She was beyond beautiful.
Her hair was blond and it hung perfectly straight down to the middle of her back. Her eyes were a shade of metallic green and they were set in a round face. Her teeth were white and they showed when she found something particularly funny or embarrassing. Her lips had that way of sticking out slightly when she was thinking of something.
Her body was equally as alluring as her face. She was by no means thin. Her frame was just a little bit big. This is not to say she was fat, just that she was not a rake. Her legs were full bodied and they led slowly up to her hips, which were very pronounced. Her butt was perfect looking through jeans. It was full in all directions. It stretched wide with her hips and it puckered out against her jeans. Her breasts were entirely proportional to the rest of her body. They were obviously large, but large in a real, not silicon enhanced way. They hung nicely in her bra.
Her name was Elaine and she was French. She always seemed very shy and embarrassed when she spoke English but her skill in the language was actually quite considerable.
All this being said, I figured she was way out of my league. I’d been away at university now for two years and I’d seen her around for all that time. So at the beginning of my third year I just resigned myself to the fact that we’d never talk.
I was wrong, though.
* * *
About a month after school resumed after the Christmas break, I was in the campus library in a study room in the basement. It was a great room to do work in because nobody ever came down. They hated the fact that there were no windows. I was alone on this particular day.
I was working my way through a chapter in a Biology text book when the door opened and Elaine walked in. She had her bookbag on and she was dressed in a windbreaker. Her hair was tied back with a blue elastic and she had on a pair of faded blue jeans.
When she saw me she gave a small smile and said, “Hi.”
“Hi,” I returned.
“How long have you been here tonight?”
“Oh, not long. I’m almost done now.” I didn’t like the idea of staying alone in the room with her because I thought I gave off too much of a desperate feeling.
“Shit,” she said, “I got a lot of stuff to do and I’m gonna be here all night.”
“What do you have to do?”
“Study for a Physics test tomorrow. I need the mark and I have to be sure I get it.”
“Good luck. I’m sure you’ll do fine. And even if you don’t, you can just threaten to throw the teacher out a window and give him a lesson in gravity.” I have always had a morbid sense of humour and it usually just made people smile nervously and resume whatever they were doing. To my surprise, though, she laughed.
“A guy who’s actually funny. It’s a break from all the dumb jokes that most guys tell. Fart jokes and other dumb stuff that always seems to involve shit or piss.”
“It’s not actually funny,” I replied, “just so dumb that you got to laugh.”
“If you say so.” She smiled and finished unpacking her bookbag.
I didn’t bother to finish reading the chapter. I just waited a couple of minutes, just to seem as though I was finishing, then packed up and left.
When I was walking out she said, “See you later Paul.”
I thought to myself:
she knows my name?
* * *
I saw her again the following Thursday in the same place. I was reading a Chemistry text now instead of the Biology and she was wearing a sweatshirt and black jeans. Throughout the week we had actually met up a couple of times just walking around campus and we’d had several short conversations about random things. It turned out she was a lot like me. She had a great sarcastic sense of humour and we shared a mutual enjoyment for old blues music.
“Hi,” she said, smiling, when she saw me. “Did you see Joe Howard down at the club yesterday night?”
