She wasn’t really naked naked.

She was in some gauzy short thing Ellen didn’t recognize with nothing on underneath, and if you wanted to you could see pretty much her whole deal, but technically at least her mother was clothed. Ellen was burning to know what had gotten into her. Joyce had been noticeably freer with her body, to her daughter’s occasional chagrin, in the years since she and Ellen’s father split; but this was something else entirely. There was no precedent for this. But Joyce was so matter-of-fact about it—she carried herself like someone who didn’t even know they were undressed—that Ellen couldn’t find the words to ask. It would have been like questioning a sleepwalker.

Tracy had sat down already. Ellen busied herself setting places, head down, shuttling rotely between the sideboard and the table. She wondered if maybe she was the one sleepwalking. Joyce dealt with things in the kitchen, keeping up some inane, mostly one-way patter about homework and the girls’ extracurriculars. If you only knew, Ellen said to herself. Tracy, who was facing into the kitchen, looked like she was having an out-of-body experience. She couldn’t take her eyes off Joyce. Walking past on one of her trips Ellen swatted her on the shoulder, thinking stop perving on my mom’s body, but Tracy didn’t blink.

Joyce came out with a steaming bowl of biryani. She put it in the middle of the table and stepped back, eyeing the arrangement skeptically. “Four, honey,” she said to Ellen. “You’ve only set three places.” She clucked her tongue and went to fetch the missing dinnerware herself.

But Dad isn’t— Ellen almost opened her mouth to protest, but then the thought hit her, it’s not Dad. Tracy had shifted in her seat, and was staring down the unlit front hall like someone witnessing an apparition. From the corner of her eye Ellen caught movement, the sound of a step, and even before she knew she knew.

He coughed when he came in and Joyce immediately dropped the silverware and trotted over to greet him, heedless how exposed she was. “Hi Daddy,” she said, all throaty, and literally wrapped herself around him. He pushed her negligée up to grab a handful of bare asscheek and squeezed, Joyce cooing her pleasure. It was grotesque.

Ellen made the mistake of catching his eye. Still pawing her mom’s ass, Library Guy grinned at her with all his teeth and shot her a big, lewd wink. And it was like something snapped in her then. Ellen felt suddenly, overwhelmingly tired—of everything, him, her mom, makeout practice—the whole stupid setup. Even Tracy. Whatever this was, whatever kind of play this was they were playing, she was done. She didn’t give a shit anymore.

Tracy had stopped watching and was occupied serving herself rice. She’s as over it as I am, Ellen thought. She got a whiff of something from the kitchen. Samosas in the oven, Joyce had said, and Ellen grabbed a potholder from the table to go make sure they didn’t burn.

When they came into the living room, the girls took places side by side on the love seat. It took them a second to realize they’d sat in exactly the same pose, butts on the sofa’s edge, very prim, knees together and hands folded daintily atop. They didn’t dare look at each other. It was all Ellen could do to suppress a fit of giggles.

They hadn’t prearranged it or anything. They actually hadn’t said a word to each other this last hour. He had a thing about conversation while he was eating, so except for him pontificating about shit dinner had passed essentially in silence; and after he and Joyce went into the living room to relax the hush lingered, while the girls cleared the table together and doused the candles he’d made Joyce bring out, because he wanted mood, and bagged up the takeout trash.

Come talk to me when you’re done he told them. The girls had exchanged a look at that and it was like a flash of telepathy. Oh shit, the vice principal wants to see us. They were still in their school clothes, plus he so completely looked the part: just the sort of doughy slightly balding white guy who looked like his highest calling was supervising detention.

Not that vice principals came to your home, in Ellen’s experience. Or interviewed you while they were petting a naked whore kneeling at their feet. And if the whore also happened to be your now fully naked and drippingly horny mother.

“So you went in then,” he was saying to Joyce. “When you got home. They up to anything?”

She batted her eyes up at him. “In bed, just sorta languishing together,” Joyce sighed. She glanced toward the girls, looking very superior.  “You could tell they’d been getting it on, though.”

Christ she better not be in love. It seemed to Ellen like any time Joyce found a new boyfriend it brought out her inner Mean Girl. She looked smug, like she thought she had something on her daughter. Bitch you’re not telling him anything he doesn’t already know, Ellen imagined saying.

Joyce lolled her head back on the couch and gazed up at him from that angle. “Tracy’s blouse was totally undone,” she said, passing a finger down her sternum.

“Really,” he said, flicking his eyes over in Tracy’s direction. LG patted his thigh and Joyce hopped up onto his lap. She fit herself as close against him there as humanly possible and Ellen thought great, more groping, but all he did was rearrange her so she and her breasts were facing out. It grossed Ellen out how big and hard Joyce’s nipples were.

“Top to bottom,” Joyce said. She smirked at Ellen and gave her chest a little bounce, like she was enjoying her daughter’s discomfort. “If I didn’t know any better I’d say our Leenie was tryna cop a feel.”

Ellen’s face burned. He fixed her with a look. “You wanted to feel up your girlfriend’s tits,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

She’d never felt so humiliated. She wanted to cry. She wanted to disappear. She wanted to beg for forgiveness in Tracy’s ear while she groped her from behind.

“Well come on nips, what are you waiting for?” he asked Tracy. “You were halfway there already. Whip ‘em out. Top off, bra off. No covering yourself up either, stay sitting straight.” Tracy didn’t say a word. From the side Ellen could see her friend’s hands start moving.

“You too, babe,” he said to Ellen. The world seemed to contract to a point. “See what we’re working with.” And then her own fingers were at it. Somehow she lost track of what she was doing for a bit, and then she saw that her and Tracy were both topless. Side by side just as they had been, in just the same good-girls-at-attention posture as when they sat down.

There was a confusing moment where Ellen could have sworn they’d both just taken their tops off together. That couldn’t have been right though. Why else were they there except to show off their titties? It was all they’d been thinking about since dinner. Obviously you wouldn’t come in with them all covered up, that’d kill the whole joke. She shook her head to make the thought go away, and went back to staring at her mom’s gross sexy nipples.

He leaned his head in to Joyce and nodded towards Ellen. “Those what yours were like? back in the day?”

“I was bigger.” Joyce’s expression was completely deadpan, but Ellen saw a sour little curl on her lips. Right, Mom, thanks, she thought. Always number two.

LG was fishing around in his pockets looking for something. Joyce watched, resting her hand meaningfully on the bulge at the front of his pants. What a trainwreck, Ellen thought. She had an agonizing sense of the nearness and nakedness of Tracy’s breasts to her, but she couldn’t look away. Joyce seemed to feel her daughter’s scrutiny and turned back to face her, seeming amused.

“Hey,” she asked the dude brightly, “how’d you know they’d be in bed fooling around with each other?”

“The girls?” he said. ”Told em to.” He paused his fidgeting. “Makeout practice. Been at it, I dunno week and a half? two weeks?”

“Wait,” she said, “so you already—“ Joyce’s face clouded. He looked into her face, suddenly interested. She glanced dubiously over at Ellen and at Tracy and then back again, like she was trying to put a thought together. “Wait. How long have we been seeing each other?”

He frowned. “Couple-three hours?” he said. “Swung by your office to introduce myself, remember?”

“You were from the college.” Her voice all at once sounded very small, and very tired. For a long moment she seemed to drift out of focus, then Joyce gave a heavy sigh and whatever nugget of anxiety or concern there’d been in her melted. Her gaze turned smoky and insinuating. “So I guess it only feels like I’ve known you forever,” she purred, snuggling back into him and licking his neck.

“I have that effect,” he said. He moved Joyce’s hand off his dick. Whatever he was looking for, it didn’t seem to be on him. “Hang on.” He looked over Joyce’s head towards the other end of the couch. “Reach me your purse over there.”

Joyce rolled her head and lazed her arm back behind her catlike in the direction of the side table. The effort made her fall out of his lap entirely. She laughed and lay there sprawled on the couch cushion, half hanging off of it, legs splayed, making no move to get up. Ellen wondered if her mom was drunk or on drugs or something. She could fully see Joyce’s untrimmed gash.

He stretched across her to retrieve the purse himself. Joyce kind of squeezed her tits up at him as he passed, and then she gave Ellen that taunting smile again. “You should make em show you Daddy,” Joyce said, licking her lips. She hoisted herself back up. “See how good they’re practicing for ya.”

He’d found what he was searching for, though all it looked like was a thin white stick. He tossed the purse aside. “Great minds,” he said, waggling the thing at Joyce between his fingers. “This is always a hoot.” He tossed the stick in the direction of the love seat.

Ellen jumped, but Tracy, unstartled, caught the thing almost without having to move. The white stick turned out the handle of a tootsie pop, a red one. Tracy’s fingers were already busy at unwrapping it.

“How. Many. Licks?” he intoned, arching his eyebrows at Ellen. Joyce sniggered, but Ellen was at a loss what he meant. Tracy dropped the wrapper and held the thing up to show him. “Alright babies,” he said, “cooperate. No biting. Not the lollipop anyway. See how long does it take you to get to the tootsie roll center.”

And then their tongues met and Ellen got the idea. There was no hope of keeping count though. Tracy kept custody of the pop and kept moving it, teasing her with it. It was slobbery and sweet and sticky and their faces were a sticky red mess and the longer they went the more Ellen lost track of herself. At some point her fingers were on Tracy’s nipples. It took her a minute to register what she was touching. She gave them a pinch and Tracy moaned around the pop into her mouth, and she went on pinching. Her friend’s breasts felt dainty and somehow precise to Ellen, and made her sorry for her own heavier, clumsier ones.

After a time she was aware of another sound than her and Tracy moaning together, a gaggy kind of slurping sound. It reminded her of a porn she’d seen once of women doing blowjobs. She wondered if Mom and Library Guy were still in the room. Briefly Ellen had the sense that it meant something those things being in her head together, and tried to think what it was. But there was Tracy’s mouth against hers like a ripe fruit, there was the center their tongues were vying to reach; and the sole idea she needed or could hold onto was the one that kept telling her lick.