Alistaire at USC: SNAFU

There was a vicious, ungrateful, and unfair complaint (I kid) about the last chapter, in that it had no sex. This one should make up for that, I hope. It is also longer, for those of you yelling about, "Moar Alistaire!" But remember, this series is in part about consequences. Alistaire will come to understand that there are consequences, good and bad, to all his sexual history.

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Situation Normal: Al Fucks as Usual

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I had to tell my mother and father about Liz eventually. Worse, I realized that I would have to call them. Somehow, I figured that a quick text along the lines of, 'Yo, Mom and Dad. You remember Liz? My first girlfriend who I was with most of the semester but whom I largely forgot about over Thanksgiving break, except whenever you asked about her? Yeah, about all that. We are done.'

They would just call me instantly anyway, but at a time I could not control.

But I was not eager to talk to them by voice because they would hear me. Hear my voice. I would have to control myself very carefully, or I would find them dragging out of me the fact that she had dumped me with my dick still inside of her. Then they would drag out of me how the fight went. My mom is a huge Taylor Swift fan, and she would end up siding with goddamned Liz...

With Dave off watching an NFL game somewhere, I sat in my room, took a deep breath, and called Dad. I knew they'd be home and together.

Hopefully not too together...

I heard one more ring than I had expected, but the fact that Dad answered with the phone already on speakerphone mode explained the delay. "Hey, son," he rumbled quietly. "Your mom is here with me. How are you? Is something the matter?"

"Huh? No, uh, well..." I replied, caught off guard. "What makes you think something is wrong?" I temporized, still not wanting this conversation, but now realizing how much I truly needed it.

"You called your father, not me," Mom's voice came through loud and clear, and with a note of caution under her amusement at me not expecting her to know everything already. "And your weekly call to me to provide proof of life while you are away comes on Wednesdays. What is up, baby boy?"

"Liz du... Liz and I broke up," I said sadly. I berated myself. I needed to speak slower and choose my words more carefully before I said them.

There was a pause on the other end. I heard my mother grumble something I couldn't make out. Dad made a small sound of triumph.

Wait a minute...

"Mom! Dad! Did Dad bet you that Liz and I were going to break up?" I asked heatedly. "Real nice, Dad! At least you had some faith in me, Mom."

"That wasn't quite the bet, dear," Mom said, a little sheepishly. Mom doesn't do sheepish. "What I bet your father was, the two of you would not make it until Christmas break."

"What? I can't believe you two thought so little of me."

"For the record," Dad replied with an awful, somehow compassionate laugh in his voice. "I won the second bet that she'd be the one who broke it off with you."

"I didn't say that happened," I protested.

"Please, you cut yourself off," Mom said. "Besides, I know she pulled the trigger, not you. If you had been the one to end it, you would have called us for advice before you did so."

That wasn't true! I'd have called Maddie and Charlotte. Or maybe my track chix...

No, I'd have definitely called my parents, damn them.

"So, what? You give each other ten bucks for each winning a bet?" I asked sulkily. And very, very unwisely.

There was a horrendous pause.

"Do not, for the sake of all that is good and holy, tell me the stakes of those bets!" I yelped desperately. They both laughed.

My parents are the absolute best, but they can kinda be psycho monsters when they want to.

But they heard the pain in my voice; the underlying pain of the breakup. No, the pain of having failed. Failed Liz, and failed myself. I realized that losing the relationship itself didn't hurt much.

But that realization did.

"I am sorry, Alistaire," my mother said genuinely contritely. "I know this can be difficult." She paused. "Actually, I don't know firsthand. I've never had a breakup."

"What?"

"Your father is my first boyfriend. If he keeps playing his card right, I may never have a breakup," she almost giggled. "Seriously, Dennis, I think Alistaire was right to dial your number, not mine."

"You said you had a lot of girlfriends, right Dad?" I asked, hoping for some actual advice at last, not the goat rodeo this call had been thus far.

Dad paused. "Yes, though if I had it to do over again, I'd have tried to do things your mom's way. I'd have likely failed, but I'd have tried. Liz aside, the way you have been living your life, just like the way your mother lived hers, is an almost impossible balancing act. You must have inherited whatever mutant gene your mother has that made it all work."

"But even if I couldn't do things your way, I would never do them my way, if I could do it all over," my dad said seriously. "I was a serial monogamist."

"What's actually wrong with that?" I asked. "I like what happens in my life, but most people I know do just have one partner at a time, and try to make that work. Sometimes they do."

"While I was technically faithful to every woman I was ever with," Dad said almost sadly, "I was never truly faithful to any of them. To me back then, a relationship was just a period of time where a girl was available to me sexually whenever I wanted... or she wanted. When that period ended, I went on to the next girl. I never for one second thought I loved any of those women, and never much wanted to. Did you think you loved Liz?"

"No," I admitted. "And no, it never much bothered me at the time, either."

Yeah. I sucked.

"Well, you are a better man than I was, given that you are still upset enough about the breakup to call us for advice," Dad said... approvingly? "Look, breakups hurt, whether you are doing the dumping or getting dumped. My problem was, I barely gave a damn within hours, a day at most. That is because by the time things ended I almost always had the next partner lined up, whether she knew it or not."

"Yeah," I mused unhappily. If I were being honest with myself, I was already missing sex with Liz more than being with Liz.

"There is nothing wrong with moving on, dear," Mom put in.

"Yes," Dad agreed. "But if were I you, I would avoid moving on straight to another relationship like I would have. That way just leaves a trail on unhappy people. There is a reason that your mom is still actively friends with about twenty ex-lovers, while only two of the women from my life besides your mother will have anything to do with me."

So, go back to being me before Liz.

I could live with that. But I still felt a bit like a failure.

"You'll be fine, boy," my dad said, optimistically feeling that I was set to rights. "You learned a lot here about relationships, and that is fine. Don't run from them, though. Some day, in a year or a decade, you will meet a woman whose soul is the other half of yours. You don't want to run away from her just to avoid being a couple on general principles."

"Thanks," I said, almost surlily. I could appreciate what Dad had said, but I didn't have to feel good about myself because of it. And I definitely did not like Dad coming off as anything other than awesome.

Surely he hadn't been as bad as he said.

"We will let you go," he went on casually. "I do regret not having any excuse to come see you out there any time soon, though. I'd love to get a look at the team you end up assembling to ease your pain!"

He was way fucking worse than he said...

*

Dave and I got along great, but, well... I had gotten used to having my own space, what with having had a single dorm room as a senior back at prep school. I found that I sometimes needed some regular time with no one in my face, be it for studying or just scrolling TikTok. Over the course of the first semester, I found myself gravitating to a nearby campus coffee shop called Café Annenberg when I needed to get out of our room. It was always a good spot to grab a small, two-seat table by myself to drink a cup of Oolong and reset my social energy. I'd sit there for an hour, studying or just scrolling TikTok.

During the short run of classes between Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks, there was more studying than scrolling going on. That Tuesday afternoon, I had two textbooks and my notes in front of me. I was also on a second cup of tea and reflecting that, even busy with classes as I was, I was beginning to notice a significant absence of sexual activity. I had mostly made my peace with being dumped by Liz and had begun to come to grips that maybe the worst part of it was that we had taken so long to part. But damn, Liz had been very, very good in bed...

I took a moment for fond reminiscence. Not about Liz, but about what awesome sexual apparatuses beds were. How had I survived six weeks of sex before I tried a bed for the first time?

I had reached out to her, but via text because I am a coward. I just wanted to apologize again for my lack of commitment.

LIZ: I'm feeling better, Alistaire, but I need to apologize too. More than you. I did the dumping, and the way I did it was super trash

I snorted.

ME: Actually, the way you did it was borderline awesome, in retrospect...

There was a pause, and I immediately regretted being flippant. Before I could apologize again, she replied.

LIZ: Please don't ever change

I shook my head, and made myself put away my phone before I opened TikTok, or God forbid, X.

But instead of studying, I just sort of woolgathered.

My little flex in the faces of my D&D buddies, and their reactions, made me quite sure that I would be able to move on and find some excellent friends of the best kind, with a little care. But none of that would happen soon, because there were only two and a half weeks until Christmas break, and I would spend that with my parents in Telluride. I really had no time to chat up any fresh prospects.

I was just satisfying my brain with the image of potential snow bunnies, and thoughts on how to meet them over the break, when I was interrupted by Hannah's voice over my shoulder.

"Hey, Alistaire! Um, can I use your other seat? It looks a little crowded in here and I don't want to take up a table for myself if I don't have to," she said, book bag in one hand, and an obscenely large coffee in the other.

"Sure! Take the other seat," I said brightly, gesturing to the other side of my table. I sort of wished that I had not, honestly. Being alone was my current vibe. But I had already been dimly aware that the joint was filling up, open seats were becoming rare, and I sure as hell was not going to insult a friend by so much as even hesitating.

I also wished that she wasn't sitting down at my table because I was feeling horny, remember? Hannah was cute as hell and was thus going to do absolutely nothing to alleviate that horniness. And she also was not the kind of friend who would fix my horniness, if you take my meaning. She wore a light blue alligator logo shirt that fit snugly enough to remind the world that her tits might not be big, but they were there, and they were enchanting. "What are you studying?" I asked to forestall any further wandering images of Hannah without said shirt inserting themselves into my conscious thought process.

"I was just in the library, finishing a section of my paper for my Intro to Satire class," she said, plopping down in the seat facing mine over the small two-person hightop against a wall. "That is done, so I came here to find..." she stopped and smiled. "I came here to get a fix, man," she said in a wavery voice and brandished her coffee. "You go on and study, please," she added, suddenly appearing uncertain about interrupting me. "I'll just get out my phone and catch up on my aviation disaster videos while I have my coffee."

"If you like," I said. "But I'd rather take a break myself. What's up, besides your paper for a class I've never heard of but am now suddenly, deeply interested in?"

"Another paper for another class, and general exam prep," Hannah said glumly. "Do you think we will play D&D this weekend? Or will people beg off to study?"

"I hope we get together," I said. "All work and no play makes Thrangor the Destroyer a dull barbarian. I know I always have a good time, and we will all need the break."

Hannah looked almost pained, but also like she had been waiting for the subject to come up. "Always a good time? We kind of got on your case last week. Was that okay?" she asked apprehensively.

I smiled in thanks for her concern. "I actually do think the whole conversation let me feel better about everything. I'm a past master of handling being embarrassed."

"If a quarter of what you claimed is true, you're a master of something besides being embarrassed," Hannah said tartly, but a little wide-eyed.

I just stared at her and sipped my cooling tea. It occurred to me that I now had a way to shut down any conversation I didn't want with these four friends from now until the heat death of the universe.

She looked at me, opened her mouth, then closed it. "It is, isn't it? All true?" she asked, but I could see that she fully believed it already, whatever she said. So I just sipped my tea. "But how?" she asked earnestly. Weirdly, I sensed it was not a protest, nor a challenge. She actually kind of wanted to know.

I just cocked an eyebrow, since she hadn't told me What when she asked How.

"The math says you are claiming two girls... or women, a month. More than that, because you were with Liz for three months all by herself," Hannah said, revealing quite a lot of thought about my situation prior to this conversation.

"First, I've never 'claimed' anyone. I've never been possessive. Liz was unique," I put in quickly and firmly, though I'd never felt possessive about Liz, come to think of it. "She is the only exclusive relationship I've had since I first had any relationships." Hannah looked at me in something like confusion. "With every other girl I've been with, we both knew that we might be friends for life, but there were any number of reasons that we couldn't or wouldn't be sexual partners forever. So we all just kind of assumed that exclusivity was pointless. With Liz, those kinds of obstacles were never there, or at least not so imminent, and I guess we got caught up. I got caught up."

"Well I know what you mean there," Hannah said grumpily.

I wordlessly invited her to elaborate, because now I was really interested. When she still seemed to hesitate, I probed. "I assume you mean your one guy, he of the many times? Not your two earlier failed suitors?"

"The two incompletes were after Pete, not before," Hannah huffed. "And I lied, both were actually nothing but handjobs," she confessed in a guilty rush. "I felt so inexperienced next to everybody else, I had to lie, just to put myself up over at least Flip in some way!"

I could not help but laugh a little.

"If you tell him, I will strangle you in your sleep," Hannah hissed with perfect sincerity.

She looked at me so sheepishly she might as well have been New Zealand. "I kind of thought I was putting myself up on you." Then her face hardened again, obviously doubting my ability to keep my big fat mouth shut.

I wisely ignored her words and focused on her not-so-subtle threat. "I, as you can probably surmise, am a paragon of discretion," I said holding my hands out as if being held at gunpoint. "Unless Flip somehow guesses it on his own and for some reason asks me for confirmation, your secret is safe. If he does guess, you're screwed, because I can't lie to save my life."

Hannah glared at me for another second, just to ensure that I knew waking up with her hands around my throat was still a possibility, before she slumped mopily and went back to her point. "At least you got out before Christmas. I wasted almost my entire freshman year out here on Pete. I mean, the sex was new. And it could sure be fun sometimes," she mused.

Sometimes?

"But Alistaire, I knew. I was conscious the whole time that I didn't love him, and wasn't ever going to love him. But I just kept trying. Why did I do that?"

"I don't know," I shrugged. "But I do understand. Now that you say it like that, I never felt like I loved Liz either. It never even occurred to me that it was a possibility. But I'm so glad we had this discussion because now I have something to measure before I ever let a girl waste her time on me like that again."

"So you can just... people can just be friends and... and," she paused. "And fuck," she whispered the word, "with multiple friends?" Hannah asked almost eagerly.

I took a deep breath. "Maybe? I think it only works in very narrow circumstances," I said, then paused. "Bear with me, because I am thinking this through myself in response to your question." I paused some more. "To begin with, you need to be friends, or at least easily capable of being friends. And everybody has to be crystal clear that there could be, or are, or are going to be others for everybody."

"I don't know whether that all sounds awful or fantastic," she said and yanked up her phone to stare at it. It is impossible for a grown person to hide behind a smartphone, but Hannah seemed subconsciously to be giving it the old college try. This was suddenly the timid Hannah I knew. It was in sharp contrast to the woman who was warning me that she could and would strangle me to death a minute ago...

I am generally a somewhat clueless guy. Bridget likes to tease me for being an innocent, when she isn't thirsting on me for being an elemental, that is. But I am getting better.

Hannah's curiosity was personal. I'd gotten that early. But it was focused on me, and that took me longer to pick up on.

But was it intellectual? Or was she interested? Did she even know which it was herself?

This suddenly became a very important question to me. You see, my plan to have a normal conversation with her instead of staring at her out of the corner of my eye, all in order to avoid getting hornier than I was before she sat down... that plan had failed miserably.

I've noted that Hannah is not a supermodel. But she is seriously cute. And that cuteness meter had pegged every time she had blushed during this conversation, which was often. And, truth be told, while she might not be a supermodel, Hannah is plenty, um... Look, I have high standards, okay? She meets them.

By the point when she had sat down, I had long had her comfortably filed away in the category of 'friend, but not that kind of friend'. But by this point in the conversation, she had been solidly transitioned into the category of 'friend, and why the fuck not?'

I took a breath. If her curiosity was only intellectual, I was about to embarrass myself. I was betting I was not about to embarrass myself.

"Going back to your question, I'm going with it being fantastic over awful," I said carefully. "Whether or not we play D&D this weekend, want to hang out Friday night? Maybe explore the question further?" I let her see me looking at her fully, and held her eyes.

"That... that sounds like a date," she said hesitantly.

"Ish," I said blandly.

"I think I've decided I'm going to mostly avoid dating with guys that I don't see even possibly falling in love with," she said, almost sternly.

"Sound plan," I said, inwardly grateful. "I think it should be my plan too. But hanging out with a friend can be just a really good time, not a date," I added, trying for gentle persuasion.

She nodded. "Yeah, but... for me, I think I'll avoid it out of the box." She paused again and almost trembled. "For me, that question we were talking about? About it being possible to, um, have sex without all that relationship stuff? If that kind of thing actually works, does it still only work on Friday or Saturday nights? Or could it happen on, say, a Tuesday afternoon?"