Juice
After his faux pas last night, Noel didn't expect Angela to venture out of her room until both Noel and Ricky had left the house.
So when he heard the girl's door pop open early that morning, he thought she was making a break for the bathroom while the men were occupied with breakfast in the kitchen.
He didn't expect to see the bedheaded teen standing in the doorway.
He *really* didn't expect to see so *much* of her.
Last week's borrowed Underoos were positively Puritain compared to what she wore this morning. A satin babydoll, cleavage prominently displayed, and too short to cover matching side-tie panties.
Technically, a short robe covered her. But she might as well have worn plastic wrap for all the good it did. The filmy fabric barely lent a shadow of blue tint to her body.
Did this girl have no shame?
If any part of his body had been able to do anything useful in his state of shock, he would have mounted protest.
Instead, he felt mounting pressure.
He wondered if Ricky had seen her in this ensemble before -- perhaps Tuesday, Noel's bowling night? Ricky had made a big deal about how Angela spent all night tidying up the place -- picking up, vaccuuming, dusting, scrubbing the bathroom. Now Noel was wondering if that had been a guilty cover-up for sinful behavior. Not that he condemned the idea of exploration with a loving partner in a safe environment, but the idea and the activity still had some reconciling to do.
Angela made her entrance. "Morning!" Her bright red cheeks betrayed embarassment, barely subjugated by the steely determination in her eyes, but she covered it with a relaxed cheeriness. Noel's eyes followed this sexy creature as she tiptoed across the kitchen, reaching reaching reaching for one of the bowls on the upper shelf of a cabinet. Upon retrieving it, the girl looked over her shoulder demonstratively -- her expression said Do I Feel A Breeze? -- and tugged the shorty see-through robe down against her fleshy little bottom. As if it made a damn bit of difference.
Oh, this was a stunt all right. No, not a stunt -- a lesson.
And Ricky looked anxious to become teacher's pet. The boy's eyes bugged out of his head.
Angela dropped her spoon. "Shoot!" she said demonstratively. She squatted down to pick it up.
Somewhere in the back of Noel Aquino's mind, a scene from an old sitcom popped up.
Bad Naked? From where he stood, there was no such thing.
The two Aquino men stood rooted, their expressions strained, eyes gobbling up the slender girl's curves as she poured herself cereal and milk. Both looked away when she turned around, staring at nothing as their peripheral vision strained to focus on the perky thing bouncing across the kitchen to hop into a seat at the table.
"Oooh! Seat's cold!" she bubbled.
Juice shot out of Ricky's nose.
Noel briefly had an image of her hovering in mid-air in this getup, winding up to deliver a powerful kick to the teeth of some ne'erdowell as the poor sap was held helplessly distracted by her fully exposed feminine charms...
This was a hundred and eighty degrees away from the smartly-dressed businesswoman he'd found in his kitchen last night.
Which, he now realized, was exactly the point.
He could practically hear her thinking now: confuse me with somebody's mom, will you? Let me make it perfectly clear...
Perfectly clear. That pretty well summed up the girl's attire.
But unbeknownst to her, this stunt did nothing to further her cause.
Noel's late wife Margaret had had a similar reaction to a verbal slip. Noel once had the accidental audacity to compare his new wife to his mother. He'd meant it as a high compliment, which somehow made the offense all the more serious. Maggie was already a free spirit (or a wanton woman, if you'd asked Noel's mother), but the next day she'd pulled out all the stops, teasing up a storm that had Noel miserable and begging for days afterward. He'd never again used the word 'matronly' in Margaret's presence.
The memory galvanized Noel's current predicament. It was as if the Devil Himself had sent this sweet doppelganger to torment the pious detective. In trying to differentiate herself from his departed Margaret, Angela only became more like her.
Noel coughed to shake himself free of disturbing reverie. "Well, I'm going to be late. How about you, Ricky?"
The sixteen-year-old looked trapped in wax -- openly ogling this innocent harlot that had once been his girlfriend, but unable to move for fear of startling her into self-awareness and spoiling the view.
"Ricky?"
"Huh? Oh! Yeah. I've gotta go." He made eye contact with his dad, staying locked on while he stood from the table and crossed the room, as if the slightest glance at anything else would result in him being sucked back into Angela's vortex. "Bye Angela!" he said with mechanical effusiveness, never looking at her.
Noel let his son quickly pass him on the way to the front door, noting the way Ricky carried his books quite low in front of him... Noel, for his part, covertly adjusted himself -- only complete shock had prevented a similar uprising in the elder Aquino.
Detective Aquino took a deep breath of crisp September air as he closed the door behind him.
Margaret, forgive me . . .