Words: Bedraggled and beguile
Word Count: 100
As he soars through his teens, Ben Braeden's shoulders flare out, his hair lightens, and his eyes adopt a mischievous green glint: brilliant, beautiful, beguiling. Lisa laughs—she's sure they're his—but it's a sitting-on-the-ground-inhaling-ice-cream-bawling-her-eyes-out laugh, not a screw-that-bastard sort.
Ben wakes with bedraggled hair and a dreamy quarter-moon grin, stumbles down the stairs, and slides into the kitchen: sluggish, warm, expectant. "Love you" ghosts over Ben's lips, and Lisa knows it's from son to mother but can't help hearing him—"love you", whisky, sex in a Chevrolet—and screams at herself because she never can remember who he is.