Disclaimer -- All characters are 18 or older.
Intro: 43-year-old mother has an encounter with her daughter and her daughter's female friends while they're all on break from college.
It's not necessary to read Part 1. This is written to be standalone.
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Deanne finished putting away all the groceries from her trip to the store. It was the Saturday morning before Thanksgiving, and her daughter, Alana, was on her way home from Frostburg State. Deanne hated how empty the house felt since her daughter left for freshman year of college a few months earlier, but Alana's laughter would soon fill the house again and bring it back to life.
Deanne had been a single mother Alana's entire life, and she gave up even attempting to date any men years ago. Alana was her life's focus, and she was proud of everything her beautiful daughter had already accomplished. She graduated high school near the top of her class and earned a half scholarship to college. She was popular in high school, a cheerleader, and she remained close with the same group of neighborhood friends she had gone to school with since kindergarten. On top of that, Alana was kind to a fault and oblivious to her own physical beauty. Her mother couldn't fathom how she got so lucky to have her turn out so well.
Deanne took the whole Thanksgiving week off from work to spend as much time as she could with Alana. She had the whole week planned out with her daughter, and she had the fridge stocked to make all her daughter's favorite comfort foods, topped off with Thanksgiving dinner at her parent's house across town.
The homemade mac-and-cheese was almost ready to take out of the oven when she heard the front door opening. Deanne raced over, and mother and daughter ecstatically embraced as soon as Alana entered in.
Soon enough they were wildly chattering away, with Alana recounting all her new experiences at college, and Deanne peppering her with questions about it all. They'd talked on the phone, video, and text, but there was something about being face to face that just opened the floodgates and let them settle right back into their old role as mother and daughter best friends that shared everything.
After lunch, they retreated to the den to watch a movie.
"Mom, I hope you don't mind, but I invited all the girls over tomorrow."
"That's fine, honey. The more, the merrier. But what about Leonard?" Deanne asked somewhat nervously, her last encounter with him still fresh in her mind.
"Oh, his family flew out to California to do Thanksgiving with his grandparents, and he went with them."
"Oh, that's nice," Deanne said in relief. "What do you have planned with the girls?"
"I don't know. We'll probably just hang out around the house."
Deanne smiled. "They're all welcome over here any time."
The rest of the day flew by in a blur. They streamed a bunch of movies while eating a bunch of popcorn and talking about a bunch of things, and they made time to eat a bunch of dinner in between.
Come the next day, on Sunday, all the girls came over after lunch. Everyone was overjoyed to have the old gang back together again, and even after months of being apart, it was like they all picked right up again where they had left off. It feels just like old times, Deanne marveled.
While the girls all sat down to catch up, Deanne surveyed all of them and reminisced.
It was only 5 months ago the girls walked across the high school graduation stage and only three months since they departed for college, but, in some ways, it already felt like years. Still, the time seemed to instantly melt away as they caught up on each other's lives.
There were 7 of them total, including Alana, and all were at least 18 (some of them had already turned 19). All of them were smart, but they were also tall and beautiful and competed on the cheerleading team together. Deanne loved that Alana fell in with this group of friends. They were all academically successful, stayed out of trouble, and went to college, although they all ended up at different schools along the mid-Atlantic after high school.
Brandi was the unquestioned leader of the group. At 5'11", she was the tallest in the group and as tall as Deanne, although she weighed 40 pounds less than Deanne's 180 pounds. She was the prototypical blonde-haired blue-eyed beauty that seemed to hit the genetic lottery.
Kenna was of Irish descent with long flaming red hair, pale skin and freckles that she hated but everyone else adored. She was a wing girl, of sorts, to Brandi.
Kayla was a long-haired brunette who was probably the quietest of the girls, but also the most book smart of them.
Michele was Chinese American. She was the shortest of the group at 5'7", although she rejected the traditional stereotypical quiet role her parents tried to instill in her and embraced her naturally lighthearted personality.
Louisa was born in the US, but her parents came from the Dominican Republic. She had a fiery temper that she joked was passed down through her bloodlines.
Nicky, who was African American, rounded out the group. She was the most serious of the whole group but also the first one to stand up for any of the others when anyone challenged them.
Deanne's own daughter, Alana, was good friends with all the others, but she tended to be a follower, content to follow the crowd. She was a peace maker, always willing to do whatever it took to make others happy. Deanne marveled how much Alana reminded her of herself at that age. She was just a few inches shorter, but the same facial features and long dirty blonde hair.
Collectively, the girls were all tall, slender, and fit. They turned heads everywhere they went, but none of them were big-headed about it. Deanne secretly wished she had their youth with so much life and endless possibilities still ahead. Lately, she was finally starting to feel her age, all 43 years of it. Still, the girls were almost like daughters to her, even though she knew they were adults now. All of them had boyfriends at one point or another, and she was confident all of them had become sexually active by now.
The conversation quickly turned to a recounting off all their love hits and misses in college. To no surprise, all the girls seemed to have no shortage of suiters, and guys were still as horny as they were back in Deanne's day. Some things just never change, she mused.
"Miss Taylor, how come we've never seen you with a man," Brandi asked innocently. "All the years we've been coming here, and you've never introduced us to anyone special in your life."
"Oh, Brandi, I'm afraid the love train left this station a long time ago," Deanne replied wistfully.
"But don't you ever get lonely?" Kayla wanted to know.
"Sure, I do," Deanne smiled. "But I learned a long time I'm better off with no one than with the wrong one. Besides, I'm not really alone, am I? I've always had Alana and all of you in my life."
"Yeah, who needs a man," Kenna piped in. "They can't really do anything that we can't do ourselves. Am I right?"
"I've got five fingers that have done more for me than any man's 6 inches," Nicky declared.