Note: Scroll down to the divide in the page to get straight to the erotic part.
When I opened my eyes, I found myself in my dorm room. In early May I couldn't help but keep my window open to let the cool night air in as I slept, so this morning the Sunday stillness of a collective campus-wide hangover allowed the sounds of nature to come in bright and uninterrupted. Light poured into my room, and I sat up in bed. Must be at least 10. Too late to go to the cafeteria. I headed to the showers with a towel around my waist. I'd wait to wash my hair, I decided, and just stood under the shower head, watching the spray glint in the sunlight that glared through the dingy beige shower curtain. Today would be an easy, carefree day. I'd probably find a little nook in the library and watch the sun's position slowly turn the moods outside. We were all captive to the season, seeing ourselves as too mature to realize how playful we really were. Our spirits were like big unfolding flower buds after all those long nights of clenched concentration and study.
Still dripping, I walked back down the hall, when I saw Jesse knocking insistently on my door.
"Dude!" she yelled at my door, just before I caught her eye.
"What's up?" I asked, walking past her. I opened my door, and Jesse followed.
"Where did you disappear to last night?" she asked. I just looked at her blankly, until last night's party came flooding back into my mind. I turned away so Jesse wouldn't see my face light up with the memory. She was as perceptive as Kate was book-smart, and she had read my mind with spooky accuracy before. Not sure how I felt about her reading me now...
I started getting dressed, partially shielded by my closet door. I knew Jesse wouldn't mind. Aside from Kate, I couldn't imagine anyone I was closer to. Jesse kept looking, trying to figure things out from my movements. Maybe a telltale static or tension to my silence, or a sidelong glance? She could pick up a scent from a fucking mile away. Good thing I had just showered, or she easily could've put the pieces together.
"Disappear? I just got a tour of the house. Nothing to tell." I said to fill the silence.
Jesse collapsed in my bean bag in the corner of my room, hanging her arms over her knees.
"You know, you really need to decorate. Place looks like a monastery" she said distractedly, letting her eyes wander around my room. Nothing on the walls, and not a single stray sock on the floor. All my earthly possessions fit on a bookshelf and a dresser. As you might expect, it wasn't a great place to hang out.
"It's a bit late for that" I said, as I slipped my shoes on "Six days till graduation, remember?" I walked up and stood over her as she looked around. She had white and blue striped linen shorts on, a black shirt for some band with the sleeves cut, and converse high-tops. Her hair was blonde, very curly, and short. Her face was angular, almost masculine, but her soft green eyes flecked with brown and small lips tipped the scales in favor of a bubbly pixie look. When she got drunk, though, or wore those aviator sunglasses of hers, a distinct note of chiseled masculinity took center stage. She reached her arms towards me, and I helped her up. We headed down the stairs and began walking through the main quad -- a large square patch of green spidered with the worn down paths of least resistance for students as they gravitated blindly to class, food, sex, drugs, etc. We, however, sat at the picnic table we had dragged into the center of the square. The Buildings and Grounds staff could care less in these last weeks of classes, having far more important things to accomplish than having a tug-of-war with some seniors over outdoor furniture arrangements.
Jesse leaned back, watching a sparrow slice through the deep blue sky, as if to properly calibrate herself for the frictionless days ahead. "The way I see it" she said languidly "there are two possibilities."
God damn. I didn't have to ask. I already knew her inner monologue had taken up a psychoanalysis of me: full-tilt, no holds barred. But I asked to keep up appearances, knowing I was too lazy to keep them up against the usual calculated barrage for long. "Please tell me you're talking about breakfast."
It was astounding. She looked so laid back she may as well have been on K, and yet her eyes were sharp and no-nonsense. "Either..." She started, loving to drag these things out, raising her index finger to begin enumerating "you became a mule for some elite, clandestine, strictly collegiate drug ring, or..." she raised another finger "You got laid."
"Jesus, Jesse, let's get breakfast." I was normally tolerant of shit like this-- even getting high off the thrill of our game of hide and seek. I swear, she could have been a genius at gossip, if she weren't so principled (and slightly antisocial). I sat stock still, waiting for the verdict.
"Fine. I came to get you to go eat anyways. Kate's treat."
At Kate's house, down the road from the college, we sat at dainty wooden chairs in her kitchen/dining room. Jesse and I had biked there, 1.4 miles apparently, with slight inclines. We had just started breaking in pearls of sweat when we arrived. Our faces were flushed when we stepped into Kate's unnaturally cool kitchen.
Kate sat, solid black ponytail down her shoulder, tied with a thin, dove white hair band. She satirically turned her head in a mock silhouette, looking to the sky with a champagne flute hung in her fingers, "Well, should you have been any later--" she said in an English accent running like thin honey.
It was cute, but it creeped us out sometimes. She had never gotten far enough out of her shell to act in any performance, but she would take any sudden moment of framing to experiment with one of her personae. We sat.
The window was wide open, fresh thyme on the sill, the breeze billowing in on occasion.
"Well," Kate said, in her usual goofy voice. "You all are about to get served."
She pulled a frittata out of the oven, along with fresh pancakes and a half-done pie, which she checked at the table, and put back in the oven to set. The table had been set when we walked in the door, with total silence upstairs, downstairs, near the bedrooms. Her family must have been away. In all her bright momentum, she gracefully swung down into her seat and folded her skirt under her. Placing her arms on the table, she said, "Goldmund, you should eat. You must be exhausted from last night."