Author's Note: All characters are over the age of 18. Story will include soft themes of mind control (fucking duh, mate).
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"
here
" I typed out and sent.
I'd been in this library hundreds of times, and still I appreciated just how fucking ugly it was. Monochromatic, cubic, unimaginative. Just a hulking tessellation of granite and plaster, with taupe walls and taupe librarians. But hey -- I respected a hustle, and the architect who designed and erected the thing surely had grandiose artistic statements to justify the multi-million dollar "investment." Here's hoping he's on a beach with a cigar somewhere.
I'm not going to tell you exactly which library or which city or whatever, by the way. You'll know why later.
This library is on my high school campus, which is, like the library, sprawling and unattractive. It's a private school, meant to model college life, so they do the whole library/studying thing hard. I live where a lot of rich people live, and this is the school they all want to get their kids into -- the widest avenues to top universities and whatnot. I'm here because I tested in, which is, incidentally, also why I'm at the library: because the kids who paid to get in need help from the kids who tested in to pass their classes.
I sound bitter. Maybe I am, I dunno. I don't feel bitter. I was tutoring Miranda Plover today, and I really didn't feel any resentment towards her. Her folks were both doctors, so they paid well, and her dad has taken me to a Giants game each of the last two seasons as an extra bonus. It wasn't weird, either: Miranda and I were friends, despite her allegiance to New York teams. She was bubbly in a non-irritating way, spirited about learning even if it doesn't come easily for her. Her educational goal is a doctorate in occupational therapy, and I was the first betting on her to reach it.
She was also pretty hot, which didn't hurt. Didn't hurt her aspirations in a male-dominant field, and didn't hurt my enjoyment of her company. Shorter and curvier, with long brown hair and dimples behind a big smile, I knew the shape was one she worked for as much as she lucked into. She liked sweaters in the chilly library A/C; I liked them because they were tight over her tits, which were...ample. That's a non-gross way of saying it.
It was a black turtleneck today, tucked into maroon pants that gripped her waist and flared with her hips. She waved as she approached; I remembered to pick my eyes up.
"88 on the last test, bitches!" She cursed when she was happy.
"That B average is well and alive coming into finals," I said without mirth -- that B was hardfought. "What tripped you up?"
"There was a multi-part word problem where I got the first part wrong and I was screwed the rest of the way." She riffled through the papers in her hand. "And then there was a volume of revolution where I tried to do slices but I think I was supposed to do shells."
"Well, most calculus isn't going to pop back up in your life again, but choosing the right way to attack a problem will. Especially when we get to the final. You don't want to be wasting your time on the first strategy you think of when you could have just planned your approach. Brute forcing things can take time."
"Yeah, next time I'll go real subtle on the word problem, keep him guessing. He'll never know just where I'll strike."
"I just mean--"
"Head on a swivel, integration!"
I leered at her. She grinned at me. She had a nice smile.
We took a desk on the third level, which was usually quiet after dinner, and dug in on the next topic: multi-variable functions. It was predictably frustrating, slow-going. She unpacked a prepackaged vegetable motley with a branded super water while I raided the vending machine for Cheetos; we took over an abandoned study room so I could draw horribly disproportionate diagrams on a smudged whiteboard. After 90 minutes, we both wanted to die.
"...technically, it's ellipses all up the
z
-axis. Just, in this case when the coefficients of
x
and
y
are equal, it's circles." I was describing elliptic paraboloids to my captive audience, to little avail.
Miranda stretched in her chair, and my eyes traced the outline of her bra over her chest. She wore some heavy-duty stuff, and rightfully so. With a final lurch back in her chair, her boobs bounced once, and I gulped, re-crossing my legs in my seat.
"I think I understand most of it. If there's more to it, though, I'm not going to be able to get to it tonight." She tapped her temple with her pen. "I'm stuffed."
It wasn't really innuendo, but in my current headspace, it felt like it.
"I feel that." I checked the clock. "If you want to just keep chugging away at your assignment, I'll hang around for the final 30 minutes, be around for any questions."
"You don't have to do that!" She shot me a winning smile. "You've got better things to do with your Friday night."
"I assure you, I don't." I was swinging for a 'would rather spend time with you' angle, but didn't realize the actual implication until the admonition was hanging between us. Miranda, to her credit, waved it off with a laugh.
"If you just asked out Rachel, you would have something to do with your Friday night, you know." Rachel was another test-in at our esteemed institution -- mousy, sweet, motherly. She didn't have soft, round cheeks for the light to bounce off of; pink lips to receive a careful reapplication of gloss in a compact mirror.
"I would have something else, yes. But again -- wouldn't be better than this." Got the message across this time, but now it just felt hackneyed. Miranda beamed at me anyway.
"You're sweet."
"Nah, it's mostly cause you're paying me. This ass ain't free."
"And magic's gone." She sighed dramatically, reaching into her bag and fishing out her AirPods. "I'm taking you up on your offer though. 28 minutes of homework with my own personal WolframAlpha? Too good to pass up."
"Fair's fair." I gestured to her AirPods. "Since when do you have study jams?" Miranda, like me, always enjoyed studying to the white noise of the library -- though at this time of night, there weren't many studiers to generate that ambiance.
"It's something my mom worked on for a study, actually." She turned her phone around to show me the app: FocusTunes. "There's a developing field called 'brainwave entrainment' -- it's like training your brain to activate to certain sounds when you want it to do certain things. So this app has these songs you can listen to" -- she scrolled through a list of mp3s, faster than I could read the names -- "that are supposed to increase your brain's sensory response, make it easier to capture new information, get memory neurons activated before a test, calm down after a test. That sort of thing."
I sent her a sideways glance. Dr. Plover was a smart lady -- and pretty hot in her own right -- but she tended to get too excited about emerging trends in her field of neuroscience. One friendly dinner at the Plover residence ended in an unnecessarily detailed conversation about new pheromone regulatory drugs in post-pubescent males. Miranda had been wearing a pretty low-cut dress that day, too.
"Shut up." She rolled her eyes, plugging her earbuds in and selecting a track. "I've only just started trying them out, but if they help me get through this and the fucking transcendental movement in Scharping's class, I'll buy the premium version."
"Whatever floats your boat." I shrugged, reaching for my latest sci-fi novel. "If you have a question, just let me know."
I couldn't get through a paragraph without glancing back up to Miranda. I knew she brought up Rachel as a deterrent to me asking her out -- something I had only once tried and failed to do, after tutoring her for a few months. What better way to discourage a potential suitor than constantly pointing him in other directions? And frankly, I didn't so much want to date anybody as much as I wanted to fuck somebody -- you just had to go through one to get to the other. I don't mean to be crude, but I was a high school senior with two sexual experiences lasting a total of four minutes, with the intermittent "fuck!...sorry..." and "...are you okay?" comprising the dirty talk and blind groping in the darkness the totality of my memorable visuals. Those were both a while ago, before I was emphatically branded as a low rung on the social ladder. In some way, I suppose my Friday nights were spent with Miranda, or another from a glut of other malleable and eager fabrications of a lonely imagination, the darkness of my own bedroom, and a Kleenex.
I glanced up again. Miranda had her pencil eraser between her lips in concentration, her tongue occasionally darting out from behind it and wetting her glossed lips. That was enough for me.
"Bathroom," I said as I rose, making my way out of the study room while fumbling for my phone in my pocket -- had to give her a reason for the bulge in my pants. They were all gender-neutral single bathrooms for this modern school, so I picked the one furthest down the hall and slid in quickly. I had my phone out before the door closes behind me, but before I can even get to Reddit or Google or the folder buried in my apps titled "Catan Strategies" -- listen, it works, okay -- I realized I probably didn't need it. I'm rock hard as it is, and there's only one girl on my mind.
I tossed my phone onto the sink and ripped my pants down to my knees -- fuck, I don't know how she does it to me. She knows she's sexy, but if she were just overtly teasing me, I'd be as pissed as I am horny. It's how casually she throws it around with me now, how comfortable she is with me ogling her when she bends or stretches or walks or fucking anythings. It's how comfortable she is knowing I'm wrapped around her little finger.
"Fuck, Miranda..." I mutter as I stroke.