Chapter 1

I had never believed in love at first sight until the brunette with the mesmerizing gray eyes appeared. She arrived late; the party was already well underway. She wasn’t supermodel stunning; more like girl-next-door pretty. Beyond those eyes, her wide hips and lush, rounded bottom, sheathed in a tight print dress, would have made anyone sit up and take notice. At a party like this, she was clickbait for any guy with a ‘pointer’.

That would be Eddie Matthews. He was currently winding down his fifth year of college, no degree in sight, majoring in Drinking, Debauchery and Terrorizing Pledges and Other Underclassmen. He had been the bane of my existence from the moment I moved into the house until the moment I moved out. At that moment, he was, as was his wont, stupid-drunk. The object of his afflictions dismissed him with a toss of her dark-haired head. I didn’t have to be an expert lip-reader to see hers form the words “Take a hike, Buddy”.

Déjà vu. I had the feeling I had seen her somewhere before, but I couldn’t place her for the life of me.

Then our eyes met. I had drawn my fair share of attention from women before, although I didn’t seem to be anyone’s ‘type’. This woman’s reaction to me was completely new. Her eyes sparkled. Her nostrils flared. Her mouth curled into the most come-hither smile I had ever seen. The bigger surprise was that she made her way towards me, the expression on her face unchanged. Even from this angle, the sway of her full hips was hypnotic. My first impression was we were nearly the same height, but she currently towered over my five-foot-seven-inch frame in the sky-high heels she wore. That didn’t seem to deter her in the slightest.

“You are Michael Bennett,” she avowed without preamble. “My girlfriends and I watched you win the conference cross-country championship last month.”

Huh? Reality Check: No one but runners and coaches attends cross-country events. At best, we get a one-inch box story on the back page of the Sports section - unless that big sporting goods chain has pre-empted us with another full-page, four-color ad. We are the Black Hole of intercollegiate competition. We runners have come to accept that as a fact of life. Besides, if this woman had been anywhere near the finish line, I would have remembered. She sensed my thoughts and ratcheted up her smile a notch.

“Okay, I confess. We only saw you because the finish line was on the green, right across from Bradley Hall. We had a good view from our fourth-floor window. Even at that distance, I thought you were the prettiest boy I had ever seen. What’s not to like about that tight, compact body and all that thick, sandy blonde hair? You are even better up close and personal. Those azure eyes are simply amazing and that dimpled smile makes me tingle all over. You belong on a runway in New York or Paris.”

“Thank you,” I acknowledged; the only thing I could think to say. Then I added: “How did you know my name?”

“I asked around,” this amazing woman responded. “One of my sorority sisters mentioned you were a member of this house. I wouldn’t have shown up tonight otherwise, but if there was even a chance you might be here...”

‘Nuff said. We found a quiet corner, sipped, rather than guzzled our obligatory cups of punch (I know what goes into “Velvet Hammer”), conversed – and canoodled. Me? Canoodling with an attractive woman who was stone-cold attracted to me? That only happened in my dreams.

Don’t wake me up.

Her name was D’Arcy. She was a graduate student in Business, which meant she was a year older than me. She was sardined (“cozy”, she called it) into a townhouse near the business school campus with five other Wall Street wannabes. Three bedrooms, six women, one bathroom. Yeah, that’ll work...

“That’s not too far from me,” I commented, perhaps more hopefully than informatively. “At least it’s closer than this place.”

“You don’t live in your house either?” she queried, amazed at the coincidence.

“Nope,” I chirped. “I am fulfilling my filial obligation to show up. I’ll give them at least that much. After three and a half years of this madness, I bailed. You met one of the reasons why when you came in.”

“I see what you mean,” she posited knowingly. “I had only been here five minutes and I wanted to grab an assault rifle and go postal. In that case...”

She took my hand in hers and squeezed.

“ ... I feel doubly-blessed we hooked up tonight.”

She looked down at our hands, then held them up, palm to palm, comparing the two.

“We have the same hands,” she noted. “You have such long, tapered fingers for a boy. You would make a good pianist.”

“I’ve never played,” I admitted.

“Never played?” she challenged, eyes twinkling. “We’ll have to change that.”

Like most fraternities, the living room was decorated in Early Thrift Store. In front of us sat this old, ratty ottoman which weighed a ton. We were using it as a kinda-sorta coffee table, as everyone else had through the years. If the cup spilled, the stain would blend right in with all the rest - until the next Hell Week, when some hapless pledge would be assigned to clean it with an upholstery shampooer. I had.

When the music wasn’t abjectly awful, we got up and danced. Although we gyrated our way through a couple of fast numbers (I didn’t embarrass myself too badly), we really liked the slow songs. D’Arcy danced close; real close. During one number, we spooned; my front to her back, my hands on her hips, our lower bodies rocking in sync. She reached behind my head with one hand and pulled me in even tighter against her, gazing at me through heavy-lidded bedroom eyes over her shoulder. Up close, her dark hair was thick, lustrous and smelled of lavender and perfume. Even I could tell this, whatever it was, was something special.

We had just returned to our seats when Eddie staggered up, got right in my new acquaintance’s face and insisted she just had to dance with him the way she had with “the twerp”. As zoned-out as he was, it was amazing he could stand up at all. In his imagined glory of stealing my girl away from me, he didn’t notice the ottoman was right behind him. It only took one little push with the flat of my hand against his sternum. Doofus cartwheeled over backwards, arms flailing in empty air, only to land with a resounding thump like the proverbial sack of potatoes.

Remember that old commercial?

I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!

Yeah, it was like that.

“Nicely done, my prince,” my companion commented appreciatively, studying the spud stud laid out at our feet. “Now, be my knight in shining armor once more and rescue me from the rest of these drunken louts.”

Her kiss convinced me the night was young and so were we. I had a car. It was nothing fancy; four wheels and an engine that ran. My place was closer than hers; a one-bedroom with no roommates. I had lucked into it. A friend had graduated early; I took over the lease. We spent the night together, cuddling and getting to know one another. An only child, D’Arcy had been orphaned two years previously, no thanks to a drunk driver. Her parents’ life insurance and the meager equity return from the sale of the family home were keeping her in school, but she pinched every penny. She had to do well in her studies; there was no fallback option.