Initial Public Offering

He reaches across and thumbs one of her nipples through her blouse.

"I think there's only one way to find out," he says.

*

He was immediately charmed by the change in her, the maturity, an ebullience that hadn't been present when she was a mere twenty-three, gorgeous but slightly grimy, rarely smiling. She wore a pair of daring low-rise jeans—well, not daring, he thought, if one looked like her—that bared that area of hip bones hollowing in towards belly that he found so incredibly erotic. As if ten years hadn't passed, once again he had to will himself not to stare. Then something occurred to him, a risk of sorts, but he also felt that he really had nothing to lose; seeing her again reminded him vividly of how far out of his league he was with a woman who looked as she looked. As they waited just inside the restaurant door for the hostess to return and seat them, he said to her softly, "The only way I'm going to be able to avoid staring at your gorgeous midriff is by concentrating instead on your breasts. Just so you know." And she burst out laughing, nudging him hard with her shoulder.

They talked easily, and laughed a great deal more, and by the time they left the restaurant, he felt more happiness for having had the opportunity to see her than disappointment about any romantic ideas he may have harbored. By chance, she had parked next to him, and they embraced between her van and his car, a real embrace, a holding-on of several seconds, his right hand flat against the bare small of her back, that lovely valentine dip at the top of her bottom. They broke, she kissed him lightly on the lips, and they parted. As she walked to the other side of her van, he paused by his own car door, his back to her; something, he thought, something... He wouldn't turn and look, he decided. He unlocked his car as he heard her door slam. Then, before he got in, her voice: "Hey!" Her passenger window was down and she was leaning toward it.

"You got a minute?"

"Sure." He stood at the open window.

"There was something I wanted to tell you about and I forgot amidst everything else we talked about."

"What was that?"

The sky, which all day had been clouded a uniform, pearly gray, had been darkening quickly in the last few minutes, and as he stood by her van, he looked up at the first sweeps of bruise-blue clouds moving more swiftly above them. A large drop landed on his shoulder, then another on his sleeve, and his shirt seemed to bloom with the small, dark flowers of sporadic raindrops.

"You'd better get in," she said, and he left off his examination of the darkness sliding across the busy summer sky and looked at her. She looked straight back. She smiled.