Tuesday morning after Memorial Day weekend, Lower East Side

“We were talking about orgasms.”

Jules almost coughed out the caramel latte that filled her mouth.  Orgasm talk this early in the morning?  Seriously?

She’d overheard it from the loud conversation the group of grad-school level film students with oh-so-serious faces were having a few feet from the entrance to the busy Starbucks branch in St. Marks Place.  They were standing in a loose circle around a girl casually perched on a bar stool.   Jules tended to drop by this branch to get her latte or cappuccino fix before continuing on to the martial arts studio of her Krav Maga instructor in the Lower East Side.   She’d noticed this group of film students had begun to hang out at this Starbucks more frequently over the last six months.   They all turned to look at Jules now with varying expressions that ranged from curiosity to irritation as she gagged while swallowing her coffee.

Jules had overheard enough of their conversations over the past six months to know that they were each working on film projects to fulfill academic requirements.   At times, their tortured “film as art talk” had been merely amusing.  At other times, mildly irritating.  Thankfully this morning they’d clearly switch gears to a more interesting topic.   Sex talk in a coffee shop early in the morning, though.  What a way to start the week.

She gave them a quick grin, and wiped off the drops of latte that had spurted onto her warm-up jacket zipped half way up.  “Don’t mind me,” she told them, as she grabbed a few more paper napkins to wipe herself with.

The girl half-sitting on the bar stool leaned to her right to get a better look at Jules.  She pushed aside the guy standing in front of her who was obstructing her view.  She’d seen Jules many times in the café before, and knew the slim, sexy charmer with silky chestnut brown hair that fell softly past her shoulders and whose pair of strong eyebrows, and pretty, smiling dark eyes that could bewitch anybody didn’t tend to stop for long once she’d picked up her coffee drink from the barista.  She’d exchanged quick glances before with this mysterious girl, and every time their eyes had met, she’d felt a pleasing frisson of excitement.