"That's my favorite food also. In fact, being Hispanic myself, I know how to cook tamales. So how about I take you home & cook some?"
"That would be wonderful," I said with a sigh of delight. So we donned our coats, grabbed our backpacks, & drove away from the campus. Roads were snowy & icy all the way to her apartment building in south Philly, so Elena made sure to drive carefully.
When we arrived at her apartment & closed the door behind us, we set our backpacks & coats against the door. As she went into the kitchen & started cooking the tamales, she permitted me to turn on her stereo & play whatever music interested me, as long as I kept the volume down. I did find something of interestβone of Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell's duet albums. So I put it on the record player & played it, starting with that old radio classic "Ain't No Mountain High Enough." As I listened I lay flat on the floor with my ear to one speaker.
A few songs later, on came another hit, "Your Precious Love." Elena walked toward me, knelt, lightly touched my shoulder & said, "I just put the tamales in the oven. While we wait for them to bake, shall we dance?"
I accepted, then took the needle off the record & brought it back to the beginning of the song. I wrapped my arms around Elena's waist, her arms encircled my shoulder blades, & we rocked each other gently as we heard Marvin begin to sing, "Every day, there's something new..." We looked into each other's eyes & smiled at each other. When the song finished, we stopped dancing but tightened our embrace. Within seconds, an erection grew inside my pants & started to press against her thigh; her breasts swelled & began crushing my chest; & we grew oblivious to the remaining songs on the record.
Then came the buzzer signaling that the tamales were finished baking. Abruptly we let go of each other & she rushed to the kitchen to turn the oven off & take the tamales out. The record had finished playing, so I turned the stereo off & took a seat at the table while I waited for Elena to serve dinner. Soon she brought 2 plates, each containing a tamale & a whole-wheat roll. Then she brought a glass of water for each of us.
As we ate, I told Elena, "Only 3 more weeks & this semester will be over. Then one more semester & I'll graduate. I'm really looking forward to that."
"I graduate this coming spring also," she said, "& I can hardly wait either. Especially since I started so late!" She then told me that she grew up in a middle-class family, but for 5 years after graduating from high school she had to work day & night (& stay at home with her parents) to save enough money to pay for college. She received a full-tuition scholarship for her freshman year, but over the other 3 years she would deplete her savings. She still worked on days when she didn't have classes so she could pay the rent for the apartment we were now sitting in.
When we finished our dinner & she her story, I said, "After all that work & all that studying, you must be getting senioritis."