Mama's Girl (Patreon)

1

The room on the corner of Baker and Willow, which was part of an old two-story house that had long since seen better days and was now rented out to students, was filled that evening with the faint yellowish light of a cheap desk lamp, the smell of reheated noodles, and the loud pounding of Megan Miller's heart, a nineteen-year-old student at the local college, who stood barefoot in the middle of all her "girly junk" (as she had thought when she first found herself there) and tried in vain to get her uncomprehending mother to admit that all this madness was only a dream.

"Mom, I don't understand why you don't believe me," she said, trying to stand her ground and make her voice sound hard, but immediately grimaced. She did not sound like a forty-year-old head of a security systems department who was used to giving orders to engineers and contractors, but like a confused girl whom no one took seriously. "I'm telling you, something happened. I'm not Megan."

Her mother, Samantha Miller, sighed heavily and, rubbing the bridge of her nose, closed her eyes for several seconds, as though she were trying to find the right words while also keeping herself from snapping in irritation. On the phone screen, Megan saw a familiar expression she had known all too well during her thirty-eight years of life as Mark Miller, a man who, despite his age and the respect he commanded, had always known that in moments like this it was better not to argue with his mother.

"Megan," Samantha finally said, slowly opening her eyes and looking straight into the phone's camera, "my girl, listen, what..."

"I'm not a girl!" Megan snapped in a shrill squeak, squeezing the phone more tightly in her hand and immediately feeling her breasts beneath the thin, tight top with the large words "MAMA'S GIRL" rise heavily with her sharp breath, while her long fake nails dug slightly into the soft fabric near her collarbone.

Samantha narrowed her eyes slightly on the screen and adjusted her glasses.

"Megan," Samantha said calmly but firmly from the screen, looking at her closely. "Stop yelling."

That tone silenced Megan more effectively than if her mother had raised her voice. During his thirty-eight years, Mark had come to know that intonation far too well, especially from those very evenings when his mother once again reminded him that he needed to start a family and get married, and answered every objection that things simply never worked out for him with the same calm but devastatingly certain look that said it all: disbelief, disappointment, absolute certainty that she knew better, and irritation that her adult son was once again trying to argue about something that, in her opinion, had long since been perfectly obvious.

And now that look was directed at Megan.

Not at the head of a department.

Not at an adult man who could argue with contractors, demand that mistakes in projects be corrected, and make decisions worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But at a nineteen-year-old daughter throwing a tantrum in the middle of her rented apartment.

"I'm not yelling," Megan said more quietly, but even she could hear how pathetic it sounded.

Samantha merely snorted.

2

"No. You are yelling. And you are yelling at your mother. Do you want your father and me to take you home?" Samantha leaned slightly closer to the camera, and the sound of her voice sent goosebumps over Megan's body. "Because judging by this, you clearly cannot manage on your own at all."

"I can manage! What are you even talking about?!" Megan shouted without thinking, forgetting that she was not in a meeting and not considering at all that this shout would produce exactly the opposite reaction and sound not like a threatening roar but like a sharp, high-pitched, almost childish burst of irritation from a nineteen-year-old girl who was confused herself and was trying to convince her mother of something she did not particularly believe herself.

Samantha's expression on the phone screen changed at once. Her eyes widened with irritation, and then she straightened abruptly, as though she had finally lost her patience.

"Jesus Christ! Enough! Calm down!" she said firmly, raising a palm toward the screen as though the gesture could stop her daughter. "Megan, I'm coming over to you right now, do you hear me! I don't like any of this!"

Megan froze, feeling everything inside her clench unpleasantly as her head began to spin.

"What? No, Mom, wait, don't," she blurted quickly, and only after the words had already escaped her lips did she realize how strange they sounded. Not like an order from an adult used to controlling a situation, but like the frightened plea of a daughter afraid that her mother was about to arrive and see the complete mess.

Samantha caught that reaction immediately.

"Don't?" she repeated, narrowing her eyes. "Megan, you just spent ten minutes trying to convince me that you aren't yourself, saying you don't recognize your own apartment and that something happened to you. And now, when I say I'm coming to help, you suddenly want me to stay home?"

'Because you will not come to help, you will come to control me, and with you here beside me in this girly hell, I will not even be able to think properly,' flashed through Megan's mind as she stared irritably at the phone screen and at the same time felt her confidence falling apart under her mother's calm gaze alone.

She could already picture Samantha walking into this apartment and taking everything in with her attentive gaze: the makeup scattered across the table, the clothes on the back of the chair, the cheap shoes by the bed, the women's panties carelessly drying on the rack, the photographs on the refrigerator, and this ridiculous top with "MAMA'S GIRL" printed on it, which she still could not make herself take off because it had somehow become the one thing currently reminding her just how absurd her life had become.

And the worst part was not that her mother would see the mess.

The worst part was that Samantha would not see it as a catastrophe.

She would see the ordinary room of her daughter, who rented it with Jessica Breen, the daughter of Samantha's friend, who, according to her mother, was supposedly more responsible simply because she was a year older and therefore "in charge" of this "rented nightmare of yours."

"I'm listening, Megan," Samantha repeated, and her calm tone made Megan feel even worse.

Megan swallowed.

3

"I just..." she began, but the words caught in her throat.

'Just what? Tell my mother once again, when she sees her daughter in front of her and is completely convinced that no Mark ever existed and there had only ever been Megan, that I am actually a forty-year-old man who went to sleep in his own apartment last night and woke up today in the body of a nineteen-year-old college student with photographs belonging to someone else on the refrigerator, rent of six hundred and fifty dollars, and a roommate who, judging by the note on the mirror, knows me better than I know myself?'

'Tell her that I am not crazy and this is not a joke?'

Her gaze dropped and immediately landed on the two mounds beneath her T-shirt, tightly outlined by the fabric of her bra, and remained there for several seconds, as though all of it would disappear if she stared long enough.

"Megan?" her mother's voice made her look up sharply. "Can you hear me?"

"Yes, Mom," Megan answered quietly, forcing herself to look away from her own body and back up at the smartphone screen. "I can hear you."

Her mother was just about to say something when the apartment door swung heavily open, and a familiar, far too cheerful voice that did not fit the tense silence that had ruled here for the last few minutes burst into the room along with the cool air from the hallway.

"Megan? Are you talking to Mom on speakerphone again and forgetting that we actually have neighbors?" a girl said cheerfully as she appeared in the doorway with a large mug of coffee in one hand and a bag from the nearest store in the other.

"Hi, Mrs. Miller!" Jessica said brightly, smiling broadly at the phone screen.

Megan nearly groaned but held it back.

"Jessica," Samantha said slowly from the screen, shifting her gaze from Megan to the new participant in the conversation. "Good evening."

"Oh, sorry for butting in." Jessica immediately raised her hands in a defensive gesture. "The door was open, and Megan is talking so loudly again that you would think this was a stadium instead of an apartment."

She immediately leaned close to Megan's ear and whispered quietly.

"Ryan will be here in an hour," Jessica whispered in her ear, covering her mouth with one hand so Samantha could not hear her through the screen. "You need to get ready."

Megan jerked and stared at Jessica with wide eyes in confusion, but Jessica, as though nothing had happened, had already turned away and headed for the door, whistling cheerfully.

Samantha narrowed her eyes.

Her gaze on the screen moved slowly from Megan's face to the door through which Jessica had disappeared, then back again.

"What did she say to you?" Samantha asked as though she were facing not her daughter but someone who had committed a crime against humanity.

"Nothing," Megan answered at once, far too quickly, as if she were making excuses for something, and immediately blushed.

It looked too normal and too ordinary. As though she really were Megan, a girl trying to hide her relationship with a guy from her mother.

Samantha raised one eyebrow slightly.

"Megan."

Samantha said her name as though she already knew the answer and was simply waiting for her daughter to give herself away. Megan felt hot patches spreading across her cheeks, and at that moment her own voice seemed even stranger and thinner than before.

4

"Honestly, nothing," she repeated more quietly, automatically adjusting the edge of her top. "She just said a... friend will be here soon. From class. With notes."

On the screen, her mother nodded slowly, but her gaze remained the same, heavy and attentive.

"A friend."

Samantha said it in the same level, calm voice, but at that moment every fine little hair on Megan's female body stood on end, and so did her nipples, which immediately pressed noticeably against the fabric of her top, as though reminding Megan that her body now worked differently.

"A friend," Samantha repeated, slightly adjusting her glasses and looking closely at the screen. "Is that why you started making up stories about Mark? To hide your 'friend'?"

Megan drew in a sharp breath, feeling the fabric of the top stretch even more tightly across her breasts, and tried to answer more firmly than she was able to:

"No! That's not... this is completely different. I'm not... I mean, I..." Her mind boiled from the shame of her mother thinking that she, a forty-year-old man trapped in the body of a nineteen-year-old girl, had a boyfriend she was hiding, combined with the fact that, after this entire exhausting conversation, she herself really did want to hide behind this "reason" just to end the conversation already.

"I mean, everything is fine, I... sorry, I was just joking," Megan forced out, making herself smile as though it really had been an ordinary awkward joke rather than yet another attempt to hide behind an explanation that she herself considered ridiculous.

Samantha was silent for several seconds, studying her face closely through the phone screen, and those seconds, together with the silence broken only by Jessica's rustling and cheerful little cries, felt unbearably humiliating.

"All right," Mom finally answered, and Megan immediately sensed that this "all right" did not mean Samantha believed her at all.

She knew that tone far too well. Mark had heard it dozens of times in his life: his mother did not agree, back down, or argue; she simply decided what to do next, as though she were facing not an adult capable of dealing with a problem on his own but someone who needed the obvious explained carefully.

"All right," Samantha repeated more calmly, adjusting her glasses and looking straight into the camera. "That means I'm coming over this evening. I'll bring some things, stay with you for a couple of days, and figure out what's going on."

This was nothing like the "all right" Megan had partly been hoping for. It was the opposite of that "all right." It was a complete disaster.

"Mom, don't," Megan blurted again, and she no longer even tried to sound confident as she had before, as though part of her had already accepted that she was simply a frightened girl.

"Come on! Are you almost done in there?!" Jessica called loudly with a smile and mild irritation as she barged into her room, then immediately clapped a hand over her mouth when she noticed Megan was still talking on the phone. "I... uh... I mean, the avocado is about to go bad, we need to hurry."

Samantha slowly shifted her gaze to Jessica on the screen and then looked back at her daughter.

"Megan?"

There were so many questions in that single word that Megan felt as though she were back at a school assembly, standing in front of the principal.

"Mom, I..." she began, turning toward Jessica, who stood angrily and silently in the doorway with her eyes wide, gesturing that it was already "time" and Megan needed to "end the conversation," while silently mouthing, "Just end it already!"

5

Megan swallowed, understanding the absurdity of the situation in which her male mind, accustomed to solving problems of an entirely different kind and certainly never planning in his life to try to end a conversation with Mom because "the guys will be here soon," had found itself.

"I just..." Megan faltered, feeling irritation and burning shame rise inside her. "We... well... have plans right now."

Jessica exhaled heavily, shaking her head in irritation, and no longer bothering to hide it, whispered straight across the room:

"Megan, seriously, wrap it up. Ryan and his friend will be here in forty minutes, and you're still barefoot and wearing that stupid top. Mom can hear everything anyway, so enough already!"

Megan closed her eyes for a second, gathering her strength, and looked back at the screen:

"Mom, I really need to go. We have... study plans. I'll call you back tomorrow morning, I promise. Please don't come today."

Samantha was silent for several moments, looking over her glasses at her daughter, understanding what their "plans" meant, yet also understanding that these "plans" at least belonged to ordinary, normal language, a reality in which her Megan was not babbling nonsense about supposedly being some man, and then she said quietly, almost wearily:

"All right, Megan. But if you start talking about Mark again tomorrow morning, I'll come over without warning."

After saying goodbye, Megan hurriedly pressed the end call button and put the phone away as though afraid her mother would still be able to continue the conversation through the dark screen.

Jessica immediately exhaled with obvious relief, swept the hair back from her forehead, and commanded in her usual cheerful tone:

"God! I thought you'd never finish! Where is my top with the hearts?! Did you take it last weekend?" Jessica hurried over to the closet without even waiting for an answer and began rifling through the hanging clothes so quickly that it seemed she had seconds left rather than minutes.

For several seconds, Megan merely stared at her, still trying to recover from the conversation with her mother while at the same time taking in the reality of what was happening and its "normality" for everyone around her except herself.

She wanted, desperately wanted, to tell Jessica the truth as well, even though she was seeing her for the first time in her life, but as soon as she opened her mouth, she fell silent.

It was simply impossible to explain, especially to a girl who was currently digging through the closet with such enthusiasm that the fate of the entire evening seemed to depend on finding the right top.

"Jess, listen..." Megan began, but Jessica had already pulled out a bright pink top with hearts and turned around, her eyes sparkling.

"Not 'listen,' but 'help'! Ryan will be here in half an hour, and you're still barefoot and wearing that awful 'MAMA'S GIRL' top. Get in the shower, now, and I'll clear up the makeup here and find you some decent shorts. And don't even think about calling your mom again, okay?"

Megan froze, hearing how confident and familiar Jessica's words sounded, as though this scene had already played out between them dozens of times.

"Jess, I... I really can't right now..." she tried to object, squeezing the phone in her hand, but when she saw the determined look on her roommate's face, she immediately realized that any objections would be taken as excuses. "Fine..."

"Good girl! Just hurry up!"

Megan blinked, feeling those two words cut deeper than any rebuke from her mother, and automatically took a step toward the bathroom, still squeezing the phone in her hand.

'Later. Everything later. Maybe a shower really will help?'