Gwendolyn
Copyright© 2026 by yfnsp
Chapter 1: Afar No More
Gwendolyn was, from the first time I saw her, an icon for me. A vision of perfection. She walked past me on the school grounds unconscious of the devastation in her wake, unaware of her radiance, unaware of me, though my breath might catch and my gait might falter.
I asked my brother Mitch about her. Like him, she was two years behind me in high school.
“Oh,” he said, when I described her as delicate and aloof, “that’s Gwen. You like her?”
I blushed. “I just think she’s really pretty.”
“I guess,” he replied, looking up from his phone. “No one wears their hair like that,” he opined. “Plus everyone says she’s conceited,” he added, with a further demonstration of tenth-grade conformity.
It was true. She wore her chestnut-brown hair much shorter than any of the other girls. Eschewing the ubiquitous long, drooping tresses, her cut left nothing to obscure or distract from the elegance of her jawline.
“Besides,” Mitch announced with finality, “she’s got no boobs!” He chuckled at this display of sophomoric wit.
I walked away, smiling to myself. I had not only learned her name, but I’d also found out that the secret of her allure was fairly safe.
Her breasts were admittedly small, but they were exquisitely shaped. Usually braless, she wore shirts that, when she moved her lithe torso in certain ways, the curve of one or the other of her perky cupcakes would be revealed, tipped by a sizeable nipple for anyone with eyes to notice.
And I noticed! She had an aura, at once childlike and wise, like a Botticelli madonna. The oval symmetry of her face was flawless; it needed no makeup. Except for the minimum of liner that accentuated her large, luminescent eyes, her face was naked, almost plain, displaying both innocence and a kind of self-possession.
It was on the first day of my junior year of college that I saw Gwen again.
It was a glimpse. It looked like her. I was walking across campus, heading back to my dorm. She was way on the other side of the quad and walking away on an almost perpendicular course, so it was odd I should notice her. I guess I had been operating an unconscious radar ever on alert for her.
I gripped the strap of my backpack to keep it from bouncing on my back and I took off at a run after her. But she turned the corner of the Psych building and was nowhere in sight when I got there.
My heart was pounding, and not from the run; I had run cross-country in high school and I had kept myself in pretty good shape. No, it was the thrill of seeing her. It brought back all my secret longings. I was anxious to see her again. Maybe I would speak to her for the first time.
There were several places she could have gone, so I just stood around hoping. I could see the doors of three campus buildings from my vantage point and I waited; if she had entered one of them, she would surely exit sometime. It was after four o’clock; all my plans for the rest of the day were forgotten. This was now my only priority.
After an eternity of twenty minutes or so, I spied her again, walking down the terraced steps of the Main Library carrying an armful of books. I raced to the foot of the steps to intercept her.
“Gwen!” I said, breathlessly.
She stopped and looked at me blankly. Several milliseconds beyond my tolerance for silence, she asked, “Do I know you?”
She was even more ravishing than I remembered. No wonder; she had been fifteen when I first noticed her and still only sixteen when I had last seen her. Now at eighteen, her beauty had been sharpened, distilled to a perfection even more perfect.
“Yes!” I said, “I mean, maybe ... probably not ... I mean, I know you ... That is, I know who ... We were in high school togeth...”
Finally, with great effort, got a grip. “I’m Jason Lecker. My brother Mitch was in your class?” I looked at her hopefully.
How could anyone look so gorgeous dressed in a plain white tank top and khaki shorts? And wearing no makeup? Her hair was a little longer now, tied back in a short pony tail, revealing cheekbones that makeup artists strived for on other women.
“Oh, sure, I know Mitch,” she confirmed, still looking at me suspiciously. “But I’ve never met you. Not that I remember.” She looked me over, exciting me with her glance. “I would have remembered,” she concluded with some finality.
“Uh, no,” I admitted, “we never met.” I felt myself blush. “I wanted to though.” I dropped my gaze. I stared at her feet. Perfect feet. Pretty toes peeking out from her open-toed sandals.
I must have piqued her curiosity. “What do you mean?” she asked, shifting her stack of books, three substantial tomes, from her left to her right arm.
“I, um...” I started after an awkward pause. “I was really shy in high school.”
Truthfully, I still felt a bit awkward at times, around women especially, but I had matured. Most of my acquaintances saw me as kind of nerdy, but nice, maybe a little standoffish. I was generally accepted but had no close friends.
“I have to sit down if we’re going to talk,” she said. She turned to the side of the stairway and sat on the grassy slope, placing her books on the ground beside her. We remained at eye level.
“I mean...” she began, stirring me with the thought that she was showing at least a little interest. “Why did you want to meet me?”
“I had a crush on you,” I confessed.
I sat down too, on the grass just below her feet. I hoped that sitting would disguise my growing erection.
“You had a crush on me, but you never even spoke to me?” she said, musing. She smiled a little. A corner of her cupid’s bow mouth curled. It was adorable.
“Wow! How shy were you?” she wondered aloud. “What made you ... how did you even notice me?”
“The first time was at track practice - I ran cross-country, so I wasn’t usually on the track, but I used to wait for Mitch in the bleachers after my run, and you caught my attention. I liked the way you moved.”