Employee of the Year - Pt. 01

This continued on for a few more minutes, before she began humming to herself while scribbling in her pad. I let out a loud, pronounced sigh of irritation, which seemed to do the trick, as she abruptly stopped. But then, she was tapping her pencil against the table and I was distracted once more. As a result, I put in my earphones and played some classical music, which always helped me concentrate. I was able to focus a little, and do another run through of my notes before I noticed that she was waving at me from across the room.

With clear agitation, I removed my earphones. "What?" I said in impatient tone. "What is it?"

"Sorry," she said, almost looking somewhat sheepish. "I was just going to ask if"--she rolled her eyes downwards--"you'd mind if I take my boots off?"

I was taken-aback for a second, and wasn't quite sure I'd actually heard her properly. "What?" The fact she'd been wearing those booties again had given me false reassurance that she wasn't going to be a problem in that way. That there was going to be no repeat of my idiotic stumbling last time, because it hadn't worked. She'd got me flustered with the tease of her feet, but I'd come away the victor anyway. I'd assumed she'd abandoned that line of attack, but clearly, Maya was way more persistent than I'd realised. Maybe she'd even regrouped with her sister after the previous debacle?

"My boots," she repeated. "Will you mind if I take them off?" She stared at me as if curious of my response.

"Your boots?" I dropped my eyes down beneath the table and eyed those booties once more. Part of me wanted to say, yes, I'll mind, keep them bloody on. The last thing I wanted was her waving her feet around, trying to distract me, because I knew the exact way my body would behave in response.

"Well, okay then," she said while leaning down and unlacing one. "Since you're so sure my feet won't bother you."

I could feel the hairs standing up on the back of my neck as it felt like the room was suddenly getting smaller. Despite her doing something completely innocent, it felt like there was a growing atmosphere between us. Suddenly, my thoughts rolled back to the lingering comment she'd left hanging the week before, and how her sister had told her my weakness. My eyes watched intently as she worked her fingers through the knot in her lace, even though I knew I was foolish to look, and then, her own eyes flickered up and caught me staring. Immediately, a sly little smirk appeared on her lips, and I felt my entire face blushing over.

Rapidly, I looked back towards my laptop and tried to keep my eyes completely focused on my work. However, I was struggling to pay attention with the sound of Maya removing her boots filling the air. My eyes wavered as I heard one boot hit the floor, and then I felt like I was undergoing an anxiety attack as I tried to keep looking straight forwards, fighting the curiosity to look over and catch a glimpse.

However, I was almost proud as I remained fully committed to my work, and for the next few minutes, I scrolled down through my bullet points and practiced in my head what I was to say. It was only when I reached the end, and I instinctively looked away from the screen that I froze.

Maya was sat back in the seat, chewing on her pencil and rolling a couple of strands of hair through her fingers while she read through a piece of paper. However, that wasn't what had left me caught by surprise: it was the fact she had both of her feet crossed up on the table before her. Instantly, my eyes were drawn to her soles, and the way the hosiery she was wearing had a single, black line running from heel to toes. It was like after all these months, I'd been startled by a sight of something I wasn't supposed to see and I was completely caught off-guard. It wasn't like in the hallway where I was able to look away, and this time, I hadn't been given a chance. She'd deliberately planted her feet right in my line of sight, and before I could even save myself: I'd succumbed to a full view of her soles.

Soles, and a beautiful girl's soles at that, an arrogant girl that I actually despised, were my absolute weakness. There was just something about witnessing the bottom of a girl's feet. For me, there's a power to a woman's soles, because it's such an intimate thing to see them. You can walk around every day and see women's toes, butt, and cleavage out in the open, but how often do you see women's soles in the real world on a daily basis? It's rare, and it's powerful when it happens, and it stops a guy like me in my tracks.

My eyes darted from her soles in a panic, and then, I was looking straight into Maya's dark eyes. Her head was cocked as she continued to chew the pencil, almost like she was watching me in a scientific, analytical way. I gulped, and felt my fingers begin to shake as I gripped my table, and then, Maya's toes wiggled. Instantly, my eyes shifted towards them, before immediately darting back to her eyes. She pursed her lips as her head lightly shook, and at that moment, I knew she hadn't been lying. Piper really had told her everything about me.

"Are my feet bothering you?" she asked, and she re-crossed her ankles and made an obvious show of wiggling her toes once more. Even while hidden beneath the nylons, the shape and curves of her arches and soles were visible. The meaty ball of her foot pressed against the sheer material as if it was about to burst straight through, and despite that delicious foot belonging to Maya: I had an urge to submit to it. I wanted to give up, to crawl over to her, kiss that provocative foot and declare that she had beaten me. That even though I was older and more experienced, that I couldn't fight the power she held over me. I couldn't fight the draw of her young, delicious soles and all of the delicate femininity they oozed.

As I felt my temperature rising, and my mouth becoming dry, a stiffening in my pants unnerved me. "No," I whispered, my voice shaky as I continued to blatantly leer at the bottoms of her dainty, petite feet. "You're...you're not bothering me, umm, at all."

I knew I should look away and pretend like nothing had happened, but whether Maya fully knew it or not, she'd broken through my exterior shell, and now, my composure was all over the place. As I stared at her soles and traced their curves with my eyes, my back began to tremble while thinking about her discussion with her sister. Piper, wouldn't have, would she? I tried to convince myself, but from the twinkle in Maya's eye as she lightly flexed her toes, her grin seemingly widening with each further second I stared: I was suddenly overcome by a growing dread. Obviously, Piper had completely filled her sister in on my particular interests, more so than I'd first realised. Despite being a confident and cocky guy, who was able to brush off beautiful women as if I was God's gift, I had a blaring weakness that certain girls could exploit. Girls that were in the know, to which Maya apparently now was. Evidently, Piper hadn't just told her sister that I liked pretty feet, she'd told her the reason why. To my utter horror, and growing arousal, she had, in fact, told her all about Stacey Cleaver. As I acknowledged that fact, I stared lewdly at Maya's meaty soles, imagining pressing my nose into the groove beneath her toes and whining in shame as I breathed in her powerful, feminine foot stink, all while accepting that men were weaker.

You see, from a young age, I'd had it driven into me by my father that men were superior to women. He'd often taken me to the gun range to fire off some rounds, before heading back to watch the football while Mom prepared dinner in the kitchen. That's how things had flowed in our house. Dad had been the breadwinner and Mom had taken care of the chores and raised me. "That's gender dynamics, kid," Dad had once told me, and that's how I'd always thought about things. "Never let a girl get the best of you," he'd warned me one time. "Because I'll whip your ass for embarrassing the male of the species."

As a result of that constant rhetoric, when I'd walk through the school gates, I'd operate under the guise of being a natural leader and liked to be in control. The girls had just existed to follow orders and do as they were told, to practice what they were eventually going to do for their husbands one day. That being, cook, and clean, and shut the fuck up. It goes without saying, that throughout my youth, I had been a total dick. A misogynistic, sexist asshole.

Right up through high school, I'd been truly awful to any girl that crossed my path, but in particular, I'd focused my vitriol towards a quiet, good-natured bookworm named Stacey Cleaver. She'd been kind of cute, keeping her blonde hair pulled back behind a headband, but she'd had a fragility, to which I had seized upon. She had always studied hard, and usually received the best grades, often outperforming me. For that reason, I had resented her, as she had been upending everything my Dad had preached, and had subsequently made me look bad. As a result, I had made her life truly miserable, spreading rumours about her and causing her constant distress. Whenever I had passed her by in the halls, I'd knocked her books from her hands. I'd sneered when she had been announced as the top achiever, or laughed during her presentations. I had been a veritable and undeniable asshole, and Stacey Cleaver, in all her innocence, had experienced that more than anyone.

Oh, she had tried to clap back at times, but I had a talent for getting others on my side. I'd round on her with my clique, and even when I had been hauled before the teachers, I'd talk my way out of things. Even at that age, I'd possessed my assured gift of the gab.

This haranguing of Stacey had gone on for years, and gradually, there had been a shift in her demeanour. Her eyes had become glassy and her shoulders sagged, and as we had approached graduation at the ripe old age of eighteen, she'd looked a shadow of her former self. I had broken her, and proved, that despite all of her success, that it was irrelevant, because I had been better than her in the game of life and popularity. I had made her feel terrible about herself, simply because she had been a girl and I had been a guy.

With us all having been about to leave and head off to college, I could have left it at that, but, the utter bastard within me had needed to torment Stacey one more time, just because I could. Which is how I had cornered her that day in the library. She'd been in there all alone, looking for a particular book that was specifically important for the major she had wanted to pursue at college. I'd hidden behind a shelf, and listened in as she'd enquired of its location. When the librarian had looked it up and shared the shelf number, of course, I had raced over and got there first.

Stacey had arrived to find me as I clutched the book, and I had been ready for my final act. To make her life miserable one more time. Yet, things hadn't gone as expected that day, and what was to follow had tormented me ever since. It had festered inside me, and as much as I had tried to bury it in the years since, that incident had shaped all future interactions with women.

"Books aren't for girls," I'd said, while taking a seat and pretending to read. Even now, I can't even remember what that book had been about, all I can remember is the way that Stacey's face had screwed up, first in devastation, and then in a rage I'd never seen before.

"Enough," she'd said. "I've had enough of you. Give me the book and leave me alone. After today, I'm never going to have to see you again, so, just get out and go." She'd put all of her emotion and energy into that little rant, spreading her legs and stamping her feet in the dorky sandals I'd previously bullied her for. They had been cheap; a mixture of corked soles and withered leather, and demonstrated that she had come from the poverty line. Her little performance had only made the childish, spiteful me laugh in response.

"You're not allowed to read," I'd teased, and I'd made a show of flicking through the pages. As I'd taunted her, constantly moving the book out of her reach whenever she'd tried to grab it, I'd recalled how my father had only let my mom own a couple of books, each of which were associated with cooking or cleaning. He'd often fire jokes at her with derision, claiming that she'd destroy the house in some way if he had let her loose with any real responsibility, and declared how she had been better off sticking to what her limited intelligence was capable of. "You're better off staying in the kitchen," he'd said once time while nodding at me knowingly. "Stick to where your skills lay."

Even as a young boy, I'd witnessed the embarrassed shame appear on my mother's face as my dad had silenced her. There had been no possible come back to being put in one's place by a bigger, superior man, as after all, men were stronger, and it was a power I too had sought to wield. My father had once caught me playing with my cousin and her dolls. He'd swiftly put an end to that, and ever since that day, I'd been all about doing manly things. Manly things like pushing girls around and showing them who was boss, right up until that day I had cornered Stacey in the library.

"Girls cook," I'd said with a scowl, before I had pointed petulantly towards the home education section of the library. I had smirked, then poked out my tongue as my father's words sprung from my lips, "Why don't you go and fetch yourself a recipe book, because that's the only knowledge you need to know?" With that, I'd smugly smiled to myself, before I had looked down and continued to flick through the pages of the book, enjoying the fact that I had been untouchable. While I had maintained control of that book she'd wanted so much, I had looked over at Stacey in victory, her having looked ever more frustrated with each passing second.

I'd expected her to cry as usual, but that time, instead, she'd scowled, and stood hands-on-hips while she had stared at me with hatred through her eyebrows. "Give it to me," she had said from barely a foot away. "I need that to prepare for my college course."

I had glanced around, worried that the librarian might have overheard, though when I had realised we were completely alone, I had doubled-down with my persistent commitment to bullying her, the way a man should when he showed a woman her rightful place. "No, this sort of stuff is for boys, and you're not a boy. Go play with the girly stuff." I had grinned viciously. "Go read how to fucking cook, you bimbo."

"I'm more of a boy than you are!" She'd taken a stride towards me and the words had seemed ridiculous as she'd spoken. "Give it to me right now, or you're going to regret it."

I had scoffed while looking her up and down. "What are you going to do? You're tiny." I'd seen the way my father had constantly brushed off the pestering of women. Whether it had been at the grocery store or at home with my mother, he'd simply stood to his full height and suddenly he'd been untouchable. Women could beg and plead, they could pound his frame with their fists or try to win him over with tears, but the simple fact was, if my dad hadn't wanted to do something, then he wouldn't. No woman could have changed his mind, because my father had always been bigger and stronger.

Back then, I had been bigger and stronger than Stacey Cleaver, and I had nothing at all to worry about as I had continued to deprive her of her stupid book. She could have pushed me, she could have thumped me, she could have even tried to wrench that damn book from my grip. But, I'd have easily fought off each attempt and came out the victor, because boys were better than girls. Boys were stronger than girls.

"Give it back," she had said while trying to tower over me, and I had braced myself ready for her attempts to pull the book from my grip. When she had reached with one hand, I had quickly gripped her wrist, easily subduing her pitiful attempt. When she had tried with the other, the book had fallen to the floor as I'd successfully seized that hand too. And then, as I had held her in place as she had awkwardly leant over me, I had laughed straight into her face and mocked her for being a pitiful, pathetic girl.

"God, you're so weak," I'd said. "Look at you. You can't even take it from me and I'm sat down." I'd shaken my head derisively while looking into her blue eyes, just as they'd been on the point of tears. "What you gonna do, Stacey?" I had goaded her. "What you gonna do about it? Cry?"

Her arms had been trembling in my grip, as her fingers clutched and clawed. She had tugged, and pulled, trying to break free, but I had held firm, delighting in the fact that she had been too weak to escape. With each passing second, I had noticed a growing frustration in her, as her pale cheeks had reddened and her breath had become laboured. A single tear had trickled from her eye, and at that moment, I had known I had won. I had forever imprinted my superiority on the best female student in our school. She would go off to college, and every time she studied that stupid course, she would remember how I had bettered her and denied her something as simple as a book.

Her eyes had darted around as she had panicked, trying to pull away, and then, as our eyes had met, she had looked down at me and screeched in anguish, "Let go of me right now." She had tugged with all of her might, lurching backwards as she had lost her balance, and then, I had been completely taken by surprise when she had lifted her leg, her sandal flinging free, and in her desperation to free herself, she'd shoved her foot straight in my face.

There had been a shocked silence, and then I had gasped in surprise, as the slippery, sweaty surface of the bottom of her foot had slid down my face, right across my forehead, and along my nose, before her heel had planted against my chin. Her toes, with nails polished a dreaded black, and equally moist and warm, had lodged over my nose, gripping intently at my skin as she had steadied herself on her standing leg.

There had been a flash, as the pair of us had mutually realised what had happened: Stacey's foot had been pressed against my face as we had stared into each other eyes. At that moment, as her grubby, sweaty toes had remained wrapped around my nose, I had noticed that Stacey's eyes had widened, her eyebrow raised as she'd contemplated what she'd just done, a real fear being noticeable as she had waited for me to retaliate. However, I had not. I had been so shell-shocked at having her foot in my face, that I hadn't known what to do. Instead, I had hesitated, and that had been a mistake I had regretted ever since. While Stacey had stared down at me, perplexed by my lack of action, I had inexplicably taken a breath from between her toes. Even now, I cannot explain why I did it, but that's exactly what I did. While Stacey had watched, her blue eyes fascinated by my surrender, I had taken a huge, gasping, shocked breath, and with that, I had sniffed Stacey Cleaver's sweaty toes.

At that moment, the pair of us had seemed to recognise that this had been a humiliation that had surpassed anything that I'd ever done to her. All of my previous bullying and teasing of her had suddenly been made irrelevant, because after it all, after all those years of torment, I had ended up with Stacey's sweaty foot in my face by chance, and my immediate response had been to sniff it. During my proclaimed superiority as a boy, my instinctive reaction to a girl's sweaty foot in my face had been to breathe in its pungent stench, and as I had done so, and the full, sharp, cheesy odour of Stacey's toes had entered my nose, I had shuddered and trembled beneath her.

My fingers had loosened from around her wrists, and I had remained there, trapped beneath her scrunching toes as I felt her own wrists twist, her hands clasping my arms as she seized control. Her eyes had flickered around, not fully understanding what was happening, but she had kept her foot firmly on my face, not wasting the opportunity of finally having me subdued, despite not knowing why I had refused to fight back. She had cocked her head and marvelled at her black-painted toes, petite in the size, yet, masterful in their power as they had kept me at bay, splayed out over my face as if they had belonged there.