Jo [COMPLETED]

D

"I am utterly fucked," Alec cried. He dropped the magazine onto the kitchen table and sunk into the chair beside it. "How could this have happened? Mom, why aren't you freaking out about this?"

His mother was calmly humming to herself, twirling a lock of curly hair around her finger. She let go of the now frizzy lock and sighed. "Alec," she said, "calm down. This is no big deal."

"No big deal?" he repeated, shocked at her lack of concern. "Mom, Dad died from AIDS and they found out about you. How is this not a big deal?"

Alec walked around the table in a mix of frustration and exasperation and grasped his mother's arms to stop her from cutting up the green apples set out in front of her. He slowly turned her around to face him and said in a small voice, "You don't have to pretend, Mom. Just talk it out."

His mother, with whom he shared his mixed complexion, simply turned her head to the side with a look of wonder and slight confusion speckled in her eyes. "I have no idea what you're saying, sweetie. I really don't find this to be a big deal. They didn't find me, anyway. They just found out that Jo had slept with an underage girl during one of his tours."

There's no use talking to this one, he thought. With a sigh, Alec leaned down and gave his mother a light peck on the cheek before saying, "I've got to go. My class starts in half an hour."

"Okay. Bye, love," his mother replied. She smiled brightly at her son as he moved towards the door. "I'm proud of you."

This sentence was something she told him every time he left the house, even if it was simply for a run. It sometimes annoyed him to hear her repeat the same words over and over again but he knew how happy it made his mother. Besides, complaining would be the worst thing he could do. His mother worked as hard as she could to raise him normally and worked three shifts a day even though the money she received from Jo was more than enough.

When she found out she was pregnant at sixteen, her life was over. She barely finished high school and immediately took the role of a mother. Being an orphan, there was no one she could truly rely on. Her parents died when she was ten--but they had given her up before then. At one month old she was dropped off at an orphanage. At sixteen, upon learning of her pregnancy, she tried to find them in hope of some comfort and support. They died during a highjacking of a plane in Brazil, when the plane's highjackers crashed it into the ocean.

Since then, she was relatively alone. Of course she had Jo. But Jo wasn't exactly the father figure one would expect. He was an internationally famous musician and singer on one of his famous world tours which meant that he couldn't settle down and help raise Alec as directly as one would have wished. There was also the fact that Jo was ten years older than his mother and she was underage.

Jo sent money every month. A lot of money. Enough for Alec and his mother to afford many luxuries and afford his college education at NYU. Jo even came by every chance he could to spend time with the family he loved so much.

They had been in love, Jo and Alec's mother. Neither could resist the other. But with Jo's career and reputation at stake, they did not marry or have any more children. There was also the drugs and sex that came along with being an internationally famous musician that lead to his AIDS and whatever other STIs he contracted.

It was a tough life for his mom and he knew how much she was pained by his father's untimely death. Even with her happy demeanor, there was no question about the pain she was feeling inside.

Alec pulled his bag higher up by his shoulder straps and began the trek from his small studio apartment on the Lower West Side to the NYU building about a mile away. He and his mom purposely moved into Manhattan in order to be closer to the university once he was accepted. It made the commute easier for him and the feeling of being close to each other at all hours was comforting. At least for his mom.