Free Summer in the City by Kojo Black

Chapter 1
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Meeting Stephanie
    They say that winter in the city can be a miserable affair. Expressions change. Faces become grim, stuffed down into the collars of overcoats. No one celebrates their body in winter. They celebrate resistance—if grim survival can be celebratory. But that’s why I’ve come now and not then. Even in the city the air smells like flowers. Chestnut blossoms dust the pavement and the girls who walk over them move like willows. Their short, loose skirts whispering over their buttocks and fluttering about their soft, strong thighs. In the afternoon heat, from my shaded seat outside the café, I notice the girls. And I notice that the girls are not annoyed when I look.
    They have not dressed to be plain and they expect to be noticed. I notice them pass, but without lechery in my eyes. They needn’t know the secret heat of my maleness, as the singly sentient member tightens both itself and the fabric of my jeans. And so they smile sweetly back at me as I smile sweetly at them. They cannot know how the heat of the day and the delight that I find in the mystery of their beings fills me with a lust that needs to be celebrated just as roundly as the winter’s defeat. Or perhaps they do. Perhaps they are aching deliriously to celebrate the heat, and the sun, and the freedom of unclothed bodies and warm skin. Perhaps it’s all a game—all of us tucking in and restraining our panting heat until we can’t take it anymore. And all the while the heavy heat between the walls of the city taunts us, moistens us, draws us out.
    Having briefly put my gaze back down into my magazine, I was startled to see her making her way toward me—where a few seconds ago the footpath had been empty. Her long, dark hair fell in waves down over her shoulders. The creamy, honey-tinted flesh of her slightly over-prominent breasts rose out of the low-cut valley of her diaphanous, sleeveless blouse. Her breasts swayed and bounced in time with every step, every bend of smooth knees, and every sure footfall. Her pretty, short skirt swished in a counter-rhythm to the movement of her breasts and the soft exchange of her thighs. She looked down at her breasts for a moment, as girls will do when they walk in light clothes, to see if their motion was unseemly. The motion was far from unseemly. I found her beautiful. And so her own research must have found also, for she continued to walk with the same easy, merry, unhurried gait which caused her contours to wiggle seductively.
    In another few steps my gaze met hers and she smiled at me. I returned a smile as she drew closer and then parallel to my chair, preparing to pass me forever and glide on through the baking city. But as she drew alongside me, a strap from her shoulder bag caught the wicker backing of my chair. She let out a small cry of surprise as the bag was jerked suddenly from her shoulder and into my world. The bag became amorphous as it tumbled from her control. It fell to the ground, expelling a phone, some lipstick, a book by Isabel Allende, mascara, and a few other sundries.
    I leapt quickly out of my seat and knelt down to help her recover her items. Her brief shock gave way to an expression of wry embarrassment, as if she found the whole thing funny—which it was. Though she was aware that she might be just a fraction less cool than she had been a short while ago. But, for the sun and the heat and the ardour of the city in summer, neither of us minded at all. She knelt too and began to scramble for her belongings. Her skirt rode up high on her legs as she did so. Although she made a vague attempt at modesty, I saw that her thighs were strong and smooth. So smooth, in fact, that they gleamed in the afternoon sun.
    She had collected her things and prepared to move along. And I nearly waved her goodbye. But I stopped. Instead, I asked her who Isabel Allende was. And then I asked her if she’d have a drink with me.