Author's Note:
This is a romance and a work of fiction. All characters are entirely fictional and any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
There is some sex in this story related to the romance, but these events are loving encounters and are not presented in very graphic detail. If detailed descriptions of hardcore action is what you're seeking, please consider looking elsewhere.
While part of this story takes place at Christmas, like Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," it's not primarily a traditional, cutesy Christmas tale. Part of the story is rather dark, involving an often difficult and controversial topic, but I've tried to deal with it in an appropriately intimate manner between the affected characters.
Finally, as a new author on this site, I really appreciate everyone reading this and my other stories. Please vote and let me know your thoughts when you've finished reading. Thanks!
________________________________
Prologue
Present day...
It was 7:45 on Monday evening a few days before Christmas and I was getting ready to walk out when my office phone rang for the second time in less than two minutes. As a partner in and operations manager of a mid-size consulting engineering firm, it wasn't uncommon for me to be working that late, but it was quite uncommon for someone to be calling then and actually be expecting someone to pick up unless we'd arranged the appointment in advance. That was especially so during a holiday-shortened work week.
It had been a long day so I let it ring, allowing it to roll over to voicemail again; assuming it wasn't a wrong number, I'd deal with it in the morning before taking the rest of the week off for the holiday. Divorced with no children and without any family except for a few distant cousins I hadn't seen in ages, I wasn't particularly looking forward to it, though being in Jacksonville, at least I didn't have to deal with snow. Other than attending the Christmas Eve service at church on Wednesday night, I didn't have any plans so I'd volunteered to help with Meals on Wheels for Christmas dinner on Thursday. Afterward, I might head out to the beach for a walk with the wind and waves.
What was really depressing was that I would probably be one of those lonely shut-ins in another 20 or 25 years. Perhaps, though, since both of my parents had died in their mid-to-late fifties of cancer, I might never get there, despite being proactive with regular exercise and annual medical checkups.
My recent luck with women had been equally depressing; no one interested me, and I wasn't really into one-night stands. Oh, I'm not proud of myself but there had been a number of those in the first few years after the divorce. While I'd desperately wanted children when Annie and I were married, it wasn't in the cards and I'd eventually given up on that goal. Following the divorce, my initial plan was to be with a different woman rather frequently to make up for those last few years of what amounted to wasted time, so I'd gotten a vasectomy to avoid any unexpected surprises in case of a technical failure on the protection side.
Unfortunately, those frequent interactions over the first couple of years after the divorce left a very bad impression on me and I'd returned to my former practice of making love to my relatively few lovers rather than frequently to strangers. Thus, I hadn't seen much action or received much affection in recent years, which made Christmas an even sadder, lonelier time. I told myself it wasn't quite to the Ebenezer Scrooge-level, but it felt fairly close.
I finished packing my briefcase and flipped off the few lights and the lighted angel at the top of the little Christmas tree that graced my side table. All done, I was heading toward the door when the phone started ringing yet again.
"Shit. Persistent bastard, aren't you?" I said aloud, figuring it was some contractor having trouble making the proverbial square peg fit in the round hole. Whoever it was, their persistence had paid off, so I picked it up and answered with my professional voice, fully prepared to tell them I'd look at their problem tomorrow after getting a name and number.
"Good evening, this is Jason Langley. How can I help you?"
An audible gasp sounded on the other end of the line. "Jase? Is it really you?" asked a feminine voice.
"Last time I checked," I replied with a chuckle before asking, "With whom do I have the pleasure..."
My voice trailed off as I realized she'd called me by that name. Only two people had ever called me that since I was a kid. Though we'd been divorced for just over ten years, I knew it wasn't Annie's voice.
Therefore...
My breath caught, much as hers had done just seconds earlier. My eyes focused on the angel atop my little Christmas tree. It sported brown hair and bright green eyes. "You called me Jase," I said, haltingly, accusingly. My mind was almost spinning as I thought back to another angel over thirty years before.
*****
Chapter 1
Thirty-something years ago...
Several engineering friends and I took Psych 1001 in the fall semester of my junior year of college. As engineering students, this was one of those electives selected from a short list of qualifying courses. None of us wanted to be there, but we walked in to the theater-style classroom shortly after the 8 AM class was dismissed since we didn't want to be too far back. See, as upperclassmen, we had the advantage of having heard about Professor Rebecca Sorenson, Ph.D., in advance.
The teacher was a very pretty woman, probably in her mid-40s, with a body that was perfectly proportioned to her almost 5-foot height. She wore her dark brown hair rather short, and her dark-rimmed, round glasses seemed to match her hair and her face. The consensus among the four guys in our group was that, if the opportunity presented itself, she would be most welcome in our beds despite being twice or more our age, and our two female friends, while frowning at us for our familiarity at her expense, agreed that we could do a whole lot worse.
We'd heard the prof really knew her material, but since she was so short she couldn't reach as high on the chalkboard as some of her less stature-challenged comrades in the Psychology Department. Still, she had the same amount of material to cover, so she accommodated by writing a bit smaller. In addition, unlike the majority of the female professors we'd encountered, her handwriting was worse than most men's, so it had been described to us by friends who'd taken the class as being like trying to read small chicken scratchings rather than normal size scrawlings of her male counterparts. Therefore, we knew to sit up close. Walking in, we grabbed six seats together in the center of the third row and marked the sheet accordingly when the professor's teaching assistant passed it around.
We still had a minute before class started so I took the opportunity to look around to see if I recognized any other friends in the huge classroom behind me.
It was like there were two hundred bored-looking faces and the face of a brown-haired angel looking toward the blackboard as the professor walked in. The angel even had a halo, though I later speculated from an engineering perspective that it was probably the effect of the can light above reflecting off a shiny hair beret. One second I'm hating the class and dreading Professor Sorenson's lecture, and the next it's my favorite class. I couldn't wait to come back because of that beautiful angel; my appreciation for the actual subject slowly grew as the semester continued, too.
That morning, I sneaked a few peeks back over my shoulder by pretending to yawn. Each time I looked, she was more beautiful than the time before, and by the time the class ended, I was determined to meet her. The bell rang, everyone stood up, and the aisles were full of scurrying students, doing their best to escape. By the time I got to the upper level where she'd been sitting, she was long gone.
I'm sad to say my courage level dropped from that point. I was like a balloon pricked by a pin, with my emotions sending me spinning erratically before bringing me crashing back down to Earth. At the time, I wasn't exactly brimming with confidence around young ladies as it was, so as the following classes came and went, I peeked back at her and I pined. To make matters worse, I was stuck in my seat assignment on the third row and she was in hers, two rows from the back with a couple of empty seats next to her.
"Jason, what the hell are you looking at back there?" asked Rick, my friend and apartment-mate, as we walked to our next class a couple of weeks later. "You can't need to look back that many times. And it's not just today, it's like every class this week and maybe last. Is somebody flashing you their tits back there? If so, I wanna' look, too."
"No, idiot. I, ah, see someone I want to meet. She sits near the back, so I can never get back there in time."
"Right. You ever thought of meeting her before class one day? Skip your 8 AM class; I'll let you borrow my notes. Or take off a couple minutes early like we did the first day. Professor Johnson won't get that mad at you. You're a fucking President's Scholar so I'd think you'd have enough sense to figure out a solution to that little problem. Personally, I think you're just chicken."
It was true. While I was quite smart, I had little experience with women and I was afraid to push what little luck I had. I'd had two short-term girlfriends who were as inexperienced as me, so I'd only dreamed of the pleasures of what lay beyond first base despite having lightly dusted around the edges of second a few times without ever actually touching base. Of course, I'd heard the stories of those who'd claimed to have been lucky enough to actually round the diamond, but that was still a far-distant goal for me.
Yes, I was afraid, but it wasn't just that I was afraid to meet her. It was more than that; I was afraid of what I might learn on meeting her. In all likelihood, she had a long-term steady boyfriend with whom she might already be regularly doing it, and the angel would come crashing down off the lofty pedestal to which I'd elevated her, shattering the wonderful image I'd created, crushing my dream. Therefore, each class session passed with me wanting to meet her but being too chicken to act.
As the fall passed and the number of remaining class sessions dwindled, Rick pointed out a little problem. "Jason, once this class is over, you'll probably never see her again since this campus is so big and since the chances of you ever having another class with her are about as big as you getting into her panties either way. If you're not a complete pussy, you need to meet her now."
Therefore, I eventually made my plan. Being on scholarship, having a 4.0 so far, and having aced all the tests and papers in the class, I would whip through the exam, finish it early, and be waiting on her when she exited the upper level as she always did. It was brilliant in its simplicity...as long as I didn't chicken out again.
On the day of the exam, I looked back and saw the angel sitting there, waiting, I hoped, for me to sweep her off her feet, or at least to give me her name and number. Therefore, I went through the first parts of the exam quickly but became bogged down in the essays, reinforcing points that probably didn't need it and offering my own thoughts on the issues presented. Still, I finished early with everyone around me writing furiously, so I grabbed my bag, took the paper forward, and then started up the steps toward the back, where she would almost undoubtedly turn in her paper to the T.A. I was almost half way to the top when I realized that she'd already left.
I rushed to the top and out the door, looking around but didn't see her anywhere. I'd missed my chance.
Instead of congratulating me on my success, my friends gave me a hard time when they came up top a few minutes later. Leave it to Rick to rub it in; he slapped me on the back and said, "Sorry you missed her, buddy. Maybe you'll run into her next semester...or more likely next century."
He and the others laughed at his joke, but it served as yet another reminder that a haphazard meeting on a campus the size of ours was rather unlikely. Therefore, I decided on a radically different plan.
Late that afternoon, I visited Doctor Sorenson's office during her regular office hours. She looked at me questioningly when I entered following her invitation.
"Mr. Langley. Welcome. I have a question: is it my class boring you or do you just never get enough sleep?"
