II: Full Time Students
A phone rang. A car honked twice. People yelled. Doors slammed all around and footsteps echoed on stairs and tiled floors. Laughter mixed with yells and the susurrus of everyday conversation at home. It was an apartment complex like any other, smack in middle of a city like any other, filled with people like any other. It had first been occupied predominantly by the elderly, then the impoverished masses, then not much of anyone for a few years until some industrious individual decided to remodel it and make a profit. Now it was full of students, eager to use loans to pay for a place of their own, and the whole structure rang of their humor, their vitality, their spirit, and their camaraderie. It also rang of their virility.
Robert Bret Davidson heard it all, felt it all. He also felt the lump in the pit of his stomach, the butterflies in his gut, and the sweat running down his back. The hall had to be eighty degrees, the stairs ninety, and the temperature outside encroached upon a hundred degrees. The hall stank of sweat, cheap cologne, and fresh paint. It was a place to be moved through, tolerated until one could reach an individual apartment or car outside, but Robert stood, just as hot and just as uncomfortably and just as still as he had for the last thirty minutes. He wanted a drink, not to fend against the heat, but to give him some courage and calm his nerves. All the relief he needed was through the door he stared at, and he knew it.
Apartment 69 was occupied by none other than Morgan Robertson, a sophomore at the local college, a cheerleader there as well, and the girl that took Robert's virginity. She was one year older than he at twenty, and had always been mature beyond her years, both mentally and physically. Robert had lusted after her for over a year before circumstances led them into each other's arms. Their sex was the release of all their adolescent tensions: fleeting, hot, and a real-life fantasy for Robert.
She had led him on afterward, flirting and stealing kisses for weeks before she invited him into her car for a nighttime "drive." It was a disaster. Not due to the sex, of course, Robert seemed naturally gifted and Morgan was more than adept, but afterward it was time to discuss their direction together. Morgan was interested in sex and just sex: when she felt like it, needed a quick fling and had to have a hard dick to accomplish it. Robert loved the sex, but hers was the first thing resembling a relationship he had had in years, and he wanted to hold onto that. The sex was his greatest attraction, but her mind and her company also interested him. Sex was Morgan's only attraction. She never considered him relationship material, continually looking for an older guy to be with, someone she didn't think of as a friend or a peer. Unfortunately she let him know it.
They separated then, unsure of each other and unsure of their own motivations. She would be tormented by guilt and he by his seeming romantic impotence and the dull ache in his loins for almost a full year. He got a "happy birthday" from her when he turned nineteen but no more, the silence stinging more than any insult. She moved on and away, took up residence on her own, and concentrated on her school and friends. He gave up hope as well, certain she would replace him with a bevy of men, and certain she would never need him like he needed her. He consoled himself on the internet at night, staring at the harlots on the web until his hand released him temporarily from his desire.
Unbeknownst to Robert, Morgan was no happier. She had tried to date other men, but found them all the same. For months she missed Rob's innocence, his pure effort and stamina. Finally her fate was his: guilty self-pleasure by the light of a computer screen and the caress of a palm. She buried herself in her work and her social life, making friends by the dozen, earning good grades like candy, and achieving no real happiness. The raw, sexual burning she felt was still there, aching more than ever, and it had only subsided once in her young adult life: her passionate months with Rob. She needed him back, and she knew it.
Thus came the message via Facebook. It was plain, vague, and short, but to Robert it was more beautiful than any verse ever written in the history of mankind. She gave a date, a time, and an address with an order to "meet me to talk. About us."
The time came of course, and so did Rob. He made the drive to her apartment complex, climbed her stairs, and found her door, but then he stopped. There he had been, in the heat and the humidity, for over half an hour.
He raised his hand a tenth time, intending to knock, but had to lower it. God curse his nervousness! Without it he wouldn't have driven her away in the first place! Dejectedly, he turned himself away, ashamed to admit even to himself that he couldn't face whatever ultimatum she had planned. He turned back, just once, and rested his forehead on the door as if to say goodbye for good, grimacing in shame. Then his phone buzzed.
He grumbled, putting all his weight against the door through his head as he fished in his pocket for the message. Sweat dripped off his eyebrows, barely missing his phone on their way to the floor as it completed its journey below his face. "I'm going to the parking lot," it said, "You'll see me when you pull up." From Morgan. Robert comprehended its meaning instantly, but had no time to back away before the door that had forced him away for the past thirty minutes swung open, with him tumbling after it.
He reeled as his balance was forced back upon him by the door, swinging his arms and tottering forward half a step. His heart beat rapidly, its staccato a rhythmic song to his hysterical dance. He finally composed himself and stood fully upright, phone in his hand, and saw her.
Morgan Robertson gaped at him from two feet away, mouth and eyes wide open. She hadn't seen her last lover for a year, and then had him almost fall on her. He was disheveled, sweaty, and unfocused, but immediately she saw again what attracted her to him in the first place: he was fit, handsome, and young. He was smooth in the way only fair-skinned adolescents can be, with slightly bulging muscles on his chest, back, and arms. His dark blond hair was too tousled to be cared for, and the sweat had soaked through his chest and under his arms, but Morgan found it deliciously masculine. His eyes bored into hers, and his face wore an embarrassed look, coupled with the fading hope that was there previously.
"G-g-good God!" he stammered, shaken, "Do you always open doors so violently? And it's about time! I knocked 'till my hand hurt!"
She answered him, knowing he hadn't knocked once. "I like to make sure my guests are devoted to being here before I throw open the door to strangers, especially ones that are liable to lurch suddenly into my home upon the door's opening!"
They both laughed, totally surprised at the lack of awkwardness between them. As usual, all Robert's worrying was for naught. It was an instantaneous happiness, like two friends seeing each other for the first time in decades. Whatever had driven her to push him away was gone, as was the uncertainty that plagued her from the very first time she decided to fuck him. They hugged, like friends, and Rob held her away from him to look at her, closer to him than a friend would hold but far enough away to examine her.
"My, my, do you look nice!" His compliment escaped automatically as he observed her dark hair and unblemished skin, down her slender neck. Her breasts were as he remembered them: large for her petite stature and pert. He thought for a second as he looked at her chest that she was braless, but that was never like her, so he moved on. Her hips flared out almost too much, but stopped just in time to complement her breasts and make her one of the most curvaceous women Rob had ever seen. Her ass was taught, but not small, and it rolled with her hips as she walked. It stuck out just enough to catch the eye and to keep jeans from sitting above it. He loved that ass. "You haven't changed a bit but for the better, if that were possible."
"Well well," she countered, "Looks like I let in the right guy! You're a sight for deprived eyes as well, excepting that you look like you ran the whole way here."
