Things get worse

Scott followed Lydia outside. Martha watched them exit the house with a suspicious eye. Lydia went over to the pool, sitting down on the side, letting her legs dangle in the pool.

“Well, your mood has improved.” Angel said to Lydia, looking past her to Scott, “I wonder what could have changed.” She was clearly delighted.

Scott tried hard but couldn’t hold off a blush, Angel practically had a sixth sense when it came to sussing out people having sex.

“Scott,” Martha came over to him, “How did things go with that girl from the bar?” She was worrying, and he understood, after his dad ran off and left Scott with Martha, she had done her best to raise him well, and if she thought he was cheating on someone, it would break her heart.

“It went fine, but she wasn’t looking for anything serious, we aren’t together or anything.”

“Hmm.” She looked disappointed. “I really hope you find a nice girl Scott.” She didn’t say it with malice, but the implication wasn’t lost on Scott.

“I’m not really looking for a relationship right now, I’m still working through what went wrong with the last one.”

“Yeah, well, be careful.” She looked like she wanted to say a lot more, but she didn’t.

Scott put a reassuring hand on her shoulder and kissed her on her forehead. “I’ll be alright, you don’t have to worry about me so much.”

She snorted, but she also smiled. “I’ll try.”

Scott walked over and slipped into the pool, going under in one quick motion, getting used to the cold water in one go.

“See Lydia, that’s how you do it, jump in, get it all over at once.”

“Yeah mom, you two monsters can do what you want, I’m going to ease myself in.” Lydia was still sitting on the side of the pool, but Scott didn’t mind, she looked fantastic sitting there in her bikini.

Suddenly he felt two hands wrap around his body, as Angel pressed her tits into his back, and ran her fingers over his stomach.

“You’re going to make me entertain your cousin all by myself?” Angel said, smiling at Lydia.

Scott slipped away from his aunt. “I don’t need anyone to entertain me aunt Angel.”

“Leave the poor boy alone Angel.” Martha had been doing her best to keep Angel away from Scott for a long time.

“He’s not a boy anymore Martha, he’s a man now, and he can handle himself.” Angel smiled. “I bet he could handle a couple of us as well.” And she winked at Scott.

“That’s enough mom.” Lydia said firmly.

“Okay, okay,” Angel backed away from Scott, her palms up. “I’m just trying to liven this party up a bit, I’ll behave.”

Scott was glad to see Lydia could still make her mother back down.

“Oh Damn!” he heard Martha shriek. She had slipped into the pool, and the water was nearly up to her breasts. “It’s cold.”

“It’s not bad once you get used to it.” Scott said.

With Martha in the water, and having been chewed out by her daughter, Angel behaved herself for the most part, and the group had a good time, drinking and talking in the pool.

Scott had hoped the flirting of his Aunt Angel, the sexual tension between he and Lydia and the weird relationship he had with Martha would all somehow improve by not being a teenager anymore and the distance four years away would bring.

But his Aunt Angel had been worse, either making up for lost time or she thought him being 22 and divorced meant he was fair game to be treated like any other man she decided she needed to have.

Lydia. . . shit. He wanted to talk to her today, explain the situation with Jenn and Suzie, let her know why he wasn’t able to give her an answer right away, but that was going to be much more difficult now.

And Martha, that relationship was always rough. He didn’t even know where to begin. He felt like they needed to talk about so many things, actually talk about the tension between them for once, and the awful weekend that started it. He knew what he had done, he knew she blamed herself, but mostly, what the hell did the universe expect putting a lonely 28-year-old heroin addict and a horned up 16-year-old together in a trailer with one place big enough to sleep?

Scott scowled internally, it made sense he didn’t have a clue how to have a healthy relationship with women, his most notable sexual experiences involved his cousin, his aunt, a lady he recently called ‘Mom’ and his ex-wife who wanted him to watch her fuck other guys. He looked at Lydia and wondered what she would think of him if she knew how close he had come to accepting it. . .

“Fuck.” He said under his breath and he climbed out of the pool. His mood was rapidly deteriorating and he needed to walk, needed some space.

“Where you going Scott?” Martha asked.

“I’m going to get more punch.” It came out angrier than he expected. He had nursed his first cup, drank a beer, he had been trying to stay sober around Angel, but the thoughts he was having. . . he didn’t want to be in that headspace anymore.

He went inside, and realized how fucked up he felt. The self-loathing, anger, horniness, it was like being a teenager in this family all over again. Like every choice you could make would just lead to you hating yourself more.

He had to calm down. He got a glass of water instead of Angel’s punch, **** wasn’t going to help.

“Save some for the rest of us Lyds.” He heard Angel yell, followed by something from Martha, the usual.

Lydia came in the door.

“Hey Scott, I’m sorry about. . . Oh shit! Scott, talk to me.”

He was holding back tears, he hated that he would start to cry when he got mad like this, and it only made everything worse, made him madder, made people treat him like he was broken. He could picture how his face looked, he’d seen in in the mirror enough times before. Shit, he’d seen it on his dad’s face growing up, knowing you should probably run but that it was already too late for that.

He couldn’t speak, couldn’t let the words out without tears following, and then things would not be good. He just shook his head, doing everything he could to hold back the feelings **** to explode from his chest.

Lydia grabbed him, led him to the living room, sat him down and gave him space. Her face was expressionless, but her eyes were a mixture of fear, sadness and concern, all at once.

“Breathe Scott. Keep breathing.”

Scott focused on his breathing, felt the wave of emotion and memories recede some, enough.

“Thanks Lydia,” he said, his voice shaky.

“It can’t be easy being back here, with the three of us.”

“Yeah.”

There was silence for a minute.

“Thank you, Lydia.”

“Hey, no problem, I’ve been in therapy remember, I’ve been dragging up a lot of stuff too.”

“I ran away, thought I could just leave it behind. Start something new and never have to deal with it.”

“Wouldn’t that be nice.”

Scott laughed, and a small tear ran down his cheek.

“All I did was find a new person to hurt and be hurt by.”

“Did you ever. . .” He knew what she was wanting to ask.

“Hit her? No. Came damn close though. I had shut down, wasn’t telling her anything, she tried to **** me to engage with her, make me mad, jealous, whatever. I know she made the choice to start cheating on me, but I did a lot to push her to it, and man, it went bad. Came too damn close. At least I ran away instead of hitting her.”

Lydia got up and walked to the back door, closed it, he heard the dead bolt slide into place. She went and locked the front door too.

“There, now where were we?”

“Did you just lock our moms outside?”

“Yeah, it’s nothing they haven’t done to us, right?”

Scott laughed.