Becy's Secret

Chapter 1: Late-night Shopping (Prologue)

Hamed doodled idly on a piece of paper as he slumped at the counter. The store belonged to his uncle but as the youngest nephew, Hamed always ended up with the shifts nobody else wanted - his friends would all be out living the high life but here he was, working on a Friday night at nearly midnight.

Hamed's uncle's shop was the only place open late around here, and the only place licensed to sell alcohol at this time. On these shifts, the only people who came in were those who found themselves running out of booze or cigarettes at parties or social drinking sessions. They were mostly already drunk and it wasn't exactly pleasant to serve them, but over time Hamed had become adept at coping with all manner of shenanigans and liked to think of himself as fairly unflappable.

The store's door chime sounded and Hamed glanced up. Two white girls had walked in. One was a petite blonde, the other a tall, buxom brunette. They were both dressed fairly typically for late-teen or twentysomethings; scruffy pseudo-rock t-shirts, short shorts, trainers. The blonde had her hair tied back but the brunette had a mass of bouncing curls which she wore loose and natural. She had large eyes and a pretty face - her friend was a little more plain, in comparison at least.

The two girls were clearly on a booze run. A-level exams, the final exams students took at 18 or older before leaving school for university or work, had recently finished, and free of the burden of study and responsibility, a lot of the young people in the area had been throwing house parties in celebration. No doubt these two were among them.

There seemed to be some consternation between the two girls - not an argument exactly, but a spirited discussion nonetheless. Hamed couldn't make out what they were saying but it seemed as though the brunette, in high spirits, was making a suggestion or a request which made the blonde laugh, but also blush and look about her nervously. The two walked through the store, finding their way between the high, stacked shelves to where the beer and other served-cold alcohol was kept, until they were out of sight.

Mindful that young girls were often quite willing to steal either out of lack of funds or simply for a thrill, Hamed turned to watch the black-and-white monitor that showed the feed from the store's CCTV camera. It was pointed right at the area of the store the girls had gone to - the most likely things to be stolen were alcohol, after all - although Hamed could switch to other cameras if he needed.

The girls' discussion continued but seemed to be reaching a conclusion. The brunette had apparently got the outcome she wanted, the blonde nodding some sort of assent. The brunette looked about her for a moment, cagily. Hamed leaned in, expecting that he was about to see some shoplifting in action, ready to call out and hopefully discourage the girls without any further trouble.

Then he stopped. The girl wasn't stealing. Instead, as he watched, she grasped the hem of her t-shirt, lifted it up over her head and shook her hair free.

Hamed's eyes widened. The girl had a bra on beneath her shirt but no other clothing - dark-coloured on the black-and-white CCTV. She handed her discarded shirt to her friend, who took it in outstretched arms, folding it neatly. Hamed caught his breath. She was a very pretty girl and despite the grainy CCTV image, he had a clear view of the white swells of her breasts where the lacy fabric ended.

Only a fraction of a second passed, though, and the girl moved, turning away so her back was to the camera. As Hamed stared, she brought her hands to the front of her waistband, unfastened the button and zipper and, incredibly, loosened her shorts and let them fall to the ground. Wearing only her underwear (her panties were also dark but didn't seem to match the bra), she stepped out of the shorts and bent to pick them up and hand them to her friend. Hamed's pulse was racing now, as he admired the curve of her back and bottom as she bent, and then she straightened up again.

Well, now there is a young woman - a beautiful woman - standing in my store in her underwear, Hamed thought to himself. He'd never seen the like before. Indeed, he'd not had much opportunity to see anything like this before. His own girlfriend was rather chaste and modest, and though he had fond memories of dalliances with more liberal-minded girls in years gone by, in truth they had been quite infrequent - certainly not frequent enough.

He wanted a closer look - the CCTV wasn't crystal clear - but worried if he made any movement, the girl would realize he was looking and suddenly lose her nerve, and regain her clothes. Instead he sat motionless, staring at the CCTV feed on the monitor, wondering what would happen next.

He didn't have to wait long to find out. With a toss of her curls, the brunette reached up behind her back and unhooked her own brassiere. She shrugged her shoulders, loosening the straps, and let the bra fall away in front of her, pulling free first one arm and then the other. The bra, too, was handed to the blonde.

The girl was only wearing panties now. Only wearing panties, in a small supermarket. What on earth was this about? Was she going to take off everything, Hamed wondered? Was her friend going to strip too? The blonde hadn't had the knockout figure of the brunette but she had a charm of her own and Hamed certainly wasn't going to complain if she lost her clothes too.

But right now the blonde's job seemed to be to hold her friend's clothes. The way they were standing, blondie was facing the camera, with the near-naked girl facing away. The blonde seemed a little nervous but also held her gaze fixedly on her friend - almost as if she couldn't take her eyes off her.

Hamed couldn't blame her. He was transfixed too.

Of course, the girl wasn't quite done with her striptease yet. She hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her panties and yanked them quickly down, stepping out of them unceremoniously. Hamed gazed at her naked rear. She had a real peach of a bottom, curvaceous and smooth. His penis stiffened in his jeans, he felt it strain against the stiff fabric.

Please turn around, please turn around, Hamed mouthed silently to himself. The girl was gorgeous from the back, but he longed to see her from the front - he knew if she put her clothes back on now, how she had looked nude would always be on his mind unless he saw it.

As if bidden to his will, the girl complied, turning away from the fridges and stretching languidly. Hamed gasped audibly. She was everything he'd hoped for and more. Full, round breasts, her nipples visible as darker grey on the camera footage against the lighter tone of her skin. Her stomach almost flat but with a little softness, a small swell to her belly, her navel a dark imprint. Below, a neat triangle of pubic hair, curvaceous hips and long, bare legs.

He'd stopped wondering why she was naked. Why shouldn't she be naked? He was never going to complain if a girl like her came into his store and took off her clothes. She certainly seemed to be enjoying the moment, he wasn't going to deny her that!

Now that she was naked, the brunette seemed in no hurry to put her clothes back on. She walked along the refrigerators, apparently trying to decide what to buy. She seemed completely at ease with her nakedness, as if it was the most normal thing in the world - an ease which only increased her attractiveness.

The girl deliberated for a minute or two, then chose a particular brand of beer. She bought a 12 pack, pulling it from the refrigerator with both hands. She juggled the beer awkwardly, hugging the pack to her chest and letting out an audible squeal as the cold metal connected with her bare skin. She handed the beer to her friend, placing it on top of the pile of clothes she was holding out. Her friend, although looking awkward next to her confident, naked friend, seemed happy to have been made to be the mule.

The naked girl roamed the aisles now, apparently looking for something.

"Excuse me?"

Hamed started. The girl was shouting, calling out, apparently to him. Did she know he was watching? Or did she think she was unobserved.

"Excuse me?" she shouted again. "Energy drinks? Do you have any energy drinks?"

Hamed found his voice. "What? Uh, here, in the fridge next to the counter."

There was a moment. Then, with a "thank you!" the girl appeared, walking out of the end of the aisle and over to the refrigerator. Just walking out in front of him, completely naked, as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

Hamed gaped, open mouthed, as she took the drinks and handed them as well to her friend and accomplice. In the flesh, in the harsh halogen light of the store, she was more lovely even than she had appeared on the CCTV. She had fair, light skin, marked here and there by a few moles. Her nipples were pink ovals, crowned by puckered bumps. They were stiff, either from cold or, a more intriguing possibility, from arousal. Up close, she had her imperfections - patches of pinkness where her white body was reacting to the cool of the store's air conditioning, marks where growing into her full figure had stretched her skin - but rather than spoil the image, these flaws enhanced it, a reminder that she was really here, that she was a real person, naked in the store.

Seeing him stare, the girl smiled.

"You want anything else?" she asked, turning to the other girl. The blonde, seeming lost in a reverie as she gazed at her friend, shook her head.

The two girls came up to the counter, the nude one and the clothed. The nude one took the beer and other drinks from her friend and passed them to Hamed to ring up. Like an automaton, without taking his eyes off her body, he did so, announcing the total in a monotone, disconnected voice.

Still nude, the girl took her shorts from her friend and pulled some notes from the pocket. She paid and then replaced the change in her pocket, and returned the shorts to her friend. She took the drinks and placed them back on top of her discarded clothes in her friend's arms, and thanking him turned to leave the store.

Hamed watched them leave. Two girls, one naked and one clothed. The naked one, blissfully happy and fully at ease; the clothed one flush-faced and almost in a trance.

There's a story there, he thought to himself as he watched her bare and beautiful bottom as she exited the store. There's a story I will probably never get to find out.

He grinned. At least he had the security tape.

Chapter 2: Becky's secret

Lisa Meredith lay face down on her bed, surrounded by papers. Open textbooks, printed-out revision guides, and pages and pages of notes.

She was snoring lightly.

It wasn't terribly late but her revision had finally got the better of her, and she'd fallen asleep in the middle of her studies. That wasn't unusual. She was always pushing herself and working too hard, her parents said - but at the same time, they understood the pressure. Both doctors, they knew the value of education, and had always stressed it to Lisa. It was no wonder she had turned out academically gifted but also incredibly studious.

Lisa's mobile phone, left where it had fallen beside her outstretched hand, pinged into life. A message alert. Groggily she opened her eyes, reaching instinctively for the phone. Like many eighteen-year-olds, her mobile was never far from her sight at any time.

A Snapchat, from her best friend, Becky O'Neill. The two girls frequently Snapchatted each other their days whenever they weren't together - meaningless exchanges to anyone else but crucial to them, an example of the close bond the two had shared since childhood.

Lisa opened the message. A selfie; Becky, in her bedroom. Her head and a portion of her shoulders. "Studying hard?" was the caption.

Lisa fired off a reply - her own sleepy visage. "Fell asleep :(" she responded.

Further messages from Becky followed - a short, amused conversation between the two.

The subject matter of their conversation was nothing in particular, as they so often were. But Lisa had recently begun to wonder about the photo messages she received from Becky. Not about what Becky was saying directly with them, but about what she was seeing in each of the ten-second pictures - something that made her wonder if perhaps Becky was saying more than she thought.

Becky often sent her snaps when she was in her bedroom, and recently Lisa had noticed that in all the face and shoulders shots, what was conspicuous was what was missing. In the shots Lisa would send, you could always see the neckline of her t-shirt, the straps of her vest top, or similar. But in Becky's shots, no clothing was ever visible.

No matter what time, day or night, if Becky sent Lisa a snap of her in her room, you couldn't see any sign of the clothes she was wearing. In fact, in some of Becky's recent messages, she'd been in other rooms of the house - the kitchen, the living room, even the back garden, and still Becky seemed rather more bare than one would expect.

All this was making Lisa wonder something. Snapchat was very spontaneous - a short glimpse into another person's life. So maybe the reason Becky looked so bare in the pictures she was sending was because, at the time she was taking them, she wasn't wearing much in the way of clothes?

Becky had always been a daring, mischievous girl. The two had been friends since early childhood, despite their different backgrounds (Lisa had grown up in a well-to-do home with her parents and two brothers, while Becky was the only child of a widow). As children, playing together, Becky had always had a certain way about her. She had been the sort of girl who would find a way of making you dare her to do things she actually wanted to do herself, but needed an excuse, a prompt of the sort a dare or challenge from a peer might give. Invariably, these had been the sort of things that, if Becky was caught, might well get the both of them into trouble. But for Becky, that had been part of the fun - the more forbidden and taboo the better.

These games had been the source of a few fallings-out between the two children. But now that they were older, Lisa was able to look back on this with some understanding as to why Becky might have behaved in this way. Becky had been something of a latch-key kid - while her mother loved her very much, the fact that she was on her own meant that she wound up frequently working late and Becky often went home to an empty house and a lack of adult supervision. It wasn't much of a stretch to guess that Becky might therefore have found joy in activities which won her a lot of attention, no matter whether it was good or bad. She wasn't a troublemaker, not by a long shot, but if there was a stunt or a dangerous activity or a place kids weren't supposed to go, it was fearless, intrepid, and sometimes foolhardy Becky who went there.

It hadn't ultimately done Becky any harm. Becky did what she wanted, didn't worry too much what others thought of her, and her outgoing nature and easy charm won her many friends, not to mention more than a few admirers. She'd grown now into a bold young woman, who knew her own mind and valued her own personal freedoms.

She had a certain level of confidence, particularly when it came to her own body. So the fact that Becky appeared in her chats to be missing some clothes didn't strike Lisa as odd, not by itself. The Becky she knew wouldn't have let a little thing like not being fully-dressed stop her from sending her friend a picture message if right then and there she had one to send.

But the frequency of these impressions had of late piqued Lisa's curiosity. Becky seemed to be unclothed a little too often for it to be easily explained away that she was just between outfits - not to mention those pictures where she was somewhere other than her bedroom.

That was the problem with something like Snapchat, Lisa thought to herself. You get an insight into how a person lives their life for a second, and then it's gone, and you're left wondering what the story really is. She had thought she knew Becky pretty well, and yet here she was with a question over something as apparently innocuous as what she was wearing in her picture messages. It wasn't exactly causing her sleepless nights, but each time she picked up one of these messages, a little tremor ran through her - a curiously anxious feeling, as if she was being told half a secret.

She'd hesitated to ask about it before, but now, as they chatted, curiosity was starting to get the better of her.

Lisa pulled a quizzical expression and captioned it "What are you wearing?" Then she hit send, and waited. There was no reply. Not at first, anyway. Then, rather than a Snapchat, a text message came through on Lisa's phone. This wasn't unusual - the girls often switched between apps. Snapchat was for selfies and silliness, texting was for more in depth stuff. It looked to Lisa like they were about to have a longer conversation - once again, that anxious, half-a-secret feeling started to grow in her. She opened the message.

Becky's reply was a red-faced 'embarrassed' emoji, then the word "nothing".

"You're naked?" Lisa messaged back.

An instant response - "Yes".

I knew it! Lisa thought to herself. I knew it! But by itself, it didn't answer Lisa's questions - that itch of curiosity she had still went unscratched.

In fact, it was a little troubling. Lisa was aware of Snapchat's capabilities for sending intimate pictures to another person - what people called sexting. But that was something couples did, naughty pictures to excite someone you were either sleeping with or wanted to sleep with. There had been nothing naughty about the innocuous glimpses of bare skin in Becky's messages - but they still seemed to have an intimacy about them which Lisa didn't fully understand. "Why are you Snapchatting me naked?" she asked.

The response she got back was not terribly clear. "I'm not Snapchatting you naked," Becky answered. "I'm naked, and I'm Snapchatting you."

Well, Lisa supposed, that was true. Clearly Becky's lack of clothing had nothing to do with the fact they had been picture messaging one another. But if that wasn't the reason, what was?

It was difficult for her to ask her question in the right way. She typed, then deleted, a few messages, almost giving up on the conversation. After all, why did it matter to her so much what her friend wore when she was alone (if indeed she was alone)? If Becky wanted to be naked, that was her business and nobody else's, surely? And yet, she wanted to know more.

"You seem to be naked a lot lately" Lisa texted. "In all your pics from home. What's going on?"

The reply from Becky took a while to come through.

"Nothing," Becky responded. "I just like it. It's often me here on my own. Mum at work. Nobody to see me. So why bother wearing clothes? I'm more comfortable without. So stopped wearing them when mum's out. Sometimes in my room too. Why be shy? Feels good and it's fun too."

"Everything's better when you do it naked."

-

It was later, when they were together again, that Becky explained herself further.

They sat on a bench outside the school, talking quietly so nobody else could overhear.

"I wanted you to know," she said. "I wanted you to know for the longest time. At first I thought it was silly to even need to have a conversation with anyone about it. But the longer it went on, the more I realized, it's not just about what I am wearing - or not wearing. It's about who I am. It's like, when I have clothes on, it's a front, it's something I present to the world. But it doesn't feel genuine, it doesn't feel like how I actually am. But when I take off my clothes, it's like I'm revealing my true self. All the other stuff is stripped away and I'm me, the real me. It's liberating. Its... amazing."