My name is Stella and I work at an old-established but slightly falling-apart food factory in deepest Devon. We make pastry products, cakes, cake mixes, and powdered drink mixes. I am twenty-seven years old and single again after finally catching him red-handed with Suzanna, a floozy from the firm of lawyers next to his sports shop.
A few months later (alright, weeks then) I was beginning to feel the lack of someone to play with if you follow me. Sex was the only thing he was good at. That and playing the field behind my back.
My colleague in the factory's accounts department is Himari, a woman who was born in Japan and moved here when she was a teenager. Her English is very good but there's a bit of an accent which suggests to people that she wasn't born in Tiverton like I was. She'd been having boy problems recently, and a while ago we had started to give each other advice. We talked a lot with each other while the office computer churned through the daily uploads. Most of the advice that we'd suggested (rather bravely) to the other person were things and ideas which were more theoretical than what you would actually get up out of your chair and do in the cold light of day. Only a few such suggestions included locking him with fluffy handcuffs (with titanium metalwork) to the bed (the sea bed), using a whip on him (preferably one with shards of broken glass knotted to the leatherwork every four inches) and some cosy anal attention (with spiked red-hot pokers).
It took me a while to get over the latest débacle, and Himari had gradually talked me back into the land of the living. First I wanted to bang my head against the factory car park wall. Then I wanted to kill him. Dave, I mean. Then, I wanted to kill her. Floozy Suzy, I mean. Then, I wanted to kill both of them and string them up to the closed double-automatically-opening-to-each-side factory gates with a short and very tight piece of rusty barbed wire - then to open the gates. Each time I lost control of myself (while doing normal stuff like inputting the staff overtime figures. I never actually did anything illegal or immoral or remotely energetic) Himari would talk me down from the office ceiling, figuratively.
She had a refreshingly realistic view of life in Devon and seemed to have access to feelings and emotions which I did not. She was a little older than me, I think about thirty although it was hard to tell. She was shorter than me, athletic, very young-looking, and well endowed in the breast department, unlike my own molehill 34Cs.
Then one day at going home time after I'd had a particularly bad melt-down she invited me back to her place. This had never happened before. We were good friends, but 'work' friends only. Neither of us had been to the other's place or met up anywhere outside of work. I readily accepted and went with her back to her flat off Queensway. I stayed there much longer than I'd planned, not that I had much else to do that evening. We talked about boyfriends, the lack of them, and any alternatives there might be.
One thing led to another and we started talking euphemistically about having sex with women in general terms. Each of us had people we both knew who we would like to have sex with, including but not limited to our favourite film stars and one or two of the women in the factory's packing department, each one of us lusting gently after different people. There was one whom we both agreed on, who was the Managing Director's PA. She was always smartly and tightly dressed in a LBD (little black dress) with all the curves in the right places. That she was also a lovely person - and fiercely single - made it a lot more acceptable.
OK, a lot less unacceptable.
It was Himari who said it first. The people who we wished we could make out with didn't know we wanted to do this, and we wondered who might want to do it with us or at least be persuaded that they did.
“What about starting a club for single women?” she suggested. “Just for companionship-with-benefits.”
I smiled. There were already some clubs in the factory - a football team/cricket club (depending on the time of year) and a motor club of some sort, amongst others. One more wouldn't hurt.
“Yes, that would be a good idea.”
We began to elaborate on her idea.
“We'd meet once a week and anyone who wanted to could have some fun with anyone else.”
“There would have to be some no-go areas.”
“Rules.”
“Yes.”
I paused at this moment when I realised what we were saying to each other. She and I would both be in the club, presumably. She realised it too, at the same moment. Our eyes met then drifted downwards from our faces to our chests, and even lower than that. After work, Himari had quickly changed into a single thin white top presumably with a bra underneath it with a very short skirt under that, as a change from her rather smart work-wear I was more used to. With a single move, she took her top off and dropped it on the floor. I found myself staring at her boobs in her bra.
Her bra was a white lacy see-through bra which was more for show than for support. It had lots of tiny star-shapes woven into each cup and a thin ribbon strap running round to her back.
I said nothing and I must have looked a little surprised, I hadn't thought things would move so fast. Himari smiled and put one hand behind her back. Her bra went limp and then joined her top on the floor. I found myself staring at her size DDs, which she let me do without saying anything. She leant forwards nearer me and continued saying nothing, but the implication - and the offer - was clear. She slid off her single armchair and sat alongside me on the sofa. My eyes followed her breasts as they made the move, jiggling a little with each change of direction. She had small areolas with a petite nipple exactly central in each one.
She waited for me to make a move. I began to move my hand up from my lap. It made it halfway to her front and then I stopped, uncertain as to what to do. She took my hand in hers and led it towards her breast. I swivelled towards her and allowed her to place my fingers on the nearest one.
“Do what you want! We've been talking about doing this all evening!”
All the 'taboo' bells were ringing inside my head but I managed to push them to one side. I smiled and touched it more firmly, swivelling further around so it was easier to reach her.
She swivelled around too, turning away from me for one second before she put her feet up on the other arm of the sofa. She leaned back onto my legs and rested her head on the near arm and looked at me, her face only a few inches from mine and her breasts right there in front of me. I felt myself becoming breathless and suddenly wet and warm between my legs.
'Lesbian!', my brain shrieked. 'You're a lesbian!'
While I was fighting with myself, my fingers remained touching her breast. Himari watched me battle with myself, a hint of a sardonic smile on her face. She put her fingers lightly on the back of my hand as an indication that my hand should go nearer, not further away. It was more like an indication that I didn't have to stop and be a good girl. I breathed out slowly and let my fingers trail gently over each breast and around the nipples, which grew tight and erect as I watched.
I was brought up in a family of me, my parents and three brothers. They treated me like another brother and none of them had ever tried to feel me up or even ask to see my bits, even though I'd often been felled or tackled to the ground in some childhood game or other, and I gave as good as I got. They never noticed or cared if their hand or some other part of their body brushed across my pre-puberty chest or between my legs. When my chest began to grow, the childhood games came to an end. Perhaps my mother had dropped a not-so-subtle hint to the boys. My first boyfriend, a schoolmate of my older brother, had tried fumbling me a few times until I kicked him where he didn't want to be kicked.
Later boyfriends grew more adventurous with our increasing age until Dave came along. At first, he seemed nice but then, after a few months, began to demand things from me. 'Wear this.' 'Don't wear that.' 'I'll fuck you when I want to.'
It was alright to start with. Then I found out about Floozy, and surprised them both in a room at the Tiverton Arms behind the charity shop one Saturday afternoon when he'd said he was going out with one of his mates. His stuff was on the road outside my gate within thirty minutes of that moment, and the door code was changed, so that was that. My parents had left the house to me when they died, and my brothers got the hotel business and everyone was happy. And I could kick Dave out onto the street which made me even happier.