From the time Ella Harvey was a little girl she had wanted to be a librarian. There were two great loves in Ella's life: books and organization. Everyone knows why books are so great, there's nothing quite like getting lost in a good book, but few people enjoy organization as much as Ella did. When everything was neat and organized Ella just felt better. Cleaning all her shoes and lining then up against the wall gave her a sense of peace. Doing laundry and folding everything just so put made Ella feel like all was right with the world. .
So it was the Librarian's life for her. Not everyone can realize their life's dream by the age of 25. Ella had a plan and she stuck to it. And here she was with a job as the head Librarian of her local community college. Actually she was the only librarian but that didn't sound so impressive. She liked being in charge of the library. After working there for almost a year everything was finally organized the way she wanted it and that made Ella happy.
This morning, like every morning, Ella got up at 6am to begin her routine. She ate breakfast, brushed her teeth and showered. She put lotion on her skin and combed her hair. She had curly red hair and it was the bane of her existence. Curly hair never did exactly what you wanted it to. While she waited for her hair to dry Ella picked out her outfit for the day. Today she chose a black pencil skirt, a blue flowered blouse and black heels.
As Ella was pulling her black tights out of the drawer the material snagged on a splinter of wood and tore a long run down the leg. Ella growled in frustration. She didn't have any other tights that would match and time was running out to re-choose her whole outfit. That would put her completely off schedule. "Unless..." Ella fished in the very back of the drawer and pulled out an unopened cardboard package.
Her college roommate had given her the stockings as a bit of a gag gift, saying that Ella should lighten up a little. They were sheer black thigh-highs with a back-seam. Ella had put them in the back of her drawer—too sexy. But they matched her outfit. She opened them up and pulled them on one at a time and readjusted her skirt.
She slipped on her heels and looked in the mirror. Not as bad as she thought; they really just looked like normal tights to anyone who didn't know. Ella finished getting ready, putting on a little makeup and rolling her hair into a tight bun and securing it with pins. She put on her coat, grabbed her purse and headed off to school.
Sitting in her little car, driving to the college, Ella realized that her skirt had ridden up and she could see the lace bands at the top of her stockings. It made her feel a little sexy, a little excited. Waiting at a red light Ella ran her fingertips over the smooth stockings, stroking her thigh. She could feel herself getting aroused. So inappropriate, she chided herself. This was not the time or the place.
AS she walked down the hallway to the library Ella had a little extra swing in her step. Was it just her imagination or was that young man staring at her a little? She hid a smile as she sauntered into the library.
Ella forgot about her undergarments as she lost herself in her work that day. She re-shelved books and did a lot of paperwork. By five o'clock Ella's feet were aching from walking around in heels all day. She took them off and lined them up in a corner, preferring to finish her work in stocking feet. The floor of her office was immaculately clean anyway.
Ella usually finished the day by dusting all the surfaces in her little office. It calmed her down and offered a nice sense of closure at the end of the day. She was standing on a stepladder and dusting the top of a bookshelf when the door to her office suddenly burst open, startling her.
When Ella turned around there was a student standing in her open office door, staring at her, his mouth agape. He looked to be in his early twenties and he was everything that Ella was not; he was wearing torn black jeans, a hoody that badly needed a wash and battered black boots. His long hair was tangled and Ella found herself just itching to take a comb to it.
"Can I help you?" she asked, stepping down from her stool with all the decorum one can have when standing on a stepstool in stocking feet.
"Uh, they sent me here for detention." The boy said with a lazy sort of grin. Was he mocking her? Ella wondered.
"Detention?" Ella smoothed her hands down her skirt, trying to stand up straight. She felt very little without her heels; the boy was tall.
"Yeah. Library duty?" the boy answered, waving the slip of paper in his hand. "They said I could start tonight."
This was going to throw off her whole routine. "Nobody told me," she mused. Even though Ella was about to go home the library was still open for another three hours. A work study student manned the desk in the evening. It would hardly do to have this young man's detention supervised by another student.
Ella sighed. She hated when her routine got changed at the last minute. She walked over to the corner and put her shoes back on, feeling a little more in control. The young man lounged in the doorway, watching her. "OK," she said. "I guess we'll have you clean something."
Ella led the way up to the stacks, stopping on the way for some supplies from the cleaning closet. Of course the library was cleaned regularly by the janitorial crew but they hardly performed up to Ella's high standards.
She got them set up in the farthest corner of the room and instructed the young man how she wanted him to take the books down, scrub the shelf underneath them and the put them back in the correct order. Simple right? Ella knew that she should leave him then and go back to her office but she wanted to make sure he was going to do it correctly. Big mistake.
The boy nodded at her instructions and started taking books off the shelf at waist height and piling them on the floor. Ella bit her lip; she should really just leave it but..."Wait! Stop!" the boy looked at her surprised by the outburst. "You have to start at the top. So you don't push dirt down onto what you've already cleaned. Do you see?" Ella felt flushed for some reason. The boy was staring at her but she couldn't figure out what he was thinking.
Finally he nodded. "Yeah OK, I get that." Ella smiled in relief. But was he humoring her? Whatever, he was getting on a stepladder to do the top shelf. He pulled two handfuls of books off and turned to descend the ladder.
"Here, give them to me," Ella said, reaching up for the books. He handed them down and the two of them fell into a rhythm. Ella donned a pair of rubber gloves and helped clean as well, working on the shelf next to the young man. She was in the zone: cleaning, making something better and more organized. Ella felt the stress of having her routine changed slowly rolling off her shoulders.
