Free Memoirs of a Wild Child by Cassandra P Lewis Page B

him start to feed. He’s so innocent, so beautiful, and so pure. I don’t know what’s more terrifying to me, being the mother of a daughter, who could so easily turn out like me. Or a son, who could turn out to be just like most of the men that I’ve been with. I mean, sure he has a fantastic role model in his dad, and in the other close men in his life. But Simon was an innocent, loved, baby boy once too, and he turned into a money hungry, sex monster with no real respect for women. I would be devastated if Cooper treated women that way, I won’t let it happen.
     
    Holly and Ben arrive home, and my girl fills me in on the adventures of the day. All that she had seen and learned, and shows me all of the treasures that Ben must have spent a fortune on, in the gift shop. I looked him wide-eyed, and he just shrugs, she’s his girl.
    We eat Chinese food for dinner, and I wash the dishes while my family snuggle on the sofa and watch Cinderella. Looking at them gives me a feeling in the pit of my stomach, it’s like nothing I have ever felt before. My parents would be absolutely mortified if they knew half the things I had done and the amount of men I have slept with. Looking at my babies, I can’t bear the thought of them growing up and having sex, drinking, taking drugs, it just doesn’t bear thinking about.
    “Are you coming to bed?” Ben asks as he kisses me on the top of my head after checking on Holly, fast asleep in her bed.
    “Yeah, I just need to finish writing something and then I’ll be through. Take Cooper, I won’t be long.” I smile up at him.
    “Okay, but you need your rest, Pip, don’t be long.” He leans down to kiss me on the lips, before heading into the bedroom with the boy, and I pick up Vinnie; I just need to finish this chapter and close the book on Simon.
     
    When I started seeing Simon, I never imagined that a year down the line, I would still be enjoying life with him in it. I started to convince myself that it was more than it was. I know now that to him, even after that long, it was still just sex, but to me, I thought it had started to become something more.
    Looking back, I don’t know why; of course, we went to dinner a lot, but it wasn’t what I would call dating, there was no real affection between us. He didn’t hold my hand; we didn’t do things like going to the cinema or shopping unless it was sex shops in Amsterdam or Lingerie shops in Milan. We travelled together but saw more of each other’s bodies than the cities we were in.
    We never snuggled on the sofa or cooked together, but I had never done those things with anyone, not until Ben, so I didn’t miss it, it didn’t seem odd to me. When I think about Simon now, I know without a shadow of a doubt that I didn’t love him. Not even close. But back then, before I knew what love felt like, I thought I did.
    I started to look for clues that Simon felt the same way, seeing things that weren’t really there in his body language, and finding meanings in his words, where there really wasn’t any.
    I was staying at Simon’s apartment during that week, ‘the one-year mark’, and I convinced myself that he was going to tell me he loved me. I thought I had picked up on signs, I hadn’t of course, but I was convinced. I even practiced my shocked face in the mirror and how I would say it back. I was giddy.
    A week after the milestone date, there was still nothing. I was becoming disheartened until Simon texted me to tell me he’d booked us a table for dinner. Excitedly I put on some music and started to prance around the apartment, taking a long bath and enjoying getting ready for the big night. He asked me to get out his blue suit and lay it out for him. I did, then went into his chest of drawers to find underwear, socks and a tie. My hand landed on the unmistakeable shape of a box. I assumed at first that it was cufflinks and pulled it out to select some. My heart stopped when I saw the famous blue of the Tiffany box;