The Escort (18+ Only) [COMPLETED]

9: In Which She Stops Running

9: In Which She Stops Running

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“Places, everyone,” Teddy hissed, quickly flicking the light off in her living room. She turned to face the small gathering. “He’s coming.”

I fell to my knees and crouched behind one of her huge black leather couches, squashed between a guy dressed as a lumberjack and a girl going as a witch from Buffy. To be honest, I was more creeped out by the lumberjack than I was about the witch. He had a toy axe in hand and wore stark-white lederhosen. Any grown man who went to such lengths for something as idiotic as Halloween deserved to be put in a straitjacket and locked away for a very long time. My only concession to the celebration was a pair of pink Playboy bunny ears on my head. I’d refused to dress up, choosing, instead, to wear a short white cotton dress that made me look ‘adorably innocent’ – Teddy’s words.

The front door was pushed open and someone hissed for everyone to ‘shut the hell up’. It sounded like Teddy.

“Ted?”

I felt a tug in my abdomen at the sound of Ashton’s baritone. I needed to tell my stomach to cool down.

“Mom?”

Light bathed the room and everyone around me sprang into action. I tottered to my feet reluctantly, bracing myself for the moment when Ashton would eventually spot me. No doubt he’d find this whole Halloween-slash-birthday bash utterly stupid but Teddy confessed that Ashton’s childhood was filled with him in Dracula and Egyptian mummy costumes, ergo he’d find his first Halloween birthday party utterly hilarious.

“I never thought to fuse the two things,” Teddy had laughed, adjusting her beehive Amy Winehouse wig on her head two hours before the party. “Isn’t that unimaginative of me?”

For three weeks, we had planned this occasion with simplicity in mind. It was clear to a blind parrot that Teddy West loved her son with all her heart and then some. While phoning up all of Ashton’s friends – courtesy of a contacts book Teddy kept handy – I’d learned more about him than I wished to know. Ashton skateboarded on Sundays with Luca Ferrell; Ashton helped out at the local orphanage whenever he could with his buddy Sean Dustin; Ashton and Helen Forrest went out in seventh grade and he introduced her to her current boyfriend; Ashton once broke his leg on a drunken trip to Cabo with Matt Pinelli and friends…

Everyone had some funny anecdote or other to chirrup over the phone, pausing to convey how they were ‘psyched’ for the party at his mother’s house. Apparently Teddy was one of the gang, cool without trying.

Watching his friends maul him and wish him a happy birthday, I felt something I shouldn’t have been feeling. Yes, there was a shitload of lust there, but then there was something else. I’d been trying to analyse it while I spent the day with Teddy but couldn’t exactly put a finger on it.

Now, Teddy was beckoning me over to her and her son, a wide smile on her pretty face. If anyone else’s mother attempted to dress up as Amy Winehouse, they’d end up looking dirty and slutty, but Teddy looked like a goddess and her son looked like an Adonis in plainclothes. An angry one, but a god no less.