“You're not a fool. You can sit down, if you'd like.”

“I'm not keeping you from working on your story?”

At a wooden table in the otherwise empty Mystery section of the campus library, Abbey pulled out a chair next to her. “Are you a writer, too?”

“Aspiring.” He sat and faced her, keeping his voice low. “I have started a bunch of them, but I haven't finished any.”

“What are they about?”

“I am embarrassed to say.”

“Ewoks?”

He shook his head, tickled. “They are slightly more erotic than yours.”

“Hardcore humping?” Abbey teased, closing her spiral notebook with her pen inside.

He laughed. “More like tender intercourse. But it can get a little wild. Well, it could, if I actually wrote the scenes that have been developing in my mind for months.”

“Write them down. What's the worst that could happen?”

“They might be awful.”

“Then fix them. It's easier to make a story better when it's on paper or on a screen than when the words are swimming in your head.”

“Maybe I'll take your advice.”

“I give very good advice.”

“I don't think I introduced myself.” He held out his hand. “I'm Jed.”

She shook it. “Hello, Jed. I'm--”

“Abbey, yeah, of course.” Jed wiped his sweaty palms on his corduroys. “I’ve read all your stories.”

“The ones I've published. Should I be concerned by your fandom?”

“I just read a lot. I've read more books than anyone else I know.”

“Doubtful.” She winked.

“But I've never met one of my favorite authors in person before.”

“Me?”

“Yes, you.” He held up a library paperback anthology and turned to her bio page. “You're even cuter in person.”

“You're making me blush.”

“Did I go too far? I don't want to be a creep.”

She looked him over. “Between the two of us, I don't have a monopoly on cuteness.”

“Oh yeah?”

“You know all about me. Tell me about you.”

“What would you like to learn?”

Her eyes widened. “You're Jed.”

“I just said that.”

“We have met before. I mean, I've seen you before, at those post-grad events for American expats studying across the pond.”

“Kind of silly if we're supposed to immerse ourselves in European cultures, but I show up.”

“My friends are friends with your friends.”

“According to the transitive property, that makes us the friendliest of friends.”

Abbey settled back. “Also makes you slightly less of a creep.”

“You're going to perform reconnaissance on me,” he surmised.

“What will I dig up?”

“Other than a public intoxication citation from my junior year at Georgetown, not much. I like to keep my nose clean. Makes it easier if I decide to run for office. If I searched, what would I find on you?”

“An enjoyable yet uneventful stint at Berkeley. My current sojourn at Oxford. An unexpected development in between. I named her Amelia. She lives back at home with my Mom.”

Jed blinked. “I have no knowledge of any unexpected developments of my own.”

“Peachy.”

The 22-year-olds stared at each other, arms crossed, sizing up the prospect in front of them.

Abbey frowned at his coiffed brown hair, his kind blue eyes, the dark reddish stubble sprouting along his sharp jawline. She could never explain it--not even two decades later, when she and Jed finally moved in together for the first time, in their deceptively compact Oakland bungalow--but that was the moment Abbey felt in her bones that, even with her mounting reservations, she would fall in love with Jed very soon.

She also predicted that Jed would fall in love with her at the exact same time.

And neither of them could foresee that they would stay in love with each other for longer than either of them would expect.

Despite what happened next.

“I should go.” Jed arose, pushing the book closer to Abbey.

She was surprised, disappointed, yet amused. “Never meet your heroes. They never live up to your expectations.”

“Heroine,” he replied.

“No, thanks. I had some Coke earlier.”

“Not the drug, I meant--”

“I know what you meant.” Abbey coiled her cropped hair into a low, tight bun. She swiveled her wooden chair away from Jed, reopened her notebook, and began writing. “See you around, fellow countryman.”

He stuck his hands in his pockets and ambled toward the exit. “See you.”

…

“Fancy meeting you here.”

“It's not a coincidence.”

Abbey leaned on the bar as she glugged her Orangina in the lively Dublin pub. “My friends, your friends, inevitable.”

“I asked them to throw this party. Admittedly, it didn't take much arm-twisting; they do love a drink and a song.”

“What's the occasion?”

“On the record: a last hurrah as grad students, before we all scatter to parts unknown after our programs end.”

“Off the record?”

Jed bit his lip and cast his gaze at every object in the vicinity before landing on Abbey's nonplussed face. “My apology to you. I'm sorry I ran off the other day.”

“Ten days ago. I was counting.”

“I don't have an excuse.” Jed's hands froze in his pockets.

Abbey peered at him as she drained her orange-shaped bottle.

He returned her stare.

She set the glass container on the bartop with a thwack. “Great talk.” She brushed past him, waving at the members of her clique congregating across the room. 

“Wait.” Jed caught her wrist. When he saw the fear in brown eyes, he released her instantly.

“Don't grab me.” She stood and faced him. 

“I won't, ever again.”

“What would you like to say?”

The pair noticed that most of the bar's patrons and staff were looking in their direction, keenly awaiting Jed's response.

Jed blew a raspberry and shook his shoulders to summon his courage. “Abbey.”

“This is she.”

“I like you, and I want to go out with you, and I should have asked you on a date at the library--”

“Ten days ago.”

“--but I got scared because you have a kid, even though she doesn't live with you, because I'm stupid and you're incredible, and I am embarrassing both you and me in a foreign country.” Jed inhaled, exhaled, then inhaled again.

“Agreed.”

“Yeah?”

“You are embarrassing. I am incredible. Where do you want to go?”

“Right now?"

Abbey adjusted her purse. “I only came to this party because you would be here.”

Jed started smiling and didn't stop smiling for the rest of the night.

“You didn't have to stage a live event.” Abbey held out her hand and led Jed to the pub’s front door. “You could have called me.”

“I will remember that for the next time I screw up.”

She continued walking alongside him as they exited the establishment. “The next time?”

“I have a feeling there will be many more next times.”

She paused with him on the sidewalk. Abbey ran a finger along his stubbly, red jawline, making Jed shiver. “So do I.”

...

“Obligatory sex scene!”

“There is always one in these tales, but it's tasteful.”

On the extra-long twin bed in Jed's dimly lit dorm room, Abbey wiggled her bare toes against Jed's ankle as they watched an action movie. “Is this what you're into?”

“Breathing into each other's mouths while an 80s ballad plays in the background?” He squinted at the screen of the chunky laptop perched on his desk, which was covered in books. “I could get into it.”

She snuggled under his arm. “It's been a fun two months.”

“Are you going somewhere?”

“Eventually. We both are. We can't stay in school forever.”

“What if we went somewhere together?”

“Seriously?”

“Is that a crazy idea? We could find jobs anywhere. The world is our oyster.”

Abbey rubbed his stomach. “I didn't know we were… I thought this was…”

“A European fling?”

“Not that I wanted it to be. Where do you want to go?”

“Wherever you are.”

Abbey stopped rubbing. “The Bay Area. I have a series of interviews lined up out there. But I thought you were bound to Cambridge for law school.”

“I got dinged.”

“I'm sorry.”

“I've got a few months, then I'll apply again. I could rewrite my essays in Northern California while I stump for a state senator.”

She resumed her rubs. “Then that's what we'll do. Together.”

“That was easy.” He sank into the mattress.

As Jed brushed the hair off her forehead, Abbey pointed at the actors’ slow thrusting on the screen. “We could do better than that.” Her caresses moved to his waistband.

Jed perked up. “You ready to try? Even though you're scared about your fertility?”

Abbey unzipped his jeans. “I talked to my doctor, you talked to yours. We've got the pill, the diaphragm, the spermicide, and the condoms. And my period should arrive the day after tomorrow. So if I get pregnant tonight, then in nine months, I'm giving birth to Jesus.”

Jed peeled off his Hoyas t-shirt, uncovering his strong chest. “I'd be so proud.”

They helped each other remove the rest of their clothes, prepared the array of prophylactics, and then sat cross-legged on the bed, naked and afraid of what to do next.

A squadron of fighter jets flew across the laptop screen.

“I’ve fantasized about this moment a thousand times,” Jed confessed. 

“Then why are you nervous?”

“I never thought my dream would come true.”

Abbey crawled across the lumpy comforter. She climbed into Jed's lap, her bare bottom pressed atop his firm thighs. She brushed her thumb across his lips before she gave them a soft kiss. “Show me your fantasy.”

Jed returned the kiss, leaning back and spreading Abbey's legs so that she could straddle him.

Abbey continued the smooches. Her brown legs slid along his pale legs as she settled her curvy body on top of Jed.

Jed placed his hands on Abbey's round bottom, massaging her meaty cheeks, urging her hips closer to his.

Abbey positioned her pussy lips along her boyfriend's wrapped shaft.

The two moaned and squirmed and panted on the bed, enhancing the friction between them, until Jed entered Abbey. 

“Is this okay?” he asked her.

She nodded, balancing on top of him, squeezing Jed's staff deeper in her cavern. “Yes.” 

They moved together, each experimenting with rhythms that pleased the other, exploring the oscillations that brought them satisfaction.

“This is really good,” Abbey giggled, rocking back and forth on Jed. “You're good at this.”

He kept his hands on her hips. “You had doubts?”

“I had hopes. You surpassed them.” Abbey grasped his hand. “I'm close. Rub my clit.”

He complied.

She came.

He held her while she shook, her large brown breasts wobbling near his nose. As she slumped forward with relief, Jed sucked on a nipple, if only to prevent his girlfriend's bosom from smothering him.

Though the sucking was appreciated, Abbey pulled herself away. “You need to cum.” She shifted position, spinning to sit on his cock in reverse cowgirl. 

“I need you, Abbey.” Jed petted her moist back as she gyrated on his rod. He reached around to thumb her clit, generating a mewling sound from her lips.

Jed felt his girlfriend's walls pulsating around his cock once again. “Abbey, I'm gonna cum!”

She couldn't respond, as she concentrating on trapping his thumb against her clit, since she was about to explode as well.

The weak bed creaked on the dorm room floor as the couple's orgasms ebbed and flowed and created and swelled and eventually allayed into a quiet bliss.

Abbey lay down and found her way into Jed's arms. Sticky and gratified, they held each other, listening to their hearts beat, amazed that this moment was actually happening. It was real.