Erin and James

[court713]

Hey, this is my time writing one of these stories. It's gonna focus on a nerdy-type college girl with slow muscle growth.

Erin and James
_______________________________

Erin grabbed a seat towards the front of class. It was the first class of the semester, so she wanted to get there early to make a good impression on her new teacher. As other students started showing up, though, it became apparent the teacher was gonna be late. "Cool if I sit here?" Erin turned around and saw a guy her age grab the seat next to her without waiting for a response. "I mean, it's a free country", she muttered. He kinda gave a 'hmph' through his nose in amusement and then proceeded to close his eyes and lay back in the chair. Erin eyed him for a bit. He looked like a mess - his tussled hair, his worn-looking hoodie, his baggy eyes, this guy looked like he was barely keeping it together.

Eventually the teacher showed up and started the lesson. It was an intro to circuitry class, and Erin wanted to make sure she was taking good notes. "I'm going to be doing things a little different this year", the professor said. "This year we'll be doing a group project that will take up 30% of your grade. It's not going to be too hard, just something to get everyone used to working with circuits. I'll be giving you a lego mindstorm robot, and I want you to wire the breadboard on its back, and add sensors to it so that it can navigate a simple maze. You'll have until the end of the semester to finish it, so no worries if you're a little lost at first. Oh, and one more thing, I don't want this to be a whole thing where people feel left out, so whoever's sitting closest to you, that's your partner for this project. You can't always choose who you work with in life, so think of this as preparation for life after college."

"Ahh shit" Erin thought. "Guess you're stuck with me, huh", the guy next to her said.
"n-no it's not... that's not what I was thinking", she responded, meekly.
"It's alright, I promise I'm just having a bad week. I'm James by the way."
"Erin."
"Well Erin, we should poke around with this robot thing sometime this weekend. Just let me know what works for you."

With that, they exchanged contact info and Erin went back home. Since her parents lived in the same city as her college, she still lived with them to save money. She went into her room to change into her favorite harry potter pjs. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. Erin was never the most popular or most attractive girl in school, but she wasn't ugly by any stretch. She was 5'4, had a short pixie-cut brown hair and thickish rimmed glasses on her pale never-leave the house face. She normally had b-cups, but she had lost more weight recently, and so she was a little smaller at the moment. She probably needed to eat more, her arms were starting to look like sticks. Lots of women starve themselves for this end result out of some form of body dysmorphia, but Erin didn't really like it, she was just always too busy to eat. She never liked eating, and would prefer reading some sci-fi book over it any day. *CRASH* She heard a plate break from the kitchen. Her dad was drunk again, and her mom had incurred his wrath somehow. Erin scurried over to her bed and turned off all the lights except for her book light, grabbed some ear plugs, then escaped into a world of fantasy. She felt like a coward for not helping her mom, but she was afraid of what would happen if she ever intervened. Life was easier this way, and it's not like he was like this every night. Just to be safe, she turned on her phone and texted James "Hey maybe we should do your place this weekend. I've got some renovations going on - lots of loud power tools, going to be super distracting." And with that, Erin fell asleep.

Saturday
Erin showed up to James' house. It was in a rough neighborhood, and if Erin was honest, it was a little scary. She knocked on the door and James let her in. Immediately she noticed an old woman hooked up to an oxygen machine in the living room. She was smoking a cigarette. "Is she supposed to.." "Be smoking while hooked up to an oxygen machine? Aboslutely not" He snagged the cig from her mouth and snuffed it out on the kitchen counter. "But she does it anyways. One day that's going to blow up in your face gammy, you know you're not supposed to be doing that. Cmon." A slightly younger, obese woman was sitting in the living room, watching game shows on tv. "Hey mom, we're just gonna be working on our project in my room, let me know if gammy needs anything". "uhuh", she responded, not taking her eyes off the tv.

They walked into James' room. It was pretty small, but one thing Erin noticed was all the books he had laying around. "Oh my god, you've read The Three Body Problem series?" she asked, rifling through his collection. "Yeah, recently, there's a book donation place nearby, and they showed up last month." he said. She put the books back and sat on the floor next to James, "So what did you think of them? The mysteries in the first book and the sci-fi concepts that they broach throughout the series, it's incredible, right?" "Oh yeah, it's one of my favorites now. If you know anything else like it I'm always up for recommendations." They talked about their favorite books for what felt like hours. Erin looked at her phone. "Wow ok we should probably talk about the project, yeah?" she laughed. As they were pulling out their notes, James' mother called out "hey JAMES gammy needs her tank swtiched out where ya at". He kinda rolled his eyes and said "ok sorry, I'll be back in a few minutes"

James left the room. Erin couldn't remember the last time she felt like this. She had a flowery feeling in her chest. Of all people, she never would have expected falling for the guy who sat next to her in circuitry class. After a minute, curiosity got the better of her, and she started poking around the room again. There wasn't much here - just a makeshift bookcase, a small bed, and an old looking computer. As Erin went to go pick up a book lying on the computer, she accidentally bumped the desk and the monitor turned on. "What.. is this?" What looked to be a muscular woman was on the screen. It was on a website that seemed to be dedicated to showing images of muscular women. There were endless comments under the picture talking about how sexy this woman was. She had no idea that people found this kinda body attractive on a woman. Was this... what James was into? She quickly put the computer back to sleep and went back to think about what she just saw. James came back in. "alright, ready to work on this robot?"

[quick]

It's gonna focus on a nerdy-type college girl with slow muscle growth.

Well, you had me hooked there.  Looking forward to more.

[tapion]

Same for me... Nerdy girl.. Slow muscle growth.. Perfect!

[court713]

Erin got back home pretty late. They made good progress on the robot - it looks like they were gonna need some sensors from the lab, but otherwise, this stuff seemed to come pretty naturely to both of them. Erin sat in her bed for a while, then opened her phone and searched up info about muscular women. She was right, there was a whole sub-culture of people who were into this stuff. She ended up finding some young woman on insta**** who was showing her progress photos. In the first photo, she was 19 years old and looked your average college girl, and in the second photo, she was 22, but 30 pounds more muscular. Erin was shocked. This woman still looked very feminine, but she had the muscles of a fitness competitor. Also, her whole demeanor felt different. She looked like she had confidence in herself. Erin thought back to the other night. If she was braver, if she was stronger, would she still let her dad get away with this shit? She'd look into it tomorrow. Tonight, she grabbed a book and read until she drifted off.

In the morning, Erin did some research. She didn't wanna get big, but she was excited about the idea of adding a small amount of muscle to her small frame. She kicked her shoes off and laid in bed, looking through various google scholar articles on the subject of muscle gain. It was a little disheartening, though not unexpected, to see that women gain muscle a lot slower than men. There seemed to be various experimental supplements to help with this discrepancy, but Erin was not at all ready to broach that subject. Instead, what she found over and over again were 2 main components that promoted muscle gain -

1. Progressive resistance training
2. Eating a calorie surplus with enough carbs for workout energy, and enough protein to help the muscles grow

Her dad had a home gym in the basement from when he used to work out. Nowadays, he's let himself go and rarely ever uses it. If she were to come up with a workout routine, #1 could be taken care of. #2 was a bit harder, since she lived with her parents and didn't really have a say in what they ate for dinner. It was usually something heavy on carbs, low on protein like pasta. If she ate the carby foods her parents made for her, she'd just need to get some protein powder on the side. It didn't sound like the most apealing way to get in her nutrients, but it's not like she had many options. "I'm definitely gonna need to pick up a job to pay for this," she thought. "But I can worry about that later". For now, she ordered some protein powder and started thinking up a workout plan.

She pulled out her Aperature Science notepad and started writing down a schedule. She would try working out 3 times a week, following the push/pull/legs routine. She wrote detailed notes about common mistakes she read that people make with each exercise, and even drew cute little diagrams based on videos she watched so that she could reference the correct form. Erin was a decent artist, but it was never something she tried to formally learn. She just liked drawing her favorite characters or creatures from stories she read growing up. Erin looked over her plan and cracked a smile. She was kinda surprised she was going through with this. It was definitely not something she ever thought would interest her, but once the macros and studies and planning came out, it felt right up her alley. Erin realized from a young age that doing something in a smart, planned out fashion was way more effective and less time consuming than brute-forcing your way. If there were shortcuts, she would find them. Some people might call that lazy, but then again, those same people might work their entire life under the guise of hard work and never actually reach their goals. Erin wouldn't be like that.

After ordering the protein powder, Erin went over to James' place to work on their project some more. Once again, Erin walked past James' grandma and her mom without them acknowledging her existance and went into James' room. "How long has she been like that?" Erin asked. "Oh, gammy? For about a half-year now, but even before the oxygen tank, she had health issues. Smoked her whole life, and my mom's going down the same path..." He trailed off. She could tell he didn't really wanna talk about this and tried to change the subject, but he interjected. "Once dad left, my mom just completely gave up on taking care of my grandma. I don't completely blame him. He was a bit like me, we can't help but take care of someone who needs our help. But I think deep down he couldn't carry all this weight, and started to despise the situation he was put into. I'm pretty sure that's going to happen to me one day, I already feel the desire to leave this place, but I can't bring myself to do it, and possibly leave my grandma to die." Erin sat there for a moment, unsure of what to say. James opened his mouth again, "I'm sorry, that was way too much, I guess I've been holding some stuff down." "No, it's ok," Erin responded. "It's not fair. It's not fair what you're going through, and I'm sorry." "Thanks," he grinned, "but how about we actually work on this project now". "Sounds good", she chuckled.

After a few hours, they actually had a working prototype. "Are we pretty much finished with this project?" James asked. "It's only been a week, what are we gonna do for the rest of the semeseter?" They both laughed. Erin thought for a second, then her face lit up. "Ok, crazy idea so feel free to turn this one down", she said, "but we're pretty good at this. What if we were to build these robots for the other students and charged them money for it? We could split the money 50/50." She gave a kinda shrug with a half smirk that made her cute nose scrunch up a bit. "ha, I mean isn't that cheating though? I'm... I'm not sure." He responded. "Yeah, no worries, it was a dumb idea, forget I even mentioned it." She said. They sat for a minute in silence, and then James opened his mouth "I'm in. This thing is 30% of our grade. People might be willing to pay some good money for that. And I could defintely use the money..." It was decided. Next week they'd discreetly ask around after class and gauge interest.

Later that week, after Erin got her protein powder, she went down into the basement for her first workout. Today she was just gonna try all the different exercises to get an idea of her starting point. She was wearing a pink sports bra and some white workout shorts. She looked at herself in the mirror. Her stomach was completely flat below her small A cup boobs, and her shoulders were pointy cause she was basically all bones. She sat down on the bench, using just the bar and grabbed the bar. With great effort she lowered it down to her bra and pushed it back up. She tried it a few more times and put the bar back up. She was weaker than she expected. Erin almost couldn't finish the last push, and she didn't want the hurt herself on the first day. After trying most of the other lifts, Erin lay down on the floor, completely exhausted. Her whole body hurt, and she was drenched in sweat. She wiped the sweat off her face. She would defintely stick to the push/pull/leg days from now on. "Alright, time to get some protein powder", she muttered as she tried to get up. "Ahh maybe a little more rest."

The next morning she was sore pretty much everywhere. At least she had followed her diet plans strictly, so hopefully the recovery would go well. Erin had trouble yesterday eating so much food in one day, but this morning her stomach was rumbling. Guess that's what happens when you use so much energy. Later that day, after class, she hung around outside of class and walked over to one of the kids who sat at the back of class. She overheard him complaining about the project. "Pretty hard, huh? How are they expecting so many people to figure this all out on their own?" Erin interrupted. "Yeah, exactly! I don't have time for this crap." The guy responded. He seemed like a potential customer. Erin motioned to come closer and spoke quietly "My partner and I will do the whole thing if you're willing to pay." He looked interested "How much are we talking?" Erin thought for a second before blurting out "$300". She was worried, she had planned on saying something like $50, but at the last minute, she had the feeling this guy was willing to pay a lot more. But maybe she should have stuck with the pla.. "I'll do it, yeah no problem." Erin tried to hide her excitement as she discussed the plans and shook on it. She started texting James when another student pulled her to the side. "I.. I overheard your conversation, sorry." She stuttered. "I also wanna pay. I can't fail this class my parents will kill me." Erin throught for a second "Sure thing, but we're only 2 people, we gotta work on the other guy's project first. Not sure when we'll get to yours." "$1000", the girl said. "I'll pay you 1k to do mine within the next week. I need to show my parents some progress with this thing, they're always on my ass about this shit, I can't wait several weeks with nothing to show." Erin was stunned. "Yeah I think we can make that work." She said with a smile.

[szerep]

Very promising start. I can't wait for more.

[Wookey]

Looking good K+

[potatocarrot]

I really look forward to seeing where you take this as I really enjoy a slow grow, especially if it is through hard work and effort. They are hard to find so nice start. K+ Keep it up!

[tapion]

Yeah I like slow muscle grow too! And I like when the muscles grow with only hard workouts and willpower.

[phil123]

Great start. "Yeah I think we can make that work." Can't wait