The Drafthouse - 3/4
V
At my insistence, we kept our little rendezvous a secret from the rest of our coworkers. At Ivy’s insistence, it happened again three nights later. And the following Thursday. Three weeks after our first night together, Ivy and I sat in our usual booth, eating “the leftovers.” As usual, she did most of the eating.
I was trying to eat my salad when Ivy’s foot touched my leg. Looking up, I watched her undo another button from her blouse. It took the lightest touch from her fingers for the tiny plastic circle to spring free of its buttonhole. When I managed to tear my eyes away from the alluring, bountiful mounds crammed into that blouse, I saw Ivy watching with her characteristic smirk.
“Wanna see something cool?”
Fully expecting her to keep undoing buttons right here in the restaurant, I looked around to make sure we were alone. Which, of course, we were—Luis had been the last to leave, at least half an hour ago. Instead, Ivy put my salad on the tray with her onion rings and calzone and slid out of the booth.
“Grab our drinks.”
I picked up the glasses—my IPA, her hard cider—and followed. Ivy led me down the concourse, up the stairs, and then to a second, smaller stairway. Reaching the top, she nudged the door handle with her hip and stepped out onto the roof.
The Drafthouse wasn’t a skyscraper or anything, but the roof was higher than a three-story building. I knew our small college town reasonably well, but seeing it from this vantage made everything seem different. Despite the light pollution, a blanket of stars covered the cloudless sky. With summer coming on, it was still warm, even at this hour.
Ivy carried her tray to a pair of old lawn chairs, the kind with the metal frame and nylon webbing. She set the tray on a little plastic table, then took the drinks from my hands. Unbuttoning her vest and draping it over a chair, she joined me in gazing over the city.
“Well?” She asked.
“You’re right; this is cool,” I said.
Her hip bumped into mine. “You’re a regular poet, Mitch.”
I struck a pose and did my best Jimmy Stewart impression. “What is it you want, Ivy? You want the moon? Just say the word! I’ll throw a lasso around it and pull her down!”
I’ve never thought of myself as funny, but I lived for the moments when I made this incredible girl laugh. Her soft curves jiggled as the musical sound left her mouth, and she fell into me. I wrapped my arms around her, and, as cheesy as it sounds, we kissed under the stars. With her warm body and full breasts against my chest, I had other things on my mind than my half-eaten salad. Ivy must have noticed my arousal because she pulled back from our kiss and quirked an eyebrow. Then I felt her stomach rumble against me; she, at least, had not forgotten about our food.
I released her from our embrace and led her to the lawn chairs. I held the back of one so she could sit as if we were in a fancy restaurant.
“Such a gentleman,” She teased.
We sat on the roof together and finished our meal. I was getting more okay with ‘abusing’ our privilege at work like this, but I still had doubts. “So… do you bring a lot of guys up here?”
Ivy’s gasp wasn’t entirely mocking. “What kind of girl do you think I am?
I scrambled for something, anything I could say to back out of this dangerous line of conversation. She was offended now, and I… I saw her smirking at me again.
“God, you’re so easy. Lighten up, dude.”
Surprising myself, I recovered quickly. Shrugging, I said, “Well, I don’t know. I could just be the latest in a string of coworkers you’ve seduced.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Seduced, eh? Is that what I did?”
I shrugged again.
Ivy stood and stepped in front of me, hands on her hips. With a long row of straining buttons staring me in the face, I had to crane my neck to meet her eyes.
“I’m pretty sure it was you who kissed me first, remember?”
“Hmm… maybe. After you got me drunk.”
A hint of fire sparked in her eyes. She climbed onto my chair, dropping her soft rump into my lap.
“I didn’t hear you complain.”
I put my hands on her thighs; they were warm and soft, and my body responded to the contact. “You most certainly did not.”
She drew her face close to mine, and we made out again. I ran my hands along her luscious body, her tummy tight and firm from all she’d eaten that night. I squeezed and groped up her sides and along those glorious mounds until I found her buttons. When I touched the highest one that was still fastened, the threads snapped, and it broke free. Ivy arched her back, and a rapid-fire sequence of plastic circles struck my chest as her blouse burst open.
“Sorry…” I whispered.
Ivy chuckled softly. “Don’t worry about it. It was getting too tight to wear to work anyway.”
Her words lit a fire in my core. I suspected she’d been growing since we met. How could she not be? Putting away so much food after every shift—or during, for that matter. With my eyes and hands filled with so much shining, glorious flesh, I went on the attack. I rubbed her full belly and peppered kisses on those fat tits overflowing her enormous bra. I didn’t hear the warning creaks until it was too late.
With a chorus of bending metal and popping rivets, the lawn chair collapsed. I landed on my ass with a thump, then fell back to the rooftop. With Ivy on top of me, I was briefly smothered by a pair of warm, round pillows. The weight shifted to my lower half as she sat up.
“Oh my god, are you okay?”
Feeling my head for lumps or blood, I said, “I’m alright. I guess these chairs aren’t meant to hold two…”
Ivy hit my shoulder. “Are you calling me fat‽”
“No!”
She must have felt me twitch under her plush rump because she raised an eyebrow.
“Well… maybe a little,” I admitted, bringing my hands up to cup the most enormous, most perfect boobs I’d ever seen. “In all the best ways…”
She lowered herself onto me again, but as her tongue slid into my mouth, the pressure forced the air out of my lungs. She rose onto her knees—belly and breasts still touching my chest.
I gasped in a breath. “Should we maybe… go back inside?”
“Good idea,” She said, clambering to her feet and pulling the ruined top across her front—it had no hope of covering her abundant curves now. “We don’t want to give the neighbors a free show.”
I’d forgotten that several nearby apartment buildings were taller than The Drafthouse. Ivy grabbed her vest and dashed to the door.
“Grab those dishes. I’ll get some snacks and meet you in theater three.”
VI
The crowd changed somewhat over the summer. With most of the students gone, our Tuesday nights got quieter. Then came the summer movies, when The Drafthouse got as busy as I’d seen it. I developed a good rapport with my team. Nat was easy to get along with, even though we shared few common interests. Maddison continued to be prickly and standoffish, but she worked hard. Aside from Ivy, I got along the best with Doug and often had to be the “hard ass boss” and remind us both that we had work to do, lest we spend half the night debating the finer points of film nerd trivia.
Although we kept our relationship a secret from our coworkers, Ivy and I continued our late-night escapades. Once everyone else went home and the doors were locked, The Drafthouse was our playground. We watched countless movies and distracted each other from many important dialogue sequences.
Ivy rolled off of me and onto the theater couch beside me. She did up a few of her shirt buttons—the ones that weren’t scattered across the auditorium floor. “Ugh,” She groaned, running her hands along the buttonless tails of her blouse, “That’s the third one this month!”
My first instinct was to apologize, but Ivy’s personality was starting to rub off on me. “Maybe you should switch to a bigger size.”
She glared, but her lips were quirked into a grin. “This one is a bigger size!”
Before I could reply, Ivy’s stomach purred loud enough for us to both hear. Her cheeks reddened. “Hey, let’s go to the kitchen; you can make me a snack!”
It was unthinkable. “The kitchen? We can’t use the kitchen for personal use!”
“Sure we can.”
“Luis’ll be pissed.”
She rolled her eyes. “We’ll clean up, obviously. He won’t even know we were in there.”
I’d watched Ivy put away a plate of shrimp alfredo, meatloaf, three soft pretzels, and almost three full buckets of popcorn. We’d worked off a few of those calories a moment ago, but I wondered if the woman ever got full.
She touched my arm, snapping me back to reality. “Come on… it’ll be fine. You’re always talking about cooking stuff; this is your chance to show off.”
“I don’t know…”
“Pleeeeease? Whip up a little snack for your… girlfriend?”
A shock ran through me. Was Ivy my girlfriend? We’d never had the ‘define the relationship’ talk, but we had been hooking up in the theater for over four months. I met her eyes. This felt like some kind of test. I stood up and straightened my pants.
Ivy clapped. “Yay!”
In the kitchen, I fired up the flat top while Ivy fetched ingredients: two packages of cheese from the cooler and a loaf of bread. I recognized the components we used for croque monsieur, minus the ham. I looked questioningly at her.
She smirked. “Grill me a cheese?”
I couldn’t help but return her smile. She brought out the worst in me, or maybe the best. I said, “I’ll need some butter, then.”
Her eyes sparkled. “Yass!”
She grabbed a block of butter from the cooler and pulled four slices of bread from the bag. I held my hand over the flat top to check the temp and said, “I’m not really hungry…”
“More for me, then!”
She must have caught the skeptical look on my face because she added, “What?”
“Not a thing.”
I scraped two slices from the butter and made sizzling pools on the grill, swirling a piece of bread in each before stacking slices of cheese on top. Ivy watched, and I caught her pink tongue slip out to moisten her lips.
“Hey, do you want to go out sometime? You know, in the daylight?”
I don’t know what made me say it. Maybe the ‘g-word’ had me thinking about our relationship. We never saw each other outside the theater. And while I’d clearly gotten over my hangups about dating a coworker, I wanted to do some normal couple stuff together. I’m sure the thought of being seen out in public with a girl with M-cup boobs was a small, tiny factor as well.
Ivy put her arm around my waist, leaning into me. “I’d love to.”
***
Ivy and I were at the theater early—we’d come straight from our lunch date—when Ramon came into the restaurant bearing a tray.
“You two want to try something new?”
I eyed the tray—two plated sandwiches. They looked like our croque monsieur but with a fried egg between the layers of melted cheese on top.
“Croque madame?” I asked.
Ramon nodded with a grin. “I think we can upcharge for them, and they’re not much different to make.”
Ivy bit into one of the sandwiches, and her eyes fluttered as she moaned in delight. A smattering of breadcrumbs dusted the tops of her shirt-and-vest-clad bosom. Watching her devour the hot sandwich, even though she’d wolfed down a massive burger with loaded fries and two apps on our date less than an hour ago, I suspected she wouldn’t be satisfied with just one of the gourmet sandwiches. I used a clean knife and fork to cut myself a quarter.
It was crisp and delicious. The egg added a new element to the ham and cheese. “Excellent as always, Ramon. We can definitely sell these. I’ll talk to Greg about adding it to the menu.”
Ivy nodded, mouth full.
“Have you tried making a Monte Cristo?” I asked the chef. “We could probably use the onion ring batter. It’s not quite the same, but close enough.”
Ramon considered my suggestion. “We could try it. It might be too much handling for my line cooks.”
“Let me know. I’ll talk to Greg about the price point.”
He nodded, looking from me to Ivy. “Success?”
Of course, Ivy’s mouth was full, so I said, “Great success.”
As Ramon returned to the kitchen, I slid the remainder of my sandwich onto Ivy’s half-empty plate. She beamed up at me appreciatively. Doug walked into the restaurant at that moment, so I took a step away and busied myself, wiping an already dry glass with a towel.