Competition

When I started writing this story, I thought it would be just a quick little tale of lust, but it grew to over fifteen-thousand-six hundred words. Please enjoy this slightly longer tale of lust and love.

Competition: A story by R.C.PeterGabriel: All rights reserved.

I sighed as I slipped my ID badge through the slot on the time clock. “At least it was Friday,” I thought to myself. Just a few more hours and I could put my feet up and rest my aching knees. Not that I’m in bad shape. It’s just that standing, mostly in one place, for forty hours a week takes its toll. I work out daily trying to keep my joints loose and muscles tight but at forty-three, my knees were starting to feel it.

I walked down the hall and punched in the code, allowing me access to the pharmacy.

“Hay, Boss!” was enthusiastically called by multiple voices as I entered. My name is Michael and I’m the pharmacy manager, but no one refers to me by either moniker except the customers.

I approached my station and began typing in my access codes and swiped my badge again before turning to my counterpart Howard, for a briefing. “No, issues, but I’m a bit backed up,” stated the day shift pharmacist. “I’d hang out and help you catch up but I’ve got a date.” With that, he quickly logged out and made a run for the exit.

I sighed again. He is always behind and he always had an excuse as to why he couldn’t help clean up his own leavings. I wasn’t sure if he had a date or not but I didn’t really care. I glanced at the queue counter at the bottom of my screen and groaned inwardly. Three-hundred-seventeen scripts, forty-five of which were in the rush queue. I was going to need my runners today.

Not that I was surprised. He left me with a mess almost every night. At least the part-time pharmacist made an effort. I could pull rank and claim the day shift but I’d let my younger colleagues have days in exchange for a guarantee of getting the weekends off. I didn’t really care which days I had off but I knew Howard wanted to be off on the weekends and I disliked him just enough to be petty.

There was one other benefit my younger and less wise underling hadn’t noticed yet. The techs that staff the day shift are all working-class wives and moms. All of whom have been abused by the ravages of time. You know, frumpy, empty nesters. None of them wanted to do anything but complain about their husbands, or their inability to lose the ‘baby weight’.

I wasn’t about to tell them that what used to be ‘baby weight’ didn’t count as such after two to three decades. Nor would I point out that it had multiplied by four or five times … at least.

On the other hand, the evening shift was staffed with nubile young co-eds that couldn’t work during the day because of their class schedules. I might have to take up someone else’s slack but I had nice scenery to look at while I did.

We all worked well together and having spent a lot of time in close proximity, we know almost every detail of each other’s lives. They also knew they’d have to step up their game as I started verifying scripts twice as fast as the day shift. Mostly because I didn’t have to look up what the imprint codes stamped into most of the pills mean. With just shy of twenty years in, I can glance at almost any ‘small, white, round, non-scored, numbered’ tablet and tell you what the drug and dosage are. If you add color or shapes … well that makes it too easy.

By the time my two hours of overlap with the midday techs came to an end, I had reduced the queue by a hundred-sixty and the drive time rush was trickling to a stop. As usual, we didn’t let up and pushed hard so that we could coast through our post-meal time.

We’re a small town pharmacy but owned by a major chain, so while we aren’t 24 hours, we stay open until 10 pm. The rest of town on the other hand rolls up the sidewalks by 6. I put out the lunch sign at 6:30 and pulled down the security gates. We’d have 30 minutes to sit down and eat at the snack bar out in the main store. Occasionally we’d actually buy something there but we almost always brown bagged it. And almost always I’d be the one providing the food.

These were college kids on a ramen noodle budget and looked to me as their surrogate dad. They even started calling me Dad when no one else was around. And once the Dad title started being used, they started calling each other sisters. Needless to say, I try my best to take good care of them. It didn’t hurt that I went to bat for them with corporate to keep their hours up as they weren’t needed after lunch. I agreed to let them get paid out of the last three raises I didn’t accept. They, of course, think it was the most selfless thing anyone could have done for them. In truth, it wasn’t a big deal because I don’t need the money.

My parents signed over the family house and lands when they abandoned me to my own devices at my high school graduation. They pushed me hard educationally so that they wouldn’t feel guilty when they dropped their big reveal on me. Along with the keys to the house, and a college fund, they informed me that they had never wanted kids, that I had been holding them back, and that they were leaving to explore the world. Admittedly, it stung and I hated them for the first few years before I realized I hadn’t been close to them anyway. They may have been cold-hearted and aloof but at least they took responsibility for me and raised me to be self-sufficient.

I received a total of three correspondences about their journeys. The first was an email about a year after they left, with photos and a ‘we’re having fun’ letter. The second was two years after that with about the same letter. Neither asked about how I was doing. The third was from a lawyer about ten years ago. It was a notice explaining that they’d visited the wrong country at the wrong time, ending their travels. I was amazed at the size of the inheritance but just left it in the portfolio that it had been in. Since I have no expenses other than food and utilities, my one-hundred-twenty-thousand dollar-a-year salary is far more than I ever needed. Anyway, in exchange for the extra hours, the girls do their absolute best for me and we’ve all become very close.

In truth, only my ability to recognize how beautiful all three girls are had separated me from having a genuine father/daughter relationship with them. I love them as if they’re my own and have often wished that I could have adopted them.

Of the three, I’ve known Eva the longest. She was barely two when I started working at the store. Her mom worked the snack counter and would bring her in to play in a pen tucked under a booth until she was old enough for school. (It’s a small town. We can get away with certain things.) She always smiled when she saw me and we eventually became close after her father died when she was eleven.

After that, her mom sank into depression and quit the store. According to Eva, she lives off of the work comp settlement and never leaves her house. Supposedly surviving solely on food deliveries and soap operas.

Eva had to learn how to take care of herself but would come to me for advice. She started working as a cashier up front on her sixteenth birthday and moved into the pharmacy on her eighteenth.

Sakura and Ruby started directly in the pharmacy during their senior years of high school but I’ve known them since about middle school.

Sakura never knew her father. He was a thirty-something Caucasian American with dark hair and dark eyes and is all her mother knows about the man who raped her. Her mother and grandparents had emigrated from Japan when her mother was seventeen. She hadn’t been here for two weeks when it happened.

Understandably, her mom doesn’t trust men. I’m amazed that Sakura seems well-adjusted. She is a little shy around most men but she doesn’t seem afraid.

Ruby knows all too much about her father. He’s a former coal miner turned alcoholic that likes to beat her mother. He’s never touched Ruby, but his refusal to fix either the bathroom or bedroom door locks left her feeling unsafe. The last straw was when she woke up with her nighty pulled up and her dad masturbating over her. She begged her mom to leave with her but couldn’t convince her. She hasn’t seen either parent since she was put into foster care at fourteen.

The store’s night manager, David, is what the girls describe as “a little rapey” and usually comes by at some time during our meal to engage in what he thinks is flirting, and to suggest I share my harem. I think he’s just awkward and is trying to be friendly without understanding how it comes across. They assume that he spends all of his time lusting for them, and always counter his offers by flirting with me. It got so bad a few times that at least one of them (usually Ruby) would shoot him down by implying that they were already sleeping with me and that I’m taking care of all of their needs. Although to their credit, they wouldn’t come out and say anything specific. They’re smart enough not to get us fired for violating company policies. Especially since I’m their boss.

Personally, I don’t think he’d care. Nor do I think he’s as bad as the girls believe. I just figure he’s like any other overweight, fifty-something, divorcé that wishes he could turn back the clock. He is mostly a nice guy but I’ll admit his normal expression is a bit creepy.

My life took a major turn the evening I’ve been describing. My girls had noticed that my knees were bothering me more than normal, so as we slid into our usual booth, Sakura, and Ruby, demanded I put my feet up between them. And as if they’d planned it they both slid their hands up the inside of my pant legs to pull down my elastic knee supports. I was shocked but not as much as when Eva reached under the table in order to massage my knees.

I should have put an immediate stop to it but “Sweet God in Heaven,” it felt good! I rolled my head back and groaned in appreciation, causing all three to giggle.