(Usual Disclaimer Time: Even though this story almost entirely takes place in a high school setting, all the characters in this story are 18 years old or older, and since we're living in the wide wonderful world of porno-land here, where clichés roam free and things might get a little unrealistic from time to time, please remember it's all in good fun. This story is highly serialized, and though it's not 100% necessary to have read the whole story up until this point to enjoy the content of the chapter, it's definitely advisable to understand some of the ongoing plots.)
(Author's Note: I'd like to again thank MisterWildCard for acting as a second set of eyes on this chapter and for his honest editing and fantastic suggestions. Please check out his story, "Brooke's Wild Ride" in Erotic Couplings, as it acts as a canonical side story to Senior Year Memories starring Regan Hills High's favorite blonde cheerleader.)
Previously, on Senior Year Memories: Thanksgiving was a day that 18-year-old nerd Ryan Collins would never forget. He was looking forward to a day of good food and awkward family conversations after accepting the invitation to his best friend and longtime crush, Tori McNeil's, house. That he had had sex with Tori's mom, Lauren, and befriended and made out with Tori's hated older sister, Rachel, were secrets he meant to hold close to his chest, especially after knowing that taking things any further with Rachel would make a bad situation even worse. However, after meeting Tori's new girlfriend, April, Ryan broke off and shared a drink with Rachel. Commiserating over how out of place they both felt here, they let their passion overcome their better sense and had sex, only to be caught by Tori. After a long, loud argument, Tori kicked Ryan out of her house and her life, possibly forever.
***
There's a line in a not-great-but-not-terrible Matthew Broderick and Marlon Brando comedy called The Freshman that's always stuck with me.
"There's a kind of freedom in being completely screwed... because you know things can't get any worse."
I'd always liked that quote, but the problem with it is it's hard to tell when you've hit that spot where you're completely screwed. Too often when you think that things can't get any worse, they find a way of doing just that that can take you by surprise, so I try to avoid thinking that I'm completely screwed. That way if things get worse, I can't be surprised.
It was hard to keep thinking this way after Thanksgiving. That my oldest friend... that Tori, wanted me out of her life, that felt like being completely screwed. She hadn't spread around any of what happened between me and her mom and her sister, though whether it was to protect Lauren or me or her dad or Rachel (unlikely) or herself, I couldn't tell you. I'd tried daily for close to a week to try to talk to her afterward, only to get shut out every time.
I tried to tell myself that this wasn't that different from the times Tori and I had lost touch earlier this year, that if I kept at it and let heads cool down that we'd get back together and be friends again, perhaps with the help of a few more screaming matches, but the utter silence I was getting felt more conclusive than usual.
This really was it. This was the end.
If you've been reading so far and remember the Kyle Bowman incident, you can probably guess that I shut down for a little while after this; for days afterward it felt easier to just stay quiet and avoid the world and hope that that would keep everything from falling down all around me while still telling myself that this was the worst time of my life. For a time, even, that worked, but that was only sustainable for those first few days after Thanksgiving before having to go back to school.
Like in the days after Kyle Bowman attacked me, it seemed like pushing people away would be easiest, but unlike those days the people around me weren't so apt to let me push them away this time. Some of them were easy to let in, some I even encouraged after I realized how much better it felt to be surrounded by friends (even if they weren't Tori) than being alone. I may not have been the greatest company for them when they were really doing their level best to cheer me up, but I was honestly glad to have them on my side.
Some of them, though, I still had to figure out if I wanted to hear from them or not.
Take the Skype call I was waiting for, for example.
It'd been just over a week since Thanksgiving, and we'd just tiptoed into December. Now, like a lot of Southern California, Regan Hills didn't exactly have what you would call seasons. Sure, we had summer and spring, but fall and winter never really got as cold or as wet as it did anywhere else. Sure, the days were getting shorter and there was a bit of chill in the air, but I'd never seen snow in my life, nor did I ever expect it.
Still, it had been a gloomy, overcast day, the kind that demanded a light sweatshirt with a hood in case it rained, and it was cool enough come nighttime that I was glad for the thin blanket wrapped around my shoulders while I sat at my laptop and waited for the call.
Well, waited was one word for it. "Dreaded" might have been another good one, though that wasn't quite right either. What was I feeling, really? This shouldn't have been so hard, it was just a phone call, just talking to someone I cared about, just... well, it wasn't "just" anything, not after the last time we met, not after-
This had to have been the first time Skype ringing actually managed to give me a jump scare. I knew the call was coming, I knew who it'd be, but that didn't make it any less surprising when it actually happened. I watched the name on the screen, looked at their picture, staring at it long and hard considering how wise this move was.
It kept ringing.
I kept looking.
"What the fuck are you waiting for?" I muttered to myself, clicking to answer it.
Within a couple seconds, I was greeted by the welcome sight of Rachel McNeil sitting at a desk in a small apartment. She wasn't as made up as I was used to seeing her, but she still looked beautiful as ever in her pale, red-haired and tattooed glory. The eyes behind her glasses still had a hint of tired sadness to them, but looked a lot happier and healthier than when I last saw her at Thanksgiving, even if her knit cap and comfy-looking sweater meant she was almost certainly colder than I was.
"Hey, Ryan," she said.
"Hey, Rachel. You're, uh, looking good," I replied, trying to think of something neutral to say.
I hadn't seen Rachel in person since Thanksgiving out of a mixture of fear and shame, but we still kept in touch via text even after she left for Portland; by this point we were too good friends to not communicate. This is how I knew as much as I did about how things were in the McNeil household, even the details I'd rather not have known.
"Thanks. Wish I could say the same for you," she said.
"Thanks," I said, sarcastic.
"Hey, I'm just callin' 'em like I see 'em," she said. Her flippant attitude softened for a moment. "The meeting today didn't go well, I take it?"
"That's one way of putting it," I said.
The meeting today was at the office of our school's paper, the Puma Press. Editor Nadia Barclay had called a private meeting with me and Tori in the hopes of trying to get us to work our shit out. Neither Tori nor I were exactly in a place where working out our differences was an option, and while Tori used much more colorful language than I did, we both got the point across to Nadia. This would have been humiliating enough as is had Nadia not then told us that she didn't give a damn about our problems, but if they got in the way of the Puma Press' success this year that she'd kick us both off the paper and make sure we regretted our choice.
In the interests of keeping the peace, I offered to resign from the paper, but Nadia wouldn't let me. Something about how I was too good a writer to let my personal issues get in the way of my success (though I was reasonably sure "my success" in this case also meant "Nadia's success"), and that Tori and I would just have to be adults about this, lest we go back to her making us regret fucking with her.
"Well, you're alive, so, that's something," Rachel said, doing an admirably job of trying to find a silver lining.
"I guess. Anyway, what's Portland like? How's the new job treating you?" I asked, happy to have another topic to change to.
Rachel rolled her eyes, lifting up her laptop and showing me the tiny stretch of her apartment. "I just got through orientation today, but it looks pretty good. The city's fucking cold and wet and full of weirdos, which means I fit in rather well. The apartment's on the Spartan side, and I've got noisy neighbors above me and on both sides, but, it's my own place, and with this job I'll more than be able to afford it. Hopefully I'll even be able to pay off Mom within about three, four months tops."
From what Rachel told me, things didn't quite explode on Thanksgiving after Tori and me had our fight on the front lawn, but they got pretty close. Rachel and Tori spent most of the night arguing, and once everyone else went home, Lauren more or less gave Rachel a stack of cash and encouraged her to get a move on to Portland sooner rather than later. Nobody ever revealed what the fight was all about, but Lauren pushing Rachel to the side wasn't terribly surprising for how she usually favored Tori.
"You two still haven't talked?" I asked.
"Not at length. I keep trying to schedule a Skype chat, but things keep coming up and she says she has to reschedule. I know she's busy, but..." Rachel trailed off.
"Yeah. But..." I replied. Though she never said it in so many words, I knew that Rachel had been looking for Lauren's approval for a while now, any acknowledgment that she'd made a turnaround from the hellraiser she was back when she was a kid, but so far Lauren had kept her at arm's length. Rachel had been trying to make it look like she didn't care, but I wasn't buying the aloof act.
"So, how have you been doing?" she asked. "Still adding pictures to your Senior Year Memories album?"
I smiled, nostalgic. "Not since you. I'm... putting it on a bit of a hiatus right now."
"Oh, don't tell me you're doing that whole bullshit withdrawn act again, because if I have to come down there and kick your ass to pull your head out of it, I will," Rachel threatened jokingly. At least, I was pretty sure she was joking.
"No, no, no, nothing like that," I clarified. "I'm not deleting my pictures or saying I'm never gonna have sex again, but..."
"But what?" she asked.
Good question. My wandering dick had brought me almost as much trouble as it had joy this year, and that trouble was pretty bad. Whether it meant getting punched in the head by Kyle Bowman hard enough to give me a brief bout of PTSD or losing my best friend because I'd fucked her sister and her mom, it was hard to not think that I'd have had a much more peaceful year if I just kept my head down and stopped fucking around so much.
The problem was it wasn't just something I could turn off anymore. For lack of better wording, my sexuality had become a major part of my identity now. If I denied myself that, I'd be denying a major part of who I was and it'd drive me insane. I won't go so far as to say I needed sex to survive, but if I were to pretend that I didn't enjoy it and just try to go back into my shell like I did after Kyle attacked me, I knew I'd have been a mess.
"But..." I continued. "I think I'm going to need to be more cautious. I need to think through what I'm doing, make sure that whatever happens, nobody gets hurt."
"Love and sex are pretty fucked up sometimes. You can't always save everyone from getting hurt," Rachel said.
"Maybe not, but I'd really like to try," I said.
"Awww, aren't you sweet?" Rachel said.
I shot her my middle finger. She returned the gesture with a smile.
