The first I suspected that there was more to what she felt for me than I for her was when I felt the soft but insistent pressure of her cotton clad crotch nudging into my back as I sat, facing away from her, in my desk chair. It wasn't that she hadn't given me signals before, but for all my claims to be a smart woman, there are times I can be quite slow on the uptake, especially when it comes to reading the clues correctly from people who are coming on to me and although it may look like I have the same lapse when it comes to those who are giving me the opposite message, I do not, but I can inhabit the space called "denial" for an awfully long time. Psychoanalyze that all you want, but don't bother to tell me the outcome of your analysis as I know exactly why I don't read those clues correctly, usually at least, until those people have long since absented themselves from my life.
But this the particular instance, shall we say, turned out a little differently than the others that I had failed to grasp in time, for that pussy - clothed though it was - grazing my upper back was such a clear signal that even I couldn't fail to understand what was being offered to me.
It was a very warm summer day and we were ensconced in the dormitory, most of us -mid-career professionals working on our graduate degrees through a summer program - isolated in our own small rooms, books (yes, this was "back in the day") with weighty vocabulary but enlightening ideas were strewn in piles on almost every available surface.
If not completely open, our room doors were usually left unlocked and we would, occasionally, give a quick knock and pop in for a chat, or a coffee, or an invitation to take a break and go for a walk on the campus' circle road to blow the cobwebs out. As this was our usual practice, I wasn't at all surprised when K popped into my room with a cheery hello - she and I were in several classes together and frequently walked from the lecture halls back to the dormitories - and, although I did not raise my head from the large, clunky computer I was plugging away at, I muttered a greeting, vaguely aware that she had shut the door to my room before walking over to stand behind me, to read what I was writing, I thought.
I was, although reluctant to admit it, ready to take a break and my shoulders, neck, and eyes were feeling the ache of being too long hunched over big ideas and bigger still, it felt, assignments that were to be completed in minuscule time frames.