Miss Noble Ch. 01

It was near the beginning of my senior year of high school. I'd turned eighteen near the end of my junior year. (I'd started school a year late due to an illness which prevented me from making the deadline for registration, and suffered for that illness ever since.) I'd had a job working at a local pharmacy for almost two years, originally starting out doing janitorial-type work, and stocking shelves, but eventually working my way up to running a cash register. I was still expected to occasionally be the first one at the pharmacy to do some clean-up work: vacuuming, sweeping, and general tidying up before the business opened for the day. Since I was often the only person in the building for an hour or more on those mornings, it wasn't uncommon for me to occasionally swipe a candy bar, or some other snack as I worked, without paying for it. I was usually pretty good about paying for things, but during those hours I was alone in the store, I just didn't see the harm in what I did. I never took anything that was high value, and never stole anything from the pharmacist's shelves. But after a while, I guess I became complacent about hiding what I was doing. It wasn't like I was trying to get caught, but I suppose I started to feel like I was invulnerable from discovery. It was almost inevitable that I eventually did get caught. The owner of the pharmacy found a box of condoms in the pocket of my jacket as it hung in the employee's break area. He demanded to see my receipt, which of course I didn't have, and I was sacked on the spot.

I wasn't aware of how many items typically turned up missing, due to employee pilferage and actual shop-lifting, but he produced a list with all sorts of stuff on it. The list totaled several thousand dollar's worth of merchandise, for which he claimed I needed to provide restitution or he'd have me arrested and prosecuted. I was in a panic. I knew that the things I'd taken over the years I'd worked for him couldn't have added up to more than $100-$150, but he wanted to make me cough up money (which I didn't have) for every little thing he claimed was missing from the store's inventory. Frankly, I suspected he'd gone so far as to add things that he himself had "brought home."

I should point out that I was generally a pretty good kid. I got good grades, was active in the seasonal athletic programs (football in autumn, basketball in winter and track & field in the spring), and was even a member of my high school's band program. I admit that stealing anything was wrong, but I didn't think it was fair for me to be penalized so heavily for thefts that I hadn't committed. I also didn't dare tell anyone in my family or even my friends what had occurred. The one person to whom I thought I could go was my high school's Guidance Counselor, who also happened to be a neighbor in the condominiums where I lived with my mom and older sister.

Pamela Noble was the one person I believed could both keep this incident private, and possibly offer me advice on what to do. Let me take a moment to describe her. In a young man's fantasy, the women involved are typically voluptuous sex-kittens. Busty, sexy vixens who always wear revealing clothes designed to entice. That would not describe Miss Noble at all. Miss Noble just over 30 years old when she came to my school. She was extremely short—about five foot one. She was also very slender and not very well endowed. She had a face you'd have to describe as "cute", with glossy, wavy dark-coppery-colored hair that hung down to just below her shoulders. She also wore thin designer eye-glasses that had the effect of making her look slightly older and more serious than she really was. She tended to wear clothes that reinforced her image: that of an administrator in the education system. They were stylish, but in a not in a way that attracted stares—typically either quite bulky, or very loose-fitting to disguise her figure. With her small size and tiny, delicate features, combined with her choice in clothes and the fact the I'd never seen her in more than minimal makeup, she was not someone whom you would typically describe as your "dream girl". The overall effect was of a younger woman wearing mature clothes. If you didn't know her already, you might have mistaken her for a student in our school, instead of our guidance counselor.

When I got home that evening, it was already getting dark outside (dusk comes quickly to Michigan in early October), and instead of going to my townhouse (technically, the two-story apartments were called 'town-houses' before the apartment complex went condo), near the front of the complex, I took the chance and detoured across the parking lot to Miss Noble's building. Her own townhouse was at the far end of the complex, in the last building in the winding row which faced a woodland ravine. There were 10 buildings scattered through the complex, and they were built to afford a degree of privacy from one another. Landscaping added to the privacy factor, with lots of trees and bushes placed to screen them further from one another.

It seemed to take forever to walk the cold sidewalk that wound around between the parking spaces, carports and enclosed garages of our complex, but all too soon, I was standing in front of her condo.

I took a few deep breaths before knocking on her door.

I knew she was home, as I'd passed her sensible Volvo sedan on my way in. I was still a bit surprised when she answered the door in something other than the clothes I was used to seeing her in during the school day. She was dressed in a loose-fitting red t-shirt with a college logo on it, equally loose grey gym-style shorts, and comfortable gray fleece house-slippers.

"Jeremy? What is it? I was just getting ready to unwind for the night. Today was pretty exhausting," she said, surprised to see me. "Is this something that can wait until tomorrow morning at school?"

"Um, sorry, Miss Noble," I answered her. I was suddenly at a loss for words. I didn't know what to say, and it must have shown on my face. "Actually, this is something that probably can't wait. I have a problem and I can really use some advice. I don't think I can wait until tomorrow at school. I'm sorry to bother you, but..."

"It must be pretty serious, judging by your expression. All right then, come on in. Would you like some water, or a soft drink?"

I shook my head no, as she gestured for me to come inside, then closed the door behind us. I spared a glance to see that her condo was very nicely furnished. It was tastefully decorated, and the furniture wasn't what I'd have expected to find based on what I guessed her income would be. I suppose I'd assumed that the salary of a Guidance Counselor would keep one in a somewhat lower income bracket than seemed to be the case here. After leading me down a brief hallway to her living room and offering me a seat on the sofa opposite her own seat on a loveseat, she leaned back, crossed her arms, and told me to go ahead.

"Um. Well, Miss Noble, my boss at the drug store let me go this afternoon," I began, took a deep, calming breath, and tried to continue. "He found an item in my coat, while it was hanging up, and I hadn't paid for it. He... He..." I'd like to say that I kept my cool, and that my voice didn't waver as I told her my predicament, but the truth is that as I began to spill my guts to her, I could feel my throat starting to constrict, and my eyes to water. 'This is not happening!' I admonished myself. 'You are NOT going to cry in front of her.'

"He told me, as he fired me, that I'm going to be responsible for paying him restitution," I was blushing furiously—both from the embarrassment of admitting to this authority figure that I had stolen from my employer, and from the fact that despite my best attempts at controlling my emotions, several tears had rolled down my cheeks. "I wouldn't argue about paying him for what I'm responsible for stealing. That's only fair. But he's ...he's trying to blame me for all sorts of items he says are missing from the store. Thousands of dollars worth of things. He's warned me that if I don't pay him this restitution, he's going to turn me over to the police, and I'll have a permanent criminal record."

"Jeremy, what was that item he found in your coat? You haven't said yet."

I'd been embarrassed admitting to shop-lifting, but now I really began to blush.

"It was a box of condoms."

"Oh..." she said after a long pause. "And were they for you, or were you taking them for someone else?"

"What?" I hadn't seen that question coming.

"What I mean is, were they for you to use, or had you planned on giving ...or selling ...them to someone else? Have you profited from the items you've taken from the store?"

"Oh, no! I wouldn't do that! I mean, I know what I've done is wrong, but that's so much more wrong, you know? I took a piece of candy, or things like that, because I had a craving, and I was alone in the store. I'd never steal something to sell to somebody else. That would make me some kind of serious criminal!"

I stopped myself before I began to babble. Some corner of my mind told me I was starting to sound like Wally and Beaver talking to Ward Cleaver. I was staring at my hands in my lap, trying to think of what to say to steer the conversation back to the reason I'd come to her in the first place. I had hoped to get some advice on what to do, not answer questions about..."

"Then, you'd planned to use the condoms yourself? At least you showed some sense there, Jeremy."

I wished the earth would open up in front of me so I could jump in.

"But you know, Jeremy, I've kept an eye on you. We are neighbors, and all. I think I would have noticed if you'd been seeing someone. And all the student gossip that I hear... well, I have to admit that I'm a bit curious about this mysterious sexual partner of yours."

"I've been messing around with Denise Lane," I said in a voice barely above a whisper.

"Denise Lane." She didn't say it as a question, but it clearly was. "Your boss's married daughter, Denise." Again, her tone didn't pose it as a question, but again, it clearly was. Shock began to creep into her voice. "You have been fooling around with a married woman, the daughter of your employer, the wife of an attorney, for God's sake! And doesn't she have three children of her own? My God, what were the two of you thinking? She's 10 years older than you! She, of all people, should have known better!"

"She's only 26, and she has two children, not three... And... It just sort of happened. We haven't gone all the way yet." I hesitated, then admitted, "Well, we did sort of, but we didn't have protection, so we didn't..."

I looked up at her, and saw her staring almost expressionlessly back at me. I felt that I had to justify myself, some how.

"We were working in the stock room, in the basement of the store. She was pulling inventory for me to haul up the service stairs. I bring it up and drop it in the aisles where it goes, and the cashiers can put the stock where it belongs. Then I take the empty boxes and stuff back with me on each trip." I paused, and she motioned for me to continue. "It's an old building, and Mr. Hayden is pretty cheap. I think the lighting in the basement hasn't been serviced since he bought the place, and that's got to be, like, twenty years ago. All the lights are bare bulbs on a single circuit. You pull a string to turn on each light as you go, and if you have too many on, the circuit can't handle it. It's not unusual for the circuit down there to blow when you're not careful. Then you have to give it a couple of minutes to cool down, and reset it. It's a pain in the ass. Normally, I only light the aisles I'm in, but Denise was in a hurry, and had too many on. So, the circuit box blew, and we were left in the dark. There aren't any windows down there, so both of us were pretty blind."

"And this meant the two of you had to have sex?"

"No! I was trying to work my way to the breaker box so I could reset it, and she was fumbling around to find the stairway up. We bumped into one another, and we lost our balance, and she landed on top of me. In her dress, she had a hard time getting up, and while she was wriggling around on me, and I was trying to help her to get up off me, I accidentally touched her butt, and her chest. And I got, um, excited. And while she was trying to get back on her feet, she put her hand right on ...me."

I was blushing so badly, I was surprised the smoke detectors hadn't gone off.

"All of a sudden, she didn't seem to be in such a hurry to get off of me. We were both kind of frozen in place. Then she started kissing me, and rubbing me, and I was kissing her back, and..."

"I believe I can fill in the other details, Jeremy."

I looked up at her for the first time in a few minutes, and was struck by how embarrassed she must have been as well. Her face was completely flushed, and she looked quite warm all of a sudden.

"It's not like you're probably thinking, Miss Noble. She told me that her husband is a jerk. He works all the time, and when he comes home, he pretty much ignores her. The only time she gets any attention from him is when they're, um, in bed, but she says he's always done and asleep before she—" I stopped myself from finishing that, although based on the grin on her face, she knew exactly what I was going to say.

"She said that if it wasn't for their two kids, she'd have left him already. She said she wasn't looking for someone to cheat on him with, but ...it just sort of happened. And that time there, we didn't go very far. We stopped before we did something that was..." I was searching for the right words.

"Too far over the line to go back?" she suggested.

"Yeah, exactly! And once I got the breaker reset, we did our best to avoid each other for the better part of a week. It was just too weird. But then she surprised me, back in the basement, one evening. She wasn't even supposed to be working. She said she snuck in, so she could talk to me. But when she did, all the memories came back, of us making out, and I, um, I got..."

"Excited again?" she offered.

"Yeah. And I guess it was pretty obvious, because all of a sudden, she wasn't talking anymore. She was just staring at ...it, and then she was right in front of me, and, um..."

"One thing led to another?" She was grinning broadly now. I don't know if it was from my obvious discomfort, or from the fact that she was now finishing my sentences, but she seemed to be mightily amused about something.

"She said that we can't be indiscreet about what happened. And we need to try to be strong, but if the situation were to get the best of us again, we should, um, be prepared."

"And rather than attract attention by being the one to obtain the protection, she suggested you steal it?"

"No. I don't know what she expected me to do, but this is not a big town. And if I brought a pack of condoms to a cashier to ring up, word would get back to my mom. I know it would, and then she'd be pumping me to find out who I was..."

"Pumping?" She again supplied the end of a sentence, and then chuckled at the bawdiness of it.

"So, I tried to steal the box of condoms. I thought it would be the safest way to have them, in case I needed them. But now I doubt I'll be needing them at all." This brought me full circle back to the reason I was there in the first place. "I don't have much money put away in my savings. He didn't pay very well to begin with, and what I do have is supposed to be for college next fall. I don't have enough to pay him what he told me I owe, in any event. If I scraped together everything I had, it still wouldn't be close."

I realized a little too late that I was hyperventilating. I was feeling noticeably light-headed as my mouth started to run away with itself. I was speaking so fast that I felt like my words were an avalanche, and I just seem to get them back under control.

"Please, Miss Noble! If he goes to the police, I'd be screwed! I've already got applications out to colleges, but what if they won't accept me because I've got a criminal record? And if my mom finds out, she'll ground me for my whole senior year! And the worst part is that I didn't do it! I took a hundred dollar's worth of stuff—a hundred and fifty, tops, but Mr. Hayden wants to blame me for every damned thing that walked out of his store! He's even talking about blaming me for missing drugs, and I never even TOUCHED the drugs! I'm not some druggie!"

I can't remember everything I said after that point. The tears were starting to leak out again, and my head was spinning. At some point, she must have moved over to sit beside me on the sofa, because she was gently patting my back as I tried to hide my tears from her. I tried in vain to wipe them away without her seeing them. I finally gave up, and was openly sobbing when she enfolded me in a hug. She brought my face down to her shoulder and spoke soft, gentle words to try and calm me down. All the time, she gently rubbed and patted the back of my head, my shoulders and my upper back. She spoke to me like you'd speak to a baby you were trying to get to fall asleep. Between that and my hyperventilating, I lost track of time for a short while, but when I began to pay attention to my surroundings again, I noticed a few things very quickly: My tears had partially soaked the front of her t-shirt, my face was inches from her breast, and the nipple was noticeably stiff (and very obviously visible through the damp cloth).

I retreated to my corner of the sofa cushions, and tried to look anywhere except at the front of her wet t-shirt. She was looking at me like I was some kind of disgusting pervert, scowling at me, and I knew she was on the verge of either throwing me out of her condo, calling the police, or both.

The silence stretched out, and each second, I felt even more miserable than the one before. I kept my eyes focused on my hands in my lap, but in my peripheral vision, I could see her staring—glaring—at me. I waited for her to say something. Anything. Even hearing her call me the most vile names would have been a relief from a silence so long and absolute that I swear I could hear the sweat rolling down my face.

"You've been bad, haven't you, Jeremy?"

Her words were soft, almost gentle, but they were such a surprise in that awkward silence that I jumped as if she'd shouted at me. My eyes darted up to her face, to actually look at her expression for the first time in several minutes. I only looked at her for a moment, before I again returned to staring at my lap, but the image was burned into my mind. And even though I was looking at my denim covered knees, I was seeing her face. And, slowly, a realization crept over me. Her face was flushed, angry. Her eyes were squinting at me. Furious eyes. Her nostrils were flared. Her lips were drawn back in a disgusted snarl. Or were they? No. I doubted that. Her eyes were squinted? No, they were half-shut. Almost dreamy. Her lips weren't snarling—they were grinning. Her face was flushed, but not in anger. She looked turned on!

I risked another glance up at her. Only a quick, darting glance. But in that fraction of a second, I was certain of it: She wasn't angry. She was aroused!

"You want me to believe that you feel genuine remorse for stealing from your boss, Jeremy. Don't you? I mean, you've said, 'I know that stealing is wrong', but how badly do you want me to believe that you really feel that way?"

"Miss Noble! I meant that. I mean, I mean that! I regret taking anything from the store. It was stealing, plain and simple, and I am more than willing to accept responsibility for what I did wrong. What... what do you want me to say to convince you?"

"Actions speak much more loudly than words, Jeremy. I'd like you to show me how sincere you are." She was still speaking in a soft, quiet voice. It was a voice that I might have considered gentle, in other circumstances.