Chapter One

 

I looked at the screen of my iPhone and considered, then pressed the microphone and spoke.

"I want you to pay very close attention. Maybe print these words out for posterity. They could be deeply important to the entire future fate of the human race, and maybe to all of existence!"

The words were typing themselves across the screen as I talked. I pressed the send key, then brought up the box for the next test.

"Bebop binglebang, bippity bangle pop, pop, pop," I said, then sent it.

"You're weird, Zoe" the reply came.

I giggled happily.

"Nonsense. I'm just in touch with the mystical inner plane of the universe," I said.

"You're touched, all right. Nerd."

"I am so not a nerd!"

"Nerd."

"Airhead!"

"Dork!"

"Bimbo!"

"You're just jealous I'm getting some and you're not."

I was, but I wasn't about to admit that.

"I could have a boyfriend easily. I just have to relax my standards - like some people I know."

"Nerd!"

That was kind of the way text conversations between me and my cousin Amanda went. She was a blonde cheerleader. Or at least, she had been a cheerleader before we'd graduated from Saint Mark's Academy, the Catholic high school we'd both gone to. And she wasn't really blonde, though she'd had her hair dyed blonde as long as I could remember.

The truth was I do have high standards, sort of. But really I'm just not entirely comfortable around guys. I'm an introvert, and their sexual interest in me and my body parts has always left me feeling self-conscious.

Plus most guys are idiots, and mostly interested in sports and cars... and sex, which they then brag about to other guys.

I'm not into sports and cars. So what do you talk to guys about? Music. Okay, but I'm not interested in the type of music most people are these days either. I like sweeping orchestral music with romantic themes, and I play the piano.

You can get musical tracks for all sorts of music which have removed a particular instrument so you can play along with the music. Amanda does that for drums, which she plays, but the music she uses is rock and pop from super-groups. I download orchestra music and play that through my earphones as I play the piano.

It's kind of my hobby.

One of my hobbies. I like video games, too, which is why Amanda calls me a nerd. I also read science fiction and fantasies. And sometimes mysteries, if the detective is a girl.

"Come over to my place tonight and hang out," she typed.

"With whom?"

"Only you would use whom," she said.

"You didn't answer."

"My friends and me."

"Your friends think I'm a nerd."

"You ARE a nerd."

"Meh!"

Bart Simpson isn't a nerd, is he? Of course not!

I kind of regret being a nerd sometimes. I mean, I'm not bored, but I don't do the exciting sorts of things Amanda gets up to. I don't go to parties and dance wildly with boys, and have sex in back yard swimming pools and stuff like that. And I have this vague feeling I'm missing out by not doing that stuff.

But her parties are full of shallow girls who really only care about what you look like and what you're wearing and want to talk about reality TV shows. Mention politics or what's going on out in the real world and their faces go blank. The boys are even worse, as I've already mentioned. Maybe if I get to college I'll meet more intelligent, thoughtful guys.

Nerds, I guess.

Hot sexy nerds.

Can you be a hot, sexy, nerd? I thought I could be if I could bring myself to abandon my inhibitions. Which I couldn't. I mean, I'm on the internet. I know what passes for hot and sexy. I have the body. Sometimes I'll pose for myself in the sexy poses I see the girls on the internet doing, and slide my tongue out and vamp for the mirror. And as long as I'm wearing my contacts I sure don't look like a nerd then!

Although, the truth is I don't spend much time on my hair except to make sure it's more or less straight. It's a little over shoulder-length, thick and soft with heavy bangs that cover my forehead. I love how thick and soft my hair is and often slide my fingers through it.

I know my hair isn't a fashionable style or a fashionable color. Amanda has suggested I dye it red. She thinks I'd look hot as a redhead. Me, I don't want people staring at me. Redheads get attention, like blondes. No thanks. Plus they sort of have a reputation for being aggressive and having a temper, and that's so not me.

So no, brown is fine for me, and basic clothes that look good on me and aren't too tight or revealing or anything. I'm not super shy but I don't like the idea of eyes on me everywhere I go. Amanda is fine with that. She knows every eye is on her ass whenever she walks by and is okay with it. That makes me uncomfortable.

"I have to go to bed early anyway, I said. Got work tomorrow."

"Bleh," she said.

***

You might imagine the rules of behavior at a big bank are pretty severe, that doing almost anything against policy will get you fired, and that as a result, people walk around being very, very careful of what they say and do.

And you'd be absolutely right.

Everyone in the bank dresses in business clothes. The men all wear suits and ties. The woman all wear dresses or suits with skirts - and sometimes trousers, though that's rare. The atmosphere is very formal. No one addresses their boss by their first name. There is no laughter in the halls, and nobody would be insane enough to try to send a joke or cartoon through email.

It's kind of a dreary place to work. And I count down the days until I don't have to work here anymore. Fortunately, I'm only a summer student. I'm given relatively straightforward tasks as a sort of temporary replacement clerk type for staff who've gone on vacation in the summer.

I keep quiet, act respectfully, and do what I'm assigned without complaint. After all, I was lucky to get this job, very lucky. It pays well, and it will look good on my resume some day when I finished college.

I'd had to raid the used clothing stores for enough different skirts and blouses to wear. My usual tastes ran to sweats and jeans and sweaters or long T-shirts, or in the summer, shorts or short skirts. None of that is acceptable here. Nor were summer dresses allowed. You can't have bare shoulders here if you can believe that.

The bank is privately owned by some religious billionaire. Even swearing, even mildly, will get you reprimanded. So if people trip or drop something they say ''darn' or something similar. It's very weird!

Almost everyone I work with is old; as in at least twice my age, and almost always lots more. It means very little conversation and a very boring day. When I have lunch, it's like having lunch with my mom and dad and their friends. Meh.

My current task was using a big paper trimmer to cut some brown paper which I would then use to wrap a package that was going out. I was in the mail-room, and dutifully measuring and cutting paper on the low table.

Until a hand gave my butt a good squeeze through the thin gray skirt I was wearing.

I gasped and jerked upright, whirling to give Derek a glare. Derek is another summer student, though he's older and has a more important job. Or so he tells me.

"Are you trying to get fired!?" I hissed.

"Naw. But you have a beautiful ass and I couldn't resist."

I flushed, in part because I liked that he thought I had a beautiful ass. He's super good looking, after all. But I was also uncomfortable in that he was acting like the guys always did in seeing me as a collection of body parts they wanted to get their hands on.

"Why do you wear those glasses?" he asked.

"So I can see," I replied dryly.

"Get your eyes zapped," he said, leaning on a cabinet.

"You mean laser surgery? I don't like the idea of someone cutting pieces of my eyes."

"So wear contacts."

"Why? To look hot? There's nobody here I need to look hot for."

"There's me!"

I sniffed and went back to trimming the paper.

"You have a nice body, Zoe," he said. "I bet you'd look great in a bikini."

I would look great in a bikini, or at least, I do in lingerie, which is basically the same thing. But I never went swimming. I appreciated the compliments but I knew this bank had very few young people, especially young women, so it wasn't like I was competing with people like Amanda for his attention. If Amanda was here he probably wouldn't even look at me.

"I don't think the bank would approve of me wearing a bikini to work," I said.

He laughed. "I'd love to see the looks in the faces of some of these old fossils if you walked down the aisle in a bikini."

"You could always put on a thong and walk down the aisle yourself," I said.

He smirked. "What makes you think I'm not wearing one?"

"Oh sure."

"Wanna check?"

"No!"

"Thongs look a lot better on girls, though," he said, "especially when they have nice bubble butts like yours."

"Stop staring at my butt!"

I was still conflicted, embarrassed, and annoyed but also flattered.

"Well, if you bend over more I'll go around to the other side of the table and see if I can look down your top."

"How have you not gotten fired already?" I asked, exasperated.

"Everyone loves me!"

He wasn't wrong. Everyone did like him a lot here.

"I bet you don't talk like this around others."

"Oh right! I'm gonna go tell Mrs. Spawlin about her great butt?"

I laughed. Mrs. Spawlin had a huge butt.

"Face it, babe, you're the best eye candy in here."

I felt that conflicted sense again.

"I'm not eye candy!"

"You would be in the right clothes."

"Nobody is allowed to wear those kinds of clothes here."

"Yeah, I know. You think I'm wearing this stupid suit by choice? I mean, the jacket hides my fantastic butt!"

He turned around and lifted the jacket and bent over, rolling his butt at me.

I rolled my eyes and turned away.

"Admit it. I have a great ass!"

"How would you know?" I asked as I wrapped the package.

"All the girls tell me so."

"Maybe they're just trying to make you feel good about being so short and ugly," I said.

He was, of course, tall and handsome, and had really nice blonde hair - real blonde hair.

"Naw, that's not it. They can hardly keep their hands off me."

"God, the ego," I sighed.

I turned on him with a scowl as I sensed him coming closer, warning him with a look not to grab my ass again. But he only grinned and moved in closer so I had to put my hands up against his chest.

"Why don't you come to my place after work? We have a swimming pool."

"I don't have a suit," I said as his arms slide behind me.

"We can skinny dip!" he exclaimed, grinning wildly.

"Yeah uhm, no."

"I can make you a steak!"

"You cook?

"Well, no, but the cook can make you a steak."

"You have a cook? You mean your mom?"

"Nope. A real cook. I'm rich, baby."

His hands slid down my back onto my butt and he pulled me in against him, folding my arms back against my own chest.

"Derek!"

"I bet I could change your mind with one kiss."

"I don't think so! And I don't want to get fired!"

"Nobody comes down here but us peons."

And then he slid a hand up behind my head to keep me from turning away, and kissed me.

Now, I know I should be disapproving of this kind of thing. And I know it's really, really shallow to let him do it just because he's, like, hot and sexy. But that's just the way life and hormones work.

And damn if he wasn't a really good kisser! I mean, a great one! I felt I had to express my disapproval. And a part of me worried he was just slumming because some sexy blonde goddess-like Amanda wasn't available. But the feel of his lips on mine and his tongue delicately dipping and darting and stroking were doing weird and wonderful things to my lower belly.

I felt my nipples hardening inside the cups of my bra, and felt my chest tightening as excitement began to make me thrum with some strange sense of pressure.

He eased his hand off my head, but I didn't turn away as we continued kissing. I was focusing on kissing him back in a way that didn't make me look like some kind of virgin, even though I was supposed to be expressing my disapproval. But then his hand slid up between us and got a good, solid squeeze of my breast.

I felt a kind of jolt of heat mixed with outrage. I jerked my arm back in and twisted away.

"Derek!"

"Wow, better than I'd thought," he said with a grin.

"You're a pig!"

"True. But all guys are."

Which, as far as I could tell was true, including nerd guys.

He winked and left the room, leaving me red-faced, indignant, and more than slightly flushed with heat.

I have to admit I had fantasies about him. But they were just fantasies. He might be hot and sexy and all but he wasn't my type of guy. He seemed like a jock, one of those arrogant sports types. And all he saw in me was my ass and breasts.

Telling myself that didn't mean I couldn't have fantasies, of course. I'd often had completely unrealistic sexual fantasies (as well as other kinds). Most of them involved big, hunky, musclebound guys who would turn out to be sensitive and intelligent, and gentle, and like playing chess and cooking and like the same music as me.

Of course, they'd also be rough and tough and ready to kill anyone who so much as looked like they might be thinking about being rude to me.

Anyway, I finished out the day, which, aside from that one incident, was as boring as ever, then went back home. Of course, I called Amanda and told her all about him. And of course, she was as blunt and slutty as ever in her advice.

"Next time he gropes you grope him back. That way you can see if he has a big cock before deciding if you want to do more," she said.

"God, you are so slutty!" I said as I crossed my bedroom and looked out the window.

"Meh!"

"Hey, that's my word!" I said.

"That's Bart Simpson's word."

"But now it's mine! And I have no intention of groping him!"

"Why not? He gropes you."

"But not... there," I said.

"Oh don't be so dainty. If he wants to see if your boobs are big you should be able to see if his cock is big."

I went back to the closet and considered what to wear tomorrow. There wasn't much I could wear that would be the least bit sexy that the bank would tolerate.

"Well, he wouldn't be, like, hard, so how could I tell?"

"You hold him there for a couple of seconds and if he doesn't get hard then he's probably a dud. Especially if he's squeezing your breast."

"And what then?" I asked.

"I dunno. Give him a blow job. You're good at that."

"Oh, I don't think so!" I exclaimed. "You want me to do that at work!?"

"Sure, why not? You say it's boring there."

"He'd think I was a slut!"

"So what? He doesn't know any of your friends. He doesn't go to school with you. He's not likely to be bragging around at that office because everyone's old and he could get fired. You say he's some cocky jock type who isn't your type, so just have some fun fucking his brains out and move on."

"You know, that's not exactly an attractive visual," I said.

"Meh. Jocks don't need brains anyway."

"He's not, like, a football type jock. He's more like a, uhm, tennis or polo-playing type jock."

"Huh? Rich guy?"

"Maybe. He said he has a pool and a cook."

"Definitely give him some deep throat, then."

"Don't be so mercenary!"

"Hey, handsome with money is better than handsome and poor."

I hung up and tried on various dresses, skirts, and blouses. I also considered my contact lenses, but no way was I going to wear them now. He'd think I'd done it for him, and he was arrogant enough as it was! Imagine just groping a girl like that! No way I could wear contact lenses so he thought I liked it!

I would probably wear some sexy lingerie, though, just to feel sexy and give me confidence. But for a dress, hmm, I wasn't sure.