General Chemistry Ii

List of Characters

Jack: Our point of view. Smart, corny, neurotic, Jack has few friends at school outside of his study group. White. Lifeguards in the summer and has a big dick.

Pri: Jack's ex(?). Brilliant and reserved, she plays varsity soccer with her best friend Liv. Indian-American. Short and athletic with ass for days, darkly tanned with thick black hair.

Liv: Pri's best friend and Jack's study buddy. Funny and dynamic, she plays varsity soccer and does what she feels. Jewish. Tall with a heart-shaped face. She has a deep tan, small breasts, and sprinter's legs.

Marco: Liv's boyfriend and long-time friend. Charming and almost offensively handsome, he teaches tennis and studies literature. Colombian-American. He's fashionable, with a lean, muscular body.

Sylvie: Liv's long-time frenemy and Marco's ex. Grim and sarcastic, she's pre-law at NYU. Pale, Jewish, and tiny, with a cute face and a bull ring septum piercing.

Kay: Sylvie's friend from NYU. Laconic and up for anything, they study film and play volleyball. White and non-binary, they're over six foot and covered with tattoos. Bleached pixie cut and dark eyelids.

Grace: Liv's friend from college. Perky and energetic, she's All-State softball and loves to party. Chinese-American. She's muscular but feminine, with thick legs, big breasts, and fun tattoos.

~

Laughter and music filled the enormous kitchen at Calle Didion 19. All six of us had gathered for breakfast, a little later than we'd planned, to prepare for our first Spanish beach day.

I'd been sipping my coffee and nodding along to the general commotion. The morning sun trickled through the shades and warmed my back. Honestly, I didn't need the caffeine. I'd had my first cup around 5 AM, right before roughly fucking Liv on the bench a few feet from where I sat. Our mugs, cold and abandoned, were still there on the window sill.

Even though Liv and I had done it before, many times, I couldn't quite convince myself that this time was okay. Pri and I were on "break" but I had no real idea what that meant. Liv and Marco were fighting

about

Pri. And I was still reeling from being abandoned by everyone this summer. Given the circumstances, fooling around with Liv was probably the stupidest thing I could have done. It wasn't cheating, not by any of the rules we'd set up in the past, it felt like it.

I really shouldn't have come here.

I

click-click

ed on my laptop and mumbled performatively about finding an ebook. I was looking for something pulpy, with heroes and monsters and nothing at all to do with my fucking

feelings

.

Kay and Sylvie were organizing the beach equipment they'd found. The pair were dusty and a little sweaty, having alternated trips to the closet under the basement stairs. Each time they returned it was carrying more booty: folding chairs, coolers, umbrellas, and even a paddle ball set.

Marco was too excited when he saw it. "It's not paddle ball, it's

pickleball

. It's like... slow tennis. It's really fucking fun."

"That's good," I said. "Fun. Great."

Marco, who was an actual tennis instructor on the side, had convinced me to play once. Never again. He'd slam an ace into my body and then apologize, or he'd lob a serve toward me only to smash my return into the farthest corner. Then he'd apologize.

"Pickleball is a great equalizer," he said. He and Grace were hip-to-hip at the kitchen island slicing fruit and veggies into containers. A stack of baggied sandwiches was piled at his elbow. "Plus, we have enough for three teams of two, so we

could

do a little tournament."

"Maybe we can just have a vacation," said Liv, entering. She dropped a tote bag of colorful towels on the table. "For once. Instead of competing."

"Picklething could be fun," said Grace. "I gotta get energy out somehow." Her aggressive chopping stopped abruptly. "Liv, babe. You're not bringing a top?"

"Hm? No, I don't wear one." Liv wore only a pair of bikini bottoms and a paper-thin Charlotte Football Club t-shirt. The fabric was practically shrink-wrapped to her breasts and the imprint of her puffy nipples was obvious. "You can do topless too if you want. Lot of people do."

"Oh," said Grace. "Yuck." The seams of her own suit top were visible through her shirt. It was modest, resembling a sports bra with a fun, floral print, and it covered her ample chest almost completely. "I don't think so. I'm not throwing meat for

babosos

."

"

Que es

that?" I asked.

"

Guau, mis amigas

, he learned Spanish in a single night!" said Marco. "It means creeps. Slimy dudes. Possibly perverts."

"It's not like that," said Liv. "Topless

es normal

. Kids do it.

Lots

of old ladies do it. You're gonna see several miles of geriatric titty today."

"Kilometers," I said. "Maybe liters if we're going volumetric."

"Yes,

liters

of tits, that's obviously what I meant to say. Thank you Jack, I knew we kept you around for something."

I turned in my seat to raise a cheeky thumbs up and froze. Just at arm's reach, Sylvie had bent over to root around in a drawstring bag. She'd ditched the dusty shorts she'd worn over her suit and her lime green bikini bottoms had ridden up, revealing most of her milky pale cheeks and the outline of something more personal.

I snapped my head forward, staring at nothing, rubbing my forehead as if suddenly remembering something important. Yeah, man. Plausible deniability.

I somehow locked eyes with Grace. She looked amused, her chin resting on a stack of takeaway containers. She waggled her eyebrows over her glasses and mouthed

baboso

at me. I made a stupid face and stuck my tongue out.

Despite my much-needed release with Liv, I was still coming off two months of no sex and, bluntly, I was tired, emotional, and horny as hell. In a Spanish tourist town I'd be seeing bare chests and asses in thong bikinis, young women with succulent tan lines and long, beautiful legs. I wanted to keep a low profile, but whether silently ogling the girls in this room or staring too hard at strangers on the beach, I was bound to get caught at some point. My plan was to stick to my chair, read a book, and hope that the compression shorts I wore under my suit would conceal any rogue erections.

"We good to go?" asked Kay. Her New York accent really stood out on certain phrases, and it sounded something like

We gooda go?

Their

accent. Not her. I hadn't spoken to them very much, so I hadn't had the chance to fuck up the pronouns. They leaned against the wall, one tremendously long leg crossed over the other knee, massaging their ankle. Kay's androgynous style apparently extended to beach wear as well, and the two of us had both dressed in tees and swim trunks. Their shoulders were just as broad as mine and we probably could have swapped outfits without much issue.

"I don't see why not," said Marco. "What do you say, chef?"

Grace slid the containers forward, examined them for a long, dramatic beat, then nodded with exaggerated intensity. "I'd say we're good, chef."

~

The short drive to the beach frustrated us all. We saw gorgeous ocean views, just barely visible through the palm trees, all the way down the mountain, but parking near the water was a pain for one car let alone the two we needed for all of our crap. After endless searching, with speaker phone arguments and several illegal turns, we finally found some spaces. Then we had to scrounge for euros when the card reader was broken and, of course, actually haul all the tools of leisure that were supposed to make the trip enjoyable in the first place.

"Next time," said Liv, switching the cooler bag to her opposite shoulder for the thousandth time. "Next time we leave at nine like I said."

The narrow beach of San Cristobal was a riot of color and activity. There were umbrellas for rent by the entrance, neon reds and greens and yellows, and we saw them planted up and down the water by the dozen. Tourists jammed the concrete boardwalk and it wasn't until we actually stepped on the sand that we could start to look for a spot. The sunlight felt almost heavy, pressing down on my hair and skin. A sheen of sweat had already started to form under my shirt.

Marco led the way. He walked slowly, scanning the terrain of towels and tents, sandcastles and volleyball nets. He took us to the halfway point between the boardwalk and the water and planted his umbrella viciously, with all the confidence of a European explorer claiming indigenous land.

"

Venganza de Colombia

," he said wickedly.

We arranged our chairs in a semicircle and I placed myself at the very end. Kay was my only neighbor, and they were already applying sunscreen to their long, extended legs. The lotion collected in the dark fuzz of their shins.

"Kilometers of tits," said Liv loudly after we'd finally gotten settled. "Told ya so."

"No kidding," said Kay.

I leaned back in my chair and buried my toes, feeling around in our canvas bag for my Kindle. Liv was right, of course. You couldn't look in any direction without seeing bare breasts of some kind. They were mostly old women with the over-tanned, low-hanging variety, but I saw plenty of fit tourists too. Walking out of the water in our general direction, a group of kids our age laughed and high fived and held hands. One of them, a topless olive-skinned girl with brilliant white teeth, pushed the boy she was with and started jogging away, shrieking, her large, wide-set tits swinging.

My cock twitched only a little. Thank god they're all the way down there. Maintain a respectful distance and I'd make it through this alright. I turned to check on the others.

Liv stood in profile, six feet away at most, slipping her shorts off the perfect half-moon of her ass. She lifted her shirt over her head, peeling the tight fabric away from her sweaty, tanned skin, her individual ribs countable as she arched her back, the shirt catching momentarily on the underside of her breasts before releasing them to jiggle.

Her thin, athletic body had filled out since spring. It was obvious in the swell of her thighs and chest. Her once-visible abs had disappeared behind a smooth tummy. I remembered this morning, how the biteable weight of her rump had taken the serious, hard fucking I'd given her...

Liv twisted her torso to brush some sand off her hip, looked directly at me, and winked. My mouth hung open as she ducked back under an umbrella. Harpy. Witch. It was Liv's vacation, Liv's party, Liv's friends. If anyone should have been playing it cool, it should have been her, yet she was the one doing a barely disguised strip tease in my direction.

But I wasn't the only one in the audience. Kay slowly turned their head until they caught my eye, eyebrow arched. Their wayfarers had slid down their nose and they'd paused sunscreening, fingers barely touching the octopus tattoo that wrapped around their calf.

"Cool, cool, cool..." they said, leaning back and running a hand through their bleached-out hair. The lotion made it stand up in a little faux-hawk. They exhaled loudly, then craned their neck at something else. "Oh, fuck. Check it out."

I followed Kay's line of sight down a crack between the umbrellas. Sylvie and Grace stood apart applying sunscreen as a pair. The shorter girl's pert ass wobbled as she rubbed the cream onto Grace's back. Her breasts were tiny bumps under the padded triangles of her bikini. A pair of oversized sunglasses hid most of her face. Sylvie was definitely hot, but she was Kay's best friend so I didn't think that's why they'd gotten my attention.

It was Grace, yanking at the thick straps of her suit, tucking her hand into her top to apply the lotion to her generous tits. The Asian girl's legs were muscular and ridiculously thick, with bulging calves the size of oranges and a tiny cloth anklet above her left foot. I wasn't sure how I hadn't seen them before but her left leg was inked from ankle to bikini line with a dozen or more colorful tattoos. The biggest was a huge brown bear, almost Native American looking, on the side of her thigh.

She split lunged in the sand to more easily rub the bear's body with sunscreen, incidentally pushing out her prominent venus mound. It was wrapped tight by her suit bottoms, looking like a huge, juicy peach straining against the packaging. A little curve of chubby belly popped over her waist band, and a gnarly shirt-and-shorts tan divided her skin. It was either from a sports uniform or she'd worked for the Department of Transportation this summer.

And her ass... Her ass was incredible. Round with muscle and thick with body fat, the crease between her hamstrings and butt cheeks was deep enough to disappear a fucking Sharpie. That, or swallow the fingers of a reverent man.

"

Fuck me

," I said, and Kay laughed. I powered up my Kindle and crossed my legs, trying to cover the bent and swollen mess of my cock.

"You got a type, huh?"

"You started it."

I thought that'd be the end of our conversation, possibly for now, possibly forever.

"Pri's tomorrow, yeah?" asked Kay. They'd lifted their t-shirt to rub lotion on their stomach, but instead of a bathing suit top they were wearing some kind of vest underneath. They noticed me looking and dropped the shirt abruptly.

"Uh, sorry," I said. "I didn't mean to."

"All good," they said stiffly. "I'm just trying it out."

"What is it?" I immediately cringed at myself. "I'm sorry. Forget it."

Kay scratched their cheek with a fingernail. "Nah, it's okay. It's a binder. It... hides your tits. Makes your chest flat."

"Oh," I said, my stupid cis brain kicking into gear. That's a trans thing. Kay is non-binary. That's a different thing, isn't it? Say something, dickhead. "It looks really good. It's, like, very natural."

They said nothing for a long moment, long enough for me to worry that I'd really fucked up. "Thanks," they said eventually.

I felt like I'd just dodged the shockwave of a faux-pas nuke. Kay flattened their blonde tufts back down with their palm, staring at their feet, their face returning to its normal programming: distant and unreadable.

"Not for nothing," they said after a pause. "But you should probably start thinking about grandma's slipcover or whatever. Before we play this pickle game."

They inclined their chin towards my lap. My cock, chubby but not fully erect, was obvious across the top of my thigh. With my crossed legs and the crease of my bathing suit, I'd thought it was hidden. It was not.

"Shit," I said. I crossed my legs in the other direction which only pointed my semi towards them more. I reversed and leaned over a bit, trying to creatively angle my Kindle for cover. "Listen, I'm sorry. I'm not--It's, like, autonomic..."

"I don't care," they said. "There's some very good looking people here. I don't blame you..."

"Exactly what I was saying. And it's... I mean, I haven't..." I stopped myself from saying something even more embarrassing.

"Dry spell," they said. There may have been a twinkle of amusement in their sleepy-looking eyes. "The Pri thing. I get it. You were a good boy this summer, huh?"

I, of course, thought of my hookup with Liv this morning, my cheeks flushing. "Is it a gray area? When you're on a break, I mean."

"I got no fucking opinion about that. But I know that when you haven't fucked in awhile, putting on sunscreen turns into the kinkiest shit you've ever seen."

"What's the kinkiest shit you've ever seen?" asked Sylvie. I nearly jumped. She'd snuck up on us somehow, sliding in like a ghost from around the wrong side of our umbrella. Her pale skin was ridiculously shiny, thick buildups of sunblock visible in patches across her body. She looked like she was getting ready for a beach day on Mercury.

"Um," started Kay, searching for something to say. "That itty bitty green bikini?"

Sylvie looked unimpressed. "He wants to do pickleball now, so get up."

"Bet," said Kay, popping smoothly to their feet. Sylvie slapped Kay's ass in a sportsman-like way as they walked past.

"No thanks," I said. "Got a book. Just gonna chill."

Sylvie gave me a heavy, bored look. "Grace! Jack's not gonna play!"

Grace approached from the correct direction, around the edge of the umbrellas in front of me, hands on her wide hips.

Sylvie somehow packed a chapter of disdain into six words: "He said he wants to read."

"He'll play," said Grace. "You go, we got next." Sylvie gave a sarcastic thumb and walked off. Grace slid easily into Kay's abandoned seat, cocked her head, and gave me a long and silly look. She'd switched her normal glasses for sunglasses, tortoiseshell and pretty hip. "You'll play," she said finally.

"Don't let me stop you. You should go."

"You're my teammate."

"Well I don't want to play."

"Is it Pri?" she asked, dripping with concern. "Are you depressed? Exercise is good for that."

"I'm not depressed," I said.

"So why don't you want to play?"

"It's hot. I'm on vacation. I have a book."

"But it's

fun

. You don't want to have

fun

on vacation? At least turn so we can watch."

That seemed harmless enough. Marco had picked our spot for its proximity to some volleyball nets. I saw him making the final adjustments, tying the ropes tight as we rotated our chairs.

We couldn't hear his words but we saw him gesturing towards the ground and the net in turn, and making a few swipes in the air to demonstrate. The teams separated, Marco and Liv on one side, Sylvie and Kay on the other, and began to volley. I didn't really understand the point of pickleball. Based on what I saw it was just volleyball with tools.

When the pickle thing reached Kay for the first time, they promptly smashed it over the net with a wicked overhand. Marco dodged, the ball whizzing by at neck level. The foursome laughed hard as he gave a huge thumbs up. He actually looked excited.

When the game started for real, it was pretty entertaining.

Liv was a high-level college athlete, and while I knew that she refused to play tennis with Marco on principle, she had great feet, able to get seemingly anywhere on the court with a few quick steps and a lunge. Once she got in position, however, she was scattershot. With her athletic frame, and wearing only bikini bottoms, she put me in mind of an Amazon training for battle.

Sylvie was in better shape than I'd realized, and she seemed to have some racket experience too, capable of three or four clean hits in a row before a miss. She'd added a ball cap pulled down low over her eyes, her ponytail swinging behind her. It was giving female Unibomber. In the game she was measured and calm, except, I thought, whenever serving at Marco, when the intensity jumped just a little. Soon her pale body was slick and shiny with sweat.

Marco was still in his tank top, his sunglasses held on by a dorky looking strap that he somehow made look cool. He held back at first, trying to keep the volleys going and build everyone's confidence, but couldn't help himself from smacking tough shots towards Kay as if trying to lure his enemy into battle.

For their part, Kay moved easily and constantly, pivoting and flipping their hips with a smoothness I hadn't noticed before.

"Kay plays tennis?" I asked.

"Volleyball. Years and years, but I think they quit a few months ago. Sylvie told me not to get into it."

"That sucks. She's obviously a crazy athlete--

they're

a crazy athlete. First time I fucked it up, don't say shit."

"Womp," said Grace. "They're nice, yeah. They had a scholarship but I know they had some issues this year. Academic stuff, I think. You swim, right?"

"Mhm, but not at college. I just do the lifeguard thing now. Norton, Connecticut. Home of the Hornets. Buzz."