Jo was in a haze. The way that Ethan said Harry's name - the tone and hitch, the beg were all so familiar. Ethan was talking when she tuned her senses back into the room. Harry was still above her, he hadn't moved so much as constricted, but he'd shrunk out of her.

"You must have a thing for Smiths you fucking Judas." The quiet broken windowpane of Ethan's voice ripped into Jo's flesh and though she was still damp, it felt like the clamminess of a grave.

What the fuck did that mean? Judas?

"You're fucking my mum?" Ethan's voice went up in volume that time. Harry closed in on himself on top of her, dead weight instead of shelter.

Jo pushed at him to get him to pull his body off her, to get some fresh air. She could barely breathe, the air was fetid.

He pulled back and just before she could catch her breath his murky green eyes caught hers inside the surround of his hair and he said, "Sorry." She realized then her cheek was wet and she wasn't sure whether it was him or her.

Harry rolled to the side and quickly grabbed for the boxers she had removed with her feet a lifetime ago.

This was a new life.

Once he was covered a bit, Jo watched him put on something else when he took a huge breath and turned to her son, who stood seething with hands clenched in silhouetted. Harry was contrite, but stood straight and looked to where Ethan had come farther into the doorway. 

Ethan's face broke Jo's heart. She could barely see anything with the light behind him and it was still all that she could see. Shattered. Jo covered herself up to her nose, but she could still smell her crime.

Harry spoke then inside the stifling air. "No! I'm not fucking your mum! I love her, she loves me."

"Yeah! Like you loved me?" Ethan shouted in return.

What? Jo thought. What was he talking about?

"Ethan! You do not get to rewrite history." Harry was yelling back, she'd never heard his voice like that, not even after the awards banquet.

"I'm not fucking rewriting history, you sick fuck. Both of us?" Ethan started towards Harry.

"Ethan!" Jo uttered. He looked at her and she thought of the way his face would melt when his dad didn't show up before she gave up trying to facilitate a relationship all together.

"It's not like that. We couldn't help it. We were around each other, all the time. She's...." he looked at Jo then. "She, I couldn't help it."

Ethan scoffed. "This some way to get back at me, because I didn't want people to call me a faggot. Wouldn't be with you, hold your bloody hand at college? Is this some sick way to get back at me?"

"It's not about you at all!" Harry stood mostly naked, sweating, maybe still from being inside of her, or from the increase in temperature in the room.

But Jo had chills.

"It was always about me Harry, you were fucking obsessed with me." Ethan threw his hands up, he'd come to the end of the bed and Jo could hear his face was red, though it was too dark to confirm.

"Oh, and you felt nothing for me, Ethan!" Harry puffed his chest up. "Never whispered how much you wished for me into my neck?"

"More than I should have, you piece of shit. How could you? My fucking mum, she's all I have. You ruin fucking everything!" Ethan's voice was loud, and fragile like a note held too long in the air. "Ruined me, loving you."

Oh god! Jo's heart broke on her son's note. Loving you. She could totally see how loving Harry, or no longer loving him, could crack your voice. It was a peak into her near future she grieved.

Harry gnashed his teeth then. "You never loved me, not enough. You liked the way I made you feel. But I was your fucking dirty little secret. Bit of experimentation on the side." He hit his chest with his palm. "And I, I fucking followed you like a puppy and ate your scraps for years. Ages. Until I realized there were other people in the world."

"Like my mum!" Ethan screeched and Jo remembered Zoe was upstairs. She started praying she'd sleep through or stay where she was.

"She's not just your mum, Ethan. She's an entire person outside of you. A woman. She loves me more than you ever did! Makes plans with me and tells me so, and is willing to tell people. You'd never own me, be with me out loud." She had agreed to all those things and the backbeat of pride Harry spoke with made her stomach roll.

Ethan rushed him angrily then. Harry stood up straight and faced him. Ready to catch or repay the coming blow. Jo thought she said stop.

Ethan's arms came up to grapple Harry rather than hit him. And Jo watched him deflate, the way he nuzzled into her when he told her about his mum. But when Ethan got his arms around him it changed. Was more of a hug than a blow, but no less sharp. Jo watched as Ethan struck another.

Instead of hitting him, Ethan hissed, "Yeah but you're still a fucking secret, aren't you Harry? Never good enough to be more than a thing fucked in the dark."

Jo watched the glass of Harry's face crack, his shoulders hunched and he got his finger up into Ethan's face. Whatever he wanted to say, it didn't come out. "Et-" he gasped like the air was thin, Himalayan high.

"And she's so willing to tell people? Because I've heard nothing about it." The grin then, god, that Ethan reached for the hurt so quickly, like Jo did months ago and belittled Harry to make his point. "Face it Harry, you are still a secret, a dirty one. My mum, like me, knows better than to tell people about being with you." The mocking tone in his voice hurt Jo, but the look on Harry's face was devastating.That's what really hurt, tore at her and made her stomach twist. That the sympathy for him remained through the shock.

"It's not true. She loves me, wants to have my baby," he shook his head back and forth.

"You mad? She's too old for another child! She'll be 65 before it's at uni! And you're leaving the country. She doesn't need you. She's got me and Zoe, you're a bit of fun, Harry, like you always are. The big dick and the loving words, nobody turns those down, but never good enough to tell anybody."

"We were gonna tell you, have a dinner to tell my mum," his voice broke. "I guess- I gue—" he looked at Jo and she had no idea what was on her face, but he gnashed his teeth and broke the embrace with Ethan and came to her side of the bed. Jo was still buried under the covers. "Baby?" He reached for her.

She recoiled, a fired gun, spent bullet. Oh God, she'd let him in. He had just been inside of her. And she'd pushed away her son for him. And he was a liar. Had deceived her and used her and she didn't know why, or what it meant. Jo's stomach felt like it was full of serpents.

Harry saw it, the change. "Jo?" He gasped her name. "Pleas—"

"Get out." It was the first words she'd gotten out. They were corroded. "Get the fuck outta my house Harry!"

"No! Jo listen—-"

She cut him off. "Fuck you. What the fuck can you possibly say? You fucked my son and then came after me? What the fuck is wrong with you—-" she started pulling at her skin like it hurt.

She looked up at Ethan then, and his tears had dried. "Ethan," she tried to go to him, but remembered her nakedness, the dried sweat and tears, and the cum cooling between her legs. She stayed on the bed and started to cry.

Ethan just looked at her, his face ragged like sandpaper had rubbed his eyes. "Why?"

Jo had thought about the reasons, and in another setting they may have been worth saying, carried more than the weight of a feather on the scales: I couldn't help it. I love him so much. I've never felt better in my skin than with him. No one ever treated me so well, loved me like that. I like me better when I'm with him. We were undeniable. We're art, we are a masterpiece.

Those all remained true, but were worthless now. Because, if it was just the betrayal of sleeping with Ethan's mate, that would hurt, but she had believed they could move past that. But as her mind processed the last five minutes, dots connected in her mind in a haphazard line.

She and Harry had been trying to build a home on a grave.

Ethan and Harry, all those times they took forever to come down, and the tickle spots, and Harry's boyfriend that wouldn't claim him? It was her son, they were a 'them'. Was their whole love affair a lie? Or just based on one? She couldn't even get her thoughts together. A game? A joke? Her son's lover, she retched, feeling bile in her mouth.

She wrapped the sheet around her and ran for the bathroom, emptying the quick sandwich she had eaten earlier into the toilet. She heard a ruckus over her shoulder, and looked back at the slim doorway to Ethan pushing Harry away from her.

"She told you to fucking leave." Ethan came in and pulled her hair into a low ponytail, still tender even in anger.

"Jo!!" Harry's voice broke and it made her eyes well over again in tandem with his.

"Mummy!" Sounded from upstairs and insult multiplied injury.

Jo pulled herself up and wanted to say something to her son. He'd moved back from her as soon as she flushed the toilet and rose. Harry stood back from the doorway and she made herself small to go around him, so none of her would touch a bit of his skin, and closed her closet door.

She could hear noise and low tense voices while she threw on a t-shirt, careful it was hers, and sweats. When she came out, Ethan was near the door.

"Ethan, don't leave, please!" She got out, and went towards him. Zoe's cries started again, louder than an alarm, and Jo looked up and down and felt torn in two.

Three if you counted the quiet sobs coming behind her.

"Go, get Zoe Mum, she wants you near her." The unspoken subtext was clear. The door closed and Jo's knees went weak. She folded down and would have stayed there had Harry not tried to put his hands on her. They may as well have been covered in leper's rags for the revulsion it caused.

The hard floorboards under her knees were smoother under her feet when she flinched away and made a move for the stairs. Running up. Her phone, she hated how far down she had to scroll down to get to Ethan's number in her recently called list and how large the number could be when he lived under her roof.

Her trip on the landing may have been due to her face in the screen, or the tears in her eyes, or the fact that she thought her kneecaps being broken would hurt less.

"Ethan! Please! I didn't know!" That was the first call, she assumed of many. And he shady buttoned her. Zoe was at the top of the stairs, holding the blankey she loved and used to take everywhere with white knuckles and teary eyes. She would normally have no problems coming down the stairs and getting right in the middle of the fray. Today, Zoe stood at the top step like there was a force field holding her back.

"Mummy!" She melted and Jo picked her up and the twin burying of their noses in the others neck was relief.

"Jo!" She heard behind her and the little comfort Zoe had brought slacked off her skin like water out of a gutter shoot.

She couldn't look at him. "Get out Harry." She didn't yell, her voice was raw with the last twenty minutes though most of her screaming had been internal.

"Jo, baby!" She tensed then and did look at him and whatever was on her face, he withdrew into his skin like a chick not quite ready to leave the egg. "Sorry," It was a hiccup, wet and mucusy. "Please let me explain."

She turned so Zoe couldn't see him. "Get out. Don't come back. If you're not gone by the time I get downstairs, I'm calling the police." Her voice was flat, like a dry lake bed.

Harry just looked at her, he didn't even have to blink for the tears to run out. When he finally did close his eyes, it was in defeat. His posture was never good, but he wasn't a recalcitrant knight now, but one who'd lost the holy land.

Jo heard the door shut, and it was the first pang of heartbreak she'd felt over the disgust. 

No, she wasn't gonna be sad about him. Miss him. He was a liar. He'd lied to her for ages, maybe by omission, but a relationship, a sexual one, with her son, was a life-changing, relationship precluding situation.

He was a betrayer. Ethan and her. Ethan seemed so hurt by Harry being with her. And it was Harry who had hurt him. Jo could cut all ties to Harry, they could remove him from their life, she and Ethan and Zoe, the Brutus who had stabbed them in the back at the same time, same knife.

But she had to get to her son. Ethan had to listen. To forgive her. The rational side of her, the one she had not been listening to for nearly six months told her to calm down and give him time.

The mum, who'd seen the cracks and fissures of water snake down his face, couldn't. This wasn't like the time she wasn't able to come to his footie awards because of the department meeting and the traffic an accident caused, blocking the only way home. Ethan had been so sad, he'd been sad with Anne and Harry. God, she couldn't again.

That's why this was so different. Jo had done her best to get to him that time, to be in the audience, and he'd not been alone. He was alone this time.

Because she had taken something from him, his support system, her and his best mate, or lover, or...?

By the time she was in the truck she was crying again. What kind of mother was she?

The kind that dragged her three year old out into the dark to chase down the one she'd betrayed. That knife was in her hand too.

Zoe nodded off quickly, it was dark and still and a new day, but no one had told the sun that as it still sat below the horizon and had yet to rear its golden head. She hoped she beat the dawn, that she didn't have to watch the light break across the sky. It would be tainted, maybe forever now. "Fuck you Styles."

Zoe had tear tracks dried on her face and her blankey clutched tightly when she got to Ethan's student apartment. But she stayed asleep, cuddled into her mother's shoulder.

Because she didn't know. She had no idea what Jo had done, and only saw her as a source of comfort and rest. Zoe didn't know what last night was about and Jo hoped she never did. She hoped she was light in the eyes of one of her children for a little longer at least.

She knocked for a while. The curtain near the door rustled and her own eyes, she assumed hers were just as red, looked out at her. They tightened at the edges. The light was changing and Jo wanted to get inside as soon as she could, like if the weak sunshine touched her, it would give her a sickness.

"I'm only letting you in because you have her. Figure out the couch bed, I'm going to sleep." Ethan sounded much colder than even when she hadn't let him go to the team trips when he was 15 years old. He'd not been showing great judgement, which was ironic currently, and she didn't think Germany without her was a great idea. He'd been awful to her for the lead up, duration, and aftermath of the trip.

This time she deserved it. She bit her lip to keep all her words from spilling out as it looked like he was entirely unready for her to approach the subject, and time to cool the anger and hurt was a good thing. But she had to say something.

She lay Zoe on the couch and turned towards the kitchen where he was grabbing the cuppa he must have made when he got in. He couldn't have beat her by much.

She got slightly closer and Ethan held up a hand.

"I can't now Mum." His voice broke.

She nodded and bit her lip.

"I'll see you in the morning. Well, more morning." He tried to fake a smile for her and straightened his shoulders to walk passed her. She almost grabbed him. To hold him to her. But she let him go. But as he walked through his bed room door she realized he had left her a cup brewing as well. 

"I love you, Ethan." It was all she could get out.

He looked back, anguished. "I love you, Mum." He coughed and closed the door. 

Though it might have been a comfort, Jo found herself crying over it, and that he poured her tea. He was the best boy. She did not deserve him. It was bitter, he'd put no sugar in, or honey, but his words and the gesture were sweet enough that she swallowed the whole cup in two gulps.

She located a shower, because she was certain she wouldn't sleep until she had rinsed her sins away, and laid down curled around Zoe with her back off the edge of the couch.

Jo knew her rest would be fitful and rough at best, nightmare filled at worst. She tried though, so she could organize her case, though she knew she was guilty, into something sympathetic at the very least the next day. Maybe she'd get manslaughter rather than emotional murder. She had some time to serve though.

Zoe stirred when the day was late. It was hard to tell because it was cloudy and Jo was thankful. The sun had no place in her life today. The grey was what she could handle.

Ethan appeared at eleven and Jo was laying breakfast out for him and Zoe.

"I hope you don't mind, I made pancakes." Not waffles. "Do you have work?"

"I don't mind. And not 'til three."

"Can we talk? Or after?" She begged.

"Yeah, but." He went passed her and let their shoulders brush and she could breathe again. "Mum...I don't think I can today. I need a bit more time?"

"Yeah, um ok, I guess I should have not followed you and made you talk to me, but I just couldn't," she shivered. "I couldn't stay and be where..." she rocked in a breath. "I couldn't be there, where...." Why couldn't she say it?

"Where Harry had been, where you had been with him?" He supplied and she felt tears slip down her cheeks. "Me either. Can you stay until tomorrow, and I'll try to put on my big boy pants and get ready to talk to you. I actually had come home because I had some things to tell you."

Neither of them spoke about why that never happened. In fact, they just spent the day pretending that nothing was amiss, keeping distance and focusing on Zoe. It felt so much like her times with Colin that her skin was crawling.

Their behavior was reminiscent of her divorce, but you can't divorce your son. And lord knew that she had no interest in disowning him. She hoped he felt the same. Her optimism there was shaky, but its foundations built itself up every hour he let her hang around. He let her in last night because it was late and she had Zoe, but today she could safely leave at any time.

Ethan wanted to talk to her. Jo had no idea what she was gonna say.

So that night while he was at work, she rummaged a bottle of wine up and went into her trunk to find some supplies. Jo stared at the canvas until her bottle was nearly dry and found herself crying. The beat she put on the canvas was rolling itself into a big ball and coming at her, like her hopes and dreams had twisted into something painful Her woman was at the bottom of the painting trying to outrun what her creation had become.

She was still sitting at the canvas she'd propped up over kitchen roll on her empty bottle. And her lady was just about out of room to run.

"Mum!" Ethan whisper shouted and she looked up.

"It's almost three am. Go to bed." He touched her to help her up and wiped away her tears without comment. She let his mildewing eyes pass as well. But she couldn't help but hug him. He hugged her back.

"I'm so pissed with you." He bittered into her neck. "But I'm pissed at me too, because had I ever been able to be honest with you, we may not be in this situation." He sounded like he was talking from the bottom of a well.

"I think we both know who the liar is here!" Her sentence sounded like a curse word. All at him. How the fuck was she missing him?

"I'm, fuck I," he sat on the couch and looked around. "Zoe?"

"She's in your bed."

"Ok, I'll cuddle her tonight. Think I need it." He exhaled, and looked at her with still humid eyes. "I could kill him Mum. But, he was also keeping my secret, I think."

Jo shook her head at that. "What secret is worth this? Such a big lie!" She boggled.

Ethan gnashed his teeth and closed his eyes, looked down then said. "I'm gay Mum."

Well, she'd surmised as much from the fight Harry and Ethan had had. Or that her son was some variation of not straight. The impact was soft. The revelation he feared so much didn't change how she loved him, and while she took in the shapes of face, she remembered the youthful round chubbiness of him as a toddler, and the lean pride of busy elementary Ethan, the awkward spots of puberty, and the squareness of beginning adulthood. He was her Ethan, whoever he loved.

She wanted to be upset he hadn't told her. But this was not about her at all. So she tried to focus on him, and put her hand on his knee. "Ok," she started with. "I love you. However you are. However you've been, with whoever."

Ethan just looked at her and folded himself into her lap. It was a feat, he was almost six feet tall. She wrapped her arms around him and felt him tense and then sob for just a minute while he began talking.

"And I knew that, that that would be how you would respond. I'm so fucking livid that I couldn't get the words out. I think I've ruined at least three relationships because I'm ashamed of who I am." By the time he reached the end he'd exhaled though, and some of the god awful tension he'd held was sucked into the vent.

"What relationships?" She bit her lip, please don't mean us, she thought.

"Well, definitely me and Harry. I want to fucking kill him." He balled his fists and sat up, his tears gone now. "We've been over for ages, because he was so pushy, always pushing me for more, and never satisfied." Yeah, she knew that about him. "So fucking insecure. But we were able to be friends, but I can't even look at him now. Think I'd punch him in the face."

She mmmhmmm'd encouragingly. She wanted to slap him herself. And then.... would the longing ever fade. She stopped herself from slouching to ruin and refocused.

"And Sean and me." He swallowed and Jo remembered the tall sweet boy she'd met only a couple weeks ago. That made sense. "He's so. He's so mad at me. Just like Harry was. Won't talk to me. I just want him to talk to me." His sentences were clipped and quiet. "I just miss him tal...I just miss him." He looked up are her then.

"Sean's your someone, then?" Jo caught his eyes and smoothed his hair back.

Her son bit his lip and nodded. The honesty though, had loosened the lines around his eyes, and his temples were smooth now. Jo adopted the lightness.

"Good on you. He's cute! Can I meet him tomorrow?" What she was really asking was, am I allowed to? Are you too mad at me?

"He hates that I wouldn't meet his family last week." God, last week, Jo thought.. "And that when I introduced him to you I didn't really introduce him to you. May be too little, too late now."

"I think he will get over it. He's hurt, nobody likes to feel like the person they love is ashamed of them." They shared a sympathetic look.

"And you and Harry. Imagine that's well over now. Not that I'm sorry." He looked liked he'd eaten a bitter lemon.

Jo suddenly felt her tears rush back. She was sorry. How cruel, to be so close to something great and find out its foundations were rotting. "I...I....don't even want to see him." It was all she could say about that. "And the last relationship?" There was only one dyad left.  Ethan was being so nice. But just a day ago, he'd been rightfully livid and nearly kicked her off his doorstep.

"I dunno Mum?" He sighed. "I'm really mad at you, and you knew I'd be upset about it, but you carried on."

"I thought, well, I, couldn't," She took his hand. "None of it sounds like more than dust in the wind now. I thought you'd be mad and then accept it. You kept going on about how happy I looked." She pursed her mouth, can a lie still make you happy? "I hoped you'd be happy for us. But I didn't know!" That came out harsh and bitter.

"I know Mum. And if he wasn't what he was to me, I dunno, maybe you'd be right." He shook his head. "You alright?" He looked at her face then.

"If we're alright. If you can forgive me for lying and keeping secrets—"

"Well, I was doing the same thing." Ethan conceded.

"Then I'll be alright. And I want to meet Sean. You should try to work it out." Jo sighed, somebody should get their happy ending.  Sean seemed the real innocent here. He deserved it.

"Yeah, ok."

"Go call him." Jo nudged him when he stood and he smiled and her heart stitched itself back together a little at the tippy top.

She didn't sleep. Jo lay in bed and felt like she was in an Iron Maiden, or wished she had been one. Had she been cold and contained sharp edges, maybe she wouldn't feel like her skin was covered in cuts. At least she wouldn't know what her skin was capable of feeling like, like it glowed and everywhere he touched you could see the light. The contrast was painful.

The worst part was that she wanted Harry. At night, on Ethan's couch, she wanted to wake up to his feet shuffling and his arms with their black etchings wrapped round her. The cycle went like this. She'd hold still on the couch, close her eyes and flash to the scene in her bedroom just a day ago. The humiliation and confusion. Her need for comfort would well up and her Judas heart would call for Harry.

Harry who had a knack for texting or trying to ring her whenever a residue of sympathy clung to her. She'd had to shut off her phone.

Then she would focus on her son's face and her own hurt. He'd lied, this whole time. Could you love somebody you kept such a secret from? Then she would realize she'd kept a secret just like it from Ethan. She had so many questions.

Then she would try to sleep, and it would begin all again.

The next day she knew she looked thin-skinned. Ethan had made her tea, though he was the injured party, and Sean, lovely Sean, had held her a little long and the strong hand up and down her back had made tears well up. 

Ethan and Sean looked good together. And Sean looked over the moon to be the boyfriend and not the friend. Once Sean and Ethan were snuggled up in the pub booth and Zoe was playing and Jo was avoiding alcohol because she had a drive, she found herself in a familiar place.

Jo stood before the mirror and stared at the lone middle-aged woman looking back at her. Alone again, after months of partnership. Her picker was horribly broken. It was time to set aside her hopes for companionship, it never worked out. Also, time to set aside the woman Harry saw her as.

Jo liked her better.

Now, she was as much a facade as Harry's apparent love.

Why?

His motivations plagued her. Was it all a joke? Some sick interest in hurting Ethan, being Ethan? Did it have anything to do with her?

Did he love her at all? The version of her that was his?

By herself, all the questions she had piled up like logs on a river, but she'd not ask them, she'd have to live with the emotional dam. That part of her stayed upriver.

The drive home was horrible. Because Zoe slept in the back, she couldn't turn up the music loud enough to drown out the voices, the ones with all the questions. They were loud.

But the answers were on her doorstep, sat in the dark. And he looked like a daydream.

A beautiful nightmare.