A shy virgin wallflower comes back to his old town.
This story is for ADULT amusement only. It contains material of an adult, explicit, SEXUAL nature.
The Cruise just began…..
Enjoy.
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THE ONE WITH CARRIE CROENKE
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As I walked down the hallway leading out of the Delta Airlines concourse and into the main terminal, I saw my parents waving to me. I quickened my pace and found myself barely able to drop my backpack from my shoulders before my mom pulled me into an embrace. It took me a bit of effort to free myself from the embarrassing hug, and as I did, she kissed me on the cheeks and began to fuss about my hair like I was eight or something.
My father rescued my by stepping up to shake me hand. “Hey there, Al,” he beamed. “How are things in the home stretch?” Possibly my father’s greatest gift to me was his insistence that I be called ‘Al’ when I was little. Alistaire is an extremely old family name on my mom’s side, and once I was born with a penis, there had never been a chance I’d be named anything else. But Dad had been firm that everybody call me Al, believing that the only person who should decide that I actually be known by that full mouthful should be me.
So far I have not made that decision… Check back with me in a million years. I am Al, though Alistaire has its appeal…
I go to boarding school up in Connecticut, and this was my senior year. Most of us Seniors had already heard from our colleges, with the only exceptions being the kids still held on pins and needles by the super competitive schools like the Ivies. I had been accepted Early Decision at USC back in December, thus, as my father was intimating, my spring semester was pretty much just an exercise in not flunking. It really was a home stretch. I was having fun, too. I was playing a lot of D&D, and I had buddies to hang out with. But school was still school, and it was nice to be home for the almost two weeks of Spring Break.
I am an only child, so my parents understandably kept me to themselves my first night home. I did manage to make some phone calls to the few people who had still remained buddies with me after I had gone off to boarding school. I had discovered that you don’t keep a lot of friends back home when you go away to prep school. Four years is a long time to keep someone in your head when you are a teenager and you never see them anymore. I had never been exactly a social butterfly to begin with, either. I was not a loner, or a loser, or ostracized back in middle school when I was still living at home, but I had definitely been pretty shy, and just enough of a geek to keep me ‘friendly’, rather than ‘friends with’, most people.
By this point in my Senior year, I was down to about three dudes back home whom I still thought of as friends enough to hang out with, including my long-time best friend and former next-door neighbor, Chris. We made plans for me to pick him up the next day when Peachtree High, the local public high school, got out. The good thing about my vacation was that it at least partially aligned with the local school system’s this year, which was rare. But for the rest of my first week home, I had nothing to do until 2:30, when Peachtree let out.
*
I did the laundry I brought home Thursday morning. Mom would have done it for me, of course, but I’d learned to do it myself over the last four years, and I had discovered that it made her ridiculously happy that her son could and would clean his own clothes. So happy, in fact, that I was never made to do the dishes…
About two, I left the house. I drive my mom’s car when I am home, and I tooled over toward P-High, grabbing a Coke at McDonald’s on the way. I parked on the shaded street near Peachtree, where kids tended to meet up for a ride after school. The ‘official’ pickup area had no trees, was blazing hot, and overflowed with clingy moms in minivans. I did not even go to school at P-High and I knew no self-respecting human wanted to get picked up there. The bus would have been better.
I didn’t know too many of the kids at Peachtree in the first place, given how long I had effectively lived eight states away, and the fact that about two-thirds of them had gone to middle schools other than mine to begin with. That made most of the kids drifting out past me as classes let out, strangers. Among that number, I included a bunch that I had used to know, but who now had no recollection of me. I just sat on the hood of the car, sipped my Coke, and scanned my TikTok follows.
I periodically pulled my face away from the cleavalicious babes dancing or lip-syncing on the screen to check out the less cleavalicious but often still pretty strangers wandering by as I waited for Chris to show his mangy hide As each passed, I’d go back to the next video. When I looked up the next time, scanning the increasing flow of kids walking by, I suddenly straightened my spine and put away my phone.
Walking toward me were two girls I most definitely recognized from back in eighth grade, Carrie freaking Croenke and Mary (or was it Maddie?) Davis, two of the absolutely hottest girls I had ever known back then. Carrie Croenke had been the near-universally acclaimed prettiest girl our age, and somehow, looking at her walk toward me now, I doubted that she had lost that status. Maddie or Mary might have given her at least a run for it, though. Both the girls walking toward me had spent the years from 13 to 18 developing from pretty to knuckle-bitingly hot.
It wasn’t that I had forgotten what the other girl who was walking toward me’s name was, it was just that Mary and Maddie were a pair of twins, and I had never learned to tell them apart. I had no idea which one was in front of me now, for sure.
My view of them got even better when they both actually recognized me! “Al Taylor,” Carrie exclaimed. “Who knew you were still alive!”
“Hey Al,” the twin added. “You went away to private school, didn’t you? Do your parents still live here?” she asked, in a little bit of surprise.
“Hey Carrie! Hey, uh, M…” I trailed off, realizing that I had trapped myself by naming Carrie.
“It’s Mary, Al,” Mary said drily, but with a smile. She tapped at the small, brown, thumb-sized birthmark on her neck. “Remember?” I vaguely remembered about the birthmark, that it was the only real way to tell between them. Those girls were utterly identical otherwise. But even back then, I never could remember which one had been the one with the mark. I never really had had much need. When you are only staring from a distance, too young to fully know why, you hardly need to actually know a pretty girls’ name.
I had honestly never talked to any girls much, back in middle school. And especially not girls like Mary or Carrie. They dwelt on a higher plane of existence. Obviously, I knew them, and had managed to be friendly. The twins had actually ridden the same bus as I, but they seldom sat near me. Carrie I had talked to a little more, since we were in the same homeroom in eighth grade. But just a little more.
I smirked sheepishly at Mary. “Sorry! It has been a while. Are you guys enjoying Senior year?” I asked, changing the subject quickly.
“It’s been a blast,” said Mary happily, and Carrie agreed, though with visibly less enthusiasm, which puzzled me.
“And Carrie is Student Body Vice-President,” added Mary sweetly. Carrie rolled her eyes.
“Mademoiselle Vice President,” I intoned solemnly, making a deep, formal bow while still sitting on the hood of the car. Carrie elbowed Mary.
“Is that your car? Nice,” Carrie said, changing the subject.
“Uh, it is still in my dad’s name, for the insurance,” I temporized, finding that I was loathe to tell these two girls that I was driving my mom’s car. I am not cool. No one thinks I’m cool. But I did not need to look uncool. “I just drive it when I’m home.”
“Nice,” said Carrie, looking the elderly Mercedes over.
“So what’s it like, going to boarding school?” Mary asked curiously.
I chuckled, happy to talk about myself a little. “Honestly, it is pretty fun, if a little weird.”
“How’s the food?” Mary inquired.
“Weird?” Carrie asked simultaneously.
“The food sucks,” I said promptly. “95 percent of the time. The other five percent is the made-to-order omelettes on Sunday mornings. And as for the weird… it is strange having your teachers around 24/7. But the hardest thing I had get used to when I first got there was having classes six days a week.”
“Wait! You have got to be shitting us,” Carrie challenged me. “You go to school on Saturdays?”
“It’s really not that bad,” I said, instinctively defending my school. “Wednesdays and Saturdays are half days anyway, because almost everyone has a match, meet, or game those afternoons.”
“A real jock school, huh?” Carrie asked. “How do you handle that?” I felt a little challenged at her easy assumption that I wasn’t up to sports.
Mary felt a little embarrassed too. “Carrie! Don’t be mean. Al could handle some soccer or something.” Okay, my defender was possibly more condescending than Carrie.
“It’s not so bad,” I said easily, then couldn’t help but slip in the knife and give it a twist. “But then, who would have thought that nerdy little me would end up graduating this May with four varsity letters?” I asked rhetorically with a matter-of-fact expression.
They both stared at me with grins on their faces, which faded to incredulity when I let them see that I was smugly serious.
“Really?” blurted Carrie. “Four?”
“Two in Cross Country, two in Track,” I proclaimed proudly. “Turns out, even if you are a scrawny waif, when you just refuse to let the exhaustion win, you can claw your way from the last place scrub on a no-cut team, up to Varsity in a few quick years.”
Mary shook her head. “Al Taylor is a jock. My world is rocked.”
“Hold on! I’m no jock. I have still never won a race… ever! And with only eight Track meets left before graduation, I am never going to, not without a couple of faster dudes breaking their legs.” Who knew? The old humble brag can make girls smile… noted.
At this moment, Chris irritatingly decided to show up. He called my name as he approached, and we fist bumped. He hid his surprise at finding me talking to Carrie and Mary… barely.
“Hey Chris,” said Carrie absently. “Is Al your ride?”
“Yep,” Chris said easily. “Thanks for waiting on me, buddy!”
This sounded like a prelude to a goodbye, and I found that I really wanted to keep talking to these two. And to just keep looking at them, honestly.