Chapter 1

He rolled off her, exhausted but still feeling so close to her. They had made love. Sex. He had sex with her, his coworker, a divorcee, seven years older than him.

“Maria,” he whispered, “Maria. I love...”

She put a fingertip to his lips.

“No Rusty, you just think you do,” she giggled to herself, knowing that at only seventeen, barely out of high school, he didn’t know what love was yet. Lust, yes. Love, no. Too young. Too innocent.

A cry came from the other room. A small child. Hers. Little Plena called out from her bedroom. Twenty-four-year-old Maria sucked in a breath, smiling at Rusty.

“I’m coming baby!”

He caught the innuendo and sighed. He knew she really hadn’t, not this time. He frowned a sad puppy look at her as she slid out from under the warm covers. Her body still naked as his fluid leaked down her thigh. She ignored and tossed on her robe, slipping off toward her four-year-old daughter’s room.

“Mommy!” a call came.

“Mommy’s coming, Plena.”

Rusty lay watching her move. Slim sexy body now covered softly with her white robe, flowing over her wide hips. Hips that he had been making love to. Breasts he had kissed as she taught him how. She was his first. His body count now one.

Four months earlier, Rusty walked into the stock room. His first job right out of high school was as a stock boy for a department store. He had graduated a year ahead, taking the GED to speed thru. Originally planning a technical college, but decided to wait a year and work for a while.

“Rusty,” his mom called to him one evening only a few days earlier, “There is a new mall opening just a few miles from here. You were looking for a job?”

He had been looking, previously working a few days taking inventory at a five-and-dime store. That one hadn’t paid much and was temporary. Now he was looking for something more.

Rusty applied the next day at the main department store for the new mall, one of their anchor stores. It was still preparing to open, needing stockers and pricers. Coming in looking neat and clean, speaking in complete sentences, even with a neatly typed, if thin, resume which included a few signed letters from teachers and neighbors. They hired him on the spot and he started just two days later.

“Ok, this is the loading dock, obviously right? We take all these boxes over to the inventory pricers in the stock room,” said his boss, Brian, who was only in his mid-twenties himself.

Rusty and Brian loaded a cart with boxes of merchandise, fresh off a delivery truck as the dock foreman checked them off the shipping manifest. Together they pushed the cart to the inventory area where a half-dozen young women were working, opening the boxes, taking inventory, and sticking price tags on their contents.

Rusty didn’t have a girlfriend. That was a laugh. Hadn’t dated in high school. No prom, no dances, no Friday night lights. He was so invisible to girls in school they would likely have just stepped over his body, had he died in the hallway.

Several of the women looked up, continuing their conversations together, but watching the new kid, him. He felt their eyes on him making him look away.

Brian spoke up, “This is Rusty, our newest stock boy, He’ll be keeping you hopping, so get to it!”

The women laughed and shook their heads, “We’ll be keeping HIM busy as we wait around for you guys!”

Rusty hid his blush at the unexpected attention by shuffling the boxes, this time of women’s lingerie, from the cart to the roller conveyer as Brian pushed them down each of the girl’s lines while they moaned and snickered at each other and Brian. The sound of box knives slashing, clacking price guns, and returning conversation left Rusty and Brian to their task.

Being a new store, everything, I mean EVERYTHING, had to be stocked and stocked quickly. Opening day was just a couple weeks away. Brian headed off letting Rusty ferry the dozens of arriving boxes of clothes and housewares and whatnot items from the dock to the girls.

Days went by. Semi-trucks came one after another. Pallets of boxes were unloaded and moved. Rusty and a couple others shoveled them from the dock to the pricers, then from the pricers to waiting stockrooms all around the store. The busy rush slowly decreased as the initial store stock filled.

Rusty hauled in the newest load of curtain rods, still in their long, thin boxes. The girls were all leaning or sitting, finally able to take breaks between truck deliveries.

“Hey, those are mighty long poles you have there...” one of the sassier women called out.

Most of the women were in their twenties or early thirties. Same for most of the stock ‘boys’. Rusty just smiled, getting used to their version of catcalls. He was the youngest and thus a target for their teasing.

“I only have the longest!” he laughed, turning the tables.

“You wish!” tossing it back at him.

However, there was one girl ... woman ... that caught his eye. And she eyed him back. Maria. Though older by seven years, the two clicked, always joking or kidding, usually innuendo laced. And always a smile when they stared each other’s way.

I knew she was different from the others, though I actually was better friends with one of the other women, Adrian. Adrian was funny as can be. Constantly teasing and joking around. However, she saw that I kept eyeing her friend, Maria.

Maria, with her long dark hair and dark eyes, would look up and we would catch each other staring and quickly glance away. Some days, Maria seemed withdrawn, sad. Other days, she would be smiling and kidding, just like the others. I learned from Adrian that Maria was going through a divorce and had a young daughter.

Inventorying and pricing was a pretty rote job, almost as rote and tedious as being a stock boy. Thus, conversation filled with hidden meaning and laughter was that spoonful of sugar to make the medicine go down. Every time I came into the stock room with another load, there would be groans and laughs as more work came. I think they liked treating me like a kid, even though their words were laced with hidden meaning.

Nevertheless, our change from being coworkers to something more came the day I came into the break room to find Maria in tears. No one else was there, just her and me. She quickly tried to wipe them away as I sat down at the same table.

“Hi, Maria, how’s it...” I spotted her tears.

“ ... Maria, are you ok?”

It didn’t take much coaxing. She broke down and told me all that had happened. How her ex had been trying to take custody of her daughter. How he had been fighting child support and alimony. How she had to do everything around her apartment, with bills and lawyers and raising a baby.

My hand went across the table to hers. Touching hers as it lay beside her simple meal. Our hands slipped together. I knew she was interested in me; well at least, she paid a lot of attention to me as we worked. More attention than most of the others. While I just seemed drawn to her.

However, being only seventeen, I was still just a teenager. I felt like a kid to her, yet not. I felt more, caring for her. Trying to comfort her where I could. Our hands stayed together as she looked up. A quick little smile crossed her face and then was gone as the door rattled.

Suddenly, two others came in and we quickly separated, releasing hands, embarrassed. The others hit the refrigerator and microwave, filling the room with smells and talk. Thus leaving us sidelined. Maria got up and I followed suit. As she left the breakroom, I held the door for her. Neither of us saying a word, but the air around us was filled with tension. Sexual tension, now that I look back.

Had I been a little older, I felt I would have given her a hug and told her to be strong for her daughter and she could get through this. As it was, I was shy and unsure of what to do, what to say. We went quietly back to work.

A week or so later, one afternoon, I was pushing a cart loaded with Christmas ornaments in July down the narrow aisles towards the seasonal area of the stockrooms. If you’ve never seen these mini-warehouses hidden from the bright lights of a store front floor, you would likely be surprised. They are dark, dingy, utilitarian in every way. Haphazardly lain out to squeeze as much space from them to give to the sales areas. Always messy with torn papers and pieces of cardboard littering the floor. It’s like having a bunch of teenagers hidden away upstairs in their dirty rooms of your million dollar home.

This particular stockroom was in the far back corner along a dimly lit and packed passageway lined with shelves full of boxes. The cart I had was full nearly to the top and fit through with only inches to spare. As I trundled along, pushing the cart, I heard a familiar voice call out.

“Hey! Stop! I’m here.”

“Maria? What are you doing? I’ve gotta get this stuff into Seasonal.”

“I’m inventorying. You made me lose count.”

I peeked up over the top of the cart, standing on its rim, to see her there a few feet away, looking indignant.

“Sorry, Maria, but you’re going to have to move. I can’t get by.”

“You back up and wait! I was here first, silly!”

“Ah, oh, I ah, need to get by.”

“Goof,” she replied.

“Fool,” my smart-aleck reply.

Thus we launched into our typical silliness we had come upon weeks earlier.

“Goofus.”

“Dingbat.”

“Stinker.”

“Loon.”

“Poop pants.”

“Hey, no fair, that’s your daughter’s words.

She giggled, a broad smile and a twinkle in her eyes.

After some further back and forth, I finally convinced her to move down to the cubbyhole, a little area at the corner of the building, where the aisles met at right angles. Except that was exactly where I had to unload. At the cubbyhole, I pushed the cart as far forward as I could and squeezed by it.

“You just wanted to get me in here, right?” she whispered, her eyes staring into mine. A sly grin on her face.

The cubbyhole was a small, dimly lit area with only a few square feet of empty space surrounded by shelves full of boxes stacked to the low ceiling. It was actually part of the Seasonal section of the stockroom but everyone knew it for other things as well, being the most private area of the store. The tightness and darkness muted all sounds, giving it its intimacy. And this was one of those intimate moments.

“Rusty, you’ve blocked us in with that cart,” she delivered with a little grin.

“Oh, sorry. I guess you should have gone on around the corner.”

She gave a snarky look, reached over, taking my forearm, and pulled me to her. I thought she was just trying to squeeze by me. Instead, she leaned forward and unexpectedly tapped my lips with hers. I am sure I blushed, as much for the poorly executed kiss as for the unforeseen event. She backed away for a moment, looking at my reaction. I did nothing but stayed fixated on her eyes. She came forward again. This time I was a little better prepared. Another kiss. Our lips met only for a moment that seemed like forever. Her body was so close I could feel her warmth. I could smell her hair of soap and girl. We said nothing. I leaned forward just slightly, offering my mouth to her. Our lips again came together and stayed together this time, letting the passion of our kiss build. I had never kissed a girl like that. Or rather, had never been kissed by a girl like that. A young woman. She was far more practiced, more worldly, than I. I felt overwhelmed, yet wanted more, following her lead.