Chapter 35

What I had been thinking planning an early-morning departure with a teenager in tow I'll never know. I had already knocked on Jonas's door twice that morning and save for some particularly zombie-like moans had seen nor heard no sign of my son yet. "C'mon, Jo, you can sleep in the car. I just need you to drag yourself into the backseat."

The only response I got then was a muffled cry of, "The backseat? Aw mu-um..." but eventually I heard sounds of movement and it wasn't long after that that a showered and dressed Jonas appeared, raiding the kitchen thoroughly for anything approaching junk food that he could add to our picnic.

He was still at the monosyllabic stage, though, leaving my mind free to be occupied by my nervousness over our upcoming weekend. It wasn't just what we'd be doing - though I knew it held some potential for trouble later on - but more who we'd be doing it with. It hadn't be hard to avoid seeing Alex very much that week as we were both incredibly busy, and it was good we were, because every time I did see her I was distracted by strange flashbacks to my conversations with Joyce and memories of our last sailing trip together when Alex had hurt her ankle.

I reminded myself that it was natural that I was suddenly preoccupied with her - after all, Joyce had left me questioning my own... 'options'... and Alex, although far from the only lesbian I knew, was the only one with whom I had regular contact. That line of reasoning didn't explain my sudden tendency to stare at her lips as she talked or the fact that I had nearly invited her back to my place for another drink on Thursday night, but tried to shrug that off and ignore it as best I could, not least because in addition to being in what seemed a stable if not passionate relationship, she was my subordinate - being friends with her was quite unprofessional enough without sullying both our working relationship and our friendship by making her the subject of my middle-aged experimentation - and that was taking the big leap that she would even be interested.

And so we were friends, and friends we would stay. I just wished I didn't have to remind myself of this quite so often.

"Mum, the light's green."

"What? Oh, right..." It was going to be a very long car ride.

 

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