The Player's Happy Ever After

Chapter 15 - The Mother

Picture to Judith, Ethan's Mum

Ethan's POV

I was thinking about last night as I walked over to Lauren and saw her carrying those flowers, it almost crushed me. I could understand that someone other than me would want Lauren to be theirs but she seemed so happy to have received them. She deserved flowers every single day of the year.

But I wasn't that type of guy, romance I didn't do. I'd never been loved as a child, my Father walked out on us 2 days after Nat was born. My Mum went back to work 2 weeks later and for 14 years straight she worked 3 jobs 7 days a week. What made it worse was we had no car so we walked everywhere for first 10 years.

Every morning at 5am Mum walked us to the pool to train. At 730am she'd catch her train to work and we'd catch the bus to school. After school a neighbour who fed us as much jam sandwiches until Mum came home at 9pm and we ate dinner really most nights. She always had lamb and veggies ready to go in the fridge.

When Mum finally got some money together she bought a car but Dad happened to hear about it and came back for a few nights. He ended up wrapping it around a pole before taking off for a few years again. He always came back and left he'd never let Mum move on. She asked for a divorce but he'd always refuse.

She was a tough lady. Didn't believe in being sick or slack days, you showed no weakness and you were tough all the time. She was old style, no emotions or love it was just tough rules, tough love. She worked 3 jobs so her kids never went without anything. We had the best brands we went to the best private schools. But the reality was we ended up having everything except what we needed the most a Mum. It was obvious both Nat and I's past relationships were failures because we didn't know love or see how families interact we had no idea. We were always popular with the opposite sex, but we lacked maturity and depth when it came to understanding relationships, we were selfish and could only ever please ourselves.

When Mum asked Nat to move in with me I was so against it. But she never asked me for anything, I just felt like I needed to give back to her and not always feel like I was her greatest disappointment.

So in 2 weeks time it was my 27th Birthday and Mum wanted to meet Lauren so she'd called me up earlier today and confirmed she'd organised a dinner at her local restaurant. By all accounts I was excited for Mum and her partner Barry to meet Lauren but given Nat's attitude towards Lauren, I was kinda hesitant to accept.

We were relaxing on the couch after a bbq dinner at Lauren's when I mentioned it. "Babe, it's my birthday in two weeks time, my Mum's organised a dinner and wants to meet you. I'd love for you to come". I was hoping she'd want to go. I hadn't really mentioned much about my family, part from her meeting Nat and that went so well!

"Ok, sounds great. Just a question though. Is there anything you want in particular?" Her eyes were beaming, she looked like she had a thousand ideas running through her head. You know that kinda reaction when the penny drops, she was facially buzzing. It was so cute. She had no idea how much she turned me on. It was the simple things she did that made me want her more. She was still sweet and naive, she'd been sheltered from all the bad stuff in life. She had a perfect childhood, family supporting everything she did, she was loved.

"I don't care what you get me, I just want to spend time with you".  Her face lit up even more. She was fucking precious.

My phone buzzed:

Got two ready to go at my place, need your help wingman, c u soon - Michael😛

I put my phone away. Michael had been texting me all day. I wanted to head off shortly anyway as I'd been here two nights in a row. I'd been avoiding home because of Nat and her friends. They were leaving first thing Monday morning so I decided to head over to Michael's.