find her clit—swollen, sensitive. I circle it while she rides me, and she falls apart.
She screams.
Not a moan, not a gasp—a scream, loud enough that I'm glad the lot is empty. Her pussy spasms around me, milking me, pulling me over the edge with her.
I bury myself deep and let go.
We sit in the car for a long time after.
Her head on my shoulder. My hand on her thigh. The windows still fogged.
"That was..." She trails off. Laughs. "I don't have words."
"Me neither."
"I know it's wrong." She traces patterns on my chest. "I know you were married to my daughter. I know—"
"I don't care."
She looks up at me. Surprised.
"I don't care about Lauren," I say. "Not anymore. Maybe I never did. Maybe it was always—"
"Always what?"
"You."
Her eyes fill with tears.
"That first Christmas," I continue. "You were wearing this green sweater. Tight. Your daughter kept complaining about your weight, and you just... smiled. Didn't let it touch you. I couldn't stop looking at you."
"I remember that sweater."
"I jerked off thinking about you that night. In Lauren's apartment, in her bathroom, while she slept." I laugh, hollow. "I've felt guilty about it for years."
"And now?"
I cup her face. Kiss her softly.
"No more guilt."
We become something.
Not dating—we don't go on dates, don't hold hands in public, don't tell anyone we're together. But she comes to my apartment twice a week, and I go to hers on weekends, and we lose ourselves in each other.
She's insatiable.
Years of bad marriage, years of neglect, have left her starving. She wants me everywhere—in her bed, in her shower, on her kitchen counter with her legs wrapped around my waist. She wants my mouth on her pussy, my cock in her throat, my hands on every inch of her body.
"More," she begs, every time. "I need more—"
I give her everything.
Lauren finds out.
I don't know how—maybe Diane told her, maybe someone saw us, maybe she just knows her mother. She shows up at my apartment one night, fury in her eyes.
"You're fucking my mother?"
"Lauren—"
"My mother, James? What the fuck is wrong with you?"
Diane steps out of the bedroom. She's wearing my shirt, nothing else. Her thick thighs are bare. The marks I left on her neck are visible.
"Hello, sweetheart."
Lauren goes white.
"Mom—"
"You threw him away." Diane walks to my side. Slides her arm around my waist. "You treated him like garbage for three years and then threw him away. Did you think no one would pick him up?"
"He's my ex-husband!"
"He's a man who deserves to be loved." Diane kisses my cheek. "And I love him. I've loved him since the day you brought him home."
Lauren looks between us. Her mouth opens and closes.
"You're disgusting. Both of you."
"Maybe." Diane shrugs. "But we're happy. Can you say the same?"
Lauren storms out.
We don't hear from her again.
One Year Later
Diane moves in.
We don't tell people how we met. When they ask, we say mutual friends. They don't need to know about the years of longing, the forbidden fantasies, the way we came together from the wreckage of marriages that were never meant to last.
She wakes me every morning with her mouth on my cock.
She fucks me every night like it might be the last.
She loves me with an intensity that should be frightening, and I love her back just as fiercely.
"Was this worth the wait?" she asks one night, curled against me, her body warm and heavy.
I think about Lauren. About the wedding, the marriage, the divorce. About all the years I wasted on the wrong woman.
"You were worth everything," I tell her.
She smiles.
Pulls me on top of her.
"Then show me."
I do.
Some people find love young.
Some people find it late.
Some people find it in the most forbidden places—in the arms of the woman they should never have touched, in the bed they should never have shared.
I found it in Diane.
My ex-wife's mother. My second chance. My everything.
And I'm never letting go.