Alistaire At Usc Big Surprise

FWIW, the actual USTA National Championships are held in the Fall, not the Spring. Sue me. This is my timeline and I'll mangle it if I want to. This story needs to be in the spring of Alistaire's second year, so that's when the championships are held.

All sorts of callbacks in this one, including the main event. I just can't seem to get away from her...

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The One With A Big Surprise

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BECCA

: Hey! My dad says that your mom has told another one of her clients to hire him as Chief Operating Officer. Monica is ecstatic. She likes Dad better when he is busy bitching about the millennials he loves to hire, and besides, having him around the house all the time cramps her style

ME

: Excellent!

I was glad of this final confirmation that my antics with Becca had not screwed up things for Mr. Howard.

BECCA

: It's too bad you aren't actually a Gamecock. We could get together this weekend and toast Dad's success

Oh wow. For the first time

ever

, I kind of regretted that for me, USC meant the University of Southern California, instead of the University of South Carolina.

ME

: Curses. Foiled again

BECCA

: Maybe for the best. Carol might knock me out and show up in my place if she heard you were going to be around again

ME

: What?

BECCA

: Your friend Carla has been putting ideas into her head about you.

This conversation was putting ideas in my head about Carol... As many as would fit, given all the ideas about Becca there were in there at the moment. It was completely distracting me from the USC-Oregon baseball game I was in the stands to watch with friends. Even though we had a really good team, I think you can understand my difficulty concentrating...

ME

: My fam is hitting Telluride for Christmas this year, but I will be home with them after that until break is over. It would be a road trip, but we could meet up then?

BECCA

: I like the way you think. And hopefully there should be time for you to meet up with Carol too, to get her off my back

Really?

I was not complaining.

Of course, I was already planning ways to meet up with both of them simultaneously, should I manage the feat. Christmas was going to rock!

And Becca sure was chill about the way I managed to make things work.

ME

: You fit right into my life, don't you?

BECCA

: That's what all your friends say

I stared at my phone as I walked across the grass of central campus.

Of course.

Carla had to be the culprit this time. There was no way my old friend would have failed to get Becca's contact info out of Carol.

ME

: Swell. Are you enjoying being part of The Sisterhood?

BECCA

: Actually yes. That is a bunch of cool women

I shook my head. She wasn't wrong, though. They were all cool. When they weren't ganging up on me.

An inning later, I got another text.

BECCA

: We gotta make the Xmas thing happen. New Year's or after. Carol totally wants in

I started to put my phone on Do Not Disturb. I could not handle any more of this if I wanted a prayer of seeing any of this game.

The fact that the Trojan cheerleaders were in attendance and making the gaps between innings awesome helped focus my attention back locally.

The fact that my pre-med friend Fiona had been coerced into lifting her head out of her books and having some fun by coming to the game was also helping. I would have preferred, if she was going to spend a couple of hours not studying, that she and I spend them fucking, but you can't have everything.

And there was always after the game.

Dave sat on the other side of me from Fiona, and another guy named Rich sat on the other side of Fiona. Rich was okay, but I sensed that he and I were the main competitors for Fiona's very limited free time. Too bad for him. While I am not jealous, I am extremely competitive.

The third out of the inning came ignominiously. But the cheerleaders came out to work on our foul line this time around, right about in front of us.

"It is nice to have the hottest cheerleaders on Earth, ain't it?" I observed happily.

"They are hot," Dave agreed.

"But there are lots of hot cheerleaders out there," Rich said tendentiously.

Fiona ignored us and read her phone.

I wasn't sure what she had on there, but I had dark concerns that she was getting in a little studying...

"Nonsense, Rich," I said, saddling up a hobby horse of mine. "On the seventh day, when God rested, except for creating football and cheerleaders, he declared, 'Let there be hot, athletic girls in short skirts. Let them be called cheerleaders. And let there be a university in California called USC, where the best of the best shall go."

Darla MacWilliam, the hottest of the universally hot squad, chose that moment to execute a series of high kicks directly in our direction. Along with her squad-mates, I felt like she was dropping the mic for me.

Dave, Rich, and I shut up to enjoy.

"Maybe you are right," Rich sighed.

Fiona finally looked up from her phone. "The redhead? She's not even the hottest cheerleader on campus." She looked back down to her phone.

That looked a lot like Chemistry on that screen...

"Please," Dave snorted. "We might disagree over whether our girls are the best of every school, everywhere, but Darla is totally the hottest USC cheerleader."

Fiona didn't even look up. "Not a chance. The hottest cheerleader on campus isn't even cheering anymore. And when she was, she was cheering for UNC."

"What are you talking about?" I asked skeptically.

"Look, there is a first-year med student named Stephanie Wilkes here. She captained the Chapel Hill cheer squad. She's nice." Fiona shrugged. "And yeah, way hotter than Darla."

None of us guys knew what to do with this information... Except to continue enjoying watching Darla and her squad-mates, who were having a helluva lot better day than our ball club, especially my other roommate, who had seen six pitches, swung six times so far, and not made contact once.

*

The next day, a more immediately important text came through.

POPPY

: Oh, by the way, Mom and her partner are through to the semi-finals of the USTA Nationals. They play again tomorrow, and Mom says her semifinal will probably be the championship match

ME

: Srsly? I gotta send her my congratulations. Or should I wait until the final results?

I paused.

ME

: Wait. Where is the tournament being held this year?

Something was tickling the back of my mind.

POPPY

: Someplace out there called Pasadena

ME

: Fuck! Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't SHE tell me? I'm going to go tomorrow for sure!

Tomorrow was Saturday. I'd be free.

POPPY

: I did not think Pasadena was very close to you

ME

: It's an easy drive. Well, easy for LA

I was coming to loathe LA traffic with a bit of a passion. But for a chance to see Sloane play competitively? I'd have gone during rush hour.

ME

: Don't tell her I'm coming. I want to bust her chops for not telling me about this herself!

I sat there chortling at this text exchange, and Hannah looked up from her hamburger. "What's got you cackling like a hen, Big Guy?"

"An old... friend is playing in the USTA Over 40 doubles national championship semifinals tomorrow in Pasadena. I'm going to go and surprise her."

"Cool. Want company? I'd like to see this 'old... friend'," she giggled. Then she stopped herself. "Wait. Did you say 'over 40s'?"

"Yeah," I said blandly. "She's the mom of one of my favorite classmates back in high school."

"And by favorite, you mean..." Hanna teased.

I'd give her that much. "Yeah. Her daughter Poppy is very... dear to me."

"Oh, I am so fucking riding along."

Early the next morning, I was meeting with Kate to exchange some papers we had edited for each other. We were sitting in Everybody's Kitchen, a place on campus, just shooting the shit when Gina walked by with a tray. I waved and said, "Grab a seat."

Gina and I traded quick glances of 'that' variety, but otherwise she just plopped down. "Hey, Kate," she said. They knew each other in passing, or I would not have invited Gina to sit.

"What's on your agenda today, Alistaire?" Gina asked.

Usually, I would have immediately answered, 'You,' to an invitation like that, but I do still believe in discretion and, more to the point, I had plans.

"I am driving over to Pasadena with Hannah to see an old friend play in the semis of the USTA Nationals."

"Seriously? What college does she play for?" Kate asked.

"Heh. She never went to college. She was actually a WTA touring pro for a couple of years, way back when. She is in the 40s and up division of this tournament," I said.

"Oh," said Gina.

"I'm in," Kate said excitedly. "I love good tennis. Have I heard of this woman?"

"I doubt it," I shook my head. "She was the girls' tennis coach my senior year back in Connecticut."

"What time?" chimed in Gina. I told her when the match was, and that I was leaving in an hour with Hannah. She grimaced. "I can't quite get free by then. I'll drive my own car a little later, and maybe do some shopping out there afterward or something."

"Mind if I ride along with you, Alistaire?" Kate asked me.

And so I would be sitting and watching a tennis match with three women.

USTA matches, even at the top level like this, are not played in stadiums. Our destination was a country club, and the show courts would, at most, have some basic, portable, four or five row aluminum bleachers set up.

Traffic again bit me in the ass, and Kate and I ended up arriving less than five minutes before Gina and Hannah rolled up. Hannah had begged off my early departure and was now smug as fuck at spending an hour less time on the same drive by riding with Gina.

I'll bet Gina and Hannah had compared all sorts of notes, I thought darkly. Ordinarily, I'd have been hoping that their notes had been on some kind of 'collaboration' with me. It's the way I think. But Gina is even straighter than I am, if such a thing is humanly possible.

The four of us all went in together. Sloane was on one of the prime courts, and we squeezed together up on the top row of the bleachers.

Sloane and her partner Melissa finished winning the first set about five seconds after we sat down, 6-2.

"Gonna wave hi?" Gina asked me as the players took a break.

"Fuck no!" I snorted. "If she somehow loses, I don't want her to blame my presence! If the worst happens, I'm beating feet as fast as I can before she sees me!"

We all laughed.

A loss was a kind of a concern for the first four games of the second set, with Sloane getting her serve broken at love to put her and her partner down 1-3. I was nervous, but then Sloane hit three winners in a row, two at the net, to break right back. She and Melissa won 6-4 in the second to take the match and move on to the finals.

Most spectators applauded lightly and headed for the bar to wait for the next match.

I sat there atop the stands and cheered like a loon, woo-hooing and calling, "Sloane! Right on!"

It took two or three calls before she turned and saw who was making an ass of themselves.

"Alistaire!" she exclaimed, turning my way. I popped up and dashed down the risers to court-side. Sloane met me, a big grin on her face, her partner trailing along behind, curiously.

Then...

I saw Sloane spy the girls I had with me, make a quick and accurate assumption, and grin wickedly at me.

Uh oh.

We met, and she slid a hand right out, cradling the back of my head, and laid a kiss on me that curled my toes in their Converses. A long kiss. I was there for the kiss. I returned it with all sorts of interest. I thought about copping a feel, except her partner was there and I was still not sure what Sloane was trying to accomplish.

We still had not quite finished, but were winding down when Hannah chuckled, "Oh. That kind of old friend, huh?"

Sloane just gave Hannah a challenging look as we broke off the kiss.

"Um," said Sloane's partner.

"Melissa, this is Alistaire," Sloane blandly said to the older woman with her. "Alistaire, this is Melissa, my doubles partner. Please note Melissa is wearing a wedding ring, so don't get any ideas. Especially don't get any of your specialty ideas," she finished drily.

Too late.

Melissa was not as hot as Sloane, but that left plenty of room for hotness. Room she mostly filled. I had already found myself pondering several 'specialty' ideas of what I might do with the two of them together, long before the match had even been over.

Ah well.

"Nice to meet you," I said, giving her a polite younger man handshake. "If you guys play like that tomorrow, I'm going to bet you win the whole thing."

"Thank you," Melissa said, still off balance. "It's nice to meet you too, Alistaire. And who..." she froze and looked at Sloane. "Wait!

This

is Alistaire?

The

Alistaire? How old are you?" she asked me with incredulity.

"Um, twenty?" I said before thinking.

Melissa blinked a time or two. "Well, Sloane. That explains that kiss just now. And why you left out a detail or three before!"

Sloane just winked at her.

"And are you going to introduce me to the local chapter?" Poppy's mom asked, turning back to me.

"I'm Gina," my friend popped off. "Alistaire never mentioned anyone as epic as you in his history."

"Epic? I think I'm flattered," Sloane murmured, then looked onward. "His taste remains impeccable as always," she added, looking my friends over.

"This is Hannah," I said, who audibly smirked at her introduction. "And this is..."

"What the fuck is going on?"

"Kate," I finished lamely.

Oh... yeah.

Kate knew nothing about anything.

Well, she sort of knew a fuckton all of a sudden now, and I could tell it was not all processing smoothly.

"Wait," Kate said, blinking like mad. "Am I just going insane? Or am I going insane and Alistaire is also fucking everybody?"

"Not me," chirped Melissa who was a helluva lot more amused but less confused. "Although I think I should feel bummed to have been left out!"

"Kate, I... uh... see... G-Guys? Kate and I are just, well, friends," I gobbled helplessly.

"You mean you and Alistaire aren't...? Wow," Gina said to Kate in shock. "Um, why not?"

"Why not?" Kate yelped. "I... I mean..." she glared at me like I was some rabid beast shitting in her flower garden while giving her bad Yelp reviews. It was a weird glare.

She turned to Gina. "Can I ride back with you?"

Gina and Hannah looked at each other for a moment.

"Oh absolutely," Gina purred.

"This is going to be a blast," cooed Hannah.

Kate looked at them both like they were live snakes wearing propeller beanies. But it was clear that she'd still rather ride back across town with live snakes wearing propeller beanies than with me. She was freaked out. Then she shot me a grim look and said, "Yes. Yes, it is going to be fabulous."

I facepalmed.

Then the three of my local friends spent ten totally normal minutes congratulating Sloane and Melissa and discussing the match. All of them ignored me, though not pointedly. They just were totally comfortable having a conversation in front of me without including me.

Honestly, it was my normal existence, just on steroids.

Well, Melissa did not completely ignore me. She kept shooting utterly gleeful glances my way. Sloane was going to regret that stunt.

"Melissa and I need some photos after our penultimate victory," Sloane asked Gina. "Take a couple and text them to me, will you? My phone is over in my bag and I'm too tired from the match to schlep over there and grab it."

Gina shrugged and hauled out her phone. Sloane and Melissa hugged and mugged for the camera, and Gina ended up taking a bunch of shots before texting them all to Sloane.

"Ooh!" Sloane said just as that was happening. "We also need a picture with you guys, please. Since Melissa and I now apparently have a nationwide fan base, we need to rub that in Janice Gifford's face back at the club."

"Oh, God! Please," squealed Melissa like she was a sixteen year-old mean girl. "Who can we get to take it?" she asked, looking around.

"I'll do it!" almost yelped Kate. I realized she just did not want to be in a picture with me... and all of them. She grabbed Gina's phone, looked a little more relaxed after engineering her escape from being in the picture, and settled down to take her photographer's job seriously.

Predictably, I was placed in the center, between Melissa and Sloane. Gina and Hanna pressed in against them from either side. We all smiled, Melissa and Sloane both putting up two fingers, palms forward, in the old English 'Victory' sign.

Someone grabbed my ass just as Kate took the photo and she demanded to take another when she looked at it and saw my facial expression in the picture. The next one passed muster.

From her facial expression, I think Kate knew what had happened.

I did not. I know a bit about having my ass grabbed, but I was betting that the only one of them who could have grabbed that cheek from that angle was Melissa!

To be clear, I did not think the woman was actually copping a feel, per se. She was counting coup on Sloane.

Okay, she probably had been copping a feel, too.

I was summarily ignored again as they went back to talking for another minute or so.

"Well, we should go," said Gina, hauling out her keys. "See you later, Alistaire?"

"I hope so," I said feebly.

Gina and Hanna laughed merrily at that. Kate did not. She looked like she was escaping an alley filled with a very sketchy-looking crowd... in the company of another sketchy crowd.

And then they were gone.

I waved goodbye, trying and failing not to check out all three of their each in their own way splendid asses as they walked away.

Great, now I was checking out Kate's ass.

I turned back as swiftly as I could to Sloane and Melissa. Melissa was still trying not to cackle at my predicament.

Sloane was looking at me like... Sloane when she is horny.

"Alistaire," she said languidly. "It is so fortuitous that you are here, and now at loose ends. To be honest, I'd love it if you could help me out with some pre-match procedures before our final tomorrow."

"Huh?"

"Pondering some female athletic enhancement, Sloane?" Melissa asked. Apparently, she could still be caught at least a little off guard.

"Like you are not going to fuck Walt tonight," snorted Sloane.

"No shit," Melissa said firmly. "I keep telling you, it absolutely works."

"Oh," I said, getting it. "Um, I really, really don't want to derail this, but I'd always heard athletes should refrain the day or so before..."

"That's for male athletes, Alistaire," Sloane almost cackled. "Word is, the opposite is true for us ladies."

Huh. It's good to be a woman.

"You work fast," Melissa said to Sloane.

"I have to, if I want to work faster than he does!" Sloane retorted, jerking a thumb at me.

That was unfair. I had barely even begun to ponder the implications of being left here to my own devices. To Sloane's devices.

But I was pondering those implications now!

"Wait, where is Walt?" Sloane asked, suddenly realizing that Walt, Melissa's husband, was not in evidence.

"I saw him get a call and leave to take it during the second set," Melissa shrugged.

"He left during the match?" Sloane asked, borderline incredulous.

"I am pretty sure I know what it was about," Melissa said, her cheery disposition fading temporarily. "Someone at his office is getting fired, and I'll bet things just got ugly. He is probably off making some decisions he does not want to," she added sympathetically.

"That said," she went on, her demeanor immediately reverting to A-positive, "I should go find him and give him the hug he needs. I'll see you at breakfast tomorrow?" she asked Sloane, in a pro forma manner.