Alistaire at USC: Orientation

Welcome to Alistaire's college years! For new readers, this is Chapter One, but in what is Book Four of this character's adventures. You might want to go back and start from the very beginning, but you might not. You do you.

Sorry this took so long, but this is the longest segment of all the Alistaire Cycle, and spans the longest period of time. More new partners just kept stepping up as I wrote, and Alistaire also has a variety of recurring partners who had things to say and do as well. Also, Alistaire started out as my take on the shy nerd with a humongous scepter trope, but he has largely outgrown his own trope, and it takes some balance to make sure he is still the same person, only evolved. I hope you find that I've done a good job with the whole thing! I intend for there to be some surprises, and some chapters that stem from popular demand as well. On with the show!

As with all my work, always remember, that I'm not trying to be realistic. I simply aspire to the plausibly ridiculous. Go with me on this.

By the way, sometimes you write yourself into a corner. I had never intended to write about Alistaire's college years, so I did not hide the name of USC. If you attended the University of Southern California, I apologize in advance. I have only so much as set foot on that campus once, and my memories are hazy. I doubt my depiction of USC will ring true if you have attended there. Sorry!

For everyone else, this is EXACTLY what USC is like!

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The One During Orientation

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When the summer ended, and college finally beckoned, the hardest woman to say goodbye to was, of course, my mother. An 18, almost 19 year-old guy should not snivel when he hugs his freaking mom goodbye. Mom is a good solid foot shorter than me and I felt like I was bending in half to hug her. She probably felt my tears, darn her.

"Let the boy go, Sophia," my dad rumbled in fond amusement. "We have to get in a lot of miles today. And I want a hug too!"

I reluctantly let go of Mom, and she turned to my Dad. "Please, Dennis! Don't rush my goodbye with my baby boy! You are the one who wanted to wait until after rush hour to get on the road!"

Dad held out his arms to her, ignoring her sally. But Mom smiled and dodged away. "And you got your 'squeezing' already this morning! Get in the car, you two!"

Did I hear fucking air quotes around 'squeezing'?

Oh, God. Suddenly, I could not separate my parents fast enough.

Rather than endure their inevitable smooch which was coming as soon as she was done enjoying her 'joke', I went out to my car. (My Car! Fuck, yeah.) I slid in behind the wheel, because even though I knew my dad would do the majority of the driving of my laden vehicle, I was by God going to start and finish each day's travel behind the wheel.

Dad followed me out and hopped in the passenger seat. Mom was right behind him. He rolled down the window for her and she leaned in to deliver one last, lingering kiss of the sort I was absolutely never going to be comfortable with them enjoying in front of me. The two of them had internalized my discomfort and were now flat-out making out in front of me regularly.

I could not get going quickly enough.

"Say hi to Owen for me," Dad said, as their lips parted. "Is he there the whole time?"

"No, I only need him for a day, so he will stay just the one night," Mom replied. "I'll tell him to swing by and take you golfing soon."

"Thanks. Now go catch your own flight, Dear," Dad said. "And bring home the bacon!"

"I always do," Mom said easily, stepping back.

"Love you, Mom!" I called, then started backing out before she and Dad could decide to get amorous again.

I was pretty comfortable with my new car by now, and I smoothly headed for the highway. The nav was on but I hardly needed it for the start of the trip. It was a four-day drive out to Los Angeles, but we were going to give ourselves five for the trip. When Dad had seen that we would make a natural overnight stop in Flagstaff, AZ, he excitedly insisted that we spend a whole extra day there. The city is right by the Grand Canyon, and it turned out that my father had never seen the big hole.

Neither had I, of course, but it amazed me that he had never visited. That said, I was as excited as he was to see the incredible wonder.

But between our house and Flagstaff, and from there on to LA, there was a whole lot of, um, America to get through. Amber waves of grain can get tedious fast. Even purple mountains' majesty gets old in between new reveals.

Dad had plenty of work to do on his laptop while I drove. He had spent a lot of time with the chief judge of his circuit, learning the ropes of how a judge can manage to take a week's vacation without using a week's vacation. He even held three meetings on the first day in virtual 'chambers' via Zoom. But there were still a few times on the trip when I think he regretted not bringing even more work. Airlines make us forget how freaking big America is.

I had my Freshman Summer Reading to help pass the miles when Dad was taking his turns behind the wheel. I had intended all along to hoard those books for the trip out, despite occasionally tart commentary from my mom. The fact that I had better uses for my free time when I was still at home, like having sex with Mary... or Maddie, or their mom Jessica, or Charlotte, or Carrie, had nothing to do with putting off the tedious, boring books.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

But fending off tedious, boring hours of drive time with tedious, boring books turned out not to be the sound plan I had envisioned. I had a lot of time to think. To remember.

But as I said, Dad also ran out of work pretty soon, and this all meant that there was a lot of free time for us to talk.

Mostly, this was great. Dad and I have a lot of the same interests. He got me into many of them, after all. We solved the problems of the Braves' iffy season several times over, and even listened to a day game that was on while I drove. We were less successful in solving all the problems of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The MCU needs a lot more than just a right-handed middle reliever and a left-handed bat.

But I kept waiting for the hammer to fall. Dad had not mentioned girls once on the trip yet, and that was very much unlike the gleefully torturous man I had lived with all summer long. I waited and waited. And he just seemed more inclined to nap or be otherwise bored, than to bring it up.

It was making me nervous.

"I'm surprised you aren't peppering me with more questions, Dad," I said at last, unable to bear the waiting.

"Questions about what?" the man asked mildly, with an innocence that he had not possessed since he was two.

And maybe not then...

I was not prepared for that reply.

"I... uh... well, like classes," I temporized. "I mean, neither you nor Mom have even asked me what classes I'm taking."

Dad looked at me and shrugged. "That is for a bunch of reasons. Mostly because we both know you will have to have a bunch of required classes this year that we don't want to talk about because they will bore us to tears just hearing about them."

"Yeah, but," I started uncertainly. Now that I mentioned it, this was weird. All my friends had bitched and moaned about one or both parents arguing with them about every minutia of class selection.

"Alistaire, for the record," Dad went on, "your mother and I have left you alone on the class selection thing because you don't need us. You may not have noticed, but we mostly left you on your own for class selection in high school too, since your freshman year. You have mentioned several times that you like the academic advisor that USC has assigned you, so you obviously don't feel that you need our help. And this is your first semester. If you mess up and select a class or even two that you won't need, you have plenty of time to maneuver around that. You have four years, at least."

"Thanks," I said, a little taken aback and a little flattered.

"I have kept forgetting to ask how much credit they finally deigned to award you for all those AP tests you aced," he mused.

I smiled. "I know, and it has been pissing me off that you haven't asked about it," I said. Then I preened, "I am three credits short of being a sophomore right now."

"Really?" he asked with a surprised smile. "Beats the hell out of what I earned way back when. So that means you have even more room to waste some credits on mistake classes." He paused. "Or fun, useless classes you just want to take anyway. Don't be afraid to take some of those during your time out there. You need to learn for learning's sake some of the time."

He paused. "That said, I'd appreciate you not deliberately wasting time either. There are a bunch of vacation spots and cruises your mom and I would love to spend our money on if you could shave off an unnecessary semester or three's worth of tuition."

"I'll see what I can do," I said drily.

Yeah, right. USC was going to be awesome. No way was I going to fuck up and let myself graduate early!

"Any other questions I'm supposed to be asking?" Dad asked. He was looking away from me out the side window at some absolutely riveting grain silos, but I could hear the smile on his evil face.

I realized that he was giving me a gift. He was not going to tease me over girls. He wasn't even going to perv about them.

I love my dad.

But the thing was, now that I had steeled myself to bite the bullet and unleash him on myself... I kind of wanted to talk.

"I would love to go on at length about Football Saturdays, movie star sightings, and maybe the smog, all to keep you off of your damned agenda," I snapped somehow airily. Then I paused. "But I actually have some thoughts on the subject of women that I'd... kind of like some help working out."

I could feel that eyebrow shoot up. I was betting that a bunch of lawyers were already coming to hate that eyebrow. But my father, who, again, never lets a lull in the conversation go unfilled, just sat there stone silent and waited.

Fuck.

I sighed. "Even back in December, when I was first accepted into USC, I... I just expected life when I got there to be more of the same, only awesomer. Last winter, before, well, things started happening... I was just happily expecting to have some nerd bros to hang out with, the chance to play some great games, and a football team to watch that didn't suck, along with an incredible selection of classes to sink my teeth into. And hopefully, a whole raft of good-looking California blondes to stare at from afar."

He snorted.

I looked at him with a shrug.

God-dammit! That had been a pretty smug shrug. The glint in his eye told me I would regret the smugness at some point, but not immediately. He wanted to hear me talk. I wasn't sure if that was a great thing or not, but I appreciated it.

"Then, since, um, spring break," I went on with a deep breath, meaning since I had stormed past my virginity like the entire allied army on D-Day, "I have been assuming that I will remove any distance between myself and said blondes... along with a number of brunettes, and etc. I have been quite looking forward to doing so, in fact. The couple of days we spent out there for orientation last month had me casually salivating." I stopped talking.

The sonofabitch still just sat there and listened.

"But now, as I drive this car west, each mile I get closer to this shit getting real, I'm getting nervous."

"First," my dad said, his voice amused, with a measure of torture waiting in the wings, "it is refreshing that you are talking about this while not still pretending that you aren't getting laid by every gorgeous thing you encounter. But more to the point, are you feeling some insecurity about women out there being willing to get with you?" Dad asked. I wasn't sure if he was prompting me or speculating.

I looked at him.

Without even meaning to, I had had our server at dinner the prior night blushing... happily. I could see that he remembered this as well. I had thought he was going to draw blood from biting his tongue at the time.

"I kind of doubt that will be my problem," I admitted heavily. "But every single girl I've... been with has been a friend," with one exception, "and we both knew from the beginning that anything between us had a hard ending coming fast. Two, maybe three, months was the longest any of us expected to be together. Nothing was going to matter in the long term for any of us, so everything was easy for all of us. Now, at USC..." I took a deep breath, "now, I will be there for four years. Four years. And I'll be living in California, probably LA, after that. Everything will have consequences. For a long time. Longer than I can forsee... maybe."

"Mmm," my dad mused quietly. "It is worse than that, you know."

"It is?" I almost yelped. "How?" Whatever he was going to say was not going to be reassuring, but I figured I had better hear it.

"What was the student body at your school?" he asked. "A little over 500 kids? That meant that the entire potential pool for your... friendships was maybe 65 senior girls?" That brought him up short as he said it. "Damn, you got with nearly ten percent of your class?" he muttered, more to himself.

Almost. It did seem a rather large share, now that I pondered the math. Then I stopped pondering as Dad went on.

"But there are, what, 20,000 plus undergrads at USC? All around of more than age? That is 200 times more girls than you had to deal with in Connecticut; at a school notorious for the attractiveness of its student body. It won't be as tightly knit a group, of course, so you will have to work harder to find the good ones for you, but you will be desperately spoiled for choice, boy."

I took my eyes off the road to frown at him. "Dad," I tried to growl.

"Moreover, there will be at least that many grad students as well, not to mention at least a segment of the faculty, staff, etc," he went on gleefully.

"Dad!"

"Don't knock older women 'til you've tried them, kid," Dad said, letting himself relax back in the passenger seat. "I had several girlfriends who were older than me, back before your mother. Two were a lot older." The bastard's eyes rolled up in reminiscence. "To paraphrase Ben Franklin: Five stars, would recommend," he chortled.

"Dad!"

"I suppose it is better that you didn't find that out with Poppy's mom, on your beach sexcation this summer," he went on grinning evilly. "But it is still too bad. She was a dish..."

"Dad!" I practically wailed.

Then I got very uneasy as his body posture froze. Worse, I saw his right index finger twitch back and forth like he was paging through an invisible book. It is a tic he has. Dad in no way has a photographic memory, but he is creepy good at remembering anything resembling 'testimony', even years later. He was reviewing something I had said at some point.

"Sonofabitch!" he exclaimed, looking at me with a slightly outraged grin. "You did score the Manning woman! You threw me off with that line that you had enough with Poppy. Well done, kid!"

"I don't know that it is some kind of accomplishment," I grumbled.

"Oh, I'm sure she was a helluvan accomplishment," Dad chortled. "But I was referring to the accomplishment of managing to throw me off the scent! Well played, Al!"

Christ...

I was allowed to drive in peace for almost two whole minutes.

It was peaceful, but not restful. I could feel him percolating next to me. Suddenly he turned in the seat toward me almost eagerly. "God knows I don't want any details of your activity, but how the hell did you survive intact? I mean, I cannot imagine you pulled that off without the daughter catching on..."

Okay. This long-ass road trip was looking like it was about to get even longer if Dad got rolling with questions. Simply shutting up and refusing to answer was just not an option with my father. Neither was deflection, now that my gambit was exposed.

Maybe I could make him want to stop...

"Well," I drawled, "when Poppy caught the two of us in bed, the fallout kind of made global thermonuclear war seem like a good idea. She screamed, 'You stuck that in my mother!' and ran out of the room. Took her three days to come back to the house."

Dad barked in laughter, then sobered. "One, please tell me that you and the daughter are good now, right? I'm sure you would have been in a less ebullient mood upon your return if you had permanently messed things up. And where did she go for three days while 800 miles from home?"

I looked blandly over at my dad. "Oh, I'm sorry!" I replied, with all the innocence I could muster, which was pretty much none. "That whole disaster happened back in early May, while I was still at school. It was before Poppy and I ever actually got together ourselves, though I had certainly already begun trying to make that happen."

I returned my gaze to the road tranquilly.

Well, that shut him up!

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

One mile marker passed on the highway. One. Fucking. Mile. Marker.

"While at prep school, at boarding school, you nailed what has to be the hottest mom in your class other than your own?" my dad asked, less incredulously than I thought was warranted. "And then you managed to get with her daughter even after she found out?"

Own it. Don't back down. I just stared him in the eye for an unsafely long amount of time, wordlessly.

Then the old man whipped out his phone and started paying attention to it instead of torturing me. I dimly perceived he was typing on it as I barreled down the highway at 50 smugs an hour over the smug limit.

He didn't usually type on his phone that extensively, and I became apprehensively curious. "What are you up to?" I asked at last, as he chortled while typing.

"Nothing," he said, a smile in his voice, despite his admirable poker face. "I'm just texting your mother..."

"Dad!"

"Come on, Al," he just snorted, pausing to read something and bark a laugh. "Your mom got away with some shit when she was your age, but that little tale can match her best."

"Dad!"

He typed away. "She says 'Bravo,' by the way."

"We are approaching a city, Dad. There are once again overpasses for me to slam this car into," I said in a pained voice.

He just chuckled some more and shut up. But he was still texting.

I basked in the silence while simultaneously regretting trying to go alpha on my dad.

Then I opened my mouth again, because I am stupid. But I also still had questions, and how much worse could this all get, anyway?

Right?

"And that is something else I worry about," I said hesitantly. "I mean, I have a lot of friends that still mean a lot to me. What if I ever want to get married or something? I don't want to have to... lose them as a part of my life. Not that I'd want to keep, um, with... you know!" I added hastily. "I just meant as... um... just friends."

My dad looked at me again, smiling... proudly? "I'm glad to hear you thinking like that, even if it is likely a question for far in the future. My answer is, you probably need not worry. Of all my old girlfriends, I am still friends with only two. Just friends, of course. And with those, I'm friends with their husbands, too. I don't think you've met any of them," Dad trailed off musing. He thought for a moment, probably remembering things. "But your situation later in life will likely be much more analogous to your mother's, since you are more analogous right now to the way she lived. She is still friends with all sorts of guys from her past," he went on bemusedly.

Uh oh... I did not need further information about my mother's early sex life.

Before I could cut Dad off, he went on.

"Mostly those guys are sort of there, in the background. She will get the occasional text, or they might have a drink with us if we are in the same town. But a few men are still good friends of hers, others are valued business associates. Some are both. Take Owen for example..."