Chapter 2

Most of the building had been empty for a while, so the first thing we did was build an office on the second floor for our company. Several of the tenants had stayed in the building more to help out the old couple than because of the good rent, and they decided to move to better locations. They had given us plenty of notice of their intentions before we bought the building, so we were ready for them to leave.

The building had several advantages nearby buildings didn’t. It had plenty of parking around it, and heated underground parking with a freight elevator serving all the floors. Delivery trucks could park inside to unload out of the weather. The building had the second floor built out over the front, providing a sheltered area for customers to get out of their vehicles if the weather was nasty. The old couple had built a garden area beyond that with bushes to screen the drive, adding further protection from the weather and providing a place to enjoy the outdoors when it was nice. We also had great bus service just outside our front door.

The second floor didn’t stay empty for long. A few of the people who invested took advantage and rented space, in effect putting money right back into their pockets. One of those was an orthodontist who didn’t like the place he was renting before the purchase of the building. The couple with the renovation company opened a second office in the building, and began making changes to the building to upgrade it. They also had the advantage of being able to out-bid other companies in the area for jobs because of the low cost of their office. Their first renovation was to the entrance. They build a staircase to the second floor and a reception desk at the foot of it to give the building a professional appearance.

A second entrance to the restaurant was added off the lobby, though the restaurant itself stayed the same, with one change. The former cheerleader became the hostess and her slightly off-kilter smile greeted each customer when they entered the restaurant. The weekly get-together continued, with everyone invited to join in. It wasn't a business meeting, it was just a bunch of friends having lunch and talking.

Part of the main floor was used for storage space. While I wasn’t responsible for managing the building, I did have plans for the space. The restaurant was busy during the day when the offices upstairs were open and the businesses around us were operating, but in the evening, the building was deserted. I wanted to create a restaurant that would draw in people in the evening, and I wanted it to have an unusual theme that nobody else had. I just didn’t know what it was going to be. I also wanted to upgrade the existing restaurant to make it more modern.

The menu in the restaurant gradually changed and expanded. The orthodontist on the second floor suggested a change to the menu to make it more braces-friendly for his patients. The menu still offered many of the inexpensive items from before, but I added a few more-expensive choices in the evening, hoping to draw in a few more customers. It met with moderate success, paying for the cost of keeping the restaurant open later and making a small profit. The feedback from the customers was informative. They wanted a less casual atmosphere when they were dining in the evening.




Each month, the managing members of the company met to discuss business matters, and the second restaurant was always a subject of discussion. I was in charge of planning the layout and theme for the restaurant, while the rest of them had parts to play in making it a reality. The renovation company had a meeting room that was perfect for our meetings and the restaurant provided the food. Even though she wasn’t officially a member of the board, the former cheerleader always stayed after she helped me bring up the food.

Her slightly off-kilter smile had acquired a little bling since we bought the building, thanks to the orthodontist on the second floor. She usually took care of managing the meal or sat quietly while the rest of us talked. The basic layout of the restaurant had been decided on, and the kitchen area was planned out to be as efficient as possible. The new restaurant was going to be aimed at the evening crowd and would have a higher-priced menu, some of which were a success on the menu already. What we didn’t have was a theme and a name for it.

Many ideas had been discussed, with none of them being accepted. It was our normally quiet hostess that said, “If you're looking for something to draw people in, make your menu the focal point. You already have a braces-friendly menu, expand that and make it your focus. You can call the place “Sparkles” and hire a few waitresses with braces or something.” Then she smiled at all of us and added, “I’ll fit right in and can be the hostess at the new place. I wouldn’t mind being able to sleep in every morning.”

The room went silent as we all looked at her, and her smile began to slip, partially covering her braces. Her smile returned when the orthodontist said, “That’s not a bad idea. Nobody else has had an idea anywhere close to as good as hers. I don’t think there is a restaurant anywhere that has tried something like that.” After trying for so long to come up with an idea for a theme, we finally had one that we liked, even if we weren’t quite sure how to do it yet.

With the help of the orthodontist, and assistance from the sparkling-smiled hostess, a braces-friendly menu was put together. The renovation company put together a concept drawing of the inside of the restaurant, with emphasis on the entrance. When the diners walked in, they would find themselves in a waiting room, complete with a vintage dental chair on one side and modern furniture similar to a modern dentist's office on the other, right down to the out-of-date magazines and posters on the wall. The rest of the interior would be typical seating found in any other restaurant, except for the accents, which would be from the various ages of orthodontics.

As the interior of the restaurant took shape, I spent more time working on getting the staff arranged. Our hostess made a few suggestions for what the waitresses should wear and what kind of look they should have. What surprised me was that she suggested we look for guys as well as women to work on the floor.

When I had the scripts we wanted our staff to use, ready, she tried each one of them out for me, with a pleasant smile on her face, so that I could see what to expect as each script was spoken. The idea was to have the orthodontic appliances on display as naturally as possible. With a few minor changes, she improved them for me.

We wanted to hire quality staff, so we offered a good benefits package with all the usual medical and dental benefits. One thing our benefits package had was a free orthodontic exam for every person who applied and met our hiring standards. We had an on-site orthodontist to do them, and he had the final say about if we would hire them.

It gave us several ways to refuse applicants who weren’t suitable without violating labour laws. We knew right from the start that we had to be careful, because we were hiring people with a certain look and had one condition that all of our potential employees had to agree to before we agreed to hire them.





The interview process was in three steps. Anyone that wanted to apply had to show up in person to get an application. The application included the script they would use while working, and they had to know it before they could move to the interview stage. The last page of the application had a list of requirements all our employees were expected to meet or exceed. Our hostess dealt with handing out the applications, and had a polite way of telling some of them they wouldn’t be hired because they didn’t fit the image of the employee we were looking for.

I dealt with the interview process, and I sure enjoyed my job. Each applicant was asked to dress a certain way, as if they were coming to work, and expect to be asked a few personal questions that they might be a little uncomfortable with.

Each interview started the same way, with them smiling at a camera, facing a large screen on the wall so they could see how they looked, as they recited the script they had been given. This step had been suggested by our braced hostess, and she and the orthodontist had tested it out with me watching as if I was conducting an interview, then they had done the same with me. The next step was the interview, where I went over their application with them and asked questions about their work experience.

If I felt that they might make a good employee, I moved on to the last part of the interview, where I asked them questions about why they wanted to work for us and if they understood what the requirements were to work in our restaurant. This is where things became fun for me.

All of our employees were required to wear an orthodontic device of some kind while at work, and it must be visible whenever they smiled. If they chose to wear a retainer,  it had to be Hawley-style.

I had a list of questions I asked each applicant, and one of them was if they enjoyed wearing braces. This question tended to embarrass the guys more than it did the women. I was good at judging how honest they were by their reaction to the question.

Another question I asked was what they would do if they were given the opportunity to fix their teeth and what kind of treatment they would like if they did. This question was more important to us than it seemed to the applicant.

Those two questions often determined whether their application was approved or not. Another determining factor was the way their teeth looked when they smiled. If they had a pleasant, natural-looking smile with teeth in need of treatment, they were given a higher priority. If they already had metal braces and were near the start of their treatment, they were given top priority.

The applicants who made it through the interview were sent upstairs to the orthodontist, where they were given a thorough exam. It was the final screening point and having good hygiene was a final determining factor.

Great idea and story so far. Five stars would definitely eat there

It's going to be a while before I work on this story again. I have three other stories that need my attention first.

I'm posting the other stories in the club section of the forum and adding them to TheArchive and my account on DeviantArt.

I have a few ideas for where I want to take this story, but as frequently happens, as I write the stories they take a path of their own. I picture this story becoming more of a series of shorter stories rather than one long story, telling it from the point of view of different characters. We will just have to see what happens.

I will probably post a little more as the mood takes me. I'm not going to focus on this one just yet. I have a few ideas rumbling around in the back of my brain, and at some point, I'm going to have to get them out of my head.

Chapter 2

A week later, I get a text from him asking if I would like to get together with the group on Wednesday. At first I’m hesitant, not sure if I fit in with them. They’re all more successful than I am, and I can’t even afford to get my car fixed. When I text back that I am having car problems, he offers to pick me up. After a few texts back and forth, he convinces me to let him pick me up at my place.

After scrounging through my closet, I put together a reasonably dressy outfit. Even though it isn’t a date, I still want to feel good about how I look and I want to look good for him. I make sure to brush my teeth before he shows up, looking at my off-kilter teeth one more time. I’ve always wanted to fix them, but have never had the money to do it.

His car looks so out of place in my neighbourhood. He gets out and opens my door for me before I reach it, then asks me to wait while he opens it for me at the restaurant. Before he opens the door to the restaurant he says, “Let me pay for your meal. It’s not a date and I don’t expect anything in return. Just have fun and enjoy yourself.”

I give him an off-kilter smile and accept his offer. We’re not the first to arrive nor are we the last. The restaurant is busier this time and it looks as if they are short-handed. The waitress looks as if she is falling further behind, so I grab a coffeepot and take care of our table to give her a break. I’ve done my share of waitressing and it feels good to be able to do it again. As more people join us at our table, I grab a fresh pot and ask the waitress for an order pad, explaining that I would appreciate it if she let me help her out a little. The group is a bit confused by what I am doing, but I ask them to look around and take notice of how busy she is.

I’m a bit rusty, but the cooks seem to understand my order shorthand and everyone gets the meal they ordered, or at least I don’t hear any complaints from the group. At the end of the meal, everyone divides up the bill and throws a few bills into the middle of the table for a tip, then push it my way. I blush a little, then call the waitress over and give it to her.

She’s young, probably just starting college and working to pay her tuition, and judging by the metal braces on her teeth, new to braces as well. Her teeth have an uneven appearance and she keeps moving her lips away from the brackets on her teeth when she closes her mouth.

I noticed the guy that brought me glanced at her a few times as she moved around the restaurant, but no more than the rest of the guys did. She could have been me when I was younger and waitressing, except I didn't have braces.

When he drops me off, he asks if I want to go again next week, and says that he will pick me up and pay for me again if I want to go. He says it isn’t a date, just that he is enjoying my company. That earns him another toothy smile and a promise that he can pick me up again. I notice that his eyes linger on my smile before returning to my eyes.



After running around to job interviews all day, I’m not quite ready when he arrives to pick me up. I’m dressed, but need to do my makeup and fix my hair, so I let him in. My place is small, only a bachelor apartment, so he can see through the bathroom door as I finish getting ready. He moves a little closer as I brush my teeth, and I notice him from the corner of my eye as I rinse the toothpaste from my mouth.

He opens the car door for me again, both as we leave my place and at the restaurant, then opens the door to the restaurant for me. The group is larger this time and we push several tables together to create one big table. The same girl is working and she looks as if she is just as busy. She smiles at us and says she will be with us soon to fill our coffee cups. I notice my friend checking out her smile, but it only lasts a second or two.

Before I sit down, I grab a coffee pot and fill all our cups. I get a thankful smile from the waitress as she takes food to a nearby table. When it seems as if everyone that is coming has arrived, I get an order pad from her and take everyone's orders. With so many orders ready at the same time, I give her a hand bringing them to the table. My waitressing skills show as I handle multiple orders at the same time and deliver them to the correct person each time. I was taught to always smile at the customer as I am serving them and my training kicks in, and I catch my friend checking out my smile as I move around the table.

It’s not as if I am spending all my time serving our table. The coffee pot moves around the table without my assistance, though I do get refills when it is empty. The rest of the time I just sit back and listen to them talk. While I am accepted as an equal, the conversation tends to be above my income level much of the time and I don’t feel as if I have anything to contribute.

Once again, the pile of tips in the middle of the table grows and is pushed in my direction. I make a point of calling our waitress over and giving it to her. She thanks me and smiles at me, and again, my friend checks out her smile.

He takes the long way back to my place, giving us more time to talk. Each time we wait at a light, he turns to me and watches me talk. When he walks me to my door, he says, “Let’s make this trip to the restaurant an ongoing thing. If you can’t make it, just send me a text. I’m not asking for a date, I just enjoy spending time with you and I spend so much time working, I don’t have a lot of chances to spend time with a pretty lady.”

I blush at being referred to as pretty. It’s been so long since I felt that way about myself, and just as long since someone said it in such a casual way. He waits as I smile at him, and again his eyes drop to my mouth before returning to my eyes, as I accept his offer of an ongoing ride to the restaurant.



Each week, he picks me up at my place and we drive to the restaurant. He never lets me pay for my meal, and each week, I take care of serving our table, no matter how busy the restaurant is. It makes me feel good about myself to be useful and help out someone else.

What I am doing doesn’t go unnoticed. After helping out the waitresses for several weeks, I find a dessert being delivered to me at the end of the meal and the charge never appears on the bill.

One week, just before we leave the restaurant, one of the ladies in the group takes me aside and hands me a bag, saying, "I was making room in my closet. I came across a few things I never wear anymore. Take them home and try them on. Let me know if they fit." When I open the bag, I find it full of brand-name clothes, some looking as if they have never been worn. A few weeks later, another of the ladies does the same thing. I try to thank them and tell them they shouldn't be giving me such expensive clothes, but they repeat they were just making room in their closets.

One of the topics of conversation around the table is the real estate sign in front of the restaurant. One of the ladies in the group works for a real estate company and has access to information the rest of us don’t. It’s not just the restaurant that is for sale, it is the whole building. I’ve spent enough time working in restaurants to know that this place has the potential to keep going as it is, and after looking around ‘behind the wall’, feel that it has the potential to be even better.

The old couple that owns the building and restaurant sometimes drop by when we are around and chat with us, and the lady has started to bring a cake to the table when they chat with us. She’s mentioned a few times that she could use a waitress with the skills I have, and that if I ever need a job, she’d be glad to hire me. If things don’t improve for me soon financially, I might just take her up on the offer.

I've done this myself in stories, having multiple views of the same thing, and it actually makes the story more interesting in a way, as we know  what is coming up.

I'm guessing there's going to be a couple more chapters from "The Cheerleader's" perspective before it's at the same point as the original story thread. I'm kinda hoping we might get to see things from a third person's perspective too.... looks like I just need to be patient. Also looking forward to when the new restaurant actually opens.

It's strange, I'm not enjoying your other stories over in the club area so much, but this one I'm definitely enjoying!

Sparkles - Charlene

By Braceface2018

Chapter 1


I met my husband when we were both still in school. I had just moved to town and had been hired to work at the truckstop as a waitress. The truckstop was on leased land and the family that owned it was the largest landowner in the area. They had a mixed grain farm, beef and dairy herds and an egg-laying chicken operation.

At the time, he didn’t have his commercial driver's license yet, but had been driving big rigs around the farm for years and drove the smaller trucks on the road. The family operation used the truckstop to fuel their vehicles because they paid a lower price at the truckstop than if they bought it in bulk for the farm.

I’d see him at school and we had a few classes together, but we didn’t hit it off at the start. My name is Charlene, but I preferred to use Leena, thinking it was more feminine, but he always called me Charli even though I told him I didn’t like it.

He’d frequently stop by the truckstop and fuel up whatever vehicle he was driving, and he liked to flirt with the waitresses and cashiers, a few of who went to the same school as us. It didn’t occur to me at the time, but he seemed to favour the ones that had braces. Back then, they still used bands around each tooth, though the bonded brackets were becoming more widely used. He made a point of talking to me each time he came in, no matter who was working that day. I both enjoyed it and was a bit put off at the same time. He was always polite to me and waited until I was free, which I liked, but he also insisted on calling me Charli no matter how many times I told him not to do it. Looking back on it, it was his way of teasing me, and he still does it.

Back then, I didn’t understand why he was interested in me. He could have dated any of the good-looking girls at our school, especially the ones with braces, and he did date a few a couple of times, but they never seemed to last long. He kept asking me for a date, but I kept telling him I didn’t want to date a stuck-up rich kid. It was my way of getting back at him for calling me Charli. He didn’t give up though, and he kept buying me nice clips to tie back my long hair. I liked the clips and kept them all. As he bought more clips, he also bought a fancy multi-drawer cabinet to hold them. I found out later just how much some of them cost.

I didn’t think I was good-looking. My teeth were crooked and I had a gap between my top front teeth. My parents didn’t have the money to fix my teeth, so I learnt how to smile without showing my teeth unless I had to. He became quite good at telling me jokes to get me to laugh, something he didn’t do with the other girls he talked to. His jokes were good enough that he had me laughing with my teeth showing.

I rode the bus to and from work, but the bus didn't run that often and I had to wait for it in the dark to get home. Even though it stopped right in front of the truckstop and was well-lit, it still was a bit risky. When he found out, he started showing up at the end of my shift to fill up his fuel tank and began offering me a ride home. I resisted his offer for a while, but he would just park near the road until the bus came and I got on. I finally let him start driving me home, and I got to know him better. It turned out that the girls he dated had told me the truth, he didn't act like a spoiled rich kid. I didn't like that he flirted with the waitresses with braces, but we weren't dating, so I couldn't do much about it.

Over the summer, I worked more hours, and each night, he was there to drive me home. He didn’t have a fancy truck, it was an old pickup that he had rebuilt and upgraded himself. And one day he showed up with the passenger seat recovered with my name stitched into the seatback. I didn’t know how to react. Once again, he asked me to go on a date, and for the first time, I told him I would go on one date with him and that would be it.

I expected it to be to a drive-in movie, just like all the other guys made a habit of doing on their dates, but he took me to his place on the farm and cooked me supper on the grill outside. After we ate, he took me horseback riding through the fields and we watched the sun go down from the top of a hill.

It was a few dates later that I asked him about the seat cover, and he told me I was the only woman who was going to sit in it, so I needed to have my name on it. It brought a big toothy smile to my face and earned him a kiss on the cheek. On the next date, I rode back from the hill on the back of his horse, and he got a kiss on the lips. I still hadn’t said I would date him. But we both knew I would.

In the fall, he passed his commercial driver's test and showed up at my door to pick me up in a highway truck, and my name was on the passenger's door. We still weren't officially dating, but we might as well have been. He was hauling things for the farm all day, and on the days I wasn't working, I rode with him. He stopped flirting with the waitresses when I asked him, though I did catch him looking at them when he thought I wasn't looking.

In the spring, he bought a couple more trucks and took over all the hauling for the farm. When the farm didn’t need him, he hauled for other farms in the area. His trucks were so busy that he needed someone to handle the scheduling, and he hired me to run the office for him. I didn’t get to ride with him as often, but I was making more money doing less work. Then he set up a laptop and cell phone to connect to the office and I could do just about everything while I rode with him. He changed the company name on the trucks to SRK Trucking, and I was the only person who knew that it stood for ‘spoiled rich kid trucking’. I still told him that I wouldn’t date a spoiled rich kid.

In the fall, he gave me a ring and asked me if I would marry him. I told him yes and pulled him against me for a lengthy kiss, then told him I still wouldn’t date a spoiled rich kid. He just laughed and told me to stop spoiling him then. That led to an extended kissing session, which included him running his tongue over my teeth and the gap between them. He enjoyed kissing me and my misaligned teeth didn’t seem to bother him at all.

We got married in the spring, and by the fall, I was pregnant with twin girls. We were both happy about me being pregnant, and he built a new house for our family on the farm. The trucking business was doing good and he had bought a few more trucks, so I spent more time in the office as my belly got bigger and less time in the truck, partially because it was harder to climb in and out of the truck with a big belly.

The old house became the office and it worked great having the space for the kids to be with me all the time. As the company grew, so did the length of the trips. What started as one-day trips became two days and grew from there. I didn’t mind it when we both did them together, but as my due date got closer and I spent more time at home, he let other drivers take more of them so he could be home more often.

After the twins arrived, he spent less time on the road and more time with his family, but I didn’t have the time to spend with him like I used to, and devoted more of my life to my daughters than him. The number of overnight trips slowly grew. As the girls got older and asked him to take them for rides, he took them in the truck for the day, alternating girls to keep it fair. By that time, the company had grown and we had office staff for me to supervise and a maintenance crew for the trucks. When he wasn’t on the road, he was managing the garage.

My daughters inherited my teeth, and when they were old enough, they asked to get braces and he willingly made the appointments for them to get them and was the one that took them to all their appointments while they had them. He asked me a few times if I wanted to get braces with them, but didn't push it when I didn't seem interested. When they got their braces off, he insisted they get Hawleys and made sure they wore them more than they were required to.

Their teeth turned out beautiful and stayed that way. I was a bit jealous of their smiles and almost wished that I had gone through braces with them. He was an overprotective father, and no boy seemed good enough for his daughters. I went behind his back a few times, and they ended up dating guys that treated them right, but not as well as my husband had treated me. Nobody was that good in my eyes.

Our relationship had suffered over the years and a lot of it was because of how I treated him. I had pushed him away too many times and he had eventually retreated to a place where he felt safe, inside his trucks. I knew that he cared for me still, but I had rejected him too often and he didn’t know how to get me back no matter what he tried.

Read the first story, then the second one and the third. The stories are all linked by the location it is taking place. Each story is from the perspective of the person in the story.

I don't want to post it all at once because the stories tell parts of the bigger story.

Very pleasant story to read, especially because of the different points of view you use, which is kind of original.

Hope the following is coming soon !

Here's another one. I left the ending open for more chapters, and if I feel like it, I may add to it. It is meant to only be one chapter long.



Sparkles - The Bet

By Braceface2015


Chapter 1


A bunch of fratboys were sitting around playing poker when one of them said, “Have you seen some of the ridiculous things people are doing on the internet lately? Trying to see how many crackers they can eat without taking a drink of water or things like that.”

One of the others said, “Yeah, and they’re doing it for nothing. Why aren’t they betting on it?”

And that was how “The Bet” started. They each put in $10.00 and came up with something to bet on. It wasn’t just a simple one-time bet. They used the betting system from poker, and each could fold, stay or raise the bet each time it was their turn. If they raised the bet, it had to be accompanied by increasing the challenge. The winner would be the one who made the last bet and managed to complete the challenge. Bluffing or raising the bet too high for anyone else to match wouldn’t work, because to win the money, the one who made the bet had to do it.

As the value of “The Bet” grew and the challenge became more complicated, other people heard about it and wanted to get in on it. Their girlfriends were the first to join and added a feminine twist to it. The original challenge became lost as the pot grew. Eventually the challenge became to apply for a job at the new restaurant and be accepted to work on the floor as a waiter or waitress and keep the job without getting fired. It seemed pretty simple to win the bet, and the value of the bet grew as more people joined.

Most people didn’t do any research into what was required to win, and just figured it was an easy way to make some extra money. Almost everyone who tried to win the bet lost as soon as they applied for the job.

I did my research before I gambled my money. The people who were losing their money didn’t have the right attitude to start with. When I went in to pick up the application form, I smiled at the lady handing out the forms and introduced myself. Her eyes went to my mouth briefly and returned my smile. I did my best to keep my eyes on her face, but her smile was too interesting to resist looking at.

She had just a slight lisp, and most people wouldn’t have noticed it, but I did because of my hearing aids being sensitive. They are the new inside-the-ear kind and are hardly noticeable. When she handed me the application, I knew I had made it one step closer to winning “The Bet”. I sat at one of the tables and ordered a drink so I wouldn’t be taking up space that a paying customer could use. The waitress was a girl not much older than me, and when she smiled at me while taking my order, I saw she was the second one in the restaurant wearing metal braces. It seemed my research was paying off.

I read through all the information included with the application form, and left a tip underneath my glass before returning my application to the hostess. This time I let my eyes stray to her mouth and examined the braces on her teeth before returning to her eyes. It seemed as if her braces were new, and her smile got bigger when she saw me looking at them. I knew I stood a chance of winning the bet when she called the waitress over and asked her to take over at the hostess’ station while she took me for an interview.

The first part of the interview was pretty standard and covered my work experience. While my resume wasn’t very long, I did have a little experience as a waitress and had a letter of recommendation from a previous employer attached to my resume. As the interview progressed, I smiled more because I knew I was getting closer to winning “The Bet”.

I seemed to do well, because she asked me if I had time to wait for a second interview, this time with her boss, or if I would prefer to return another day. As far as I knew, I had managed to get further than anyone else had so far, so I said I would be happy to stay and wait. She made a phone call, and a few minutes later, a guy in a chef’s uniform knocked on the door and entered.

I smiled at him as he introduced himself and his eyes seemed to light up. After escorting me to his office, he explained what was going to happen in the next part of the interview. After reading through a short greeting that all the staff were expected to follow, he had me stand in front of a camera and read it again. The greeting was easy to remember and I smiled at the camera and recited the greeting from memory. It felt a bit odd to be watching myself projected on the wall across the room from me, but it gave me a chance to make changes to my posture and smile to maximize the look I wanted to present.

I must have done well, because he asked me a few questions about my work experience before beginning to ask me a few personal questions. When he asked if I enjoyed wearing or seeing braces, I responded by saying I had never worn them, but I didn’t have a problem with the idea of having them and some of my friends had worn them when I was younger.

A few questions later he asked what kind of treatment I would like if I was going to get my teeth fixed. I paused to think about it, then decided not to directly answer his question. I started by explaining that I had seen pictures of some of my older relatives when they had braces and how I had been fascinated by the bands going around all their teeth, then by the heavy wires on the retainers when they got their braces off.

While I hadn’t actually answered his question, it seemed to satisfy him and he asked if I would be willing to wear a retainer or some other orthodontic device if I was hired to work in the restaurant. The question caught me off-guard and I blushed a little. My teeth weren’t bad, but I had never been completely happy with them. Having to wear a retainer at work would draw more attention to them than I was used to and I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.

While he waited for my answer, he explained about the benefits package that all the employees would receive when they passed the probationary period. My blush deepened a little as I gave him my answer to his last question. He wrote a few comments at the bottom of my application form and asked if I could stay a little longer.

When I said I had the rest of the afternoon, he picked up his phone and made a call. After a brief conversation, he escorted me to an office down the hall.

In my wildest dreams, I never dreamt I would be sitting in an orthodontist's office during a job interview, but that is where I found myself. After introducing me to the girl at the desk, he asked me to wait until the doctor could see me.

While I sat there, I looked at the people sitting around me. It was no surprise to see so many people with braces sitting in an orthodontist's office, though it seemed as if they all had metal showing in their smiles. What did stand out was the number of people wearing restaurant uniforms. They all looked as if they were either on their way to work, were taking a break from work or had just gotten off work.

The girl at the front desk interrupted my perusal of the patients to say the doctor was ready to see me now. My gaze turned to her smile and I saw she had braces too, not at all surprising for an orthodontist's office. After I sat down, the doctor looked up from my file and smiled at me. It seemed as if everyone in the place was smiling.

He explained that he was doing the final step in the interview process and his job was to determine if I had the look they were expecting of their staff. As part of the application process, all prospective employees were being given a full orthodontic exam free of charge. I didn't have to accept the exam, but if I didn't want it, my application would be added to a list of people to call later. I understood right away that they wouldn't be calling any of those people.

I was determined to win the bet, and if I had to get my teeth checked, so be it.

Before I knew it, I had X-rays taken and was in a chair with my mouth wide open as he checked my teeth. He seemed pleased with what he found and asked if I had ever had impressions of my teeth done. After he explained what was involved and what to expect, he inserted the filled trays into my mouth, one at a time, and I found out what it was like. The worst part was when the stuff oozed out toward my throat, but he used his finger to move it aside before I began to choke.

He suggested I brush my teeth and rinse thoroughly before returning to his office. He was looking at the scan of my mouth and my digital X-rays when I returned. Following compliments on my fine oral hygiene, he asked if I still was interested in a job in the new restaurant.

I hadn’t gone through everything I had just to stop now, so I said I was. He passed me a sheet with a list of requirements the staff was expected to meet or exceed, then drew my attention to clause four, which read, “All employees in the restaurant must wear some form of orthodontic device at all times while on the floor. A Hawley retainer is acceptable and will be provided free of charge at the time of hiring. No exceptions will be made and failure to do so will result in immediate termination of employment.”

I smiled when I saw that. I had just found a way to make winning the bet harder while giving me a better chance of winning more money. All I had to do was add another condition to the requirements of the “The Bet”, and raise the stakes by a small amount.

I said I was fine with the requirements and signed and dated the bottom of the sheet. Then he surprised me by asking if I wanted to start working in the restaurant now, before the new one opened. They were offering the opportunity to a few people and I fit the requirements for the offer. It would start my probationary period earlier and I would be eligible for added incentives. I wasn't expecting to be hired so soon, but if it meant being that much closer to winning "The Bet", I didn't see any reason to delay, so I accepted his offer.

Before he sent me to the front desk, he opened a cabinet and pulled out a drawer with different types of retainers. I didn’t know there were so many types, and he explained that they weren’t all retainers, some of them were for active treatment and could be worn before the braces were put on. He asked me which type of retainer interested me, and after looking at them, I pointed to one with a heavy wire with bends that followed the contours of the teeth on the model. His smile got bigger as he made a few notes in my file.

The receptionist had me sign a few forms, then made an appointment for me to return a few days later to pick up my new retainer. Before I left, she smiled at me and said. “If you want to move up on the seniority list faster, wear your retainer at work all the time, and when you get a chance, get braces and extend your treatment as long as you can.”

Some more chapters would be very much appreciated.

Chapter 6

My teeth are a little sore when I wake up Tuesday morning, but not as bad as I was expecting. It’s going to take me some time to get used to my new smile. My lips feel puffy and they catch on the edges of the brackets when I open my mouth, but the biggest thing is seeing the metal on my teeth when I look in the mirror.

I skip breakfast and keep a glass of chocolate milk underneath my hostess station. The regular customers comment on my new look, many of them saying they like it. Lunch is from the braces-friendly menu, and I am grateful that we have it.

My boyfriend calls me in the evening and asks if I want to video-chat, but I tell him I don’t feel like it right now. We talk on the phone for a while, mostly about how he is doing straightening out the new office.



Wednesday morning is my checkup and the first time my expander is turned. He explains that he is going to start my expansion slowly and shows me how to turn the screws to move it. He has me turn it one way, then has me turn it back to reduce the pressure and turn it to increase the pressure again. Lunch is from the braces-friendly menu again.

I create a sensation when I arrive with the food for the investors meeting. A few good-natured jokes are made about my braces, mostly by the guys. The women are more subtle with how they react to me having braces. I ask them not to say anything to my boyfriend until I tell or show him what I have done.

I can't keep putting off video chatting with my boyfriend forever, but I delay it for one more day. I feel some pressure on my upper palate, but it isn't bad. I talk about what was discussed in the investor's meeting before wishing him goodnight and going to bed.



Friday evening he calls to tell me he has done all he can do at the new office for now and is flying home Saturday morning. He gives me his flight details before telling me goodnight. I’ve managed to make excuses each night for not video-chatting with him, and he hasn’t pried into why.


Saturday afternoon I drive out to the airport to meet his plane. I’ve been debating with myself whether I want him to see my new look for the first time in a public place or not, finally deciding that I don’t want to wait.

I watch as his plane lands, then hurry to the arrivals area to meet him. I keep my lips over my teeth, smiling as he walks past the barriers and sees me waiting. It isn’t until I am in his arms and he is hugging me that I whisper into his ear, “I have a surprise for you, and I hope you like it.”

I pull away from him slightly, creating enough space so he can see my mouth clearly and smile at him with my braces showing between my lips. He pulls me against his body, and I get my first kiss with my new braces. It's just a brief kiss, but there is plenty of meaning, and tongue, in it.

We stop by the handicapped washroom on our way to pick up his bags, and his bags are the only ones still on the carousel when we arrive. Now I know how the older waitress felt after her appointment to get her braces.

We leave his car in long-term parking for one more day and take my car to my apartment.



He apologizes in the morning for breaking the boundaries that I have set for our relationship, but there was no way that he was going to go to his place last night. After how he treated me last night, I’m not going to hold it against him, though I am going to hold my body against his some more today. It’s a good thing I work in a restaurant, because I’m not going to be cooking much today.

I did find out a few things last night. When we got back to my apartment and had spent some time kissing, he mumbled something about me having a perfect smile now. It took a while, but I finally coaxed it out of him that he has a thing for women in braces. We had THE talk, and between many bouts of extending kissing, he admitted that he wouldn’t mind if I missed a few adjustment appointments and possibly delayed my treatment a little. With the way he treated me last night, I am giving it some serious consideration, especially when he showed me a picture of the ring he is having made for me.



He shows up early for the Wednesday investor’s meeting, and we engage in some heavy kissing. It must show, because the women smile at me, and I catch a few guys giving him the thumbs up when they think I’m not watching. It takes a while before the meeting gets underway after the meal, and at the top of the list is the new restaurant.

They still haven’t come up with a theme for the new restaurant and several names have been proposed, none of them meeting with any success. I’m still feeling the effects of the last kiss I received and feeling a little silly, so I say, “How about we call it ‘Sparkles’? We could have a few waitresses wearing braces, and I would fit right in with my new smile.”

The room goes silent and they all look at me. My smile begins to slip, and then the orthodontist says, “That’s not a bad idea. We already have a few waitresses with braces and our menu has a few meals that would fit in with the theme.”

A vote is taken and my suggestion is given approval for further study.



At the next investor's meeting, the name ‘Sparkles’ is tentatively approved for the new restaurant and ideas are tossed around about to create the atmosphere to go with the braces theme. Some of them are funny, some are impractical and some are ridiculous, but I suggest having some of the staff wear scrubs like in the orthodontist's office, and have the waitresses with braces dress like patients. Once again, my suggestions are put to a vote, and approved for further study.

After the meeting, my boyfriend escorts me back to my apartment, locks the door behind us and carries me into my bedroom. We are both late for work in the morning.

Very good!!

Chapter 3

Quite a bit of research is done as the plans are put together. The braces-friendly menu is expanded to include a daytime and an evening menu in the restaurant, with one day a week highlighting the new menu and giving a modest discount to every customer who fills out a detailed survey about their braces-friendly meal.

At her suggestion, our former cheerleader has a few prototype uniforms designed for herself and begins to wear them at work to get an idea of how they will function in the restaurant. The idea is to have a uniform for the waiters and waitresses that looks as if it is from an orthodontist's office to stay with the theme of the restaurant. The first few uniforms are too generic looking and the staff rejects them. She has a friend with a sewing machine and asks her to make a few changes to improve them, and when she returns to work with a figure-hugging set of scrubs modified with a little strategically-placed lace, the female staff asks to be able to wear it occasionally before ‘Sparkles’ opened.

Keeping with the orthodontic theme, a reservation system is set up for ‘Sparkles’, calling them ‘appointments’ with the idea to give priority to anyone that books ahead. Anyone that arrives without an appointment will be put on a waiting list and requested to book an appointment next time. Even if the restaurant wasn’t full, there is going to be a fifteen-minute wait for a table. The layout of the restaurant comes together, with a portion of it dedicated to a more intimate setting for up to four people in semi-private rooms, and a larger area designed to be reconfigured for large groups of people.

The kitchen layout receives a lot of attention. It is designed to be large enough to serve twice as many meals as the new restaurant will have tables and do it efficiently. The plan is to expand to have a take-out service in the future. Even the bathrooms are designed with an orthodontic theme, having an assistant at the entrance to hand out toothbrushes, floss and mouthwash to any ‘patient’ that requests them.

Before ‘Sparkles’ is ready to open, the staff in the restaurant begin using a few of the scripted greetings, and a few part-time staff are hired, most of them younger people. It is no surprise that many of them have an orthodontic appliance of some type.

The look of the original restaurant gradually changes, with a few orthodontic-themed accents replacing the old decor. The most noticeable is at the hostess station, where an overhead spotlight on an adjustable arm replaces the lamp on the desk, giving it the look found while laying in an orthodontist's chair.


As more of the original tenants move out, the space is stripped bare and the wiring and plumbing are replaced with new materials, and new walls are put in place. After the last tenant moves out of the second floor and the renovation company moves into their office and the office for ‘The Company’ is finished, the orthodontist moves into his new office and the rest of the floor is left as open space.

The orthodontist takes advantage of the open space and puts a few couches and tables beside his office and encourages his patients and the staff in the building to use the area as recreational space. The restaurant sets up a walk-up coffee and soup and sandwich stand.

Near the top of the stairs to the second floor is a space where the stairs curve. The guys found out it is a good place to watch the women going upstairs to the orthodontist's office and Sparkles Cafe, and moved a few comfortable chairs into the space. The women caught on to what was going on and it became a game for them to walk close enough to the railing to give the guys a glimpse up their skirts and dresses without revealing more than they want. Some of them deliberately walk right by the railing. For some of the guys, the metallic smiles the ladies give them were more thrilling than the other view.

The third floor has lower ceilings and the area is renovated with new apartments. Following the pattern on the second floor, the third floor is slowly renovated and new apartments are put in place. One of the largest investors has an apartment built for his personal use and moves the Hostess into it. It makes sense to have her living upstairs from the restaurant with all the work she is doing.

When she finds how convenient it is to be so close to work, she suggests the same thing be done for the seamstress. With empty space to work with, a showroom with a comfortable changing room and a large space for her to work in is built and she moves in too. A few couches and tables are purchased by ‘The Company’ and a second recreation area is created just for the tenants of the building. The seamstress and the hostess use it as a convenient place to hold meetings.

I’m thrilled by the arrival of the new kitchen equipment. The staff in the restaurant is encouraged to check out the layout and make suggestions to improve efficiency, with some changes made based on their suggestions. The restaurant staff are thrilled when all of the large pieces are in place and the new kitchen is ready for use.

The old kitchen is removed during the night when the restaurant is closed and prototypes of the booths for the new restaurant are built to test the layout before they are used in the new restaurant. The new booths are by reservation only and give us a chance to test out the reservation program. Feedback from our customers is encouraged and a few changes are made. The semi-private room is a big success and is booked solid well in advance.

With so much happening in the building, the staff give nicknames to a few of the public areas. The area on the second floor becomes ‘Sparkles Cafe’ and the restaurant is called ‘Sparkles Daytime’. The names catch on with the customers and neon signs are put up to make it official.

The idea to have a standard uniform for the staff is quietly vetoed by them, and a dress code is put in place instead, allowing them to express their individual tastes instead. Surprisingly, it’s the older staff that cause the most sensation. The Hostess and the Seamstress get together with Charlene and come up with a 60s-style uniform with a modern twist. The three of them show up at the Wednesday investor's meeting wearing dresses with a short hemline and quite a bit of cleavage, and pictures to prove that the uniform is a very close match to what was worn back then.

Charlene has the more sedate dress and is wearing low-heeled shoes. The Hostess has a blouse and skirt combination suitable for her job and pairs it with heels that are just a bit too tall to be practical for daily wear in the restaurant, but it makes the point that the waitresses should be able to express themselves with the way they dress and still represent the restaurant respectably. The Seamstress is wearing the shortest dress and on her short body and long legs with tall platform heels, it is more suited for a gentleman’s club than a restaurant. She has a hard time suppressing the big smile on her face as she walks around the room, serving the people seated at the table.

After everyone has a chance to examine the outfits and relax after the meal, the three of them present their opinion on what should and shouldn’t be in the dress code. The Seamstress explains that her uniform is not meant to be worn in the restaurant and she made it just for the fun of it. By allowing the employees to have a say in the design of their uniform, the company could create a better working atmosphere, and the variety in the designs could be an advertising point in the ad campaign. All three outfits are in the proposed colours for the restaurant.

Both Charlene and the Hostess have their braces showing and their ligatures are in the company colours. The Seamstress has a heavy-wired retainer showing in her smile, carrying on the theme of the restaurant. There’s a small group gathered over to the side and they keep looking at the Seamstress and grinning as they whisper amongst themselves.

Sparkles - The Seamstress

By Braceface2015


Chapter 1


It’s been a while since my friend and I have talked to each other. For the last while it has been emails and social media, which isn’t talking, it’s just letting each other know we are still alive and have somewhat of a social life.

I am caught by surprise when she calls me up and says she has a ‘project’ for me. All my friends know that ‘project’ is code for me getting into trouble and I might be calling them for help. Her use of the code word gets me excited and right away I want to know what we are doing. Rather than tell me, she asks if she can come over and talk to me face-to-face.

When I tell her I am living in my parent's basement again, she laughs and asks me what I did this time. I have a reputation for getting into trouble and my parent’s bailing me out, and one time that was quite literally what they did. This time it was just that I needed a place to live for a while until I could find a place I could afford to rent.

Growing up, my grandmother taught me how to sew, and as I got older she taught me everything she knew. It started with sewing clothes for my dolls and stuffed bears, and by the time I was in middle school, I was sewing clothes for myself. That is when the trouble started. I was young and had big dreams of being a famous fashion designer. My idea of what I should be wearing differed from what my teachers considered appropriate for at school, and we often clashed.

The principal’s secretary and I got to know each other really well while I sat waiting to talk to him, and she negotiated a compromise to my outfits I wasn’t happy with, but it kept me out of his office, at least most of the time. My designs didn’t change, it just meant I wore outfits at school that drew less attention from the teachers.

My friends all liked the ideas I had, and one Halloween a couple of the cheerleaders asked me to make their costumes for the Halloween dance. I copied their uniforms, just with some changes. The skirts were too short, the tops were too tight and showed too much skin, and at my suggestion, fishnet stockings and overly high heels completed the costumes. When I showed up at the dance with them, wearing a matching costume, our parents became involved.

By senior high, Halloween became my favourite time of year, and I always had a waiting list of friends wanting me to make them costumes. I didn't make any money creating the costumes, but I had fun doing it. They paid for the material and I did the work. I'm probably the only girl in our school to have players from both the male and female football, hockey, volleyball, baseball and basketball teams in my bedroom without developing a bad reputation. It's not that things didn't happen, they just knew better than to talk about it.

I spent much of my free time the year I graduated making grad dresses for the girls. For the first time in my life, I made money from my hobby, and my dreams of being a famous fashion designer seemed to get closer to being a reality.

My dreams took a hit when I tried to find a job working with clothes. Nobody wanted to hire a girl with no resume, an attitude and a reputation for getting in trouble. I finally managed to get a job in a discount clothing store doing alterations. It didn’t take me long to get tired of trying to fit size twelve women into size ten dresses while listening to them complain about them being sold too big a dress. I knew they’d be coming back for repairs the first time they tried to get the dress on without the girdle they were wearing.

When my friend shows up wearing scrubs, I begin to laugh, and I am rolling on the floor by the time she finishes telling me what she wants to do. When I say, "strip," she slips out of the scrubs. She's well aware of how I work and is dressed for it. I start by taking all of her measurements and marking them on a chart. Then I take apart the seams on the scrubs and alter them to match her contours better. While I am working, we talk about the cheerleader costume I made for her and the trouble we got into for it.

She was several years ahead of me in school and graduated before I did. Her figure has matured a bit since then, but her smile hasn’t changed at all. It is still off-kilter, but she doesn’t seem bothered by it. My smile slips and my lips cover my misaligned teeth as she puts on the altered scrubs. Before she has a chance to ask what is wrong, I say, “I did what you asked me to do, but I don’t like how it looks. They are still scrubs and have no flair, no appeal to them at all. They are boring to look at. I am capable of much better work than this mess.”

Her smile gets bigger as she pulls a bottle of wine from her bag and another pair of scrubs. “So, show me what you can do if I let you do what you want. I said I had a ‘project’ for you and I meant it.”

I look at the scrubs then get a corkscrew for the wine bottle. We sit and sip the wine as I tell her what I want to do. Then I say, "It would be much easier if I just started from scratch without having to alter the scrubs, and I can probably do it for less than you paid for them. If you pay for the material and give me a week, I'll give you a uniform you'll be happy to wear."

I didn't think her smile could get any bigger, but it did. "I knew I could count on you. Save all your receipts and you'll get paid for everything."

Chapter 3

I wake up in a strange bed in a long t-shirt that smells of laundry soap with a faint hint of cologne. Memories of wearing my dad's t-shirts to bed surface and I smile and stretch. I lay in the comfy bed for quite a while, watching the light around the edge of the window blind brighten.

The smell of fresh-brewed coffee drifts into the room and I pull back the blanket. Beside the bed is a pair of fluffy slip-on bedroom shoes with a one-inch heel. I’m used to walking around barefoot at home, but they look comfortable, and feel just as good as they look as I slip them on. I follow the smell of coffee to the kitchen and pour myself a cup.

I realize I am still at my friend's place as I look around the kitchen. Just as I’m stretching and yawning, a strange guy walks into the kitchen. It takes a second for my brain to process the fact that my t-shirt is stretched snuggly across my chest and the bottom hem is resting relatively high on my thighs.

He smiles at me and asks, “Did you sleep well?”

I hastily bring my arms down and try to cover my chest with one arm while tugging the hem down with the other. All that happens is the neckline of the t-shirt is stretched a bit and some more of my cleavage is put on view. I have a short athletic body and long legs, so my decent size breasts look bigger than they really are.

My friend walks in as he waits for my answer, and she pulls his face down and kisses him. It’s only a quick kiss, but he puts a lot of feeling into it, and I notice his tongue run over the braces on her teeth. She’s blushing a little as she pours herself a cup of coffee and says, “I didn’t hear you come in. I let my friend spend the night in my bed. She had quite the shock yesterday and I figured it would be better if she stayed here. You didn’t disturb her, did you?”

Then she turns to me and asks, “Do you feel ready to talk about signing the contract? I didn’t want to throw too much at you yesterday, but things just kind of got out of hand. We can sit down today and take our time, and you can ask any questions as you think of them.”

The good-looking guy is still standing by the counter with his mug of coffee, and I catch him checking me out. Surprisingly, it’s not my body he is looking at, it’s my mouth. My friend sees where he is looking and gives him a good-natured swat on the ass. “What do you think you’re doing?”

His reply surprises me. “I’m just imagining what she is going to look like with braces.” I hastily cover my teeth with my lips and put my hand over my mouth, but he just smiles at me and says, “Don’t do that. It is a shame to cover up such a beautiful smile.”

She tells him to be quiet, then turns to me and says, "I haven't had a chance to explain the benefits package to her yet, and there is still quite a bit I don't think she remembers from yesterday." Her next comments are directed at me. "Why don't you go and see if you can find something to wear in my closet? My boyfriend gets cranky if he doesn't get his good-morning kiss before going to work, and I haven't given it to him yet."

I look at him and what she is wearing and understand why she wants a little privacy. I’m blushing as I smile at them and leave the kitchen, taking my mug of coffee with me.

Her closet is more of a room connected to her bedroom. Some of what was talked about yesterday comes back to me, and I decide to ask if I can have a closet like this in my apartment. I smile as it dawns on me that I am going to sign the contract even though I don’t know everything that is included in it.

Finding something to wear is relatively easy. Finding something that appeals to my sense of style is not. She has the uniforms I designed hanging in her closet, and on a whim, I put on the blouse and skirt combination. The blouse is tailored to fit her body, and on my larger chest, the fabric stretches to accommodate my breasts. The skirt has more give to it and fits nicely around my waist and hips. My whimsical sense of humour kicks in and I find a pair of slip-on shoes with ridiculously high heels to wear. It’s nice to see that her wild side hasn’t disappeared as we have gotten older. I locate the drawer holding her socks and find a pair that fits to just above my knees to complete the look. I would fit right in at a gentleman’s club as a waitress or performer. It’s too over the edge to wear to work in a restaurant.

While I wait for my friend to kiss her boyfriend goodbye, I pull a sketchpad from my bag and let my mind wander. It's handy having the materials to put my ideas on paper when I get them and sometimes I sketch to pass the time. When I'm working on an outfit, I concentrate on the design of it, but there are times when the location is important as well. I watch as lines appear on the paper and two bodies take shape, then a cafe table to one side. Most of the time, I leave the faces blurred, but this time, the lower face of the female character is in focus. What stands out are the braces on her teeth and the elastics running from top to bottom. Bits of colour are added to make them stand out.

Body shape and size are important to any design I make, and the female character is short and busty, with long legs. The male character is taller and fit-looking. As the sketch progresses and details get filled in, the male is wearing a chef's uniform and she is wearing a waitress's blouse and skirt from the sixties, with lots of frills and lace along the bottom. As the sketch nears completion, the braces get shaded in to give the impression of bands encircling the teeth. The final touches of colour are added and the completed sketch sits in front of me.

I become aware of the presence of a body behind me and look up to see my friend's braced smile above my shoulder. "I knew you could draw, but I didn't know you were that good. Would you mind if I kept that?" I carefully remove it from the pad and turn to hand it to her. Her clothes are in disarray and she has a flush on her cheeks. "Don't forget to sign and date it the way artists do."

Her smile gets bigger as she takes a closer look at it. “Why don’t you go to the restaurant and order yourself some breakfast. I’ll get changed and join you in a little while.”

I gesture at what I’m wearing and she adds, “It will be fine. The staff will enjoy seeing what kind of designs you can come up with for their uniforms. You might want to change the shoes though, they are a bit too wild for this early in the day.”



She joins me while I am still looking through the menu, trying to decide what to eat. The braces-friendly portion of the menu is fascinating. There are so many items on there I never thought of. As she’s sitting down, two mugs of gourmet coffee appear on the table and an early-twenties waitress with metal braces waits to take our orders. My gaze travels over her body and an image forms in my mind of what kind of outfit I think she should be wearing.

My friend sees what I am doing and she smiles. Now I have two braced smiles to look at and I fail at trying to look at both of them at the same time. “You’re going to sign the contract, aren’t you? I can tell by the look on your face. Let’s eat first, then we can find someplace with a little more space where we can talk in private.”

At her suggestion, I order from the braces-friendly menu, and find it to be better than I expected. As we eat, she explains that the guy in charge of the kitchen is a chef and uses quality ingredients. He’s using the restaurant to test out new dishes for the theme-restaurant they are designing for the other side of the main floor.

By the time we are done eating, I’ve found out that she is the hostess for the restaurant and is in charge of managing the staff serving the customers. When I reach for my wallet to pay for my meal, she stops me and says, “Don’t worry about paying. You have an account at all the restaurants in the building. You can tip the waitress if you want to.”

She picks up the file that has been laying on the table and adds, "Let's go upstairs and talk if you're ready, just watch which side of the stairs you walk up on." I find out what she means as we follow the curve in the stairs near the top. There's a small area with comfy chairs beside the stairs, and the guys sitting there have a nice view of what I am wearing as we step past them. That bit of information gets stored in my mind for future use.

We sit in the area beside the orthodontist's office and she begins pulling sheets of paper from the folder. The first sheet I recognize as the contract for the uniforms. It's simply worded and easy to understand. If I accept the contract, I will be supplying uniforms for the staff in the current restaurant, the coffee bar we are sitting near and any future restaurants in the building. A cost plus percentage profit clause is guaranteeing I will make money.

The next few sheets deal with setting up a business name for my company and getting all the licenses and permits required. All of that will be taken care of for me by ‘The Company’ and the costs will come out of my operating fund. I’m keeping up with everything so far and haven’t been asking a lot of questions.

What I want to do for the workspace comes up next. It's up to me where I want to work. Right away, she suggests I take them up on the offer to have a space set up for me to work in. She smiles when I ask what it is going to cost me, and I am momentarily distracted by the flashing metal in her mouth. She waits until my attention returns to the subject at hand to reply with, "I can only give you the answer I was given when I asked that same question about my apartment. 'Ask the accountant.' The secretary didn't bother to make an appointment for me, she just said, 'Don't worry about it. It's all being taken care of.''

Then she asks if I want to have an apartment in the building too. More of what happened yesterday surfaces in my mind and I remember the models on computer screens. I ask her, “Do I have to live here?” She shakes her head. “If I decide to live here, can I design it myself, or will someone else do it?”

I get the smile again as she answers, “That is up to you. My boyfriend did mine for me and added a bedroom for himself to the plans. My advice is to talk to the couple in charge of the renovations and get their opinions on how to lay it out.”

After a break to refill our mugs and get a snack, she pulls out some more sheets and hands me one set. “This is a copy of the employee benefits package. As soon as you sign the contract, you can use any of the benefits you want. There is a page with requirements that applies to restaurant employees only, but you can use those too. I want to make it clear that you are not an employee of the company, you are a contractor. The benefits are provided as part of your contract. You don’t have a boss.”

It takes a while for the information to go through my brain and get processed. I take the time to read through the forms, looking for things I don't understand, but everything is in simple language and is clearly laid out. I begin to smile as I read through the benefits package, and by the end, my smile is bigger than hers, though not decorated the way hers is.

I sign all the forms and she takes me to talk to the couple in charge of the renovations while she makes copies of the forms for my records.

Chapter 4

Two days later I’m back in the orthodontist's office having the retainers I didn’t know I was getting adjusted to fit into my mouth. On the way upstairs, I stopped to see my friend at the hostess station to see if she could explain to me what is happening, but she was busy training some new staff and couldn’t take the time to go to my appointment with me. She did say to ask the assistant to explain anything I didn’t understand and to be honest with them if I wanted to enjoy my appointment.

I take her advice and ask the assistant to explain to me the differences between the retainer I am getting and the other types available. She tells me mine are called Hawley’s and shows me models of the other types available. My retainers have a wire running behind my front teeth and she explains they are normally used to help straighten the teeth a little, but the wire on mine is only going to rest against my teeth. She hands me a mirror when they are done adjusting them and points out how the heavy flat wire used is shaped to match the contours of my teeth.

We move to the orthodontist’s office and he begins to go through the treatment options he recommends to fix my teeth. Each time he uses phrases I don’t understand, I ask the assistant to explain them. I try and use neutral ways of asking about other possible treatment options, but they catch on that I am trying to find ways of extending the treatment. The orthodontist excuses himself, saying he needs to deal with a ‘non-typical situation’ and will be back in a few minutes, and leaves me with the assistant.

As soon as he is gone, she takes my hand and looks me in the eye. “How long would you like your treatment to take? We can extend your treatment if you want and there are more options we can use to give you the smile you want.”

I blush as images appear in my mind, and I wish I had my sketch pad with me so I could show her what I want. She pulls the mouse to our side of the desk and clicks on a few folders, then a copy of the sketch I gave to my friend appears on the screen. “Is this what you would like your treatment to look like?” At my nod, she clicks a few more times and my face appears on the screen with narrow bands around my teeth. I grin and move my fingers apart a little, and she makes the bands wider. I shake my head and the bands return to the narrow size again.

“How about additional appliances? If we use expanders, you can keep all your teeth and we’ll widen your palates to make room for them to fit together nicely.” She shows me a picture of what the expanders look like. “We would probably need to use a face-bow to move your upper teeth back a bit to create more space,” and more pictures appear, one showing my face with the wire running in front of my teeth. “The use of a Herbst appliance to shift your bottom teeth forward is another possibility, and can be combined with the other options.” More pictures appear, and my face on the screen changes to show the appliance.

My blush deepens and the smile on my face gets bigger. I make several attempts to speak, but my tongue keeps bumping into my new retainers and garbling my speech. Finally I take out the bottom retainer and I can talk semi-understandably. “I wouldn’t want all of that at once, and I’m not sure about having bands around my teeth, but it is nice to know what I would look like if I did. Let me think about it for a while.”

The orthodontist knocks on the door and asks if we are okay. She nods and he sits down at the desk again. After checking the notes she made in my file, he looks at me and smiles. “I’m sure that we can accommodate your wishes relatively easily.”

When I ask how much it will cost, the answer doesn’t really surprise me. It’s just another way of saying ‘ask the accountant.’



My next stop is the office of the people in charge of the renovations. The lady hands me the keys and says, “Let’s go upstairs and take a look at where your office is going to be.” There are lines taped on the floor and a few pieces of lightweight furniture placed in the places between where the walls will be. “Walk around and get a sense of how it will look when it is finished. We can easily make changes to the layout now.”

I walk around, pretending to open and close doors and sit in the chairs where the furniture might be placed. I find a problem in the bedroom. “Can I get a door that slides into the wall instead of swinging into my bedroom?” She nods and makes a note on the pad she is carrying. I walk back into the living room space and look out the windows. They are southern facing and get plenty of light all year.

She joins me and I ask if it is possible to add more windows. When I explain what I would like to do, she says, “If you don’t mind me making a suggestion, why don’t we put up a wall across this end of the space and create a greenhouse for you? If we extend it across the bedroom as well, we can put in a studio for you to sit and sketch or relax in. I’ll check with the architects and see how many windows we can safely put in for you to give you as much light as possible.”

I grin at her, and my lip slides over the heavy wire of my top retainer. My day keeps getting better as time passes. She goes back to her office and I go to the restaurant to talk to my friend.


The lunch rush has ended and the supper rush won’t start for a while yet. I sit in a booth where I can see everything that is going on. My friend brings two mugs of coffee and sits across from me. Before I came down, I put my bottom retainer in again, and I give her a big smile so she can see what she has done to me.

She has the new employees cleaning up from lunch and getting the place ready for the evening. Charlene drops by the table and says she likes my new look, then asks when I can make her a new uniform. She has a few ideas and wants to sit down with me sometime to see what I can do with them. When our mugs are just about empty, the young waitress with the braces comes to refill them and smiles when she sees my new retainers.

My friend asks if I want to stay for supper with her and her boyfriend, but I politely decline the offer, saying that I want to go home and enjoy my new retainers in private. She’s still laughing as I walk out of the restaurant.

Great story

Chapter 5

I get an email from the company doing the renovations asking me to drop by the office when I have some time. Attached is a note from the lady saying she has a 'project' for me if I am interested. I look around my basement and take in the lack of space to adequately work in. There's nothing here that needs to be done that can't wait.

It isn't ideal to sketch while riding the bus, but it helps to pass the time, and I can make notes on what I want to sketch if it is too rough. Before heading upstairs to the office, I drop by the restaurant and say hi to the staff, promising them I will sit down with them to discuss ideas for their uniforms soon.

My outfit was deliberately chosen for the walk up the stairs to the second floor and I can't wait to see the reaction I get. It is one of my creations, and I made a few alterations to 'improve it'. The boots are thigh-high leather with a four-inch heel and a very modest platform sole. The thigh-length skirt has been altered to billow around my legs and give flashes of the boot tops as I walk, and across the cheeks on the shorts I am wearing underneath is embroidered, "Gotcha". Topping off the outfit is a black lace t-shirt over a white satin camisole.

The staff in the restaurant give my outfit a mixed reaction, all of it positive, and my takeout order is ready in no time. They're still working out a few bugs with the takeout system, but the overall response is very good from the customers who are testing it.

The hostess tells me to expect an interesting afternoon when I talk to the lady in the renovation office and that she knows what 'project' means. I'm smiling as I walk up the stairs, and my smile gets bigger as I turn the corner. I look at a few of the guys sitting there and flash my retainers at them, then put more sway in my hips. The reaction to my display is what I was hoping for, and the laughter drifts up behind me.

There is a new computer sitting on the table in the conference room and the lady is playing around on it. She has a few other items neatly stacked beside the computer and waits until I am comfortably seated beside her to push them in my direction. On the big screen on the wall is a 3D model of her, and it has her wearing a retainer. She explains that the program on the computer is a combination of what the orthodontist uses in his office for his patients and a modified version of the 3D modelling program they use in the office for planning their renovations.

One of the investors has a software company and is providing tech support to 'Sparkles'. As part of the support, a program is being set up for me to run my uniform shop and make creating designs easier. She hands me what looks like one of my sketch pads and a pencil and says, "Give this a try and tell me what you think of it. I want you to design me an outfit for around the office to tease my husband. Be as wild as you want."

I flip up the cover and a blank page is waiting for me. The pencil feels just the way the coloured pencils I normally use feel, except the tip looks as if it needs to be sharpened. I make a few random strokes on the page to get a good feel for how it fits into my hand, then flip it over and erase them. Other than the pad being a little heavier than I am used to, everything feels comfortable.

She brings me a bottle of juice to go with my meal as I start sketching and then sits back away from the table so I can see her entire body. As I draw on the pad, what I am sketching shows up on a small window on the screen on the wall. It doesn't take long for a rough image of her sitting in the chair to show up and I add colour to it. Rather than having to hunt through a box of pencils to find the colour I want, all I do is tap on the screen and select it from a menu.

The sketch shows her as she is currently dressed, and then I begin to make changes. My page usually gets messy when I alter things, but this pad makes it easy to keep things looking tidy. I alter her blouse to look more form-fitting and show it with a few buttons undone, then shade in the hint of the underwire bra and the edges of a padded pushup bra underneath. The program automatically takes the shape from the original image and alters it to account for the added features.

The lady laughs and says, "I wish I looked that good, but the bra I am wearing already has a fair amount of padding in it." I take a closer look at her and my retainers slide from behind my lips as I alter the look on my pad a little. I reduce the size of the breasts in my sketch and bring them closer together. She nods at the changes.

I move to her lower body, adding a pair of heels and changing the pants to a skirt. It's a long skirt, showing a bit of her calves below the hem. I shade it in to show she is wearing stockings, then change them to fine-mesh fishnets and add more height to the heels and a small platform to the sole.

She laughs again, and uses the mouse to pull up a menu on the screen on the wall. She morphs her face onto my drawing and selects an option to have the sketch rotate. I notice there is an alteration I need to make and I add a slit on the side of her skirt so that the side of her leg shows through. Still not satisfied, I increase the length of the slit until the top of her stocking is showing.

I can't stop grinning as I look at her. "This makes designing things a lot easier. I'm so used to having to do several sketches before I am satisfied with the result."

She looks at my sketch and smiles. "If only I could actually look that good. If this is what you can do with the sketch pad, wait until you see what the rest of the program can do. Once your shop is set up, I'll have someone come by and teach you how to use it. And I am going to have to drop by and see what else you can create for me." She gestures at the screen and says, "As much as I like this look, I don't think I'm brave enough to wear it at work."

I pick up the pad to make a few changes, but she stops me before I do anything. "Let me make a copy of it first. I'm sure my husband will want to see it too. Make sure you date and sign it." It's the second time someone at the company has asked me to do that.

"Now, for the real reason I wanted you to drop by. Let's go take a look at your new apartment. It's still just a skeleton, but it will give you a better idea of what it is going to look like, and we can still easily make changes if you want."

We walk past the orthodontist's office, and the girl at the desk waves for me to come inside. She asks how my retainers are feeling and I smile, showing her I am wearing them. The lady from the renovation office takes a closer look and she has a strange look on her face that passes quickly. The girl asks if I want to book another appointment and says she has a spot open in an hour if I want it. My smile gets bigger and I accept her offer.

I wave my wrist over the pad beside the door to the stairs and the door opens. Despite much of the building looking old on the surface, most of the inside is brand new and uses the latest technology. The locks are just one example. I don't have to carry my keys around with me, I have a charm on my bracelet with a chip hidden in it that opens the doors I have access to.

There are substantial changes on the third floor. The space my apartment is going into is screened off, and when she pushes aside the edge of one, I see the skeleton of the walls in place. She leads me to the gap where the door to my shop is going to be and says, "Walk through the whole place and get a feel of what it is going to look like."

I begin to wander around, imagining how I want to lay out the furniture, then step into the changing room and spread my arms to get a feel of the amount of space to move around in. The backroom looks too big, until I start placing the machines where I want them to go, in my mind. Then I began to wonder if it is big enough.

There's a gap in the wall in the workroom I don't remember from the model, and when I look at it, she says, "One of the guys said it would be a good idea to put a door there so you can get from your apartment to your shop easily. It got overlooked in the original plans."

The doorway leads into the living room, and there is a wall across the back to create a space for a greenhouse. Through the side wall, I see the framing for the bedroom and the walk-in closet with the sliding door framed in. All the plumbing is in place for the kitchen and bathroom, and I can picture where the big clawfoot tub is going to be. Right now there is a lawn chair where it is going to sit and I stretch out on it and smile.

It's been over a week since I signed the contract and so much has happened already. I glance at my watch and realize I've been daydreaming for quite a while. My lips slide over the wires of my retainers as I walk downstairs with the lady from the renovation company. My confirmation that I am happy with the layout brings a smile to her face and I take note of her teeth. They are straighter than mine and it looks as if she may have had braces before, but there are signs she didn't wear her retainers long enough if she had braces.

She returns to her office while I step into the orthodontist's office. I recognize a few faces from the restaurant downstairs and smile at them as I walk to the desk and check-in. I don’t have a chance to sit down before I am being escorted into a treatment room. I smile at the orthodontist as he walks into the room, wanting him to see his work on display in my mouth. He takes a quick look inside my mouth, then pushes back from the chair and says, “Everything looks fine. While you’re here, is there anything else we can do for you?”

A grin spreads across my face as I say, “Do you have time to go to your office? I have a few alterations to my smile I would like to discuss.”

It's been a while since I posted a chapter, so here's one for you to enjoy.

Chapter 7

My teeth are sore when I wake up in the morning and biting into things is very uncomfortable, so I skip breakfast. Sitting in my basement all day doesn’t appeal to me, so I ride the bus to the restaurant.

The new sketchpad has given me the idea of starting on designing new uniforms for some of the staff. After finding that the pictures of my new braces can be combined to create an accurate 3D image of my face, I decide to try taking several photos of the person I am designing the uniform for before working on the new uniform. Being able to see the uniform from different angles will make it much easier to make the uniform fit right.

My outfit is skinny jeans and a tight t-shirt because I don’t feel like teasing the guys beside the stairs. Despite how sore my teeth are, the guys still get a smile from me as I pass by them and a few smile back at me, making me feel better.

There are a couple of chairs tucked into a corner most people don't use and I set myself up in it. The wifi gives me full access to the files on the computer and I begin to experiment with just what I can do with the programs. The 3D program quickly combines the pictures of my braced mouth to create a realistic image of the front of my face, but when it gets to the back, it has nothing to work with. The modelling part of the program takes over and tries to estimate what should be there, but the results are comical and nowhere near what the back of my head looks like. The program is good at adding depth to my sketches, but fails when it tries to turn them into a 3D model.

I'm laughing at the results when the girl from the orthodontist's office comes out to take her coffee break. She joins in the corner and I show her what I am laughing at, then she says I need more pictures for the program to work with. "Why don't you come into the office after my break and I'll take some more of you? Even if it doesn't work, you'll still have lots of pictures to remember your first few days in braces."

I show her the sketches I did of her the day before after the computer added some depth to them and she smiles at the result. "I'll have to work on my boss and get him to buy me some new uniforms. The guys will be lining up to get braces if I'm wearing something like those, especially if I'm wearing those heels." I can rotate the sketches a few degrees each way before the dimensions become too skewed.

I wait a while after her break to go to her desk. One of the other girls takes over for her while she takes me to the back and positions me against the wall. Since today isn't about taking pictures of my teeth for their records, she has me smile naturally as she takes pictures from the front and side, and then a few of the back, with closeups of my head. We're both having fun and it hasn't taken us very long to snap what we have, so she has me throw in some sexier poses as I slowly turn.

It's a high-quality camera body and expensive lens, and all she has to do is transfer the pictures to the office computer and erase the memory card, then move them all to my sketchpad. I don't know what she took and leave her to deal with a new batch of patients while I return to my corner to experiment with the new pictures.

I flick through the pictures as the sketchpad stitches them together into a 3D image, marvelling at the quality of the pictures she took. Rather than just capturing my face, she took many of my whole body and the sketchpad incorporates those into the image as well. As the 3D image rotates, more and more details fill in and I can zoom in and out. Looking in the mirror isn't the same as being able to see myself the way other people see me, and my new braces look different than I expected. The ligatures on the metal brackets add the splash of colour I was hoping for, and I can change the colour to get a better idea of what the braces will look like when I get the ligatures changed.

My skinny jeans and tight t-shirt also look good in the 3D image and when I switch to the design portion of the program, the dimensions displayed are close enough to my measurements to use for the patterns. After altering my t-shirt to show a little more cleavage with a push-up bra added, I check the dimensions and find them to be just as accurate. Just for the fun of it, I take the uniform I made for the receptionist and replace my t-shirt and jeans with the blouse and short skirt. The program takes the new information and builds a realistic-looking representation of what I would look like wearing it, including the metal brackets and ligatures currently on my teeth.

I’m having so much fun playing with my sketchpad, I forget about my sore teeth. There is one problem I notice, my image needs a background rather than the blank space it is currently in. The lady from the renovation office mentioned the program I am using has many of the same features they use in their office when they design projects, so I decide to wander over there and see if I can get access to the plans for my apartment.

As soon as I walk in, she smiles and thanks me for the designs I did for her. She particularly liked the one with the braces, and so did her husband. When I ask her how to access the model of my apartment, she gives me a quick lesson on how to find it in their database and cautions me not to make changes without consulting them first. The 3D model of my apartment is just what I am looking for and adding my 3D image just takes a few clicks. My screen is a bit too small to get an accurate look at the entire scene, so I cast it onto the screen on the wall. The room I select is my living room, and even without furniture, it gives a much better idea of how I would look in a work environment.

She laughs and says, “How would you like to do that on the model of the new restaurant? You will get a much better idea of how the uniform will look with a table and chair in the picture or a booth in the background.” She pulls up the model of the restaurant and drags my image into it, positioning me beside a table.

She rotates the whole model, and we watch as my image seems to move around behind the table and my face disappears from view, then reappears with my braces showing again. The combination of my image with the table makes the entire thing more lifelike and adds a sense of scale to both. She looks at me and asks, “Could you add the sketch you did of me to the chair at the table? It might be fun to see what the restaurant would look like with people in it.”

I locate the file with the sketches and open a new character file. The 3D program begins to build the base character from the sketch but doesn’t have enough information to work with. As the model rotates, it does the same thing it did with my face, showing the front and a bit of the sides, then running out of images to use for the rest.

I smile at her again, “I know how to fix this. Do you have a camera handy? I need to have more pictures for the program to work with.” When she nods, I add, “Get the camera and sit down in the chair. It will be easier to create a sitting character if the pictures are of you sitting.”

I move around her, taking pictures every forty-five degrees. It's just a simple digital camera, but I don't think it will matter. I ask if she has a cord to plug the camera into her computer, but she has a better idea. "Why don't you just put the SD card into your sketchpad and work off of it." I smile again and flash my newly accessorized teeth at her. Each time I smile, her eyes drop to my mouth briefly before returning to my face without saying anything.

The sketchpad goes to work, using the new pictures to fill in the blanks on the model. As the model rotates, the back and sides of the body fill in more until it is nearly complete. It is still struggling to combine the dress from the sketch with the photos I just took, but the semblance of her sitting in the desk chair in the evening gown is there. The back of the desk chair hides much of the missing information.

A few clicks transfers the new character into the model of the restaurant, but it doesn't look right without the chair from the restaurant. The lady pulls up a 3D model of one of the new restaurant chairs on her screen and shows me where to find it in the database. I'm surprised to find that I can access all the work the company has done to create the models for the restaurant right from my sketchpad, but she tells me all the computers in the building are linked to a central server, including the sketchpad I am using. It is a matter of moments before the chairs are switched and the scene in the restaurant has a waitress and a customer.

Chapter 5

Birdy shows up for her first day at Sparkles in a fancy low-back wheelchair with a set of forearm crutches clipped to the back. When she sees my panicked look, she grins her misaligned smile at me and says, "I brought my office chair to work with me, instead of waiting for you to get one for me. I find it easier and faster to get around the office this way, and if I need to stand up to get things, I have a spare set of legs to help with that. I usually wear my legbraces, but I feel more capable of doing my job if I am in one of my chairs. I brought the legbraces with me, but left them in the car in the basement."

I have to admit, she does look good in the wheelchair. I planned to spend most of the day teaching her how to run my office, but that quickly becomes unnecessary. When I show her the computer programs I use, she demonstrates she knows them better than I do, and shows me a few shortcuts to make my job easier. She handles the phone system like a professional and I find myself with nothing to do before our coffee break arrives.

When I offer to have something sent up from the restaurant, she rolls out from behind my desk and says, "Let's just go and get a coffee from Sparkles Cafe. You can introduce me to some of the staff and I can pop into the orthodontist's office for a minute to arrange an appointment to get started on fixing my teeth." It seems as if my assistant is already doing a better job of running my office than I did.

We order our coffee and a sandwich, and while I carry them to a table, she pops into the office and sets up her appointment. She obviously doesn't approve of the location I pick because she parks her chair at a table near the stairs and gestures for me to move there. As we sip our coffee, I begin to explain to her about the chairs set up halfway up the stairs, but she grins as she explains she knows about it.

"I was told all about it when we were coming up the stairs yesterday. I plan on making use of the opportunity to have a little fun from time to time. In case you haven't noticed, I still have a nice set of legs, even if they aren't working quite the way they should."

I am not quite sure how to react to the comment. She's clearly giving me the opportunity to check out her legs, but I'm her boss and I'm not sure if it is an appropriate thing to do. She takes the matter out of my hands by pushing away from the table and moving to the railing and knocking on it before doing a slow spin in her chair. A few whistles drift up from below as she returns to the table.

She's blushing a little and has a big smile on her face as she returns. "One of the ladies in my therapy class saw I was having a hard time dealing with my injuries. She started taking me out for tea after class, and she told me it was up to me to decide if I wanted to be miserable for the rest of my life or if I wanted to be happy. She tried explaining to me what she meant, but I couldn't seem to make it work for me."

"Finally she decided to show me what she meant. She took me to the mall and sat with me on a bench beside the escalator. I was told to look at the people around us and watch what they were doing. If anyone looked at us, she told me to smile at them before looking away. It took me several trips to the mall before I was able to do it, but I noticed that most of the people were too busy to look at us."

"The next time we went to the mall, she left me sitting on the bench while she went to the bathroom and changed. When she came back, she looked very different from what I was used to seeing her. As she crutched past me to the escalator, she smiled at me and moved her head so the hair on her long blonde wig fell over her chest. For the next fifteen minutes, I watched as she rode up and down the escalator in her short skirt with her missing lower leg on display. It really got interesting when she started clutching up and down the stairs. It didn't take long for her to attract an audience, and it wasn't just men watching her either."

"When I saw how much fun she was having, I finally understood what she meant. Those trips to the mall changed my life more than the accident did. She taught me that I have fashion accessories that other people don't. As soon as I get the braces on my teeth, I'm going to have one more fashion accessory to wear, though they won't make me stand out much around here."

My new assistant is making it impossible not to notice how good-looking she is. I’m also noticing she is more than just a pretty face and a nice body, she has a very sharp mind to go with it. Our coffee break has lasted longer than expected with her telling me more about herself, and with her doing most of the talking, she hasn’t had a chance to finish eating. I don’t feel like rushing her back to the office, so I say, “I’m making an executive decision, maybe the last one you’re going to let me make for a while.” I have a big grin on my face as I add, “Take your time finishing your break and come back to the office when you are ready.”



I'm just finishing with some routine paperwork when she comes rolling into the office. She has her legs crossed and her skirt is pulled up above her knees. The office suddenly feels crowded with both of us in it, and I feel as if I am intruding into her space. I stand and move my chair from behind the desk so she can take my place, and the office feels just a little bigger, but it doesn't feel like my office anymore.

She watches as I look around and asks, “What’s the matter? Is something wrong?”

I sit in my chair facing her across the desk and answer, “This office isn’t big enough for both of us to work here.”

She smiles at me and says, “I was going to bring that up, but I didn’t think it would be so soon. I was going to ask if a few changes could be made to accommodate the way I do things. Mostly just having shelves and cabinets at wheelchair level so I don’t have to stand up as much. I find it easier if I use my chair around the office, even when I am wearing my legbraces.”

I return her smile. “I know someone who can help us with that. Let’s go see if she is busy right now.” Birdy rolls out from behind her desk and I can’t help admiring how gracefully she does it. She handles the chair as if it is just a part of her body as she glides through the door ahead of me and waits.

It's only a short trip across the second floor to where the offices of the couple doing the renovations are located. Louise is in her office working when I knock on her door and ask, "Louise, do you have some time to help us with a problem?" When she nods, I move aside so Birdy can roll into the office and say, "This is my new assistant. She prefers to be called Birdy. We need to set her up with an office for her to work in, there just isn't enough space in my office for both of us. I was going to give her mine, but she pointed out to me that my office needs renovations to make it suitable for her to work in it."

Louise smiles at us and I notice a thin wire running across her top teeth. “Why don’t we go into the design room and see what we can do.”

Birdy pirouettes her chair and we follow Louise. A few minutes later, we are looking at the screen on the wall as an outline appears. “Let’s start with the idea of setting up a new office space for both of you to work in instead of renovating the one already there. We have lots of space to work with on the second floor.” Louise smiles at Birdy and says, “Tell me if I get out of line. What accommodations do we need to make for your condition?”

Birdy laughs and says, “If your referring to me being a female, and a good-looking one, none at all. If you mean that I am overqualified for the job I’ve been hired to do, there’s nothing you can do about that. What I do need is an office with a fancier desk than my boss's and someplace I can store all the files and things I am going to be using. I already have a fancy office chair and need an office to match it.”

Louise laughs and the wire across her top teeth sparkles in the overhead lights. "I think we're going to get along just fine. Okay, let's start with laying out your office first, then we can figure out what to do about arranging someplace for your boss to be while you do his job for him."

I clear my throat to get their attention, then say, “Why don’t I leave you ladies alone to rearrange my life? If you need me, I’ll be in my office trying to figure out what is happening to me. Or maybe I’ll go to the kitchen and see if I can be of use to them instead.”

I enjoy more and more your story ! Please keep on writing !

Chapter 3

My spoiled rich kid got even more spoiled when we got home. I put on one of my old waitress uniforms and slipped on a pair of stockings and stiletto heels. While I cooked supper, he sat at the table watching me, and I made sure to bend over to look for ingredients several times, each time giving him a flash of the top of my stockings.

I didn’t neglect what he really wanted to see, my braces. I still hadn’t taken a look at them, so I didn’t know what they looked like yet. My tongue got quite a workout exploring them, and he got to watch as I ran my tongue over the brackets frequently. My teeth hadn't started aching yet, but I knew from when our daughter had braces that my teeth would get sore, so I made one of the meals they used to enjoy.

Eating wasn’t as easy as I expected, and I spent a lot of time trying to dislodge food from my braces, which he seemed to enjoy watching. He was spending so much time watching me, his plate hardly got touched.

After wrapping his plate so he could eat it later, I told him it was time for me to brush my teeth and he could watch as long as he behaved himself. Brushing my teeth with braces was a whole new experience, and oddly, made much more enjoyable by having my husband watching me. Each time I bent over to spit or rinse, he got a glimpse of more than just my stocking tops, and a few times I caught him extending his hands toward what he was seeing. I just grinned and let him know he would have to be patient. I also got a good look at my new braces, and the look of the bulky brackets and dark ligatures holding the archwires in place appealed to me.

I had seen how thorough he had been, making sure our daughters had done a good job brushing their teeth, and I wanted him to do the same for me, with a few variations. The first was how long I wanted him to take doing it. The second was the positions we would be in. I had him sit on the edge of the bed with his feet on the floor, then I put my head on his lap. I don't know where he found the lamp, but it had a fully articulating arm and a lens to focus the light to a point, just like they use in the orthodontist's office, only smaller.

With his lap acting similar to the headrest of the orthodontist's chair, he was able to see everything in my mouth and move my head around to get the best view possible. He had a surprise waiting for me. He pulled a set of instruments from the drawer of the night table and removed a tiny mirror from the case so he could see how the bands fit around my back teeth, in better detail. My first evening in braces was turning out to be even better than I had hoped, and it was still early.

His visual inspection became more thorough as he used another of the tools to very gently probe behind the archwires to check for any food left after I brushed. I had spent extra time brushing just to tease him and he didn't find anything. There was one more thing I wanted him to do. I let him take as long as he wanted inspecting my braces, before I pushed him onto his back and straddled his hips, putting him in the ideal position for him to use his tongue to make sure my braces were clean.

My position above him also freed his hands to explore the areas he had been reaching for in the bathroom, and all he had to do was unfasten a few buttons. There wasn't anything else in the way.




As more of the new restaurant was put in place, they hired more part-time staff. The Hostess was busy training more hostesses and had more than enough to do with getting the new restaurant ready, so I was promoted and given the job of training the new waiters and waitresses. I came up with a fun way to make the training realistic without putting pressure on the new staff.

Each week, I held a training session in the new restaurant and invited anyone who worked in the building to come. Everyone who came got a piece of paper to write a possible scenario on and place in a box. All the new waiters and waitresses were given a number, and when everyone was ready, I took a scenario from the box and we acted it out, sometimes doing more than one at the same time. Anyone whose number wasn't drawn became a customer.

The kitchen staff and busboys weren't excluded either. I had one of the staff members draw numbers and the people with those numbers were the serving staff for that scenario. Some of the scenarios were funny, such as the screaming baby, and others were a little more intense, such as the pregnant woman going into labour. Even the kitchen staff were involved. We used pink forms to designate a practice order and the kitchen staff had to keep track of how long it was supposed to take before the order was ready, then place the form on a plate to be delivered to the table. Even though they didn't have to make anything for a customer, they still had to manage their time while still working.

It wasn't just the floor staff who showed up. Management came as well, and they used the time to listen to what the employees said. The kitchen manager's new assistant was particularly helpful. Sometimes she showed up wearing her legbraces, and other times she came in her wheelchair. She taught the staff how to properly serve someone with a disability, and the most important thing everyone learnt was that not everyone with a visible difference is disabled. She demonstrated it by challenging some of the waiters to try serving the 'customers' while using a wheelchair, and did the job right alongside them.

The Seamstress also showed up frequently, usually in a costume and we never knew how she was going to act. When she did 'rich woman with an attitude', there were a few embarrassed looks from some of the owners, and some changed the ways they did things. Everyone had fun when she did 'the drunk bride-to-be', even the busboys who had to clean up the mixture of cold pea soup and vegetables left on the floor.

What really stood out was the number of people with braces and orthodontic appliances that took part each week. The new people usually had retainers and were still getting used to wearing them. The staff who had been around for a while and had just been fitted with their braces were easy to spot too. They were the ones either trying to hide their braces or still learning how to get their lips over the brackets. Sometimes I cheated when the numbers were drawn and appointed them to be the waiters and waitresses for the evening.

My husband didn't always join me for those evenings, and when he did, we always played the older couple on a date. We didn't make it easy on the staff, deliberately getting caught with my husband running his tongue over my braces while we kissed and let our hands stray. They didn't know just how much fun we were really having, and most of the time, we weren't acting, we were treating it like a real date.




When the Seamstress and the Hostess asked me to help them with a presentation to the owners about the uniforms, I leapt at the chance, and got my husband involved as well. We designed a uniform similar to what I had worn when I first was a waitress and added a few minor touches to update it a little. My older-style braces were the touch that really pulled everything together. Of course, we had to try it out in the bedroom, and both of us enjoyed what happened.

Chapter 8

Despite being around people with braces all day, I've always seen them as just part of the uniforms they are wearing. It's never occurred to me that there is more to having braces than just wearing them for treatment, for some of the people in the building.

Birdy’s braces display has an effect on me that I’m not prepared to deal with. It’s been a while since I’ve had a pretty girl sitting on my lap, and even longer since I’ve had my hand on the leg of one so willing to allow me to be so close to her. I’m also realizing she is using her braces in a way I wasn’t expecting.

It's impossible for me to hide my body's response to the display she is putting on, with her sitting on my lap, and her smile gets bigger as she adjusts how she is sitting. I'm trying to figure out how to apologize to her for acting inappropriately when she says, "Thank you for asking me for a date. It's been a long time since anyone has treated me with the respect you have so far this evening. You probably don't realize just how special the meal you prepared for us was. Nobody has ever created a meal for me, designed to be shared the way this meal has been."

Her eyes begin to sparkle as they get moist and I can see her fighting back the tears that are forming. “What is even more special to me is that you haven’t treated me as if I am a cripple. You’ve made me feel like the woman I am.”

I move my hand underneath hers on her leg and she giggles again. “I did say you might end up with me on your lap if you weren’t careful what you did with your hands, I just didn’t expect it to be quite like this.” Her hand moves from covering mine to the side of my face. “I’ve been hinting that I want you to be the first guy I kiss after getting my braces, so if it’s okay with you, will you let me?”

I’m really not in a position to object, nor am I inclined to refuse the request. When I don’t say anything, she takes it for consent and leans toward me, a single tear running down her nose and landing on my lips just before her lips contact mine. Our first kiss is tentative and brief, with her pulling away first. I pull her closer to me with the arm supporting her back, and this time I initiate the kiss. She shifts her position so she is more comfortable, and my hand on her leg slides up the outside of her leg and under her skirt. Her lips part slightly and her braces brush against my lips.

We’re interrupted by a knock on the door. Birdie moves her head away enough to say, “Come in,” and our waitress enters. She takes one look at us and turns the switch on the wall to ‘Do Not Disturb’. Her face has a pretty pink flush to it as she turns back to us and says, “It’s been quiet in here for a while. I just wanted to see if you wanted anything for dessert, but it doesn’t look like you’re quite ready for that yet. Just let me know if there is anything I can get you.”

Birdie giggles and says, “Would you mind bringing me my wheelchair? I’m not sure how stable I’m going to be on my crutches and I’d rather not take the chance of hurting myself.”

As soon as we have the room to ourselves again, Birdie runs her tongue over her braces and says, “Now, where were we? I think I had my braces against your lips and you were about to use your tongue to feel them before kissing me the way I should be kissed to experience being kissed for the first time while I’m wearing braces.”

I press my lips against hers again, and her new brackets graze my lips before I follow her directions and add a slight twist by running my tongue along the inside of her teeth as well. It’s hard to tell who is getting more enjoyment from our second first kiss, and it doesn’t really matter.




I let Birdie decide when she’s been kissed the way she wants to be kissed, and she isn’t in any hurry to stop. Her position on my lap gradually changes as she presses more of our upper bodies together, relying on me to support her. I’m beginning to think I’m doing something wrong, until she moves her lips away from mine and says, “Wow, that kiss was so much better than I imagined it would be.” She quickly brushes her lips against mine and asks, “So you think you can put me in my chair now?”

I grin and reply, “I don’t think it would be very polite for me to stand up right now.”

Her grin matches mine as she leans away from me and pulls her chair next to us, depending on my arms to support her. I swivel in my seat to line her up with her wheelchair and my hand slides along the outside of her leg as she transfers to her chair. As her leg slides beneath my hand, I caress it until my hand reaches her knee and she pauses as I trace along the scars covered by her stocking.

Her hand grazes the front of my pants as she settles into her wheelchair and she’s grinning as she says, “Thank you. Do you want me to leave while you adjust yourself?”

I smile sheepishly. “I was hoping I could use the handles on the back of your chair to pretend to push your chair and hide it behind you.”

She has a big grin on her face as she says, “That’s not going to work. I don’t have any handles. You can put your hands on my shoulders and it will look as if you are pushing me that way.” She waits as I stand up, then turns so she is facing away from me and I put my hands on her shoulders. Her head tilts back against me and she grins as she asks, “Ready to give it a try?”

I smile at her. “You’re making it hard for me, you know that?”

Her gold brackets and bands are on full display as she says, “I know, so just enjoy the view while you can.”




We don’t make it very far before someone in the restaurant begins to laugh and someone else begins to clap. I try to ignore the whispered comments of, ‘It’s about time’, and ‘It took him long enough,’ coming from some of the staff and regular customers. As we pass the hostess station, Birdie asks her to store her crutches until later, when she will pick them up. She places her hands on top of mine on her shoulders and says, "To the office James."

I smile down at her, dividing my attention between admiring her braces and the amount of cleavage showing between the edges of her blouse. Her hand leaves mine just long enough for her to wave it across the elevator keypad before covering my hand with hers on her shoulder again.

As the door to our office locks behind us, she points to the office chair and asks me to sit down so we can talk eye to eye. “I want to thank you properly for taking me on a date.” She parks her chair beside me and uses the desk to stand, letting her left leg dangle until she settles on my lap with her shorter leg away from my chest.

I thought our first kiss was good, but she takes everything she learnt from it and puts her entire body into showing her appreciation for taking her on the date. Without the risk of being caught, I take the time to explore her braces thoroughly. It takes a while before she loosens her grip on my neck and I can move my mouth away from her enough to say, “Thank you. You’ve given me a whole different understanding of how to kiss a woman.”

Chapter 10

The second investor's evening is a family night. They are all encouraged to bring their children, and for the older members, that includes their grandchildren. The menu is expanded to include dishes designed for younger people with braces.

The kitchen staff inform me ahead of time my place is on the floor watching how things are working, not in the kitchen. In reality, they don’t want me in their way while they are working. They’ve talked to Birdy and she is enforcing the ‘no boss in the kitchen’ ultimatum for them. Once again, I wonder just who is running the office around here. It sure doesn’t seem to be me.

The restaurant has a different feel to it this time, less formal and more family-orientated. The uniforms are still varied, just better suited to a family environment. The smiles are still there and quite a few have coloured ligatures and elastics, giving a more festive atmosphere. Someone on the maintenance crew replaced some of the white bulbs with coloured ones in the walkways and there are little pools of colour all over the place.

Birdy tells me to walk around a little and talk to some of the customers to get a feel of what they think of the place. Despite my best efforts, I can’t seem to remember very many of their names and do what I can to talk to them without making a fool of myself. Birdy takes pity on me and takes over by greeting them and letting me ask for their opinions of the new place. She has her tablet handy and makes notes as we circulate among the tables.

Almost everyone who attended the first evening says how much fun they had and they wish we would do it again sometime. Many of them thank me for all the effort I put into arranging it, and when I try to give the credit to Birdy, I quickly learn she doesn’t want it, preferring to say it was a team effort.

All of the effort Charlene, our new head waitress, put into her training program shows. When kids spill their drinks or food ends up on the floor, someone is there to clean it up right away. The tables are cleared efficiently and new customers are seated soon after. Even the tables with customers who are sitting and talking after their meal are cleared without any interruption.

Birdy has the same table we had the first evening reserved for us and we enjoy our meal, along with the rest of the guests. After the last guest has left, she has another informal staff meeting, and once again, she spends more time listening than she does talking.




The file of notes from the two evenings is smaller than I thought it would be, and Birdy has taken care of many of the things of concern already. Most of what's left is related to the kitchen, which is my department.

Birdy rolls into my office looking very lovely, dressed in one of Tabi's creations. Having an in-house seamstress is paying off, and it shows in how the staff are dressing. She's been signing all her work with a small black cat stitched on the right pocket or collar of everything she creates.

My assistant has a smile on her face as she hands me a letter with a company name I am familiar with. She's already read it and I can see the reason why she's smiling as I read it. I've been invited to a supper meeting at the hostess's apartment and they would like to know when I have time to go.

She's practically bouncing in her chair with excitement as she explains, "Her boyfriend was very impressed with how the two evenings went. He wants to discuss a business opportunity with you." It's obvious she is talking about the Hostess and her boyfriend. "They were going to just drop by and talk to you, but Tabi and I suggested they make it a formal request. I'm supposed to go with you and Tabi's been invited too."

Her excitement is infectious, so I ask, "Can you set it up for tonight? We can order from the kitchen if it will make things easier." She does a wheelie and spins her chair around, and I am treated to a display of her outfit from every angle. Tabi's work really is amazing. Birdy's outfit is tailored to give her ease of movement in her chair and still look professional. The chair and leg braces blend in and become a part of her total look.

Even though we both have phones on our desks, she never seems to use hers to call me when I am in the office, preferring to visit my office. No matter what I am doing, it becomes less important than talking to her. It feels as if a ray of sunshine has entered the room as she rolls through the door. The gold bands around her teeth are sparkling as she says, “They will be available after 6 pm and Tabi is going to join us, so we have to stop at her place before we go. Be prepared to spend a good part of the evening upstairs, it could take a while to answer all the questions we are going to be asking.”




Birdy makes sure we lock the office a little early and head upstairs to Tabi’s place. I haven’t seen her apartment yet, and she is eager to give us a tour. At the front of her place is a display window with a few of her creations on mannequins. The inside of her shop is a tidy mess. She has samples of materials arranged on one wall and spread across a table where clients can choose the fabrics they want. One corner has lights arranged so the cameras can take shadowless pictures for the computer program she uses to design the outfits to their precise dimensions. Through a doorway is her workroom. One wall has a rack with rolls of fabric stacked on the shelves, and the wall across from it and much of the floor has all her sewing machines and tools handy for her to use. A track in the ceiling holds a heavy curtain that can be pulled out to create a changing room when needed, leaving the space open for when she uses it to check the fit of her creations.

She touches a button and a section of the wall slides away, revealing a second entrance to her apartment. They both smile at the look on my face. Her living room is not what I expect of someone with her rather risque taste in clothes. It feels as if I've stepped into my great-grandmother's house, with comfortable-looking furniture from that era just waiting for me to relax in it. Whoever painted the room is an artist at heart, using shades of paint to give it the look of antiquity to match the furniture.

Her kitchen is as modern as it is possible to be. Stainless steel appliances are everywhere and it is all spotless. I wish I had a kitchen as well equipped as hers is, even the kitchen in the restaurant isn’t as well equipped as this.

Off of the living room is her greenhouse and it is still a work in progress, with plants growing everywhere. I can see all the work she is putting into creating the space she envisions in her mind.

Her bedroom is a mess, with clothes everywhere. It is just what I expect of someone who makes clothes for a living and I have to explain to them why I am laughing. “This is the one room in this place that is just the way I expected it to be. Everything else is so tidy.”

Her studio is a wonder to behold. She opens the door and it feels as if I am stepping outside the building. The outside wall is painted to look identical to the view through the windows and it is hard to tell where the windows end and the wall begins, until I step to the side and my perspective shifts.

The tour of the place has taken a while and it is getting close to the time we are supposed to meet with the Hostess and her boyfriend. As we pass through the living room, I look at where the doorway to her shop was, and it has disappeared. Birdy laughs at the look on my face and says, “It is still there if you know where to look.”

The apartment next door is completely different. Her boyfriend's influence is apparent throughout the place. It looks as if a woman has decorated it with the goal of making her boyfriend want to be there with her. The furniture all looks comfortable and durable, meant to be used to entertain. I can see signs that he spends quite a bit of time here, and a glance through the open doors shows he has a bedroom here.

We sit around the table and enjoy one of our premium-priced braces-friendly meals while talking about things other than the restaurants and the building. The ladies sit together, with our host sitting beside me so we can chat. Birdy keeps stroking my leg underneath the table until I take it and place it on her leg instead, then trap her hand with mine on her leg.

Using the round table is a good choice, with everyone having easy access to the food without having to disturb the conversations, and nobody feels like the odd person by being stuck at the end of the table. Dessert is another selection from our premium braces-friendly menu, and I notice Birdy isn’t the only one sharing a plate, our Host is being fed forkfuls of dessert by his girlfriend too.

The ladies excuse themselves to brush their teeth, and Birdy asks me to get her crutches for her. I provide a bent arm to balance herself with and I’m rewarded with a kiss on the cheek.  The others laugh when I try to turn my head and connect with her lips and she says, “Later, when we are alone.”

Our host waits until the ladies return and Birdy is sitting beside me, to start his business presentation. "I'm going to keep this casual. Interrupt me any time you have a question." It sets the mood and we all relax. "I have a few business associates with too much money and arguably, too few brain cells. They've eaten at the restaurant over the years and they've been impressed with what you've done with the place since you took over."

“When I told them what you did at the investor's dinners, the few brain cells they share between them came up with the idea to open a restaurant of their own. This part of the plan I can understand. They want to buy a franchise of ‘Sparkles’ to capitalize on the reputation you have built in such a short time. This is where the plan seems to fall apart. They want to do a 50s-style drive-in diner, complete with waitresses on rollerskates. I convinced them not to try to go with period-correct braces as well. They are looking at several locations, some are local and some are in nearby towns. They don’t want to get too far away, at least not yet.”

I stop him. “The board would have to approve the franchise deal, I’m just one member of the board.”

Our hostess takes over. “I’ve talked with a few of the women on the board informally, and they are open to the idea, as are their husbands. It’s a low-risk situation and potentially high rewards. A significant part of the deal is reliant on the three of you participating.” She turns to Tabi. “They want you to do all the uniforms. They like what they see and they want the same quality you have been providing for us.”

Our host takes over again by asking, “Do you think you can design a period-correct braces-friendly menu for the drive-in?”

My mind is already kicking into gear and I have several ideas. “In theory, I can. What I need is someplace where I can work without using the kitchen here. They keep kicking me out of the kitchen I designed for them.”

I get a laugh from everyone and Birdy squeezes my hand. Our host asks, “What do you need? Make me a list and I’ll see what I can do for you.”

I grin. “I don’t need to make a list. Send them a picture of Tabi’s kitchen and tell them I want one just like it.”

Our hostess directs her next comment to Birdy. “I already know the answer to this question, but I’m going to ask it anyway. Does your boyfriend think you can handle his responsibilities while he is busy getting the kitchen for the drive-in ready?”

Birdy grins at me and I melt a little inside. “He’s trained me very well. I’m sure he can find the time to coach me if I run into problems. Maybe in the evenings after he’s done in his new kitchen.”

I kiss her cheek and say, “I’ll be honest. She’s already doing my job for me. She just lets people think I’m in charge.”

Our host and hostess look at each other, then at the three of us. “I’ll write up a proposal and give it to the guys. If you don’t have any other questions right now, how about we have a drink to celebrate.”

Sparkles - The Accountant


By Silversmiles64



Chapter 1

In high school, I was the kid the jocks made fun of for being uncoordinated and lacking athletic talent. The cheerleaders pretended I didn’t exist and the good-looking girls would just laugh at my attempts to get a date with any of them.

It didn’t help that my teeth weren’t quite aligned right, and I seemed to have more bad-hair days than I did have good-hair days. I was the tall skinny guy who seemed to blend into the background no matter where I was. My grades were average, so I didn’t fit in with the smart kids, and I had to really study to keep my grades at that level. Even the outcasts, the strange kids who dressed in dark colors or wore odd fashions rejected me.

The one thing I was good at was things involving numbers, not so much math, but how numbers worked in the real world. I say patterns in numbers and how things went together to make two plus two equal four. It wasn’t until my last year of high school that I found a way to use it to my advantage.

There was this little restaurant on my way home from school that I liked to stop at and do my homework. They served a decent quality coffee and the lady who owned the restaurant baked the most delicious cakes I had ever seen. There was one table nobody ever seemed to use, tucked into a corner of the restaurant. There was just enough space for a small table and one chair, perfect for me to study at without being in anybody's way, including the waitresses. After a while, I started to grab a cup of coffee when I came in so the waitresses didn’t have to do it.

The table had a good view of the entire restaurant and I could watch everything that was going on without anyone really noticing me tucked away in the corner, or so I thought. On the days the restaurant wasn’t busy, the owner of the place would sit at the table near me and take care of all the paperwork involved in running the place, including balancing the books. I frequently would hear him muttering to himself about the things that were bothering him about the restaurant.

Even though I didn't pay much attention to what he was muttering about, my mind still took it in and I began to notice patterns in what he was talking about. The customers who ordered a piece of cake all had good things to say about it, but the pieces were so big they frequently couldn't finish eating what they were served, so the remaining part would get thrown out. My mind saw a way to make more money from the same cake just by serving smaller pieces. The coffee was another way I could see for them to save money. The coffee pots were easily accessible to anyone in the restaurant, and by simply putting up a sign to say customers were 'welcome to serve themselves', they could reduce the amount of time the staff spent refilling coffee mugs instead of serving food.

Something else that stuck in my mind was how he was handling his paperwork. He did it all himself whenever he could find the time, rather than taking care of it each day or having someone do it for him.




I made a habit of refilling his mug whenever I refilled mine and it was when I made a casual comment while refilling his coffee mug one day that things in my life changed. I asked him why he didn’t have someone take care of the paperwork for him.

He asked me to have a seat so we could be comfortable while we talked. “I see you come into the restaurant frequently and take the same table nobody else uses, so you can study. When you're not studying, you’re watching what everybody else is doing. You always seem to be able to keep your table organized.” Then he smiled and said, “To answer your question, I don’t have the time to take all this stuff to someone who can do it for me, and it doesn’t make much sense to pay to have someone come here and do it. It would just cost too much.”

I looked at everything spread out on the table as I sipped my coffee. If it was all organized better, it seemed as if it would be easier to work with. As if he were reading my thoughts, he said, "Having a secretary would help, but this isn't the part I have trouble with. It's having to use the computer I have a problem with. I'm so used to doing it on paper the old way. I didn't grow up using computers the way you young people do."

Something went click in my mind and I heard myself say, “If you show me what you need help with, maybe I can give you a hand.”

I don’t think either of us really took it seriously, because he asked, “What would it cost me?”

He laughed when I said, "A piece of your wife's cake, but tell her to cut it in half. She cuts them way too big and people can't eat all of it." I looked around the restaurant and saw one of the few girls who actually acknowledged my presence and talked to me at school. Like me, she wasn't one of the popular crowd, and she didn't fit in with the other groups at school. "Tell your wife to give that girl sitting alone in the booth the other half."

His smile got bigger and he said, “You know what, I’m going to give you a piece of cake. You’ve brightened my day by distracting me, and you’ve earned it, even if you don’t do anything else. Wait here while I get it for you.”

I watched as he went to the counter and had his wife cut a piece of cake, then cut it again when he explained what he was going to do. His wife took the one piece to the girl's table and pointed in my direction. I couldn’t tell what she said to her, but the girl looked at me and smiled, and that is when I saw the sparkle of metal braces on her teeth. It was only a flash before she covered her mouth with her hand and tilted her head down.

As the owner placed the slice of cake in front of me, he said, “Smile at her and give a small wave, then look at me and I’ll show you what I have to do with this mess on the table.”

I did what he said. I couldn’t see if she was watching because her hair was hiding her eyes, but she did move her hand away from her mouth. It took us longer than it would normally take him if he was doing the paperwork by himself. He explained everything as he filled in the forms, making sure I understood what was required. As we were cleaning up, he said, “Next time will be easier. I won’t have to spend as much time explaining things.”




It was almost a week before we did the paperwork again. As we were starting to get organized, his wife came over and asked if I would like a sandwich while we worked. I hesitated as I looked at the cake sitting on the counter. She smiled at me and added, "You can have a piece of cake too if you want."

After accepting her offer and telling her what kind of sandwich I would like, we began to work our way through the paperwork. When my sandwich came, she had a second plate with her. She pointed to the table where the girl was sitting and whispered, "I made a sandwich for her too. When I give it to her, smile at her and wave."

I waited until the sandwich was delivered and the girl looked in my direction, then I smiled and waved. She smiled back at me, and she didn’t cover her mouth right away with her hand, using her lips instead to cover her braces. She seemed to have a little trouble covering them when her lips caught on the hooks on the brackets. She turned her head away first, with a smile on her face.

The owner had a smile on his face when we resumed working. He was right, it was easier with the two of us doing the work. I organized the stacks of paper and had them ready for him so they were ready as he filled in the forms.

Chapter 3

I found that if I came in each day and sorted the paperwork that had come in, it took considerably less time to fill out the forms each week. It also gave my mind a break from the schoolwork I had to do to improve my marks. The owner or his wife, and sometimes both, would stop by the table for a chat, and they said they were okay with the idea of doing the renovations as long as it didn’t cost too much.

I started calling them Mr. Boss and Mrs. Boss when they started referring to me as the Kid Bookkeeper, and the staff started to use the nicknames too. When we talked about what type of computer to buy, they kept telling me to decide what I needed and to let them know how much I wanted to spend. Mrs. Boss was the one who said not to spend more than half the money in the bank account for whatever I decided to do, and that included the renovations. She asked me to have the renovations done by the time I graduated so I would have an office to work in when I officially began working for them.



The head waitress was the next one to approach me with suggestions about the renovations. She wanted to know what I thought about the idea of having a space for the staff to take their breaks in. Usually they sat at an empty table or went outside the kitchen, near the freight elevator.

When I asked her why she didn’t talk to Mr. and Mrs. Boss about it, she said she had and they told her to talk to me, since I was in charge of doing the renovations. Then she said something I didn’t understand until after I graduated. “They put you in charge of the renovations. Do the job they have given you. If you need help, ask for it, but don’t keep running to other people expecting them to make the decisions for you. When they sit down with you to negotiate what you want to be paid, be honest with them and ask for what you think you are worth. They aren’t as old-fashioned as they seem to be.”

I took my time thinking about the renovations and the costs involved. The head cook and the head waitress gave me advice on what renovations to do and asked me to make the computer available to them if they needed to use it. Mr. Boss gave me a list of people to contact when I was ready to begin the renovations. The first name on the list was an architect. The one name missing from the list was the owner of the building the restaurant was in. He said he would take care of talking to the owner of the building.

I was a nineteen-year-old student about to graduate, and I had been put in charge of more than just doing the paperwork for the restaurant.


My first call was to the architect, and I took their advice as I worked with them on the preliminary drawings. I decided to build an office for the computer and added space to grow into if it was needed. With the advice of the cook and waitress, I added a space for the staff to relax in that had room for a couch and armchairs, with electrical plugs for a fridge, microwave and other things, including a TV and stereo in the future. The couch and chairs were already in the budget, the rest could be added if they were needed in the future.

I did my research on the computers available and set up a budget to buy two reasonably priced computers, a desktop for the office for later and a laptop for use in the restaurant right away. The old computer was donated to a charity and the receipt was included on the tax forms. Each week, I met with Mr. and Mrs. Boss and explained to them what was happening, and told them to let me know if they had anything they felt needed to be changed.




Having the laptop meant I could take care of the paperwork each day when I went in. I tried to show Mr. Boss how to use it, but he just kept saying, “That’s your job now, that’s what I hired you for.” With the ‘wage’ they were paying me, I put on a little more weight and my clothes began to fit better, and I wasn’t the only one to notice it. Mrs. Boss insisted I buy some new clothes and gave me a company credit card with my name on it. She gave me the same instructions I had for the renovations, “Don’t spend more than half the amount in the bank.”

I convinced my bosses that they needed to change how I was being paid, partly because I didn’t want to get fat, but mainly so I could show it on the paperwork. For the first time, I had to put a monetary value on what I was doing.  I knew what the rest of the staff was being paid and based my requested wage on that. They asked me to put it in writing, and to put my reasons for requesting what I did. When they returned it to me, Mrs. Boss had added, “Accepted, plus bonus clause for additional duties. Contract to be renegotiated at the completion of the renovations.”

When I tried to object, saying it wasn’t meant to be for such a short term, Mr. Boss smiled and said, “Just nod and accept it the way Mrs. Boss has written it.” When he referred to his wife that way, I knew better than to argue. They treated me like an adult and didn’t tell me to do things, they asked, and I gave them the same respect.

I wasn’t the only one that was changing. The girl with the braces always smiled at me when we passed in the hallway at school, and she didn’t try to hide her braces. It didn’t take me long to notice she was dressing differently too. She started to stop by the restaurant more frequently, and each time she did, Mrs. Boss would bring her something to eat, though what she brought changed as the girl put on a little weight. On her, the extra weight went to all the right places. She didn’t become beautiful suddenly, but I took more notice of her. As she changed, I felt she became even more out of my league. It didn’t stop me from smiling back at her, and I often saw her blushing when I looked at her in the restaurant. Her braces were always visible when I did. I noticed the waitresses always placed her at a table where I would see her.

Every so often, Mrs. Boss left a receipt for me with a note attached asking me to claim it as a restaurant expense. The amounts were small compared to what the restaurant spent and it was easy to find places to claim them, though I couldn’t figure out how clothing from boutiques and sessions at salons were business-related. Some things I just claimed as charitable donations.



At Mr. Boss’s suggestion, I asked the various people I was dealing with to meet me at the restaurant. The meeting included food paid for by the restaurant, and I learnt the value of what giving away something could do when negotiating a deal. It didn’t take long for word to spread that Mr. Boss had put me in charge of the renovations, and despite my age, they treated me as an adult.

The renovations quickly went through the planning stage into the construction phase, and just like any construction project, changes needed to be made as problems occurred. The minor things were dealt with by the people I hired, but there were still I few things I had to make decisions on.

I also found ways to save money, such as by offering to feed the crews at the restaurant's expense. By claiming the regular price of the meals as an expense, the restaurant only had to pay the cost of preparing the food, and the reduction in the negotiated price of the construction was significantly better than what it cost to feed the crews. With well-fed crews doing the work, the renovations started ahead of the schedule and stayed that way.

As it got closer to the end of the school year, the topic among the staff turned to graduation. Everyone knew someone who was graduating and they wanted to know what I was planning to do. The big discussion revolved around the party in the evening, and they all had stories to tell about theirs. Some of the stories were quite risque, though they didn’t get too descriptive. When they found out I wasn’t planning on going, they wouldn’t stop asking me why until I explained I didn’t fit in with the crowd at school and hadn’t even asked if anyone would go with me.



There was plenty for me to do as the renovations were completed. The desktop computer arrived, along with the rest of the office equipment and furniture. The renovations didn’t just include the new office space and staff area, I included wifi for the restaurant, and the customers commented on the addition. It didn’t take long for there to be an increase in the size of the tips being left. With the tips going into a jar and being divided between all the staff, everyone was happy.

The Bosses had been keeping a closer eye on things than I realized, and I received a call from one of the formalwear stores in town asking me to come down for a fitting. I had used half the balance in the account at the start of the renovations as the amount to work with, and had kept track of all the expenses as they came in. Mrs. Boss had a big smile on her face when she told me the fitting was part of the bonus for completing the renovations ahead of time and under the budget they had set. She asked me to pick out a suit to wear for the graduation party, and from the way she phrased it, I understood it was one of those requests I didn’t have a choice with. I had just been notified I was going to be attending the party.

The staff at the store had several choices ready for me when I arrived, and as I tried them on, they made suggestions to narrow down the choices to the one I felt best in. Each suit had come with suggestions for shirts to wear with it and it didn't take me long to realize I was being fitted with a suit I could wear after the party as well. When I walked in, I looked like a kid getting ready to graduate. By the time they were done, the image I saw was of a young man getting ready to face the business world. I also found out I wasn't renting it, the restaurant was buying it for me, together with the shirts to go with it.

On the day of the party, Mrs. Boss asked what time I would be ready and explained a car would be picking me up. It was all part of the bonus for the work I did on the renovations. What she didn’t tell me was Mr. Boss would be my driver and she would be with him in one of his carefully restored automobiles. It wasn’t a limousine, it was classier than that.

I found out there was one other stop on the way to the party. Mrs. Boss informed me she had arranged to have someone accompany me to the party. All I could get out of Mrs. Boss was it was someone I would recognize, and she was sure I would enjoy being with the person.

We pulled up in front of a house in the better part of town, and Mrs. Boss asked me to accompany her to the door. It was another one of the requests I knew better than to argue about. I knew it was traditional for the guy to pick up his date for the party at her place, but this situation was not typical. As the door opened, I was met with a smile I recognized right away, though the person smiling at me didn’t look like she usually did. She still wasn’t beautiful the way people usually define beauty, but she definitely looked way out of my class.

Even with the braces, her teeth hadn’t improved much yet. She had definitely filled out in all the right places, and the dress she was wearing was highlighting all of it in a very appealing way. Mrs. Boss was ready for the stunned look on my face. “See, my dear, I told you he would be speechless when he saw you. Give him a chance to recover, though I think it may take him a while.” Then she turned to me. “This is the part of your bonus I have had the most fun working on. I’ve been taking her clothes shopping and to the salon for a while now. After I saw how you looked at her in the restaurant and asked me to take her the piece of cake, I knew I had to do something. I could see you wouldn’t. When I asked her if she would go to the party with you, she said she was more than willing.” She paused, and then stage whispered, “I think she likes you. I didn’t even have to bribe her to go with you. When I took her shopping for a dress to wear to the party and she saw the prices, I had to tell her you were buying it for her.”

Charlotte and I were both blushing by that time, and she looked even better to me. I finally got my brain to work enough to say, “My name is Brian. It’s nice to finally say ‘hi’ to you, Charlotte.”

Her smile got bigger as she said, “I know who you are. I’ve been too scared to talk to you, and I’ve been waiting a long time for you to say something to me.”

Mrs. Boss had things under control. She whispered to me, “Hold out your arm so she can slip hers through it, then walk her to the car.” It was the final thing needed to relieve the tension we were feeling and Charlotte laughed as I extended my arm. Mr. Boss was waiting by the back door of the car for us to arrive. He took her hand and assisted her into the car, and gestured for me to follow her, before shutting the door for us.

At the hotel where the party was being held, Mr. Boss stepped out and slipped on a hat. All the eyes in the area turned in our direction as he opened the suicide door on his classic car and I stepped out wearing my suit. Everyone went quiet as I extended my hand to Charlotte as she stepped out. Mr. Boss whispered, “Hold your head up and walk into there as if you own the building. Have fun tonight, enjoy yourselves. When you are ready to leave, have us paged. I’m going to take my wife to have a meal and we’ll be listening to the music in the club afterwards. I still remember how to have a good time.”

Chapter 5

The first kiss was a disaster. She was surprised and wasn’t ready for me to kiss her. The second kiss wasn’t much better. By the third kiss, our instincts began to take over and things improved slightly. Our fourth attempt was better yet. And then she began to giggle. “We really aren’t very good at kissing.”

Our faces were so close together, her lips were brushing against mine as she was talking. I didn't want to lose contact with them, so I didn’t move away. “I did say I didn’t know how to kiss.”

It was too much for me when she said, "It sure isn't as easy as they make it look in the movies."

I had to move away before I laughed into her face. “They only show the scene after they have shot it many times. They don’t show all the times the actors made mistakes.”

My heartbeat increased as she said, “Well, maybe we need to practice some more,” and she moved her face toward me until her lips were against mine again. We were both ready for the kiss, and it wasn’t any better than the others, but it wasn’t any worse either. There were just too many things that weren’t right.

I put my hand on her bare shoulder and moved away from her. “We seem to be doing things wrong.” I grinned at her. “Let's try changing what we are doing until we get things right. Between us, we should be able to figure it out. How about we change one thing, try two kisses, then decide on something else to change.”

She nodded and I moved my chair closer to hers. We gradually changed how we were kissing, taking turns making suggestions, until she ended up sitting on my lap, and several things happened quickly. I had my left arm around her back to support her, and we found our faces at the right height to match, the distance between our faces was just right and our faces were at the right angle. When she’d sat on my lap, I’d put my right hand on her knee, but I wasn’t comfortable with it there, so I started to move it to her waist. She adjusted her position slightly just as I was moving my hand, and I misjudged the location of my where my hand was. Instead of landing where I thought her waist was, I ended up slightly higher on her body… on the side of her left breast. Up until that point, we had been kissing with our lips mostly closed, but we were both surprised and our mouths opened slightly.

For the first time, her braces were exposed and they brushed against my lips. We both hesitated briefly and then I moved my hand down to her waist. I tried to move my head away to apologize, but her lips followed mine, staying parted with her braces against my lips. The kiss lasted much longer than the others, and when she moved away, she said, “Can we do that again? I think we are finally figuring out how to kiss.” She pressed her lips against mine and opened hers slightly so her braces were against my lips. The kiss felt similar, but not quite right, as if something was missing. We tried again, with the same result. She moved her head back slightly and smiled. “I think I know what is missing. Do you trust me?”

I nodded my head, and as she moved her lips to mine again, she moved my hand from her waist to the side of her breast again. She was right, the thing that had been missing from our kiss was the placement of my hand. The kiss wasn’t quite the same as the first time because we were both expecting the sensation of my touch. The surprise wasn’t there and we both relaxed into the kiss, letting our lips slide over her braces together.

Our kiss was interrupted by a cough from the bar. We reluctantly moved our faces apart and turned to look at the bartender. “I hate to interrupt you, but I have always wanted to say this and never had the chance. Get a room, I can’t let you keep doing that here.”

Charlotte and I looked at each other and laughed. I turned to the bartender and said, "We didn't come here for that."

Charlotte brushed her hand against my cheek and said just loud enough for the bartender to hear, “Thank you for saying that, it means a lot to me. Why don't you sit here while I fix my makeup and then we’ll see if we can find our driver and his wife.” She gave one last wiggle as she brushed her braces against my lips and moved off of my lap. She understood I didn’t want to stand up just yet, and her lipstick did need to be repaired.

Watching her walk away from me was fascinating. I couldn’t tell how much of the wiggle and sway was from what she was wearing, how much of it was natural talent and how much of it was for my benefit, and it didn’t really matter. Just before she disappeared into the ladies' room, she looked over her shoulder at me with a smile and licked her lips.

Watching her walk toward me was even better. She’d fixed up her lipstick and adjusted her dress, and the top of the stocking on her left leg flashed at me with every step she took. She hadn’t suddenly become a beautiful woman, she was still the same 19-year-old girl who had been coming into the restaurant. Her teeth were still messed up and she had metal braces working to straighten them out, but her smile had changed. She had a level of confidence that had been missing before, and it showed in how she smiled at me.

I stood up and extended my hand to her, letting her decide whether she wanted to take it or simply link arms again. Her braces seemed to take on a sparkle they didn’t have before, as she wove her fingers with mine. When we’d walked into the bar, I’d been presenting an image to the bouncer that I wasn’t sure about. As we walked past him on the way out, the image he saw was one of a young man with a good-looking woman holding his hand. Rather than have my bosses paged, we wandered around the hotel to find the lounge, then walked around until we found them. We weren’t going to disturb them, but they saw us and gestured for us to join them. They had selected a booth at the back and the music in the lounge wasn’t loud to begin with, making it easy to talk.

We told them we were in no rush to leave and we would go when they were ready. They offered to buy us alcoholic drinks, but we both turned down the offer, choosing to have fruit juice instead. Mrs. Boss smiled when we asked for one of the fruit-blend specials served in a large bowl-like stemmed container and asked for two straws. When the drink arrived, Charlotte moved my arm over her shoulder and snuggled close to me so it was easy for both of us to drink. Before long, my arm had moved to her back and my hand was resting beside her breast, where she secured it by pressing her arm against it.

I wasn’t the only one enjoying the company of the person I was with. My bosses had moved closer together after we sat down with them, and their hands were doing a bit of wandering just out of sight. Every time Charlotte leaned over to take a drink, she used my leg to support herself, and her hand gradually moved up my leg, getting closer to my hip.

The band played a mix of styles of music, mostly jazz and blues, from modern tunes to old-time classics, and they joined the singer on some of the songs. We just sat back, enjoying listening to the music without having to talk to each other. Charlotte snuggled a little closer to me each time one of us took a sip, and my hand gradually moved closer to the side of her breast, with her encouragement.

When the band took a break, the ladies decided they needed to use the facilities and Mr. Boss suggested we head home. While we waited for the ladies, he said, "I remember what my graduation party night was like. I didn't meet the love of my life until years later, but the girl I was with was close to being the one I wanted to marry. She didn't want to wake up alone in the morning. If you don't want to go home yet, I can get you a room."

I smiled and said, “You’re the second person to suggest it. Charlotte and I didn’t come here with that in mind, so I’m going to politely decline your offer, though I wouldn’t mind if you gave us some privacy when you drop her off at her place. Maybe drive around the block once or twice?”