My mom (53) is dating Ethan (25), my childhood crush. She keeps inviting me over, saying we should “bond” as a family. At brunch, Mom kept gushing about how “mature” Ethan was.
I felt gross. At the next dinner, I felt even more disgusted when she fed him a bite of her tiramisu while locking eyes with me, like she was trying to prove something. Ethan chuckled and wiped a smudge of cream off her lip like they were in some soap opera.
I wanted to vanish into my risotto. I should explain. Ethan wasn’t just any childhood crush.
He was my neighbor for 10 years. My older brother’s best friend. The boy I would write bad poetry about in middle school.
The one I tried to impress with my glitter eyeshadow at 14. He was my entire pre-teen emotional universe. And now, somehow, he was dating my mother.
When I first found out, I thought it was a prank. My mom had casually dropped it into a conversation like it was no big deal: “I’ve been seeing someone new, sweetie. You remember Ethan?
From next door?” I remember I literally dropped the spoon into my soup. She just giggled like a schoolgirl and said, “You’ll love him once you see how mature he’s become.”
Right. The first time I saw them together, I felt like I was watching some weird alternate timeline.
Ethan wasn’t the shaggy-haired 17-year-old I remembered, but he still had the same laugh, the same crinkly eyes, the same charm. Only now, he was calling my mom babe. And she was dressing younger than me.
At first, I tried to be civil. Maybe even open-minded. After all, love doesn’t follow rules, right?
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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