The Ugly Ducklings (Closed for Desperado 1089)

[SpicySpirit]

Miriam clutched the copy of her resume in her hands, looking up at the sign across the familiar blue building. Taking a deep breath, she shifted the weight of her backpack strap and placed a hand on the glass door. As she opened the heavy door, she heard the familiar tinkle of the bell to let the employees know a customer had entered. She had come to the bookstore frequently since moving to Berkeley, but had always kept to herself and tended to blend in with the bookshelves. Besides, coming to the bookstore to do an interview was far different than hiding in a corner to read her newest treasure all alone.

She nervously walked up to the counter and asked for Mrs. Fisher, the owner. The employee at the register politely asked her to have a seat or feel free to look around while they went to retrieve her.

Miriam bit her lip. Fantastic, she thought, bonus time to build up my nerves. Trying to keep her mind off the interview at hand, she walked through the aisles and browsed the various titles. Pegasus Books was a new and used bookstore. She had always been an adamant reader, and while the rest of the world moved on to electronic books and tablets, Miriam had continued to select physical copies to read. Bookstores with used books were becoming harder and harder to find. She loved the chocolate and wood fragrance that old books seemed to emanate. Her fingers browsed the spines of several older romance books on a shelf, admiring the textures and fabrics.

“Miriam?” She heard an older woman’s voice calling from behind her.

“Yes, that’s me,” she said, turning back to the front of the store.

Pulling the brown cardigan sweater tighter around her chest, she followed Mrs. Fisher into a back room to complete, what she hoped would be, a successful interview.

 

[desperado1089]

Sam Fisher, who happened to be the owner's grandson, was already in the room when his grandmother walked in with their newest applicant. He pushed his glasses further up his nose and smiled. "Don't mind me, I'm just here to help out grandmother. Plus it helps with my people skills." He held up a pencil and a notebook. "You won't know I'm here."

But as he balanced his notebook on a clipboard against a pair of skinny legs that the dark blue slacks he wore did a poor job of concealing the thinness of, he thought that he would most definitely not forget this girl. She was beautiful, he thought, and almost missed the start of the interview because of his daydreaming.

 

[SpicySpirit]

"Nice to meet you," she gave him a small smile and a friendly nod. She hadn't remembered seeing him around the bookshop before, but then again, she wasn't one to go out of her way to introduce herself to others. His disheveled brown hair was endearing and his smile welcoming.

She tucked a strand of her auburn hair back behind her ear and adjusted her black-rimmed glasses before settling into the plush leather chair across from Mrs. Fisher. Miriam pulled the brown sweater even tighter around herself as if it could hide her nerves and the butterflies in her stomach. Last year, she had worked on campus in the dining hall and it had been a disaster for her. This year she had vowed to get a job off-campus, where she wouldn't know anyone. There were very few jobs she was comfortable doing, so the stakes were high.

"So, tell me a little bit about yourself," Mrs. Fisher started, her voice was gentle and her eyes were kind.

Miriam fiddled with one of her rings and then took a breath to ground herself before answering, her somewhat lower, husky sounding voice tumbling out faster than she had hoped it would.

"I am originally from Surprise, Arizona - yes that is the actual name," she noted the usual eyebrow raise she got from strangers when she talked about her hometown. "It's a small suburb outside of Phoenix. I moved here for college because UC Berkeley offered me a scholarship and I wanted to attend a larger school. I am a Biology major. I love to read and appreciate old and used books, so I come here often. I needed a new part-time job outside of school and saw you were hiring..." she trailed off somewhat awkwardly. How many times have I told you to not ramble and then trail off, scolding herself for not finishing definitively. She hated interviews.

Her hazel eyes had been glancing between the table and Mrs. Fisher as she spoke, but when she trailed off she caught Sam's eyes. He gave her an encouraging smile before quickly looking down at his notebook. Miriam looked down at her hands and then back up at Mrs. Fisher waiting for the next question.

 

[desperado1089]

Thankfully, Sam's grandmother was not some old battleaxe when she was conducting interviews, particularly with candidates who were so much like her grandson: shy, awkward, nerdy. So Rita Fisher gave Miriam a warm smile and said, "Well, that is indeed a surprise," hoping to lighten the mood; Sam laughed at the joke and made a mental note to look up the township later.

"So, I've taken a look at your application," Mrs. Fisher went on, "and your resume is, of course, not really full of experience but hey, you're still young and you got your whole life ahead of you! We try not to hold that against people around here." She paused and glanced at Sam. "One of the other reasons I let Sam sit in on these is, unfortunately, I'm not getting any younger, and his parents are doing their own thing. So one day, hopefully a long time from now yet, Sam will be taking over for me. Best to prepare him now while there's still time. So, Sam, what do you think?"

Sam set down his notebook and stood up, and doing his best to summon a bit of confidence, he barely stumbled over his words as he said, "I think she'll fit right in, Grandma." Rita beamed and said, "I couldn't agree more. Welcome to the team, Miriam." Both Sam and Rita offered Miriam a handshake.

 

[SpicySpirit]

Miriam was lost in her thoughts the entire walk back to the dorms and when she arrived at the door to the suite, she wasn't even sure how she had gotten there. She was elated to have been offered the job and was even more excited that she could start training tomorrow. Miriam secretly hoped that Sam would be the one training her, but never would have admitted it. The door to her shared dorm room in the suite was closed, and when she gently propped it open she was relieved to see that her roommate, Jackie, was out and about on campus.

Freshman year, Miriam had lucked out half-way through the year when her roommate had decided to transfer back home. The college hadn't moved anyone else in for the rest of the year and she had enjoyed the freedom of having a private space. This year, she hadn't been as fortunate since single rooms were few and far between. To be fair, she could have been placed in a triple, which would have been far worse. She loved that Kerr was several blocks from campus and not right in the thick of things, so between having a single room and being removed from campus, this was the lesser of two evils.

This year, the college had placed her with a junior. Jackie would have been a perfectly lovely roommate had she not been everything Miriam was trying to escape from back home. Her luscious dirty blonde hair, large honey-colored eyes, and curvy figure, were the epitome of every frat boy's wet dream. She reminded Miriam of all the cheerleaders who used to torment her mercilessly in high school, but thankfully, Jackie was much kinder, so she couldn't begrudge her too much. Being classically attractive and outgoing, Jackie was often out and about being a social butterfly. Thank goodness for small favors.

Placing her backpack on the floor next to her bed, she flopped onto the jewel-toned mandala comforter, hugging a pillow to her chest. She needed to start working on the paperwork for her chemistry lab, but couldn't bring herself to sit in front of her laptop to start. Miriam leaned over and grabbed her backpack, pulling out her most recently acquired copy of Emmanuelle, an older French novel. She had a found a copy in its original language. Being practically fluent in French from high school, she was eager to read it without the translation.

She was only part way through the first chapter where Emmanuelle was on a plane under a blanket and had reached under her skirt to start touching herself. Taking advantage of the empty room, she continued reading the chapter, feeling the wetness build between her own thighs. Miriam held the book in her left hand, unzippered her pants with her right hand and slid her fingertips into her now damp underwear. She started gently pressing against her throbbing clit, massaging it the same way Emmanuelle did in the passage.

In the next section, the mysterious stranger next to Emmanuelle's seat, reached his hands under the blanket and began caressing Emmanuelle's swollen sex, dipping in and out of her opening and circling her clit. Her mind wandering, Miriam imagined Sam as the mysterious stranger in her own fantasy, continuing to dip in and out of her own lips with her fingers. The book fell to her pillow as she was getting close to climaxing... she bit her lip trying to stifle back a moan...

And that's when she heard the front door to the suite slam shut.

Fuck. She stopped cold. So much for that.

Miriam quickly shoved the novel back into her backpack and zipped up her pants, just before Jackie burst into the room.

"Hey!" she greeted, tossing her things onto her bed before turning to face Miriam.

"Hi," Miriam replied weakly, trying to restrain from showing any annoyance in her voice towards Jackie.

"How did your interview go?" Jackie asked flopping into her desk chair.

"It went really well," Miriam smiled over at her, reminding herself that Jackie truly was a good person. "I got the job."

"That's awesome, Miri." Jackie gave her a genuine smile. There were only some people allowed to call Miriam by her nickname and Jackie had been kind enough to earn the right.

"Thanks. I was just about to go get a shower before starting my chem lab report. Did you need it first?"

"Nah, I was going to try to finish my essay for lit and then meet Shane for dinner." Shane was Jackie's boyfriend of almost a year. Miriam tried not to be jealous, but struggled having never had a boyfriend herself. Miriam grabbed her bathrobe and started to make her way to the suite's bathroom.

"Cool, well have fun and I will see you later then!" Miriam quickly departed the dorm room and headed to the suite bathroom where she could turn on the water and finish what she had started in private.

 

[desperado1089]

Sam breathed out a sigh of relief when he shut the door to his off-campus apartment. "Alexa, lights," he called out and a moment later the apartment's lights came on to his own half-intensity specifications. The door locked electronically at the same moment as the lights came on, and he walked past a framed, signed poster of Captain Jean-Luc Picard as he bent down to scratch his Belgian Malinois behind the ears. "You miss me, Bones?", he asked the dog softly, and he whined in response. He thought back to when he first got Bones, as a newly-birthed puppy, and recalled how he thought it would've been weird if the dog was female. His tradition of naming his pets after Star Trek characters was called into serious question, in his mind at least, when he had a female cat as a young teenager, but he compromised and christened her Spot, after the feline companion of Lt. Commander Data. Spot was currently in a different home, as Sam gave her to his only friend from high school after moving for college.

Kicking off his shoes and glancing towards his school computer (he had a high-end gaming setup in the apartment's second bedroom, which was his nerd cave, as he termed it), he chuckled at how he'd already done all of the assignments that were due anytime soon, and started the ones that were due later. His mind drifted to thoughts of Miriam, and in due course he had left a pile of clothes in his hamper as he turned on the shower in his bathroom, head full of thoughts imagining what she might be hiding under that cardigan.

 

[SpicySpirit]

Miriam’s alarm jolted her awake at 6am the next morning. She had an 8:10am Statistics class, followed by a chemistry lab. She didn’t mind the early classes because they got her up and moving for the day. She had three other roommates, including Jackie, in the suite that shared a bathroom. The others all had later morning classes, so she appreciated her calm mornings in the bathroom before their chaos began.

Before trekking to the suite bathroom, she reached inside her bedside drawer and pulled out her pill bottles. Medication had been an ongoing saga of her life, and she had to be mindful of taking her meds at specific times of day to stay regulated. Sipping the glass of water by her bed, she stopped to log the meds in her phone app before shuffling to her closet to pull out clothes for the day.

Any other day, she would have thrown on the first t-shirt, sweater and jeans she could find and head off to class, but today wasn’t a typical day. She wished she had asked Mrs. Fisher or Sam if there was a dress code for the bookstore, and hoped that whatever she picked for today would suffice.

She settled on a pair of light tan corduroy pants and an earth-toned slouchy striped sweater over a white button-up. Beyond the substantial scholarship, one of the reasons she had selected Berkeley was the change in climate. Miriam had always been overly self-conscious of her body, and it was much easier to wear layers here than it was back in Arizona.

On the way to the bathroom, she stopped to make a cup of tea before settling in front of the bathroom mirror. Miriam took the time to braid her wavy reddish-brown hair instead of throwing it up into the normal clip or bun. Due to sensitive skin and acne, she rarely wore a ton of makeup, but did take the time today to add a little mascara. Doing a final check in the mirror, she put her glasses back on and stared at her reflection. This was acceptable, she had never been super feminine, but this was a small step.

Her classes went by quickly, and before she knew it, she was walking back into the bookstore that afternoon, ready to start her first day of work. Stepping over the threshold, Miriam quickly scanned the areas she could see for Mrs. Fisher… or really for Sam… Not seeing either of them, she sighed, her stomach turning as she approached the female employee at the register. Tessa, her nametag read. But before she could open her mouth, she heard a voice behind her.

 

[desperado1089]

The bookstore was one of the few places Sam really felt comfortable, where he could speak without stumbling over his words, where he almost felt...normal. So it was with an almost giddy anticipation (part of which had a lot to do with Miriam) that he blew through his classes without paying much attention to them.

When it finally came time to begin work he took extra time to make sure he was presentable--hair combed, button-up shirt tucked in, tie straight, name tag clean--and began his shift with one eye always on the door. He was called into the back to help move some heavier things, so he missed Miriam's entrance, but when he realized she was here he quickly finished up before heading back to the front. "I got this, Tessa," he said, and when Miriam turned around he forgot how to speak for several seconds, his eyes would have bugged out if this was a cartoon.

Eventually recovering himself, he cleared his throat. "Umm, yeah. Welcome, welcome. Let me show you around the parts of the store you haven't seen yet, and hopefully by the time that's done..." He led her into the back where a 3D printer was set up next to a computer with six different name tag designs on the screen. "Just pick one, type your name or however you'd like people to address you, and click the green button at the top. By the time the tour is done, so will the 3D printer."