Discovering Melanie Ch. 5

Melanie had joined the Walker family for lunch again. Yet again she was helping to clean up the table afterwards. She was bent over on the patio table and sensed someone was behind her. She turned her head but couldn’t see who it was. Her arms were extended out over the table.

“Whatcha doin’ Mark?” She heard Josy’s say, dragging out the words.

She felt her skirt being lifted and then it was taken off, leaving her naked below the waist.

“Look at her, Mark. She seems to like it,” Josy said, in that same slow voice.

“What are you doing?” Melanie finally found her voice as she felt soft hands on her thighs.

She was getting excited by Josy’s light touches and knowing that Mark was watching. She was pushed further up the table so that her whole body rested on it and didn’t resist when she felt her legs being spread open. Her feet went off the sides of the table and she shivered from arousal knowing how obscenely exposed she was.

“Shhh, don’t worry Melanie, all part of the course,” Josy said as she started massaging her butt.

“Part of the course?” Melanie moaned. She heard murmurs around the classroom.

“Look class, this is what happens when a woman gets excited,” Josy said as Melanie felt delicate fingers trailing down over her anus before touching her wet folds. “I can easily slip a finger in. Would you like that, Melanie?”

“Please, it’s been so long,” Melanie begged, gasping and squirming.

She heard more murmurs around her and then felt the finger enter her. She woke up feeling extremely hot.

What on earth was that? She felt her panties, they were soaked.

When she had calmed down, she checked her phone. 3:41 am. She changed into fresh panties and went to drink a glass of water. It took a while to fall asleep again and when she woke up again, she had forgotten about the dream.

As predicted the weather changed, bringing cold and rain. It spelled an end to Melanie’s fun in the sun for the year.

Her usually style had long been to wear pants to school, and she’d continued doing so in the first few weeks of college.

After this weekend however, she’d felt like changing it up. Though the temperature had already dropped due to the rain last night, she opted to brave the chill with a black mid-thigh A-line skirt with a loose-fitting white top. For outside she wore her dark grey jacket.

In the first class on Monday, she’d just seated herself and was getting her notebook when she heard someone ask, “Can I sit here?”

She looked up to see a guy standing by the seat next to her. The college classrooms were more spaced out than in high school and were almost never full. Two sets of connected long tables made up the rows. Not having a particular reason to say no, she indicated that the seat is free.

“Brian,” he said after sitting down, extending his hand towards her.

“Hi, uh, Melanie” she said, shaking his hand.

During the lecture she focused on making notes. She noted that while he glanced in her direction a few times, he didn’t seem to be leering.

After the class, Brian walked over to talk to a girl and a guy who’d arrived later and had been sitting some distance away from them. Melanie was walking out the classroom to head to the next class when she heard him call her name.

“Do you want to walk with us to the next class?” He asked as she turned around. “I’ll introduce you, this is Sarah” – indicating the girl – “and Cohen” – indicating the guy. “We know each other from high school”.

“I’m Melanie,” she said, and they briefly shook hands before heading towards the next class.

“Cohen and I know each other since we were little. Brian here was in our class, so since we three decided on the same direction in college, we formed our little group,” Sarah explained.

They seem a friendly bunch, thought Melanie and she sat with them during the next classes. She let them pick a place to sit and ended up the last one sitting down, next to Brian.

“So now we have S and M,” Cohen piped up. Brian laughed while Sarah rolled her eyes. Melanie gave a forced smile.

Between classes learned that they also lived in the same city, though much further away from this college than she did. All three of them had signed up for student housing well in advance and so had moved closer to the college. She was a bit embarrassed to admit she still lived with her parents, but they didn’t seem to make much of it.

They invited her to join them during lunch at the college lunch hall, which she accepted.
Though she still felt a bit like an outsider to their tightly familiar group, the three kept the conversation casual while she mostly listened.

After lunch she felt that she’d been tagging along enough for today, not wanting to bother them further and so for study hours she excused herself and joined her usual group.

It was a larger group consisting of 15 people. Though she hadn’t really gotten to know any of them yet, the group had worked together to go through daily assignments, which worked quite well.

That evening after dinner, Josy came over to talk.

“You’re also looking for a room, right?” Josy asked.

“Yeah, no luck so far. Why?”

“I’ve been checking the website and saw there are about a dozen rooms coming available 1st of October. They’re in a complex near the college, about 10 minutes’ walk. I signed up for them, maybe I’ll get lucky, and going to take a look this Friday afternoon.”

“Oh, let’s check. Maybe I can still sign up for them too.”

“You should be able to.”

They checked the website. Registration was still open, so Melanie signed up for each option as well. It was a large student housing complex, set up in units of six bedrooms with common room with open kitchen and two bathrooms. It also had a food court inside the building.

“Look, these two are in the same unit. Wouldn’t it be funny if we’d get those? We’d be roomies.” Melanie said.

“Yeah, but what are the odds of that?”

With only a few months of built up wait time, the odds were pretty slim of even one of them getting a room in the complex, let alone them getting into the same unit.

“Alright, so let’s check it out this Friday. We can dream, right?”

Tuesday followed the same pattern as Monday. She’d sit with the three friends during morning classes and joined the bigger group in the afternoon. Slowly but certainly, she was beginning to feel like part of their little clique.

Cohen and Sarah seemed to gravitate towards each other, which made sense as they’d been friends for many years. It seemed to Melanie that Brian had been the odd one out and now focused more on her. She found herself wishing she’d had such relaxed group of friends in high school.

On Wednesday, her new friends suggested she join them for the study hours. Finding no real reason not to, she accepted. From what she’d seen so far, they seemed to have a similar level of dedication to their education as she did.

Melanie and Josy talked regularly nowadays, and not just about Saturday’s events. Josy still had her own group of friends – making friends was so easy for her, Melanie knew – and though they didn’t have time to meet up during the week, on Wednesday Josy sent her a text inviting her to join her family for their Saturday lunch again.

Melanie swiftly declined, adding “Nice try”.

She didn’t feel the need to see her humiliation at Josy’s hand spelled out on Mark’s face and could imagine that simply fine on her own.

She got a sad emoji back, quickly followed by a couple of laugh emojis.

Lack of outdoor activity due to the bad weather was making her restless. Yoga alone at home wasn’t enough for her and she needed some additional exercise, so when the forecast predicted a brief break from the rain Thursday morning, she set her alarm to wake up early. She’d go for a run before classes.

Shortly after her alarm went off, she was pulling on the dark blue runner leggings that suited the colder temperatures, black sports bra, and her runner’s jacket. She fixed her shoulder length hair into a bun.

Phone, keys, shoes, reflective safety LED armband.

6:08am. It was still dark out, but the sun would rise during her run.

She could easily fit in a 30-minute run followed by some cooldown time and a nice hot shower.
After some stretches and other warmup exercises, she went out the door, heading towards the park. She had briefly considered running the park road along the highway, but the other park was nicer, and she usually went there instead even though it was further from home.

It also saw more people than the park road in the early hours, mostly people walking their dogs, and she’d encounter other runners as well.

It was great to be outside again and she felt invigorated. At the park she did some interval training and soon felt the sweat on her forehead and back.

During a downtime in the intervals, she slowed to a walk, lowering the zipper on her jacket to about halfway to feel out the chill of the air.

It wasn’t too cold, she thought.

Though her sports bra covered much more than a regular one, it still felt embarrassing opening her jacket. The sun was coming up and she could easily see a few dozen people around the park. Would they recognize it as her bra? She wondered as she nervously looked around.

She did another high intensity interval, then slowed to a walk again. No one was looking at her funnily.

Act natural, she told herself, though she was turning her head this way and that to see if people were looking at her.

She stopped walking next to a couple of trees. Nervously she lowered the zipper all the way, though she couldn’t get herself to pull off the jacket.

This looks even less natural, wearing an open jacked over a bra! She turned towards the trees and realized she would have to take it off or risk people noticing her weird behavior.

She was wasting time here and needed to finish her run, so she rezipped her jacket. The sweaty cloth now felt cold to her skin.

Yuck, she thought and quickly unzipped again, face reddening since she was now definitely acting weird. To avoid changing her mind yet again, she quickly pulled off the jacket and tied it around her waist. She looked around and did see some odd looks aimed at her. They should mind their own business, she thought.

Angry at herself and at the people looking her way, she put in some extra effort and got out of the park fast, heading home.

Arriving home, she went into the backyard and sank into a deck chair. She’d run that last stretch at high intensity and needed a few minutes to catch her breath. She was too tired to care about sitting there without her jacket.

During her shower she reflected on her run. She needed to be more confident in her actions, to own them. Take off her jacket if she wants to and stand there in her sports bra, defiant. She should also buy a new sports bra, a racier one to challenge herself.

She was grinning to herself all the way to college.

“You seem in a good mood, what happened?” Brian asked her when she got to class.

That took her off guard and she struggled to think of something.

“Inside joke,” she said, blushing.

“You’re cute when you blush,” Brian said.

“Hey!” she didn’t like being made fun of and lightly punched him in the arm.

“Violence is not the answer, and now I wonder what the joke was,” Brian said, pretending to rub his arm.

“Maybe later,” she said as they picked out a place to sit.

That afternoon before dinner, Melanie asked Josy to come over for a quick chat. They talked about the past week and Melanie mentioned her new friends. Josy seemed interested to hear about them and asked if she could join their group for lunch on Friday. Melanie in return had asked Josy to go shopping Saturday afternoon.

“Sure Mel, but only if you join us for lunch Saturday.” Josy grinned at her.

“Your bad side is showing again,” Melanie said, rolling her eyes.

“I know, but just humor me,” Josy laughed.

“Fine, but I’m choosing my own clothes this time.”

“You’re no fun,” Josy pouted.

On Friday, Josy joined Melanie and her new friends for lunch. Melanie had checked with them that morning if it were alright if she invited a friend and they said that’s fine.

After a brief introduction, they sat down to eat.

“So, you know little Melanie here?” asked Sarah.

Melanie wondered what ‘little’ was supposed to mean. She was about the same height as Sarah.

“Yeah, we’ve been neighbors since we were little,” Josy said to Sarah. “She’s a shy one, isn’t she?”

“Excuse me, I’m right here,” Melanie interjected. She got a little nudge from Brian, who was sitting next to her. Though she protested, her friends talking about her in a light and fun way gave her tingles. Somehow it made her feel part of the group.

“She’ll warm up to you and then I’m sure she’ll show you her fun side.” Josy said as Melanie suppressed a groan. Josy continued, “So you’re all following the same course?”

“Yup, standardized schedules for the first years.” Sarah said.

“Ah, I’m in building C most of the time. They have a much smaller lunchroom there.” Josy.

For the most part Josy and Sarah played off each other, social butterflies at work. Melanie just listened while she ate, though most of it passed her by. Cohen and Brian were also fairly quiet. Still, Melanie had an enjoyable lunch break.

“See you at 5?” Josy asked Melanie after lunch.

“Yeah, see you at the entrance.”

“What’s at 5?” Brian asked her as they walked to the study hall.

“Oh, we’re looking at some rooms today. We signed up for some openings that come available next week.”

“Oh, that’s great, hope you get in. Is it nearby?”

“It’s about 10 minutes’ walk from here.”

At 5 pm, Melanie met Josy at the housing complex. It was three buildings in a U shape with 8 floors. The ground floor had a small reception area that led to the food courts.

They were both amazed at the setup and hoped they’d get assigned rooms here. They were not able to check out the rooms themselves, since those were still occupied till the end of the month, but they were allowed to walk around a bit.

Melanie spent Saturday morning with her parents. She’d agreed to lunch at Josy’s again and shortly before noon she went to her room. Thinking back to the previous Saturday lunch and the way Josy had pulled her skirt up, she suddenly remembered the dream she had that weekend.

In her dream she’d been a willing participant in being exposed, and then even begged Josy to slip a finger inside her. Why had she dreamt like that? She felt a lot closer to Josy these days, but as a close friend. Reflecting on her feelings, she felt no sexual attraction to her friend. Rather she felt it was the circumstances that excited her.

She tried to imagine a generic guy in place of Josy and it made her feel uncomfortable. It’s the trust that makes the difference, she realized. What was it about Josy that makes her trust her so easily? She didn’t know.

Even so, she decided not to change and stayed in the black skinny jeans with black and white striped casual t-shirt she was already wearing.

Josy didn’t remark on her outfit and it was a casual lunch, indoors due to the colder weather. It was nice to be able to talk to the Walker family in a more relaxed state. Melanie was surprised Mark was there again, but apparently he’d made plans with an old friend that day.

After lunch Melanie and Josy cleared the table together again and she kept evading Josy, who seemed to keep trying to get behind her. Finally, she gave in and wiggled her butt, as they were alone in the kitchen.

Josy gave her a playful slap and then rubbed her butt before slapping it again.

“This was better without the pants. I wonder where Mark is,” Josy said, making them both laugh.

Feeling whimsical, Melanie wiggled her butt again, but then quickly got out of Josy’s reach.

“You seem obsessed with my butt, Josy. Did you spank your boyfriend as well?” She asked playfully.

Josy didn’t answer and stopped chasing her. She wondered if it was her calling Josy out or her question that made Josy uncomfortable. In high school Josy had a boyfriend for a couple of years and they had broken up some time in May. Melanie knew of him, but she and Josy hadn’t been that close at the time and never talked about boyfriends before. Did Josy still have feelings for him? She figured she’d better steer clear of the subject for now.

They finished cleaning the table and then got ready to go. Melanie borrowed her dad’s car, and they went to the mall.