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Larisa sat alone at the Vbar coffee shop down on Sullivan Street. She drank her skinny latte and chewed on the pumpkin flavored granola that she packed away in a small Ziploc bag before she left her apartment.
The place was sort of empty for a Thursday morning. Typically, just finding a chair was a challenge. But on that day, there were enough empty seats to make one wonder.
Maybe it had something to do with the relatively warm weather. Forty degrees may have seemed like arctic temperatures in places like Boca Raton or Palm Springs but when it came to the city in January, it seemed rather temperate.
Larisa wore her lucky turtleneck shirt. The fabric pressed hard against her small love handles but she liked the way that her large breasts burst through the thin lilac cotton.
Across her left finger she wore the antique brass ring that she received from her aunt Rebecca only a few months before she passed away from stage three Leukemia. The two of them were never that close but for some strange manner, Larisa felt safe when wearing that ring. It almost felt like someone was watching over her from above.
The radio was playing soft classical music. She always preferred the piano to the violin.
Around 11:30am, Jake walked into the place.
“Hey, what’s going on?” He asked in his typical Jake shyness.
She pretended as if she did not notice, but she did notice, she noticed just as soon as the door opened, just as soon as he walked in. Her heart beat like an African drum to the sound of her enthusiasm. She did her best to seem aloof.
“Not to much, what are you doing here?” What a stupid reply, she thought. She only wished she could take it back and start off with something more meaningful.
“Oh, you know, just getting some coffee. Hanging out. Trying to avoid work, the usual, you know.” Hey smiled and then turned towards the book that Larisa was reading. He could not make it out. “What are you reading there? Is this fun reading or something for school?”
“Oh trust me, this is definitely not for fun, this is for Schiller’s class. The book is called Journey to the End of the Night. Louis-Ferdinand Celine wrote it. He was a French writer from back in the day. Schiller is making us read it for his seminar. The book is kind of heavy reading if you ask me. I am only on page 58 and I have to write a paper on this stupid book by Monday afternoon.”
“Oh I love that book,” he smiled, “I read it over the summer. It’s a classic. I am sure that you will eventually change your mind. Celine was a freaking genius. He is definitely one of my favorite authors along with Bukowski and Philip Roth.
Once again, she felt inadequate. Jack was a deep guy. He must have thought that she was boring. There were not many people like him around campus. While all the other boys were always busy with getting drunk and trying to fuck anything and anyone that walked, Jake read books, played the guitar and always had something smart to say.
Larisa and Jake were not good friends. They weren’t really friends at all. They sort of knew each other from some of the classes that everyone took during freshman and sophomore years at New York University. The two of them never really hung out. Yea, there was that one time when Professor Falica took them all out for beers to celebrate the end of the semester but they sat on the opposite corners of the long rectangular table. Jake sat next to the professor and argued with him about something that seemed rather intellectual. She on the other end and on the other side of the table sat with Jenny Crugerman and Stephanie Sigel and engaged in the same old discussion about where to go out that weekend and how cute this boy was over the next. She recalled just how much she hated life on that particular night. Everyone around her seemed so similar to one another. No one ever had anything interesting or original to say and neither did she.
But on that rather warm Thursdays like that Thursday, things would be different. Sometimes life intervened in one’s favor. At least that was the way she felt as Jake slid his tall chair along her outer thigh.
The sat around for a while and talked about the kind of things that people around their age spoke about. While Jake had much to say about everything, she focused on her smile. A guy like Jake was full of theories about life. He had read important books. He had already managed to backpack all across Europe and the Yucatan Peninsula. Larisa has never been anywhere. She did not read any important books nor did she have anything smart to add to Jake’s many worldly observations.
She smiled and nodded her head. She pretended to keep up with the conversation but what she was actually attempting to do more than anything else was to seem much smarter than she actually felt.
Jake was a nice guy. He lit with enthusiasm. He treated her to a cup of herbal tea and later they split a double chocolate brownie that made her feel that much better.
When they walked into his apartment, she was overly impressed by the paintings that were displayed all across the studio apartment’s walls. Jake had painted these during the summer he spent out in Florence Italy. She could only hope for such adventures or such talent.
Jake took out a painted glass pipe from the drawer of his desk. Thick green marijuana spilled out of a round plastic container into a pure piece of notebook paper. Jake broke the plant into small pieces and placed them into the pipe as he lit it up.
Larisa observed the slow moving dials of the living room clock that indicated that noon was just around the corner. A bit early in the day for pot smoking she suspected. She has only smoked pot a few times before and could never really get high. But Jake offered and so she accepted. For him, she would climb a tall white mountain only if to see him at the top.
As the smoke made its way through her system, Jake inserted his intellectual tongue into her ordinary mouth. It tasted like knowledge. It carried an older texture along its cress. His kiss was more mature than that of most boys who had kissed her before.
As he slowly massaged her breasts and licked the tips of her nipples, Larisa could feel her back twist and twirl like a drunken ally cat. Panic settled in all across her inner thighs. Things were moving way too quickly. But she knew that she would never get a second chance. She knew that Jake was different than most of the other boys she came across. And besides, she was in New York City. Her parents lived more than two hours away. No one would ever find out, she suspected.
Despite several attempts to keep her underwear on, Larisa had no real chance. Jake’s persistence that he attributed to them Marijuana and to the fact that he absolutely loved her body and must have had a taste of her inner salty flesh, that was all way too much. Despite the mastery of his tongue, she could not help but to worry about just how bad it must have tasted. She did not want to loose Jake as a result of his body’s saltiness.
Jake asked her if she preferred for him to be on top or at the bottom. She did not know what was the right answer and so she told him to simply have his way. He took a condom out of his bedroom drawer and asked Larisa to place it across her larger than usual cock.
While he moaned in pleasure, she just closed her eyes and thought about what life would be like if Jake decided to make her his girlfriend and the two of them would be known amongst her girlfriends as a leading couple of the overall popularity scale.
While Jake took his time, soaping up in the shower, Larisa fixed her makeup and dried her long brown hair.
Low cumulous clouds came down on the streets of New York City; the sun was slowly disappearing despite the early hour of the day. As the temperatures plummeted down back to the ordinary low thirties, Larisa walked towards her university dorm room and wondered if Jake would ever call her up again for a second date.
Regardless of anything that he may do or would have done, nothing really mattered for during that brief moment that for the first time in her life, Larisa felt like she was alive.
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