Sometimes moms need a break from being moms. This one looked completely flustered. We were all getting off at the campus train stop: me, her, her screaming kid, and her screaming kid's paraphernalia.

I offered to help, and she gratefully accepted, handing me the stroller, and the bag, following me off the train, trusting me completely.

It's a good thing I'm a nice guy.

I put her stuff down and asked where she was going. She pointed to an office building up the hill. The Psychology department, I remembered correctly, and in the exact opposite direction from my classroom. But I was early enough, and tenure has its privileges. I shrugged, and followed, carrying her bags in one hand, dragging the stroller behind me, watching her walk up the in front of me with her son on her hip and her ass swaying enchantingly.

It was the first opportunity I'd gotten to really look at her.

She was short, pale, naturally wiry with a few curves added by motherhood and long kinky black hair that fell wildly about her shoulders, hair she kept tossing to keep it out of reach of the kid, who kept grabbing at it while he made faces at me over her shoulder. A couple of times when she turned her head to rescue her hair and scold him I saw her looking at me out of the corner of her eye. She could tell I was checking her out. Women know these things. Her lips curled up, just a little, at the corners, before she concentrated again on her son.

I imagined her teaching like that, the stroller propped in the corner, her son on her hip, lecturing to a room full of students, those eager to learn distracted by the screaming child, those bored with the subject taking bets on how many times he would manage to grab her hair. But that was silly. She probably left him with the child psychology students all day for observation.

I wondered too, for just a second, why she hadn't put him in the stroller I was dragging, and put the bags I was hauling over the handlebars. Either she was incredibly absent-minded, which most of us are, or she liked the idea of me carrying her stuff for her, following just behind, admiring her ass and her hair and the curve of her hips and the line of her back and those trim business-like little legs and feet that looked very very lickable.

The distance to the psychology building was obviously shorter that I'd remembered it. Either that or I'd been so engrossed watching her that I simply hadn't noticed how many uphill steps it was, because suddenly we were there and she still had barely said a word to me, nor stopped to thank me, or give me instructions, or anything. Psychologists. Always with the mind games. What can you do with them? Many things, actually, most of which involved her legs wrapped around me in some position or the other.

Anyway, in the absence of clear instructions I walked around and opened the door for her. Me, who was carrying all her stuff. I opened it for her, which gave me a good look at her in profile. Her breasts were impressive. Not huge, but large and firm. I wondered if her son still fed from them, and if I might have the pleasure too.

She entered, still without speaking, and I followed. The building was cool and calm, slightly dark, a welcome relief from the Spring heat outside. I followed her still, down a long hall, which ended in a room with a large window, a two-way mirror I suspected, behind which several faculty brats were already playing. I shook my head to myself, thankful for a second that my parents were beatniks and not shrinks. But at the same time I was thankful for the arrangement. Were it not for this facility she would not have had him on the train, would not have needed or welcomed my help, would not now have somewhere to leave him, leaving her alone with me.

Again I held a door open for her, this time without prompting, and then put down the bag and rested the stroller where she gestured. After hugging her son goodbye she stepped back out of the room and I followed. She stopped, turned and watched him through the two-way and lacking any clear direction I stood with her. It was an odd feeling as though we were both parents watching our shared child, though I knew intellectually that I had never borne any children with this strange woman.

The urge to put my arm around her as we watched was too strong to fight. So I did. She didn't flinch, or shy away, but slipped her arm around my waist. We stood there like that, watching her son. It felt so natural, and at least to some small nagging voice in the back of my mind, so wrong.

I looked down at her. She looked back up at me. She raised herself on tiptoe and gave me a little peck on the lips. That was it. Just a soft little peck. But I could smell the soft shampoo-smell of her hair and feel the softness of her mouth.

She reached into her pocket and handed me her card, pecked me again, and swayed off down the hall toward her office or her classroom or wherever it was she was going. I watched her ass until she disappeared around the corner, looking over her shoulder at me as she went.

When she was gone I looked at her card, gave myself a minute to luxuriate in the memory, and sighed the sigh I had been holding since the little voice started nagging me. I sighed because we had been working at cross-purposes. I had been auditioning for the part of quick and mindless fuck and she was trying to fill the role of husband/father. It would be a great role to play, I could imagine her greeting me at the door each night, making me dinner, riding me for hours into the dark recesses of the morning, her hips moving hypnotically and perpetually over mine. I could probably even tolerate her son. It was a wonderful and tempting image.

But I already have a family.

I sighed again on my way out as I tossed her card in the trash can.

It's too bad I'm a nice guy.