Grown Up

Cara flopped down onto a stool and surveyed the chaos of the apartment with dismay. It had happened again. Bella had done half a job with the bathroom and Eloise appeared to have merely drifted by the kitchen before both heading out the door with all their stuff in boxes. Cara vowed to herself that she'd find someone else to share with next year. She didn't need this level of shit to deal with on top of finals.

There was a knock at the door and her mood lifted.

"Cara, hon, you home?"

Cara skipped over to the door and opened it. A middle-aged woman stood in the hallway in a coat. Cara noticed she had leggings on and gym shoes and she smiled in relief at that. The cavalry had arrived and was prepared, as she always was, for the onslaught of end-of-term moving out.

"Daughter."

"Mother."

Cara stepped out and gave her mother a warm hug.

"Hi Cara."

Cara turned towards the male voice and her buoyant mood evaporated.

"Hi Wade."

He was in a coat too, stretched across his massive shoulders, easily a head higher than Cara's mother. He was sporting his usual three-day stubble, regarding her with dark, intense eyes. Wade extended a hand.

Cara looked down at it, feeling that little gut wrench when she spotted the wedding ring. She disengaged from her mother and shook the man's hand. As always, Wade's handshake was firm, enveloping her hand in his meaty grip, but perfunctory. She nodded to him.

"The place is still a bombsite. The girls just bolted, again."

"It would have been better if you'd made them clean up first," Wade said.

"It would have been better if you'd have got here first, so I could leave them all to it."

Wade didn't reply, but he shrugged. "Rena, do you want to get started?"

Cara's mother nodded quickly, and then slipped past her daughter into the apartment. Cara turned to her step-father.

"You helping too?" she asked.

"Oh, your mother and I have an arrangement. She'll help you with this, I'm doing all the driving and the carrying. Division of labour."

Wade smiled amiably at her, but Cara felt the hairs rise on her neck. She bit off a response and went to find her mother.

Rena was in the bathroom, tutting. She took off her coat and folded it over her arm, then walked around to the kitchen, then inspected the bedrooms one by one.

"Darling, this might take a while."

She hung up her coat on the back of the door and found a pair of rubber gloves.

"I'll give the bathroom another go while you finish packing your boxes, okay?"

Cara exchanged a look with her mother and then stared pointedly at Wade's back. Rena's expression flickered.

"Sooner started, sooner finished," she announced brightly and disappeared into the bathroom.

Cara returned to the slog of packing, watching her stepfather as he took up position on the same stool that Cara had been mooching on just a few minutes beforehand. He was on his phone, thumbs tapping the screen.

"Got a lot on?" Cara enquired as she slid her shoes into a suitcase.

"I do," Wade murmured, his attention consumed by the screen.

"On the weekend?"

"Business never sleeps."

That was all he said, tapping away at the phone. It looked like a toy in his huge hands. Cara continued her work, fuming silently, listening to the sounds of her mother hard at work scrubbing and cleaning.

Cara could see what her mother saw in Wade, why she'd married him. After Cara's father, it would have been flattering to be paid attention to by someone like her new stepfather. He ran his own business, and made enough money to give her mother a good life and a nice house after having to sell the family home in the divorce. Physically, he towered over his wife and Cara understood that too. The bulk of the man was intimidating. His features were not unhandsome, the stubbled chin suited him, and when he smiled he showed neat white teeth. But there was something about his eyes, the way they saw you, the dark chocolate colour. Cara had looked into those eyes; her mother hadn't stood a chance.

Not that the divorce was acrimonious, not that her mother had found herself lost and reeling. Quite the opposite: they'd kept it civil, at least as far as Cara had been able to see, split the assets and made the arrangements. With Cara now past the age of consent, there weren't even any custody issues. She suspected that her parents had waited for that moment, sending Cara off to college, to arrange the split.

It had taken a year for Wade to appear, another six months for him to pop the question and then another six months for her mother to walk down the aisle with him. Cara had been through a couple of boyfriends in that time, and she'd found herself in the position of telling her mother to slow down. She'd felt strangely foolish, saying that, giving her mother dating advice like she was the parent and her mother was the eighteen-year-old innocent. Something about that, about the divorce, had flipped the tables between mother and daughter, putting them on an equal footing and watching out for each other. Cara had warned her mother against Wade but had been roundly ignored.

She taped up a carboard box, making a show of it in front of her stepfather, but he seemed oblivious. Sure, he was better than sleeping alone, but there was something about him, about the way he treated Cara's mother, that just didn't sit right. It didn't seem very equal.

"Bit of help?" she called out.

Wade looked up from his phone and slipped it into his jeans pocket. He stood up and came over to the packing box, taking off his coat to reveal a t-shirt underneath.

"Sure," he rumbled.

"Careful, it's...."

Wade hefted the box and turned for the front door.

"Heavy," she finished.

Cara skirted the big man to open the door for him. Her eyes settled on the way his biceps bulged with the strain, but he seemed to make light work of it. A strange thought flashed through her mind, of how he'd look carrying her mother like that, his wife pressed against his thick chest as she was transported lightly in his arms.

Wade stepped out into the hallway and headed towards the stairs. Cara found herself watching him go. She shook her head and darted back into the apartment.

That was the problem. He looked good in those jeans, stripped down to a t-shirt, probably even better naked. Her mother had settled for a man who could wrap her up in his arms, but in exchange for something else, something that made Cara uneasy.

Her mother had always been independent, running her life and her family, and it had been a formative part of Cara's life to see her mother in charge. Now, she was the opposite. Her mother was meekly scrubbing and cleaning while her new husband checked his emails. Cara snorted: the good little wife.

The worst part of it was that she'd be under the same roof until college started again. She was resigned to the fact that at some point or other in the next few weeks, she'd reach a tipping point and tell her mother what she really thought. It felt inevitable, but Cara was resolved to somehow prick the bubble and get her mother to see. Whatever Wade was giving her, he was also taking as well. Was it better to be with someone and under the thumb, or alone but free?

Her mother walked into the bedroom where Cara was just folding the last of her clothing into a suitcase. She'd stripped off the loose top, down to a t-shirt.

"Kitchen's done. Just need to vacuum," she announced breezily.

Cara didn't reply immediately, gawping at her mother, but Rena had already disappeared back into the lounge to fetch the vacuum cleaner. It wasn't her cheerful demeanour that had brought Cara to a sudden halt, it hadn't even been the fact that her mother was wearing a tight white t-shirt. No, it had been what was underneath the t-shirt.

Cara inherited her body shape from her mother: not overly tall, but slim, narrow hips, modest breasts. The image of her mother's cleavage pressed beneath the white t-shirt was burned into her memory. Cara was still standing in the middle of the floor unmoving when her mother returned and began to vacuum the floor.

She seemed oblivious to Cara's eyes on her as she tidied, tucking a strand of blonde hair behind her ear. The blonde colour wasn't a recent change; she'd gone blonde soon after meeting Wade, and had steadily grown out her hair from a neat bob to a lustrous ponytail that now sat between her shoulder blades. The hair had been the first trigger point for Cara. She'd noted it, and her mother had replied that Wade liked it that way. The woman she knew would never have just gone blonde because a man preferred her like that.

Now this; as Rena moved around, Cara found herself staring at her mother's front. She looked up, giving her daughter a smile, then stopped. She frowned, then clicked off the vacuum cleaner.

"What's up?"

"Uh, you tell me."

Cara made a little circling motion with her finger. Rena looked down and began to blush.

"Oh. Yes. I guess... yeah, you probably want to know," she stuttered.

"Yeah. What the hell?"

Rena stood awkwardly in front of her daughter, clasping her hands. It had the effect of plumping her cleavage even further. She held eye contact with her daughter as her face coloured.

"What do you think, hon? How do I look?"

"Uh, you looked fine before."

"Yeah, but now? Do I look more... uh."

"Yeah, you look more. A lot more."

Rena glanced towards the open doorway quickly, then replied in a low voice.

"I was going to tell you. I just didn't have the time. How do I look, hon? Does it look alright?"

"How many sizes did you go up? When did you get it done? Why?" Cara hissed, keeping her own voice low too.

"I'm a D now. We talked about it, and I went in for the op a couple of months ago."

"Did Wade talk you into this?" Cara bristled.

"No, uh, we both agreed."

"Whose idea was it?"

"Both of us."

"But who brought it up?"

Cara glared at her mother, daring her to reply. Rena stayed silent.

"Thought so," Cara hissed.

Footsteps approached. Rena flicked on the vacuum cleaner again and resumed her work. Wade appeared at the doorway.

"Ready for the next load," he said.

"Here," Cara replied, zipping up the suitcase, "Just this one then the box in the kitchen. Then we're done."

"Okay. How about you baby? Nearly done?"

Cara cringed at the name, but her mother looked up brightly and nodded.

"Just the lounge area, then that's it."

Cara's eyes were on her mother's face, seeing how eager she was to please. Her toes curled. She needed to get her mother on her own sooner rather than later.

"Okay," Wade replied, "Wheels up in ten. Let's get on the road."

---

They took a walk in the park, instead of a run.

"I just need to be careful for the next couple of months," her mother was telling her, "No sudden movements, otherwise there could be complications, the surgeon said."

Cara bit her lip. Rena was wearing running tights, same as her daughter, with a figure-hugging exercise top that accentuated her new, more substantial cleavage.

"You don't approve."

Cara shook her head, facing her mother at last.

"Your body," she muttered.

"Hon, look, I was going to say something, but, y'know, I was all swelled after the op, so I've been waiting for everything to come good. It's come good, right?"

"You keep asking that. Why don't you ask Wade? He paid for them, yeah?"

"Don't be like that. It just makes you sound petty, Cara."

For a moment, she sounded like the mother Cara remembered, the one who wouldn't hesitate to put her into place if she stepped out of line.

"I'm not being petty. I just don't see why you did it. Was it for him?"

"It's for me. You don't understand. One day you will, but you're too young. You'll get it."

"He didn't push back though."

"No."

Cara hesitated. "So, it was his idea."

"No, it was mine."

"Since when?"

"Since...."

"Since Wade. Just say it."

"I don't know what you've got against him."

"I've got nothing against him, so long as he's not...."

Rena's eyes narrowed, and they walked on for a while in silence. They left the park and turned for home, back to the new house that Wade had chosen. They crossed the street.

"He loves me, Cara. I love him too. It's not like your Dad, it's different. Wade's been so good for me."

Cara's palms itched as she paced alongside her mother. They arrived at the house, but Cara didn't make a move down the pathway. She surveyed her mother, the changes that had been wrought over the last year or so. Rena looked better than Cara had ever recalled seeing her. She'd lost weight, slimming down and toning herself up. She looked good in the tight activewear, her blonde hair blowing in the breeze. But that was a problem.

"Cara, what is it?"

Cara sighed. She needed to get it off her chest.

"What I have against Wade is this. He's turning you into a bimbo. Look at you."

Cara gestured towards her mother's lean body. She was surprised by the way her mother broke out into a smile, like it had been a compliment. There was a little sparkle in her eyes. Cara realised that she'd lost the argument, even without her mother saying anything more.

"A bimbo? Why, yes, I guess, " her mother replied, doing a little twirl, "It's the new me. Y'know what, hon? I like it."

She turned on her heel and led her daughter into the house, the rounded curve of her bottom wiggling in her lycra tights. Cara could see what Wade saw in her mother, that much was obvious. She could also see what her mother saw in Wade. The big man was a commanding presence, effortlessly dominating the woman he'd married. Her mother was fulfilled in her life, and no doubt also fulfilled in the bedroom.

Wade was in the lounge, watching a show. Rena began to busy herself in the kitchen, putting together lunch for them all. She brought her husband a drink, her hand resting lightly on his shoulder, and that was as much as Cara could bear. She got up.

"Honey, are you going?" her mother asked.

"Yeah, look, I still gotta get that run it. I'll be an hour."

"What about lunch? I was just making it."

"I'll grab something when I get back."

"Okay. Have fun."

"Yeah."

Cara left the house, breaking into a light jog, but then building up until by the end of the street she was at full sprint. She came to a halt at the curb, bent over, gasping. It was all too much, like something out of the fifties. Her mother was in way over her head. Cara needed a plan.

She picked an easier pace, running back through the park and then down to the river, her mind freewheeling as she built up the distance between herself and her new stepfather. The way her mother had touched his shoulder giving him the drink made her shiver. As she tracked along the side of the water, she tried to pinpoint how it had made her feel, seeing that.

Was it because her mother had been blinded by love? Or was it something about Wade, the way he accepted her attentions like it was his right? Or was it something else? Cara grimaced, her skin cooling as the perspiration dripped down her back. She was running hard again, picking up pace without meaning to, as her brain worked through the possibilities. There was one other reason she felt like she did, and it left her cold. Cara could imagine how it would feel to touch him, feel his bulk under her fingers, the need for him. Cara's last boyfriend had been months ago. Yes, she could imagine what was going through her mother's mind very clearly.

Cara came to the little rise that looked out over the neighbourhood and stopped to catch her breath after the ascent. She wanted her mother to be happy, but this wasn't happiness. Wade had come into her life and filled it up, reshaping her as he wanted, and her mother had just let him. She needed help. She needed to be shown the man she really married. Cara would lift the veil over her eyes. She only had a few weeks before she'd need to return to college, so she had to work fast. Descending the hill, a plan began to form.

---

Wade was in the garage working out. They had two cars, but his spent its life on the concrete out front, one half of the double garage filled with weight benches and pull-up bars. Cara's mother was still at work, leaving her in the house with her stepfather. Cara rifled through her clothing drawer until she found what she wanted: her dark blue bikini. Quickly, she stripped off and put it on, conscious of the way it revealed her lean body. She checked herself in the mirror, plumping up her modest breasts, checking the straps were neat. She examined herself from the side, noting the curve of her bottom.

She had her mother's figure, but more toned. Of course, Cara no longer shared a breast size with her after her mother's augmentation, but that didn't matter. Cara tucked her long, auburn hair back into a ponytail. She was still going to make an impression.

Cara sidled into the garage, padding silently in her bare feet. Her skin was tingling, nervous at exposing so much skin to the man in front of her. Wade was oblivious, locking the weights onto the bar ready for another set of repetitions. He was stripped down too, sweating in tight exercise shorts and a baggy grey vest that revealed his thickly-muscled shoulders. Suddenly he looked up and saw her.

"Hi," she said, "I just came to see what the noise was. I'm gonna catch some rays on the sun lounger. I've been spending too much time inside."

It felt pathetic, but at least it was a story.

"Yeah, okay," Wade replied.

His eyes darted away from her, not making eye contact as he busied himself with the weights.

"You spend a lotta time in here, hey?" Cara prompted.

Wade nodded, standing up and stretching his back, replying, "Yeah."

"Don't you ever have work to do?"

"Sure. I got a project meeting in an hour, then Rena's home, so I'm just squeezing in a few sets now before I have to get back to it. Helps the stress."

"Maybe I should try."

"Maybe. You ever done weights?"

"Nah. Gyms are usually full of stalkers, I've found."

Cara let he comment drift between them. Wade didn't respond. She paced over to the rack of barbells and picked one up. She was conscious of turning her back on her stepfather, how her bikini bottoms cut into the cleft of her bottom. That tingling sensation increased, feeling his eyes on her body. Suddenly he was next to her.

"Heavy," she observed.

"Depends what you're doing," Wade told her. "If you're building muscle, it's ideal. Or, if you're just trying to maintain tone, take a lighter one."

Cara replaced the barbell and picked up a small one from the end. Wade was close to her now, the scent of his body in the air between them, an earthy musk. She hefted the small barbell experimentally.

"Feels like there's not much point to this one," she replied.

"Depends. For tone, it's the reps, for muscle it's the work."

"So, I just stand here for an hour doing this?" Cara laughed, bending and straightening her arm, "While you lie over there and lift practically my entire bodyweight."

She looked up at him, smiling, acutely aware of putting herself on display for the big man.

"Something like."

"Is that how you got like this? Have you always worked out?"

Wade shrugged, hands on hips, looking down at her.

"I hit the weights a bit, and then when I met your mother."

"What happened?"

"I hit it more. I bulked up."

"For her, or for you?"

Wade grinned down at her but didn't answer immediately. Cara allowed the silence to lengthen between them.

"It's good to be in shape, Cara. Plus, your mother likes seeing me like this."

"So you did this for her?"

Wade laughed, then pointed at the barbell in her hand.

"You done with that or you want to try out some other stuff?"

"Are you going to hone my body into shape?"

Wade shook his head, taking the weight from her and replacing it on the rack. Then, he turned away and went back to the weight bench.