Thursday, May 29th

I feel . . . so fuckin' sedated.

Jake shut his eyes, smiling at his inner dialogue. The bean bag he was on shifted slightly as he leaned to pass the joint.

They were at Ellen's house - a small, one-bedroom place with a fair garden and a huge basement. Jake learned a couple things soon after arriving - one, she was undoubtedly he and Winter's mother. There was too much similarity in personalities. Half of her décor looked like something either Winter or Jake themselves would have picked out for their own places. Two, he learned that his mom smoked pot.

The basement was spacious and strewn with huge bean bag chairs and full-body pillows. Jake and Ellen had sat in that room for hours now, talking, laughing, hanging out. The joint they were on now was probably their eighth or ninth. She grinned at him, and Jake grinned back, enjoying the wink their minds were sharing. All the fight was out of him - they were emotional for some time earlier, at Val's dad's place, but now all he had was peace and acceptance. It would be hard for any negative emotion to exist in Jake's body anyway, with his mind tingling and relaxed. Mainly Jake wasn't mad at her because he understood her - and felt too connected to her to deny their relation. And in his mind, how could you be angry at someone you love and understand?

"I don't have a boyfriend," Ellen murmured, her eyes at half-mass. "I've had very few since Ted. I think I just kind of accepted that I'm not cut out for that type of thing. I've got too much going on in my own mind, and I just don't do the whole obligation bullshit very well." She sighed. "I don't know if that's old hippie blood in me or something, the whole free spirit, free love idea. I've got a lot of great male friends, and that pretty much covers the need for companionship. All the rest of it's just sex, and it just works so much better for me to do that occasionally with a real close friend I trust than to do it in the confines of a relationship." Ellen glanced at Jake. "I'm really sorry, Jake. I'm sorry I let those feelings take me away from you. It didn't have anything to do with you guys, or with Ted, or anything. Ted treated me great and I loved him, and I was glad that he was the other half of my kids, but . . . " She trailed off and sighed again. "I'm sorry I hurt you guys. I wish I could take it back."

Jake held up a hand. "It was almost fifteen years ago." His voice sounded a little bit thicker than normal, partly from the topic and partly from the THC. "Ah love you and ah know you jest did what you felt you had to do right then. Sometimes people make mistakes, you know, even big ones. If they're really lucky, they get a chance to fix it. Like now." His blue eyes stared straight into hers - so exactly like his own - and he knew that for a minute, they were both teenagers. The adult and child rules and certainly the mother and son rules weren't really here in this relationship yet. Right now they were on exactly the same plain, and forming a friendship, forming a trust. Jake leaned up a little bit and took his mom's hand. "Look, right now is the chance to throw all that shit under the bridge. Let's throw it, and just cross the fuckin' bridge already."

She nodded, completely unfazed by his language. "You're right. It's so completely true." Ellen's eyes watered a little as she tenderly fingered Jake's strawberry blonde hair. "I'm so glad I got a second chance with you, Jacob Aaron. And I want you to know that I really like you, and I really wish I'd had a part in how completely well you turned out." Then she paused, and shrugged. "Who knows. Maybe I did you the biggest favor of your life by stepping out SO you could turn out so well."

"Nah," Jake replied. "Don't say stuff like that. The past is gone, we need to jest think about the future."

"Amen." She grinned and held up the last tiny stump of their joint. "I think the future looks like it needs to get rolled."

They both started laughing again, and Jake scooted up so that he could roll another one. It had been years since he'd had this kind of hanging out bonding experience over smoking weed. Back when he lived in Lubbock, Jake and his friend Wren used to play out this exact evening at least once a week. It was kind of nice - it felt immature, it felt breezy, it felt floaty and free.

Jake and Ellen stayed up pretty late, telling jokes and getting to know each other and sharing stories about their lives. They discussed the whole 'free love' concept a little deeper, and Jake cheerfully reported that he had a really good friend he wouldn't mind sharing a little free love WITH. Then of course, he had to describe her out to Ellen, and then he went ahead and filled her in on anything she could ever want to know about anyone in The Gang. Never once did she lose interest, or lose Jake's interest.

He knew he needed to get back to Tooler. Sure. But not right now. Not tonight . . .