Chapter 8

I woke as someone threw back the covers to get up. It was Amber and she squirmed out of bed to use the bathroom. That started a parade before we went back to bed. I was a tragic wasteland of strained muscles as I hobbled to the bathroom and then back to bed before Lana pulled the covers over us and we drifted off again.

Sunshine poured into the room through the open door as Emma came to wake us. There were groans of protest, some of which might have been from me, as she got us up and moving. We were all groggy, sleep deprived and still recovering. We got moving with some effort, getting dressed and gathering up our things. We had work to do at home to clean the toys before we put them away. The rest of the suite had already been cleaned up and they’d given us as much time as they’d dare before we had to go check out. I left $100 on the dinette table as a thank you for housekeeping and then we were out the door.

We all crowded into the elevator and Emma went to check out. Gina was already gone to work and the nine of us were splitting up between Collie’s car, Lana’s car and Jessie’s car. It was decided that Jessie and I were going to drop Amber back to her car and then go talk to her parents. She’d drop me off and get the formal introduction to the rest of our circus, even though she already knew Mom from school, Patty and Dan from cheerleading with Lana, and Lilly from the day Cheryl left. It was her introduction to them as one of the family.

Emma got everything squared and then we were on our way. There were hugs and kisses in the parking lot and then we all split up. We drove back to the restaurant and got out to say goodbye to Amber.

“Don’t be a stranger,” I told her with a smile. “I expect to get a text from you later so I’ll have your number. Call me and let me know how Grandmother likes the marks.”

She laughed and hugged me. “I will. I’ll get your number from her and let you know. She might want to see the recording at some point.”

I nodded. “We’ll have to arrange that later. I doubt my father wants to see what sort of deviant behavior I’m getting up to these days.”

“You never know,” she teased me, with a laugh, and I made an exaggerated shudder of revulsion at the thought of my father getting turned on by what I did with my cock.

“Hopefully, I never find out,” I laughed with her.

We hugged again and she gave me a very passionate kiss before turning to Jessie and giving her the same treatment. “Thank you both and thank the rest of them again. Last night was ... AMAZING!”

She got in her car and we got in Jessie’s. “Ready to face the music?” she asked me brightly.

“How many guns does your dad own?” I asked uneasily.

“More than Vance, but less than the Army,” she told me. “Don’t worry. He almost never shoots anyone on Sundays.” She giggled and reached over to give my hand a squeeze.

We drove over to her place and were there just before lunchtime. Jessie took her overnight bag and led me to the door, opening it and leading me inside. She dropped her bag by the door. I’d carried her backpack with me and I put it down too. She kicked off her shoes and I did the same, handing her my coat so she could hang it up.

“MOM! DAD! I’M HOME!” she shouted.

Her mother and father appeared at the end of the hall, having obviously been in the kitchen, either eating or getting ready to. Her father still didn’t look happy about what was going on with Jessie, but her mother was looking hopeful.

“How are you feeling?” she asked tentatively.

“Perfect,” Jessie said serenely. “I brought Matt home to meet you again. You met him just before he was shot, but after this weekend, we figured you’d want to talk to both of us.”

Her mother nodded carefully. “So everything went well?” she asked as delicately as she could.

Jessie couldn’t hold back her enthusiasm in anymore. She giggled and bounded over to her parents, throwing her arms around their necks. Their looks of stunned relief underscored that Jessie had been affected far deeper than she wanted people to know. I stood back and smiled, letting the three of them bask in this moment. Jessie was bouncing on her toes and brimming with excitement.

“Everything was perfect!” she gushed. “It was exactly what I needed it to be.”

She kissed her father on the cheek and then did the same to her mother. That was when her father noticed the fresh bruises on her neck and he pushed her shirt collar down to get a better look.

“Which of you want to explain these?” he asked, unimpressed at the clear teeth-marks.

I winced, but pushed my collar down, showing my own matching set. “Self-defense,” I claimed ardently.

Mrs. Mortimer looked over her daughter’s love-bites and snorted. “They’re not so bad, Stephen,” she scolded him lightly. “Let’s sit down and they can tell us as much as is our business.” She pushed Jessie into the kitchen and gestured for me to follow. I could feel her father’s stare at the back of my head all the way to the table. I was seated across from Jessie and her father joined us at the table, while her mother worked on lunch. She was simmering a pot of soup and dished it out for four, bringing us each a bowl and set out a loaf of bread and a dish of butter.

When the four of us were seated, Mrs. Mortimer started us off by turning to me. “Matthew, I hope you understand that Jessie’s father isn’t angry at you personally, but this situation is ... awkward for us all.”

I nodded and looked back and forth between the two of them. “I do understand that, Ma’am,” I said. “I wish that no one had gone through that weekend. I didn’t know Jessie before that happened, but I got to know her afterwards and we’ve grown very close.”

“Of THAT, we are aware,” her father growled.

“Stephen,” Mrs. Mortimer said warningly.

“Dad,” Jessie said. “Matt’s my choice. MINE! I’m not a little girl anymore. You need to let it go. What happened to me at that party hurt me a lot.”

“I understand that, sweetheart,” he said soothingly and a touch condescendingly. He was still talking to his little girl. “I don’t have to like you going off for the weekend with some boy we barely know.”

“I’ve TOLD you all about Matt!” she said as if this was a tired conversation.

“Sir,” I said quietly. “What would you like to know about me? Jessie told me that you’re familiar with my YouTube channel. A lot of my videos are very personal. I talk about my mentor being terminally ill, I shared some of my experiences after the shooting, I talk about doing the charity event in April. There’s a lot of me in those clips.”

“Well,” he said, considering the question. “What are you planning on doing after high-school?” he asked. “Is there college in your future?”

“Jessie didn’t tell you?” I asked, surprised. Jessie smirked and shook her head.

“Tell us what?” Mrs. Mortimer prompted.

I dug in my wallet and pulled out my Harvard student ID, putting it on the table. “I’ll graduate with four degrees from Harvard about a month before I leave high school,” I told them. “My mentor, Dr. Saddler, has me enrolled as part of a study on advanced intelligence. I’m only still in high school because the study is a pilot project to try to determine a better way to nurture the gifts of geniuses without hurting their social development. In the past, the conventional wisdom was to have those kids skip grades and get them into college as soon as possible with an eye toward their intellectual potential. So you end up with a situation where our brightest minds can get a man on the moon, but can’t get a woman to go to dinner.”

“From what I’ve seen, you’ve got that part wrapped up,” he said dryly.

I shrugged. “Brutally executing a rapist gives me a certain amount of good will with girls,” I countered just as dryly.

He nodded, conceding that point. “Okay, so you’ve got college done and high school is just a formality. What are you going to do then?”

“Truthfully, I’ll probably stick with college to advance those degrees. I can stick it out in college for a few more years and go for Masters degrees in all four fields and maybe even PhD, if I can make it work.”

“So, when Jessie graduates from college, you’ll be ready to go out into the working world?” he asked.

I nodded. “I’m also planning on attending medical school at some point. That’s a personal goal because Dr. Saddler had hoped I would follow in his footsteps.”

“What degrees are you taking now?” he asked.

“Mechanical and electrical engineering, computer science and psychology,” I answered. I was aware that I was mowing down the number one reason for parents to hate their daughter’s boyfriend. They all want to think that no boy is good enough for their little girl, but I was brilliant, ambitious enough to go places, I really wasn’t a wimp and I was talking to him calmly and not buckling under the pressure of an interrogation.

“Why those ones?” he asked. “I mean, if you’re so smart, why aren’t you in astrophysics or doing something with the space program?”

I shrugged. “Dr. Saddler wanted to know the same thing,” I told him. “What I pointed out to him was that there are a ton of people doing research in higher sciences that have absolutely no clue how their discovery could ever be used to make people’s lives better. That’s the job of engineers. They take the discovery and find a use for it. I wanted a firm grounding in reality before I jumped into the navel-gazing of theory.”

He nodded, agreeing with that answer. Jessie had told me that he’d worked in construction, so that was the kind of attitude that would appeal to him. “Alright, that’s college. What do you intend to be after college?”

“Rich,” I said simply. “I picked my degrees so that they complement each other. By the time I’m thirty, I’ll probably own a company that leads the world in producing technology of various types, whether it’s next generation TVs, components for NASA, game consoles, cars or computers.”

“How does psychology fit with those?” he asked dryly.

“PEOPLE buy products,” I pointed out. “When the specs for your product are an industry standard, you need to make the product more appealing to the people, not just on paper, but to look at and use. People buy crappy cars that look good more often than they buy ugly cars that perform well.”

“Sounds like you’ve got all the answers,” he said.

That made me laugh. I shook my head. “I come to Jessie for advice at least once a week. She gives me more answers than I give her.”

“Really?” Mrs. Mortimer asked, surprised.

I turned toward her and nodded. “Jessie has a habit of giving me good advice. When she found out that my scars bothered me, she told me about her great-grandfather and how she felt about his scars when she was younger. She told me that they’d help protect me from people that couldn’t see past them. That advice helped me a lot.”

I looked across the table and Jessie blushed, embarrassed at the amount of weight I was putting on her advice. I reached over and took her hand, giving it a squeeze.

She smiled at me and then the four of us ate in silence for a little while before her father thought of something else to say.

“So now what?” he asked. “You’ve had your weekend together. That’s what Jessie needed from you,” he said.

I shook my head. “That’s not all that Jessie needs from me and certainly not all I need from her.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, getting suspicious now.

“Dad,” Jessie said gently. “Matt’s my boyfriend. I love him and he loves me. We decided together that it wasn’t just sex this weekend. I mean, yeah, it was sex. It was the most mind-blowing experience of my life, but it was more than that. I want Matt for more than a weekend. I want him forever and he wants me too.”

“He’s engaged to someone else,” Mr. Mortimer pointed out. “What about her?”

“Who do you think arranged for the hotel?” Jessie asked smugly. “She knows. We called her as soon as we realized that there was more than friendship between us.”

He seemed surprised at the news that there was a hotel. “What hotel?!!?” he demanded. “You said you were staying with him this weekend.”

“And she did,” I assured him. “But to make sure that we minimized the disruption to everyone else’s life, we spent the weekend at a hotel. We went shopping on Friday, had family dinner with my father last night and checked out this morning and came here to tell you how it went.”

“And what hotel did you take my daughter to?” he growled.

“We were in the Presidential Suite of the Ritz Carlton, Dad,” Jessie said. “Matt didn’t take me to a cheap motel, if that’s what you’re thinking. I was loved and pampered and respected and adored. We had a fireplace and room service and a romantic escape. Isn’t that everything you could have asked for, for your daughter’s first time?”

He turned to look at me, stunned. “You paid for a weekend at the Ritz?!!?” he blurted.

“The fiancée you mentioned is the one that put it together,” I reminded him, “but the YouTube channel that I run has made me wealthy on my own, so yes, that’s the kind of thing that we can do for special occasions.”

“Okay, so what does your fiancée think of you cheating on her with Jessie?” he demanded, folding his arms across his chest satisfied that I couldn’t talk my way out of this one.

I looked at Jessie to guide me through this, but she just jumped in and took over instead. “Emma gave me a hug and a kiss and admired my bites and Matt’s,” she said sweetly.

That seemed to surprise him. “She saw them?” he asked.

“She came to pick us up when it was time to get dressed for dinner,” she said.

“Jess,” I said. “You think your folks can handle the rest of it?” I asked.

She looked at her father. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “Dad’s not loading his guns, but you left your shield at home.”

I shrugged. “We’ll have to tell them sooner or later.”

“Tell us what?” Mrs. Mortimer asked delicately.

Jessie sighed. “Mom, I trust Matt. I love him. Other than Daddy, I think Matt’s the only guy in the world that I trust. I can’t imagine loving another guy. After last September, I thought about swearing off guys and dating girls for the rest of my life.”

That bothered both of her parents to hear. It meant no grandchildren, for one, some perceived social stigma for another and possibly a backlash at home. Jessie persevered though.

“Can you really blame me?” she asked. “The only experience I had with guys was that weekend. It sucked, it was awful, and I never wanted to trust a guy again. Then Matt came along and he’s been shit-on as bad as me and worse. I love him, but beyond that, I’m still strongly attracted to girls.”

“So that means that you and his fiancée will...” her mother trailed off, not quite able to get there.

“Yeah,” she said.

I nodded. “That’s important for them to know, but I was referring to the Sorority,” I prompted her.

“I’m getting to that,” she assured me, before turning to her mother again. “So now you know that I’m attracted to men and women or, at least MATT and women,” she clarified, making me smile with amusement. “The other thing that you need to understand is that I’m not the only one that’s attracted to Matt and women. Matt’s got nine girlfriends, including me.”

Here was the moment of truth. I could almost hear her father cocking the shotgun now. “He what?” he asked, stunned.

“He could be dating close to fifty girls if he wasn’t picky about who he wanted in his life,” she said. “You think I’m the only one that’s attracted to him after the way he’s stood up for us? Matt, why don’t you tell them about how it all started.”

I nodded and talked to them about Lana and Beck and about Tabby and Collie in generic terms, about where the term ‘Sorority’ came from, how we’d been broken up by lies spread about me, how I’d met Emma and Tricia, about Gina and a little about Zoe and Hanna without giving them too many details. I told them how the arrangement worked and how adamant we were that no one was forced or pressured or coerced and about how we all had to agree to accept someone or the answer was no for all of us.

“Whether Jessie was bisexual or not, the girls would all welcome her and love her as a sister. The fact that she’s attracted to girls is just another dimension to that love that she can explore or not explore at her choosing,” I finished.

“So you have a harem of women and want to add Jessie to it,” Mr. Mortimer said flatly.

“God, I hate that word!” I muttered. “No, it’s not a harem. The word harem leaves an impression that it’s a house full of vapid love-slaves lounging around in luxury and boredom for their lord and master to show up with an erection and a whim. The reality of the term is that households in Arabian culture were segregated and ‘Harem’ referred to the part of the household that all the women lived in and the women and girls that lived there.”

I took a breath and calmed down. “Sorry,” I said. “Someone else referred to my girls as a harem, and he wasn’t very respectful about it, so the word makes me want to grind my teeth. Let me explain. All the girls that I’m lucky enough to call my girlfriends are bisexual. Our relationship lets them explore that part of their sexuality comfortably. That’s important to all of them. Also, I’m in a rare situation where I can focus my attention on them more than they can normally expect from a boyfriend or husband. When I told you I was taking four degrees at Harvard, I meant it. Right now, my coursework is being recorded and I attend lectures through a virtual classroom. I actually watch three or four lectures at a time, listening to the audio and watching the video overlap, and I can absorb and comprehend it. However my mind does it, I can focus on more things than most people can without losing the thread of what’s going on in each lecture. I also read at about a hundred times faster than average. The point I’m trying to make is that I’ve found that I’m still able to make time for each of my girls without neglecting them and they all make enough time for me that I don’t feel like they’re slipping away. At the same time, they can count on each other for love and affection just as much as they can count on me. It’s definitely not conventional and some people might say that it’s wrong, but it works for us and it really does work.”

Both parents sat there, contemplating that possibility. Her mother was shocked, but starting to focus on the fact that this is what would make Jessie happy.

“I don’t like it,” her father declared.

I nodded. “I can understand that. Society has very strict guidelines about what’s acceptable. We’re way outside of that. Let me put it another way though. Jessie tells me that you’re a Doomsday preparation enthusiast. Assuming that the worst was about to happen and you were tasked with grabbing a tiny sampling of people to try to get them to safety with an eye toward rebuilding society yourself after the dust has settled, what would you pick? Mostly men or mostly women?”

“A mix, really,” he said.

“I’d pick mostly women,” I told him. “Interested in why?”

“Sure,” he said interested now that we were in his field of expertise.

“Let’s assume that you’re interested in long-term re-population,” I started. “You need a variety of females to carry children. You want as wide a genetic base as possible. Once you get to safety and start making babies, you have to throw all the old notions of marriage and monogamy away, because to create a genetically diverse population, you need to create as many combinations as possible as early as possible. A woman can only carry one child at a time, no matter how many times she has sex, twins notwithstanding. Men, can go from woman to woman creating offspring with each in a relatively short period of time, so men are less desirable than women in their role in renewing the species. A limited resource is precious. A plentiful one, not so much.”

“Men are stronger though. In rebuilding, they’ll be able to do heavier work,” he countered.

I nodded. “On average, men grow to have more muscle-mass,” I agreed. “Women have other qualities that offset that advantage though.”

“Like?” he asked, curious of what I’d say.

“Women often have better organizational skill then men, they can be devious and startlingly bloodthirsty when they need to be and they’re often not swayed by what will win a man’s trust. Jessie and my girls have been protecting me from people that they think could hurt me emotionally, physically or financially. I want to believe in forgiveness, but some people are just beyond that point. Sometimes the girls have to show me where I should draw that line. In a new settlement, that skill is vital and it can mean the difference between life and death. You might trust the stranger who comes seeking a safe place to live, but a woman might look right through that smile and ask how that stranger has managed to survive all by themselves if it’s so dangerous out there. You see the man looking for the same sanctuary you were when you started the settlement, but she sees a Trojan Horse sent to gain your trust.”

He nodded. “Okay, that makes a strong case, but we’re not in the middle of the collapse of society.”

“Maybe not,” I agreed, “but I’d rather have my people picked if things did fall apart. All those considerations are secondary though. The important thing to remember is that Jessie wants us and we want Jessie. When was the last time you saw her this happy?”

He didn’t have an answer for that. “I still don’t approve of my sixteen-year-old daughter being sexually active,” he told me.

I nodded. “I can understand that,” I said soothingly. “But she is and she’s going to want to continue to be. I can’t promise that I’ll never take Jessie to bed again, but I can promise that she’ll be loved and respected, whether we’re in a bed, the backseat of a car, a deserted movie theater or a secluded corner of the park.”

“The park?” Jessie asked me with a giggle.

“Just an example. I know you love the outdoors,” I told her with a smile.

Her father looked at her and sighed. “Alright, we’ll try it,” he surrendered reluctantly. “I’d still rather she not do this, but she IS happier today. We have some ground-rules though.”

“I’d be surprised if you didn’t,” I nodded. “Let me start with a few. Jessie needs to keep up her grades. I tutor the other girls and I’ll do the same for Jessie. Overnight visits are for weekends and holidays only and only if her staying doesn’t disrupt a family function. For example, I wouldn’t want her to stay over on Christmas Eve if you normally do something early the next day. We don’t ever have sex here. You and your wife aren’t completely comfortable with that part of our relationship yet, so there’s no way that we want to rub your nose in what we’re doing. It’s a respect thing and neither of us want to push that issue. Those seem like reasonable ground-rules to me.”

He looked at me askance, probably shocked that I’d place restrictions on myself. “And what about during the week?” he asked.

“Jessie’s welcome to come and study with us, have dinner and relax, respecting whatever her curfew is right now. For that matter, you two are welcome to join us for dinner. A lot of the parents do. Some of the girls have moved into the house and their parents come on a regular basis.”

“Your parents allow this?!!?” Mrs. Mortimer interjected, surprised.

I nodded. “My mother’s actually started dating Tricia’s father,” I said with a smile. “We’re considering building a house that suits us all, later in the year. Right now, our kitchen is taxed to the limit, we’re short on parking for the cars, bathrooms are at a premium, hot water is hard to come by and we take over a lot of the house at study time.”

“It sounds like you have a lot of people underfoot already,” her father said.

I nodded. “It’s a big family,” I said with a shrug and a smile. “One thing I would ask is that Jessie be allowed to stay with us during exams. We do a lot of extra studying together and with the schedules the way they are, we’re all going to be leaning on each other.”

“We’ll talk about that closer to exams,” her father said. “By then, we may find the situation has changed.”

I nodded. “I don’t see it changing, but we’ll table that topic for now. I have one other item that I wanted to bring up now that Jessie is one of us. I’m taking my girls on vacation this summer. I’d like Jessie to come with us.”

“We go to Pittsburgh in the summer to visit her grandmother,” Mr. Mortimer told me.

I nodded. “She told me,” I confessed. “We’ve been invited out to Malibu to meet Emma’s parents. They want to meet all the people that have become important to her, so me, the girls and the parents are all going. You’re more than welcome to come too,” I said.

He shook his head. “I spend a lot of that time helping my mother with home repairs,” he said. “Now that she’s older, it’s harder for her to take care of things.”

I nodded in understanding. “I’d still like Jessie to come with us,” I told him. “She can learn to surf, take in the sights, do some shopping in LA, visit Disneyland and be a tourist for a summer.”

“What would it cost?” her mother asked.

“Not a dime,” I told them. “I’m paying for the trip. Plane tickets, meals, shopping, tourist destinations, the works. We’re staying with Emma’s parents, so there’s no hotels involved.”

“Her parents have room for everyone?” Mr. Mortimer asked, surprised.

“They work in Hollywood,” I answered. “I worried about the space too, but they have a huge house.”

He frowned and looked at Jessie. She was pleading with him using that anguished little girl face that every father knows too well. “You’ve been asking us if you could stay home this summer,” he said to her. “Is this why?”

She shook her head. “This is the first time that Matt’s formally asked me to come,” she said. “He knew I wasn’t looking forward to being stuck in the car for the drive to Grandma’s and two weeks in Pittsburgh, so he suggested that I talk to you early about maybe staying home. I’d rather go to Malibu with him than be bored at Grandma’s for two weeks.”

“Your mother and I aren’t comfortable leaving you alone for two weeks,” he said carefully.

“If it helps, my mother is going, so are Gina’s parents, Tricia’s father, Lana and Beck’s parents and Emma’s father is going to be there,” I told them. “A lot of days we’ll be traveling in a group, doing sight-seeing. Even when we’re not all together, Gina has family in the city that she wants to spend time with and we have more than enough parents to chaperon as needed.”

He considered that and his wife stepped in. “Alright, she can go,” she said, putting her foot down gently, but firmly. “What are the dates that you’ll be away?”

I told her the dates and promised that I’d make all the arrangements. Her father didn’t look pleased to have the decision taken out of his hands, but he didn’t argue. Instead he looked at me sternly. “I’m making you personally responsible for my daughter’s well-being this summer,” he said seriously. “This is your one chance to impress me.”

I nodded. “I’ll take good care of her,” I assured him. “She’ll come back with new clothes, a deeper tan and a million pictures of her trip.”

Jessie’s eyes got wide as she realized that we’d talked her parents into letting her go to Malibu with us. She shrieked in excitement and jumped up from the table, throwing her arms around her father’s neck and hugging him while trying to jump up and down at the same time. I grinned at her and then looked at her mother and mouthed a silent ‘thank you’ to her. She smiled a little and then waited for Jessie to release her father.

Mr. Mortimer had a slight smile on his face when Jessie let go of him. “Okay, okay,” he said with a chuckle. “This all depends on your ability to keep your grades up,” he warned her and she nodded her head enthusiastically.

She walked around to the other side of the table and gave her mother a longer, more gentle hug, thanking her and promising them both that she’d make them proud. I’d see to that if I had to stand over her while she studied. When she let go of her mother, it was my turn. I got a very intense hug and a lingering kiss for my efforts.

“I can’t believe I can go!” she gushed. Her father cleared his throat and we separated, Jessie blushed a bit. “Dad!” she said, exasperated. “Matt promised that we’d never have sex here, but you can’t expect me not to kiss him. He’s my boyfriend.”

He nodded. “Yes, he is,” he said. “We’d really rather you keep the displays of affection to a minimum around us, for at least the first little while. You’re still getting used to the idea, from the love-struck expression you had when you said it. We’re getting used to it too.” He sighed and I could tell that this was tough for him. Jessie was his little girl. She’d been badly hurt in September and he hadn’t been able to save her. She’d been hurting since and he was powerless to help. This was the way forward and it meant letting her go and watch me take her away. I really did sympathize.

“I have something that I want you to see,” I told him, struck by inspiration. “Jessie said you’ve watched my videos where I punish the Waterman brothers.”