The Housekeeper, Chapter Three
Chapter Three
Jess
I couldn’t believe I was dressed like a fucking MAID.
It was so embarrassing. Even without my glasses, I could see and feel all the things that were wrong. The whole dress was too small; my breasts were uncomfortably smushed behind the fabric up top, and the skirt sat so high on my thighs that I was worried that something as simple as walking would risk exposing me while I didn’t have underwear for protection. The outfit also awkwardly clung to me a little bit, since I was still damp from not being able to dry off after my shower. My hair was a whole different story, but I was just going to have to deal with that until I got my hair dryer and brush back.
The worst part? This was probably exactly what Hannah wanted.
Well, I’m sure she would have been satisfied with me being naked as well. Either way, I now had to brace myself for Hannah and company poised to take countless photos the moment I opened the bathroom door. Wait, speaking of smartphones, where was mine?? With my blurry vision, I had only been focused on the lack of clothes and towels in the bathroom. Toiletries, too. Now that I was thinking about potential ways out of this mess, I realized that I didn’t even have the option of calling Hannah’s parents. The girl had taken my fucking cell phone.
Now that I was stalling, I took the time to examine my surroundings a little more carefully. Right away, I noticed there was something I missed. In my half blindness, I had mistaken it as something to do with the soap dispenser by the sink, but upon closer inspection I found that my glasses were waiting for me.
It was anything but a relief. True, I would be able to actually see, but at what cost? There was a reason I always wore contacts. The prescription required for my horrible eyesight didn’t have a lot of cheap options for glasses. And, since I couldn’t afford the prettier ones, my ‘last resort’ was an incredibly ugly pair. I hated, hated, HATED how they looked on me, and pretty much only wore them for studying when I was secluded in my dorm back at university. Even then I was on edge, as I had a roommate.
On top of that, this meant that Hannah had pilfered through my things while I was in the shower! My glasses had been stashed away in my backpack. While there wasn’t anything particularly private that I had brought with me for the summer, I still felt violated thinking about the blonde teenager strutting into my room and checking out all my stuff. God, I could just imagine her turning my suitcase upside down and ruining the way I had everything perfectly folded. And then there was my precious laptop; it was password protected, but it would still be frustrating if she ‘confiscated’ it along with my phone.
‘One thing at a time, Jess.’ Projecting like that wasn’t going to help with my current predicament. Taking a deep breath, not particularly ready to face the reality of how I looked, I put the glasses on anyway.
It was even worse than I imagined. From the waist down, I looked like a total slut. My thighs were fully on display, and a quick turn to check out my backside confirmed that the skirt barely, barely covered my ass. The top half was the total opposite. While some tight bras and tops would make my boobs ‘pop,’ the neckline of this maid outfit was high enough that my chest was just squished and nothing more. The perky Cs I was normally so proud of looked at least half their normal size without a bra for support and when trapped behind the awful dress.
My hair actually looked better than expected after a good cleaning, but I knew from experience that it would get a little messy if left to air dry without proper care. And, without make-up, my face looked a lot more youthful. Then there were the glasses themselves, which were as horrible as always. Overall, my appearance was the weirdest combination of immature, slutty, and awkward. And there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
Nervously padding over to the bathroom door again, cringing at the continued wave of coldness against my bare feet, I cracked the door ever so slightly. “Hannah?” I quietly asked. In my mind, I had been aiming for something a little more assertive. After all, I was supposed to be the one in authority here. But in my current state, I felt slightly at the blonde’s mercy, at least until I was dressed in my own clothes again.
To my surprise, no one was waiting for me. Similar to when I found my glasses, I felt more worried than relieved. If not right outside the door, then where was she? Around the corner, waiting to get a more full picture of me when I stepped out into the hall? After all, I currently had a door to hide behind. “Hannah.” Finding a little more backbone as the frustration of the situation began creeping in and outweighing the embarrassment, I curtly addressed the girl. “Hey. Bring me back my things. Right now.”
Silence. She and her girlfriends were so giggly earlier; either they had a lot of self control at the moment, or they weren’t here. But all it would take was one photo for this whole thing to get more complicated. “Hannah!” I yelled. So much for not drawing attention to myself.
Nothing.
Fuck it. Exhaling in annoyance, I crept out into the hallway, bracing myself to skitter back to the bathroom at the tiniest sound. Actually, wait. Running to my room was a better idea. Being conscious of the fact that my feet were still slightly damp, I made a beeline for the door as quickly as I could manage while being safe about it. Of course, there was always the daunting thought that Hannah could just as easily be waiting in the guest bedroom. If she would shamelessly dig through my bags, then what was stopping her from waiting in there for me?
Instead, I found a totally different issue waiting for me: The door was locked.
Groaning at the unexpected obstacle, I aggressively jiggled the doorknob for a few seconds in the hopes that maybe it was just stuck or that Hannah’s latest trick wouldn’t hold. No luck. The door held fast, and none of my efforts to make it budge seemed to matter. I had felt so close to a fix, and it was such a psychological blow for that hope to be snatched right away from me. Still in that odd limbo of embarrassed and pissed off, I stormed down the hall towards Hannah’s room. She was bigger than me in every way, but I’d still prefer slightly baggy clothes to the maid dress.
Just like the guest room door, hers was locked. “Come on!” I whined. What about her parents’ closet? It felt a little wrong borrowing clothes from my employers, but that was still a better alternative than my current getup. All the upstairs doors were closed, so it was no surprise when the master bedroom was locked as well. For fuck’s sake.
I could always try the downstairs bathroom for a towel, or the laundry room to see if there were any clean clothes to change into. Hell, I would strongly consider putting on one of Hannah’s used outfits if it meant keeping her from the victorious smirk I could already visualize if I walked outside wearing this. From what I could tell from the faint female voices in the distance, she and her friends were still outside. And it was definitely more than three girls at this point. If she had gone through the trouble of making sure all these doors were covered, it was safe to assume she had been just as thorough downstairs. Fucking brat.
It didn’t matter. I was the babysitter here, and she was the entitled eighteen year old. The girl in the bathroom mirror didn’t look particularly intimidating, but that was before I had gotten worked up by the audacity of the teenage blonde who clearly didn’t respect me in the slightest. But she would.
Not wasting another second circling the house in the hopes for something different to wear, I just swallowed my pride and made my way downstairs. Taking a deep breath in the kitchen, followed by several more with closed eyes in an attempt to calm my nerves, I finally stepped back outside.
My eyes instantly went wide at the sight before me. How many friends had Hannah invited?! From what I could tell, there were at least ten girls clad only in skimpy bikinis. A handful were hanging out in the pool, but most of them were sitting or lying under the sun and gossiping about who knows what. The self conscious girl within said I could easily be the subject of the giggling. Even worse, there was alcohol everywhere. Empty cans of beers and seltzers littered the ground, each and every girl had a drink in their hand, and it was easy to spot a handle of vodka sitting near the bitchy blonde who had started all of the trouble.
“HANNAH.” A bit more shrill than I had wanted, thanks to the unexpected crowd and illegal mess that I had literally been hired to prevent, I tried not to let my first impression ruin everything. Striding forward with a purpose, I ignored the other girls and set my sights on Hannah. She was lying in the same lounge chair as before, and hadn’t done much in response to my arrival; she just slightly shifted her head to glance my way. “Inside. Right now.” I didn’t care about privacy in terms of her reputation with her friends. Admittedly, it was mostly because it would be easier for me to handle this without an audience.
Considering how I was dressed, I had braced myself for laughter. That’s definitely how my university friends would react to seeing me in something so ridiculous. These girls, however, didn’t know me. If anything, they looked more annoyed than anything else. And I was about to see why.
“What’s up with your maid, Hannah?” one of the brunettes in the pool asked, “Is she allowed to talk to you like that?”
I could feel myself starting to fume even more. It was so rude to talk to someone right in front of their face, and doubly so when that girl was your elder. The only reason I didn’t bite her head off is because I wanted to walk the line between collected and authoritative. That, and this was between me and Hannah.
“I-” I opened my mouth to assert my demand for Hannah to meet me inside, but that’s as far as I made it.
“No, she’s not,” Hannah said, “But little Jessie is a recent hire. She hasn’t learned how things work around here. Although she’s not a ‘maid.’” For a moment, I thought she was actually defending me. A stupid notion, considering what I was stuck wearing thanks to her thievery. “She’s my housekeeper for the summer.”
“What’s the difference?” the girl next to her asked.
“It’s simple. Maids are only responsible for all the inside chores. Jessie will be handling everything outside, too. Which is good, because we really need someone to clean up this mess.”
It took a conscious effort to keep my jaw from dropping. Was Hannah serious?! Stealing all my personal possessions was already over the line, and now she was still pretending like this was all normal? “Hey. Hannah-”
“Jessie.” Hannah set her glass down hard enough that I could actually hear her attitude from the gesture. “You’re serving as my housekeeper this summer, right?”
NO.
That’s what I wanted to scream. Before I had been pushed into the pool, I was prepared to drop the whole ‘housekeeper’ act and lay things out for the spoiled, presumptuous brat. To hell with her parents’ idea that I present myself as something more posh. But now that I was standing in front of all her friends, I was quickly hit by a number of potential complications.
It probably didn’t take twelve girls to pull off the prank that led to me being out here dressed like this. Unless all of them were acting their young hearts out, which I wouldn’t necessarily put past a bunch of pretty rich girls, there was a good chance some of them actually thought I was a housekeeper and nothing more. If I asserted why I was actually here, how much respect was I going to get if they all saw what Hannah did to me within the first hour of my arrival? And unless I could get my phone back, which could be hidden anywhere at this point, I had no means of reaching her parents. Well, my laptop had their numbers in an email somewhere, but Hannah had definitely gone through my things. What if she took that, too? Even if I was supposed to be babysitting the girl, how was I supposed to get a whole party of irresponsible eighteen year olds to take me seriously?
Then there was the other thought. What if part of this was about their family’s social standing, and less about putting Hannah at ease? Any of these girls could gossip to their own parents about anything they witnessed here, and maybe it would reflect poorly on Hannah’s parents if their recently graduated daughter needed supervision? It’s not that I owed them anything at my own expense, especially if something like that was never communicated to me, but all of this would be for nothing if they decided not to pay me for ‘breach of contract’ or whatever.
Regardless, my inner fire was dwindling against the peer pressure before me and the embarrassment of how I looked. Screw it. “Not your housekeeper,” I replied. Waiting until I could get a one-on-one with Hannah sounded more appealing, but that didn’t mean I had to fully roll over. “Your parents hired me, Hannah, and they gave me specific instructions to follow.” Read between the lines, girl. As for everyone else, I was hoping it would make it sound like I wasn’t a total pushover.
My hopes for some semblance of authority and respect were quickly dashed when the same girl in the pool spoke up. “I can totally see her vagina.”
It was said so casually, but the mortifying observation was enough to make me gasp and throw my hands over my crotch while trying to pull the skirt down a little bit as well. The motion caused the back to ride up and expose part of my ass; my immediate instinct was to cover my backside somehow as well, but I fought that urge when I realized no one was behind me. It felt wrong to allow it to stay like that, but what else could I do?
“She’s kind of a slut,” Hannah said, “A shameless little lesbian, too. She probably couldn’t resist showing herself off when she saw all these hot girls in bikinis. Seriously, Jessie. You did bring something more modest, right? Or underwear, for that matter?”
“I’m not- I didn’t-” Still recovering from the fact that all the girls in the pool probably got a good look at my womanhood before one finally pointed it out, I wasn’t prepared at all for the subsequent accusations. Now that I had allowed the ‘housekeeper’ thing to continue, of course Hannah could fucking say that this was MY dress. “I’m not a lesbian!” I finally exclaimed after the flustered sputtering. For some reason, that felt like the most important thing to clarify. Not only was I very much a straight girl, but the suggestion that I dressed myself like that to get attention was outright false. There were just too many fronts to fight on. I wasn’t really a housekeeper. I wasn’t a slut. My name was JESS, despite the constant use of ‘Jessie’ recently. And all my real clothes and underwear were in the locked guest room.
Trying to say all that out loud, however, would be a total mess.
“Jessie.” Hannah snapped her fingers twice. Vaguely gesturing to the poolside around her and the other girls, she said, “No more talking. Be a good little girl and clean all this up.”
That same fire from earlier started pushing up. Narrowing my eyes and looking right at Hannah, I started saying, “You-”
“Yes, Hannah!” The two girls beside her said it in perfect unison. Like twins, totally in sync, despite how they looked nothing alike. It wasn’t intentional, apparently, as they both looked at each other in surprise before bursting into a fit of giggles.
“That’s right,” Hannah said, “That’s how you’re supposed to respond, Jessie. Thanks, girls. See, they have maids, too. I know you’re new to this whole serving thing, so we’ll give you a pass or two. Now, let’s try again.”
“But-”
“Jessie. Clean up this mess. Now.”
Blushing deeply and still clinging to my skirt in the name of keeping myself covered, I reluctantly responded the way I was just instructed. “Yes, Hannah.” What else was I supposed to do? I had already resolved to play along until I could find a private moment with the girl, so any pushback would make me look worse and worse. No longer prepared to face off with the bitchy blonde, I just wanted to go back inside and kill time until her friends left. No, not kill time. I was going to find a way to pry my bedroom door open.
“One more time, Jessie,” Hannah said, “So you can get used to it. You’re welcome. Now, be a good little maid and clean up this mess.”
Sighing in defeat, I muttered, “Yes, Hannah . . .”