Welcome to my latest series, mashing up a few more tropes. This one turned out to be a crazy ride, so get ready for something that ends quite unlike it begins. As of posting this first chapter, the last one or two are not finished, but I need some encouragement to get me to polish them up.
One thing you can be sure of, even though this is Literotica, and this story could easy veer off into... THERE, it does not in fact, go THERE. So either don't fear, or don't get your hopes up, whichever your preference.
Lastly, as always, I am not going for deep truths or gritty realism. The aim for me is a plausibly ridiculous course of events.
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Guilty Pleasures - One
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The young, sandy-haired boy, who was much too good-looking for my taste when it came to boys who hung around my daughter, was casually trying not to appear as if he was looking at me as he bent over to reach toward my beer fridge on the back deck.
"When do you turn 21, Victor?" I asked casually, my fingers still on the keyboard of my laptop. I didn't look up.
"Real soon, sir," he replied. I liked the 'sirs' from him. They showed some measure of respect and self-control. "Early August," he specified.
Unfortunately for him, I didn't like the sirs that much.
"Well, you can have that beer you are reaching for 'real soon'... like in three months," I said casually, still not looking his way.
"Come on, Mr. Petersen," he grumped.
I knew that if he was in his own dorm on a Saturday afternoon, he would probably be drinking beer. He knew that I knew it. I knew that he knew... etc. I knew that if they were back on campus, my daughter Becca, she of the 21st birthday in October, would likely be having a White Claw along with him. I even knew that if none of her friends were over, but she was home on her own with just me, she would most definitely be having a White Claw out of that same fridge, with my blessing.
I just grinned with only a hint of the good-natured malice that a father reserves for the sort of boy that hangs out with his daughter, but whom she carefully never calls her boyfriend within the father's hearing. "My house, the State's laws, Vic."
The kid grumbled, but reached instead for the cooler full of Cokes, pulling out an Orange Fanta.
Honestly, I ranked Victor among the less odious of the boys my little girl had swanned around with since she moved back in with me for her senior year of high school. That meant that I had been fortunate to miss most of her early high school sweeties, when she was living with her mother in Atlanta. But she had always been set on UNC Chapel Hill for college, so my ex and I amicably agreed that I should take over custody for her senior year. That way, she could re-establish herself as an in-state resident. It had been a financial decision, but I had been tickled pink to have her under my roof again.
Now a college sophomore, Becca lived on campus, but I live only twenty minutes from campus. I have a large pool and outdoor kitchen, which had earned me the dubious pleasure of frequent but random invasions by my daughter and her friends since I had moved her into the dorm as a freshman.
This day was one of those invasions. Becca's three besties, Anne, Carol, and Mary, were there of course, currently playing corn hole. Victor was there, obviously, as he had been more often than not lately. Two other boys had come along, who were clearly auditioning for a role similar to Vic's with Becca's friends. Damned if I could tell which one was chasing which one. It was possible that it wasn't clear to them. I irritably wished that Vic was kept as much at arm's length as these other two characters were. There were a few others in the crowd that afternoon, who probably had just been around at the moment of, 'Hey! Let's go hang at my Dad's house, swim in his pool, eat his food, and interrupt his quiet weekend of work, guys!'
It was a regular occurrence, as I said. Nowadays, in addition of deer meat, my freezer in the garage was always well-stocked with hamburgers, hotdogs, and turkey patties. I even had found myself keeping fresh eggplant on hand to grill for the occasional vegetarian Becca brought along.
I like to cook, especially cook-out. Sue me. And serving venison to new appearances on the boy front was an excellent excuse to show off my collection of shotguns and hunting rifles. I have to be more subtle these days with the ways I try (and probably fail) to keep her boyfriends in line. Last year, I had gone out and bought a teeshirt that read, "If you date my daughter, please know that I have a Shotgun, a Shovel, and an Alibi". and then changed into it during one appearance by a boy that I really did
not
like, Becca had actually hit me.
She dumped him less than a week later though, and I got some wordlessly-acknowledged credit for hating him before she did. I never found out what specifically made her turn on him, and I suspect that that is a good thing...
Besides crowds of college students in my home that I pretended to hate having around, there were lots of other things that were great about living in Chapel Hill. The Research Triangle area is a hotbed of tech companies and startups. I had been in shortly after the ground floor with one that you have heard of. When Becca was in eighth grade, they had gone public, and I had cashed out of the job. All according to plan.
Then Becca's mother and I cashed out of our marriage, which had not been part of my plan. As divorces involving a thirteen year-old child go, it had been amicable. My ex just got tired of me and my workaholic ways, and we both got lazy about staying in love. I didn't think she had ever cheated on me, but I was never sure. She has sure had plenty of other men in her life since, good guys mostly, but I had always wondered when she had started collecting other men. I mostly believed that she had been true until the divorce. My ex was mostly a good person, and we had tried (and often failed) not to hurt each other much.
I had not torn up the dating scene since the divorce. Workaholic, remember? Instead of retiring after the last company had gone public, as I had been half-planning, paying for half of Becca's mom's house in Atlanta meant I needed to keep my hand in and generate at least some income.
Again, I was in a tech hotbed. When you have the ability to put circuits together in interesting ways, and moreover have a reputation for doing a good job managing other people who put circuits together in interesting ways, opportunities find you. I got in even earlier this time on a second opportunity that turned out far better than I had expected. I foresee another, possibly even better cash-out a few years in the future.
In the meantime, some of the kids who Becca brought by were not there for her or the pool, they wanted to meet me. They wanted internships. A worthwhile few of them got them. I viewed Becca as an unofficial part of our HR department.
My alcohol duly defended, I went back to banging out some work on my laptop while I waited until it was time to cook. I usually can work pretty well on afternoons like this. I handle chaos and even crisis well. But the pretty laugh from across the pool, the laugh with that callous, annoying edge to it got in my head, as it usually did.
Stephanie Wilkes was over there, flirting with one of the boys who was supposed to be interested in Anne, Carol, or Mary. Why Becca tolerated her tagging along so often was beyond me. She was a bitch, and among Becca's friends, I liked her the least. As in, I did not like her any more than I did that lacrosse player, Chip Edgerton
the fourth