/elit/ - Erotic Literature

The Umbrella Hitch (Mg, loli, voy, slow) AnonyMPC 16/07/18(Mon)18:37 No. 24459 ID: a609fb

Sometimes people ask if I'm still writing. And I have been... I rarely stop, really, aside from occasional breaks, it just sometimes gets really slow.. And more annoyingly, I've just not been finishing a lot of stuff... some of what I get excited about writing peters out long before it's finished, leaving me with nothing postworthy. Frustrating, as you can imagine... it feels like a lot of writing for nothing, at least unless I get back to finish it one day. And maybe I will.

But at last, I finally have some stuff ready to go, save editing, and this is the first.

Before you ask, no, whatever ongoing project you were about to ask about is not one of the things I have waiting to post... it may well be somewhere in the mass of unfinished stuff piled up on my hard drive.

The Umbrella Hitch by AnonyMPC (Mg,loli, voy, slow)

Chapter One:

Sometimes I wonder if it was Fate after all, because so many events seemed to conspire to put me at that place and at that time, and if even one of them was different on that afternoon, I probably wouldn't have crossed paths with her.

First, there was that I got off work an hour early. One of my co-workers needed to pay for some emergency dental surgery, and most of us were letting him pick up an hour here or there from our shifts. I certainly didn't mind going a little early, although the weather made it complicated. That was the second thing. The best forecasts said it wasn't supposed to rain until the evening. Yet, just after 1pm, it started to drizzle. Ten minutes later, it was going hard. I'm talking torrential downpour. And it all happened just a few minutes before I started on my long walk home from work.

I didn't have my own car. Sometimes I was able to use my mother's, but usually she needed it, and that day I was out of luck. And there are buses, but not in a convenient straight line between my work and home. In order to get from one place to the other, I would have to make several transfers, waiting at each, often in the very weather I'd be trying to avoid. On the whole it took twice as long as just walking, which itself takes about half an hour. It was a pain in the ass and I kept telling myself to quit and try and get a more convenient job, but I didn't want it to reflect badly on my cousin, who recommended me.

As much as I sometimes complained about it, I didn't normally mind the walk, except in bad weather, where I was usually faced with the choice of either taking the long bus ride, or calling a cab. And after working a minimum wage job for eight hours, with a student debt I was trying to chip away at before next year's tuition got piled on top, not to mention trying to save up for my own place, it didn't feel right to waste two hours wages on cab fare, especially when I'd just sacrificed one.

I might have had to bite the bullet on that, but, luckily, I'd just bought a new umbrella the other day, and even though my weather app said the rain wouldn't start until the evening, I still had it stuffed in the school bag where I keep my work clothes. So, when I saw it starting to drizzle through the window, I was feeling smug about myself---and when it poured, I was in utter relief---that I wouldn't be too inconvenienced and absurdly pleased I'd get to try out my new umbrella. It was only a couple bucks and it had this weird gel-grip handle that I couldn't stop myself from squeezing whenever I saw it.

Holding the umbrella aloft for long periods, that handle was less comfortable than I imagined, but at least it fulfilled its primary purpose... it kept me dry as I trudged through the streets. With the umbrella in place, my major concerns were avoiding the huge puddles as I crossed the street and potentially getting splashed by cars driving through them.

I took a slight detour from my usual route to minimize the second problem, which had already gotten one leg of my pants wet, by choosing a street that wasn't as trafficked as my usual one. In this point in the day, it was downright quiet, and as far as I could tell, I seemed to be the only one walking along that particular road.

My earbuds were in and I had a particularly loud song playing, so although I was dimly aware of someone yelling out, "Hey, hey!" I didn't really pay attention up until my shirt was tugged at and I turned around in some surprise, half-expecting I was being mugged.

It turned out to be anything but. Standing before me was a young girl, probably not even a teenager, who came up to just past the height of my elbow, and was the epitome of the expression "98 pounds soaking wet." I'm not sure if that was her exact weight, but the "soaking wet" was no metaphor. Her dark hair was plastered against her head, and the white t-shirt stuck tight to her skin, except at the front where she'd rolled up the bottom to protect something. That was probably partly why she was bent over, too, not completely, but she looked almost like somebody in pain. With that look, and how her blue eyes were so wide and pleading my heart almost broke.

I pulled one earbud out so I could hear what she was saying. "Hey, guy. Can I walk with you?"

"What?" It was such an unfamiliar request I assumed I must have misheard.

"Can I walk with you? So I don't get wet?" She smirked and looked down at herself. "More wet, I mean."

It didn't seem like that would be possible. For her to be any more wet, it seemed, she'd have to be a sponge and leak when you squeezed her. Well, with one exception. Whatever she had in the wrapped up bottom of her shirt... it was probably wet too, by now, but possibly not completely soaked.

Chivalry, or at least common courtesy, kicked in. "Oh, yeah, sure."

She stepped under the umbrella and wiped back a lock of dripping hair with one hand. "Thanks. This rain really came out of nowhere, didn't it?"

"Yeah. How long were you out in it?"

"Not too long," she said. "When it started I got caught for a minute or two and I managed to get with somebody else, and she took me as far as the corner." She half-heartedly waved to the one I'd just passed. "But she had to turn, so I just waited under that door overhang thing for the first person going my way."

I smirked a bit. "Wait, so you're like, hitching?"

She seemed extraordinarily taken aback. "What?"

"You know, you're like an umbrella hitchhiker," I explained.

"Ohhhh," she said, and then she smiled back, a genuine smile. "Yeah, I guess. It just comes naturally, though." Her smile widened. "'Cause my last name's 'Hitch.'." That explained why she was surprised, she thought I was referring to her name.

"Well, then, how can I refuse, a hitch from a Hitch?" I continued the dumb joke. "Well, I can take you as far as Elm, Miss Hitch, but then you're on your own." It was the first thing I could think of other than suggesting the traditional hitchhiker payment. "Ass, Grass, or Cash," which didn't seem appropriate with a girl her age.

She gave me a "Heh," mostly out of courtesy I think, which was more than the joke deserved, and then told me, "My first name's Astrid."

"I like that name," I said automatically. It immediately made me think the girl in the How To Train Your Dragon movies, even though she didn't look much like this girl. She smiled at the compliment, so I continued. "I'm Karl. No school today?" I was officially off, save for one last exam at the end of the week, but the elementary and high schools ran for almost another month, unless things had changed dramatically in the last couple years without me noticing.

"It was a half-day," she explained. I wasn't sure whether to believe her, considering I hadn't seen any other kids wandering about, but it was raining and, to be frank, if she was playing hooky... it really wasn't my problem. I was just making conversation, and whether she had school seemed like an appropriate thing to ask, at least.

The same went for the next question, which occurred to me when I glanced down at her and noticed her hands, which were still cradled protectively around the bundled up bottom of her shirt, even though the rain was no longer on her. "Your phone's not waterproof, I'm guessing?"

"What? I don't have a phone. Unfortunately." Then she looked down and realized I was referring to what she was holding so tightly. "Oh, no, it's a book! I was coming home from the library when it started pouring."

She unrolled the cloth and revealed what she'd been protecting from the rain at the expense of anything else. The book was an old paperback copy of The Lord of The Flies.

"Oh, nice," I said, genuinely impressed, not at the book itself, but the mere fact that she was reading it.

Her head twitched for a moment, like she was surprised to be getting that kind of reaction, instead of disinterest or scorn. Maybe that's what made her ask, "You've read it?"

"In school, yeah." I was maybe fourteen or fifteen when it was assigned for English, at least to the best of my recollection. Even though I was just in college, already my high school years were becoming fuzzy. Astrid did not look fourteen, though. "How old are you?"

"Twelve," she said.

"Did your school assign that?"

"No, I just like reading. I read loads of stuff, for fun."

I looked down at her, smiling a warm, encouraging smile, and I said, "Well, consider me impressed." Which was probably the worst possible time to say that, because it was right while I was speaking the word that I noticed her nipples.

**