Brand New Tennessee Waltz

Regrettably, that "anyone" included George, who was now a few minutes overdue. Jolene returned to the bedroom to make a final decision about getting dressed again. Taking stock of herself in the mirror, she made up her mind to go one better still and greet him wearing nothing but a smile. After doing away with her bra and panties, she took one last look at her own luscious breasts and freshly waxed pussy and wondered why she hadn't thought of this in the first place -- of course she ought to show George just how lucky he was!

Just as she was about to climb onto the bed, one last idea struck her, and it was off to the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator and found a jar of the cherries George loved so much in his drinks. She rinsed one off, carried it back to the bedroom and, once she'd struck the right pose on the bed, she placed the cherry carefully between her pussy lips. As she lay back on the pillows and petals, she rehearsed the line she would greet him with any minute now: "It's yours. Come and get it!"

She had plenty of time to practice the line, for George was running very late. Fifteen minutes, and at least the cherry wasn't uncomfortably cold in her pussy anymore. Half an hour, and it slipped out onto the otherwise-clean bedspread, and Jolene was too annoyed with him to care. An hour, and she got up and put her clothes back on in disgust. Six months ago, he'd been stupid enough to park his car outside the restaurant where Patti had tracked them down so easily. Jolene never had known men to learn from their mistakes.

As Patti approached the school library, she was relieved to find the lights were still on. Knowing she hadn't missed her chance with Tom, she dawdled for a moment now and checked her phone to see if Lucy had left a message. She had: "Hi, Patti. Listen, I'll explain later if I have to, but...just don't go to Molly Mae's after work today, all right? And if you hear any wonderful news over the weekend, yes, it was me. I made the phone call. I know that must sound ridiculous, but you'll understand. At least I hope you'll have cause to understand. If it doesn't work out, I'll tell you everything. But here's hoping I don't have to. Love you, dear!"

Patti stared at the phone. How utterly weird, especially for her normally so levelheaded friend. But there was no time to waste trying to make sense of that.

She found Tom in the library just as he was about to lock it up and go home. Dressed as usual in his adorable cardigan sweater and corduroys that she had so often wanted to help him out of lately, and most of all those wonderfully old-fashioned glasses, his very unpretentiousness as he looked up from his desk in surprise made her heart skip a beat. "Patti?" he said, and she was flattered to realize he sounded as nervous as she felt. "Oh, no, did I forget an after-school program or something? Heavens, there's so much going on this time of year, and I always forget something. But I didn't think I'd have forgotten if I were expecting you! I mean, not that I --"

"Tom," she interrupted him with a smile, "Relax. You didn't forget anything." She sat down at a study table and waved invitingly at the empty chair across from her. "I just came by to see if you'd like some company, because it's Christmas and I certainly would."

"Well, that's very thoughtful," Tom said, and he did help himself to the proffered seat. "I've been wondering how you've been, so busy with the pageant and all. How's that going."

"Brilliantly," Patti said. "I adore those kids, working so hard. But seeing all that togetherness and peace and love...well, it doesn't help with a situation like mine. But I'm not here to whine about that, I promise!"

"No, I know, Patti!" Tom reassured her. "I've never heard you whine about it, which amazes me, frankly. If I were in your shoes..."

"If you were in my shoes, you'd have realized months ago that those two deserve each other," Patti said. "And you'd be wishing everyone else would shut up about it already. Which is why I really appreciate that you never have given me any well-intentioned pity. Thank you, Tom."

"You're very welcome...is that what I owe the pleasure of this visit to?"

"That, plus I've been wanting to get to know you better for a while now," Patti confessed with a grin like she'd seen Jolene put to great use so many times back in the day. "You...God, this is harder than I thought! No wonder guys get so wound up about asking us out!" The words had already slipped out by the time she realized just what she had revealed.

Tom looked bewildered and delighted all at once. "Are you asking me out, Patti?"

With a deep breath and a smile of pleasant embarrassment, Patti said, "Yes, I guess I am. Tom, all semester, I...you've just been so friendly and unpretentious and so adorable in those sweaters and glasses, and if there's one thing I learned last summer, it's not to be afraid of your feelings for anyone. Life's too short for that, and it's too short to mope over losing a boyfriend who deserved to be lost."

Tom was as calm and collected as Patti had always seen him, but he also looked delighted. "I don't know what to say, Patti!"

"'Yes' would be a good start, wouldn't it?"

"Well, of course! I just meant -- wow, here I'd been trying to work up the courage..."

"I sort of suspected," Patti admitted. "And I'll tell you what, that's another thing I learned last summer: shy guys are the greatest!"

"You've been talking to Jim, obviously."

Patti burst into laughter and joyfully took both of Tom's hands in hers across the table. "Guilty as charged!" Her mission accomplished, she now took her first good look around the library she had known and loved a decade before. "God, the memories of this place!" With a final squeeze of Tom's hands, she stood up and took a leisurely walk up and down the clearing between the stacks and Tom's desk. The study carrels she remembered so well were still placed at the end of each row. "Have you ever caught a student masturbating at those desks?" she asked.

"Patti! You've got to be kidding! You didn't do that when you were a student here, did you?"

Patti looked at him with a wicked, deadpan grin.

"You're joking."

"Nope," Patti said. "It was a matter of hiding in the wide open. No one expected you to do it here where you might be caught, and that made it that much easier to get away with it, if you were quick. And I was. The things I used to imagine doing to...well, it doesn't matter who."

Tom chuckled. "No, I don't suppose it does. In any case, no, I've never caught anyone back there. But now I wonder if I just haven't been watching closely enough."

"Probably not," Patti said. "Kids will always find a way to pull that off on the sly, won't they?"

"I never really did," Tom said. "That just had to wait until I got home."

"Speaking of getting home, Tom, do you want to get out of here already? If we're going out, we ought to go out, huh?"

"Shall we start with a drink at Molly Mae's?" Tom asked. "I was thinking of heading over there once I closed up anyway."

Patti's eyebrows flew up - what had Lucy said? "Oh, God, Tom, normally I'd love that, but...Well, this is going to sound absurd, but..."

"Oh, no, it reminds you of George, doesn't it?"

Patti responded only with a coy look. It was as good an excuse as any.

Tom looked at his watch. "It's awfully early for a banker to be getting out, isn't it?"

Enough of that. Time to turn on the charm again. "Tom," she said, holding her hands out for him. He took them and stood up, and she put her arms around him. "I know you've heard about how lonely I've been. Now that we've got this out in the open between us, wouldn't you rather just take me home? It'll be dark soon anyway," she added; the winter sunset was less than an hour away now.

"Oh, well, I'd love to, Patti, but...my place is a mess."

"So what?" Patti said. "I can even help you clean up if it's that important!"

Tom dissolved into that shy chuckle that had been among the first things to melt her heart in the first place. "You're not making this easy, you know, but...I'm a single guy -- or was single until a minute ago -- and usually I go home alone..."

"You don't want me seeing your porn stash?!" Patti couldn't help laughing a bit, though she tried not to.

"I'm so embarrassed." Tom began to pull away.

Patti tugged him back closer to her. "Don't be! Tom, maybe I should've told you this before I asked you out, but, well, I'm kinky. You won't embarrass me or yourself with your porn, I promise."

Tom looked relieved, but not surprised. "I kind of guessed."

"You did?"

"Patti, you just got done telling me you used to masturbate here in the library!"

Patti laughed. "Yeah, and that was the least of it. I didn't even get into what I was imagining while I did that."

"Wow." Now Tom did look surprised. "I mean, it's all fine whatever you fantasize about, but you hide it well."

"Don't we all? Especially in a small town like this?"

"I guess so," Tom admitted. "Just tell me one thing. This George jerk, who left you for your best friend, was he..."

"Not really," Patti said. "He was a guy. Not a man, but a guy. Wham, bam, thank you ma'am most of the time. Every now and then he indulged me, but he just wasn't that openminded."

"The bastard probably told your ex-friend all about it, huh?"

"I don't know," Patti said. "But he doesn't seem to have told anyone else. I'd have heard about it by now. But never mind that, it's in the past. So just what kind of porn is it that you didn't want me to know about, Tom?"

"Christmas porn," Tom confessed. "I got a stack of DVDs, and I was planning on spending tonight on the couch with them. Sorry."

"Don't be sorry," Patti said. "Not unless you won't let me join you!"

Four blocks away and across the square, Patti's accidental excuse for not going to Molly Mae's was indeed there and well into his third pint. The Christmas songs were coming fast and thick on the jukebox, his colleagues were in rare form with their jokes, and his two interns, Jane and Meg, were looking fantastic in their now slightly rumpled business suits. The latter was shamelessly running her hand up his leg and giving him a sidelong glance for permission to keep moving it up -- freely given with a wink and a nod.

He'd been a bit annoyed when Jolene had called his secretary to say she wouldn't be able to get into town until tomorrow, but now he was grateful for the reprieve -- however fleeting -- from getting stuck with the bitch all week back at the house. "God bless last minute meetings, huh?!" he exclaimed as Meg finally clutched his balls gently but firmly under the tablecloth.

"You've got to tell her it's over sooner or later, George, you know that, don't you?" said Billy, his protégé at the bank, who was smart enough to have remained single.

"I just don't want to ruin her Christmas," George said. "This is my gift to her. When she does get to town, I'll put up with her for the rest of the week and leave her with a nice memory, and then ditch her when she's back in Nashville and can't do any damage here."

"God, that's so magnanimous of you, George," said Jane, stroking his leg from the other side.

"Magnanimous," mimicked Jack, George's senior partner. "There's an SAT word for you."

"Yes, well, I passed mine, didn't I?" Jane chirped. "And George here was impressed enough to hire me for the semester!"

"Yeah, that's right, Jane, he hired you for your brains," said Billy.

"You did, didn't you?" Jane demanded, now shamelessly following Meg's lead and looking like she might squeeze a bit too hard if she didn't like his answer.

"Well, of course I did, dear," George said. "I believe every girl deserves a chance to prove she can think as good as she can look, or something." Sensing the two interns were looking ready to come to blows over him, he added, "Now, listen, girls, it's Christmas and that means we share. There's plenty of me to go around --"

"Trouble at three o'clock, George," interrupted Billy in an urgent whisper.

"Well, that's past, isn't it, Billy? It's nearly five o'clock!"

"No, you moron, I mean --"

Billy didn't get to finish. But there was no doubt as to what he meant, for at that moment Jolene made her presence known loud and clear to everyone in the now rather crowded pub. "George!" she shrieked in a voice loud enough to wake the dead. "I knew it! I get to your place and get the whole bedroom all gussied up and everything, and where the hell are you?!"

"Where am I?!" George responded, jumping up defensively and spilling both of the ladies' drinks in his panic, his own still clutched in his hand. "Expecting you tomorrow, that's where! Besides, we're only having drinks here!"

"Tomorrow?! Uh-uh, honey, we've had it marked for today for weeks! All the girls at the office were sure you were going to propose to me, too! Instead you don't show up at all, and you're yukking it up with these..." She gestured at Jane and Meg, and noted along the way that George's pants were unzipped. "These children?!"

Meg jumped up. "Look, you bitch, we're only --"

"What did you call me?!" Jolene lunged at the younger woman, and Billy and Jack had to pull them apart. "Do I really look that naïve?"

"Do you think we don't know how you landed him in the first place?" Jane shot back. "Where do you get off being surprised if he does trade you in for a nicer model?"

"Jolene, look." George flashed his best flirtatious grin, the one Patti had always fallen for but which, he now recalled, had never worked on Jolene. "We're just out for an after-work drink, and my secretary did say you'd called to say you couldn't make it up here until tomorrow! And...and I was going to propose then, if you must know."

"You didn't tell me anything about that, Georgie!" snapped Meg, who threw George's own drink in his face and stormed out of the bar.

Jolene looked torn between chasing after her and continuing to accost George. She chose the latter. "I never called your office and I never said anything about coming tomorrow! You liar! You couldn't even keep it in your pants for Christmas?!"

"Now, hold it right there!" Now George was also screaming at the top of his lungs, and everyone else in the bar was looking at the altercation. "I did get a call saying you couldn't make it till tomorrow, and I think I know who it really was, too."

The bouncer was already on his way over to break things up and probably to remove some or all of them. But Jolene didn't see him, so she didn't let that stop her from slapping the man across the face. "Bastard!" she growled.

"Let's go, Jolene!" said the bouncer, grabbing her by the arm. "You guys, too," he added with a cursory look at the rest of their party.

"I'll leave if you want, but I'm not getting thrown out on the sidewalk with her!" George bellowed. "God only knows what she'll do to me!"

"And that's just what you deserve," growled the bouncer, who like most of the town knew all about Patti. "But it ain't my problem, buddy."

Patti hadn't forgotten Tom's flimsy claim that his place was a mess; but she wasn't at all surprised to learn that was nonsense. His cozy living room was immaculate, a well-trimmed Christmas tree by the window and a neatly-folded quilt draped over the couch across from his wide-screen television. "One thing I'll say for your hometown, Patti," Tom said as he ushered her inside and hung her coat up. "It's something else that a high school librarian can afford to rent a whole house, even a tiny one like this."

"It's beautiful," Patti said, looking around the tastefully-decorated room, which looked nothing like any single man's home she'd ever seen before. The promised DVDs were stacked neatly by the television set. "May I have a look at the discs?"

"Please do," Tom said, settling himself on the couch.

Patti shuffled through the DVDs. "On Comet, On Cupid, On Into My Pussy...Jingle All the Way Down On Her...Santa the Red Nosed Bloodhound...red-nosed bloodhound? Period fetish, Tom?"

"I don't have one, if that's what you're asking. I didn't know what that title meant when I bought it. Honest."

"More's the pity," Patti said with a wicked grin.

"What?! Oh, I'm..."

"Oh, you're about four days too late for that to be an issue anyway," Patti reassured him. "But don't assume I'll keep my hands off you next month." Patti picked up another stack, and held up the first of the bunch. "How about Elves in Jail here?" she suggested, holding up the cover depicting two women in red caps preparing to yank a very frightened-looking young man's green tights down. She looked at Tom and saw he was just settling himself in his chair and pulling the blanket over himself.

"Haven't watched that one yet," Tom said.

"Then it ought to be a treat for both of us," Patti said, and she opened the case and put the disc in the machine.

Tom had his hands under the blanket now, and Patti was sure he'd already unzipped. As if to confirm as much, he burst into shy, almost girlish giggles as their eyes met. "I suppose you think I'm a prude for bothering with the blanket," he said.

"Prudish?" Patti asked. "No! Endearing, Tom. Endearing." Before sitting down, and without breaking eye contact, she reached under her skirt and pulled her panties and tights down, and kicked them in a wadded bunch over to the side of the room. With a grin but no more words, she sat down and spread the blanket over her lap, and soon had her hands at the ready.

Jack and Billy having taken their leave immediately under the guise of getting Jane home safely, George found himself faced with Jolene glaring at him out on the sidewalk. There she stood, an implacable rock, an unavoidable obstacle to the safety of his car, drawing the worst sort of attention from townspeople who were out and about for the dinner hour. There was no point in trying to sweet-talk his way out of this one. "Look, honey, I swear to God I got that message and I had no way of knowing it wasn't from you!"

"Do you think I would've told your secretary that instead of telling you to call me back?!" Jolene snapped. "We had today planned for weeks! And you knew what a chore it was for me coming back here! If I had to change anything about it, I'd have told you!"

"That...makes sense." For once, George was utterly caught off-guard. "But I had no way of knowing it wasn't you." Figuring the best defense was a good offence, he went on. "How do I know it wasn't you?! Maybe this was all some kind of test to see if you'd find me cheating! And oh, look, you didn't! I was just out with the office!"

"Then what do you call what that girl did to you when you said you were going to propose to me?" Jolene demanded.

"I call it a very overactive imagination," George said, surprising even himself with his alacrity. "College girls always did find me irresistible, I can't help it. But I also can't be responsible for what she wanted!"

"Do you think I was born yesterday?!" Jolene demanded. "Hell, do you think I don't remember how we met? I knew the day I met you I couldn't trust you!"

"Don't you dare go there!" Now George was shouting at the top of his lungs, and he was vaguely aware that passerby were stopping to eavesdrop openly on their fight. "It takes two, doesn't it?"

"Excuse me?!" demanded Jolene. "My best friend introduces her boyfriend to me and he comes on like a Mack truck, and I give in because I feel sorry for him, and I sacrifice my best friend along the way, and --"

"Sorry?!" George interrupted. "What on earth did you feel sorry for? Patti was a wonderful woman, and I broke her heart for you."

"Yes, George, sorry a hunk like you was stuck with such a blushing flower. For six months I've gone easy on you in bed because I didn't think you could handle the shock after all that time with her, probably only letting you do missionary with the lights off, but I'll have you know this week I was going to cut loose. Now you'll never know what you were missing."