I first met her in a McDonald's in downtown Atlanta. I'd walked over there on my lunch break, intending to down some greasy, overcooked, under-flavored swill. The American way, right??

Anyway, this Mickey D's, located in the heart of the Georgia Tech area was always swamped at lunch. While I waited, I enjoyed the view in front of me. Two young, shapely female forms, obviously college girls. One blonde, one brunette. The blonde had short, boyish hair, while the brunette's was tightly curled in a perm, the kind popular about ten years ago. For some reason, I found it strangely appealing, and I continued to stare at both girls from behind -- but mostly the brunette -- as the line inched forward.

It was a hot summer day, the kind we get plenty of in Atlanta. My new friend was wearing short denim shorts and a white T-shirt, and I enjoyed the view of her shapely, well-defined legs and the ample curves of her ass as we waited for our cholesterol-laden meals.

Finally, the two co-eds reached the counter and placed their orders. The clerk slid two drink cups across the counter, and the blonde picked them up. "I'll get our drinks, Laurie. Diet, right?" she asked.

The brunette -- Laurie, I knew now -- nodded. "I'll wait for the bag, meet me out front."

In another minute or so, the clerk handed a brown McDonald's bag to Laurie, and I felt a flash of disappointment that I was going to lose my enjoyable view. She grabbed the bag and swiveled on her sandals to leave. I slid to the left to allow her room to pass; however, just as she started to step forward, so did a construction worker in the next line, trying to steal my spot at the register. Laurie didn't see him.

Her left foot came down awkwardly on his heavy construction boot, and she stumbled, the bag falling from her hand as she tripped forward.

On instinct, my right arm shot out and I caught Laurie around the waist, swinging her up and against the side of my body to keep her from falling. I felt the full weight of her breast pressing against my ribcage, and my cock swelled and throbbed inside my khakis.

"Whoa," I said, releasing my grip on her midsection and picking up her bag from the floor. "That was close!"

"Mmm hmmm," she said, taking the bag from me. "Nice catch," she said, smiling at me. Her light brown eyes sparkled with amusement, and I was captivated by them for a second.

"Oh, it was my pleasure," I said. Maybe I put too much emphasis on the "my," for she blushed, looking even cuter. Then she moved on through the crowd and out the door.

I ordered (and ate) my lunch in a daze, still imagining her blush and the feel of her body pressed against mine. I was useless the rest of the day, my mind filled with prurient thoughts of Laurie.

That night, I masturbated furiously as soon as I got home, picturing those eyes and imagining her lips wrapped around my cock.

It was the first time I'd felt alive -- truly alive -- since my divorce, nearly a year ago.

My marriage didn't even make it to the eleven-month mark. I came home early one day from work, intending to surprise Marla. I thought we might go to an early dinner and a movie, have one of those romantic nights like when we were dating.

She was surprised, all right. So was I.

And so was my neighbor Tim, who was furiously fucking my wife, doggy-style, Marla bent over the kitchen table.

Unbelievably, Tim pulled his dick out of Marla and actually tried to apologize to me. Apologize while he was standing there naked in my kitchen, his cock still hard and red and slick from my wife's pussy. I punched him in the mouth, knocking him to his bare ass on the kitchen tile.

Strangely, Marla said nothing. She just stayed where she was, cheek pressed against the laminate surface of the kitchen table, ass sticking up in the air, her pussy obscenely on display. It was a scene that would replay in my nightmares for months to come.

So, at 27, I was divorced. Damaged goods.

After the divorce, and the sale of the house, and the division of our possessions, I knew I couldn't stay in Chapel Hill. Too many bad memories, too many common friends between Marla and I. How could I face people who knew what had happened? I had to leave.

The only place I had any contacts was Atlanta, and even though I'd vowed to never live in that off-ramp of a city, I had no choice. So two months after catching Marla and Tim red-handed (or was it red-genital-ed?), I found myself teaching undergrad engineering courses at Georgia Tech.

The money was better than I'd made at UNC, and I wasn't tenure track there anyway. It was more expensive to live there than North Carolina, but Marla didn't fight for alimony, so I found a townhouse outside the beltway that fit within my budget. It meant a half hour each way on the MARTA train every day, but that was a hell of a lot better than fighting traffic all the way into the city.

The workload was heavier at Tech; I was teaching three courses instead of two. But I didn't care. I had only one friend in Atlanta, had no interest in dating, and just wanted one day to pass into the next. I really wanted the world to just leave me the hell alone. Fuck Marla, fuck Tim, fuck them all.

Thoughts of suicide entered my mind more than once; and if I'd had a supply of sleeping pills or a gun, who knows what might have happened.

Yet somehow, Laurie got to me. The mere sight of her had awakened feelings I'd thought were gone forever. Over the next few days, I felt like a teenager again -- I was horny all the time. I masturbated as soon as I got home from work. I wanked off in a bathroom stall at work. I stopped wearing underwear, just because. For the next three days, I was hard the entire ride on the MARTA train, thinking about what I'd do when I got home.

I went to Mickey D's for lunch every day that week, but never saw Laurie or her friend. I did, however, see the construction worker that'd tripped Laurie; I wondered, should I thank him??

Thursday, three days after I'd seen Laurie in the McDonald's, my cock was hard and throbbing, crying out for release as I found a seat on MARTA's North Line. I had just placed my backpack in my lap, trying to cover the embarrassing lump in my pants, when I felt the bench seat move as someone sat down next to me.

"Well, well, if it isn't my hero," she said.

I turned my head to see Laurie sitting next to me, a smile quirking up at the corners of her lovely mouth. I swallowed with some difficulty, and I felt my cock get even harder.

"H... Hi," I stammered out.

"I'm Laurie," she said, extending her hand. "From the McDonald's the other day?"

"Of course," I said, as if I could have forgotten. I took her hand in my own; her skin was smooth and soft and cold and her nails were tapered and painted a lovely shade of pink. "I'm Jack. Jack Wilson."

"Good to meet you, Jack," she said.

"You too," I said, functioning on auto-pilot as I checked her out. She was dressed similarly to how she had been on Monday, this time wearing a grey Tech t-shirt and pale denim shorts.

We rode in silence for a few minutes, the train car noisily clicking and clacking over the rails. I racked my brain trying to think of intelligent conversation, something to say to this lovely girl sitting next to me.

"So..." we both started at once, and then laughed. My anxiety level dropped a notch. "Go ahead," she said, still chuckling.

I nodded at her chest, then immediately blushed. "Are you... a Tech student?" I asked.

Her smile widened a bit before she answered; I wondered if she'd figured out the reason for my blush. "Yes," she said, finally. "I'm in the architecture masters program."

"Ah, good program," I said. My heart lifted a bit at the news she was a grad student; I didn't feel like quite as much of a pervert anymore.

"And you?" she asked.

"Other side of the lectern," I said, smiling. "I teach in Mechanical Engineering."

Laurie blinked, looking at the backpack on my lap. "You're a professor? You don't look any older than me."

I grinned. "Thank you. I'm not tenure track or even a Ph.D. yet. So technically, I'm an 'instructor, ' not a 'professor.'"

"Do you like it?" she asked.

Still a little on auto-pilot, I answered honestly. "It's okay. The department was better at UNC, but I had to leave North Carolina."

"Why? Were you wanted by the law there? For seducing your students or something?" she said, winking at me.

I laughed out loud, causing the other passengers on the train to stare at me. "No, nothing that exciting. I needed to move because... because of... personal reasons," I said, lamely.

"Ah, I see," Laurie said. Her eyes flickered downwards towards my left hand, which was resting on top of my backpack. If I hadn't been watching her eyes so closely, I might have missed it.

The awkward silence that followed was broken by the electronic voice over the speakers. "Dunwoody, next stop. Doors open to your right. Dunwoody, next."

"My stop," Laurie said, nodding towards the exit doors. She gathered up her backpack and stood to leave.

"I've got two more to go, I'm at North Springs," I said. I tried to think of something else to add, but by then the train had stopped and the flow of passengers was carrying Laurie towards the exit. "Have a good evening," she called out over her shoulder.

"You too," I said. As the river of passengers continued to pour out of the train, I craned my neck around to get one final glance at Laurie. Squinting my eyes against the bright sun, I saw her walk up and greet the same blonde girl she'd been with at lunch the other day. The two of them moved off towards the parking lot as the train moved off again.

As soon as I got home, of course, the first thing I did was masturbate, thinking of Laurie's firm tits underneath her GT shirt.

The second thing I did was look up Georgia Tech's employee handbook online; specifically the section entitled "Consensual Romantic Relationships." I found this enlightening:

"It is the policy of the Georgia Institute of Technology that employees (including faculty) may not engage in consensual romantic or sexual relationships when one party to the relationship is a supervisor who supervises, evaluates, or grades the other party."

"Supervises, evaluates, or grades, a-ha!" I said out loud, startling my cat, who glared at me with heavy-lidded eyes.

Friday, I practically skipped to the MARTA station and boarded the train, sitting near to the spot where we'd sat the day before. Again, I swung my backpack onto my lap and looked around for Laurie.

By the time the train started moving, I still hadn't seen her, and my heart sank. Then I realized that I had no idea what her schedule was. Unlike me, she didn't have scheduled office hours every afternoon; she might not even have classes every day.

*I might not ever see her again!* I thought with a start. *What if she doesn't normally ride the train at 5:00? What if Thursday she was delayed because she had a meeting with a professor or something? I don't even know her last name! I won't be able to find her!*

I spent a fitful weekend with thoughts like that, and also downloaded lots of teacher/student stories off A.S.S.M. to keep myself "occupied" over the weekend.

Monday, I was completely unprepared for my classes, and gave the students a "reading day," basically just an excuse to goof off. They took it.

When 5:00 rolled around, I raced to the MARTA North Avenue station. I was thrilled to see Laurie passing through the turnstiles, swiping her TransCard just a few people ahead of me.

She turned to the left, riding down the escalator towards the northbound line, and I hurried to catch up with her.

I got on the escalator behind her and admired the graceful curve of her neck beneath her brown curls. "Hi Laurie," I said.

She turned her head and smiled at me. "Well hi, Professor Jack."

I laughed. "I'm only an instructor, I told you."

"But 'Instructor Jack' doesn't have the same ring to it," she said, laughing as we stepped off the escalator onto the station platform.

"True," I said. "So how about just plain ol' 'Jack'?"

"Fair enough," she said.

We paused our conversation as the northbound train screamed and shrieked its way into the station, and we boarded. I waved her towards one of the last empty seats and stood next to her.

Laurie leaned over to put her TransCard in her backpack. Her pale green polo pulled away from her body, and I realized that I could see straight down her shirt! Her bra was white and lacy, and I stared at the upper curves of her alabaster breasts.

Predictably, my cock swelled inside my pants, and I was still going without underwear. I'd found that I liked the sensation, and so far I'd been able to keep things "under control" during the day, or at least hide behind the lectern if a female student in the front row wore a particularly short skirt!

Now, however, I had a different problem. My crotch was pretty much directly at Laurie's eye level! I felt my dick pressing out against the fabric of my pants, and I quickly swung my own backpack off my shoulder, clutching it against my midsection.

Of course, with all this going on, I wasn't exactly clutching the handrail very tightly. I staggered a little bit when the train started moving, but caught my balance before I toppled onto Laurie and the woman sitting next to her.

Laurie looked up at me, smiling. "Thought I might have to catch you this time!"

"Nah, I wouldn't do that to you. So, I missed you here on Friday," I said, in a burst of honesty.

Her smile widened, her eyes twinkled. "You did?"

I nodded.

"How sweet. But I don't come to campus on Friday, no classes."

"Ah," I said. "What about the other four days?"

"Yep," she said, giving me a quick rundown of her schedule. Turns out she had morning and afternoon classes on Monday and Wednesday, and afternoon only classes on Tuesday and Thursday. "So, I'm usually on the train right about now... obviously," she said.

"Same here," I said, giving her a quick rundown of my schedule. Teaching four days a week, with office hours or class in the afternoon every day.

Over the next twenty minutes, we chatted as the train clattered along the northbound line. Laurie's seatmate exited the train at the Buckhead stop, so I sat down next to her. I lost my view down her shirt, but at least I didn't have to worry about poking her eye out anymore!

I asked Laurie if she was from Atlanta originally. Turns out that she was from south Florida, and had come to Georgia Tech as an undergraduate on a diving scholarship. *That explains her shapely legs, * I thought to myself.

"So, after I got my bachelor's degree, I was already used to living here in Atlanta, and I decided just to stay at Tech for grad school," she said.

I nodded. "Do you still dive?"

"Not on the Tech team," she said. "My scholarship was undergrad only. But I still fool around on the board once in a while, just to keep my skills up."

"What about you?" she continued. "I think you said you're from North Carolina?"

I winced. How much to tell her? "Yeah, that's right. Originally from Virginia, but I went to UNC for my master's, and they offered me a job after grad. But I like it better here, anyway," I finished.

I glanced out the window. We were pulling into the Dunwoody station. Laurie gathered up her backpack and placed a hand on my forearm as she stood.

"Good to see you again, Jack. Same time, same place, tomorrow?"

"Absolutely."

She waved goodbye and stepped out the doors. I lost sight of her for a few moments in the mass of passengers exiting the train. As we started moving again, I caught sight of Laurie, her distinctive curls bouncing in the summer breeze. She was already off the platform today, walking down towards the Hammond Drive exit, away from the parking lot.

The next day, I was better prepared for class, and my mind was a little more settled. Now that I knew Laurie's schedule, I felt that we could settle into a bit of a routine. I didn't know what I was going to do with that knowledge; I still didn't feel ready to ask Laurie out anytime soon. I didn't even know if she had a boyfriend.

But, at least I knew when I would see her again. Sure enough, she was on the North Avenue platform when I got there that afternoon.

"Hi," she said. "Glad to see you."

"You too," I said honestly.

"I got out of class a little early today, so I could have taken the last train. But I thought I'd wait to see if you'd show up in time for the next one," she said, smiling at me and blushing a little.

I felt my own cheeks heating. "Aww, thanks Laurie. That's sweet."

The train came within a few minutes and we boarded, finding two seats next to each other this time. Once the chaos of boarding had ended, I asked her about the previous afternoon. "I saw you walking out of the station yesterday," I said. "Do you park at Perimeter Mall or something?"

"You watched me?" she asked.

"Well, I mean, I just happened to see you as the train pulled away."

Laurie smiled. "Oh, okay. Well anyway, my roommate and I ride together and park at the station in the mornings. But on Monday and Wednesday, Janey doesn't get out of class until 7:30. So I leave the car for her and walk home."

"Oh, I see. Where do you live?"

"Meadowview Apartments. Just off Ashford-Dunwoody Road, at Meadow Lane. So I cut through the mall parking lot and then down Ashford-Dunwoody."

I nodded. The Perimeter Mall was adjacent to the Dunwoody MARTA station. Then I did some quick calculations in my head.

"That's a decent hike, especially in this weather. It must be over a mile," I said.

"It is, just over," she agreed. "But I wear comfy shoes, see?" she said, extending one long, shapely leg and rotating her ankle to show off her Nike Air sneaker.

I nodded. Distracted by the view of her leg, and the fact that her skirt slid up her thigh a bit, I didn't think about what I said next. Which is probably why I said it.

"If you want, I could give you a ride home on Mondays and Wednesdays. I mean, if you don't mind riding up to my stop?"

Laurie grinned. "Really? I don't want to inconvenience you, but it'd be nice not to have to make that walk twice a week."

"It's no problem. I live up off Roberts, so you're not even ten minutes away from me."

The next day, she rode with me to the North Springs station, and I drove her home. She complimented my car, which I'd just had washed and waxed and vacuumed that morning, knowing Laurie'd be in it.

It took about 15 minutes to get from the station to her apartment complex. It was a typical suburban Atlanta development, not much different than mine. A set of twelve wood-sided buildings in a circle around a central tennis court, pool, and clubhouse. Laurie's building was around the back, facing the parking lot.

I dropped her off, and she thanked me profusely for the ride. I stared at her lovely ass as she walked up the sidewalk to her front door.

Thursday, the train station was much more crowded than usual. There'd been a stoppage on the northbound line earlier, and so there was a backlog of passengers waiting on the platform. I found Laurie in the crowd just as a train arrived in the station.

The crowd pushed and jostled towards the open doors and I was bumped from behind, shoving my hips up against Laurie's ass. "Sorry," I mumbled, embarrassed.

She didn't answer, just reached back with her hand, and took mine in hers. Her hand was soft and cool in my own, and I let her lead me into the train.

We were both forced to stand for the entire ride, the train as crowded as could be. It was loud, hot, and generally just unpleasant. Laurie and I weren't able to have a conversation, as we were separated by a couple of other passengers.

"See you Monday," she called out, as she exited the train with dozens of other people at Dunwoody. I watched through the window as she greeted Janey and the two of them walked down the platform to the steps. As the train started moving again, Laurie turned her head around and waved, and I felt my heart lift.

We continued in this pattern for a few weeks, and just generally got to know each other better. I'd say we became friends, even.

My mood always lifted on Mondays and Wednesdays, and then kind of plummeted after Thursday afternoon, when I knew I wouldn't see Laurie again for three days.

One Saturday, about a month after we'd met, was no different. I moped around my apartment for most of the day, in a funk. Finally, around 4:00, I headed out to do some errands I'd been postponing for most of the day.

After getting my car washed, dropping off some dry cleaning, and stopping at Home Depot, Target, and Best Buy, I was headed back towards home past the Perimeter Mall.

Just around the corner from Laurie's apartment.

Not sure why, I made the left turn to cut through the mall parking lot, and a few minutes later, I was at the entrance to Meadowview Apartments.

I drove through the parking lot, slowly. It was dusk, the streetlights just beginning to come on.

As I made the turn around the final corner, I saw something that made my heart skip a beat. A guy, obviously dressed for a Saturday night date, was heading up the walkway towards Laurie's apartment.

"Shit!" I said aloud. I drove past the parking spaces for Laurie's apartment, glancing to my left. The guy was about halfway up the sidewalk.

I drove on to the next curve, and pulled into one of the parking spaces facing the grassy area between Laurie's building and the next. From here, I was about perpendicular to the sidewalk leading to her front door, and about 40 yards away. I watched as the guy walked up to the door and knocked. I couldn't see the door open from my vantage point, but a minute or so later, he stepped inside.

"Shit! Damn! Shit!" I said, uselessly, banging my hands on the steering wheel. What right did I have to be so upset? I hadn't ever asked Laurie out, hadn't ever hinted that I might ask her out. This might be her long-term boyfriend, for all I knew.

I sat there in my car, the engine still running, going through all the possibilities in my head. Should I run up there and knock on the door, interrupting her date? Ridiculous.

Should I pound on the door and declare my undying love for her? Preposterous.

Before my brain could spit out any more garbage, I saw Janey, Laurie's roommate, step out of the apartment, followed by the Mystery Guy. She took his hand as they walked down the sidewalk, and I could see her saying something back towards the apartment door, though I couldn't see if Laurie was standing there.

I exhaled, forcefully, as the two of them drove off. He was Janey's date, or boyfriend, or whatever. Thank goodness!

Now, I was faced with a different dilemma. Should I go knock on the door? Pretend I was in the neighborhood and decided to "drop in," which was pretty much the truth?

After debating this for a few more minutes, I decided to give it a shot. Unbuckling my seat belt and turning off the motor, I climbed out of the car and strode across the lawn towards Laurie's building.

About halfway across the green expanse, however, I lost my nerve. I swiveled on one foot and practically ran back to my car. Starting the engine, I raced home, tears stinging my eyes.

My students got another "reading day" on Monday, as I'd spent all day Sunday in a useless funk. This thing with Laurie was starting to take over my life, and it was all in my head.