*Author's Note: Any and all persons engaging in any sexual activity are at least eighteen years of age.
**This story has not been edited. It has been run through Spell Check. If reading a story that has not been edited bothers you, please hit the 'Back Space' key on your keyboard.
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You don't start off at nineteen an hour, Ryan; you work your way up to nineteen an hour," Vanessa Charles snapped at her husband.
Brianna Charles closed the door to her room, shutting out the same old argument she'd heard over and over for the last two years.
They were finally out of Uncle Glen's house, thank God. The man made Brianna's skin crawl. He was fat, morbidly obese actually, with greased hair, a pencil line mustache and piggish eyes. He smoked, so there was always a stench of tobacco around him, stale menthol tobacco.
And Uncle Glen had grabby hands. He would demand hugs and his hugs were gropes of Brianna's breasts, gropes of her ass, and gropes of her crotch. Uncle Glen also did it to Vanessa, his own sister.
Brianna had just turned nineteen when they'd lost their home in Kimble, Louisiana, her brothers Michael and Matthew had just turned sixteen.
Having to make the decision what to take was heartbreaking; there was only so much room in the Buick.
When Brianna's best friend Natalie was twelve years old, Natalie's grandmother had shown her how to do needle point. Natalie did a horrible job of embroidering a pillow with hearts and the message 'I LOVE YOU' and had given the pillow to Brianna. And that had been the one thing Brianna decided she could not leave behind.
Brianna had known she was gay from an early age. She and Natalie Broussard would sit and gossip, giggle about this boy or that boy. But Brianna did not really like this boy or that boy. She really liked, loved Natalie, with her short, plump body and long strawberry blonde hair and angelic face and big blue eyes.
Brianna and Natalie would steal Ryan Charles' naughty magazines and bring them into Brianna's bedroom. Then they'd giggle over the naughty things the guys and girls were doing in the magazines. When they'd come to pictures that would show two girls doing naughty things with each other, Brianna would quickly flip past those. She was so afraid if she paused long enough, she'd reveal her secret to Natalie. And then Natalie wouldn't be her friend anymore.
Then when Brianna's dad lost his job with PC Nation, when they started receiving the threatening letters and phone calls from collection agencies, when their mother let them know they had lost the home, Brianna finally revealed to Natalie that she was gay, that she was in love with Natalie.
Natalie had felt the same way, had felt the same way for years. She was in love with Brianna.
The nineteen year old Brianna and eighteen year old Natalie hugged, kissed, and pleasured each other nearly every opportunity they had. Until they packed the last box into the car, barely leaving room for Brianna or Michael or Matthew.
"I love you too," Brianna said as she now looked at the pillow on the bed in her new room in the trailer.
Matthew had been the first one to find a job. He worked at a local Taco Bell. Michael took a job at a Popeye's Restaurant. Then Vanessa found a job at a Target retail store.
"Gee, why y'all couldn't do this when we were losing our house?" Ryan tried to joke, but it came out as a bitter complaint.
Then Brianna, all five foot two and one hundred and nine pounds of her, found a job at a local warehouse, making twelve dollars an hour. But her father had still been unable to find a job. Every penny Brianna and the twins and her Mom made went to paying Uncle Glen for rent and food, as well as paying back the credit cards they'd maxed out.
And still Ryan Charles had been unable to find a job. Even after his unemployment benefits ran out, he was still unable to find a job.
Natalie had sent the Charles' family the announcement that she was marrying some man, had sent them an invitation to the wedding, and had even asked Brianna if she'd be a bridesmaid. But they didn't go; they couldn't afford it. They couldn't even afford the ninety four dollars for Brianna to take the Greyhound from Jackson, Mississippi to DeGarde, Louisiana.
Finally, the Charles' family actually started to get ahead of their mountain of bills and started saving. And Brianna and Matthew and Michael were allowed to keep fifty percent of what they brought home, Brianna bought a car. A twelve year old Kia, but it was a car, it was her car.
Then one of Vanessa's co-workers had an aunt that passed away. The aunt had a trailer, and the co-worker, the last living relative did not want the trailer, already having a home. She offered to sell it to Vanessa. And still, Ryan had not been able to find a job.
Brianna hated her job; she was the only white woman there. Other than the owner/manager, she was the only white person there. She'd been hired on as customer service, as well as inventory control. If a truck came in and said they had two hundred boxes of spark plugs, it was up to Brianna to verify that there were two hundred boxes of spark plugs. If a truck backed up with an order for three dozen air filters, Brianna made sure that they got three dozen air filters. Not three dozen and one air filters.
. It was hot, sweaty, dusty work in the summer and it was cold, sweaty dusty work in the winter.
Because Brianna was attractive, with long brown hair, big brown eyes and sweet round face, Brianna was approached every day by truckers, by the men that worked on the floor, by the clients that came in to the office. Because Brianna also sported Double D breasts, these approaches were quite often very crude.
Zebadiah, however, was simply unwilling to accept Brianna's polite refusal. The coworker would corner the girl whenever he could, thrust his crotch against her, grab for her large breasts, and accuse her of being racist.
"You just don't want no date with me 'cause I'm black, that's it, huh? Ain't it?" he sullenly accused, poking a finger into her face.
"No, I don't want a date with you because you're ugly," she snapped back, close to tears.
"Zebadiah, what'd I tell you about that shit?" Ollie Smith, the owner/manager called out.
"Mr. Smith, I quit, you hear?" Brianna snapped. "I have had enough of this shit."
"Zebadiah, grab your shit; you're out of here," Ollie said.
Ollie did not want another sexual harassment suit on his hands; the last one had nearly bankrupted him.
So it had been an uncomfortable day at work, with the other employees glaring at her for getting their buddy fired. Then after work, Zebadiah had attempted to follow her. She managed to get away from the angry man by pulling into a grocery store parking lot, then pulling back out and circling the block.
Now, safely at home, Brianna looked at the needlepoint pillow on her bed.
"I love you," Brianna said again to her pillow before stripping out of her sweaty clothes and grabbing her tattered terry cloth robe from her closet.
"Honey, didn't that Natalie girl marry some Oscar Worthington?" Vanessa called out as Brianna left her bedroom, shower bag in hand.
"Oscar, yeah, Oscar Worthington; why?" Brianna asked before sliding the door of the small bathroom open.
"I was reading the DeGarde Weekly on line earlier and it said that an Oscar Worthington of Kimble died, brain aneurism, but it can't be the one Natalie married," Vanessa answered.
