Time to ask the boyfriend question.

“Your mother—“ you begin, but Amber interrupts you. “My mother’s an idiot,” she says bluntly. “Of course, if she weren’t, she wouldn’t have had me, so I guess I can’t complain too loud. But here she is, she has the finest man either of us knows on a string, and she’s always complaining about you behind your back.” Your surprise at this must be obvious, because Amber nods. “She was always nice to you to your face, but when she knew it wouldn’t get back to you, she never hesitated to rip on you. I couldn’t tell you, because you wouldn’t have believed me. You know we don’t have a great relationship.” You wonder why Amber seems so certain you wouldn’t have trusted her, but it’s certainly true that she and her mother don’t get along. “I don’t think she really understood. You loved her, but she figured you stayed with her because she’s so hot and the sex was so good. She thought it was all about her, not about you.

“I’m way hotter than her,” Amber adds with a note of bitterness in her voice, “but I haven’t found anyone who wants me like that. I have boys who want to fuck me, but no one who really wants me, and certainly no one who wants to take care of me the way you took care of Mom. Being sexy just doesn’t get you that far, and she doesn’t understand that. She thinks she can dump you and find someone else more exciting, and he’ll be just as good to her, and everything will be just the same, only better. Who knows, maybe it will work this time, too. She's always been lucky. It’s not going to work forever, though, and she’s never going to understand what went wrong.”

Amber shakes her head and says, “She’s a fucking idiot,” which seems like an apt way to put it (in several respects).

You look Amber in the eyes and hold her gaze. Gently, you ask, “Amber, do you have a boyfriend right now?”

She looks out the window and says, “I’ve had short-term relationships, but no one steady. I know Mom’s unhappy about that. She thinks I'm too much of a prude, if you can believe it, that I’m not ‘putting out’ enough, or something. She even told me once . . . no, I don’t want to talk about that. She’s sex-obsessed, which is why she’s been cheating on you for a while.” This time, you’re so surprised, you sit up with a start, and your eyes grow wide. Amber nods again, and you feel a flash of rage. “But then, what do you expect from a woman who tried to put me on the pill at 14?”

At that, you do a double-take, and Amber nods yet again, wearily. “I refused. I don’t like the idea of **** and hormones. I was still a virgin when I started college, just in reaction to my mother. I did finally get an IUD put in, but I didn’t tell her.”

She pauses a moment and says, "The truth is, everyone I’ve dated, they’re all still boys, and I want a real man. There’s a man I've liked for a long time now—in fact, I think I love him—but he doesn’t even know I’m interested; and I’ve just never found anyone else I like even half as much.” She hesitates, as if she’s not sure how much more she wants to say, or how she wants to say it.

Your heart is racing, though you’re not sure why. You lean forward and ask, “What do you mean?”

“It’s been hard, because the man I really want has been dating someone else. In fact, it’s more awkward than that, because up until this week"—Amber takes a deep breath, gathers her courage, and raises her eyes to look straight into yours—“he’s been dating my mother.”

Your mouth drops at this, because it had never occurred to you that Amber might feel this way about you. But then, you’ve been committed to April (and you thought she was committed to you!), so you haven’t been letting yourself think about other women in that way—and surely if anyone was off-limits, it was her daughter! Besides, when you first met Amber, she was still a half-grown colt. You've seen her grow into a stunningly sexy young woman, but at some level, you haven’t really thought of her as a woman.

But now, you’re unattached, and no one’s off-limits. Though you’ve never let yourself think about fucking Amber, you have grown to love her dearly over the years. Now here she is, a beautiful and desirable woman, staring at you with undeniable lust in her eyes--mixed, oddly and appealingly, with vulnerability, because she isn’t sure how you’ll respond. As badly as she wants you, you don’t know if she could have worked herself up to say anything without the beer to give her courage.

The combination of vulnerability and lust in her expression makes you want to fuck her to the limits of her senses, but also to make love to her, gently and tenderly, so she feels loved and cherished and protected. Fortunately, it sounds like you have the whole weekend . . .