Sarah woke up one morning to find an email announcing that the company she worked for had gone out of business. It wasn't a huge surprise as they had been struggling for a while and everyone had been putting forth extra effort hoping to help the company survive. After all the stress she'd been under, it almost came as a relief.
She was immediately offered a job by a competitor. She accepted on the condition that she could start work in the fall. She was burned out and wanted to do something different for a couple of months as a sort of reset. Now she just had to find the 'something different.'
It didn't take long.
She and her husband Brian were visiting her brother Pete and his wife Joy. Normally their neighbour Jacko is hanging around and flirts with Sarah, but he was currently rekindling with his wife Michelle. They have a very on-again, off-again relationship, an since Michelle hates Pete, Sarah doesn't see Jacko much during the 'on-again' phase.
It appeared that Jacko's spot as Pete's main crony had been taken by Roy, a 400 pound guy who boards at a widow's house two doors down. The last time Sarah saw Roy, she was jumping on a trampoline, and Roy now had a video on his phone of the moment her boobs sprang into view. He stored the video in an album called 'Spank Bank'.
Roy owns a dump truck and was talking about the road building job he had been hired for.
"A construction company from out of town got a job down near The Hill. They're hiring local trucks and a few equipment operators if you know anyone looking for work."
"I'm actually looking for work for the summer." replied Sarah.
"Have you ever operated heavy equipment?" Roy asked, his doubt obvious by his tone.
Pete laughed, "Our Grampy Dan owned a small construction company. We were operating heavy equipment before we learned to ride bikes."
A couple of phone calls later Sarah was officially the operator of a 9-tonne vibratory roller.
Besides Roy she would know one other person on the job, Polly, a fiery, tattooed 22-year-old with a raspy voice and the vocabulary that would fit right in on a construction site. Polly was also topless on Roy's trampoline video. She would be working traffic control.
The first two days there wasn't much use for a roller operator, so Sarah spent most of her time off-road in a dozer building bullpens to store ditching material and other aggregate being excavated from the old road.
Since female equipment operators were still unicorns, she had plenty of visitors stopping by to scrutinize her abilities, none more than Roy.
Since he had gotten her the job, he was very anxious to make sure she didn't make him look bad. When he got her the job his only consideration was seeing her more and hopefully seeing more of her body. With a limited number of dump trucks at this stage of the project, he was seeing her every 15 minutes.
She had learned the ropes on her grandfather's 1960' era relics, so she had to adapt to modern joystick controls, but this would be a smoother transition than switching in the opposite direction. Grandpa Dan had also reinforced the need for maintenance, which wasn't lost on the guys who gathered at the end of the day to watch her bend, squat, and climb around the equipment to grease it.
The consensus was that she was 'rusty, but has an obvious aptitude for equipment.'
On Wednesday she was finally on the roller and the summer settled into a routine of working sunrise to sunset. Since she lived between the jobsite and the motel that the crew was staying at, Sarah was picked up and dropped off every day.
She immediately noticed that unlike the dozer, this roller had no air conditioning. She left the doors latched open but was still a hot sweaty mess.
She noticed that a lot of the other operators had removed their t-shirts and were wearing their mesh reflective vests against their bare skin.
On her next trip by the porta potty, she went inside and removed her shirt and put the vest back on. Her bra was visible through the mesh and that was a problem. She didn't own 'comfortable' bras, wearing either 'good' bras or none at all. This one provided lots of cleavage with a lacy front that hinted at the existence of areolas while not outright displaying them.
Once back inside of her roller, she felt relatively safe from exposure to passing motorists and coworkers. And best of all, she felt some relief from the heat. She eventually got so comfortable that she forgot all about her racy outfit and put her entire focus into her roller pattern.
At the end of the day she parked the roller, did her required maintenance, then grabbed her lunch can and headed for the crew van. She had to stoop to get through the side door and realized she was likely giving Vic, her seat mate, a downblouse view but when the entire van went quiet, she suddenly remembered there was no blouse to look down.
She looked at Vic and said, "Sorry, but it was hot."
"You just have to dress for the weather, a lesson that you uh..." he looked at her chest and winked, "seemed to have learned already."
The equipment operators traveling in this van were a fairly elderly bunch who seemed genuinely pleased to have a young lady join their trade.
Vic was a 72-year old grader operator who spoke with an Acadian accent. For the last 10 years he had told the company at the end of the summer that he was retiring, and each spring they would rediscover that top-notch grader operators were a rare commodity. He had ended up with 10 consecutive pay raises and everyone seemed happy with the arrangement.
As they dropped her off at home that night, she noticed that Gaston the excavator operator and designated van driver had shifted his rear-view mirror to keep her boobs in sight. She fixed him with a raised eyebrow, and he smiled bashfully in return.
On Thursday Sarah decided to wear a sports bra which had become a little more socially acceptable to wear in public. She hadn't worn it before, the fit was poor and by 10 AM she was regretting her decision. Her breasts were pushed together into a mono boob and her cleavage was a sweaty mess. She eventually stopped by the porta potty and opted for a tank top with no bra.
She had planned on putting the sports bra back on for the drive home, but the effect of the vibratory drum on her unholstered tits kept her nipples in a constant state of arousal and in the end, she decided to be adventurous.
After greasing her roller, she headed toward the van. As she ducked to enter the door, she felt the neckline of her tank top gape down and worried that her display might have gone beyond teasing.
"Tabarnak!" Gaston exclaimed from the driver's seat. "Vic has a pacemaker, you're going to kill him."
The van erupted in a chorus of chuckles as Vic patted Sarah's thigh and declared, "At least I'd die happy."
"Are we dropping you off, or are you coming to the pub?" Gaston asked Sarah as they approached her house.
"The pub?" she asked.
"Every Thursday the crew stops at a pub and Levi buys us a couple of rounds to celebrate a productive week." replied Gaston, referring to the company foreman.
It had already been a 60-hour week and she still had one more 4:45 AM alarm to worry about, but she was also new to the crew and didn't want to miss any of the team-building events. "Sure, let's go." she relented.
A 'whoop' went up in the van as all the other operators voiced their approval. The mood was a little bit 'too' excited, and she momentarily feared this was some sort of 'new kid initiation' before dismissing the thought.
She sent Brian a text with the change in plan and he agreed to pick her up later.
When they arrived at the pub everyone got out and removed their vests, leaving them behind in the van. This was a development that Sarah should have anticipated but hadn't. Removing a bra from under a shirt is a cute parlor trick, but doing the reverse in a parking lot surrounded by co-workers seemed like an insurmountable challenge that she didn't even attempt.
She hadn't removed the vest in several hours, so she really couldn't predict the condition of the tank-top underneath. Would hours of sweat and dust make it more transparent or less? Would the shirt hang limp and lifeless hiding her curves, or conform to her body like a second skin?
The answers were: more transparent and like a second skin.
Sarah walked with the guys across the dark parking lot with no issues. She guessed that there was a mild risk of exposure passing through the bright lights at the entrance before being enveloped by the dim pub lightning.
As soon as Vic held the door for open for her, she realized this wasn't one of those dimly lit pubs. Her areolas instantly became visible like switching on a set of headlights, catching the attention of her co-workers.
If tonight's pub visit was meant as a team-building exercise, Levi was going to owe her big-time.
Although everyone was smiling, her fellow operators didn't actually acknowledge the display. They moved as a group through the room with more and more heads turning for a quick peek before she passed.
As she approached the group of booths filled by crew members who had arrived before them, Roy finally broke the silence. "Batman called. He received your signal."
The group went quiet. It was one of those seminal moments where if she had glared at him or told him to 'fuck off', it would have made her breasts off-limits for the rest of the summer. Instead, she noticed Polly trying to stifle a laugh and Sarah snickered for half a second. That was all it took for the whole crew to burst out laughing...and for her boobs to no longer be taboo.
She slid into a booth between Vic and Josh, a middle-aged front-end loader operator while Roy and Gaston sat opposite them. She crossed her arms in front of her chest. It wasn't going to be a practical pose all night, but Sarah figured she'd hide the girls at least until the waitstaff brought some of the promised alcohol.
She took a quick look around and noticed that the guys had left just enough room so that there was one woman in each of the booths. Sarah suspected this wasn't accidental.
When her first drink arrived, Sarah realized that squeezed in between Vic and Josh, her chest was likely only visible to her own booth, so she silently decided 'que sera, Sarah' and stopped hiding them.
Vic got very excited when he discovered Sarah had experience with her grandfather's 1960's era Galion grader, exclaiming, "Before the end of the summer, I'm going to get you running my new Cat."
"Just remember, I'm not making this my new career, I'm only here for the summer." she reminded.
"I've said 'I'm only here for the summer' since you were in high school, sweetheart." Vic countered, "The money is good, and the grader operator doesn't have to share a motel room. Just try it out."
"You never offered to tutor me on the grader." laughed Josh.
"Front-end loaders are where we hide knuckle draggers. I'm searching for an artiste." quipped Vic as he blew a chef's kiss.
During their two-drink happy hour, it seemed like everyone in the pub went out of their way to walk past this table on the way back from the restroom.
After the second drinks were delivered, Sarah texted to give Brian a 15-minute head-start. When he arrived, the crew were already outside milling around the vans. In the dark parking lot, Sarah's exposure had faded into obscurity.
