Librarian Finds Long Overdue Love Ch. 13

"And likewise, we had no idea you were the same Angelina Ann knew from the Hall," Al said, extending a gentlemanly light to the woman. "But there's probably not as many Angelina Lione's around, so had Tom told us your last name in advance, maybe we could have avoided tonight's drama."

Angelina closed her lips around the mouthpiece and guided the holder with her right black leather gloved hand toward the flame. Allowing the fire to briefly touch the tip, she inhaled slightly, then withdraw the holder and calmly blew a cone of long gray smoke off to the side that caught a breeze and wafted away in the cool night air.

As faithful a husband as had ever taken a marriage vow, an embarrassed Al still couldn't help the erection that -- fortunately for the sake of discretion -- was developing undetected in his pants behind his jacket. Ann had given up smoking in the mid-'60s, shortly after giving birth to Tom, depriving Al of the guilty pleasure he enjoyed whenever he saw her lite up. Now, the unexpected sight of an attractive woman seductively bringing a cigarette holder to her lips tripped a switch that brought forth a flood of fetish nostalgia. With one puff, Angelina had put yet another Bailey adult male under her sexy smoking spell.

"Thank you, Mr. Bailey," Angelina said, the last wisps of her exhale popping out of her mouth as she spoke. "I apologize. I really don't smoke much. But sometimes a cigarette really relaxes my nerves. Like now."

"Oh, no. Don't be sorry. It's quite alright. I'm glad to have the smoking company. Ann quit years ago and then banished me to smoke outside a few months ago. I have a soft spot for smokers. And please, call me Al."

"Tom's very tolerant, too. He doesn't mind if I smoke now and again. Maybe he gets that -- and his good looks -- from you, too."

I'll bet he doesn't, Al thought, his cheeks blushing, as he watched Angelina raise the black shaft to her mouth, enclose her full and red lipstick-covered lips around it and inhale, the orange glow from the tip of her burning cigarette lighting the night.

"Speaking of Tom, he hasn't told us much about you. How did you two meet? Through work?"

"You mean he didn't tell you?" she asked in disbelief, through a nose exhale.

"No. He's not too big on details. The only thing he said was he has a new girlfriend and she's around our age."

Angelina paused to gather her thoughts and composure over having to do her young boyfriend's uncomfortable dirty work for him, crossed her right high-heeled leather boot over her left leg and took another soft draw on her cigarette holder.

"Well, I guess it's up to me to fill you in then," she said, following a barely visible smoke. "We met at Riverdale."

"The middle school?" Al asked in confusion. "But he hasn't been there in years. Not since he was a student."

"Well, he was there a lot more recently -- like six weeks ago."

"I'm not following."

"He came to see me, Al. To ask me on a date."

"I'm still not following."

"I don't want to embarrass Tom, but he had a crush on me when he was a student, and it apparently never went away, so he worked up the nerve to re-introduce himself, asked me out, I said yes, we hit it off and we've basically been dating ever since."

"Wow...I'm not sure what to say, other than that's quite a story."

Inside the house, Tom and Ann were engaged in an increasingly heated discussion.

"She was your teacher?" Ann asked flabbergasted. "Please don't tell me you were sleeping with her in grade school."

"No, of course not!" Tom protested. "She had no idea I really even existed until I visited her in school around Halloween."

"This is just too much to process. My own son, dating my arch enemy."

"Well, you'd better get used to it, because I don't see us breaking up anytime soon -- if ever."

"Have you thought this relationship through? At all? Beyond whatever sordid physical affair you're carrying out?"

"What's that supposed to mean? This is a legitimate relationship. I'm not just some play thing to her. We're very compatible."

"Compatible?! What do you know about compatibility? You've been together all of what, six weeks?"

"I just know, that's how."

"And what if you want children some day -- which I assume you do? Have you considered that? She passed her child-bearing years when you weren't even in your teens."

"Maybe I don't want kids. Have you thought of that?"

"Oh, you're too young to know what you want. Listen, I know her a lot better than you do and this isn't the kind of woman you want to be with."

"How so?"

"She's a conniving, self-centered, scheming bitch, who made my life hell once. Being a resident hall director was the best job I ever had and she made it the worst. Do you know what it meant to be a working young mother in the early '60s? The sacrifices we had to make for our careers? Even though your brother was born three years earlier, I didn't want to stop working because I loved it so much. So, unlike so many women of my generation, who quit working to raise a family, I arranged for your grandmother to take care of Neil, so I could keep working. Angelina completely ruined that for me. I'm lucky I didn't have a nervous breakdown that year."

"Well, people can change, mom. I can guarantee she doesn't party like she once did."

Ann pulled back the curtain on a kitchen window and looked out onto the patio.

"Maybe, but I see she still smokes," Ann commented.

"Oh, so now you're going to judge her because she smokes? You used to smoke, too, you know."

"I'm not judging, but I see she still uses that silly cigarette holder. What a pretentious..."

"OK, enough already. Let's change the subject. Another reason I wanted to come by tonight was to tell you and dad I won't be here for Christmas."

"You what?! Why?"

"Angelina and I are flying to Miami a week from Wednesday. We leave for a Caribbean cruise the next day.

"But why over Christmas?"

"Well, we both had the vacation time and we just wanted to get away and spend more time together."

"But you've never not been here for Christmas. It won't be the same without you. What about your nephew? Brian will be crushed you're not here to play with."

"I know, but we'll be back on the 29th."

"The 29th is NOT Christmas. Lord, get me through this night, please."

Finally argued out, mother and son stood together for a minute in silence.

"You know, I suppose the irony is, if that experience with Angelina hadn't caused me to resign when I did, I'd have kept working for who knows how long and I might not have become pregnant with you," Ann, said in self-reflection. "So, I guess you could say in a weird chain reaction sort of way that you might not have been born if it wasn't for Angelina, and now the two of you are here together as a couple. How weird is that?"

At that moment, the kitchen door swung open and Al barged into the room.

"Okay, Ann, it's your turn," he announced, closing the door behind him.

"My turn for what?" she asked.

"To speak to Angelina. To get things straight between you two."

"Oh, no."

"I know you don't want to, dear, but she can't leave without you talking. It'll just drag things out and make things more uncomfortable in the future."

"Dad's right, mom," Tom said. "You need to get things out in the open. Please, try for me -- and be nice."

Ann stared at the floor for a few seconds, then silently grabbed her jacket from the hook by the back door, wrapped it around her body and went out the door to the patio.

"Hello, Angelina," Ann said coldly, standing over the picnic table where her son's lover was still seated.

"Hello, Ann," the librarian answered.

"Mind if I sit?"

"Please."

"So, I hear you've been working at Riverdale for a while," Ann said, taking a seat on the bench across from her old nemesis.

"Since I graduated Seton Hall," Angelina responded. "What have you been up to since we last saw each other?"

"Mostly raising a family -- Tom and his older brother Neil."

An awkward silence descended over the patio.

"I'm sorry," Ann finally said, 10 long seconds later. "Listen, I'm not good at small talk, so let's just cut to the chase. Given our past together, it's very hard for me to process that you're dating my son. He's an adult, so I can't do anything about it, but he's still young and very inexperienced with women, so I don't want him to get hurt. He's my little baby. I just hope you don't break his heart, because he obviously cares for you a lot."

"I've never been a mother so I can't understand what you're feeling," Angelina responded, "But I do care for Thomas quite a bit, too. He's very special to me. But we're very much an 'in-the-moment' couple. We haven't thought much of the future, we just have fun."

Translation, Ann thought: the woman whose sexual appetite was once so voracious that she couldn't do her job satisfactorily and her youngest son and former altar boy were likely having a ton of sex. The thought made her queasy.

"You're not married now, but were you ever?" Ann asked.

"Not yet," Angelina said, her gloved index finger tapping an ash from her cigarette holder into the ashtray on the table. "Guess I've never been lucky in love."

By what measurement was Angelina ever unlucky in love? Ann asked herself. When she knew her there was practically a revolving door of men outside her dorm room.

"Well, you've been lucky health wise," Ann said complimentary. "You still look good."

"Thank you," Angelina responded. "Smoking is my only real vice -- and I only have one or two a day. Everything in moderation. Well, almost everything."

Translation -- and confirmation -- Ann thought: Angelina and Tom were most definitely having a ton of sex. Ann felt weak in the knees.

"I quit smoking a long time ago, but right now I think I could use one," Ann said, by way of asking Angelina for a cigarette.

"Sure," Angelina said, taking the hint and cracking open her cigarette case open and proffering to her former boss. "Have one of mine."

Ann reached her hand into the case and removed a Virginia Slim, while Angelina picked up her matching silver lighter and sparked it up. Ann put the cigarette in her mouth, accepted the light, inhaled the inviting Menthol into her lungs and blew out a cleansing exhale.

"Ohhhh, I needed that," she said/moaned, immediately feeling more relaxed.

Back in the kitchen, father and son were wondering what their respective lovers were up to on the patio.

"It's quiet out there. Doesn't sound like they're at each other's throats." Tom commented. "Maybe they fainted again."

Al peeled back the curtain on the kitchen window to check on how the women were getting along.

"No and no. Believe it or not, they're actually smoking together!" Al replied in amazement, his penis quickly snapping to erection at the sight of his lovely wife smoking again for the first time in decades.

"No way," Tom gasped, quickly rising from his chair to join his father at the window. Within seconds, his dick was also rock hard -- the conditioned response that nearly always developed when he saw his lover wrap her luscious lips around her phallic, penis-long cigarette holder. "I've never seen mom smoke before."

Over the next several minutes the men watched from the safety of the back window like voyeurs as their women smoked, becoming more aroused with each puff and sultry exhale. Finally, when the ladies had taken the last gentle pull from their cigarettes and extinguished them in the ashtray, they rose from the bench and re-entered the house.

"Well, we've both got to get up early for work tomorrow, so I guess we'll get going," Tom said hurriedly, before the back door was even closed.

"But we haven't even had dessert yet," Al protested, wanting to keep his son's sexy-smoking girlfriend around a little longer.

"It's late, dad. Next time."

Taking his girlfriend by the elbow, Tom led Angelina to the front door, with his parents following close behind. When they reached the indoor mat, he turned around to face them.

"Goodnight," Tom said, extending a handshake toward his father, before kissing his mother on the cheek.

"Nice to meet you, Al," Angelina said pleasantly, offering her right gloved hand to her boyfriend's father.

Al took it, then moved in and gave his son's startled girlfriend -- clearly not expecting such an affectionate goodbye from a man she just met -- a kiss on the cheek.

"Good to see you again, too," Angelina said sheepishly -- and not particularly believably -- to Ann, who could only muster a pursed-lipped nod in return.

"Okay, talk to you soon," said Tom to his parents, as he opened the door for his girlfriend and then followed her out into the night.

"Come back soon," a clearly smitten Al called out to Angelina from the open door, as the librarian and his son reached the driveway.

Ann, mouth agape, shot her husband an incredulous look.

"I like her," Al said cheerily to his stunned wife, before turning to walk back through the house and out to the patio.

There, Al immediately spotted Angelina's silver cigarette case -- apparently forgotten by its owner -- atop the picnic table, glistening in the moonlight. The man walked over to the bench and picked up the case.

"What a night," Ann sighed, moments later speaking to her husband's back as she entered the patio and plopped down exhausted on the picnic bench, as if she'd just run a marathon. "I think this is the first time since I quit smoking that I actually craved a cigarette again. Too bad there's none in the house. I think I could use another."

Back still turned to his wife, Al gripped Angelina's cigarette case in his right hand, raised his left eyebrow and smiled cunningly to himself as a woody began to form again in his pants.