The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

“Spencer.”

I stood up a little too fast. I hadn’t expected anybody to notice me back here. Not that I wasn’t allowed to be back in the filing area. At times, I had to be. Times like this. But I’d lingered.

“Come with me.”

I nodded. There wasn’t much to say. When someone catches you leaning against a file cabinet, crying, hiding, you can’t tell them you won’t come with them. I was a puppy who’d eaten the stuffing out of her favorite toy, so pitiful over my own stupid mistake that I accepted whatever rebuke was coming. So I followed Ramona around the way to her office. She pointed, and I slumped down onto her sofa. There were chairs for more formal ones, but I wasn’t ready for a chair.

It was pathetic, I knew that. That whole toxic taboo against men crying had nothing to do with it. Still, this was crying over my job, not something personal. Crying over something I wasn’t even sure I could have helped. It wasn’t my fault my girls were happy to show off, and that Kim wasn’t. I wasn’t bawling or anything, and I hadn’t been doing it for very long. Still, there I was.

A box of tissues slid into my bleary field of vision. I took it as a cue, seizing one and dabbing at my face. I didn’t need to sniffle, but I sniffled once. Despite the availability of tissues, for some reason it felt gross to blow my nose in front of Ramona. I don’t know why. I steeled myself to sit up and explain why she’d found me in such a state. Only then, there was her weight pressing into the sofa beside me.

There was a soft hand, rubbing my back, softly.

Yep, so I cried some more. Nothing brought out the tears like someone willing to indulge them. Someone knocked at one point. Ramona excused herself, had a brief exchange I didn’t even hear. Then she was back, just rubbing softly, until finally I was all cried out.

Only once I was finally done being a pitiful mess did I realize our proximity. Hip to hip, her arm resting on my back. She was leaning into it, our hair brushing softly together, only an inch or two from resting on one another. Awkwardly I scooted back. I’m not sure why. She was only being nice, but my boss was a woman, and a pretty one. Sometimes I felt like I noticed that all too often. If she’d been born a decade later, that might have been her strutting around in a tight red half-shirt last night, crowing up and down the halls about her own hotness. Could have been her, making sure Kim knew she wasn’t one of them. And Marta, and… and, um… and the other one. What was her—

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked softly.

I refused to start crying again at forgetting the final identity of the group of miserable, normal residents on my floor, formerly known as the Three. “Not much to say, I guess. I screwed up.”

“Screwed up what?” She cocked her head. Her glasses slipped a fraction of an inch down her button nose.

“You know. With my girls. Women, sorry.”

“I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about. Do you mean the move-outs this week?”

I only nodded. Ramona leaned a little closer, pressed a little harder. “Did something happen?”

My girls held a flesh parade and made sure that everybody saw the sad little float made of mud and recycled trash for what it was. That they hadn’t meant to didn’t help. It did mean I couldn’t present it that way to Ramona. It was a nice reminder that I needed to broach that subject while I was in here. Fuck.

“No, nothing ‘happened.’ They just… Did they talk to you, when they asked for the transfer?”

“No. One I never talked to; she checked out with Marcus. Of the two I did, the one this morning in particular had a pretty unhappy way about her, but otherwise…” She shrugged. “I don’t generally pry unless I have an inkling that there’s something I ought to know. Which you seem to be saying that there is.”

I took a few deep breaths. Then a few more. It probably didn’t do much to assist my reassurances. “Really, nothing specific. But I think… This is weird to say, but… I think they moved out because they didn’t feel like they fit in with the rest of them.”

“Yeah, you’ll have that sometimes. You hate to see it escalate to the level of moving out, but it happens. Sometimes a square peg ends up in a field of round holes.”

I tried not to dwell on the way Ramona’s warm voice said the words round holes and refocused. Damn what that shirt fiasco had done to my libido. “No. I don’t mean they were early risers or didn’t get along with their roommate. I mean… Look, to be blunt, they felt like they were too… too… ugly. Too ugly to live on my floor.”

Ramona arched an eyebrow. “I… don’t even know what that means, Spencer. Talk to me.”

So I explained the best I could, trying my best to keep myself out of it. The part about changing in the lounge was omitted entirely, and the shocking reveal of just how shockingly revealing the shirts were became an “error at the t-shirt shop” that I was “looking into.” I might have even snuck in a bit about my insisting we drop the matter there rather than asking for the mistake to be rectified.

What a hero I was.

“And is that why you’re upset? Because these three women moved off your floor?”

I gave a weak shrug. “We drove them out. We made them feel like they weren’t good enough. I was sitting back, having fun being one of the gals, and didn’t realize I was ignoring the kinds of signals we were giving off.”

“Spencer, let me stop you right there. That whole thing you just said? It’s a big tangled snarl of we’s and I’s. You are not Higgins 3. You are one person. War parties of hot girls preying on not-hot girls didn’t begin on your floor, and they won’t end there, either. It happens sometimes. I processed a transfer for a young woman on Vanessa’s floor the other day, and if she didn’t quite say it this way, what she did say made it clear she felt ostracized by her affluent roommate and her roommate’s affluent social circle.”

“But they—”

“But nothing, Spencer.” There was that soft, soft hand again, but this time it was soft soft firm, squeezing my shoulder. “There are almost two hundred women crammed into our one tiny residence hall. I guarantee you that your Three—” No, I amended, she only meant my three, no caps. “—aren’t the only ones losing sleep wondering how they’ll compete with the folks up on 3. Inequality breeds resentment.”

“But…”

“Hey.” She cupped my chin, forced me to look up at her. This close, I was sucking in her perfume with every breath. God, her husband was a lucky man. “You have thirty-some girls on your floor who think you’re amazing. Did you know I got emails from not one, not two, but three mothers personally complimenting you for what a good influence you’ve been on their daughters?”

“What?”

“Yeah. I didn’t even know that was a thing that happens. One of them—Dana’s mom?—already asked me if there’s a way to get her daughter on your floor again next year.”

Good god. The squeeze of my ass must have made a hell of an impression. “That’s crazy.”

“That’s a sign that you are making these young women feel cared for, and safe, and included. Me, I’m with you. I don’t love that we lost three residents because their self-confidence couldn’t keep up with the rest of your floor. It feels bad. But I’ve also never heard of an RA getting… fan mail, I guess you could call it, from his residents’ parents. I wasn’t even going to tell you, but the way you were sniffling, I thought you could use a pick-me-up.”

“Wow.”

This time, her head leaned in until it was touching mine. Her arm slid down my shoulder to my side and rubbed affectionately. “I don’t want to play favorites, but there’s something about you, Spencer. You’re reminding me why I got into this job. You’re…” She sighed, breathing in slowly, deeply, as I did the same under the veil of that rich perfume of hers. “You’re going to make me late for my 10:00.”

She sat up, and I sat up, and we both chuckled away the intimacy of that moment before we could think more of it. “Thanks, Ramona. I feel a lot better.”

She stood, smoothing out her skirt while I tried not to notice the proximity of that skirt to my face. Her tone was back to business again. “Good. Now if you find yourself feeling like your girls are deliberately causing problems, you get on them, all right?”

“Yeah. Will do.”

“Maybe I should say that I’ve seen you take them in hand, so it might be worth adding: don’t go too hard on them.” She flashed a sly grin.

My boss put her hand on my shoulder, jokingly referencing the time she’d seen me wet, naked and turgid. Maybe it ought to have made me uncomfortable. In a sense it did, only the discomfort came only when I realized it felt weirdly… nice. In a way not at all appropriate with my attractive married boss.

I shifted in my seat. If she noticed me wriggling away from her touch, she didn’t look offended or nervous or anything. “I’ll keep an eye on things.”

“I know you will. And since I can see you’re anxious, I’ll give you all the notice I can before those empty rooms are filled. That might be none at all, but sometimes I get notifications before they show up to config their key. Sorry I can’t promise they’ll only send you more ‘Hotties,’ but you never know. I should tell you, though, that Bob and I decided we’re not going to try to integrate the floor with men as we fill openings. One thing to have a veteran staff member in there with those girls. Quite another to invite Chad and Doug into the equation.”

“That’s a load off. Though as for the Hotties, trust me, I’ve got way more than I can handle.”

This time Ramona had to hide her look of smug bemusement behind a hand. “I’m sorry, Spencer. I’m sorry! It’s just still too soon for a comment about you ‘handling’ your residents. I’ve always been a that’s-what-she-said-ophile, and you’re killing me with that.”

I humored her with a dry, nonplused look. “Go on, get it out of your system.”

After three cackles and a solid guffaw, she finally relented. “I’m sorry. I promise it won’t happen again. Good grief, I’m going to get a letter in my file. Forgive me. Yeah? I’m genuinely sorry.”

“It’s fine.” Really, it was. The most frustrating thing of it all was knowing she wasn’t flirting. If she were anyone but my boss, I’d have made a counter-jibe about how it was her turn to dive into the naked shower fight dogpile next time it came up, just to make her blush, but she looked genuinely repentant. And again, looked like my boss.

She helped me to my feet and led me to the door with one gentle hand on my shoulder. I left Ramona’s office feeling better. Some. It left me feeling a little something else, too, but then I made my way back up to Higgins 3 and chalked it up to the perpetual mid-grade arousal I’d been grappling with for weeks now. I passed not one, but two of my girls in their brand new Higgins Hotties shirts. Ellie smiled and waved as I walked past her room, but Angel made it a point to pluck at the fabric of her shirt and thumbs-up me. I think I smiled back, but it was hard to be sure.

I was done with classes for the week, not ready for classwork. Back in my room, I collapsed into my bed, turned on some comfort TV that I barely even saw before falling asleep. I dreamt of seeing myself wallowing in all that self-pity, then slapping me in the face and telling me to get a grip on myself and be a bit less pitiful. In response, the crying me fell on my shoulder and cried even harder, crying and crying until my shoulder was wet with his/my tears. Until I started feeling… damp? Like, really damp. Like damp in the real world. Knock it off, I grumbled at the weepy mess resting on my shirt, sobbing. That sure did it. Then it was a flood, a clingy, weepy flood. Soon I was too grossed out by my own hysterics and forced myself to retreat toward the waking world.

“That’s enough!” I snapped as my eyes fluttered open.

“I’m sorry!” Andi leapt up and ran out my door before I even knew she was real.

Oh right. Andi. So much for feeling good about myself.

It took a minute, sorting through it. There really was a soggy spot on my shoulder. She’d been in here—damn my adherence to my open door policy!—and… had we talked? I’d been saying… something. In my sleep, but muttering. Shit. Whatever had been happening, I had a sobbing resident whom I’d neglected for days fleeing into seclusion.

I gave myself a pinch and hurried after her. Nobody in 304 answered when I knocked, but on the second try, I could hear someone crying inside. Well, if she could tromp right on into my room while I was sleeping, surely I could be forgiven for returning the favor while she was awake and in pain.

I almost didn’t see her at first, curled up under a big ball of sheets and blankets on the top bunk. The crying intensified when I said her name, though, and the shuddering mass gave her up. Jean wasn’t in, I noted, so in lieu of a need to explain my presence, I gently closed the door behind me and made my way over to the bunk beds. A disheveled red braid was all I could see of the person beneath it all, twitching as she tried and failed to choke down her tears.

“Hey there, Andi.” The only response was a high-pitched whimper, one so embarrassing it led directly into more body-wracking sobs. Had I looked this pathetic to Ramona? Not that I meant “pathetic” in some kind of contemptuous way. It was only that the term applied. Sometimes, even the toughest folks waxed pathetic.

“Um, I’m not exactly sure what I… I mean, I was asleep.” My hazy awareness only told me I’d been a little gruff.

“I’m sorry! I don’t nmm mmhmmfmmbehhhh, mehhgehhgehheg…!” Whatever she’d been trying to mutter into her pillow, it was lost in fresh sobs.

This was fresh ground for me. Not that I’d never comforted a sobbing woman, but in the past it had been friends, girlfriends. My six-year-old cousin, once, after her brother scared her with a garter snake he’d scooped up in the grove by my aunt’s house. This was professional comforting. Remember Ramona, I ventured to put a gentle touch on her back, giving it a soft rub, watching for any sign of recoiling to tell me I’d overstepped. Andi simply kept crying.

When she didn’t show any signs of slowing after a bit, I thought out a next step. Apologizing for being snippy in my sleep at a woman I still didn’t know how she’d come to be beside me seemed tricky, so I went after easier feelings. “I’m so, so sorry I haven’t managed to talk with you sooner. I said I’d come find you after the program last night, didn’t I?” She didn’t respond. Couldn’t. “That’s right. And I… I got caught up in some of my own problems and forgot all about it. I’m sorry. Really. Not like, oops sorry. Like apology sorry. I hate that I let you down like this.”

After a minute, Andi managed a few sniffles, a feeble attempt at composure. “It’s okay.” She squirmed a little, I think to dab at her tears with her sleeve. “I should’ve waited for you to wake up. That was stupid. I don’t know what I was thinking. I didn’t go down there, meaning to… do that.”

“Hey, no, you’re fine. I said my door’s open any time, didn’t I? Gotta get smarter about locking it during those rare exceptions. Plus I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say something’s really bothering you, so I’m glad you woke me up. I’d feel a lot crappier if I’d blown you off again than having a minorly weird wake-up.”

There was another apology embedded in more sobs. Ugh, what a portrait of pitiability. I was helpless. I stood there next to her bed rubbing her back until I was tired enough I laid my head down on my other arm on the bed space behind her. We were close. Close enough I had opportunity—and time—to reflect on how pleasant she smelled. A mix of some kind of earthy shampoo and a mild but fragrant floral perfume. Subtler than Ramona’s. Sweeter. It was nice. Every now and then I’d try to say something to ease her out of it. After a time, she finally calmed herself enough to engage with me for more than a few mumbled words.

“This is the most time I’ve spent talking to someone face to face in weeks.”

She sounded marginally more composed than prior attempts. I tried to reel her further in with some light-hearted humor. “Technically we’re not face to face, you know. I’m learning a lot about braiding technique back here, though.”

Andi rolled over to face me, her teary mess of a face landing just an inch outside of uncomfortably close. She had kitten breath, I noted quickly, but it was endearing under the circumstances. I withdrew my hand. “Now we’re face to face,” she said.

“So we are. And it’s a nice face.”

She made that face girls make when you compliment them and they don’t think they’re presently deserving. “Yeah right.”

No need to pursue the point. If she didn’t know she looked great even at her worst, it wasn’t my place to correct the score. Thank you Lex for teaching me to shut my stupid mouth when it came to making observations on my girls’ appearances. “So. Andi. Talk to me. Something’s been bothering you.”

It took her a moment to summon words, still teetering on the brink of sobby messdom as she was. “I… um… this feels really, really pathetic to say.”

“You don’t need to impress me, Andi. I’m here to help whether it’s an amazing one-of-a-kind impressive problem or a stubbed toe.”

The lighter-hearted approach seemed to be working. After another sniffle that actually sounded pretty gross, she took a breath, and began to unload.

“I hate it here,” she opened. “Not here, but like, at Lakeview. It’s been two weeks, and I feel like I haven’t made any friends. At first me and Jean were hanging out a lot, but she started making friends with these girls in her classes and now I barely see her either. We haven’t even gone to eat together since, I don’t know, last week sometime. Well no, we ate pizza together last night at the program. But we didn’t even sit next to each other.”

It sounded like there was more coming, but she’d paused to let me speak, so speak I did. “Yeah, I saw that.” I also saw you in your bra changing into your new shirt. Speaking of, wanna come back to my room, see if you can ID your top? “But you know, it’s OK not to be best buds with your roommate. More common not to be, in my experience. Sometimes it’s just somebody who doesn’t snore too loud, you know?”

“But I haven’t made any friends anywhere else, either! I try, but I don’t… I don’t know how. Does that sound incredibly lame or what? I mean, I went to all the meetings and all the orientation stuff, and I went to your program last night, but I just feel like maybe I don’t fit in here with the, you know, ‘Hotties.’”

Oh fuck, this again. “Did someone say something? Damnit, the whole point of that program was to stop people from choosing their company based on what they look like. And you’re not even…!” Whoops. That sentence certainly had a poorly considered beginning. Nothing so consoling as being told you’re not even ugly. “You’re one of them, I mean.”

It was decidedly not a good cover, but it did bring a smile to her lips rather than send her into fresh sobs. Or a complaint to my boss. “You think I’m a Higgins Hottie?”

Plainly she didn’t attach a negative stigma to the term, so I went ahead and leaned into my slip-up. “Andi, you’re an incredibly pretty young woman. Jordyn made those shirts with you in mind, I promise.”

Another sniffle, another smile. “That’s… thank you. I, um…” Like that, the smile faded, and tears returned. “I, um, broke up with my boyfriend. From back home? I mean, I didn’t break up with him. We broke up.”

Ah, there it was. The catalyst. “He broke up with you, you’re saying.”

I barely made out the blubbering mess of word salad that followed. What I took from it was that she’d convinced—and the way she stumbled over the word, I took convinced to mean some real down and dirty convincing—her fella not to break up when she moved away to Lakeview. Only, once she was gone, the decision became undecided. Andi was very pretty, yes, but he was going to school hundreds of miles away. I inferred that he was having a lot easier time meeting people than she had, and she seemed at least half sure that he’d cheated on her before finally, firmly, insisting they officially break it off. Those negotiations had begun as early as move-in week, and ended last weekend during a suspiciously timed early Saturday morning phone call, during which she’d heard a woman’s voice nearby.

My heart went out to her. It was a tale as old as coeds. The broad strokes of it I could have guessed before she’d said more than that they’d broken up. Long distance relationships almost never worked. Never, actually, in my experience. I’d done the same as a freshman. Like Andi’s ex, I’d been the one to break it off. Once school stopped feeling like you were staying in some weird hotel and started feeling like a new phase of life that one’s partner wasn’t a part of, it was just hard. I got why people kept trying, but I got why they kept failing, too.

By the time Jean came in, Andi had gone back to crying so hard it required another round of back pats. My presence in their room surprised her, clearly, and Andi was in no position to hide her emotional state. “Hey, Jean. Sorry, the two of us were just talking about some stuff.”

“Oh. Um, do I need to leave…?”

“Andi, do you want to talk in my room?”

Andi did. The ticking time bomb of desperate, needy, sexy teenage girl shuffled down out of the top bunk, accepting my hand for help, and trailed behind me back to my space in 310 like a baby duck.

We—mostly she—talked for over an hour. On top of her difficulty making friends, exacerbated by her depression over being dumped, she was struggling with a separate level of homesickness, too. She had a close relationship with her mother, but between her mom’s new hours at work and having a roommate around in the evening, it was hard to really lean on maternal support. Her big sister had gotten married over the summer, and was too busy with her new husband to have much time for her. That was her impression, anyway, and the impression was all that really mattered insofar as loneliness was concerned.

I listened a lot, said little. Her problem was a normal enough one. Homesickness and heartbreak, both common, normal, and relatively easily treated. All she needed was to develop an attachment or two and she would be fine in no time. I couldn’t come right out and say that, of course, any more than Ramona could have told me to go out and try to do a little good to my girls, which was all my own weepy mess problems had needed.

I didn’t try to rush her, either. It was Friday evening. I wasn’t on duty and, like usual, I didn’t have plans. She curled up at the head of my bed, knees hugged to her chest in a way that, in that dress, prompted me to offer her a blanket. Andi had bigger things on her mind than whether her dress showed a little underwear, so I wound up having to sit there next to her to have an excuse to tuck it in right. A little more intimate than I normally liked to get with a resident to say the least, especially after recent lessons at the college of hard knocks, but modesty was plainly the last thing on her mind. She’d been so lonely she’d been crying on my shoulder in my sleep. Crying on it while I was awake suited her far better. So I nestled in beside her and let Andi vent, cry, whine and wallow deep in self-pity.

“What do I do, Spencer? I’ve never felt this… this alone before.” It was the first time she’d actually asked for advice, though she’d probably said the other bit at least a dozen times by then.

“My honest opinion? Before you know it, things are going to be better. You got dumped, and that’s hard. Trying to meet people and explore and put yourself out there, especially while bearing that fresh wound, makes a tricky thing trickier.”

“So you’re saying people don’t like me because I’ve been depressed?”

“No! No, not that at all. You haven’t made friends—yet—because people haven’t gotten a chance to know you. Depression makes opening up and giving people that chance a lot harder. But you’re going to do it. You know how I know?”

“How?” She looked over at me, eyes adorably wide and vulnerable. There were so many dried tear smudges on her glasses I don’t know how she could see.

“Because you came to find me. That means you’ve got it in you to try, to get yourself help, to reach out to people. You just need to keep doing it until you find the right people, the ones who are going to value you the way you deserve.”

“But what if everybody’s already made their friends? Like, what if people have made their social circles and just don’t have any room left for anybody?”

It was silly enough I had to make sure I didn’t laugh. “Andi, nobody works that way. Everybody’s always open to making new friends.”

She gazed up at me. “Yeah? What about you?”

That got personal in a flash. “What about me?”

“I mean, you seem to hang out here on the floor all the time. I never see you go anywhere, never see you have anybody over. That’s, um, kind of why I thought maybe you would understand. That probably sounds so mean! God, stupid, stupid, stupid!” She conked herself reprovingly on the side of her head. “I’m so sorry, you’re being so nice to me, and you’re so warm, and sweet, and what do I do, I call you a big stupid loser like me. No wonder nobody wants to be your friend, Andi, trying to drag everybody down to your stupid loser level. God, I—”

Through it all, my contribution to this sudden and alarming transition from self-pity to self-hatred was to sputter something along the lines of “hey, whoa, no, no way, no you’re, no, come on, whoa, that’s so, no” and watch it fail to slow her down. Worse, she kept on hitting herself, too. She wasn’t being gentle, and it wasn’t easy to witness.

Finally, there was nothing for it but to maneuver around and stop her. I knew I wasn’t supposed to lay a hand on a resident, ever, but hey, I’d already burned that bridge to the ground and pissed on the ashes. Plus, this resident was in my bed, letting out feelings that I’d let fester by ignoring her for a whole week, so I felt responsible for her well-being in a way I normally didn’t.

She didn’t resist when I forced her hand still. Really, she capitulated the moment I touched her. Andi stopped moving altogether, looking up at me with an unreadable expression. The brief struggle to reposition myself had swept the blanket aside though, and after a moment I realized I’d wound up with my knee, bared below my shorts, settled directly against her underwear, now re-exposed as she was still curled up in that sad little ball.

Hopefully she wasn’t feeling the awkwardness like I was, because I wasn’t about to back down and let her resume that ugliness. “Andi. You’re not stupid. You’re not a loser. You’re here at Lakeview because you’re smart. Because you’re going places. You’re just having a rough start, all right? I promise you, I will make it my personal mission to help you find a place, with some people, where you can be yourself and be appreciated like you deserve.”

Her chin quivered. I don’t think she was ready for talking again yet.

“I promise. And I know you’re hurting right now, but believe me—buh-lieve me—that won’t last. You’re a Higgins motha fuckin’ Hottie, and before long, you’re going to find a guy, right here close by where you get to see him every day, be with him whenever you want.”

Her chin lifted. Still quivering.

I’m not an idiot. I knew, I absolutely knew, that I could have kissed her. She would have welcomed it with arms wide open. Legs too, if I wasn’t mistaking the heat against my knee. I’d learned my lesson though, thanks to Quinn and Leigh. Plus, romantically, I didn’t go for fixer-uppers, and Andi needed some fixer-uppering even aside from being lonely. Before she could make a desperate move herself, I settled back down beside her, facing the foot of the bed like she was, and gave her a moment before I gently nudged her with an elbow.

“How’d I do?” I asked with a little jocularity.

The hug that followed was intense, almost fierce, though Andi was not one for fierceness. “You did good,” she insisted into my once more damp shoulder. The girl was going to dehydrate if she kept crying like this. At least these were happier tears.

“But hey, I want to stress—that’s not some speech they teach RAs to get their residents to quiet down. I mean it. Things will get better if you keep putting yourself out there. And I will be your wingman all the way. I’m already thinking of some girls on the floor I ought to steer your way.”

“Yeah?”

“Gimme a bit. Maybe tomorrow I’ll do one of those ‘impromptu’ meal outings, microtarget a few doors. I’ll figure it out. Promise.”

This hug was smaller, but no less sweet. It lasted until I finally had to “all right, all right, don’t reward me until I’ve earned it” the thing away.

“Um, do you mind if I… you know, hang out? With you? For a while? I know I’ve already taken up your whole afternoon but… Jean doesn’t really like me, and I know she hates that I’m always there moping around, so maybe I could…” Then she shook her head, and I could feel the energy moving back to her smacking arm. “No, that’s so selfish. I’m sorry. I’ll get out of your hair. Obviously you have better things to do on a Friday night than—”

“Pick the movie, Andi.”

Damn that quivering chin of hers. “Really?!”

“We can at least give Jean ninety minutes. Besides, I’m a super duper senior. All my friends graduated years ago, so maybe I need to work on making some new ones, too.”

I figured out pretty fast that I’d overdone it.

Andi wasn’t subtle. There was nothing subtle about laying down on her front, right in the middle of my bed on that big crack where the two long twin mattresses met beneath the fitted sheet, with her feet waving in the air beside me. They were like those inflatable tube men, wiggling around to make sure I didn’t miss the big sale down at where her dress was constantly threatening to slide up over her butt. Everything must go, they said, and with every micro-adjustment on the bed, the dress shifted, and always in the direction she wanted it to.

I’d insisted she could put on whatever she wanted, and doubled down when she suggested some rom-com I half-remembered from bad dates years ago. “Sounds great,” I’d told her. “I love that one.” Then came an hour and a half of looking back over her shoulder at me at every joke, beaming, making sure I was loving it as much as she was. I tried. It wasn’t a great movie, nor even a good one, but I tried. I got practiced pretty fast at forcing a smile whenever I saw that braid start moving.

It took some doing, not sending back any mixed signals. Smiling was one thing, but I had to fold my arms across my chest so they weren’t hanging down, brushing against her bared legs. (Andi kept those things smooth, I noticed on the several occasions when I slipped up.) The movie wasn’t holding my interest, but I occupied my time on my stated mission of who I might be able to set her up with on a friend date. Every now and then I ventured a question about her interests. Anything specific—“do you like football?”—was met with a variation on “oh, sure, yeah, I could get into that!” Anything vague—“what do you like to do for fun?” was reflected right back at me with some kind of “oh, you know, all kinds of stuff. What do you like to do for fun?”

It was flirtation, and she was terrible at it. Thank goodness she had that cute round caboose and that adorably kissable pathetic puppy dog face. For her sake, I mean. I’d known some unattractive girls with her level of game, with her level of desperation, and more than one of them had wound up becoming blowjob queens as a means of making “friends.”

Not that that was a thought I needed in my head right then.

I even tried opening the door. It was a little awkward still, letting anybody walk by see I was lying in bed next to someone, but I figured it would signal that nothing was going to happen, at least. Except what actually wound up happening was that the triangle of yellow fluorescent light streaming in from the hall landed on exactly two things: Andi’s ass, and my eyeballs. Three things then, I guess. I headed to the bathroom after the movie ended, but when I came back, not only had she not left—not even moved, except a few more inches on the hem of her dress—but she’d started another movie.

“This one’s kind of long,” she said apologetically, “but we can stop it whenever you want.” She left unsaid exactly why she hoped I’d stop it. At least it was less overt than my now unfettered view of the very uppermost portion of her thighs, parted slightly for ease of access.

I told myself, again, to be patient. She was distraught, lonely, probably horny, and she thought she’d met a nice guy who might take care of all that. Not like they had resident training, with a session on why it was unethical and forbidden to flaunt your ass at your RA. All I had to do was not send mixed signals, and be ready to say no if she made an actual move.

“Oh my god Spencer, did you see the graffiti down on—” Vickie, no doubt in the midst of her first set of rounds, froze in the doorway, saw me in bed with Andi. Saw where that sliver of freshman panties was sneaking out. “Oh. Sorry, didn’t realize. You two crazy kids have fun. I won’t tell Savannah.”

Then the woman winked.

Winked!

And shut the door before I could come up with a single word of rebuttal.

“Who’s Savannah?” asked Andi, peering back at me. She was going to need a chiropractor, the way she kept doing that.

“She’s another RA. On the basement floor.”

“Oh. Oh! I think I’ve seen her.” She blinked as that mental image slammed home. “OH. I should probably go, huh? I don’t want to get you in trouble with your girlfriend. Not that I—”

“Stay,” I ordered.

Hang on, did I just order something? And was that order for her to stay?!

It made sense, probably. In that brief window during which Andi was processing the intrusion, I’d been going from 0 to fuming at the idea that Vickie, or anybody, would think Savannah had some reason or right to know who I spent my time with.

We’d made out, briefly, once, weeks ago! I don’t care how perfect a woman’s face is, she doesn’t get dibs on me! What the fuck?!

“Is… is something wrong? Did I say something?” Andi asked nervously.

“No. No, not at all. Sorry, Andi. You’re great, really. Just… Savannah. Goddamn Savannah!”

“Oh gosh!” Her eyes flew wide. “Did you get dumped, too? I’m so sorry! Here I’ve been—”

“She did not dump me,” I snapped. How widely had Vickie spread this? How many people thought Savannah had squatters rights on me?

“You dumped her…?!” The look of awe on her face was like I’d invented the very concept of the breakup.

I waved her off, seething. Was this coming from Savannah herself? Things still rocky with goddamn Price, so she wanted to keep a handy backup boy toy in her pocket? Or was she setting herself up as the Queen of Higgins, ruler of all men in her realm?

All right, so I knew even in the moment it wasn’t that. Still, I’d been beating off twice a day or more, surrounded by gorgeous women who teased, flirted or outright harassed me every other time I stepped out my door. I’d spent all night consoling a girl who was a walking billboard for (pardon my French) pity fucks. I’d passed up on Leigh, a blonde bombshell among blonde bombshells, for her! Leigh! Not hours after pinning her wet naked body beneath mine, cock ablaze, in full sight of half the floor, and my boss, and Savannah, and my busty blonder neighbor who’d been waving her ass at me like a checkered flag at the NASCAR EZ-Fuck Series comes to my room to plead for me to finish where we started, and instead I’d a’hyucked my way out of it for a girl who’d blown me off for someone she’d already dumped named goddamn PRICE!

Not that I’d been dwelling on it or anything.

“I’m sorry.” Andi looked ready to cry again for having done whatever it was she did for me to react like I did.

“Oh crap, no. I’m sorry, Andi. Ever get that where you don’t know you have a capital-b Button until somebody hits it?”

“Yeah, totally,” she said agreeably, obliviously.

“Let’s get back to the movie, yeah? Or do you just want to hang out and talk?” I laughed self-consciously. “Or shit, you’re probably ready to be done with me by now.”

“No! Oh my gosh, no! I’m having a really nice time,” Andi insisted, whirling around to face me. “This is nice. Really nice. Really.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.” She took one of my hands in two of hers. The movie played on behind her, as forgotten by her as it had been by me since the moment she’d picked it. “So, um, what did you want to talk about?”

I reciprocated the squeeze. “Tell me about Andi.” While I listened, I wrote myself a story problem, and set my mental clock by the answer.

For almost exactly two hours, Andi told me about Andi. She told me about her rural upbringing. Her job detasseling corn in the summers. Where her accent came from. (Her father was from Alabama; one generation removed, she merely tended to drop the g’s in -ing’s.) Her grandmother, an unremarkable-sounding woman of whom she was very fond. Her two outdoor cats and her indoor cat Gullet. I got to see a picture of Gullet. A picture of Andi with her parents. Andi with Gullet. Andi with her ex-boyfriend. Lots of Andi with her ex-boyfriend.

By the time midnight rolled around, I’d learned her favorite color (blue, but maybe yellow sometimes), favorite subject in school (art), her sign (Aquarius), her favorite Disney movie (Aladdin—but the original one, not the new one, but maybe the new one), her favorite sport (probably kickball, and which sports was I into by the way?). She told me about her plans for her major, unless those fell through and then maybe this would be her plan, unless she met a nice guy and things got serious and then maybe it would be OK to get married and start a family instead. Then she seemed to remember how families are made, and blushed, and actually ogled my crotch for a few seconds, and blushed harder.

Yes, I had a plan. It was barely even a plan; any person with a penis could have intuited that paying some attention to this attention-starved girl would coat her panties in Teflon. Nevertheless, my eyes were on the clock, and my mind on doing this the right way.

Midnight came.

“Hey, wow, already going on midnight.”

“Really? Oh my gosh, we’ve been hanging out for, like, eight hours!”

“No joke. You know, I probably ought to send you back to Jean before she starts to worry I’m up to something with her roomie.”

There it was. An unspoken threat to send her back to her miserable life, and a veiled reference to what she’d probably had on her mind since I started rubbing her back. That hadn’t been why I’d done it, any more than Ramona had sexual inclinations towards me in rubbing mine. But I had done it.

Emotions warred on Andi’s shy face for a moment. In the end, they actuated in exactly the way I’d thought they would. “Up to something? Something like what…?” A knowing giggle. She couldn’t say those things, but she could giggle about them.

“Nothing you’re old enough to hear about,” I quipped. Keeping it light was key. I wasn’t going to let her get hurt. Just some harmless fun.

“I turned eighteen in January!” she protested with a laugh, shoving my chest playfully. Her hand lingered a bit.

“I tell you what, Andi, when you decide you’re ready to put yourself back out there, you are going to absolutely destroy the men of Lakeview.”

I hadn’t phrased it well, but she took on a sly smile. “Destroy? How do you mean?”

“I mean…” I shook my head, avoided looking at her. It wasn’t easy with her sitting facing me, so close our knees were touching. “I’m sorry. I’m not supposed to notice, but you are seriously, seriously attractive.”

If she’d wanted to smile any bigger, she’d need a second mouth. “Really?”

“I’m ‘really’ not supposed to notice,” I stressed. “Sucks to be the only guy on campus who’s not allowed to flirt with you.”

“Are you really not allowed? Like, why not? What if you really like someone?” She blushed, but smiled no less brightly. “I don’t mean me or anything. But, you know. Like Casey or Leigh or somebody.”

Apt choices; I could have almost certainly fucked either of those two if I knocked on their door and said hi. No time for that now. In the reflection of my closet mirror I could see it was 12:03. Right now, Vickie and whoever she was on duty with would be counting out the register at the center desk, closing down the computer lab.

“It’s really a no exceptions kind of thing. Wouldn’t want some RA using his ‘phenomenal cosmic power’ in their itty bitty living space to take advantage of somebody.”

The Aladdin quote landed. Instead of pondering the murky ethics of a petty dictator RA bullying someone into sexual favors, she giggled at my feeble imitation of the inimitable. “OK, but like, what if the resident said they were all right with it?”

“Not sure that’d matter much when it got to the RA’s boss, unfortunately.”

Andi seized my hands earnestly. “What if the resident promised they would never, ever tell anyone? What if she was really, really good at keeping secrets?” Like that, the hypothetical of it was over. It was an offer. A request, even.

“Andi, I… Wow. Don’t get me wrong. I want to. I do. I’m hating myself for saying anything other than ‘well OK then sounds good to me.’”

“You could. I promise. It would be just between us. Hand to god.”

“I believe you. I do. But still, that’s not the main reason it wouldn’t be right. You’re hurting, and you’re lonely. I couldn’t take advantage of that.”

“But—”

“Andi, come on. You made it pretty clear you’re looking for a boyfriend, and I can’t be that, even if I were looking for a relationship, which to be totally honest, I’m not.”

“Well sure, but—”

12:07. Probably on their way down to the loading dock by now; counting out the drawer didn’t take long.

“Don’t get me wrong. You’re beautiful, you’re sweet, you’re all around great. But for now, why don’t we put a bookmark in whatever we’re both feeling and starting tomorrow, I’ll make it my mission to help you find yourself a guy who deserves you.”

“What if I already found one?”

I gave her a rueful shake of the head. “See? There’s that sweetness. But I’m serious. We’ve had an amazing time tonight, but when the light of day returns and I’m keeping my promise to be your wingman, we’re both going to hate me if we do anything tonight.”

“No. I could never hate you.” We were already touching, but somehow she scooted even closer. “Hear me out, OK? I’m tired of feeling lonely, and ugly, and sad. Tonight is the first time since I came here that I was actually happy I did. I don’t want to spend another night crying into my pillow while Jean yells at me to keep it quiet. I like you. You said you think I’m, you know, um, attractive. Pretty.”

“I did say that, I suppose. Still…”

“I’m not asking you to be my boyfriend. I don’t wanna get you in trouble or anything. I promise, I won’t say a word. And I’ll be really good to you! I’d do whatever you want, I don’t care. I just want to be with somebody who makes me feel good about myself. There’s nothing to feel bad about.”

I noticed it was 12:10, and felt bad about noticing. They’d be typing up the rounds log to summarize the night’s activity, so the primary on duty could finish it up after midnight rounds. All I had to do was wait for the sound of that heavy RA duty key ring jingling down the hall, and I could kick Andi out right in time for Savannah to wonder what Vickie had promised not to tell her about. Remind her that I could, if and when I chose, and then shut my door in her beautiful face. That was all. A few more minutes.

“You really make it hard to say no, you know.”

She grinned. “So say yes. Pleeeease? I’ll be so good to you, and so quiet.”

This was not the plan. I could still say no. I could. I unquestionably should. I had to. Fuck! Fucking fuck. FUCK. “I can’t, Andi. I’m sorry. But I can’t. You can tell me it wouldn’t be taking advantage until you’re blue in the face, but I’d know better. I’m sorry. So very, very sorry.”

FUCK! Fucking ethics, fucking Savannah, fucking Ramona, fucking hot sweet redheads begging me to let them do anything I wanted! FUUUUUUUUUUUUUU—

“Let me suck your cock, at least? Please? I, um, really, really like giving blowjobs. Pretty pretty please?”

Apparently I was a sucker for please’s.

For the first time in my life—maybe in recorded history—a woman thanked a man for consenting to receive a blowjob. Once I gave her that slightest nod, she wasted no time at all tearing into my underpants. Andi wasn’t content to simply unzip and get to work; she took my shorts all the way off, tossed them across the room and pounced on my cock with so much enthusiasm it launched her glasses down to the very tip of her nose, barely hanging on. I could actually feel the frames brushing against my slick shaft as she bobbed.

Her eyes locked on mine over those rims, monitoring for my satisfaction. No different than when we’d been merely conversing, they were an easy read. They were saying that she saw this as an audition. If she sucked my cock skillfully enough, freely enough, worshipfully enough, maybe I would change my mind. There was no going back now. You couldn’t tell a girl in the middle of pouring out her heart along with her saliva onto your cock that you’d really meant it about not being available for a relationship. Now, there was nothing left to do but give the girl a good night and then make good on my word later.

She was hella enthused about sucking the cum out of me. Frankly, I wasn’t worried about landing her a new beau.

I unloaded in her mouth right as my alarm clock ticked 12:16. Not impressive staying power, but it would be a rare woman who minded a blowjob running short. Fruits of skipping my evening jerkoff and instead spending hours and hours adjacent to a dress plainly disinterested in covering the ass of its wearer. She might not be the chestiest Hottie on Higgins 3, but man, DAT ass, as the Delta Alpha Theta girls happily advertised on their infamous sweatpants. She seemed surprised somehow, dribbling my spunk out of the corner of her mouth down onto her dress.

The center desk was closed. Vickie and the other secondary would be starting rounds at Higgins Basement any moment now. Some people hurried through the last set of rounds to get to bed. Some people dawdled, letting their tiredness get to them. I’d been on rounds with Vickie several times, enough to know she was the second sort. Vickie, who thought she was doing me a favor by not telling my business to Savannah. Who had probably told her within minutes of walking away from my door.

“Can I return the favor?” I tried to sound eager, but not too eager. Not that I wasn’t eager. I was. Ordinarily, though, I liked to take my time with such intimate things. Bestow due gratitude, and if I liked the girl, maybe cuddle a bit before diving back in. Make a night of it, not a quick sweaty half hour. Tonight, though, there was no such time.

“You mean, you want to…?” She glanced anxiously at her crotch. “Or, I mean, obviously you don’t want to, but like, you mean, do I want you to…?”

“I want to,” I assured her. Good lord, this girl. I’d have to be very careful who I delivered her to.

“Oh. I mean, yeah. That would be… You don’t have to, you know. I didn’t just do, you know, that, to get you to… that.”

“I’m not paying a debt, Andi.” It was tricky displaying patience. “I really want to. If you don’t want me to, that’s fine, but don’t be coy on my account.”

“Oh. Sorry, my boyfriend—my ex-boyfriend—always thought that was gross. He said it was something only lesbos did.”

I waggled my shaft in the air. It was already regaining steam. “Do I look like a lesbian?”

She giggled, amused by the attempt at levity, but also pleased to see I still had some fight in me. “Oh. Wow. You’re already… wow. You know, um, if you wanted, we could…” She took a deep breath. Licked her lips. There was still cum clinging to them, a glistening sheen. “We could, you know… do it. It, I mean.” Another deep breath. “Sex. You could have sex with me, if you want. I want you to, that is. Like, I’ve kind of wanted you to all night, but I felt like it would be too slutty to say it.”

12:20.

I couldn’t. The blowjob was bad enough, but that was too much. Trying not to look over at my desk where the heap of Bob’s condoms filled every empty space, I lied in the hopes she only had eyes for me. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have any protection, unfortunately.”

“That’s OK. I have an IUD. My boyfriend—ugh, I mean my ex—he liked to do it to me. Like, a lot.” To her? “So my sister took me. It hurt a little, but then I didn’t have to worry, so that was good. Anyway, yeah, if you want to just come in me, you can. It’s cool beans by me.”

The more she talked, the more fucked up she sounded, and weirdly, the more I thought that girlfriend Andi didn’t sound so bad. Clearly not brain thoughts, though. No, those sentiments bore the fingerprint of another organ entirely.

Still, I believed her. I was paranoid about such things usually, sometimes to the point of offending my partner. When Marisa told me how many people she’d been with, I’d actually taken some convincing to add my name to the list. Andi, though, was not capable of straight-faced lying to me, nor perpetrating a ruse of this length and magnitude in some bizarre scheme to get pregnant off of me. She wanted sex.

Or, to put it in her terms, she wanted to Do It, and if I felt like coming in her, ya know, cool beans. Why the hell did a cool beans fuck sound so goddamn appealing right then? Eyes darting, looking for any excuse to say no, they instead found their answer to that question in the pile of casually abandoned tops from last night’s program piled up on my desk chair.

“OK.”

“Yeah?” she brightened, though only for a moment. “Do you want me to go change into something, you know, cuter? My underwear is really bleh today. I wasn’t figuring anybody would see it, so… But yeah, I’d be happy to. Oh, I could put on my Higgins Hotties shirt!”

12:22.

“I was hoping you wouldn’t be wearing anything much longer, actually.”

Andi giggled almost manically, flushed with pleasure. “OK. Do you, um, want me to… get naked? For you? I mean of course for you, who else, duh. But I mean, I’ll take my dress off, if you want. And, um, the rest. Just don’t get mad if you don’t like it…?”

“I promise, nothing you could do right now would make me mad.” Man, if I ever saw that ex of hers, he was going to get one hell of a firm escort out of our community. “I can’t wait.”

“Oh! Sorry, right, I didn’t mean to make you impatient!” She hopped up. I didn’t bother telling her that’s not what I’d meant. Her hands trembling with excitement, she struggled to get the buttons undone down the front of her. Andi seemed anxious that I wasn’t smiling, but really, I was simply transfixed. After a moment, she grunted in frustration and simply hauled the thing off over her head.

I learned two things at that moment. One, that Andi had been right about her underwear. Plain gray, a little baggy, and worse, on a body that would be easy to flatter with a tighter fit. Two, as she hastily arched her back to unclasp her bra, I learned that I had been wrong about her breasts. Those weren’t breasts at all. They were tits.

“What…?” she asked as my head tilted. When had I stood up? When had I crossed the room toward her?

“How were you hiding those…?” I shook my head in disbelief. I wasn’t a boob man, strictly speaking, but I suppose I liked big boobs as much as the average guy. Andi’s weren’t big, per se, but they were perfect. Round, soft, smooth, barely jiggling tits. Tits like they were fresh off the assembly line at the perfect tit factory.

“Oh, Spencer!”

Huh. I hadn’t realized I was moving until suddenly I felt a tight, wet warmth wrapped around my cock. I’d spun her around, evidently so I had the luxury of holding her upright by those mouth-watering handholds of hers. Her face slumped against the wall, or the closet or door or wherever I’d driven her. Her glasses clacked against the surface, bending and nearly falling off. Then I fucked her harder, as hard as I felt like it because she’d told me I could, and they dropped to the floor.

I was fresh off of an orgasm, so I was primed to take my time about it. To enjoy myself until I finished Doing It To her and Cool Beans jizzed in her if I wanted to. Andi, on the other hand, seemed to have been bottling up a lot of her sexual energy of late, because in less than a minute I was the only thing holding her up as she shuddered, gasped, and clawed at the dozens of layers of paint on the cinder block walls as she almost immediately began to climax.

“I’m coming!” she squeaked.

I gave her ass a slap. What? Since when was I the kind of guy who smacked a girl’s ass while I plowed her from behind? Since when any of this? “Don’t stop, Andi. Let yourself go. I’ve got you now. I’ve got you.”

“Oh gosh oh gosh oh gawwwwwsh!” She really did follow orders. She was a slender thing, but suddenly most of that slender body was entirely being held up by yours truly as she thrashed.

“Come for me, Andi.”

“I’m coming!”

Another slap. “Don’t stop. You’re doing so good. Don’t stop now. Don’t ever stop.” Had I ever been this talkative during sex this intense? It was like all the pent-up horniness I’d been stuffing down these past weeks was erupting out of me all at once in all manner of unpredictable outlets.

Andi whimpered. I could feel her dribbling around my shaft. I’d never felt a pussy this wet before. It was like fucking a stick of butter. Except the stick of butter had incredible tits and said things like “if you want to come in me, cool beans.”

Or, more precisely, it was saying, “I’m coming! Coming, coming, coming, coming, coming…!”

On a typical night, rounds took about twenty minutes from start to finish. On a Friday night, Higgins was less populated but the portion of that population present was more prone to sociable behavior. Call it an average of plus one minute per floor. Vickie was prone to chitchat, so double the increase. With a ground and basement floor before the numbers started, I was on the fifth floor of six, room 310, my room, being roughly halfway down that floor, so call it 4.5 out of 6 floors. Thirty-two minutes, times 75% of the path to be walked, plus two minutes for the Korean kid who always needed to be asked to leave the computer lab by the center desk, and…

The door swung open.

We were right next to it, I realized, Andi’s soft pretty face smushed sideways against the wall, my hands pinned against it by her tits right by the light switch.

“Hey, Spencer, I—WHOA!!!”

Only it wasn’t Vickie. It was Savannah.

“What are you doing?!” I shrieked.

“She said come in!”

“She said she’s com-ing!”

“Oh gawsh and I still am! Oh gosh oh gosh oh gosh…”

A voice from further down the hall just reached my ears over the slicky wet sounds of me fucking Andi. “Who’s coming…?” Apparently my cock had decided I wasn’t going to stop simply because there was an audience.

“Shut the door!”

Savannah shut it. In her panic, she shut herself inside.

Savannah gaped.

Andi came.

Me? I was an overachiever. I managed both.

Then I stumbled back, and… oops. “Sorry, Savannah.”