Until you get to know her, Jenni is quite shy. We first met when she was working at a local coffee shop, pulling shots and running the register. Several weeks after our first meeting, I leaned over and quietly complimented her ability to pull a really great shot. She blushed and got flustered.
The next day she was absent, but her coworker Maggie told me, "Whatever you said to Jenni yesterday made her day. She was on Cloud Nine until she left."
Jenni greeted me with a warm smile and made eye contact after that day, calling me by name. The eye contact was something new. As I mentioned, she is very shy and suffers from anxiety as well. I learned about her anxiety later, after we established a friendship.
She also confided in me that she suffers panic attacks on occasion. At the time, however, I didn't know she was so afflicted. I just thought she was shy and nervous about having a man -- and an older man at that -- paying any attention to her.
In those early days, if asked to guess, I would have said she was trying for an androgynous look. Despite her attempt to hide it, I picked up on Jenni's sensuous femininity. She apparently noticed me admiring her feminine attributes.
Our little greeting ritual went on for weeks. When it was slow, she even made the effort to engage in conversation. I'd always ask her how she was doing and after she thought for a second or two, I would usually get a positive response.
Jenni could get into these sad moods however, that would sometimes elicit a response that wasn't so positive. She's one of the only people I've ever met who is so honest when asked.
One slow day when I was the only customer Jennie answered with a "Not good."
I asked her if she wanted to talk.
She looked up, looking like she was going to cry, but she said "Yes." She told her coworker Penny she was taking a break, and we walked outside, over to a little secluded bench under two big oak trees.
Jenni likes to wear dresses. I had complimented her about them several times over the months. Invariably, she blushed and got flustered each time. She was a big girl: I would have guessed at least 80 kilos back then, and probably 175-176 cm tall. She wasn't chubby or fat, she was simply big. I don't think she was used to getting compliments from men.
I had noticed that she wore the dresses I liked more often. On this day, she was wearing my favorite teal dress that, frankly, was overdressed for pulling shots at a coffee shop. Hemmed at mid-thigh, it was backless down to the waistline. I had never seen her without her work apron on.
That day I got to see that my favorite dress had a deep scoop neck with a ruffle sort of front, with Jenni's cleavage proudly on display. With her curvy figure and her rosy, freckled complexion, the dress looked incredibly sexy on her.
Sitting down, she leaned right up against me and took my hand in both of hers, looking me right in the eyes. She said, "Sometimes I just get overwhelmed for no reason at all. I know it's all in my head, but I can't help myself."
It felt a little awkward, but I was suddenly compelled to put my arm around her and hug her. She snuggled in even closer, her dress falling open as she did. I got an unfettered view of a big, freckled breast, with the prominent ridge of her large pale pink areola clearly visible.
Jenni seemed blissed out, completely unaware of just how far open her dress had become. She squeezed my hand and thanked me. "You're always so sweet and you always brighten my day." Then, seemingly out of the blue, she turned and kissed me. It wasn't a particularly sexy kiss; it was actually a clumsy effort.
I must have looked a bit shocked. She said, "I feel so stupid. I'm such a dork."
I have no idea why I did what I did next, but I gently lifted her chin, looked right into her big green eyes, and told her, "You're not a dork Jenni." I leaned in and gave her a proper kiss.
After the kiss, her entire neck and chest blushed deep pink, as well as her cheeks. She broke into biggest smile I'd ever seen on her face. She asked if I had my phone; she wanted to take a selfie of us.
I gave her the phone and she took a few photos, looked through them, then settled on one she liked. "May I send this to myself?"
I told her, "Of course."
She did, then she handed the phone back and said, "Now I have your number. That's okay, isn't it? Gawd... I sound like a creepy stalker or something."
I told her we probably should have exchanged numbers some time ago, and that she could call or text any time. I then took her hand and said, "Especially if you're feeling anxious or overwhelmed. I'd love to be there for you if I can help you with that."
She gave me a big hug then, for the longest time. Her straw-colored hair smelled like lilacs. Jenni is very, very soft and cuddly. She has the biggest bright green eyes. She has unusual looks, and combined with her size, I doubted (which she later confirmed) she got much attention from the boys she attended our local junior college with.
In a pair of 501 Levis, work boots, a plaid shirt, and a ball cap you might even mistake her for a man from a distance. However, as you got closer, with a rear end like Jenni's, there would be no mistaking her for a man. You'd also notice that she filled out that plaid shirt in a way no man ever could. Jenni is a curvy young woman.
Once we'd had that experience under the oak trees things changed. It went from a casual morning hello at the coffee shop to trading little snippets twice or three times a day via text. In addition to texting, Jenni loved to send me selfies.
She had gotten a brand-new iPhone -- the one with the killer camera -- in anticipation of a trip to Japan she was planning to make with her very best friend Bobbi, who at 21, was not quite a year older.
Typically, the photos she sent me would be pretty innocuous and innocent, many of them selfies with Bobbi and a few just of Bobbi being goofy. A couple of times, however, they were a bit more private.
Those were both sent late in the evening, and both were taken in low light. Both were after long phone conversations we'd had as she lay in her bed unable to sleep. She told me, "I keep worrying about being twenty years old and having no direction and no boyfriend."
As the weeks passed her texts fell into a pattern. We saw each other almost daily at the coffee shop of course, and shared hushed phone calls -- usually late at night -- when she was feeling anxious or, sometimes, when she was feeling frisky.
I deduced that her moods ran in harmony with her monthly cycle, so I asked her about that one night. Jenni confided that her anxiety often lasted a week, followed by feelings of melancholy once her period started, lasting until her period ended.
She told me, "My life is about two weeks of normal and two weeks of hormonal craziness." Jenni said, "You're the only man I've ever confided in about something so personal.
That level of trust led to other revelations over the course of the next few weeks. Jenni told me things about her life and her upbringing that helped explain the quirks of her personality.
I learned that she had moved from the Bay Area in the second grade, and that her friend Bobbi had also moved at the same time. Partly because they were the "new kids" at school they became fast friends.
It sounded like Bobbi was an outlier much as Jenni was, but for different reasons. Jenni described them as
peas in a pod.
She told me that during the year or so before she hit puberty, pants had become more difficult to find because she had filled out quite a bit. That made skirts and dresses easier for her to wear.
As I mentioned, Jenni has a Rubenesque figure, soft and curvy with generous proportions. She has asked me more than once if I thought she was fat.
I usually told her something along the lines of, "I like your curvy figure."
