The Graphic Details

The Graphic Details:

An Erotic Tale By Design

By Evelin J. Smiles

Copyright © 2013 by Evelin J. Smiles

Smashwords Edition

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http://www.evelinjsmiles.blogspot.com

This story is a work of fiction. The names,
characters, places, and situations are either products of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely and
purely coincidental.

Introducing, Katherine

My name is Katherine Donahue, and I am your
typical “nerdy” girl. Well, I never saw myself as a nerd, but I was
known as such all throughout high school––I don’t read comics and I
don’t really watch too many movies, but I do read a lot. But my
hair is somewhat messy most of the time and I wear glasses, and in
this society, glasses equals Nerd.

People call me “Kathy” for short. Very
unoriginal, I know. I wish I had a name that was a little more
awesome. In my own head I refer to myself as “Kat woman.” I dare
not speak that to anyone I know. I blush and shudder in shame
whenever I think of it. But I still like it.

Anyway, I’ve never been popular with men. I
am “nerdy” after all, and I’ve been told almost half of my life––by
my mother, and my aunties and my girlfriends mostly––that nerdy is
not the most popular flavor of female amongst most males. But
despite my lack of popularity amongst them––and despite what aunt
Betty thinks of my sexuality––I do like men quite a bit, even
though they don’t exactly take to me.

I did have a boyfriend once back in college,
which wasn’t too far back, but I pursued him in the beginning. Phil
was his name. I always had the feeling that Phil went out with me
out of pity. Don’t get me wrong, he wasn’t exactly the pick of the
litter himself: his hair was as unruly as mine, and he was thin,
bordering on emaciated, and he had horribly blotchy, oily skin. Now
that I think of it, he was pretty ugly actually. But he was nice to
me at a time when boys didn’t give me the time of day. I don’t
exactly know why I think that he thought that he was doing me a
favor. It’s probably due to my lack of self confidence or my
inherent sense of doom or the usual feeling that universe is
against me, but I always felt there was something in the way he
would look at me when he met me that said “Bleck, not you again.”
But if he did think that of me, he didn’t show it and put on a
fairly believable act whenever we went out together.

Now, I make it sound as if I’m 100 percent
undesirable, but I am kind of cute if I do say so myself. As my
mother would say, “I’m as cute as a button.” Unfortunately, guys
don’t usually go for he “button” look these days. Sometimes she
would compare me to a mouse as well, but men probably hate the
mouse look even more than they hate the button one, especially a
mouse with glasses. But I have a decent figure and I try not to
hide it. I am fond of skirts and wear them frequently. I’ve been
told that my best assets are my legs so I show them whenever I can:
mostly calf, almost never thigh. I’m not so proud as to get all
slutty now. I am of average height for a woman, and, as stated
before, my hair is usually a mess of brownish-reddish curls. But I
can work with it when I need to, like, you know, whenever I go out
for a night on the town, which is very rare.

In college, my major was graphic design. When
I was a kid I had always looked at the signs of random businesses
with wonder. Restaurants, department stores, grocery stores; I
would even stare at the ugly red neon signs that graced the front
of cruddy liquor stores and those lack even a modicum of
imagination. That should tell you how into design I was. I would
search for any type of graphic design I could wrap my eyes around.
As I grew older I started to notice more and more design around me.
I would see it in the clouds and I would see it in the bark of
trees and the waves of water in the sea. Nature was my graphic
design wonderland. I would stand and stare at billboards for what
seemed like hours. I would look at magazine covers for actual hours
at bookstores and I would study every typeface and font I could,
and I would marvel at the way the text would curve around the
beautiful model on the cover, models that I sometimes envied,
sometimes not. Mostly I just thought they had too much make-up on.
Who am I kidding? I wanted my make-up the exact same way. So I
bought most of those magazines, mostly to study the design aspects
of the ads on the inside. Well, that was what I told myself
anyway.

When I was in Junior high, my mother bought
me a sketchbook and I filled every page of that book with all sorts
of shapes and colors and illustrations and fonts of my very own
design. She soon had to buy me about ten more of those books, and I
still have every one of them in my closet. In fact, there are more
sketchbooks in there than there are clothes. Maybe I am a nerd
after all.

I graduated college a few years ago, and I
immediately found a job doing graphic design at a very famous
fashion magazine up here in cool San Francisco, California. Yes, my
portfolio was just that good. Now I was the one wrapping beautiful
actresses in typefaces suggesting corny headlines about how to have
mind-blowing sex while pregnant, and the ten top signs to look for
to tell if your boyfriend is cheating on you.

San Francisco is a stark contrast to the
place of my birth: Salt Lake City, Utah. That place is cold,
mountainous and littered with white structures with sharp points at
the top of them that resemble spacecraft from bad science fiction
movies. You might know them better as Mormon temples (I have many
Mormon friends and I like to kid them once in a while. I love
them). San Francisco is breezy, and clear and littered with the
steepest hills you’ve ever seen in your life. It’s also littered
with many men. And as per the myriad stories I’ve heard about this
place, many of those men are of the gay variety. Not all of them
mind you, but a great number of the ones I’ve encountered have
been. And a lot of them have made great friends.

In fact, I’ve been having so much fun hanging
out with the new friends I’ve made here and since I’m happy with my
job at the magazine, I haven’t even given relationships a single
thought. I was happy in my career and secure with myself. I didn’t
even want children––a statement that my mother and her sisters did
not like hearing from my lips. I even got myself a cat, a chubby
little Tabby that I named Selina. I had a life of my own filled
with friendship and job stability. What did I need with children or
a man?

With my contentment and all, you can imagine
my surprise when my whole world got turned upside down in a single
moment; the moment I met
him
.

Introducing, Charles

It was a typical Monday morning in San
Francisco, a little cloudier than usual, but nice nonetheless. I
was working on an ad spread that I had been stressing out over the
past weekend. I lost sleep over something as trivial as what font
to use for the headline. I even made about three of my very own to
use, but it still wasn’t coming out quite right. I wasn’t looking
my best that morning: my hair was out of place and my eyes were
baggier than, than… well, something really baggy. But what did I
care what anyone thought of my looks. My work place was
surprisingly lax about the dress code, despite the reputation it
had to uphold as a swanky fashion magazine. I did good work for
them. What did it matter if I resembled a bag lady? Just as long as
I didn’t smell like one, too. Truthfully, I wasn’t that bad. But I
was the furthest thing from “put together.” I looked stressed and
my coworkers noticed.

“Kathy, are you ok? You look a little… worn
out,” said Christy. Christy was the closest thing I had to a best
friend in this city. She was my best female friend anyway, that’s
for sure, and she had been my friend since the first day I started
with this company. She had been here a couple of years before me
and showed me the ropes.

“What? Oh, yeah. I’m good. It’s just this
damn ad. Let me get your opinion on it. Check it out,” I said, as I
turned my computer screen toward her. I took a sip of coffee. I
needed it badly that morning.

“Now what font would you use for this?”

“Hmm, Zapfino,” she said. I looked at her
with eyes that could murder.
Zapfino
in an atrocious and
very sappy font used only for titling the worst and trashiest
romance novels and corny wedding invitations.

“I’m serious. Zapfino.”

“If you’re serious, I will throw this
scalding hot coffee in your face. Now, come on. Please. What
font?”

“Ariel. Ariel would be perfect for that,” she
said as she started to laugh.
Ariel
was the polar opposite
of Zapfino: the simplest and most boring font of them all. In the
world of fonts, it was the graphic design equivalent of a
McDonald’s hamburger: bland and lacking any visual flair. I mock
throwing the coffee in her face, when our supervisor, Sarah, walks
in followed by a man, a very good looking man. So good looking in
fact, that I couldn’t take my eyes off of him, not even for a
second, and believe you me, I was trying to. I was ashamed at
myself for the thoughts that were flooding my mind at that moment.
I was able to break my stare for a second and take a look around
me, and I noticed that most of the female staff, which made up half
of the office, was probably thinking the exact same thoughts I was:
if their eyes had been daggers, the office would have been a bloody
murder scene by now.

“Everyone, I’d like to welcome a new addition
to our office,” said Sarah. She spoke about him as if he were a new
student to our kindergarten class. She was nervous, I could tell.
And it took a lot to make Sarah nervous. She’s one of the strongest
women I know and a brilliant graphic designer. I knew a lot of
nervous people in my lifetime, but she is not one of them: always
cool, always calm and always collected, no matter what. Never
faltering. But today, she was a shy little schoolgirl with a face
full of red. The new guy stepped from behind Sarah and presented
himself to us like an award statue. He stood straight (good posture
is always appreciated) and his hair, which was a walnut brown sort
of shade, was nice and shiny and cut short. His face looked smooth,
no stubble anywhere to be found. Normally I don’t like my men
clean-shaven, but this guy, yeah, he was the exception. He looked
like what I imagine Ryan Gosling would look like in the role of
Superboy, you know, if Mr. Gosling were a brunette. He wore a form
fitting blue V-neck t-shirt, which showed off his near-perfect
figure. I only say near-perfect because I don’t think anyone is the
perfect specimen of anything, but if there were a competition for
the perfect man, this guy was certainly in the running, right near
the fucking top in fact. He had a faint amount of chest hair: not
so much as to remind me of a bear, and not so little as to remind
me of a junior high school student––just the perfect amount.

Sarah continued her introduction.

“This is Charles Montague, and as of today he
will be a member of our design team. Be sure to treat him like one
of our family.”

“Oh, I don’t think I can do that. It’s
disgusting to think of fucking my brother,” whispered Christy, as
she poked her elbow into my shoulder with a chuckle. I stifled a
chuckle myself. Mr. Clark Gosling stepped up and started to
introduce himself.

“Hello everyone. I hope to be an important
addition to your team. I haven’t been doing this for too long, but
I hope some of you guys will be kind to me and help me along the
way. Let’s get to designing.”

He was certainly enthusiastic. When he was
done talking, all the women in the office quietly swooned while
most of the men rolled their eyes (some of them swooned as well, if
you get my implication). But nonetheless, most of us answered back
with a big and healthy, “Welcome.”

“Let’s see, where shall we put you? Oh, over
there,” said Sarah, as she pointed in my general direction, and it
was then that I remembered that there was an empty work station
right in front of mine. Was she pointing to it?