Changing with Katie Ch. 01

Here's a story about true events, or maybe just about plausible events. It revolves around somewhere I used to work, or still might work, or could have worked in the past. The names have obviously been changed, but the woman in the story is very real, and still out there somewhere, and still in my thoughts from time to time.

Here is a story that starts with a chance encounter gone wrong... or very right, depending on how you see things. Slow burner, relative to my other stuff, so be aware this one isn't jumping into a sex scene for a couple chapters.

Also, I'm never sure how to tag these. If you have suggestions, please comment them at the end. Tags are one of the main ways I find stories to read, so I want to do a good job of tagging for others to find my stories.

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It was the height of the COVID pandemic, and I had been working in the office at a big department store for quite some time. You know the type: neat aisles, and racks full of products. Helpful people everywhere, looking to assist you in buying as much as possible. If you've worked at a place like that, you may know there's a warehouse area stashed in the end of the building. Nothing big, but big enough that people managed to get into trouble back there sometimes. Usually things like napping, or smoking, or otherwise hiding from work. They had cracked down recently and started limiting who could go there on duty. Aside from the one girl they had working fulltime in the warehouse, almost nobody ever went back there for long.

Katie was her name, and she had kind of a Plain Jane image. Cute face, average height and build, brown hair and eyes. Nothing stood out about her, but she was pretty and had a decent body. Certainly there was nothing wrong with her. Her biggest problem wasn't even a problem with her at all; upper management always wanted to save money by understaffing, and really her job should have been done by two people. As a result, Katie always seemed to be running behind and was always stressed about it.

I felt bad for her, but she was doing her best, and that was better than I could say for a lot of people at the company. She also did her best to stay upbeat, which contributed to my appreciation for her. You could see that life was wearing on her though. She would pace around frazzled sometimes. Sometimes she would be snappy with her coworkers. Sometimes, after disappearing for a bit, she would show up again looking like she had just been crying. Sometimes I wanted to give her a hug and tell her things would be okay.

I didn't have the confidence though. Since childhood I've always been on the skinny side and insecure about it. As an adult, my sedentary office lifestyle hadn't done me any favors. For a new year's resolution one year, I had determined I would get in better shape, and so I was leaving most days to go on a run after work. A few months of that had me feeling and looking good, and with some weight training on the side, my body was starting to look downright athletic!

The women at work had noticed. I'd heard rumors that one or two would make crass comments sometimes in private, but there was really nobody at work I felt like pursuing. I just took it as a compliment and didn't pay them any mind. It was a big confidence booster though, and as I started to get more confident about my looks, I started behaving with more confidence around women. I'd have considered flirting with Katie, but she was not available.

That was Katie's second big problem: her longtime boyfriend Walter. He did custodial work in the store and was kind of a deadbeat. Not everybody felt as fondly about Katie as I did, but anybody familiar with the couple could tell you that she was the better half of that relationship. The two of them had had a kid together a few years back, and rumor had it she was saddled with most of the parenting duties at home. I didn't find it too surprising, seeing the difference between their levels of diligence at work. Nobody knew why they had been together for ten years without tying the knot, but in my opinion if she wasn't going to dump him she was at least doing herself a favor by not marrying him.

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Things began to shift when the building's changing area was shut down for renovation that autumn. I had started seeing Katie more in recent weeks because I was going to the warehouse to change. I know it was a misuse of the warehouse to change there, but the bathrooms were disgusting (see: Walt's terrible work ethic) and there was exactly zero chance I was about to risk stepping on the bathroom floor without my shoes on.

Each day I would clock out after work and grab my workout clothes on the way to the warehouse. There were rows of pallets stacked up in racks, with narrow gaps near the walls so somebody could squeeze through looking for products. I'd found a little spot in the corner where a row of pallets wasn't pushed all the way back, so there was just enough room to stand and change. Each day I went back there I would be sure to catch Katie and ask how her day was going, or at least to give her a wave and a smile. Or... what passes for a smile when everybody's masked up thanks to the pandemic.

Katie never really asked why I kept coming back to the warehouse. She was often busy anyway, but I think she appreciated somebody caring about how her day was going. Eventually she would seem to always be near the warehouse desk when I'd come in, as if she was looking forward to our brief exchanges as much as I was. I had no clue what she really thought of me, but I was definitely developing a crush. She was very sweet, and if I'm completely honest, I had felt unappreciated at work for quite some time too.

We would have our little exchange each day, and I think we would both come away feeling nice that somebody cared, until a few weeks later when the holiday season was looming. Poor Katie became a lot busier then, and so I wouldn't always see her. If I didn't, I would just go back and change, and hope to bump into her on the way out.

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Then, one day as I was changing she walked in on me.

"Walked in" probably isn't a fair description. There was no wall or barrier between me and the world, just some rows of pallets that stood taller than a person. There was no door keeping anybody out, just a tight gap between the merchandise and the wall.

On that particular day, I had just kicked off my shoes and stripped my pants when she appeared around the corner, probably looking for where some item was stored on the racks. Her eyes opened wide as they dropped to my mostly bare legs, then shot back up to my face. We both froze.

"I'm sorry!" she said, maybe a bit too loudly, as she turned red-faced toward the wall.

"Did you find it, Katie?" somebody shouted from somewhere else in the warehouse.

She whipped her head in the direction of the walkway next to the wall and immediately scooted into the shelter of the gap in the pallets I was changing in. Her hip bumped mine and she jumped, looked at me, down at my legs again, then stood bolt upright and pressed herself to the pallet behind us as if she wanted to disappear.

By this point my shock had passed, and I was more amused by her reaction than anything.

"I'm sorry!" she hissed at me, this time much quieter. Her eyes glued themselves to my hands, as I began unbuttoning my collared shirt.

"Katie, did you find it?" the voice asked again, much closer this time.

She started again at the voice, snapping her out of watching my hands, and she called back "um... no! I don't see it back here but let me check to be sure!" Then, collecting herself some, she whispered to me, "what are you doing here?"

"I'm changing for my run" I whispered back. "Not getting naked, I promise."

I guess the explanation made sense because she visibly relaxed a bit, though her face was still reading something like a mix of alarm and embarrassment. Her eyes were locked on mine. There wasn't much else to look at since we were both masked, and I think she was doing her best to not ogle my body again.

I was suddenly overcome with sympathy. Poor Katie, in here trying her best. She was so sweet, and so underappreciated, and now she was embarrassed about seeing me half naked.

I don't know what came over me. I reached up, touched her chin under the mask, and leaned in. She tilted her face up and closed her eyes, and I kissed her.

"Kissed" probably isn't a fair description. We both had our masks on, as company policy dictated. No skin touched. It wasn't a real kiss, but I felt her lips move under her mask. She had opened them before we made contact, and I heard a little sigh as we closed our lips through the barriers between us.

"Found it! It's over on rack B!" shouted the other voice. "Hurry over here and pull it, Katie, I'm sending someone back to restock."

She opened her eyes and gazed into my eyes. We heard the big door to the warehouse swing open and then shut with a thud.

A moment passed. I couldn't get a read on her, so I figured the best bet was to act natural. I reached for my gym shorts. She shuffled back, leaning against the wall, watching me step into the shorts and pull them up over my hips.

"I should go pull that pallet" she offered after another moment.

I nodded and waved to her. "Gonna go get my run in. Don't work too hard, Katie."

She smiled at that, and she scooted back down the narrow gap next to the wall, disappearing from sight. By the time I had my shoes back on she was busy pulling out a row of pallets to access rack B, so I let myself out without disturbing her.

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After the incident I was kind of worried that something would be said to me about it, but apparently Katie kept it to herself. The only thing that changed over the next few weeks was the scenery in my "changing room." Pallets came and went, but Katie was kind enough to leave my little gap. If she was around as I was coming or going I made a point to give a smile and a wave, but she was usually too busy to stop or chat. I appreciated that she was willing to just leave it as an awkward accident.

Then one day it happened again. I hadn't seen her on my way back to change that day, but just after pulling off my button-up shirt and dropping my pants, she squeezed around the corner to grab something from the racks in back.

"Oh! Sorry!" she offered, with an embarrassed laugh.

I laughed and shrugged in return. "Hey, this is your warehouse. Sorry for the intrusion."

She seemed less shocked this time, but still she froze in place, looking at me. "Sorry," she repeated, "I just needed something off the scaffold behind you."

Trying my best to act natural, I just nodded as I pulled on my running shorts. "Sorry then, I'll be out of your way in just a second."

She leaned back toward the wall as I grabbed my stuff and edged out toward the pathway to the front, but our bodies still brushed against each other as I squeezed past.

"Sorry!" we both said in unison, and then together we laughed.

And then I was past, and she was able to get farther back to grab what she needed from the shelf.

"See you, Katie," I called back as I walked the narrow path out toward the front. "Don't work too hard!"

"See you! Have a nice run!" I heard from behind the pallets. I made haste and got out before anything more awkward happened, like somebody wandering in and seeing me leaving with my work clothes in my hands.

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I don't know why I was surprised one day when I went back to change and noticed that all the front of store knickknacks were now being stored on the racks back by my little changing area. No sooner had I unbuttoned and shucked my shirt before Katie inched around the corner, an apology already leaving her lips almost before she even saw me.

"Sorry! I just needed a case of these little toys for the bin," she said with a point.

I nodded. "Want me to grab it for you?"

"Oh, no, I've got it," she assured me, as she came in to the gap and squeezed past me. I had pants on, and she had pants on, but I'd be lying if I said it wasn't intensely erotic to have her ass drag across my crotch on the way by.

My eyes immediately shot to the ceiling. At this point I still somehow hadn't caught on to the game she had started playing, so I was trying my best not to do anything inappropriate. I just held my hands up around shoulder level and tried my best to will away the little bit of chub that had sprung up in my pants.

She leaned past me to grab a box off the pallet and went to turn, but it was too tight to fit past me again and hold the box, so I reached out to take it.

"Here, may I?" Safer to busy my hands helping out so I wasn't tempted to touch her or something.

She smiled back at me and handed me the box. I held it up over my head as she came past again. I prayed she would not feel the fact that my dick had thickened considerably and was hanging heavily against the inside of my pants. Her passage seemed painfully slow as she squeezed by me again.

Did she have to squeeze so close? I felt each contour of her ass as she shifted past. For the briefest fraction of a second, we were centered, and the crack of her ass was nestled around my now half hard erection. I took a breath and closed my eyes, my hands in a death grip on the box over my head as her body mercifully passed and lost contact with mine.

"You gonna give it to me?"

I opened my eyes and looked over at her in alarm. I had heard her say the words, but it took me a second to realize that I was still standing there with a box over my head.

"Sorry, yeah. I uhh, here you go. I mean..." I stammered over my words as I passed it to her.

She took the box with a grin, her eyes darting up to my eyes from somewhere down below. "All good. Thanks!"

She turned and made her way back out toward the rest of the warehouse, as I stood there and tried to catch my breath. I looked down. There's no way she had not noticed my dick tenting out the front of my slacks.

I left to start my run with a lot on my mind.