Passion (M&M & CC/UC, AU, Adult, ) (Complete)

[April]

Winner Round 12















(for Amy DeLuca)







Cover Banner Made By: singerchic4

Round 12

for Best Supporting Portrayal of Liz Parker
Best Supporting Portrayal of Max Evans
Favorite Alternate Portrayal of a Canon Character (Tess)
Favorite Unconventional/Unique Friendship (Michael/Alex)
Most Talked About Fic
Most Memorable Scene (Michael and Maria make out on the kitchen counter)
Most Dependable Updater

Title: Passion

Author: April

Disclaimer: The story is mine; the characters are not, as usual. Bummer.

Summary: At the University of Santa Fe in New Mexico, things can get pretty wild . . .

Promos: You can view two of the "promos" I made for the fic on Youtube! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yreTSXpbpgw and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qW2BI8Tzt8&feature=user

Category: Michael and Maria AU, with some definite UC pairings thrown in there

Rating: Very Adult

Warnings: Some UC elements, overt sexuality/language

Author’s Notes: I cannot state enough that this fic is totally NOT some epic romance. It's college. Crazy, complicated stuff happens in college. Sometimes its a little explicit, sometimes a little over-the-top, probably very often frustrating. But if you read it, hopefully you’ll like it. It's going to be another long one, folks, but I promise that updates will be frequent. Feedback is totally appreciated. I thrive on it.

One more note . . . it's AU, so I figure it's okay for the characters to be a little--or in this fic's case--a lot different than they were on the show. Bear with them. They're not perfect by any means, but who is these days?

God, enough rambling from me. On with the fic! Sorry if it's not a very intriguing start. Stick with it. I promise sexiness.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

My name is Maria DeLuca, and I just graduated from the University of Santa Fe. If you know me, congratulations. If you don’t, you’re one of few. You see, my friends and I are practically the most popular people ever, and even that’s an understatement. I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging, but we’re pretty much campus legends. Their names are Kyle, Max, and Michael, and even though they’re idiots, I’ve lived with them for four years. They’ve been my best friends twice that long. And nothing’s ever changed that simplicity . . . until this year.

I thought I knew who I was; I thought I knew what I wanted. But I was completely wrong.

The irony is, I spent most of my college career not paying attention in class, not studying for tests, and I ended up learning something huge, something that completely changed my life. So what is this mysterious life lesson, you might ask? Well, it sounds kind of weird when I say it out loud, but . . . I learned that it’s one thing to have sex. It’s quite another to have passion.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Michael Guerin turned on his hand-held video camera and pressed the record button. He made his way through the living room and kitchen and crept slowly down the hallway, anxiously anticipating the footage in store.

He stopped in front of the bathroom door and listened to the sounds of running water coming from the shower. Chuckling, he turned the camera on himself. “You hear that? Someone’s in the shower,” he said in a sing-song voice. He waited a moment for an indicator as to who that someone might be, and it wasn’t long before he got it.

“I’m shaking at your touch! I like you way too much!” an unmistakable voice sang out over the sound of the running water. “My baby, I’m afraid I’m falling for you.”

“Better,” he said to the camera. “Maria’s in the shower. That’s good stuff.” He turned the video camera back and around and filmed himself placing his hand on the doorknob and quietly easing the door open. Steam poured out from inside and fogged up his lens for a moment, but he wiped it off quickly and kept going.

“I’d do ‘bout anything to get the hell out alive!” Maria kept singing. “Or maybe I would rather settle down! Down! With you! You!”

He shook his head, amazed that her taste in music just kept getting worse, and stepped forward slowly, quiet as a mouse.

“Down! Down! With you! You!”

And when he was close enough, he reached out and took hold of the shower curtain . . .

“I’m shaking at your touch!”

. . . and when the moment was right . . .

“I like you way too much!”

. . . he yanked the curtain back.

“My--you fucking asshole!” she shouted, throwing her arms in the air, knocking his video camera out of his hands and onto the floor.

“Language,” he cautioned, always amused by her reaction.

She violently pulled the curtain back into place and demanded in a shrill voice, “What are you doing, perv?”

“Oh, you know, the usual,” he replied, bending down to pick up his camera.

“Haven’t you ever heard of a little thing called privacy?”

“No.”

“Oh, my God, you’re such a guy,” was her response.

He sat down on the toilet seat and examined his camera because, as always, its well-being was his first priority. A video camera was an aspiring director’s best friend.

“Are you still here?” she shrieked.

“Yeah, I’m not leaving ‘til I find out if you broke my camera.”

“Oh, shut up, I didn’t break it.”

“Bet you did.” He pressed the power button, and it turned right back on again, worked perfectly. But of course he had to give her heck about it. “Oh, yeah. Yeah, you did.”

“I did not!”

“Yeah, you did. It won’t even turn on,” he lied as he rewound through the footage he just filmed. “Can’t do anything with it now.”

“Oh, yeah right!”

“Nope. It’s done. Seven-hundred dollar video camera, right there.” He reached into his back pocket and took out a wrinkled piece of scrap paper and a pen that barely worked. “I’ll just make a little . . . thing here. IOU.” He wrote down the letters big on the paper. “Nice letters, huh?”

“Can you just leave?”

“No, I gotta put . . .” He wrote down the amount below the letters. “Seven-hundred dollars. There we go.” He started doodling then, just to egg her on even more. “A smiley face. That’s cute.”

“Michael, I swear to God!”

“Alright, I’m done,” he said, reluctantly rising to his feet. He stuck his pen back into his pocket and started for the bathroom door. “So, I’ll just—I’ll put this on your bed, where you’ll see it, okay?”

“Whatever.”

“Seven-hundred bucks. I know you’re good for it. We’ll, uh, we’ll set up a payment plan later, alright?”

“Screw you!”

He chuckled. “Alright.” He left the bathroom and shut the door, smiling. He never got tired of doing that. That had to be the fifth time he’d bombarded Maria in the shower that month, and the month wasn’t even halfway over. But the best part? She never expected it, even though she should.

He walked back out into the living room, a grin he couldn’t hide plastered on his face. His other roommates and friends, Max Evans and Kyle Valenti, were in the kitchen, and they seemed to know exactly what his grin meant right away.

“Man,” Kyle said knowingly. “You filmed Maria showering again, didn’t you?”

Of course he had. “Ah, she likes it.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Maria wrapped a towel around herself and exited the bathroom cautiously. Sometimes Michael was waiting for her, waiting to seize her towel and leave her wandering naked around the house. He was such a freak like that.

She looked both ways like a child crossing the street and, once she was certain the coast was clear, she sprinted down to the end of the hallway, to her bedroom. The first thing she saw was Michael’s stupid IOU note lying on her bed. Grunting, she crumpled up the note, tried to toss it into her trash can, and missed. Whatever.

She went over to her dresser, then, and examined her appearance in the mirror. Hair: soaked but sexy. Body: still in shape. Face: designed to make men crazy. She loved how hot she was.

She glanced down at her cell phone next and saw that she had one new text message. She knew already before even checking it who it was from. Greg, the clingy guy she’d made the mistake of sleeping with a few weeks back. He wouldn’t leave her alone. She was about to tell him she had cancer and was going to die so he’d stop bugging her, but that would probably only make him pay more attention. She could definitely picture him coming over with flowers and a homemade chemotherapy kit.

She sighed and quickly texted him back. fucking myself right now, thinking of u. That was what she told all the guys she never wanted to see again. Eventually, they gave up hope of ever really getting together with her again.

She set her cell phone down and had just started running a comb through her wet hair when it chimed. Another new text message. Again from Greg.

plans 2nite? it asked.

She groaned. Could this guy not take a hint? Texting was all they had done for two weeks. When a girl didn’t bother to see you in person or at least talk to you on the phone for two weeks, she clearly wasn’t interested.

sorry sick she texted back. Really, she had every intention of hitting a club with Michael, Max, and Kyle that night and going home with a new boy-toy, but she couldn’t tell Greg that. He was too fragile.

“Texting lies again?”

She set her phone down when she heard Michael’s grating voice. She looked over and saw him standing in her doorway. Just the way he stood . . . oh, he was so self-assured. It really annoyed her.

“Why do you always come into my room without knocking?” she asked. “Wanna catch a glimpse of the goods?”

“Another glimpse,” he corrected. “Why do you always leave your door open? Want me to see?”

She laughed out loud, amused by the completely irrational thought. “In your dreams.”

“Well, I’m just saying . . .”

“You know what, Michael? Say it somewhere else. ‘Cause this is not working.”

“What’s not working?” he asked.

“You, having you here. You’re, like, contaminating my room.”

“Oh, really, I’m contaminating your room?”

“Well, yeah, you’re gross.”

“I’m gross?”

“I don’t remember ordering an echo.”

He walked further into the room and pointed to the crumpled up piece of paper she tossed onto the floor. “What, is that my IOU? That’s a formal document, Maria.”

“I didn’t break your stupid camera!”

“It’s not stupid! That thing’s my life!”

She laughed just a little, then let it turn into a smirk. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s sad because it’s true.”

“Well, at least I have some direction, unlike somebody. Let’s just call her Smaria.”

“Oh, yeah, you have direction,” she agreed, quickly adding, “to the nearest slut.”

“Huh, must be why I come to your room.”

She made a face of outrage and picked up the first thing she could find, her cell phone, and stupidly threw it at him. He jumped out of the way, and it crashed onto the floor. The screen cracked.

“Crap,” she cursed.

“Butterfingers,” he teased. “You gotta watch out for that.”

“You know what? You better watch out for me!” she warned.

“For you?”

“Yeah!”

“Why?”

“I’m gonna kill you!”

He gave her a thumbs up as he walked out the door. “Can’t wait.”

She clenched her jaw and shook her head once he was gone. How she hadn’t killed him already was a mystery. Michael Guerin drove her absolutely crazy.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

One of the nicest things about living in Santa Fe was the nightlife. It wasn’t a city like Los Angeles or New York by any means, but it was big enough to have clubs and other fun things to do. Michael, Maria, Max, and Kyle always took full advantage of it. Although The Lightning Strike, one of many clubs in the area, wasn’t Michael’s favorite place to go in terms of alcohol, it was a good place to pick up chicks; and in the scheme of things, chicks were much more important than anything else.

He stalked through the bar that night like a predator searching for his prey. He wasn’t really a predator, just a hormonal guy looking for a girl to satisfy him.

Meeting girls was never hard. Convincing them to spend the night with him was even easier. He couldn’t explain it; he’d just always had a way with women. Women of all ages. All types of women. Maybe it was his good looks. Or his subtle charm. Or one of his many other irresistible qualities.

So he was a little self-righteous. Any guy who’d slept with as many girls as he had would be.

Oh, the redhead at the bar. She caught his eye right away. Although he usually went for blondes, she was just hot as anyone else he’d slept with during the past month. And she looked easy. She was wearing a denim mini-skirt, so she couldn’t be too prude; and even if she was, he’d have her panting his name in an hour or so. It was inevitable.

He bypassed a couple of other girls who were making eyes at him and sat down on a bar stool next to the redhead, preparing to work his magic. “Can I buy you a drink?” he started out.

She looked him over a moment, then smiled shyly. “I’m not old enough.”

“That’s why I’m offering to buy.”

Her smile grew in size, and she blushed a little. Oh, this was going to be even easier than he thought. “Sure,” she said. “Why not?”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Maria found a strategic place to stand in the club that night, right by the performance stage and under the spotlight. It was a place where everyone could and would see her, and that was exactly what she wanted. No way was she going to walk around and pursue men. Men pursued her. That was the way it worked.

She’d had a few offers, guys who had come up to her and offered to buy her a drink. But please. Was she stupid or something? Every girl with half a brain knew that ‘Can I buy you a drink?’ was code for ‘Can I fuck your brains out?’ She didn’t want that. She didn’t want to get fucked.

She wanted to do the fucking.

She was starting to get a little impatient and panicked for a moment, fearing that she’d lost her mesmerizing mojo somehow. But just as she was about to leave her spot by the stage and start pursuing, a well-muscled Hispanic guy came up to her. He looked cocky, arrogant. Totally not her type, but he was good-looking enough to get away from it.

“Now why you standing here alone, lookin’ all fine and shit?” he asked right out.

“Oh, just waiting for a hot guy to come and sweep me off my feet,” she replied. “Too bad he hasn’t showed.”

And just as she’d expected, he took that as a challenge. “Oh, I can sweep,” he promised. “Swept up four girls just this week.”

“Only four?” she teased.

“Only?”

She laughed a little, quitting before she scared him off. “Can you dance?” she asked him.

“Hell yeah, baby,” he answered confidently. “Can you?”

She grabbed him by his shirt and pulled him out onto the dance floor with her. “You bet your ass I can.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Five minutes into the conversation and Rachel---or was it Rachelle?---was already done with her first beer. Michael ordered her another, happy that she appeared to be a lightweight. At this rate, he’d have her home and in bed before 10:00. That would leave him time to head back out and find another girl tonight, too.

A double-header. Awesome.

“You’re a s-senior, huh?” she said, already starting to slur. “That’s s-so cool! I wish I was a senior.”

He could already tell she was a sophomore just by looking at her, but he played his usual win-over tactics. “You’re not?”

“No. I’m . . . another one.”

“Junior?”

“Nope. Sophomore.”

“Really?” Duh. “You don’t look like a sophomore.”

“Well, what do sophomores look like?”

He shrugged. “Oh, you know, immature, a little overweight ‘cause they spent all of freshman year drinkin’.”

She laughed. “Well, I’m glad I don’t look like that. I’d hate to look like an immature fat girl.”

“Yeah,” he agreed, “I’d hate to look like an immature fat girl, too.”

She laughed loudly, then grabbed her next beer and started chugging for no apparent reason. Oh yeah. This girl was putty in his hands. Just the way he liked it.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

As it turned out, Maria’s Hispanic hottie couldn’t dance at all. She considered ditching him for a moment but decided against it when she brushed up against the bulge in his pants. Impressive.

She pulled out all of her usual moves, the kind that sent guys running into the nearest bathroom to jerk off. Guys were so easy. A little hip shaking and hair flipping and they were ga-ga. Add in a little bumping and grinding and they were like dogs, horny and drooling. Lucky for them, she actually liked horny and drooling most of the time.

She pressed her ass back into his groin, giving him a feel for what the night might—correction would—have in store for them if—correction when—she got her way. Sex of the wildest variety, numerous times, various positions. He couldn’t dance, but hopefully he could fuck. If not, she’d steer him around the curves.

“Damn, bitch,” he breathed into her ear. “You can dance.”

She whirled in his arms to face him and smiled confidently. Always confidently. “I know.”





TBC . . .

-April

(by the way, the song Maria's singing in the shower at the beginning is "Falling for You" by Weezer. Thought I should give credit.)

[April]

Thank you for the wonderful feedback, guys! I really appreciate it!
Alright, let the wildness continue, I guess . . .





Part 2




For eight years, Max Evans had been attending clubs and parties with Michael, Maria, and Kyle, and for eight years, he’d been the loser who never had any fun. It wasn’t his fault. He was all for having fun, but clubs just weren’t his scene. He was much more comfortable in the classroom or the library or the tutor center.

“Unbelievable,” he said to Kyle as he watched both Michael and Maria from his seat at the table. “On the make again. Don’t they get tired of meaningless hook-ups?”

“Apparently not,” Kyle muttered, sounding bored.

“Where do they find these people anyway?”

“Right here, man,” Kyle replied with a smirk. “Max, I know you think of yourself as a classy guy, but face it: this is just not a classy place.”

Explains why I don’t belong here, Max thought to himself. If he wasn’t such a good friend, he would’ve just stayed home and curled up with a good book for the night.

“I get what you’re saying, though,” Kyle went on. “They’re clearly crazy. Every night, another person.”

“Yep.”

“Where’s the commitment?”

“Exactly.”

“I myself am a two-woman man.”

Max gave his friend a look and said, “Now that just sounds weird. Especially since one of those girls is my sister.”

Kyle grinned. “Your hot sister.”

Max shook his head. Honestly, he didn’t approve of his sister Isabel’s three-way relationship with Kyle and Kyle’s other girlfriend Tess, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. Besides, they all seemed pretty happy together.

“There’s nothing wrong with a threesome lifestyle, man, really,” Kyle insisted. “In fact, most guys would love it.”

“It’s just not the natural order of things,” Max protested.

“It is, if you think about it.” It was obvious that Kyle had had this argument many a time before. “The men/women ratio on this planet is skewed. More women. Now there are more women on this planet than men for an obvious reason. Dude, we’re supposed to take two.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll be lucky if I can even get one,” Max said gloomily. He had to admit, the lack of romance in his life was starting to worry him. He wasn’t gay. He wasn’t a jerk. So why weren’t girls into him? More importantly, why wasn’t one particular girl into him?

“Chin up, Maximillion,” Kyle said. “We’ll find your soul mate someday.”

That was the problem. Max was fairly certain he’d already found his soul mate. She just hadn’t found him back.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Before his red-headed companion was too wasted to walk, Michael suggested going somewhere else. She stupidly agreed, of course. Of course.

Michael brought her over to Max and Kyle’s table to introduce her to his friends before leaving. He always liked to rub his chicks in their faces, mostly Kyle’s. Before he’d met his girlfriends a year ago, Kyle had been a bona fide player, too. Now he was doing the relationship thing. Crazy.

“Hey, guys,” he said. “This is Rachel.”

“Rachelle,” she corrected.

“This is Rachelle. I’m gonna take her back to our place, give her the tour. You know.” Translation: Make yourselves scarce for a few hours.

“Right, the tour,” Kyle said with a knowing nod. “It’s a good tour.”

“Yeah, so we’ll just take off, I guess.”

Just then, Maria came bounding toward the table with a companion of her own, a beefy Hispanic kid who looked more like a criminal than a sex partner.

“Hi, guys,” she said, sounding out of breath from dancing. “Have you met Horatio?”

“Hola,” he greeted.

“Uh, we speak American here,” Michael informed him, already not liking the guy. “Try ‘hello’.”

Maria rolled her eyes and said, “Ignore him. That’s what I always do.”

Michael grunted. She ignored him? Since when?

“So I think Horatio and I are gonna be leaving,” she informed them all. “Maybe go take a tour of the house or something.”

Michael laughed and quickly shot that idea down. “Oh, I don’t think so. Tour’s already booked up, baby.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah. Four’s a crowd.”

Kyle cleared his throat and bravely piped up, “If I may recommend the number three . . .”

Maria ignored Kyle and glared at Michael, and he could see the unmistakable gleam of competition in her eyes. Oh, he hated that look as much as he loved it, because it usually meant she was about to win something.

“I’ll tell you what,” she said, obviously forcing herself to sound civil to him. “You can take this lovely young lady--” She gestured to Rachelle. “--on a tour of your car. Or a classroom. Or a cemetery.”

“A-a cemetery?” he sputtered.

“Yeah. And while you’re there, feel inclined to drop dead.”

“Or, here’s a thought: You take Mr. Muchacho back to Mexico and do it there.”

“Racist much?” she shrieked.

“Oh, give me a break!”

“Which limb?”

Before he could retort, Rachelle tapped his shoulder and said, “I’m hot. Can I take my clothes off?”

The image of it . . . so delicious, he couldn’t resist another minute.

In one swift motion, he grabbed Rachelle by the hand and took off towards the exit. If Maria was going to be stubborn enough as to make this a footrace back to the house, then he was going to win.

“Michael! No fair!” she whined, running after him with Horatio in tow. “You didn’t even say go!”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Maria groaned in pain as her hip smashed against the doorframe and she and Michael both tried to squeeze through the door at the same time. It wasn’t a big doorway, though, so it was stupid for them to both try to fit through at once. Stupid Michael.

“Move!” she said, butt-bumping him, trying to pull Horatio through with her.

He pushed hard against her, trying to get her to budge. “God, your ass is so fat.”

“You wish you were fucking it,” she retorted.

“Gag me.” He shoved himself through the doorway then, and dragged his date inside with him. He charged straight for the bathroom, and Maria raced to catch up with him. She wanted the bathroom for sex with Horatio.

“No, Michael!” she shouted, bypassing the red-head. “I call dibs on the bathroom!”

“Too bad.” He literally pushed her out of the way and pulled Rachelle into the bathroom with him, slamming and locking the door.

“Damn you, Michael!” Maria shouted, pounding on the door with her tiny fists. She’d promised Horatio great shower sex. “I hate you!”

“Cry me a river, babe!”

No. She refused to do that. She refused to admit defeat. There was a way to get back at him, and she knew exactly what it was.

“Come on,” she said, grabbing Horatio’s hand.

“This is pretty weird,” he commented as she led him into Michael’s room.

Weird. Story of her life.

She left the door open to Michael’s room, smiling with mischief. One of Michael’s major pet peeves was other people having sex in his bed. She did it all the time when she wanted to piss him off.

“Okay, take your pants off,” she told Horatio.

He slid them down to his feet easily, boxers, too.

She pushed her skirt down, pooled it at her feet, and stepped out. She wasn’t wearing underwear. She rarely did. “Come here,” she said, jumping up into Horatio’s arms. She wrapped her legs around him, found a decent angle of penetration, and sank herself onto his erection before he knew what was hitting him. He almost tipped over backwards, but he staggered forwards at last minute and they crashed onto the bed.

“Yes,” she gasped, turning them over so that she was on top of him instead. She started riding him hard and fast, making sure to make the loudest sounds she could.

“Oh, god! Yes! Yes!” she screamed, over-exaggerating the pleasure a lot. “Fuck me, Horatio! Fuck me on Michael’s bed!”

He gazed up at her with astonished eyes, obviously too stunned to speak as she rode him.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Michael lifted Rachelle up onto the sink and urged her skirt up over her hips. He pushed her thong to the side, too impatient to undress her, and was just starting to undo his pants when he heard the sounds coming from his bedroom. The Maria sounds.

“God, yes! Fuck!”

Ignore her, he told himself, pushing his jeans and boxers down past his hips.

“I’m gonna cum!” she kept on, becoming increasingly louder. “I’m gonna cum on Michael’s bed!”

He made a face of disgust as he grabbed onto his member and positioned himself at Rachelle’s entrance. Just the thought of it . . .

“I’m cumming!” she cried. “I’m cumming right . . . now!”

The minute she screamed, he went limp in his own hands. It wasn’t that Maria and sex were too unmixable things. Hell, he thought about Maria and sex in the same category a lot, but she knew it was one of his pet peeves when other people did it in his bed.

“What’s wrong?” Rachelle asked.

“Dammit,” he cursed, wishing he could stop picturing her and that loser getting it on in his bed. “She knows how to kill the mood.”

Rachelle pouted and groaned in disappointment.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Whenever she was having a really good dream, Maria hated to wake up. Didn’t everybody? The next morning, she was having a particularly good dream about two of her past lovers when she was rudely awakened. Very rudely.

“Ah!” she screamed when she felt a bucket of water dump all over her. She tried to pull the blanket over her head, but it was too late. She was soaked.

“Ha, ha,” she heard Michael laugh.

That bastard! The nerve! Pouring cold water all over her! And in the a.m.! That . . . bastard!

She sat straight up in bed, dripping, and glared at him.

He grinned smugly and said, “That’s for having sex in my bed.”

“Wouldn’t have had to if you’d just given me the damn bathroom in the first place!” she emphatically reminded him. “Or if you’d gone to the cemetary!”

He just laughed, picked up a basket of laundry—more precisely his sheets—and set it down atop her lap. “Wash ‘em,” he said.

Oh, that just about made her lose it on him.

He kept on laughing and started toward the door. “You look good all wet, Maria. Anyone ever tell you that?”

She reached behind herself, grabbed a pillow, and threw it at his head. But she missed, of course, because he anticipated it and ducked out of the way.

Prick.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Maria took a long, thorough shower that day, because she wasn’t sure where Michael had gotten that water he dumped on her. Knowing him, probably the toilet. He was that much of a jackass to her.

Once she was clean again, she brought his laundry basket out into the living room where he was lying on the couch, napping. (Apparently his bed was just unacceptable until his linens were clean.) She rammed the laundry basket into his stomach, sharply awakening him and causing him to groan. “Oh . . .”

“There you go,” she said, smiling pleasantly.

He picked up one of the sheets, sniffed it, and made a face. “Did you even wash ‘em?”

“No, I’m not really into the whole laundry thing.”

He shook his head and set the laundry basket aside. “Well, I hope you’re happy. Because of you, I had to send poor Rachelle home after only two fucks.”

“Two whole fucks? That must be a new record for you.”

“I’ll have you know, I once went six times in a row,” he informed her proudly.

“Big deal. I’ve gone seven,” she countered.

“You have not.”

“I have, too!”

“Prove it.”

“I can’t. We didn’t videotape.” She shrugged. “You’re just gonna have to believe me.”

“Nope.”

She sat down on the back of the couch and peered down at him. “Why is it so hard for you to accept that I’ve had more sex than you?”

“Because you haven’t.”

“Yes, I have.” She glanced over into the kitchen and noticed for the first time that Max was sitting at the table, working on something. “Max, who’s had more sex? Me or Michael?”

“I really wouldn’t know,” Max replied.

“It’s me,” she said confidently. She pointed her finger down at Michael and added, “Someone’s just living in Brazil.”

“Brazil?” he echoed, confused.

“You know, land of denial. As in the Nile River. It’s a word thing. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

“Actually,” Max piped up, “the Nile River’s in Egypt.”

“Max,” she said, “there can’t be a river in Egypt. It’s all sand.”

“She’s right,” Michael said.

Max shook his head and mumbled, “Well, at least you guys agree on something.”

“You know who it is?” Maria said suddenly. “It’s Kyle. Kyle’s the Sex King. He does it more than both of us combined. I’m not, like, proud to admit it, but it is what it is. Kyle.”

“Yeah, that’s true,” Michael said. “Gotta take everything times two with him.”

“Everyone just forgets about him ‘cause he’s all committed.”

Just then, Kyle came up into the kitchen from his bedroom downstairs and said, “You guys talkin’ about me?”

“Of course,” Maria told him.

“Cool.”

“Kyle,” she said, “how many times have you had sex in a row without stopping?”

“In a row?” he asked.

“Yeah, without stopping. Except to get hard again.”

“Uh, well, there was that one time.” He thought about it a moment, moving his fingers back and forth from side to side in the air, indicating one of his many threesome encounters. “Two, four, six . . . eight.”

“Oh! That makes you the winner,” she said, “with me coming in a close second and Michael a distant third.”

“Well, at least I’m adventurous in bed,” Michael countered.

“I’m adventurous! I’m the queen of adventure. Have you seen my kinky sex drawer? It’s to die for.”

“How can you listen to this?” Kyle mumbled to Max.

“It’s entertaining,” was Max’s response.

Maria turned back to her nicer friend then and said, “Oh, Kyle, you great resolver you, can you settle one more little dispute?”

“Oh, I hope so.”

“The Nile River: is it in Brazil or Egypt?”

He seemed surprised by the “dispute” but answered anyway. “It’s in Egypt.”

Maria wrinkled her forehead in confusion and tried to picture it, a river in the middle of the desert. “I don’t get it,” she said, looking down at Michael.

“I don’t, either,” he admitted.

“Are you two doing drugs or just getting stupider by the day?” Kyle asked.

“More stupid,” Max corrected.

“Michael’s getting stupider,” she informed them. “I’m just . . . tired. Someone woke me up this morning.”

“Yeah, I got her all wet,” Michael said with a smirk.

“Shut up,” she said warningly.

“Can we talk about something other than the dysfunction duo for a minute?” Kyle cut in as he poured himself a cup of coffee. “Tess is coming over tonight.”

Tess Harding. She was one of Kyle’s girlfriends and best friends with Kyle’s other girlfriend, Isabel Evans, who was Max’s sister. It was a tangled web they wove. Maria tried her best not to get involved in it.

“Where’s she been lately?” Maria asked him.

“She was recovering,” Kyle explained.

Maria grinned and teased, “What, did you guys go overboard with Kama Sutra or something?”

“No, she had surgery.”

“Oh, did she get her nose done?”

Michael, Kyle, and Max all gave her questioning looks.

“What?” she said. “She needs to get it done.”

“She got her boobs done,” Kyle informed her, a big smile on his face.

“Ew! Are you serious?”

“Yeah, what’s ‘ew’ about that?”

“What’s not?” She huffed. “You men are pigs, I swear! Why would you wanna have sex with silicon?”

“I’m not gonna have sex with silicon. Unless I titty-fuck her, which is very possible.” Kyle shrugged. “Hey, as long as they don’t pop while we’re goin’ at it, I’m happy.” His smile turned into a rather dreamy grin as he started to fantasize. “Oh, I can just see it. Tess and Isabel . . . on top of me. Four big boobies in front of my face.”

Maria rolled her eyes and started to ask Michael, “Would you have sex with . . .” She trailed off when she recalled what a horn-dog she was talking to and said, “Oh, never mind. I already know the answer.”

He grinned. “Hell yeah. I love me some big ol' silicon boobs.”

She rolled her eyes and asked, “Well, Max, what about you?” She crossed the room and went over to sit down on his lap. “You’re a sane person. Would you go for breast implants?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“Good for you, Max.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Michael said, sitting up on the couch for the first time since the conversation started. “It’s still two against two.”

“No, it does matter, because Max’s opinion is the only opinion in this house, besides mine, of course, that matters.”

Michael shook his head and laid back down as Kyle kept fantasizing about his two girlfriends and their big boobs. Maria gave Max a pat on the shoulder and stood back up, but she didn’t notice the grin on his face stretching from ear to ear.





TBC . . .

-April

[April]

Wow, thanks for all the great feedback so far guys! I really wasn't expecting all these wonderful responses since, quite obviously, M+M are big whores right now. :lol Crazy but loveable. That's what I was going for, though, so I'm glad you guys are liking it.

Alright, time to continue. Maria's about to be really naughty in this part, though. Big surprise. :b




Part 3





“Five, six, seven, hit it one, two! Three, four! Roll five, six, turn seven, eight!” Maria shouted out the moves and mirrored her dance team at one of many early morning practices in their own private gym. “And one and two and three and four, five, six . . .” She trailed off, having been taking mental notes the whole time and not liking what she saw. “Okay, stop, guys, stop.”

The team stopped dancing and all turned to face the front again, none of them looking too happy.

“What’s going on? You guys had this yesterday. It’s hips left, right, left, not the other way around.”

“Maybe we should change it to right, left, right, if that’s what most people are doing,” her pain-in-the-ass co-captain Courtney Banks suggested.

Maria immediately shot down the idea. “No. It’s my choreography. We’re not changing it.” No one was going to get her to budge on that. She was the captain. Executive decision. Ha, ha.

Courtney sighed over-exaggeratedly, and Maria was forced to ask her, “What?”

“I’m just tired,” she replied. “I think we all are.”

“Too bad.”

“It’s 7:00 a.m., Maria.”

“Yeah, and do you know how late I stayed up last night? 4:00 a.m.”

One of the other girls on the team gave her a questioning look and said, “Studying?”

“Screwing.” She shrugged. “Whatever. The point is, I’m here and willing to work my ass off. Why aren’t you?” She flapped her arms against her sides in exasperation and said, “I mean, look at where we are, ladies. This is our gym, our own dance team gym.” She spun around and looked over the nice setting, the perfect, undamaged floors, the high ceilings, their team pictures plastered on the wall. Obviously, the best thing was the picture of her alone on the wall, all decked out and beautiful like always. The school had built and decorated the gym a year ago just for their practice sessions. It was an incredible space. “We got this by working hard, by getting up early and dealing with it. Do you know how many dance teams have their own private gym? Like . . . not a lot.”

“I’ve got class in half an hour,” Courtney grumbled, apparently unaffected by the semi-motivational speech.

“Well, we’ve got State Competition in two—count ‘em two—days. And we’re not ready,” Maria said, having no problem being a dictator. “Now, I know you’re all tired, but I also know that we are two-time defending champions. That's a great accomplishment, ladies. Really. But I know I’m gonna be pissed if we don’t win again.” Hopefully that got her point across. “So from the same spot. Five, six, seven, hit it one!”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

As far as Michael was concerned, classes were a waste of time. Except for his film classes. Those were the only classes he actually worked hard in, the only ones he actually cared about. If he was ever going to be a real director someday, he’d better at least care about his film classes.

Advanced Videography was by far his favorite class. It was a self-instruction class, so there were no real assignments, just periodic dates when they would need to show a short film to the professor and one big challenge at the end of the year in which they would need to make a full-length movie about . . . anything. Michael still didn’t know what his was going to be about, but he wasn’t the type to stress about schoolwork. Way too cool for that.

“Hey, look at this,” his friend Alex Whitman said, tapping him on the shoulder.

Michael leaned over and peered down at the screen on the video camera in his friend’s hand. “Whoa,” he said. “How’d you get that shot?”

“Underwater lens,” Alex replied. “You got one.”

“Yeah, but I never used it. I should, though. That’s awesome.” Michael was jealous of the footage. Even though it was just a couple of fish under the water, it looked clear and cool.

“What you got?” Alex asked him.

He smirked. Here was something Alex would be jealous of. “Maria in the shower.”

“Oh, righteous!” Alex exclaimed.

“Come and get it, boys,” Michael called to the rest of his friends in the class as he hooked up his video camera to his laptop computer.

Immediately, at least a dozen guys rushed over and crowded around his computer. “Oh, I can’t wait,” one of them said as Michael uploaded the footage.

“Now, granted, it’s just a short glimpse,” Michael said, “but we’ll pause.”

“Yeah, man!”

“Alright, here it comes.” Michael played the footage until the exact moment when he had pulled back the shower curtain and revealed . . . “Oh!” Naked Maria peep show of the day. He paused it at just the right time, and his friends started jumping up and down with delight when they got to see her nude front half.

“Dude, that’s awesome!”

“You lucky bastard.”

Michael laughed. Personally, he didn’t really care if she was naked or not. It had no affect on him whatsoever. Most of the time. Sometimes. Once in awhile. But it was cool to be a “lucky bastard” in these guys’ eyes.

“Dude, doesn’t she sleep with just about everybody?” his friend Luke asked.

“Just about.” Except him and Max and Kyle.

“Then when’s it gonna be my turn? Man!” Luke exclaimed. “Put in a good word for me.”

“I will, man.”

“Put in a good word for me, too,” someone else added in.

“And me.”

“And me.”

“Oh, buy her flowers and say they’re from me.”

Michael chuckled and shook his head. “Oh, guys, Maria DeLuca is not a flowers kind of girl.”

“Yeah!” they all shouted out in unison.

“Yeah, just talk dirty to her. That’ll do it,” he told them.

“Yeah!”

“She’ll put out.”

“Yeah!”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

My nail beds suck, Maria thought absentmindedly during her History of Dance class that afternoon. She hated that class. She hated it with a passion. She didn’t give a flying fuck about history of any kind—it was just so boring. But the university required her to take the class if she wanted to graduate with a degree in Dance.

Student aids walked down the aisles handing back papers about . . . something. Maria wasn’t sure what. She never worked too hard on her papers. Usually she just slept with some nerd, thus convincing him to write it for her. Hell, she wouldn’t even have to sleep with a nerd. She’d just have to say hi to him. (Her middle name wasn’t Talented, but it should have been.)

She was still looking at her fingernails when her paper was set atop her desk, face down. After a few moments of not caring, she flipped over the paper and took a look at her grade.

What? How the hell had she gotten a D? A nerd! A nerd wrote the paper! It was supposed to be an A, guaranteed!

“Crap,” she swore, trying to figure out how detrimental this could be. What paper was this again? Not her semester final . . . right?

Double crap, she thought, recalling handing that paper “she’d” written in right before Christmas break. End of the fucking semester. Final.

As the classroom began to clear out, she stayed behind, formulating a plan. It wasn’t terribly original, but it would work. She was sure it would.

It always did.

“Everyone have a nice day,” her professor, Professor Jackson, said as students filed out of the room. He sat down at his desk and, like the typical Type A adult, started working on something else right away. He definitely needed to loosen up. Luckily, she could help him with that and help herself all at the same time.

“Professor Jackson?” she said once she was the only student left.

He looked up from what he was doing and said, “Yes, Maria?”

She walked down towards his desk and asked, “Can I talk to you about this really bad paper I wrote?”

He half-smiled. “It definitely wasn’t your best.”

“No.” Note to self, never sleep with that stupid nerd again. “I don’t suppose there’s any way we could change that grade?” she asked hopefully.

“I’m sorry. I can’t do that.”

She sighed. “I didn’t think so. I just . . .” Time to turn it up a notch. “I don’t know. I’ve been dealing with so much lately. I’m totally stressed. And I know that’s no excuse, but I just feel like I could . . . explode, you know?”

She saw the professor’s expression change for a moment, and she knew he’d taken that word out of context just as she’d intended him to. Perfect.

“Have you ever felt that way?” she asked him.

“Uh . . .” He cleared his throat and replied, “Yes, I have. Every day, it seems.”

“Yeah.” She sighed. “So, I guess there’s nothing that we can do, huh?”

He shrugged, obviously getting a little uncomfortable. “Doesn’t seem like it.”

She took a step closer and lowered her voice to her trademark sultry tone. “Nothing we can do for each other? Or to each other.”

He wrinkled his forehead in confusion and calmly said, “Miss DeLuca, I’m very sorry, but I can’t help you. Now if you don’t mind, I have some work to do.”

“Right. Of course.” She turned and started for the door, wondering for a moment if this was going to work. She was a master at the art of seduction, but unfortunately, there were always some people who just refused to be seduced. Losers.

She stopped at the doorway and slowly turned around, happy to find that the professor was staring at her ass. He tried to look away, of course, and cover up the fact, but it was obvious.

Grinning mischievously, she pushed the door shut gently.

“What are you doing?” he asked her.

“You if you let me,” she replied, sashaying forward.

“You . . . you have to leave.”

“Once more, with feeling,” she teased. Laughing, she set her books down on his desk, then pushed his rolling chair backward and swung one leg over his lap. She sat down atop him, straddling him, pulling out her best irresistible hooker act.

“I can’t do this,” he said.

“But you want to.”

“No!”

“Don’t worry,” she said, trailing one finger down his chest to rest against his stomach. “I won’t tell a soul.”

For a minute, she thought he was going to cave, but he kept trying to protest. “It’s . . . against policy.”

“Screw policy,” she said. “Let me screw you.”

He closed his eyes and said again, “I can’t.”

“I feel something, professor,” she lied, urging her shirt down over her left shoulder along with her bra strap. “I know you do, too.”

He opened his eyes slowly and stared at the skin she had just exposed, clearly on the verge of giving in to temptation.

“I can’t have sex with a student,” he said more to himself than to her.

She shrugged. “No prob. I’ll just suck you off.”

The minute she said that, she felt him harden beneath her. The guy was pretty well endowed. Maybe this would be fun after all. By all means, he wasn’t a horrible looking middle-aged man.

“Do you have a wife, professor?” she asked him.

“Yes.”

“And does she satisfy you?”

For a moment, he didn’t reply. When he did, all he said was, “I love her.”

“But does she satisfy you?” she inquired again. “’Cause I would. I guarantee you’ve never had it as good as me.”

He didn’t say anything in protest this time. She totally had him.

“And after you cum, I’m sure you’ll be satisfied enough to change my grade,” she added, making sure he didn’t forget that important part.

He nodded slowly, looking too dumbfounded to speak.

“Good.” She sank down onto the floor then, sat on her knees between his legs, and undid his pants. He groaned when she released him from his confinement and took him into her hands.

“Mmm,” she murmured. “Yummy.” And with that, she took him into her mouth and guaranteed herself an A+.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Michael always made it a point to look over the university’s weekly newspaper, not because it was particularly interesting, but because there was always a section about new students. He liked to see which girls had just transferred, whether they were worth fucking or not. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be any standouts. Too bad.

Maria walked in the door while he was eating his dinner and flipping through the rest of the paper. She practically skipped over to the table and set a research paper down in front of him. She didn’t say anything, but his interest was piqued.

He held up the paper and examined it while she danced into the kitchen and noticed a peculiar white-out blotch in the top right-hand corner. A+ was the grade now, but he had a sneaking suspicion it hadn’t always been.

“How’d you pull this off?” he asked her.

She smiled. “I’m just smart like that.”

He laughed. “What, did you screw your professor?”

“Like I said, I’m smart.”

He shook his head and set the paper down. Of course. It made all the sense in the world that his slutty friend would act . . . well, slutty.

“But for the record,” she said, coming back over toward the table, “I didn’t screw him. I just gave him head.”

“This wasn’t some ninety year-old professor, was it?”

“No, he was totally middle-aged.”

He chuckled and rose to his feet, feeling the urge to tease coming on. “That’s dirty, Maria.”

“Oh please, like you’ve never used sex bribes on your teachers before.”

He shrugged. “Oh, once or twice . . . twelve times.”

“See?”

“But those professors were hot,” he added quickly. He’d never do anyone who wasn’t good to look at.

“Professor Jackson’s hot,” she said.

“I bet he’s not.”

“Hotter than you.”

“Oh, now that’s just impossible.”

“No, contrary to what you believe, everyone’s hotter than you. Kyle. Max. Brad Pitt.”

“Brad Pitt can’t hold a candle to me,” he said confidently.

“Face it, Michael,” she said. “You’re ugly.”

“You’re dirty.”

“Am not!”

“Are, too!”

“Well, proud of it, then!” she roared. She jumped in front of him and all of a sudden burst into song and dance. “U-G-L-Y! You ain’t got no alibi! You ugly! Hey, hey, you ugly! Woo!” She ended by pushing her butt towards him, so he countered by spanking her. Hard.

“Ow!” she exclaimed, cupping the cheek where he hit her.

“Come on, dirty girl! You like that!”

“Not from you, ugly boy!”

He spanked her again.

“Uh!” She glared at him, grabbed her faux A+ paper, spun, and marched off down the hallway to her bedroom. He followed her, simply because he had nothing better to do.

“Uh-uh, you can’t come in here,” she said, spinning to face him in her doorway. “I’m gonna have phone sex with Horatio now.”

“Oh, sounds riveting,” he mumbled sarcastically. He could just imagine it, the fake orgasms and the Spanglish.

“Don’t listen in this time!” she said, slamming the door in his face.

“Have fun, dirty girl!” he shouted through the closed door.

“U-G-oh, just forget it!”

He chuckled and decided to leave her alone . . . until he felt like teasing her again, of course. Pissing Maria off had to be one of his favorite things in the world.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Max liked to do his studying outside. There was something nice about sitting on the grass beneath the shade of a tree that he found relaxing. Even though he was running software on a laptop and using a scientific calculator, he felt like he was one with nature.

Hmm, maybe it’s because of weird thoughts like that that I don’t have a girlfriend, he thought to himself.

“Excuse me?”

He looked up when he heard someone speak to him. Actual words. Amazing. Usually people only talked to him to ask him what party Michael and Maria and Kyle were attending that night. It was common knowledge that he was only considered cool because of who his friends were.

“Hi,” he said to the petite brunette girl who stood before him. What did she want? Was she one of Michael’s girls? She probably was.

“Hi,” she returned. “I was wondering, do you know where the Lancing Library is?”

An actual question, one that didn’t revolve around his roommates. Truly amazing. “Uh, yeah,” he answered. “You know where the Union is?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Take a right where it says bike path. That’ll take you straight to the library.”

“Oh, okay,” she said. “Thanks.”

And with that, she was gone. That had to be the first social interaction he’d had in a long time that wasn’t with his friends or his parents.

He felt depression seeping in after that as he started to feel sorry for himself. He didn’t like feeling that way, but he couldn’t help it.

When he glanced up and saw Maria standing in front of him in the distance, he started feeling even worse. She was surrounded by a group of guys, of course, smiling and flirting and doing all the things she did well. She was beautiful.

He sighed, settling for watching her from afar like he always did. It didn’t matter that he lived with her, that he had lived with her for almost four years now, or that they’d sat together on the bus on the first day of high school. He would always be on the outside of her life, a friend but nothing more. Nothing closer. Because he wasn’t her type. He refused to treat her like a one night stand. He wanted a relationship, and he doubted she would ever want that. With anyone. Let alone him.

He stared down at his computer screen again, determined to get some work done, determined not to think about the girl who set his heart on fire.





TBC . . .

-April

[April]

Hey, guys! Thanks for all the feedback! I'm glad none of you seemed to be too grossed out about Maria and her prof. It's bad, I know, but . . .

Alright, so here's the next part. The song included is "Shake" by the Ying Yang Twins. Part of it's in Spanish, I think, so I don't really know what it's saying, but it's a good song to dance to. Enjoy!

By the way, purple daisy, your comment made me laugh out loud.





Part 4





Maria was in good spirits when she got home that night. She’d scheduled an impromptu dance team practice that evening, and even though her subordinates weren’t very happy about it, she felt better. Their routine looked much more like a championship routine now. She had no doubt that they would win.

“All my people, all my people, grab a partner, take it down,” she sang as she danced into the living room that night.

Michael, who was sitting on the couch and watching TV like a lump on a log, smirked and said, “Actually, taking it down is what you do best.”

“I’m not even gonna dignify that with a response.”

“That’s just a fancy way of admitting I’m right.”

Kyle came up from downstairs then, dressed as if he were going out. “Hey, Maria, you’re finally home.”

“Yeah, dance team stuff.”

“Well, why don’t you get ready. We can all go out tonight.”

“Sorry, can’t,” she said. “State competition’s tomorrow. I can’t risk being hung-over or fucked so hard I can’t see straight.” She shrugged. “Sacrifices.”

“Oh, that sucks,” Kyle said.

“Yeah, a night without booze and sex. How will dirty girl ever survive?” Michael teased.

She rolled her eyes and looked over as Max came out of his bedroom. He was pretty dressed up in khaki pants and a nice black shirt. “Max, you look hot,” she said. “Trying to win over some girl tonight?”

“No, not really,” he replied quietly.

Poor Max. He was so shy. Maybe if he just came out of his shell a little more, he’d get a girlfriend.

“Well, don’t party too hard,” she cautioned. “I need you at competition tomorrow.”

“Of course I’ll be there,” he promised. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“Aw . . .” Michael said.

“Shut up,” she barked at him. “What about you, Kyle? You gonna be there?”

“Hell, yeah. I made a sign,” he replied emphatically.

“Seriously?”

“No, but I’ll be there. Tess and Isabel won’t, but they wanted me to tell you good luck.”

“Oh, that’s sweet.” She glanced over at Michael again and said, “I don’t suppose you’ll make an appearance?”

“I don’t suppose I will,” he replied. “Why, you want me to be there?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“I guess it doesn’t really matter. Your presence does nothing to me.”

He grinned and said in that self-assured way of his, “Oh, my presence makes you hot.”

She made a gagging sound and brought her hand up to cover her mouth. “Sorry,” she said. “Just threw up a little.”

“Hey, Guerin, you should go,” Kyle said, plopping down on the couch next to his friend. “State competition’s awesome, really.”

“Hmm, I don’t know,” he said. “Entice me.”

Kyle went to work. “Well, hundreds upon hundreds of girls . . .”

“I’m enticed.” Michael smiled.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

What a beautiful day, Michael thought to himself as he sat and watched performance after performance at the dance competition the next day. This was heaven. Had to be. These girls were so hot and so in shape; there wasn’t an overweight or ugly one in the bunch. And hell, they knew how to move. Plus, some of the outfits they wore . . . miniscule and therefore perfect. And talk about flexibility! These girls were goddesses.

Of course, it had been his intention to attend this competition all along. No way would he miss this. It was easily one of the highlights of his year. Even next year after he’d already graduated, he’d be coming back to view.

“Whoa,” Kyle said, obviously fantasizing just as much as Michael was. “Don’t tell Isabel and Tess, but I’m thoroughly enjoying myself.”

“Oh, yeah,” Michael agreed, practically salivating as a bombshell blonde with legs as long as miles stalked by. “What about you, Max?” he asked his quieter friend. “Pick your favorite.”

“Well, I really liked the last team, the ones that did the jazz dance,” he said. “I thought their technical precision was outstanding.”

Michael and Kyle both gave each other what-the-hell looks and laughed out loud.

“Dude!” Michael said. “Not the dances, the bitches.”

“They’re not bitches,” Max mumbled, sounding uncomfortable as he said that derogatory word.

“I guarantee they are,” Michael said. “I bet they all fuck good.”

“We should find him one,” Kyle suggested.

“Yeah.”

“No, guys, don’t,” Max said.

“Oh, come on, Maxwell,” Michael urged. “They’re dancers.”

“No, I really just-I wanna sit here and watch the performances.”

“What about that girl?” Kyle pointed out a curvy girl who had an ass like Jennifer Lopez. “Hot.”

“No, that,” Michael said, pointing to a blonde girl who was bending over to the side and stretching. She had her back to him, so he couldn’t see her face, but he didn’t need to. Just the backside alone was enough to get him hard as a rock. She was wearing tight black Capri pants that really emphasized her nice, compact ass and her long, long legs; and all she was wearing on top was basically a black sports bra. What an enticing, flat stomach was left exposed. “Look at her,” he said. “I like that. I’d do that in a heartbeat.”

Kyle followed his gaze and said, “Uh, Guerin . . .”

“Bend her over the table and just--”

The girl stood back up then, and he saw her face when she turned around. Maria?

“Oh, no,” he quickly tried to recover, wishing he hadn’t just said all that stuff. “I don’t . . . I wouldn’t . . .” Shit. “I was talkin’ about the girl next to her.”

“Right,” Kyle said, obviously seeing right through the flimsy lie.

Michael shook his head and shuddered ferociously, disgusted with himself. Maria DeLuca was not fuckable. She wasn’t even hot. Not to him, anyway. Well, no she was hot. Even he knew that. Just . . . his mind had just been playing tricks on him. Or something like that.

“They’re sure not wearing much,” Max commented about his own dance team.

“And therein, my friend, lies the fun,” Kyle responded.

Speaking of fun . . . Michael thought when a sexy blonde girl sat down beside him. She was a dancer. He could tell because of the outfit she was wearing.

“I totally biffed my triple turn,” she said to her friends.

He turned to face her and smiled. When her friends pointed him out to her, she turned and smiled back at him, and he thought to himself, This competition just got interesting.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Maria, I’m forgetting the whole dance.”

“No, you’ll be fine,” Maria assured one of her freshman dancers as they prepared to take the floor.

“No, really, I can’t remember anything.”

“You’ll remember it once you get out there. Girls, huddle up.”

The team formed a circle around Maria and leaned in close to hear what she had to say.

“Okay, four rules,” she said. “Have precision. Have energy. Have fun. And for God’s sake, have sexiness, because we all know that’s how you get things in life.”

Her team nodded eagerly in agreement.

“Alright, get ready.”

“I still don’t remember the dance,” the freshman girl said.

Maria rolled her eyes. Every year there was one girl whose nerves started to get the best of her.

“And now it’s time for our two-time defending champions,” the announcer bellowed loudly. “Led by captain Maria DeLuca, last year’s Choice Choreographer, from the University of Santa Fe, it’s the Sun Rays dance team!”

Maria yelled and led her team out onto the gym floor in a rally, loving the thunderous applause they—or more precisely she—received from the audience. Lots of the other captains scowled at her because they were jealous, and she loved that, too.

They took their positions in a big clump on the floor and waited for the music to start. Once it did, they started moving, not very fast at first, building up the anticipation. Maria didn’t even have to think about the choreography. She’d done it so many times, and it was genius.

The edgy hip hop song slowly picked up in melody, and their dancing matched. For the first few eight-counts, they hit sharp, direct movements. As the song continued to build, though, their movements became bigger, more powerful, and the crowd cheered them on. Once the chorus kicked in, though, they went wild dancing, and the crowd went wild cheering.

“Shake, shake, just shake, shake
Just shake, shake
Just shake, chica, shake shake!”

And that was exactly what they did. Booty-popping, never stopping.

“Shake, shake, just shake, shake
Just shake, shake
Just shake, chica, shake shake!”

God, she loved knowing she was the hottest thing ever.

“Mentirosa! Mentirosa!”

She led the rest of the girls forward in a sexy walk and they executed a precise, difficult quadruple turn. Most of the other teams wouldn’t have been able to do that.

“Mentirosa!”

Add in a few attitude moves, a double body roll, and a spin, and they were really on fire.

“Dale huevo! Dale huevo!”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Michael dragged his new blonde companion beneath the bleachers, too impatient to go find the bathrooms or the locker room or somewhere else suitable. He hoped she wouldn’t mind a few cobwebs. As far as he was concerned, the location was a turn-on.

“I’ve never done it standing up before,” she said with a giggle.

“First time for everything.” He lifted up her skirt and tried to figure out how to go about what was underneath. It wasn’t exactly underwear. Actually, it looked like her whole dance ensemble was connected, one outfit. Where did he start with this? How was he supposed to get inside?

“It’s a complicated outfit,” she said.

“Don’t worry. I’ll get it off you,” he promised, reaching around her back to undo a zipper. Oh yeah, that was it. He was on his way now.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Oh yeah, you want me, Maria thought as she executed a move commonly referred to as the “hooker roll” and made eye contact with a cute blonde guy staring at her from the bleachers. She’d definitely have to hook up with him later. He was fine.

Their dance was pure hip hop, lots of popping, lots of locking, lots of strong, hard-hitting movements. It was something that had always come naturally for her, luckily, because it was really a man-magnet. Any girl who could feel the music and move to the music the way she did was guaranteed a wide range of suitors.

A few more shakes and shimmies later, and this dance was the quintessential nasty dance, the kind that won championships.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Michael was ecstatic when he finally got his girl undressed. It definitely was a complicated outfit, but there was nothing he couldn’t get a girl out of.

He undid his pants quickly and slid them down around his ankles. Then he yanked her up into his arms, and she wrapped his legs around his waist and her arms around his neck. He slammed into her almost violently, causing her to moan and throw her head back. It was a good thing she didn’t seem to be the romantic type, because this was going to be a rough and tumble. He just wanted to cum and brag about it later.

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” she gasped, barely managing to hold onto him.

He thrust into her hard, yearning to climax. Public sex with a hot girl . . . wouldn't take either of them long.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Maria brought out all the stops for the end of the dance.

“That ho’s fine! But, but, but, but this one’s a killer!”

A sexy head roll and full-on body popping.

“That ho’s fine! But, but, but, but this one’s a killer!”

Add in some booty-popping floor work, and people were on their feet.

“That ho’s fine! But, but, but, but this one’s a killer!”

A sexy leg-extension didn’t hurt.

“That ho’s fine! But, but, but, but this one’s a killer!”

She ended the dance front and center, of course, in the horizontal splits, making direct eye contact with the judge, noting the smiles on their faces. Nasty judges. They liked nasty.

Anyone who wasn’t on their feet before stood up then and roared with cheers and applause. It was pretty obvious that the championship was, once again, in the Santa Fe Sun Ray bag.

Maria got to her feet, and she and the rest of the girls rallied off in excitement the performance floor in excitement.

“I remembered the dance!” the freshman girl squealed.

“Alright!” the announcer exclaimed, sounding just as excited as the audience. “There they are, ladies and gentlemen, the two-time champions of the New Mexico Dance and Drill Team Championships, the Santa Fe Sun Rays! Will this be their third championship in a row? We’ll find out soon enough, because we’ve only got a few teams left.”

“That was awesome,” Courtney said, actually upbeat and positive for once. “We are all getting guys tonight.”

Maria laughed. It was true. For the next couple weeks, men all over Santa Fe would be clamoring to hook up with a member of the university’s championship dance team.

Just then, though, in the midst of that wonderful celebration, some girl somewhere in the gymnasium literally screamed at the top of her lungs, “Oh, fuck!”

The crowd went absolutely silent, and a few people started to laugh and whisper.

“Fuck me!”

Maria glanced up into the bleachers and saw Kyle and Max sitting there, looking around innocently as if they didn’t know anything. But Michael wasn’t sitting there. Of course not. He was undoubtedly the reason for the screaming girl and, therefore, the destroyer of her perfect moment.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Maria didn’t say a word to Michael on the way home. That was a pretty clear indicator that she had a bug up her ass about something.

When they got home and walked inside the house, he straight-out asked her, “Are you pissed?”

She whirled to face him and said, “Duh!”

Was that supposed to mean yes or no? “That doesn’t answer my question.”

“Yes, I’m pissed!” she roared.

“Why?”

“Because once again, you took a moment that was completely about me and made it about you!”

He sighed. “Okay, look, I can’t help that the girl was a screamer.”

“This is exactly why I didn’t want you there! I knew you’d end up doing someone!”

“Hey, just be happy I didn’t fuck a girl on your team!”

“Oh, god, you just don’t get it, do you?” she ground out.

“No!”

Kyle came inside cautiously and piped up, “Actually, Maria, I gotta go with Michael on this one. Why are you this pissed off? You guys still won.”

“Yes, but I didn’t get the Choice Choreographer award this year,” she explained, “and you know why? Because of him!” She pointed a finger at Michael.

“That’s bullshit!” he roared.

“No, the judges were too busy thinking about the loud, obnoxious sex you were having to give my awesome choreography their full consideration!”

“Or,” he suggested, “there was just a better choreographer.”

She gasped in outrage and said, “Okay! That’s it! I’m not talking to you for the rest of my life!”

He chuckled, willing to let her try (and ultimately fail) with the silent treatment. “Okay.”

“Starting now!” She grabbed her team’s oversized trophy and marched down the hallway to her bedroom, slamming the door as hard as she could.

God, she was so crazy. “3, 2, 1,” he counted down.

She swung the door open again at that exact moment and shouted, “You’re such an ass!” And then she slammed it again.

Oh yeah, he thought amusedly. She won’t be talking to me at all.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The next day, Maria forced herself to attend Debate 101, by far her least favorite class. It was one of those that she wouldn’t even take if she didn’t need some kind of general speech requirement. Stupid. Stupid, stupid college.

What sucked beyond belief was having to stand up in front of the entire hundred-person class and do spontaneous debates. You didn’t even get to pick if you were the pro or the con point of view. The professor just told you what viewpoint to take and to argue it.

On that particular day, Maria was sentenced to take the con position of sexual education in high schools. At first she thought sexual education meant teaching students how to put on condoms and the like, but when the girl debating the pro position started talking, she quickly figured out it was more birds and the bees stuff.

“So why start sex education as early as kindergarten? That’s ridiculous. Young kids like that aren’t even thinking about sex. They have no idea what sex is and they don’t want to know, so why even put the idea in their heads? But . . . age-appropriate sexual education would be beneficial, especially because some teenagers aren’t fortunate enough to have parents willing to enlighten them. But if sexual education is to be taught in schools, it needs to be with parental consent and under no circumstances mandatory; because, let’s face it, we’re not dealing with math problems or sentence structure here. We’re dealing with an act of physicality that often has life-altering results, and it’s always going to be controversial. Thank you.”

“Thank you, Liz,” the professor said with a congratulatory sound in his voice. "Nice job."

This Liz girl was really good. She must have been new on campus, because Maria couldn’t recall seeing her before. It was pretty clear that she was the brainy type.

“Maria, response?” the professor urged.

She drew a huge blank. Huger than huge. Everything Liz had said sounded totally cool to her. “Uh . . .” Personally, all the sex education in the world wouldn’t help her. She was going to have it and have it often. “What she said?” she tried.

A few people in the class laughed, but the professor wasn’t one of them. He glanced at his watch and sighed heavily. “Come back tomorrow with an argument prepared, Miss DeLuca.”

“Will do.” Or not.

“Class is dismissed.”

As the rest of the students flocked out, Maria caught up with Liz in the hallway and said, “Hey, you were really good in there.”

“Really?” Liz seemed happy to hear that.

“Yeah, I wish I could get my words to come out like that, but they’re all . . . bad.”

Liz laughed. “I’m sure that’s not true.”

“No, really, it is. The only person I can debate with is this friend of mine, and that’s only ‘cause he’s an idiot.” She laughed a little, wondering how many arguments she had won and Michael had lost. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t even be taking debate if I didn’t have to. God, I just-I wish I could do that like you.”

“Well, I wish I could dance like you,” Liz quickly put in. “I saw you at the competition yesterday. You were amazing.”

“Well, I’m a Dance major. I’m supposed to be.”

“Oh, I just can’t get my body to move like that. I mean, if I could, I would. I’m sure boys love it.”

“Boys?” Maria laughed at the word. “Men, Liz. Or at least guys.”

“Right,” she said. “Sometimes I still feel like I’m back in high school.”

“Are you a freshman?”

“Yep. Just transferred here, too. Fish out of water.”

“Where’d you transfer from?” Maria asked, surprised that she was taking a genuine interest.

“UNL,” Liz replied.

Maria gave her a questioning look.

“Oh, that’s Lincoln.”

“Gonna have to give me more than that.” Geography was totally not her thing.

Liz smiled. “Nebraska.”

“Oh.” Still . . . “That’s where they have all the corn, right?”

“Right.”

“Well, how’s New Mexico treating you?”

Liz shrugged. “Not bad. I haven’t really made any friends, though.”

“Well, relax,” Maria said as they headed outside. “You’ve made one now.”






TBC . . .

-April

[April]

Hey, everyone! Thanks, as always, for the wonderful feedback! Let's keep this slutty candy story rolling, shall we?
By the way, besomeoneyoulove, welcome to the board!





Part 5





Michael was on his way to class, trekking fast, of course, due to his lateness, when he heard someone calling his name. A female someone who sounded vaguely familiar . . .

“Michael!”

He turned around and found the red-head he had bedded the other night prancing toward him, looking so happy to see him. “Hey, Rachel,” he said.

“Rachelle,” she corrected.

“Right.”

She smiled at him and said, “I’m so happy I ran into you. I was wondering why you haven’t called.”

“Why I haven’t called?” Crap, she was the clingy type.

“Yeah, I was worried.”

“Why?”

“Well, ‘cause you said you would, and you didn’t.”

The idiot girl. Didn’t she get that ‘I’ll call you tomorrow’ meant ‘Have a nice life’ when guys said it? “Yeah, I’m sorry. I’ve just been really busy these past couple days.”

“Yeah, it gets busy,” she agreed.

“Senior year, kind of hectic, you know?”

She nodded sympathetically.

“I don’t know, I just . . . I think I’m not really looking for a relationship right now. You know?”

“You’re not?” She looked heartbroken.

“Yeah. I didn’t think you were, either.”

“But I am,” she said emphatically. “I’d make a really good girlfriend.”

“And I’m sure you would, but I wouldn’t make a very good boyfriend.” It was the oldest trick in the brush-off book, making it seem like it was all his fault. “You deserve better than me, Rachel.”

“Rachelle.”

“You deserve way better than me.”

She looked away, visibly upset, and said, “Well, how long’s it gonna be ‘til you are ready for a girlfriend?”

“Oh, it could be awhile,” he replied, trying to keep from laughing out loud at his ridiculous lies. “It could be awhile.” He bent his head in and kissed her on the cheek then before walking off in the other direction and leaving her behind.

Girls could be so God-damned gullible.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Even though they’d just won the state championship again the day before, Maria put the freshman, sophomore, and junior dance team members right back to work learning a new routine for the start of their new season. True, she and the rest of the seniors had performed for the last time with them, but she was still the captain until tryouts. They still had to listen to her. Soon she would be graduating (hopefully) and they would have to carry on by themselves. She wanted them to be prepared, have a couple of dances ready to go. She knew they hated her sometimes for the way she pushed them, but it was for the team’s own good.

She taught them half a dance that afternoon, and they didn’t catch on quite as fast as she’d hoped they would. She saw an extra practice in their future, the mandatory variety.

“Come on, ladies, pick it up,” she said as she did the dance with them. It didn’t help. They were still all over the place.

She gave them an unhappy look when they got to the end of what they’d learned and said, “Practice, guys, or I’ll kick your ass.”

“Are we done?” Courtney asked impatiently.

“How the hell did you ever get co-captain?” Maria shook her head, hoping that some other girl would show a lot of leadership potential so that she wouldn’t have to leave her team in the hands of Courtney Banks. “We’re done,” she announced.

The girls grabbed their things and practically ran out of the gym.

Note to self, Maria thought. Make tryouts harder this year. Slackers on this team just suck.

Liz, who had been hanging out with her all day since debate got over, got up from where she’d been sitting and watching them on the bleachers and exclaimed, “That was awesome!”

“I know, right?” Maria smiled. “You know, tryouts are later this week. You should come.”

Liz shook her head vigorously. “Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes. I’m gonna make you try out.”

Liz thought about it a moment, then lessened her conviction to, “Well, maybe.”

“Well, definitely.”

Liz rolled her eyes, smiling, and asked her, “So where’d you learn that dance?”

“Oh, I made it up,” Maria said. “Last night in my bedroom. I was bored.”

“That’s so crazy,” Liz said. “You can just choreograph a dance like it’s nothing.”

Maria shrugged, grabbing her water bottle, her practice bag, and starting for the door with Liz in tow. “One of two things I’m good at,” she said.

“What’s the other thing?” Liz asked.

Maria stopped in her tracks and turned to face the much more innocent, virginal girl. “You’re new here, so I guess you don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?”

Maria hesitated a moment, trying to think of a way to phrase this that wouldn’t send Liz fleeing for the hills. “I’m kind of . . . friendly.”

Liz nodded in agreement. “Oh, yeah, you’ve been really friendly to me.”

“No, I mean . . . friendly,” Maria emphasized. “Mostly with guys.”

It took Liz a minute, but a look of realization finally lit up her face. “Oh. Like . . . oh.”

“I mean, it is what it is, you know. Guys screw girls and get away with it. Why can’t girls do the same?”

“Yeah,” Liz said. “That actually kind of makes sense.”

“I know.” Maria started out of the gym again, Liz still following beside her. “Sorry if I’m freaking you out,” she said apologetically.

“No, you’re not.”

“Are you sure?”

“No, actually, I’ve never met anyone who’s so outgoing before. I think it’s really cool.”

Cool, Maria thought with a smile. Oh, yeah, that's me.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Maria opened the door to the house and gave a grand gesture to the inside. “Well, this is it.”

“Wow,” Liz said, peering in from outside the doorway.

“Come on in,” Maria said, tossing her purse down on the couch.

Liz stepped inside slowly, wiping her feet on the welcome mat like any good houseguest. “Wow,” she said again. “This is really nice. It’s bigger than I thought it would be.”

“Well, when you live with three other people, you need some space.”

“And you’ve lived here since you were a freshman?”

“Yep.” Of that much, she was proud. A lot of people had had their doubts when she, Kyle, Max, and Michael announced that they were going to buy a house and move in after graduation; but they’d done really well, gotten a sweet deal by a couple who had been desperate to sell their house. Their mortgage was almost all paid, even, thanks to Kyle.

“That’s so cool.”

Maria shook her head and laughed a little. Liz Parker was completely in awe of her. But then again, most people were.

Liz set her backpack down next to Maria’s purse and admitted, “I’m so jealous. My dorm room’s so tiny.”

“Yeah, I have way too much stuff to live in a dorm,” Maria said. “Plus, there’s roommate issues a lot of times. What if you end up with someone you don’t like?”

“I’m lucky, I guess. I have a private room,” Liz said. “My parents were nice enough to pay my room and board.”

“I wish my mom was that nice,” Maria mumbled under her breath. Her tuition was getting paid for through student loans. The loans . . . well, they were barely getting paid off by her mother. But that still didn’t mean her mom was nice. “Whatever.”

Just then, Isabel and Tess strode upstairs, both clad in Kyle’s shirts and apparently nothing else. The first thing Maria noticed was Tess’s boob job. They were definitely . . . gigantic. She supposed Kyle liked them, but she couldn’t imagine having them that big herself.

Tess and Isabel were unique. Not as unique as Maria considered herself to be, but unique to an extent. They were sort of the odd couple of best friends. While Isabel was tall and curvaceous, Tess was small and petite. Although, her boobs were definitely curvy now. Fake, but curvy. Their differences extended beyond physical appearances, though. Tess was flighty and comedic, while Isabel was mostly sensual and sultry. Their differences were probably what Kyle liked about both of them, though. What they all had going together really seemed to work out.

“Hey, guys,” Maria said to them. “This is Liz. Liz, this is Tess and Isabel.” She pointed them out to her new friend.

“Hi,” Liz said.

“Hey,” Tess and Isabel both said in unison. They opened the refrigerator then and took out a spray can of whipped cream. Isabel reached up into one of the kitchen cabinets and grabbed a bottle of honey.

Ooh, honey, Maria thought, mentally cringing. Sticky, not sexy.

As Tess and Isabel headed back downstairs for their afternoon rendezvous with Kyle, Maria glanced over at Liz and noticed the questioning look on her face. Finally, Liz turned to Maria and asked, “Are those your roommates?”

“Them? Oh, no, they’re Kyle’s girlfriends.”

“Girlfriends?” Liz echoed, emphasizing the plurality.

“Yeah, he has more than one.”

“Oh, that’s . . . strange.”

“Yeah, but whatever floats your boat, you know?” Maria shrugged.

“So who are your roommates?”

“Well, there’s the previously mentioned Kyle. Then there’s Max and . . . he who shall not be named.”

“Wait, you live with three boys?”

Maria gave her a look.

“Guys,” Liz amended quickly. “Men.”

“No, actually, these are boys. They’re pretty juvenile sometimes,” she replied. “Well, not Max. He’s a total bookworm, really smart. Actually, I think you’d like him. Kyle’s mature, like, half of the time. The other half, he’s like a drunk frat boy.”

“And who’s ‘he who shall not be named?’”

Maria groaned. “Oh, that’s . . . Michael.” She shuddered over-exaggeratedly while saying, “Things that make you go ‘blugh,’ you know?”

Liz laughed.

Maria shook her head, wondering for a minute what stupid thing Michael was going to do tonight. His stupidity had been crazily out of control lately, what with all the shower invasions and pouring cold water on her in the morning. And of course, ruining her State Competition with his stupid under-the-bleachers-sex.

“You’re so grown up,” Liz commented in astonishment, breaking Maria out of her anti-Michael thoughts. “You have your own house, you live with three guys, you lead that dance team, you have sex . . .” She trailed off then and said, “Wait. Do you . . .” She stopped again, seeming to have a hard time saying what she wanted to say. “With your roommates?”

Maria understand at once what she was asking, and her answer was a forceful one. “Oh god, no. No, I’m not friendly with my friends. I mean, I used to have a tiny crush on Kyle, like, freshman year of high school or something, but I got over that when I realized what a big dork he was.”

“And Max and Michael?”

“Max is way too nice for me, and Michael’s way too despicable.” Just the thought of ever having anything romantic with Michael Guerin . . . “Oh, my god, it’s just so sick to think about. Seriously Liz, he’s so gross. You have no idea.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

I’m so hot, Michael thought as he sat back in his film class and watched the girls. Traditionally, female film students weren’t the most attractive, but there were a couple worth noting.

“No naked Maria today?” Alex asked.

“What?”

“No shower shots?”

“Oh, no. No. She was pissed last night, wouldn’t even come out of her room.”

“Why not?”

He made a face. “’Cause she’s a bitch.”

Alex chuckled. “Okay, that’s true. What about Isabel?”

“No, she’s just Kyle’s bitch.”

“No, I mean, you got any naked shots of her? I could go for that.”

“No. Tess let me take some pictures of her new boob job, though.”

“Oh, really? Let me see.”

Michael took his cell phone out of his pocket and arrowed through to the pictures. As he leaned over to show Alex, though, a girl at a computer across the room caught his eye. She was definitely one of the attractive females in the room, and definitely somebody he wanted to and was going to fuck.

“Here,” he said, handing his phone to Alex. “I’ll be right back.” He got up and went over to her to work his charm. “Hey,” he said, flashing her his trademark grin.

“Hey,” she replied without glancing up from her computer screen.

So she was a workaholic, clearly, probably very uptight. He’d love to loosen her up, so to speak.

“I’m Michael,” he said.

“Yep.”

“Michael Guerin.”

She looked up when he said that, and for a minute she looked star-struck. Okay, maybe star-struck was an exaggeration, but she seemed to know exactly who she was just by hearing his name, and she suddenly didn’t seem to be so uptight anymore. “Hey,” she said. “I’m Lucy.”

He smiled. Lucy. He’d have to remember that. He had this terrible habit of forgetting girls’ names.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Since Kyle had made the basement his own personal love shack, there wasn’t a good place for Maria to dance in the house. Thus, she was confined to choreographing in her bedroom. Her small bedroom.

She liked to stand in front of her full-length mirror and watch the moves as she did them, watch how high she could swing her leg in the air, watch how expertly she could roll her upper body. Still, she had her concerns when looking in the mirror just like everyone else. Am I getting fat? My hair looks bad. Why does my makeup look so weird?

She stopped dancing that night when too many of those self-image thoughts started to invade her mind, and she left her bedroom to go watch TV in the living room. She probably should have been studying, but that would never happen.

When she walked out into the living room, she found Michael standing by the kitchen stove stirring something in a pot.

“Are you cooking?” she asked in disbelief.

“Yeah. Wanna make something of it?”

She laughed. “Oh my god, this has to be a first.”

“Hey, I’m not cookin’ for you, alright? It’s Lucy. She’s a needy bitch. She won’t fuck ‘til she’s fed, and those are her exact words.”

Maria grinned, happy that Michael was sexually frustrated for the moment. “Why don’t you just shove your dick in her face, tell her to eat up? Isn't that what you usually do?”

“No . . . I’m a gentleman,” he replied slowly.

She stared at him for a second, trying to wrap her mind around the words, and then burst out laughing. “A gentleman?” she screeched.

He smiled and laughed, too. “Yeah, I can’t even try to keep a straight face for that one.”

She kept on laughing, unable to stop. “What’s next? You’re gonna tell me I’m a lady?”

“Not in this lifetime.”

Her laughter died down, and she peered into the pot. “What are you making?”

“Macaroni and cheese,” he replied.

“Oh, wow, that’s so sexy.”

“Macaroni and cheese is the only thing I know how to make.” He stared at her and said, “You should cook. You’re the woman.”

“Big sexist.”

“Little whore.”

“Ugly boy.”

He grinned. “Dirty girl.”

She rolled her eyes. “Well, I for one, hope she holds out on you. That’ll bring your ego down a notch.”

“No, I’m about to just send her home, do it myself.”

She cringed. “Ew.”

“Like you don’t masturbate.”

“Well . . . whatever.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say.

He set down the fork he was stirring the macaroni with down on the counter and turned to face her. “Or,” he said, “you could take Lucy’s place.”

“Double—no, triple—no, infinity ew to that,” was her response. “You can’t be serious.”

“Oh, trust me, I’m not. I’d rather kill myself than have you anywhere near my cock.”

She reached into the silverware drawer and took out a knife. “Here you go,” she said, holding it out for him.

"What?"

"Well, you said you'd rather kill yourself. I'm totally eager for that."

“Put that away,” he said. He glanced down at the bulge in his jeans and said, “God, I’m so fuckin’ hard.”

“You see, that’s the problem with guys. You don’t know when to stop being horny.”

“Oh, coming from you, that’s just . . . wow, hilarious.”

“Excuse me? I know when to stop being horny. I’m not horny when I dance. I’m not horny when . . .” She let her sentence fade, trying to think of something else she could do and not think about her hormones. But she couldn’t think of anything.

“See? Hilarious,” he said.

“When I look at you,” she finished finally. “I definitely stop being horny when I look at you because . . . ugh, God, you are just so revolting.”

“Same to you, babe.”

“That’s right. I am a babe.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder and pranced back to her bedroom, ready to start dancing again. There was just something about berating Michael Guerin that always made her feel energized.






TBC . . .

-April

[April]

Hey, guys! As always, thanks for the wonderful feedback! It's so nice to hear that people are enjoying this story.

I will probably be without internet access for the majority of the weekend, so you can expect the next part of this slutty fic to be posted late Sunday afternoon or early evening.




Part 6




I wonder if there’re any good parties tonight, Maria thought during History of Dance that next day. If she ever actually thought about the class, there would have to be a damn parade.

“Right now, you’ll be handed back your in class-essays from our last class session,” Professor Jackson said. She noticed he never looked at her anymore, and whenever he stood up to give a lecture, or even when he wasn’t standing or lecturing at all, he was sweating. And he wore really loose fitting pants. Coincidence? Uh-uh.

When the student aid set the paper down on her desk, Maria was anxious to see what grade she’d gotten. If she passed, it was a miracle and a nice, easy break. If she didn’t . . . whatever. She’d just blow her professor again. It’d worked last time. It always did.

She smiled when she saw the B+ at the top of her paper. No, she didn’t deserve it. She hadn’t even tried. But it was nice knowing that her bribery had worked.

She grabbed her things and stood up, slipping out of her desk and heading towards the door along with the other students. She stopped by Professor Jackson’s desk on the way out and said quietly, “Thanks for the grade, professor.” She grinned, licking her lips.

He stiffened and said nothing, giving her a pleading look as if begging her not to tell anybody. Like she would ever do that. If she did, there was a chance that she could be kicked out of the college, too. She’d already gone three and a half years. Getting kicked out now would be a total waste.

When she walked outside, she located Liz waiting for her. The girl was turning out to be a good friend. Maria didn’t understand her desire to reach out to her, show her the ropes of college. Maybe it was because she would soon be gone and needed someone to carry on her legacy. But even so, Liz wasn’t the ideal candidate. Tess and Isabel were way more popular and sexual. So maybe her friendship with Liz wasn’t about her legacy. Maybe it was just a friendship. Maybe she was just being nice. There was, after all, a first time for everything.

“Oh my god, Maria, I woke up this morning feeling so much better about things,” Liz started in right away. “It’s so good to finally know someone.”

“I bet.”

“And not just anyone. You’re totally the most popular person ever. I mean, as I was walking home last night, I heard at least a dozen people talking about you.”

“Only a dozen?” Maria laughed a little. “No, what were they saying?”

“Mostly stuff about sex and the way you dance.”

“See? Two things I’m good at.”

“It’s so weird, though. This is a pretty big campus. You don’t even live on campus, but still . . .”

“Yeah, you know how when you’re about to start college, adults try to tell you it’ll be so different from high school?” Maria said. “’Oh, no, Lizzie, there’s no cliques in college.’ Remember that?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“There are.”

“Am I part of the nerd clique?” Liz asked hestitantly.

“Uh, the nerds don’t have a clique, Liz. They have . . . solitude,” Maria explained. “But since you’ve got me as a friend, you’re not a nerd. That guy . . .” She pointed at a kid named Bret who had no fashion sense whatsoever and for some reason thought that huge black-framed glasses were cool. “He’s a nerd.”

He waved at her, and she waved back.

“He’s really nice, though. He writes papers for me sometime.”

“Oh. How do you get him to do that?” Liz asked curiously.

“I just ask him, too, and he’s like, ‘Yes, Maria, Goddess Maria.’”

Liz laughed. “Wow. And that’s all it takes?”

“Well, once in awhile, there’s some sexual favors. Sex can get you a long way in the world, Liz. It really can.”

Liz blushed and looked down at her feet. “I guess I really wouldn’t know about that.”

It was no surprise that Liz had never had sex before. It was obvious in the way she carried herself, the way she spoke, everything.

“Don’t worry,” Maria said. “You’re learning from the master now. I’m like your Buddha. You’re my . . . cricket or whatever.”

“Grasshopper, I think,” Liz said.

“Really? Grasshopper?”

“I mean, I don’t know. I’m not really a Buddhism expert.”

“Well, whatever, you’re my student,” Maria stated simply. “Trust me, by the time you’re a sophomore next year, you’ll be the most popular girl on campus.”

Liz smiled at that and said the word she said so much, the word that seemed to apply to all aspects of her friendship with Maria. “Wow.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It took a little convincing, but Maria finally persuaded Liz to skip out on debate and go out for lunch instead. Liz was hesitant about it for a little while, understandably. Skipping class wasn’t in a smart girl’s nature.

“Are you sure it’s okay to miss debate?” she asked Maria.

“Oh, totally. I do it all the time. Of course, I pull a C in the class, but you’re way smarter than me.” She popped a French fry in her mouth, confident that Liz would still find a way to get at least a B. “Besides, I was supposed to have my counterargument prepared.”

“And you don’t?”

“Hell no. Waste of time. I’d rather be doing something fun, and trust me, Liz, skipping class is way more fun than actually attending.”

“Yeah, this is fun,” Liz admitted.

“And that’s what college is about, you know? People try to tell you crap, you know, like, ‘Oh, you have to study a lot. Have to get good grades.’ It’s like, no thanks.”

“How do you pass your classes? The nerds?” Liz asked.

“Yep. And horny male professors. I could tell you some stories . . .” She trailed off, noticing Liz’s wide-eyed look and quickly added, “But I won’t, ‘cause you’ll get freaked out and head for the hills.”

“Hmm.”

“So I don’t study. Whatev. It’s like a personal choice, right? Max, on the other hand . . . he studies. Like constantly. I don’t know how he does it. Michael just kinda relies on dumb luck—he’s so stupid, Liz. And Kyle, he’s, like, so in between on everything. I think he studies in secret. Like one time, I walked into the bathroom, and he was in there, not masturbating like any normal guy, but cracking a book. What’s up with that?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I mean . . . reading, it’s . . .”

“Unnatural, right? He just tries to act cool. Really, I’m the only cool one in that house.”

“Michael’s not? ‘Cause, I’ve heard a lot of people mentioning him, too.”

Maria made a face. “He’s . . . insane, Liz. I just-I really can’t even come up with another word. I hate him.”

“Okay, so you hate him, but he’s still one of your best friends?” Liz wrinkled her forehead up in confusion. “That doesn’t make sense.”

Maria made another face, frustrated that she couldn’t give her friend a decent explanation. “It’s like I’m stuck with him, you know, and he’s stuck with me, too; and neither one of us is too happy about it, but at the same time, we kinda like picking on each other.” She shakes her head, not understanding it herself. “It’s just so weird, but it works. Like Kyle and Isabel and Tess. And Max and his books. It works.”

“This social involvement stuff seems complicated,” Liz remarked. “I can’t even imagine how complicated it gets when you have a boyfriend in the mix.”

“Ah, hence my hook-ups only policy.”

“Don’t you get tired of that, though?”

Maria shrugged. “Not really. I don’t know.”

“I’d like a boyfriend,” Liz said, looking around. “Too bad I’m not . . . pretty.”

“You are,” Maria told her.

“Not like you.”

She couldn’t argue with that. Liz was the innocent kind of pretty. Maria was the wild kind. “You are pretty, Liz. You just need some confidence.”

Liz sighed wistfully. “That’d be nice.”

“I’ll teach you, Grasshopper.”

“Thanks.”

“But first, you have to scope out a target.”

“A target?” Liz echoed.

“Yeah. Find a guy you wanna score with,” Maria instructed, “and we’ll make it happen.”

“Score?”

“Sleep with, date, whatever. Find a guy.”

Liz looked around some more, taking her time. Personally, Maria would probably do the next guy who walked by, unless he was a pothead or a gangster. Well, maybe she’d do a gangster . . .

“Oh my god,” Liz said, looking over Maria’s shoulder.

“You found someone?”

“Oh my god,” she said again.

I’ll take that as a yes, Maria decided. “Okay, don’t make it too obvious. Look away.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Look away, Liz.”

Reluctantly, Liz tore her eyes away and looked at Maria. “I think I found my dream guy,” she announced with a huge smile on her face.

“Yeah, most likely not. You probably just found your starter guy.”

“No, he’s my dream guy,” Liz insisted, looking over at him again. “Oh my god, he’s so . . .” She smiled an even bigger smile and let out a wistful sigh.

Unable to take the suspense any longer, Maria asked, “Who is he?” and turned around in her seat to see for herself. Sitting directly where Liz was looking out on the steps of the Student Union was none other than her loathed worst enemy/best friend, Michael fucking Guerin.

“Oh. No.”

“Oh, yes.”

He had his camera, of course, and was watching some footage, probably footage of her drooling in her sleep or doing something else embarrassing.

“You gotta be kidding me.”

“What?” Liz asked again. “Oh my god, do you have a crush on him?”

“Ew, no!” Maria responded emphatically. She turned back around and faced her deranged friend. What was she thinking? Michael was not a dream guy to anyone. Michael was a dumb loser.

“What’s wrong with him then?” Liz asked.

“Pretty much everything.” Maria leaned in closer over the table they were sitting at and said, “Liz, he who shall not be named . . . that’s him. That’s Michael. That’s stupid Michael!”

“Your roommate?” Liz asked in astonishment.

“Yes!”

Liz’s face lit up with a smile. “You’re even luckier than I thought! He’s so cute, Maria!”

Maria groaned, cringing. “Uh, I’m gonna be sick.”

“So lucky.”

“Try cursed,” she suggested. “Cursed to live a life with him in it.”

“I can’t believe you live in the same house with him. Oh, wow, no wonder everyone talks about him. I’ve never seen anything so . . . beautiful,” Liz raved.

“Beautiful?” Maria shrieked. “You think he’s beautiful?”

“Well, yeah, he is.” Liz smiled softly and said, “Come on, Maria, you have to admit that.”

Maria turned again and glanced over at Michael. He was trying to inconspicuously pick his nose. Sick. Other than that, though, he wasn’t . . . horrible. He pulled off the ridiculous spiky hair without looking punk. He was able to wear rings on two fingers without looking feminine. He had a decent face. Maybe even more than decent. And though his fashion sense was lacking in her opinion, he definitely filled out his shirts and his jeans. Yeah, he definitely filled out those jeans.

She turned back to Liz and admitted it. “Okay, maybe he’s not a bad looking guy, but there are plenty of other guys out there, Liz. Better guys. Better for you.”

“But I haven’t even gotten to know him yet, Maria.”

“Exactly, and that’s why you’re so smitten. Let me tell you, Liz, right now you’re just like every other girl he’s seduced. Love-struck and wistful. But he is not your type, okay? Trust me on that. Not at all.”

“But Maria . . .” Liz placed her left hand over the left side of her chest and said, “He makes my heart beat fast.”

“Placebo heartbeats, Liz. Okay, he’s a womanizer. That’s what he does. He uses women.”

“Like you use guys?”

“Yes! No!”

“What?”

She sighed. “Yes. But the difference is, guys don’t mind being used. Most of them actually prefer it. Girls do mind. I mean, you don’t wanna be just another one of Michael’s one-night stands, do you?”

“No,” Liz admitted quietly.

“So, find another guy.”

Liz sighed disappointedly and looked around the vicinity some more. Maria noticed that her eyes kept going back to Michael no matter what, and she groaned.

“No, Liz!”

“I can’t help it, Maria. I’ve already got it bad.”

“Why? I just don’t understand why.”

“I just . . . I bet he’s not as bad as you make him sound.”

“I’ve known him for eight years, Liz. I know him pretty well.”

“Well, maybe you’ve just known him too long.”

“Right about that,” she muttered.

“Maybe he and I could have something real. We could balance each other out.”

“Good and evil?” Maria offered.

“More like black and white.” Liz gave her a pleading look. “Come on, please, Maria. You know him so well, this should be a cinch. Help me get Michael. Help me make him my boyfriend.”

Of all people. Of all people. Out of everyone walking around out there, every guy she could have picked, she had to pick the psychotic one. But as much as Maria hated Michael sometimes, she had promised to help Liz, and if this was what she wanted . . .

“Okay.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Maria, I’m not sure about this.”

Maria stood behind Liz and held up the scissors so she could see them in the mirror. “Snip, snip, Liz. It won’t be so bad.”

“I don’t know . . .”

“It’s just hair.”

“But it’s my hair. I’ve only had it cut twice in my life before, and never all the way up to my shoulders.”

“It’ll be below your shoulders,” Maria explained, “a little more volume to it, maybe a slight side part.” She smiled. “Don’t worry, okay? Michael’s totally into the valley girl look. It’ll be a turn-on.”

“But wait a minute.” Liz spun around to face her and said, “Do you even know how to cut hair?”

“Liz, come on. It’s like riding a bike. So easy.”

“I never got past the training wheels,” she mumbled.

“Well, lucky for you, I did. Now turn around, trust me on this, and take a leap of faith.”

Liz inhaled let out a deep breath.

“And close your eyes.”

She covered her eyes with her hands, and Maria got to work. She picked up a section of hair between her left middle and index fingers, flattened it out by pulling it downward, and made the first cut.

Liz gasped.

“Don’t worry, it looks great,” Maria assured her.

“It does?”

“Of course.”

“Oh my god. Okay.” Liz noticeably relaxed then, and even uncovered her eyes. “Oh,” she said, smiling and looking pleased when she looked in the mirror. “It does look good.”

“You’re welcome.” Maria moved onto the next section and cut it as well. By the time twenty minutes had passed by, Liz was done. Her somewhat bland hair had been transformed into shiny, voluptuous hair, something that would definitely get her noticed.

“Sometimes I do amaze myself,” Maria said, standing back to survey her work. “No, not sometimes. All the time.”

Liz laughed and reached up to touch her hair. “Forget the dance major, Maria. Hairstyling’s your calling.”

Maria laughed, too. “Wait ‘til I do your make-up.”

Liz’s face lit up with excitement.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Michael was on his way home after his last class that evening when Alex caught up to him.

“Hey, man, I’m glad I found you,” he said. “I wanna pitch an idea.”

“About a movie?” Michael asked.

“No, about your life.”

Michael gave him a confused look. “Don’t you have a life of your own to worry about?”

“Yeah, but it’s nowhere near as interesting as yours. Now here’s what I’m thinking: I host an event. No, not just an event, a spectacle.” He twinkled his fingers and circled his hands in the air as he said that. “Imagine this: Michael Guerin . . . gets a girlfriend.”

“A girlfriend?” he echoed, so unaccustomed to the word.

“Yeah. And any girl who wants to be a contestant has to pay twenty bucks to me. I split it with you, we make some cash, man!”

Michael chuckled, the thought of it totally amusing to him. “Nah, I don’t think so,” he said.

“What? Why not? It’s genius.”

“It’s not that I’d mind be the center of attention or making some money. It’s the whole girlfriend part. I’m not into that.”

“Oh, come on, Michael,” Alex begged.

“Nah.”

“Even if she was the hottest, sexiest, most gorgeous thing on two legs that ever walked the freakin’ planet?” Alex just wouldn’t give up.

Michael shook his head. “Nope. I’m not having a girlfriend, Alex. Ever.” He walked away and gave a backwards wave to his friend, set on that statement. A relationship would just complicate things. He liked his life the way it was.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“I don’t know what I’d do if I was Michael’s girlfriend,” Liz said as Maria penciled some eyeliner onto her lower left eyelid that evening.

“Probably have lots of sex,” Maria replied, pretty focused on what she was doing.

“Probably die of a heart attack is more like it.” Liz smiled dreamily, careful not to blink her eye. “He’s so . . .”

“If I hear the word beautiful one more time, I’m disowning you as a friend,” Maria warned. She took a step back and looked at her work. One eye was done. It had taken awhile, but Liz was finally starting to look like a bombshell.

“How’s it looking?” Liz asked.

“How do you think?”

Liz giggled. “Oh, I’m so excited.”

Maria picked up the eye shadow and told Liz, “Close your eyes.”

Liz did, and Maria brushed a warm brown shadow onto the closed lid.

“What’s that thing people do where they make their eye make-up look all smeary?” Liz asked. “But it still looks good, you know? Shady eye?”

“Smoky eye,” Maria corrected.

“Yeah, I love that. Can you do that to me?”

“No, because the smoky eye makes you look like a dominatrix, and that’s not the look we’re going for,” Maria replied.

“What’s a . . . dom-in-a-trix?”

Maria shook her head and put the eye shadow down. If Liz wanted to date Michael, there were going to be a lot of things she had to learn. Like how to enjoy spanking and handcuffs and all sorts of other kinky stuff.

“Okay, tilt your head up,” she instructed, reaching for the mascara next.

Just as Liz did that, Maria heard the front door to the house open.

“Honey, I’m home!”

She recognized that annoying voice instantly. Michael. “Crap,” she swore.

“Is that him?” Liz swooned. “I love his voice!”

“Where’s my dirty girl?” she heard him ask.

“Okay, Liz, you need to hide under the bed and stay there,” Maria said, lifting her bedspread for her friend to crawl under.

“Why? I wanna meet him.”

“Liz, right now, you’re like a turkey. You’re not done yet.”

“Oh.” Panic filled Liz’s eyes. “Well, I can’t meet the love of my life looking like a turkey!”

“So hide.”

“Okay.” Liz dashed under the bed, and Maria just pulled the bedspread back down when Michael opened the door to her room and walked in.

He surveyed her and said, “You look guilty. What, were you fingering yourself or something?”

“Or something,” she replied, feeling no need to elaborate. “No girl tonight?”

“Nope. I gotta get this stupid nature film done by tomorrow. I haven’t even started.”

“Slacker.”

“Well, at least I haven’t gone down on any professors to get good grades,” he retorted, adding, “as of late.”

Remembering that Liz was under the bed, Maria saw an opportunity to rid her of her sickening Michael-infatuation. If she could see what a bad guy he was, maybe she’d get over him. “How’d it end up with Lucy last night?” she asked. “I didn’t hear any wild sex sounds.”

He shrugged. “I fed her; she fucked. It was alright.”

“Just alright?”

“Yeah, just another dumb bitch, you know?”

That had to do it. If Liz wasn’t turned off by that remark . . . Liz was a conservative girl with a conservative way about her. She’d be much better off with someone like Max.

“Well, I gotta get goin’ on that movie,” he said, heading for the door. “Keep fingering yourself. Try not to think of me.”

She gagged exaggeratedly when he said that and walked over to shut the door and lock it into place this time. Then she bent down and pulled up the bedspread, peering under the bed at Liz.

“You see?” she said. “That’s the kind of guy Michael is.”

But much to her disappointment, Liz just shook her head. “No,” she said. “He may seem bad, but under that facade, I think he’s really good.”

“Good at being bad, Liz! Don’t you get it?” Maria raked her fingers through her hair, frustrated, wishing there was a way to end Liz’s crush.

Liz just smiled sweetly and asked, “Can you finish my make-up?”






TBC . . .

-April

[April]

Hello, everyone! Thank you so much, as always, for the feedback! I know some people (mostly my CID readers) are a little concerned about some possible UC relationships here, but if you are concerned about Michael/Liz or Maria/Max, stick with me. Have I ever steered you wrong with a fic before? (Well, I guess "Beautiful" when I killed off Michael at the end, but that's totally in the past. ) Anyway, thanks again for the feedback! Here's the next part!






Part 7






Michael didn’t really have a lot of direction in life. He knew he wanted to be a film director, preferably famous and with many girls throwing themselves at him, but he didn’t know what kind of films he wanted to direct. He wasn’t well-read or book-smart when it came to film studies. He directed his films with little to no effort and let the finished result speak for itself.

He stood outside that night, impatient with the short “nature film” he was trying to put together at last minute. He wasn’t into it at all. Why? Because nature had no emotion. Nature never laughed or smiled or got furious and yelled at him. He had no passion for nature, and nature had no passion for him.

He sighed heavily and zoomed in on an owl sitting up on the branch of one of the trees in the side yard. It stared back and him and made a little bit of noise, but as far as he was concerned, it was uninteresting. His movie would probably suck and he’d probably get a failing grade, but he didn’t care. This movie didn’t matter to him the way his final project would.

His final project, the one that was a full length movie about anything in the world. He still didn’t know what his was going to be about. Alex had suggested making some sort of sex documentary, but he didn’t want to. As much as he enjoyed sex, he wanted his films to be about something else, something more.

Oh, fuck, he thought, shaking his head at himself. If Maria could hear your thoughts, she’d be laughing out loud.

Just then . . .

Speak of the devil.

She came outside and stood on the front porch, her blonde hair billowing behind her in the wind. She stood there and looked out at the night sky, wrapping her arms around herself. She looked cold. No wonder. She was wearing some pretty skimpy shorts.

On instinct, he turned the camera and started filming her instead. She wasn’t exactly nature, but at least she was marginally more exciting than the owl.

She must have noticed, because she turned to face him and gave him an annoyed look. “Why do you always film me?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “That’s a good question.” One he didn’t have an answer for. Maybe it was because of her pretty looks or her wild nature, or maybe it was just because it always worked her up, got her pissed off somehow. Whatever the reason, his dirty girl was definitely his favorite subject.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Maria took Liz over to Dharma Hall to see Tess the next morning before any of them had classes. Tess, a Fashion Design major, was a pivotal part of Step Three in Liz’s spectacular make-over.

“Tess, you remember Liz, right?” she said. “Liz, I’m sure you remember Tess.”

“Oh, yeah,” Liz said. “She and Isabel were coming out of the basement.”

Tess smiled unabashedly. “It happens.”

“Tess’s dorm room is my resident shopping center,” Maria explained to Liz. “She designs the best clothes and sells them for a good price.” She motioned to the long, white, flowing shirt she was wearing over her jeans. Actually, it was more like a dress, but it looked cool, like high fashion. “See this?” she said. “She made it for me. She’s a genius. She’ll design you something good.”

“What look are you going for?” Tess asked her. “I’m really into leather and leopard print right now. I could whip up something sassy for you within the hour, probably.”

“Actually, I’m supposed to be a valley-girl,” Liz told her.

“A valley-girl?” Tess gave Maria a raised eyebrow look. “Who’s she trying to win over? Somebody you live with?”

“Please,” Maria scoffed. “He’s such a nobody.”

Tess laughed at that, then turned back to Liz and got serious again. “Okay, well, making Michael notice you shouldn’t be hard. He notices everybody. Even me.”

“It’s kind of hard not to,” Maria mumbled, looking again at Tess’s new boobs in astonishment. “Don’t those hurt, Tess? They look . . . heavy.”

Tess glanced down at her rack and shrugged. “Well, they are, but whatever. Kyle likes ‘em, so . . .”

Maria nodded. Tess loved Kyle a lot.

Tess giggled and said, “Last night, Isabel and I were practically smothering him.”

“TMI,” Maria warned.

“What’s TMI?” Liz asked.

“Too much information. There’s a lot of that on this campus.”

“And most of it comes from you,” Tess said.

Maria smiled. “Of course.”

Tess rolled her eyes and again spoke to Liz. “Okay, before we get started, I need you to sign this.” She handed Liz two pages of stapled information.

“What is it?” Liz asked, reaching into her pocket for a pen.

“It’s a standard liability agreement,” Tess explained. “It basically says, if I accidently poke you with a pin or you get a rash when you’re wearing my clothes, it’s totally all your fault.”

“Oh.” Liz frowned but took the paper from her anyway. “Okay.” She signed the form and then handed it back to her.

“Okay,” Tess said. “We’ll get started.”

“I’ll head out,” Maria said. “When I get back from class, you better wow me.”

“Oh, she will,” Tess assured her already. “And she’ll wow Michael, too.”

Liz squealed and bounced up and down happily. “Ooh, I can’t wait.”

Maria smiled, happy that her friend was so excited, but not understanding why. It wasn’t like Michael Guerin was some sort of great catch. Shaking her head, she left the room and headed off to class.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

For three and a half years, Maria had lugged a backpack all across campus. That was seven semesters. Seven long semesters. But by far, nothing compared to this last semester of her senior year.

She groaned and readjusted the backpack on her shoulders as she labored on to her ridiculous math class. Her problem was that she was such a fashionista, she opted for style over function when choosing her backpack. Thus, the uncomfortable but fashionable straps always dug into her shoulders and made the item all that more unbearable to bear.

“Just not enough muscle for Maria DeLuca.”

Great. Michael’s annoying commentary was the last thing she needed. She glanced over at him as he walked up beside her, carrying his own ugly backpack easily. “Showoff,” she muttered.

“Who’s showing off? I’m just stating the facts.” He chuckled, apparently amused by her plight.

“Look, I don’t need your snide little remarks,” she said.

“Snide?” he echoed. “Do you even know what that means?”

“Do you?”

“Maybe I don’t.”

“Well, maybe I do.”

He smiled again. “Alright. Okay. So where you headed?”

“Oh, freakin’ calculus,” she groaned.

“Calculus? Why the hell you takin’ that?” he asked. “You’re not that smart.”

She ignored that last part and explained, “My advisor said it would be easy.”

“It’s not. I should know. I’ve failed it.”

“Dumb-ass.”

“You’ll fail it, too.”

“Well . . . probably,” she admitted. “The problem is, I slept through algebra, didn’t understand trig, and this just sucks.”

“Who’s your professor?”

She readjusted her backpack again, still struggling with the weight. “That fat woman. I don’t know her name.”

“Branson?”

“Branson, Hanson, something like that.”

“She’s a nightmare.”

“No, she’s a she.”

Realization dawned on Michael as he apparently understood what she was saying. “Oh, I get it. You can’t have sex with her to pass.”

“I specifically sign up for classes with male professors. They switched professors on me at last minute, though.”

“Sucks to be you,” he remarked. “You wanna know something sick?”

She really didn’t, but asked anyway. “What?”

“I slept with Professor Branson last year.”

“Ew, Michael! Gross! Just when I think you can’t get any more disgusting!”

“I could barely get in; her stomach flab was dangling over. But I had to do it.”

Suddenly, a thought occurred to Maria, something that she could use to her extreme advantage. “Wait a minute,” she said. “This is good. Gross, but good.”

He stopped in front of her and stared down at her, studying her. It took him a moment, but not long to realize what she was formulating. “You’re such a bitch,” he said, smiling.

She smirked. “You know it. If I start failing, I’ll just blackmail Professor Branson, tell her I know about her tryst with you and she better pass me if she wants the secret to stay buried.”

“Such a bitch,” he repeated. “I taught you well.”

“You taught me?” She whacked him on the shoulder, scoffing. “Please. You learned from the master.”

“Whatever.”

They continued walking then, but much to Maria’s surprise, Michael reached over and tried to take her backpack off her shoulders.

“What’re you doing?” she asked.

“Just give me that.”

“No, you’ll infect it!”

“I’ll carry it. Come on.”

She eventually gave in and let him take it off her shoulders. It did feel good, and he was able to carry it without much effort. It was pretty much the one nice thing he’d ever done for her, and she doubted he’d ever do it again.

“Face it,” he said with a smug look on his face. “Sometimes you just need a big, strong man in your life.”

She laughed. “Oh, you may be big and you may be strong, but a man, you are not.”

“Well, you got the first part right.” He grinned. “I am big.”

She hit him on the shoulder, repulsed by the imagery. “Sick! Michael!”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Tess stepped back and surveyed the dress she designed for Liz, smiling. “I’m not one to toot my own horn,” she said, “but honk, honk, honey. This might be the cutest dress I’ve ever designed.”

“Really?” Liz twirled around in front of the full length mirror in the dorm room. It was a beautiful dress, one of the nicest she’d ever had. It was strapless, pale pink on the bottom, white on the top, synched with a pink belt above her waist. She was a little nervous about whether she could pull it off or not, especially the strapless aspect, but she really liked it.

Isabel, who had come back after class, sat on her bed and clapped her hands. “Bravo, Tess.”

Tess smiled and curtseyed. “Thank you, thank you.”

Just then, there was a knock on the door. Tess reached over, opened it, and Maria came inside.

“Hey, ladies,” she said. She gasped and her face lit up when she saw Liz’s new ensemble. “Oh my god, that’s amazing!”

“I know,” Tess said proudly. “Sexy, yet elegant.” She smiled. “Totally valley girl, not to mention, belts are in fashion.”

Liz squealed excitedly. It was amazing to think that in a matter of days, she had gone from being an unnoticeable nerd to a supermodel. (Okay, so she wasn’t technically a supermodel, but she sure felt like one.)

“On second thought,” Maria said, “maybe that dress should be for me.”

“Nice try, you bitch!” Tess said with a laugh. “You’re not the one trying to date Michael Guerin.”

“That is absolutely true!”

“Do you think I stand a chance?” Liz asked all of them, hoping for an honest answer. “Really?”

“I think you stand a whole lot of chances,” Isabel said.

“Yeah, the dress definitely helps,” Tess added.

Liz glanced at Maria. What she said mattered the most. She was the one who had been friends, more or less, with Michael for eight years.

“It’s not impossible, which is saying something, trust me,” she said. “Come on. Screw any classes you have. I’m gonna teach you how to talk.” She waved goodbye to Isabel and Tess and pranced out of the room as well as she could with a heavy backpack on her shoulders.

“Talk?” Liz echoed. “Don’t I already know how to do that?”

“She means sexy talk,” Tess explained. “It’s totally a science.”

“Ooh, science,” Liz echoed. “I like science.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Liz plopped down on the couch and groaned. “I don’t get it.”

“It’s not a hard concept, Liz,” Maria insisted, not sure why her friend was having such a hard time with this part of Operation: Snag Michael. “It’s just talking.”

“But it’s talking to Michael, Maria.”

Maria rolled her eyes. “You’re not even actually talking to him yet. You’re just talking to me.”

“Exactly!” she whined. “If I can’t even talk to you when you’re pretending to be him, how can I actually talk to the real him? I can’t.”

Maria sat down beside her and tried to calm her down. “You can stand up in front of the class and debate the hell out of sex education, but you can’t say hi to your crush?”

“Debating’s easy, though.”

Maria grunted. “Speak for yourself.”

“People in that class don’t know me.”

“Michael doesn’t know you,” Maria reminded her. “That’s why you’ve gotta talk to him, make him want to know you.”

Liz sighed heavily, looking a little bit calmer now, and turned to face Maria. “Okay, let’s try it again.”

“Okay.” Maria got to her feet, crossed to the other side of the room, and pulled out her best Michael Guerin impersonation yet again. She shook out her arms and legs, messed up her hair to look more like his, and sauntered back over to Liz, knowing exactly what Michael would say to her. “Hey, how you doin’?” she asked with a jerk of her head, even changing her voice to sound like him.

“Fine.”

Maria waited for more, but she didn’t get any, she felt like shaking Liz. “No, Liz. You’ve gotta be more conversational than that. Don’t say you’re fine. Say it like . . . fine, and then say, in more ways than one.”

Liz looked straight ahead at her reflection in the mirror and tried it. “Fiiiiine. In more ways than one.”

“Uh . . .” Maria shrugged. “Better than nothing, but you still need to work on it. Fine. More, like, sultry like that, you know?”

“I don’t think I can be sultry.”

“Okay, let’s just keep going then.”

“Okay.”

Maria cleared her throat and brought on her Michael voice again. “I’m Michael Guerin, by the way.”

“Oh, yes, I know exactly who you are.”

Maria slapped her hand to her forehead, wondering what on earth would possess someone to say that. It was so obviously the wrong response. “Okay, ego stroking is good, but obsession is not. That sounded like obsession.”

“Maria, I can’t do this!”

“No, just keep going. Say something else.”

“Um . . .” Liz looked down at her feet and pretended to introduce herself. “I’m Liz Parker. I’m a freshman here on campus, from Nebraska originally, majoring in nursing.”

“Okay, no, no,” Maria said, waving her arms dramatically. “You sound like you’re introducing yourself to the class. Okay, first of all, look at him when you’re talking to him. And don’t ramble on about yourself. Michael’s not into words. There’s gonna be plenty of time to talk if you guys start dating. At first, though, you need to appeal to his smaller brain.”

“Smaller brain?” Liz echoed in confusion.

“The guy’s led around by his dick, Liz, so if you do happen to mention that you’re majoring in nursing, throw in a kinky little comment.”

“What’s kinky?”

Maria groaned. “Okay, just tell him you’d like to wear the uniform for him sometime.”

“Is that something he’d like to hear?” Liz asked.

“That’s something all guys would like to hear. Haven’t you ever heard of the Naughty Nurse fantasy or Horny Cheerleaders?”

“I’m so confused,” Liz said. “I’m not naughty.”

“Okay, but to be with Michael, you’re gonna have to be. I’m not saying go break the law or something. I’m just saying, be willing to be adventurous. Michael’s been having sex since he was, like, twelve or something, so he definitely pushes the envelope.”

“Oh my god,” Liz said. “I’ve never had sex before, Maria. I’ve only halfway kissed a boy.”

Now it was Maria’s turn to be confused. How could you only halfway kiss somebody? What constituted a half kiss? A peck on the cheek? A smooch without tongue? She gave Liz a questioning look.

“Well, I was five,” Liz explained. “Oh, god, Maria, what if I’m not a good kisser?”

“You will be. It’ll come naturally,” Maria assured her. “When you’re with the right person, it all comes naturally.” She grinned. “And the cumming . . . it doesn’t disappoint. Usually. I mean, Michael will probably disappoint. He’s such a loser.”

“But he’s so popular,” Liz said dreamily, “and so cute. And so . . . oh, Maria, I just love him already.”

“Sucks to be you.”

“Oh, no, Maria, it’s a great feeling.”

“I wouldn’t know,” she muttered.

“Why not?” Liz looked at her sympathetically. “Haven’t you ever been in love?”

She looked away. No. She really hadn’t been.

“Oh, well, you will be someday,” Liz said assuredly. “And when you are, you’ll understand how I feel about Michael, how I think he’s just the most amazing, incredible guy on the planet.”

She said ‘guy’ instead of ‘boy,’ Maria recognized, even though Michael is a boy. Oh, well. At least she’s progressing.

“Okay, we’re losing focus here,” she said. “Back to the conversation. Within five minutes, he’ll probably invite you home with him. What do you say?”

“Um . . . sure?” Liz guessed.

“No, Liz. You need to be more emphatic. Hell yes.”

Liz grinned and echoed the reply. “Hell yes.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Michael typically liked to spend his free afternoons sleeping or looking at himself in the mirror. Or annoying Maria. Primarily the last one. But late that afternoon—or rather early that evening—he received a call from his academic advisor, Bo Johnson. Bo was a good guy, nice enough, understood Michael’s lack of academic ambition and tried to work around it. They’d gotten to know each other pretty well over the years, what with Michael failing a few classes and trying to figure out how to still graduate on time. They had worked it out, though, and thanks to Bo, he was going to be a member of the class of 2008. Most likely.

Michael sat in the hallway outside Bo’s office, drumming his fingers against the wall, wondering what Bo wanted to see him about. Usually the students were the ones who scheduled the appointments. This couldn’t be good. Probably some last minute change in his academic records, one that would prevent him from graduating on time, knowing his luck.

He was a little bit nervous, mostly impatient. He wanted to get out of there and go to The Lightning Strike club to pick up a chick, maybe two if Bo was going to tell him bad news. He’d only had a couple of threesomes in his life, back when he was in high school. Personally, it wasn’t his thing, but Kyle insisted that the right combination of girls had a lot to offer.

“Michael Guerin?”

He looked up when he heard his name, and Bo’s personal secretary, a cute freshman-type with curly blonde hair, smiled at him.

“He’s ready to see you now,” she said.

He stood up and headed into Bo’s office, smiling at the girl as he walked past her. “Here you go,” he said, slipping a small slip of paper with his phone number on it into her back jeans pocket. She took in a sharp gasp of breath as he did so and closed her eyes. After a little touch like that? he thought, truly outdoing himself. She’d cum in no time, be great for a quickie.

After the enjoyable albeit brief groping, he entered his advisor’s office, prepared for whatever news he was about to hear. “Bo, what’s up?” he said.

“Hey, Michael.” Bo held out his hand, and Michael slapped his hand against it. “How you doin’?” Bo asked.

“Alright.”

“Just alright?”

“Yeah, I guess.” Michael sat down across from Bo at the desk and asked, “So what’d I do?”

Bo gave him a questioning look. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I must have done something wrong if I have to come see you.”

Bo chuckled and held a hand to his heart. “Oh!” he said. “That hurts.”

“I’m just saying . . .”

“Michael, I’m your advisor, not your executioner.”

“Whatever you say, Bo.”

“That’s right. Whatever I say.” Bo chuckled. “No, actually, you haven’t done anything wrong.”

The for once was understood.

Bo reached into his top-right desk drawer, pulled out an envelope, and handed it across the desk to Michael. “This came for you through my office. I thought I’d give it to you in person.”

Michael took the envelope and surveyed the mailing address. It was from an internship program in California, around the Hollywood area. He’d applied for a variety of directorial internships a few months ago and was still waiting to hear back from most of them.

He tore open the envelope and eagerly unfolded the letter. He actually prayed to God, even though he wasn’t religious, that there was an internship acceptance in that letter. Being a director was the only thing that really mattered to him. It was the only thing he took seriously.

The first group of words he saw was “ . . . pleased to accept . . .”, and the second group was “. . . invite you to intern . . .” He read on in awe, as excited as he’d been about anything ever, but his excitement waned significantly when he saw which internship he had been accepted for.

“. . . new adult film series . . . summer-long internship . . . Cum-Hungry Coeds . . . work of genius . . .”

Work of genius? He highly doubted it.

It figured. It figured that the only internship he received was one working on the set of an adult movie series. Those movies were completely unrealistic and unimportant. They weren’t films that any serious, passionate filmmaker would make.

“You got an internship?” Bo inquired excitedly.

Cum-Hungry Coeds. That sure sounded like an Academy Award winner. “Yeah,” Michael replied, bummed out by it all. “I did.”

Bo smiled. “Well, then, congratulations.”

Michael folded the letter back up and stuffed it back into the envelope, not smiling anymore. This wasn’t really a congratulatory time in his life.







TBC . . .

-April

[April]

nibbles2, Alien_Friend, guelbebek, and tequasithy, thank you so much for the feedback! It's much appreciated! To answer guelbebek's question, I have about 770 pages written of this, but I'm not done yet. (Yeah, it's really long.) So you can expect these every-other-day updates to continue! I hope you guys are in this for the long haul, because it's going to be one frustrating (but worthwhile) ride.






Part 8






Max found it hard to study while Maria was sitting in the living room looking beautiful like she always did; but at the same time, he couldn’t bring himself to go into his bedroom and be away from her just yet. She was a distraction, but she was worth it.

Even though she was sitting on the couch with the TV on, she was talking on her cell phone, loud enough that he could hear what she was saying. She was talking to a guy, of course, one of the many she’d brought home and spent the night with over the past week. Who specifically he was, Max wasn’t sure. It was hard to keep track.

“What am I wearing?” he heard her ask. She looked down at herself, at the tight white t-shirt and panties she was wearing and replied with a giggle, “Not much.”

Max shifted in his seat, glancing down at his male epicenter. It didn’t matter how loose his jeans were; they were always too tight when she was around.

“What are you wearing?” she asked her cell phone companion. After a moment’s pause, she smiled and said, “Seriously? How often do you touch yourself?”

Probably not as much as me, Max though, pulling down on the legs of his jeans, trying to get more comfortable. But it was impossible.

As if she couldn’t get any more attractive, she had to roll over onto her stomach then and lie down, giving him the perfect view of her backside. She was wearing panties that said Drama Queen on the butt and had a happy drama mask and a sad drama mask. For some reason, it was really erotic.

“You always think of me, right?” he listened to her ask. “Good. Don’t think of anyone else. It’s not worth it.”

Max couldn’t take it anymore. Looking at her, hearing the things she was saying . . . there was no way he was going to get any homework done. He pushed his chair back from the kitchen table, got up, and hurried into his bedroom. He paused in his doorway and glanced back at her, longing.

“Just imagine it’s my mouth,” she said. “Or . . . something else of mine.”

He threw himself into his bedroom and slammed the door, needing to do the same thing, to imagine. He quickly unfastened his jeans, pushed them down a ways along with his boxers, and dropped down onto his knees. He took himself into his hands and began working himself off, desperately seeking the release that fantasies of her provided. He didn't really like doing this. He sort of felt like a creep, but at the end of the day, he was a guy who lived in a house with Maria DeLuca. What else was he supposed to do?

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Oh, baby, I’m so close.”

Maria smiled as she listened to her phone friend getting off. “Get closer.”

“I am.”

She shook her head. It never amazed her how many guys could just think of her and cum over and over again. Personally, she liked the real thing, so she rarely had to touch herself. But, desperate times sometimes called for desperate measures. She understood that.

“Oh god, bitch, I’m gonna cum. I’m gonna cum.”

The guy on the phone was named Paul. He had no stamina.

“I’m gonna cum.”

Just then, the front door opened. Maria glanced up when Michael walked in. “Hey, jackass,” she said.

He didn’t say anything in response. No comeback. No insult. He didn’t even look at her. She was wearing her sexy Drama Queen panties, and he didn’t even look at her. Not that she wanted him to.

He walked straight down the hallway to his bedroom and shut the door loudly. She stared at the closed door, wondering what was wrong with him. Michael was a fairly light-hearted guy. He didn’t have lots of problems; he didn’t take things too seriously. So the fact that something truly seemed to be troubling him was completely weird.

“Oh, I’m cumming,” Paul proclaimed ecstatically. “I’m cumming, Maria!”

“Good job.” She flipped her cell phone closed, ending the call and leaving him to his orgasm alone. What was going on with Michael? Not that she really cared.

She got up off the couch and traipsed down the hallway to his room. She opened the door, not bothering to knock, and found him lying on his bed, staring up at the ceiling, looking deep in thought. Michael Guerin could think? Who knew?

“What’s up your ass?” she asked straight-out.

“I don’t wanna talk about it,” he muttered in reply.

“What, did you wake up with one testicle?” she teased.

“Maria, I’m not in the mood.”

Since when was Michael Guerin not in the mood for banter?

“Just get outta here, okay?” he said.

Something was seriously wrong. It actually kind of . . . worried her a little bit. Not really, but a little. Still, she figured it best not to press him for answers, so she said, “Okay,” gently and shut the door to the room again. This was so entirely strange. She had never seen Michael like that before. He was usually just a guy who thought about having sex and making movies and . . . well, himself. He didn’t have layers; he didn’t have depth the way Liz insisted he did.

Did he?

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Nights without boys were the worst. Although Maria had planned to go to The Lightning Strike to pick one up, she had never found the motivation. Part of the problem was that she was . . . sort of kind of worried about Michael. Still. Kyle attempted to get him to talk, too, but he remained silent.

Maria was halfway asleep on the couch with the TV going when Max slipped out of his bedroom quietly and went out to the kitchen. Maria sat up and watched him grab his books, pencils, binders, etc. from the table. Here she thought he had been doing homework all this evening, but apparently he had been doing something else. Weird. Why was everyone so weird tonight?

“Hey, Max,” she said. “What’ve you been doing all night?”

“Nothing,” he replied.

She shrugged, accepting that simply because she wasn’t really interested. Even Max’s fun activities were usually pretty boring. To her, anyway. As far as she was concerned, Liz and Max would still make the perfect pair, but Liz was still fixated on Michael. Why? Still a mystery.

Maria sighed once Max retreated back into his room. She was bored. Totally bored.

As if on cue, she heard a door down the hallway open. It had to be Michael, because Kyle was downstairs with Isabel and Tess. She turned and watched as he traipsed down the hallway slowly, looking tired and still upset about something.

“I thought you died in there,” she said.

“You wish.” He smiled just slightly and sat down beside her on the couch. He stretched out his legs, resting them on the coffee table, and stared ahead at the television, but it was obvious to her that he wasn’t really watching.

“Are you normal again?” she asked, though she knew he wasn’t.

“Normal?” he echoed.

“Yeah. Annoying, disgusting. Not mopey and depressed.”

“Ah, if I wanna mope, I’ll mope,” he decided. “It’s like a Constitutional right.”

She rolled her eyes. “Well, it isn’t fun for me.”

“Oh, and it’s all about you, isn’t it?”

She smiled. “Exactly.”

He chuckled a little and shook his head. “Whatever.”

Whatever? she thought. That’s so not a Michael Guerin thing to say. “What’s wrong?” she asked him, unable to bear not knowing any longer.

“Why do you wanna know?” he asked in return. “’Cause you care or ‘cause you wanna spread some gossip?”

“I just wanna know,” she answered honestly.

He sighed, then reached into his back pocket, and pulled out an envelope addressed to him. He tried to hand it to her, but she groaned and said, “Oh, I’m really not in the mood to read right now. Can you just tell me what it says?”

He stuffed the letter back in his pocket and did just that. “I got a summer film internship in California with this director named Cameron Fleming.”

“Then why are you all mopey?”

He leaned his head back and looked up towards the ceiling. “I thought if anyone would know this, it’d be you,” he said. “Cameron Fleming’s an adult film director, Maria.”

Adult film. Hmm . . . “Oh,” she said. Then, remembering the preceding statement, she added, “You think I watch porn? I don’t need to, buddy. My whole life is porn.”

“Maria, you’re missing the point.”

“The point.” Apparently she was, because she still didn’t understand why Michael was so upset. “I don’t get it. It’s an internship. It’s a good thing.”

“No, it’s . . .” He looked frustrated, frustrated with her because she didn’t just understand. “Those movies are stupid, Maria. They have no substance, nothing that matters about them. I know I go around braggin’ about sex and how I have so much of it, but I don’t wanna make adult movies. I wanna make something better.”

“Like what? Titanic?”

“Just—I don’t know. Just something better.”

She started to get it, then, the way he felt. Still, realizing that he actually could feel was huge enough in itself.

“It’d be like if someone came up to you and said, ‘hey, we want you to dance,’” he explained, ‘’only, we just want you to pole-dance.’ You see why I’m pissed?”

“I think so.”

“It sucks ‘cause it’s below what you can do.”

“Yeah.” She had never sat down and watched one of Michael’s movies in its entirety, but from what she had seen, he was a pretty decent director. Of course, though, she would never tell him that.

“I don’t know. I guess I’ll just keep it, go ahead and do it if nothing better comes along.”

“Why’d you even apply for it?” she couldn’t help but ask. “I mean, if you knew you didn’t wanna do it . . .”

“It’s been like my back-up plan, you know? Don’t you have a back-up plan?”

“I don’t have any plan,” she admitted.

“You don’t?”

“No.” She sighed, not really wanting to think about that. Sometimes the future scared her. Sometimes she didn’t know what she was going to do. “It’s weird,” she said. “I’ve known you for eight years, and I always thought you’d want to make adult movies.”

“I don’t,” he said. “But, hey, on a side note, it’s called Cum-Hungry Coeds, so if you wanna break into the biz, you’d probably get the part.”

She slapped him on the shoulder at that remark, smiling. He laughed a little, too, seeming pleased with himself for that one.

Yeah, this was more like normal. This was the Michael Guerin she knew.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Liz insisted that they go to debate the next day. Even though Maria didn’t want to, she went along. She was close to failing the class, so she needed to get some participation points or something. If that didn’t help, seduction time. No male professor could resist her.

While two students stood up in front of the lecture hall and debated the ethics of psychology or something else completely uninteresting, Maria leaned over and nudged Liz’s arm. “Hey, you’re not doing anything tonight, are you?”

“Just studying,” Liz replied.

“Not anymore. Come by my place. Make sure you’re all valley-girled out.”

“Why?” Liz asked. “Am I . . . oh my god. Do I get to meet him tonight?”

“Yeah, I think you’re ready.”

Liz smiled a huge smile. “Wow. Oh my god, I can’t wait.”

“Big night, Liz. But, word of advice, don’t mention anything about porn for awhile.”

Liz gave her a confused look. “I wasn’t going to.”

“Good.”

Liz smiled again and repeated in a dreamy voice, “I really can’t wait.”

Maria shook her head. Maybe once Liz actually met Michael, she’d change her mind.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Liz managed to get her hair done by herself, but Maria had to touch up her make-up. The poor girl just wasn’t in the area of eyeliner expertise.

“Okay, now I’m really nervous,” Liz said as she and Maria stood outside the front door of the DeLuca-Guerin-Valenti-Evans household.

“You were excited earlier,” Maria pointed out.

“And I still am. But I’m nervous, too. I don’t know what I am, Maria. Are you sure I’m ready for this?”

“Well, Michael’s in a semi-vulnerable place right now where he might—just might—be susceptible to girlfriendly advances,” Maria explained. “You gotta strike while the iron’s hot, Liz. It’s now or never.”

“But maybe the iron’s cold,” Liz said. “Maybe it’s not now or never.”

“It is,” Maria insisted. “Look, just trust me on this, okay? I’ve gotten you this far. I’ve transformed you from a . . . no offense, nerd, to a bombshell, haven’t I?”

“Yeah.” Liz still looked apprehensive, though. “Look, I acknowledge that I’ve made big strides . . .”

“Acknowledge,” Maria interrupted. “Yeah, you might not wanna say that around Michael. He’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, you know, and his vocabulary’s really small. Among other small things he has.”

“What do you mean?” Liz asked.

“Oh.” She had expected Liz to at least understand that one. “It’s a joke, saying that his dick’s small.”

“You’ve seen it?” Liz asked in amazement.

“Yeah, most people have.”

“And it’s small?” Liz wrinkled her forehead in confusion. “Is that not a good thing?”

“No, bigger is better,” Maria explained. “No, actually, I’m just kidding, Liz. He’s not small. He’s actually pretty damn huge. I guarantee, you’ll see it and wonder how it’s gonna fit, but it will.”

“It will?”

“Yeah. Not that I’d know or anything. Gross. Just . . . guys have ways.”

“Okay,” Liz said.

“God, you have so much more to learn.”

“Exactly, Maria! I’m not ready! I’m still an uncooked turkey!” Liz whined.

“Get ready.” Maria inserted her key into the front door lock, pushed the door open, and walked inside. At first, Liz was too terrified to follow her, so she had to grab her arm and pull her inside. “Hey, loser,” she greeted Michael.

“Hey, dirty girl,” he replied. He was sitting on the couch with his laptop computer on his lap and his video camera connected to it, doing something. He didn’t glance up.

Maria turned to Liz and motioned sharply with her head for her to go talk to him. Liz, shaking like a leaf shook her head vigorously at first, but then, upon more urging from Maria, nodded and crept over to her crush like a timid little mouse. She stood by the side of the couch, not even directly in front of him, and spoke barely loud enough for him to hear her. “Hi.”

Michael glanced up at her for only a moment and returned, “Oh, hey.” And then he was looking at his computer screen again.

Say something else, Maria thought, wishing she’d given Liz some notes to study or something. The girl was blowing it.

For at least ten drawn-out seconds, Liz just stood there, looking around and saying nothing. She looked back over at Maria then, looking absolutely panicked.

It was too horrible to watch, so Maria quickly went to the rescue. “Michael, this is Liz Parker,” she said, going to stand beside her friend. Hell, if Liz wasn’t going to introduce herself, somebody had to. “She’s my new friend. She’s a freshman, just transferred here from UNL.” She kept it brief because she knew Michael didn’t care about background info.

“UNL? Where the hell’s that?” he asked.

“Duh. Lincoln, Nevada.”

He paused a moment, then nodded. “Oh.”

“Nebraska, in some circles, actually,” Liz added quietly.

“Right.” He grinned at her and gestured to Maria. “She’s such an airhead.”

“I am not!”

“Well, it’s nice to meet you,” he said to Liz.

“Nice to meet you, too.”

Well, Maria thought, at least they had a conversation. A brief, stupid one that I was forced to initiate, but there it is.

“So I think Liz and I are going out tonight,” Maria announced not at all subtly, “to The Lightning Strike. I wouldn’t say you’re welcome to come, but if I’m forced to let you tag along, I will.”

He chuckled. “Just say you want me to come.”

“I so don’t!”

Still laughing, he set his computer and video camera aside and got to his feet. “Your wish is my command.”

“Ew, I totally wish you’d just stay home!” she called after him as he headed down the hallway to his bedroom. “I’m letting you come out of pity, ugly boy!”

“Just let me get changed, get even hotter,” he said, “if that’s even possible.”

Maria tossed her head back made a disgusted sound low in his throat when he shut the door. “Ugh, arrogance takes on human form,” she muttered.

“I think he’s wonderful,” Liz said dreamily, staring at the closed door.

Maria just rolled her eyes. Apparently Liz was seeing something in Michael that she’d never seen in eight years.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Wednesday nights at The Lightning Strike club were pretty much uneventful. Middle of the week, nobody really in a party mood . . . not much fun to be had. But Maria was determined that Liz and Michael would start having some fun by the end of the night, sexual or otherwise, and she could finally re-dedicate her life to something besides Operation: Snag Michael. It was by far the grossest thing she’d ever done in her life.

She had hoped that Michael would sit in the booth next to Liz, but he sat down across from her instead. Maria sat down beside her friend and waited for the two of them to strike up some sort of conversation, but it just never happened. The awkwardness was ridiculous. She’d never been that awkward with Michael. In fact, the first words she’d ever said to him were, “Go fuck yourself.” Pretty much a conversation starter.

“So, it’s pretty dead tonight,” she commented, trying to get some words out in the air.

“Yep,” Michael agreed. “I wouldn’t have even come if you hadn’t begged me.” He took a drink of his beer.

“Oh, shut up,” she said.

“Nah.” He set his then empty bottle down and said, “Wanna go get me another beer?”

What was she, his slave? “No.”

“Dammit,” he cursed.

“You’re so lazy.”

“Right back at you, baby.”

“I wish you’d just stayed home.”

“Man, I should’ve brought Kyle.”

Now that she took offense at. “What, like hanging out with me isn’t fun enough? You need Kyle along to have a good time?”

“I need a box of condoms and whipped cream to have a good time. You know.”

“Constantly,” she said. “Constantly, you’re such a guy, Michael. You make your guy comments and you do your guy things.”

“Well, I’m sorry if I’m not one of the little she-males you sleep around with.”

“Oh, excuse me? I sleep with men’s men.”

“What, like queers?”

“Like men, okay? Something you are not. Manly men.”

“Oh,” Liz jumped in suddenly. “Whipped cream. Got it.”

Funny, Maria thought. For a second I forgot she was here.

“You’re not into kinks, huh?” Michael asked her.

Maria doubted poor innocent Liz even knew what kinks were, so she quickly prevented her from asking. “Liz does not have to divulge her ways of the bedroom to you. She doesn’t even know you.”

He shrugged. “Just makin’ conversation.”

Conversation, she registered. Liz needs that. “Right,” she said, slowly standing up. “Okay. You guys keep conversing. I’m gonna go find somebody to make out with.”

“She-male,” Michael muttered.

“Fuck you.” She grabbed her half empty glass of started off toward the bar, flashing Liz one last encouraging look as she went. She’d done her part. Now it was entirely up to Liz.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Why did Maria leave me? Liz wondered frantically. Why would she do such a thing? I can’t handle this. It’s too much pressure, too much stress. Too much . . . Michael. Gorgeous, scorching Michael.

Silence filled the air once Maria was gone, and Michael just smiled at her. She was blowing it, totally blowing it.

“So . . .” she started.

“Yeah?”

Oh god, what was she going to say now? Desperate, she blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “I really like your . . . ears.” What? What?

He looked at her confusedly and nodded slowly. “Thanks.”

Oh no, what had she just said? I really like your ears? That was beyond pathetic.

Unfortunately, before she had a chance to rectify, a tall girl with long legs and big boobs stalked up to the table. She had chin length platinum blonde hair, and although she didn’t look like a valley-girl, Michael seemed tp immediately notice her.

“Well, well, well,” she said, slipping a hand around his shoulders. “If it isn’t the infamous Michael Guerin.”

“Infamous?” he echoed. “I thought I was just famous.”

She smiled. “That, too.”

Unbelievable, Liz thought as she watched the exchange helplessly. Within ten seconds, this girl had interacted more with Michael than Liz had in over an hour.

The intruding girl cast her a challenging look and asked Michael, “Are you here with anyone tonight?”

He grinned up at her and answered, “Now I’m here with you.” He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her down atop his lap, and they were kissing instantly. And not just some peck, but full-blown sexual foreplay. (Liz had never experienced foreplay, but she imagined this was what it was like.)

Devastated, she held her hand to her head and turned to look away. This night was nothing like she had hoped it would be. It was a disaster.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Maria smiled as her lips crashed together with the lips of . . . some guy. Hell if she knew his name, or anything about him besides the fact that he was an amazing kisser. This was going to be fun.

“Are you getting hard?” she asked him between smooches.

“Yeah.”

“Good.” She nipped at his bottom lip and brought her knee up to brush against his erection, eliciting a groan.

“Alright, just let me go get my purse and we’ll get the hell out of here,” she said, eager to get back to the house and get naked. It’d been a couple of nights in a row now that she’d hadn’t slept with a guy. She was practically dying, it was so unbearable.

She planted one more sloppy kiss on him before spinning around and heading back towards the booth. She had only taken two steps when she saw something that didn’t necessarily surprise her but did make her stop in her tracks. Michael had a girl on his lap, platinum blonde and obviously made of plastic. His hands were all over her, in her hair and up her skirt as they made out ferociously, all while Liz sat just across from them, looking away and obviously feeling as bad as a girl could feel. And who could blame her, sitting there with all the tongues going everywhere?

Michael Guerin, Maria thought, glaring at the situation, you are such an oblivious jerk.

She marched forward determinedly, set on keeping her friend from having to endure any more torment. She grabbed Platinum Blonde by of her skanky halter top and pulled her away from Michael, much to her and his protests.

“Hey!”

“Maria, what the hell are you doin’?” he demanded.

“I love your hair,” Maria told the girl with exaggerated adoration. “It’s so . . . fake.” She reached up, pulled on the platinum blonde wig, and tossed it onto the floor.

“Hey!” the other girl whined again. “What’s your problem, ho?”

“It’s called you, bitch.”

“What, is this your man or something?” She gestured to Michael.

“Ew! My god, I’m gonna be sick.”

“I’ll make you sick, slut!” Fake Platinum Blonde shot out her hands and shoved her backwards.

“Whore!” Maria retaliated by doing the same.

“Don’t touch me!”

It didn’t take long for the shoving to escalate into a full-blown catfight. Fake Platinum Blonde pushed Maria back against the table, and Maria yanked on her ugly brown hair. Fake Platinum Blonde dug her obviously fake fingernails into Maria’s arm, and Maria slammed her high-heeled foot down atop her enemy’s toes, causing her to squeal in pain.

“Holy fuck, Maria!” Michael shouted as he grabbed onto her and tried to pull her back from the fray.

“Let go of me!” she shouted, kicking and screaming, trying to get away from him.

One of the bouncers intervened, grabbing onto Fake Platinum Blonde and pulling her a safe distance away. “Alright,” he said, “all of you, outta here now.”

Maria glared at her foe but finally stopped struggling. There was nothing to be gained by a catfight. Besides, what was she really fighting for anyway? It wasn’t as though she were jealous or anything.

“Okay, I’m good,” she said, but Michael refused to let go of her arm. He practically dragged her out of the club, Liz following close behind them. Once they were outside in the parking lot, he glared down at her and said, “I was about to get laid.”

“Oh, boo-hoo.”

“I hate you.”

"Guerin, that feeling is most definitely mutual."







TBC . . .

-April

[April]

guelbebek: You’re reading Stimulation? Awesome, I’m glad you like it.
tequathisy: Ooh, a kitten playing with tigers. That’s a FANTASTIC way to describe Liz in this fic. So true.
Alien_Friend: I’m glad you like the frequent updates. I try my best. And I’m glad you enjoyed the last part, too. Catfights are always fun.
nibbles2: I’m glad you “heart” this fic. Lol. I just started reading “Gold Diggers,” and I heart it, too. And yeah, this is 770 pages so far with just single spacing, size 11 Calibri font.
cassie: Thanks so much for reading and feedbacking! I really appreciate it!
starcrazed: Yea, a new reader! I’m so excited! I’m glad you’re enjoying it!
stinebiene: Hey, welcome to Fanatics! I’m glad the story has you hooked! I’ll do my best to keep you hooked.






Part 9





“Ow,” Maria whimpered as she dabbed some Neosporin on the cuts Platinum Blonde’s nails had left in her arm. “My arm hurts.”

“My heart hurts,” Liz mumbled.

Oh, poor Liz. Maria suddenly felt really selfish. There she was nursing physical wounds while Liz was dealing with some much more severe emotional ones.

“I’m sorry, Liz.” She didn’t know what to do, though. Michael had brought Liz back to her dorm room, and of course he hadn’t apologized, because he was too dense to realize he’d been rude. Liz had laid down on the bed, and she hadn’t moved for at least ten minutes. Maria was beginning to wonder if she ever was going to move again. Poor thing. As far as she knew, it was the first time she had ever felt sympathetic towards anyone. Ever.

“I thought he’d like me,” she said sadly. “I looked pretty, didn’t I?”

“You are pretty, Liz. You were pretty before this, too,” Maria assured her. “It’s just . . . it’s his loss. I told you he was stupid.”

“No, I’m the stupid one. I told him I liked his ears.”

Maria wrinkled her forehead in confusion. “Oh, well . . . that is a little strange.”

Liz finally sat up, much to Maria’s surprise. “Who am I kidding, Maria? He’s out of my league. He’s so popular, and I’m not.”

“You’re getting there, Liz. So you got a little nervous. So what? It’ll be better next time.”

“Next time?” Liz echoed.

“Yeah. I’d suggest picking a different guy. Michael’s just impossible.”

“But there is no other guy,” Liz said. “There’s just him.”

Maria sighed. She was afraid of this. Liz was head over heels in first love with Michael. She’d seen it many times before. Most of the girls he’d slept with would get down on their hands and knees and kiss his feet if he asked them to. But since Liz was quickly becoming her only real female friend, she felt obligated to keep helping her, no matter how misguided her love-judgment was.

“Then you know what they say,” she said. “If at first you don’t succeed . . .”

“Try, try again?” Liz sounded worried. “You think I can do that?”

“Oh, yeah. And I think you’ll do better this time. We’ll keep it secluded. No big outings.”

Liz nodded, seeming to like that plan. “Okay. Yeah. I can do better. Thanks, Maria.” She bent down and hugged Maria tighter than she’d ever been hugged before. “You’re such a good friend.”

Yeah, she knew it.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Michael leaned against his car and waited for Maria to wrap up with Liz and come back out. The moment she came into his view, he announced, “It’s official: you’re the worst friend ever.”

“Oh, please,” she scoffed, “half the time I’m barely your friend.”

“What the hell happened tonight?” he demanded, still baffled by the events that transpired at The Lightning Strike.

She snorted and didn’t really give him a clear answer. “Just . . . stuff, Michael.”

“I had a chick in my lap, totally hot for me, and you ruined it.”

“Hello! I, too, was on the verge of hot sex until I . . .” She trailed off, looking frustrated.

“Got jealous?” he finished.

“Jealous?!” she shrieked. “Oh, in your dreams, you stupid, self-righteous asshole!”

“I’m just saying . . .”

“Mark my words, I was in no way, shape, or form jealous,” she assured him, moving in close to him. She jabbed a finger into his chest and said, “You just can’t admit you’re wrong.”

“Wrong?”

“Yeah.”

“Wrong about what?”

“Liz was sitting right there!”

“So? I wasn’t there with her.”

“But, it’s common courtesy, Michael, not that I expect you to know anything about courtesy.”

“Do you even hear yourself? When was the last time you were courteous?”

“Sometime . . . whenever . . . I was courteous. That’s not the point!” she barked. “The point is, you made Liz feel uncomfortable because, once again, you were led around by your dick.”

God, she was so . . . weird. “I don’t get you,” he said.

“Good!”

“You know what? Just get in the car.” He was fed up with arguing. “I’m tired and I’m pissed.”

“You’re always pissed!”

“Just the get in the car!” He opened the door and practically shoved her inside.

“Hey!” she yelped. “Platinum Blonde pushes harder than that!”

“Would you shut up?” He slammed the door on her, but even as he walked around to the driver’s side, he could hear her shouting from inside.

“I can’t help it, Michael! I’ve got some quality rage, and I’m gonna take it out on you!”

He shook his head and got in the car. She was going to bitch him out the entire way home. She wouldn’t be Maria DeLuca if she didn’t.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Kyle was in ecstasy, his head nestled between Isabel’s legs as Tess’s beautiful lips curled around his cock, sucking him off expertly, when the front door burst open and sounds of shouting invaded the house. Even from downstairs, he could hear it plain as day.

“I don’t understand why you think it’s so cool to be such a god-damned ass!”

“I don’t understand why you’re so crazy!”

“I’m crazy?”

Tess stopped what she was doing for only a moment and listened. Kyle and Isabel did the same, and Kyle finally said, “Michael and Maria must be home.” He shrugged. Their fighting was nothing new.

Tess shrugged, too, and kept on going.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

It was a wonder Maria never lost her voice. With all the yelling she did . . .

“You think this is funny?” she roared, throwing her hands in Michael’s face. “You think it’s funny getting me all pissed off?”

He couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah.”

“You do it deliberately!”

“Hell, yeah.”

“Oh my god!”

He just kept laughing. She was all red in the face, looked like a volcano about to erupt, or maybe even in the process of erupting. She was completely certifiable and such entertainment to him.

“Don’t start a catfight with me now,” he said, backing up a little, “dirty girl. Or should I say jealous girl?”

“I swear to God . . .”

“You’re insane!”

“No, you’re insane!”

He just chuckled and shook his head. One of these days, she was probably going to get so riled up that she’d spontaneously combust.

“You know what the problem is? You know when this all started?” She pointed into his bedroom. “Move-in day. That’s when it all started. That was supposed to be my room!”

“Call me crazy, but I thought it all started when you ‘accidentally’ poured sulfuric acid on me in chem class freshman year of high school.”

“Oh, kay, for the love of God, it slipped out of my hand!”

“I had a nasty-ass burn for a long time.”

“You deserved it! You were an ass then just like you’re an ass now! And maybe that’s when it technically did start, but it really kicked into gear with the bedroom fiasco.”

“Oh, it did?”

“Yes! I wanted that bed. I wanted that room. I specifically set my things down on that bed in that room on move-in day and said mine. But then, when I came back five minutes later, my things had miraculously moved to the other room and there were Metallica posters on the walls of my bedroom!”

“Cry me a river!”

“Don’t even . . .”

“How the hell do you figure you’re entitled to the best room in the house anyway?”

“Because . . . I’m . . . the hottest person . . . ever,” she answered.

He burst out laughing. “Oh, no, baby. That title would belong to me.”

“Okay! That’s it!” she yelled.

“That’s it,” he mimicked in a high-pitched voice.

“I’m puttin’ my foot down!”

“You do that.”

“I’m getting that room back!”

“And after that, you’ll get jealous.”

Her face lit up in fury and she ground out a scream. She stomped her foot angrily and marched off down the hallway to her own bedroom, looking so cute and determined as hell. Still, there was no way Michael was going to let her have his bedroom back; but it’d be fun to watch her try.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Sometimes Michael didn’t think he could get any hotter. And then he did. It was awesome.

He got out of the shower that night, dried off his hair, slipped into a pair of boxers, and checked himself out in the mirror before leaving the bathroom and heading into his bedroom. He wasn’t tired, but he figured he might as well get some sleep. He was planning on bringing some random girl home for an all-nighter tomorrow night to make up for the three horrible nights in a row he’d gone without sex. Unthinkable.

When he opened the door to his room, he couldn’t deny being a little surprised by what he saw. When Maria had vowed to get the room back, he’d thought she’d do it by systematically moving her things in and moving his things out. He hadn’t expected her to do it by crawling into his bed naked. At least she looked naked lying there.

“This is the master plan?” he said, trying to act unimpressed. “This is how you’re gonna get the room back?”

“Oh, yeah, don’t mind me,” she said. “I’m just trying to get to sleep. In my bed.”

“Is that so?” He walked around to the other side of the bed, fighting to keep from smiling.

“Yeah, I think you’re a little lost. See, your bed’s in the other room. You know, it’s the much smaller one with the much squeakier mattress, probably because I’ve had a lot more sex than you, but no need to get into that again.” She smiled pleasantly, obviously pleased with herself.

What to do, what to do? he thought to himself as he looked down at her. It dawned on him quickly, that he was going to have to use his most powerful weapon. His cock, of course.

He shrugged and pushed his boxers down to pool around his feet.

“What are you doing?” she asked, all of a sudden sounding frantic.

“Not listening to you,” he replied, pulling the covers back and settling down into bed beside her.

“No, seriously, I didn’t sign up for this.”

“Oh, don’t mind me,” he mimicked. “I’ve just gotta take care of something.” He slipped his hands down under the covers to grasp himself.

“Ew. No. You’re not really gonna do that, are you?”

“I have to. Someone got jealous and ruined the sex I had planned for tonight.”

“No,” she said again. “Not with me here. Not with me in the bed.”

“In my bed.” He closed his eyes and started pumping his length. For some reason, he was already really hard. “Oh, yeah, that’s the stuff.”

“Michael, stop it, seriously. I’m gonna throw up.”

“I’m gonna cum,” he said. “Maybe I should scoot a little closer to you when I do . . .” He shifted over just slightly towards her, and that was enough to make her shriek and jump up out of the bed. She ran out of the room in all her naked glory, making various disgusted faces and disgusted sounds, too.

He laughed and sprawled out once she was gone, happy to have won that battle. Maria put up a good fight, but she was no match for his manhood. The bedroom was going to be his until the end of time. He had no doubt. Now the only thing left to do was conjure an image of someone to think of when he got off. Maybe a beautiful blonde girl with gorgeous long legs, vibrant green eyes, and full, kissable lips. Whoever that was.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The next day was simultaneously the best and the worst day of Maria’s life. It was the starting day of tryouts for dance team, and it was a good day because she got to be impressed by all the girls who showed up with real talent and potential. But it was a bad day, too, because there were some really bad dancers. No, they couldn’t even be considered dancers. Wobblers, maybe? Wannabes? Just non-dancers all around.

“Alright, ladies,” she said, walking back and forth and surveying the crowd of girls that had gathered in the Sun Rays’ gym. “In just a few moments, you’re gonna learn a hip hop dance that, I guarantee, will kick your ass time and time again.” She shrugged. “Whatever. Deal with it. Learn it. If you really wanna be on dance team and you really have what it takes, you’ll love it.”

Courtney just rolled her eyes. It made Maria so nervous that the future of her precious team might be in that whore’s hands.

“The Santa Fe Sun Rays are a championship team,” she reminded her potentials, just in case they had somehow forgotten. “Meaning, we’re good. I’m not kidding, alright? We’re talking killer leaps and jumps, advanced turn combinations. How many of you can do a double pirouette?”

About half of the girls raised their hands.

“You’ll have to do a quad,” she informed them. “Both sides. And fuates . . . they better be effortless. But that’s not all. Above all, this team has sex appeal. Now granted, it’s gonna have a little less once I graduate, but you still need to know shimmy that top half and booty-pop that bottom. Without a doubt, this team’s signature moves.” She smiled, thinking that no one could do those moves like she could. “If any of you don’t think you can handle it, leave now. Quickly.”

Liz lowered her head and started to walk away, but Maria grabbed her arm and stopped her. “Not you, valley-girl. You stay.”

Liz gave her a pleading look. “Maria, I can’t do this.”

“You want Michael?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you’re doing it.” Maria set Liz back in her place in line and addressed the girls as a group once again. “Alright, if you all think you’ve got what it takes, let’s get started. Eyes up here. Your first eight-counts gonna be some standard hip hop. On five, six, seven, eight.”

While teaching the dance, Maria paid special attention to Liz. The poor girl lacked the natural ability, which came as no surprise to Maria. Unlike many if not all of the other girls trying out, Liz had never been on a high school dance team. Plus, she didn’t have a whole lot of booty to pop. It made it difficult, and it was obvious how difficult of a time she was having. Her moves didn’t look natural, let alone hard-core the way hip-hop was supposed to be.

“Prep one, two, cross three, leap four; turn five, six, calypso eight!”

It was the tough jump sequences that really screwed Liz up. Even some of the girls who had been on dance team struggled with it. Unfortunately, Maria didn’t have time to demonstrate all the little technical components, so Liz was left to flail and hop aimlessly.

“Alright, so now you’re down on the ground. You lay on your left side, kick your right leg up and out, flexed foot. I wanna see some attitude, ladies! This is hip-hop, not ballet.”

Liz was panting and out of breath when they were only halfway through the dance. She looked awful, so Maria told her to go get some water. She didn’t want the poor girl to pass out. The only problem with that was, once she got back from the drinking fountain, she seemed to have forgotten the whole dance, not that she’d ever really learned it anyway.

“So you do the single shimmy, then the hooker roll-up, then the splits. Sex it up, girls!”

Flexibility. That was another thing Liz lacked. She’d certainly have to get flexible if she wanted to get with Michael. Half the girls he fooled around with were, like, triple jointed.

“Shimmy one, two, three, four, shake it up, six, seven, eight. Booty-bounce, two, three, four, arm up, six, seven eight!”

Oh, poor Liz.

“Rock it to the right, rock it to the left, triple-turn, flexed foot, and land.”

Some people were just not born dancers.

“Toe-touch two, three, four. Fan kick, swing back, arabesque.” She shrugged. “Okay, so it’s a little ballet.”

Liz just whimpered, looking completely out of place and terrified.

“Okay,” Maria said. “That’s enough for today. If you still think you can handle it, be back here tomorrow at 6:30. Oh, what the hell. 6:00 a.m.”

“Bitch,” Courtney muttered.

“I heard that, slut,” Maria replied warningly. “Alright, girls, get out of here. Seriously. You’re startin’ to piss me off.”

The girls all went over to the bleachers to grab their bags and head into the locker room to change and hopefully shower. Dancing was, after all, almost as sweaty as sex.

Liz stayed behind, though, and kept doubting herself. “Maria, this is impossible. There’s no way I’m gonna make this team.”

“No, you will,” Maria insisted. “I mean, I think you will. I get to have the final say, but I . . . can’t put you on the team if you don’t get . . . better. Way better.”

“I’m not gonna get way better, Maria. I’m not gonna get even a little better.”

“Sure you will. Meet me at my house this afternoon. We’ll practice,” Maria told her.

“But I’m so tired.”

“You might get to see Michael.”

Liz immediately warmed up to the idea. “I’ll liven up.”

Maria laughed and shook her head. Liz Parker was definitely infatuated . . . with the weirdest guy on the planet.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Maria kicked Kyle out of his whore-house basement that evening, moved some furniture around, and developed a decent space to practice with Liz. Technically, she wasn’t supposed to be providing outside help to anyone, but she was the captain. She made the rules, so she could break them.

She stood aside and watched her friend struggle through the dance with eight-counts after a few hours of drilled practice, and she had a mixed reaction. On the one hand, Liz wasn’t hopeless. But she definitely wasn’t hopeful, either.

Liz groaned when she flubbed up a jump and started sinking into Negative Nancy mode again. “Oh, I can’t do this. It’s too hard. I don’t have the training.”

“That’s why I’m training you, Liz. I want you to make this team.”

“I still don’t understand why I have to try out. I’m just gonna embarrass myself.”

“Guys love dancers, girl,” Maria explained. “I should know.”

“But you’re a good dancer.”

“And you can be, too. It’s just gonna take some more work. A lot more work.”

“I’ve only got a few days.”

“Look, I’ll get you on that team if you keep working hard,” Maria said, “and then you can get . . .” She looked around, making sure Michael wasn’t in earshot. Just in case he was, she said, “You know who,” instead of his name.

“I hope,” Liz said. “First I have to get the butt thing, though.”

“Liz, please, booty-popping,” Maria corrected hastily. “Butt thing sounds like anal sex or something.”

“What’s--”

“Oh, it’s something you’ll be having a lot of with Michael. He’s totally raunchy.”

“Anal sex,” Liz contemplated. “Like . . . oh! That sounds painful!”

“Yeah, sex isn’t always sunshine and rainbows,” Maria informed her. “Like your first time. Be prepared for some, you know, agony.”

“Agony?”

“Yeah. Freakin’ guys have it so easy. Get it hard, shove it in. Girls have to go through the tearing and the bleeding and--”

“Bleeding?” Liz was starting to sound freaked out. “I don’t wanna bleed. I don’t like blood.”

“Oh, don’t worry. Once you’re first time’s over, it gets a lot better. Then you just wanna do it over and over again.” Maria grinned.

“When did you . . . do it?” Liz asked hesitantly. “Was it super romantic?”

“Oh god no,” Maria answered honestly. “I was fourteen, in the back of this nineteen year-old guy’s car. So it wasn’t super romantic; it was technically statutory rape.”

“Oh.” Liz frowned. “No offense, but I don’t want my first time to be like that.”

“No, I’ll make sure Michael’s gentle with you. I’ll break his video camera if he’s not.”

“I’m sure he will be,” Liz said, smiling dreamily. “I bet deep down, he’s really a touchy-feely guy.”

“Touchy-feely physical, not emotional.”

“You just don’t see him the way I do, Maria.”

Maria rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I see the reality him. Now come on, we’re on the wrong train track here. We’re supposed to be booty-popping.”

“Right. I looks weird when I do it.”

“It does,” Maria agreed readily. She went to stand beside Liz and help her out as best she could. It was hard to teach booty-popping. It was something a girl did when she had some junk in the trunk. Maria didn’t have a whole lot of junk, but she was a good enough dancer to make anything look uber-sexy. Sexiness came naturally to her. It wasn’t really something she could teach. It was something she was.

“Okay, so the mistake you’re making, I think, is that you’re just moving your butt. It has just as much to do with your shoulders and your chest as it does your ass, alright?”

“Alright.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Michael knew Maria was doing something downstairs, but he didn’t know what. He heard her talking to someone, counting to eight a lot and then starting over at one. Dancing. Had to be dancing. And dancing was worth watching.

He made his way downstairs quietly and stopped at the bottom step, watching. She was indeed dancing with her friend from the other night, Liz. Probably dance team tryouts or something else she got really invested in. Why she was taking the time to help Liz was beyond him, though. Generosity wasn’t a DeLuca trait.

“So lift up on your feet a little bit,” she was telling Liz. “Just a little bit.”

“Like this?”

“Yeah, see how that helps?”

“Yeah.”

Michael smiled. They weren’t facing him, so they didn’t know he was there. He liked standing in the background, watching. It was fun.

“It’s not so much popping your butt out, alright? It’s actually more swinging it back into place. Use your hips.”

“I don’t have hips.”

“Sure you do.”

Actually, Liz was right. She didn’t really have hips. Maria had hips. Maria had an ass. Maria had all the things dancers were supposed to have.

“Okay, let’s just try the chorus,” she said. She reached forward and pressed the play button on the CD player, and some rap song kicked on. Personally, Michael hated rap, but he understood why dancers didn’t dance to Metallica or something with actual substance.

“Shimmy on five, six, seven, eight.”

On cue, both Maria and Liz started shimmying. Liz was doing fine, but she never got into it the way Maria did. With Maria, it just took over her whole body. It looked so natural and right for her, whereas he could tell that Liz was still slightly uncomfortable.

“Pop!” Maria yelled over the music.

Again, it was two different people doing two different dances. Michael’s eyes were drawn to Maria, and he couldn’t help watching her backside closely. It was no wonder she’d been the captain for three years. The girl knew how to dance better than anyone.

Liz got lost after the popping and stopped dancing, but Maria kept going. She kicked her leg in the air and swung it backwards to extend fully behind her. Michael watched in awe, wondering how the hell she was so flexible, and as she was executing the move, she looked over and noticed him.

“What are you doing?” she asked him, slowly bringing her leg down to the floor again.

He stepped down off the bottom step and shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“Well, we’re practicing.”

He glanced at Liz and asked, “You tryin’ out for dance team or something?”

“Yeah. Maria’s kind of making me.”

“It’ll be good for you,” Maria insisted.

“Yeah, dancers are hot,” Michael offered. “Except this one.” He gestured to Maria.

“Oh, very funny. At any moment, I’m sure to laugh,” she muttered sarcastically.

“Feel free.”

She reached over and turned the music off and asked him, “So, guy’s opinion. How’s she look?”

Liz blushed.

“She looks good,” Michael replied. “I bet you’ll make it.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah, it can’t be that hard.”

“Oh, please!” Maria exclaimed. “It’s totally hard.”

“Standing there shaking your ass? I don’t think so.”

“You suck.”

“No, you’re the one who sucks. I’m the one who gets sucked.”

“Not by me!”

“Never by you. Thank God.”

“You’re a prick, Michael,” she stated simply. “And dancing isn’t easy.”

“Making movies is a lot harder.”

“Yeah, right. Oh, hold a camera. Oh, press record. Simple!”

“Making a movie worth watching is so hard. You have no idea,” he insisted.

“Oh, whatever.”

“It is.”

“Uh, guys?” Liz timidly raised her hand and piped up, “I know something that’s hard.”

“What?” they asked in unison.

Hesitantly, she pointed down towards Michael’s . . .

He glanced down and noticed a tent in his jeans. “Oh, shit,” he cursed, turning and running back upstairs. He heard Maria laugh and exclaim, “Go, Liz!”

He slammed the basement door shut and leaned back against it, staring down at his erection in confusion. Where had that come from? All he’d been doing was arguing with Maria. Nothing erotic about that.







TBC . . .

-April

[April]

Alien_Friend: I’m glad you thought the last part was funny. Thanks for reading!
starcrazed: Oh, I know what you mean about silly college classes! There’s so many wonderful Roswell fics that I would read if I had the time. I’d rather read them any day than . . . what the hell am I reading now? Hamlet, I think? Thanks for reading “Stimulation.”
nibbles2: Ha, ha, yes, hard-on identification is progress. Btw, I’m reading my way through “Gold Diggers” right now and loving it! You are an amazing writer!
guelbebek: Aw, I’m glad you liked “Stimulation,” and I’m glad you’re still liking this! Thanks for the great feedback!
stinebiene: I’m glad the last part cracked you up. And yes, Maria is starting to rub off on “little innocent Lizzy.”
tequasithy: Yep, Liz is making progress. Thanks so much for reading and feedbacking! I really appreciate it.






Part 10





The next day at 6:15 a.m., Maria stood in the dance team’s gymnasium with Liz and Liz alone, tapping her foot impatiently. Where was everyone else? There were at least four dozen girls trying out, and none of them could make it there on time?

“I’m fairly certain I said 6:00 a.m.,” she mumbled, so pissed off.

“You did,” Liz said.

This was ridiculous. What was going to become of this dance team once she was gone?

Finally, at around 6:30, the door to the gymnasium slowly opened, and dozens of girls trudged inside, led by Courtney. They were all wearing their pajamas and dark sunglasses. None of them looked all that awake or enthused.

“Why the hell are you guys so late?” Maria demanded, her voice shrill with anger. “I said 6:00 a.m.! It’s not that hard to drag your asses out of bed!”

The only responses she received were a few groans of discontent.

It didn’t take Maria long to realize what was wrong with them. They weren’t just tired. They weren’t just lazy. “Oh, no,” she said. “Seriously? You guys are hung-over?”

“No,” Courtney said. “We’re just a little . . . tired.”

Furious that the bitch would even attempt a lie, Maria reached out and tore her sunglasses off her face. Courtney squinted her eyes against the bright glare of the gymnasium, but Maria could see the blood-shot red lines. “Tired my ass!” she roared. “Do you guys have any idea how stupid you are? Being on a championship dance team is the opportunity of a lifetime, and you’re blowing it!”

“Oh, come on, Maria,” Courtney said. “You act like you’ve never gotten drunk before.”

“Hey, I’ve had my fair share of wild nights, but I’ve never missed practice; I’ve never been late. When I first tried out for the dance team, I was so dedicated. I didn’t drink for the entire week!”

“Whatever,” Courtney grumbled.

“No, not whatever! This is important to me, and if you’re not gonna take it seriously . . .”

“They just wanted to have some fun,” Courtney said. “So I took them out. So we’re late. So what?”

“You’re hung-over! Some of these girls are still drunk!”

As if on cue, one of the girls let out a big, smelly burp. “Sorry,” she apologized quietly. “I think I’m gonna throw up.”

“You can’t dance like this!” Maria shrieked. “All you can do is stagger! You’re all pathetic! And if you think I’m laying into you now, if you think this is the third degree, think again, ‘cause it’s about to get worse. This is gonna be, like, the twelfth degree. Get ready to try out right now!”

“What? What?” the girls asked, all exchanging worried glances. Some of them clung to Courtney and started pleading with her to do something.

“She’s joking,” Courtney said confidently. “She wouldn’t really waste her precious tryout process.”

“Like hell I’m joking,” Maria said sharply. “Everybody line up now, alphabetical order, that is, assuming you can still spell, and don’t fucking blow it!” Nobody moved, so she barked, “Today, morons!”

Looking terrified, the dazed and taken-aback girls tried to find their place in line. “Does F come before G?” one of them asked stupidly.

Maria rolled her eyes. This was most definitely not the way she had envisioned her last tryout process.

“Maria.”

She turned around when she felt Liz nervously tapping her on the back.

“I can’t do this,” Liz said, panicked. “I’m not ready yet.”

“Well, at least you’re not hung-over,” Maria reasoned. “Don’t worry, Liz. You’ll probably be the best one here.”

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

The sad thing was, it was true. Liz was the best one there, and not because she had some great technical ability or wow factor. She was the best because she was the only one who didn’t trip over her own feet or vomit mid-performance.

Maria stood and watched every girl try out, not impressed. One girl just stood there the entire time, crying. Another fell over onto the floor and burst into spontaneous drunken giggles. One was still so hammered she started taking her clothes off, and one very special girl fell asleep while she was dancing.

Once the tryout process was finally done, Maria faced the impossible task of picking a new team. She had to pick some girls, no matter how much she detested them at the moment. She couldn’t let her dance team fade into oblivion.

She arranged the hung-over idiots and Liz in two straight lines facing each other and strode in between them, announcing her decision out loud.

“Last year, the athletic commission here at Santa Fe picked the team,” she said. “I spoke with them, and this year they decided it’s up to me. So Courtney . . . get the hell off my squad.”

Courtney just grunted and gave her the finger. “Whatever.” She turned and walked out of the gym then, seeming to not care at all.

“That’s better,” Maria said, feeling a little better once she was gone. “Now, Stacey James . . . congratulations. You’ve lucked out and made the squad.”

Stacey looked shocked but happy. “Oh my god,” she whispered to the girl standing beside her. “I didn’t think she’d pick me since I slept with Michael.”

Maria made a face and spat, “Wha-what?”

“Nothing,” Stacey said quickly.

Maria shook her head. Why some people thought the way they did was beyond her. “Onward,” she decided. “Sasha Mason . . . forget about it.”

One by one, Maria destroyed the girls’ dreams and they left the gymnasium. By the time she was down to her last person, Liz, there were eight girls on the new team. Plenty.

Maria stepped in front of her friend and tried to put on a stone cold face, but she couldn’t do it. Liz had actually impressed her. Within the short span of one day, there had been definite improvement. There might just be a dancer in there after all. “Congratulations,” she said, “captain.”

Liz’s eyes almost bulged out of her head, and she screeched, “What?”

“You heard me, captain.”

“No, Maria, you can’t be serious.”

“Oh, I am,” Maria assured her. “In a couple of months, I’m graduating, Liz; but I have a legacy, so you better carry it on.”

Although she seemed totally bewildered, Liz smiled and actually looked really happy, too. “I don’t know if I can make up dances.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll help you,” Maria promised. “You’ll be great. Just don’t let these girls walk all over you, alright?”

“Alright,” Liz said. “Wow.”

Maria smiled, happy to be able to give her position to someone like Liz, and turned to face the rest of the girls. “Alright, guys, give your new captain a big round of applause.”

“Woo!” the girls exclaimed, clapping and hollering wildly. “Go, Liz!”

Liz giggled and bounced up and down excitedly. Even though she knew people would think she was crazy for letting Liz Parker take the dance team reins, Maria felt as though she’d made the right decision. Liz was her friend, and Liz would work hard.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Michael read the front page article of the university newspaper over and over again, completely shocked. What had Maria been thinking?

When she got home, he asked her about it. “Hey, so is it true you made that Liz girl captain?”

“How’d you hear?”

He held up the newspaper.

“Oh,” she said, “good news travels fast then.”

“Are you sure it’s good news?”

She sat down on the arm of the couch and gave him a questioning look. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I mean, she’s an okay dancer, but . . .” He trailed off.

“Not as good as me?” Maria filled in.

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you were thinking it.” She smiled knowingly.

What the hell? There was no use in denying it. “Okay, maybe I was. But you gotta admit, I’m right.”

“Of course you are. No one’s a better dancer than me. Except maybe that Fred Astaire guy.”

He chuckled. “Why Liz, though? Why not Courtney? That bitch is so hot.”

“Ew, make me gag.”

“No, I’m serious. We went at it all Christmas break. I’ve never had it that good.”

She gave him an annoyed look.

“What?” Michael asked. “What’s that face? You think she deserves better than me?”

“No, I think you deserve better than her, and that’s saying something, Michael; because I think you’re scum. She's like . . . worse scum. And, get this, she got all my potential dancers drunk last night. Half of them could barely stand today, let alone dance.”

“Then why’d you have tryouts?”

“’Cause I was pissed!”

“You’re so weird, Maria,” he couldn’t resist commenting.

“You just watch. That team’s gonna carry on the tradition. Liz is gonna make sure of it.” She sounded confident. “She’s really . . . dedicated, you know? She always gives a hundred and ten percent. Gives as good as she gets, one might say. Really committed.”

“Committed,” he echoed with a shudder. “Definitely not my type.”

“Oh, you never know. You might find yourself wanting a girlfriend someday.”

Wait a minute, Michael thought, sensing that something was up with this conversation. What’s she hinting at? “Did you talk to Alex? Is that what this is about?”

“What?”

“You know, the whole get Michael a girlfriend thing. Are you working for him now?”

“No. And God help the girl who does date you. Seriously.”

“I’m dating anybody, alright? So you freaks can just forget about it.”

“Freaks? I’m not even in on it!” She snatched the newspaper out of his hand and stomped off down the hall.

“Should’ve picked Courtney, Maria!” he shouted after her.

“Screw you!” was the response he got.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Liz was in a good mood all day. Even when she missed a question on her biology exam, she couldn’t stop smiling. Granted, she was totally intimidated by being the new captain of a three-time championship dance team, but she was excited, too. Here she hadn’t even though she would make the team.

If guys liked dancers, Michael was going to love her!

“Hey, you’re Liz Parker, right?”

She stopped when some girl stepped in front of her. “Uh, yeah.”

“So you’re the new captain of the dance team?”

Liz smiled and laughed a little. “Yeah, strangely enough.”

“Wow,” the girl said. “That’s so cool.”

Cool? Liz thought. Has anyone ever said that word in connection with me before? I don’t think so. “Thanks,” she said, flattered.

“Well, anyway, I gotta go, but I’ll see you around. Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” she said again, shocked that a) she had gotten recognized, and b) someone thought she was cool. She felt as though she were in some sort of alternate universe. This was just crazy. Crazy and cool.

“Bye.”

“Bye.” Liz had only gone a few more paces when someone else she didn’t know waved at her and said hi. She waved back, unsure what else to do, and smiled a smile she was sure covered her entire face. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so accepted before.

When she was about to cross the street, a black car zoomed up and pulled over to the side, right in front of her. For a moment, she thought another stranger was going to socialize with her, but the door opened and Maria poked her head out.

“Hey, dancer,” she said. “Wanna come hang out at my place?”

“Is Michael there?” Liz asked hopefully.

Maria shrugged. “Maybe.”

Liz squealed giddily and skipped to the passenger’s door. “Oh, yea, I’m so excited.” She got in and shut the door, thinking that this day couldn’t get any better. Well, it could, but that would involve Michael getting down on one knee and asking her to be his wife. And her accepting, of course. Because he was so wonderful.

Maria put the car into drive and zoomed down the street, through a few red lights, much to Liz’s alarm. “So,” she said, “how was your day?”

“Really different,” Liz replied, “but in a good way. It’s like, now that I’m the captain of the dance team, everyone thinks I’m cool. They didn’t even know me yesterday.”

“It comes with the title,” Maria informed her. “Popularity.”

Popularity. Liz liked the sound of that.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

“Okay, so you know I didn’t just make you captain because you’re my friend,” Maria said as she led Liz into her bedroom. “You really were the best one who tried out today.”

“But that’s because all the other girls were out of it,” Liz pointed out. “I’ve only been the new captain for a few hours, and I’m loving it, but are you sure I can handle it? I mean . . .”

“You can,” Maria assured her. “It’s just gonna take a lot of intense practice. But you’re smart. You can get it.”

“What does dancing have to do with being smart?”

Maria shrugged. “It usually means you can pick up on things and memorize things quickly. That’s a plus.”

“I guess.”

Maria shut the door to her room, pushed a chair aside with her knee, and freed up a little more space. Kyle, Isabel, and Tess were occupying the basement again, and there was no hope of clearing them out; so her small bedroom was the new practice space.

Hmm, if only I had Michael’s bedroom, my initial bedroom, Maria thought to herself bitterly. That wouldn’t be quite as small.

“So where’s Michael?” Liz asked with an eager smile, obviously still more excited about him than her captain status.

Maria grunted. “Ugh, around here somewhere.”

“Where? I wanna see him. Do you think he knows I’m captain?”

“He knows.”

“Really? Does that help me out at all? Do I suddenly look hotter to him now?”

Maria thought back to Michael’s reaction earlier that day. ‘Why not Courtney? That bitch is so hot.’ “I don’t know,” she said, not wanting to burst Liz’s happy bubble. “Probably.”

Liz squealed. “Ooh, goodie.”

“But . . . don’t get too excited. We need to start working on your dancing, like, right now.”

“Right now?”

“Yeah. You’re gonna have to start your summer collegiate camp routine within the next couple weeks.”

“Wait, what? Summer? It’s still spring.”

“It’s complicated, Liz. I’ll give you a timeline; I’ll help you out. Don’t worry.”

“Oh my god, Maria, all of a sudden, I’m like hyperventilating,” Liz said, clearly getting panicked.

“No, you’re not. Okay, the first thing we need to work on is your flexibility. Or—I hate to say it—lack of flexibility. You have to be able to do a toe-touch, Liz.”

“What’s that again?”

Oh, they had some serious work to do. “It’s where you jump up and touch your toes, like splits in the air.”

“Oh, right.”

“Okay, so I’ll show you how to stretch.”

“But . . . can I see Michael first?” Liz asked innocently.

“Priorities, Liz. I’ll help you get Michael, but your first priority needs to be this team now.”

“But . . . it’s not,” Liz admitted. “It’s still Michael.”

Maria made a face, hating him. “That guy ruins everything.”

“I’ll just go and say hi, and then I’ll come back in and do the stretching thing,” Liz proposed.

Maria considered it for a moment, and then a much better idea occurred to her. “Or!” Her face lit up. “Two birds, one stone!” She smacked her hands together to demonstrate. “You can multi-task.”

“How?” Liz asked, seeming to like the idea.

“It’s not subtle,” Maria promised.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Michael was upstairs in the kitchen shoving a half frozen burrito into his mouth, too hungry to waste time heating it up in the microwave, when he heard an unmistakable voice calling his name.

“Michael!”

She said it in that whiny sort of way, the sort of way that indicated she wanted something. She always did. “What?” he spat back, his mouth full.

“Could you come in here for a minute? I need you.”

That almost sounded . . . sexy. He shoved the rest of the burrito into his mouth, practically inhaled it, and decided to tease her. “Oh, you need me, huh?”

“Just get in here!”

He walked into her bedroom and found her and Liz, both dressed in workout clothes, doing something that was probably dance team-related. “What’s up?” he said, noticing that Liz was showing a lot more skin than she had the other night. Midriff. Short shorts. She wasn’t bad, but Courtney still would have been a hotter captain. And Maria was still off the charts hot, but he couldn’t tell her that.

“Make yourself useful,” she said. “Help Liz stretch out.”

“Huh?”

“She’s gonna lie down on the floor. Just push her leg back as far as it’ll go.” Maria glanced at her friend and said, “Lie down, Liz.”

“Right.” She lay flat on her back and lifted her right leg up in the air just slightly.

He gave Maria a skeptical look. Whatever she was trying to do, she wasn’t doing it well. He wasn’t going to get a girlfriend no matter how hard she tried to push one onto him.

“Just do it,” she grumbled.

“Why can’t you?”

“Because I’m . . .” She dropped down into a split position at once and said, “I’m doing the splits.”

He rolled his eyes and went over to Liz. He held her foot in one hand and placed his other hand on her calf. “Alright, just tell me when it starts to suck,” he muttered. He started to push her leg back slowly, then glanced over at Maria again. “Gettin’ jealous?” he teased.

“Shut up.”

He chuckled and looked down at Liz. “So, you’re gettin’ all flexible because of that dance team, huh?” he asked.

Before she could reply, Maria resounded, “That dance team? You say it like it’s just some stupid thing.”

“It is. It’s like football. What’s the point?”

“Oh, as opposed to movies, which are so pointy.”

“Exactly.”

She rolled her eyes.

He cleared his throat and looked at the pictures stuck in the sides of Maria’s mirror, pictures of her making out with dozens of random guys. “You know, Liz, a lot of the former captains have used their flexibility in other ways, too,” he said.

“Michael!” Maria hissed.

“What?” he said innocently. “I’m just telling her the uses of flexibility.”

“You’re just being stupid. Again! Were you born this big a pain in the ass?”

“I was born a pain in your ass, baby.”

“Oh my god.”

“Just yours.”

Suddenly, a quiet voice whimpered, “Ow.”

Liz, he realized, glancing down at her. He’d almost forgotten she was in the room. Here he was pushing her leg back at an almost impossible angle. “Oh, shit. Sorry,” he apologized, immediately letting up.

“It’s okay,” she said, urging herself into a sitting position. “I think I’m all stretched out now.”

He shook his head. “Trust me, you’re not.” And with that, he felt his work was done. He left the room and headed back out into the kitchen to finish his frozen burrito.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Maria shot to her feet and ran to shut the door once Michael was gone. “Oh my god,” she said, turning to give Liz an exclamatory look. “Did you hear that?”

“What?”

“He just totally gave you some sexual innuendo.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“You think so?”

“Yeah.”

Liz smiled happily. “Wow. Who would’ve thought? I mean, most of the time, it seems like he has more of that with you.”

Maria made a face. Why did people always think that? “Mutual hatred is more like it. Liz, you’re making progress.”

“I don’t know,” Liz said skeptically. “I mean, I feel like I am, but at the same time, I don’t wanna get my hopes up.”

“Get ‘em up, honey,” Maria encouraged her. “He’s caving; I can tell. Mark my words, you’ll be dating that jackass by the end of the week.”






TBC . . .

-April