We were roommates, and I think I fell in love with her immediately. She and the other roommate we would be sharing the house with picked me up at the airport. She was deceptively thin, and it wasn't until later when she sleeked from the bathroom to her room while I was on the couch watching tv that I realized how great a figure she had. She didn't flaunt it but she had a perfect set of boobs and ass. Real beauty doesn't demand attention.
Her name was Keagan, and the other roommate was Amber. We were all to live in a house in Antigua, Guatemala, owned by the adventure tourism company we all worked for. They had been there before I got there. Amber had been there for over a year, and was actually engaged to a local. Keagan had gotten down there three months earlier.
I was terrified as I came out of customs at the Guatemala City airport. I had never been to another country before. I didn't speak Spanish. And I had half-crippling self esteem issues. When you come out of the airport into the air there is an ocean of people standing outside waiting for someone else. Seriously, it's the densest organization of humans I think I've ever seen. Some had signs for who they were waiting for, but mostly it was just tightly compacted faces all staring expectantly like giddy golden retrievers at the terminal exit.
In an email, Amber had told me to walk through the throng and to the right to where they would be waiting. It's safe to say, that as a clueless gringo with faded blue jeans and an xxl tee shirt, I was spotted by them long before I figured out where they were. They shouted my name, and I looked around and saw them. I was so relieved to have anything familiar--albeit people I solely knew from phone and email.
And that's when I saw her: all dimples and curly brown hair.
They explained everything I needed to know on the way back from the airport: only drink bottled water, no toilet paper down the toilet, etc. The things I learned to tolerate and even love while living in a developing country. The whole time Keagan talked I just stared at her face. It was so expressive, like the kind a professional actor aspires to. Whatever she was saying echoed on her face, and even when the loud motor of the ancient Kia van overpowered her voice, I knew what she was saying just by reading her expressions.
At that moment, I felt a terror in my stomach. As a romantic and overweight midwestern male with self image problems, I pretty much fall in love five times a day. It doesn't take a lot, a serene smile, curly hair, an act of kindness or consideration, and I fall casually in love with the girl I'm sitting next to on the bus or the one in front of me in line at the coffee shop.
But casually falling in love with a stranger is fine. I could not do this sort of thing with someone I would both work and live with.
But there she was being accidentally beautiful.
As we pulled into my home for the next year, I vowed to myself that I would bury these feelings and any other ones that would come and not let it get in the way of being a good roommate and co-worker.
And it seemed to work. Certainly, she was the sole material I needed for masturbation, but during the daytime, I thought I hid any attraction I had rather well. It helped that I was overweight and constantly thought badly about myself; therefore, I believed I didn't have a chance. I'm not a risk-taker anyway (unless drunk), so harboring feelings comes naturally.
We got on thusly for the first month. We became friends, and did most activities together. We cooked and ate lunch together. We watched TV together. We went out on the town of Antigua together. And we practiced Spanish together. I seemed to be learning it a lot faster than she, but I pretended to be stuck on the same stuff so that I would look smarter.
On our nights out, we made friends with a broad community of expats living in Antigua, and there were always people willing to go out with us and hit the bars. I never thought I'd get to the point of being tired of beer, but one weekend it hit me. I could not go out on that Saturday no matter how wrong it felt.
Around 6 o' clock that evening I left my bedroom, and proudly announced "Attention. I am having a lovely evening at home tonight. Anyone is welcome to join me, but I will not be going out."
Keagan came out of her room with that gorgeous grin, "thank God! I so didn't want to go out tonight, but I felt I had to. Let's stay in!"
Amber was out with her fiance, as she usually was so just the two of us put a frozen pizza in the oven and settled in on the couch to watch TV.
"Ooh! Clueless" she said. "When was the last time we saw that?"
On this rare occasion, "Clueless" was actually in English and subtitled in Spanish. Usually it was dubbed. Seeing a movie in English in Latin America is such a treat that you feel like you're almost home.
We just started in on the movie, when they showed up, a large chunk of expat friends we had made in Antigua. We explained that we were not going out tonight, and that "Clueless" was on, and they all thought a "night in" was the greatest idea. Seven people crammed in to the living room. They ordered more pizza (they actually do deliver pizza in Antigua), and we crammed around the TV.
I maintained my spot on the couch but Keagan politely surrendered hers and sat on the floor in front of me with two others. She was positioned right in front of me and with my legs slightly spread, she could rest her neck on the cushion I was sitting on.
Despite living in such close quarters for a month, this was the most contact I had had with her. Her delicate shoulders rested against the sides of my calves. Her head was inches from my crotch. I could smell her shampoo.
I had forgotten the movie at this point, and was just staring down at her, lost in her beauty as the TV lit up her features.
Obviously, at this point, I had an unavoidable and irrepressible erection, but the dark of the room hid it. I couldn't help it though. She was so pretty and so close. Her scent and proximity really got me going, and when ever she moved--even slightly--I got even more painfully aroused.
And there we sat for what seemed to be an eternity: her blissfully watching a movie from our innocent youth and me lost in her atmosphere.
Until...
Until something funny happened on Clueless. I don't really know what it was because, again, I wasn't really watching. But something funny happened, and it had to be one of those special funny movie moments. Most funny scenes obey the law of diminishing returns: they get less funny the more you see them. But on a very rare occasion, a movie moment is so great that it's greatness and funniness actually compounds. You see something in a movie that is funny, and that experience crystalizes. The next time you see that scene, you are back in time in that crytalized moment, and it's not only just as funny, it's funnier because you are travelling back and re-experiencing it. It's more precious because it's one of the few true moments of time travel.
But it was a big laugh for Keagan. A laugh that made her throw her head back. Hard.
