The immediate aftermath of Allison Murphy's disgraceful breakdown in moral and ethical decency left her numb and mortified. She had even gone back to smoking, a habit she had kicked in her late 20's and for the first time in her life, she often found herself up late, drinking to escape the pain.
Allison had made the wise and prudent, albeit difficult, decision to cancel her therapy contract with the school following her encounter with Tony. Giving up the most lucrative deal of her career wasn't easy, but Allison knew if she spent one more Tuesday afternoon there, the damage she might do to another boy, or to herself, would have only worsened things.
While she did maintain her other professional obligations to keep herself financially solvent, Allison felt a severe undertow of hypocrisy, guilt and shame each time she doled out advice to the people that came to her with their problems.
Then there was the fallout with Tony. Allison hadn't given the boy a second thought between his first visit to her office, during the initial week of school, and the fateful afternoon when he knocked on her door crying several weeks later. But in that cosmic and chaotic second meeting with Tony, Allison would throw away four decades worth of living her life the right way, and hideously intertwine their lives forever. And to Allison's everlasting horror, she had made the conscious decision to maintain the relationship with him, even after she'd cut her ties with the college.
In the basest sense, Allison was enjoying the physical fulfillment she was getting from the young man. Tony had admitted to her after their first few weeks together that Allison was the first woman he had ever made love to. Shy and clumsy by nature, the abuse Tony had endured had left him very uncomfortable acknowledging, much less exploring, his own sexuality with a female. Once that seal had been broken however, like a paroled inmate who hadn't been with a woman in years, Tony was using Allison's body for his own selfish indulgences.
Allison herself had never been very popular in school, and even during her college years she never took advantage of the numerous social opportunities that were there for the taking. Even after she finally wedded, Allison gradually came to discover the rather dull man of academia that she had married, and bore two children for, didn't particularly have any use for passion as the years wore on.
Stuck smack-dab in her own midlife crisis, the sexual outlet Tony was providing, both to her body and her ego, had created a parasitic, yet symbiotic relationship each would have a difficult time ending.
In the process of exploring their mutual want, Tony and Allison had found the time to fuck each other in her bed, in his dorm room, on her living room floor, in the shower, on her kitchen table, in her Volvo, in the city park during the middle of the day, even on the same couch at 2am one morning, in the school office building where their tryst had started.
Six weeks into the affair however, once she had shared almost every conceivable sexual rush humanly possible with Tony, Allison could feel the adrenaline of the initial plunge starting to wane.
"It's only natural," the accredited doctor inside Allison's swirl of personalities knew. "This was a relationship borne out of pure selfish lust, shallow self esteem, and a whole lot of guilt."
"You didn't want to damage the boy anymore than you already had... you couldn't just use him that way then toss him aside," She would reason. "So you kept him on a string and once you found out the sex was more than satisfactory things just kept getting deeper and deeper... now the endorphins are starting to wear off and the reality of everything is starting to rain down like acid around you, Allison!"
In those private moments of self examination, Allison knew the hypnotic haze of her selfish sexual desire was starting fade like a setting sun, leaving a much darker, star-less sky for her to find her way under. As much as she wanted an easy, painless way to cut ties with Tony, the shards of her tattered esteem and self confidence, along with much darker and more hidden motivations prevented Allison from addressing the issue directly.
Instead, Allison at times attempted to withhold sex. A ploy which inevitably failed to work when her own needy desires betrayed her. She would often try to bury herself in her work once again, knowing she needed money to pay the bills that had started piling up since she quit her job at the school, but those long days at her private practice only served to drain her already sagging energy even more.
The wildest idea that crossed Allison's mind was to simply go out and pick up a guy, perhaps closer to her own age, and bring him home when she knew Tony would stumble upon the two, hoping it would not so subtly tell her barely legal teenage lover she had moved on. Still, with all the pain Tony had been through, Allison just couldn't bring herself to be that cruel.
Any hopes however of letting Tony down easy ended after an innocent Thursday night at the movies.
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The two had agreed to take in an evening show at the local multiplex and everything was about as routine as could be until Allison and Tony were making their way out of the darkened exit of theatre 12, into the light of the main hallway.
Their eyes temporarily blurred by the stark change in lighting, Tony and Allison nearly ran flush into a familiar face as he exited the theatre across the hall.
Once all three pairs of eyes adjusted to the light, time seemed to freeze for Allison, Tony and Darrin as they stood in front of each other, each completely oblivious now to the dozens of other moviegoers zigzagging around them.
Darrin instantly came to a stop when he recognized Tony's face staring back at him. A sickening thud rolling through his stomach, Darrin stood there motionless in the mass of people, his eyes locked on Tony, not even noticing his former therapist was standing at the younger boy's side. The confusion and shock Darrin was already feeling was increased tenfold when he finally did notice Allison there beside him.
For Tony, seeing Darrin was equally as stunning and a kick in the gut. Standing to Allison's left, his gaze burning a hole in his teenage tormenter's face, Tony had no clue Allison also had a connection with Darrin.
Allison, for the moment, felt as if she was on a island of her own as the two young men intently studied the other. Clutching her purse tightly in her left arm, as wave after wave of movie patrons filed past, Allison tried to nudge Tony towards the side exit and out of harm's way.
Her 18 year old lover's feet seemed to be anchored in concrete however, and he wouldn't budge as he re-lived so much of his past in that locked stare with Darrin.
"... I... think... Tony... I think... we ought to be... going, "Allison started to mumble, immediately causing Darrin's eyes to flare when he realized the depth of Tony's and the therapist's relationship.
"You... two...?" Darrin's voice quivered.
Looking over to see the painful hurt shooting from the daggers of Tony's eyes, Allison nodded her head up and down.
