Chapter 1: The Party

-- AUGUST 2002, FRESHMAN YEAR --

“Don’t worry. The only thing important on the first day is that you pick up the syllabus and know what your homework is. Nothing in today’s lecture will matter in another two weeks.”

The handsome guy to my right with the smoking-hot blonde girlfriend turned, arched an eyebrow, and shot me a wry grin. “Wanna bet on that? My sister tells me some of these professors have a sadistic reputation of throwing the most random crap into the exams later on. What’s our reading assignment, the first three chapters? Five bucks says that stuff is on the first midterm.”

“Ooh, a gambling man. Sure thing.” I put my hand out for a shake. “Robert Kim. Everyone but my mom calls me ‘Bert’.”

“Ben. Good to meet you.” He shook my hand.

“Dawn Evans. Hi.” The beautiful blonde returned and thrust her hand out to me.

My eyes popped open WIDE, my gaze briefly yo-yo’d down to the big tits denting out the front of her sweater, and I found myself unable to get a word out.

“Shake her hand, dumbass,” Ben muttered rather unhelpfully.

Only then was I able to muster up enough self-control to finally grab Dawn’s hand and give it a weak shake. I mean, it wasn’t like I hadn’t noticed the incredibly hot blonde the moment I first saw her walk into the classroom. And it wasn’t like I hadn’t noticed her again when she sat down just a couple of seats away from me in the lecture hall next to her boyfriend. And it wasn’t like I hadn’t noticed her again when she raised her hand and answered one of the professor’s questions in a clear voice that was simultaneously intelligent and sexy.

But noticing a pretty girl across the room is one thing. Having such an awe-inspiring creature of gorgeous femininity facing you from two feet away and offering her hand is something quite different. I started gawking at her again, and she blushed and smiled before delicately withdrawing her hand from my grasp.

Good lord I’m an idiot, I chastised myself while belatedly pulling my hand back and then futzing around, not sure where to put it. Finally, I shoved both hands into my pockets and blushed.

Ben sidled alongside his girlfriend, slipped his hand into hers, and smirked at me like a cocky bastard. “Catch you later.”

“Uh, bye...” I replied lamely, my attention on Dawn.

She giggled cutely and I pretty much popped a boner in my shorts at the mere sound of her voice. I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of other sounds she might make while my dick pumped in and out of her.

Get a grip, dude! I told myself. As if a girl that gorgeous would ever have sex with a nerd like me in a million years.

As if she could read my mind, Dawn gave me one last flirtatious smile as her boyfriend pulled her away, and then tossed her sunny-blonde hair as she turned to face forward and then wrap herself quite lovingly around his arm.

Never in a million years.

“You fucking live HERE?”

I stood just inside the front door alongside Ben, Dawn, and Adrienne, my jaw on the floor of an old but spacious four-bedroom house within easy walking distance of the campus. Internally, I was ordering myself to get a grip, but as I surveyed the scantily-clad girls meandering around, I absolutely could not help myself.

Learning that Dawn was NOT in fact Ben’s girlfriend had been surprise enough. Meeting his actual girlfriend Adrienne (and then meeting Adrienne’s massive sweater-busting tits) had been mind-blowing. And learning that there were even MORE ridiculously beautiful women in his immediate sphere of influence was starting to make me really, really jealous.

I saw weird stuff in that place. Weird, strange, sick, twisted, eerie, godless, evil stuff ... and I wanted in.

First there was the busty blonde bombshell in a sheer tank top that did little to stop her big tits from wobbling, and looked close enough to Dawn to almost certainly be the big sister she’d mentioned.

Then there was the absolutely exquisite slim brunette with almond eyes and a world-class ass in a short skirt that made me start hyperventilating. I tended to like the cute, slender, dark-haired girls to begin with, and even amongst all the buxom blondes walking around, I thought the pretty brunette was the most beautiful woman in the room. Seriously, my heart skipped a beat. In any case, she seemed to feel my gaze, sauntered over to me and Ben, pinched my cheek, and flashed a megawatt smile while I just started hyperventilating even worse.

“He’s a cute one. Can I borrow him?” The way her tongue snaked out across her lower lip and the smokily seductive expression she gave me afterwards nearly made me cream my tighty-whities.

I didn’t know how to respond, so I didn’t.

The pretty brunette giggled and departed. A minute later, an honest-to-god fashion model walked in the door. No, seriously: Back in high school, I had jerked off to pictures of the girl wearing lingerie in a department store ad. And then she went and actually kissed Ben!

Ben and the girls exchanged some brief chit-chat about Ben helping seduce the fashion model’s roommates. Then the model and Adrienne headed off towards the kitchen.

Meanwhile, Dawn’s older sister came by and bumped her hip. “Hey sis. I know you told me, but I never really believed it.” She nodded towards the departing girls.

Dawn giggled. “Oh it was easy. Once Ben fucked her brains out, it was a simple matter to go in and re-wire her new brains to my liking.”

The older sister laughed and then both blondes headed off, leaving me alone with Ben. With all the girls now out of our immediate vicinity, I turned to face him and asked only half-jokingly, “Dude ... what planet are you from?”

He actually threw up a Vulcan salute, and in a really bad faux-robot voice, he stated evenly, “I mean you no harm. I merely come to have intercourse with your females.”

Admittedly, for about two seconds I wondered if he might be serious. The quantity of high-quality-grade babes wandering around the house was just too impossibly high to be real. But then he laughed, which made me crack up and feel a lot more at ease.

Ben patted me on the back and steered me back into the room. “C’mon, man. I’ll introduce you to everyone.”

Ben did introduce me to everyone. I blushed and felt bad when I realized the exquisite brunette I’d been eye-fucking was actually his big sister Brandi. A few of Brandi’s upperclassmen friends were also effing hot (and would become future fodder for spank-bank fantasies).

But one of Ben’s old high school friends who didn’t even go to Cal turned out to be the one I remembered most from that party. She was a very pretty brunette, but not in that OMFG-I-wanna-tap-that sense. Rather, she was very ... well ... very pretty.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I VERY much wanted to tap that. Like, my heart skipped a beat at the first sight of her, much like it had with Brandi. This brunette wasn’t a tall, busty bombshell, but she rather perfectly fit into my cute, slender, dark-haired type. She had an ass to DIE for, impossibly firm and perky tits, and warm, expressive eyes that I VERY much would love to see staring up at me while her lips were wrapped around my dick.

Yet although I’d spent the first few seconds admiring her physical qualities, over the course of the evening it was her personality that really disarmed me. She turned out to be very approachable and didn’t stare down at me like the nerd-boy I was the way some of the older hot chicks had done when first meeting me. When I got nervous, she was patient. When I made a comment that sounded wittier in my head but didn’t turn out to be, instead of smirking at me and wandering away, she simply shrugged and went with it. And I found myself grinning all night with pleasant surprise that such a hot girl at a party like this would deign to spend her time with me.

It all started when I first held out my hand. “Hey, I’m Bert.”

“Bert?” The pretty brunette looked confused for some reason by my name, as if perhaps it didn’t fit her mental perception of me.

I blushed and stammered nervously, “Yeah. Nickname kinda stuck in grade school. I know it’s about as sexy as ‘Sheldon’...”

“Sheldon?” she arched her eyebrows.

“Oh, uh...” I fumbled. “When Harry Met Sally reference.”

“Dude,” Ben cut in from nearby. “You did NOT just mention ‘When Harry Met Sally’ upon meeting a girl for the first time. Besides, how OLD is that movie?”

I paled and silently cursed myself. Even with the “approachable” girl I was being a stupid dweeb.

But she just giggled. Her voice was musical, inviting...

... accepting.

“You’re really cute, you know that? I LOVE that movie.” Then she affected a funny accent, saying, “Pecan pie...”

Holy crap! Did she really just quote When Harry Met Sally back to me?!? This girl is AWESOME!

I started to breathe easier and wracked my brain trying to think up a witty response. But I must’ve been a little too slow, because before I could open my mouth again, the pretty brunette turned her attention back to Ben and frowned as she scrutinized his bruises.

“Ben, what happened to you?”

The handsome guy shrugged and deadpanned, “My girlfriend is kind of wild in the sack.”

The brunette giggled and elbowed Adrienne. But then Ben explained the whole story about getting into a fight rescuing Paige, the cute redhead in the Catholic schoolgirl outfit. The brunette got upset and promptly bopped Ben on his forehead, scolding him about getting into fights like a clucking mother hen. Paige got defensive about Ben rescuing her, which got the brunette defensive about how much she worried for Ben. And that’s when the lightbulb clicked on above Paige’s head.

“Wait...” Paige began slowly, really scrutinizing the pretty brunette’s expression. “Did you two ever...?”

She blushed and looked away. “We’re just friends.”

I may not have been the sharpest guy at reading a girl’s body language, but even I could tell that she and Ben had definitely been more than “just friends” at some point.

Paige’s eyes popped open. “Jeez, Ben! Is there anyone here you haven’t slept with?”

I was curious about that myself. Even though Adrienne was supposedly his girlfriend, the guy had certainly been quite familiar with Dawn, Dayna, Felicia, and now this girl too? Did the guy have a magic dick or something? So I promptly lined up next to Paige and gave Ben a nearly-identical look of curiosity.

Ben blushed and awkwardly grabbed his girlfriend’s hand, muttering lamely, “Uh, you need another drink, honey?” He jerked a thumb towards the kitchen.

“What? And miss seeing the look on your face?” Adrienne grinned and slid alongside Paige and me to mime our wide-eyed expressions.

Ben just sighed, shook his head and started walking away. Adrienne laughed and followed her boyfriend, and Paige scurried after.

That left me alone with the pretty brunette, and she smiled a little shyly at me. In her warm brown eyes I found a certain ... acceptance. To her, I wasn’t a freshman dweeb not even worth her time. To her, I was just a guy, and it was quite a relief to feel like “just a guy” after spending my first half-hour in the house feeling overwhelmed and intimidated by all the older, more obviously outgoing upperclassmen around me.

“What’s your name?” I finally asked, feeling butterflies in my stomach as I did so.

Her smile broadened, she tilted her head ever so slightly, and seemed to genuinely regard me as ‘worth her time’. And in a sweet voice, she finally told me, “Lynne.”

There was one other cute, slender, dark-haired girl who caught my attention at that first party. Robin was one of Dawn’s high school friends, and unlike Lynne, Robin was actually a student here at Cal, so I figured I might be seeing more of her.

Since Robin and her friend Gwen had known Dawn for years, Paige and I teamed up to grill them a little bit about Dawn’s relationship with Ben. I still didn’t quite understand their dynamic since Adrienne was Ben’s girlfriend and Dawn was dating Ryan and yet Ben and Dawn were so OBVIOUSLY in love. But then Ben came over to scold Paige a bit about prying into his personal life while also lecturing her about the amount of alcohol she’d been drinking as if he were her dad and not some guy she’d literally met a few days ago.

And then for some damn reason, he turned around and pointed straight at me. “If she hurls, I’m making you clean it up.”

“Wha--?” I looked up in confusion, perhaps a little too fast because I got dizzy for a moment. I’d been drinking quite a bit myself. But before I could say anything in response like, ‘Dude, how the heck am -I- supposed to be responsible for her?’ or even, ‘I got your back, man. You can count on me,’ Ben had already stomped off.

I really need to work on thinking faster and being quippier. This is college. A chance to make a fresh start! To not be the nerd-boy dweeb I was back in high school! C’mon, Bert. You can do this!

By the time I looked up after my little pep talk, Paige was gone, probably chasing after Ben. The little redhead was clearly infatuated with her rescuer. I supposed I should go after her to make sure she didn’t hurl. I certainly didn’t want to clean up any vomit messes.

On the other hand, there’s a house full of hot drunk girls! This is your big chance! Go talk to them!

I briefly glanced at a pack of upperclassmen girls. A pretty redhead caught my eye for a moment, but then she noticed me checking her out and promptly rolled her eyes dismissively. I immediately turned 90-degrees to the left. In that direction, Adrienne, Dawn, and Lynne were sitting together on a couch chatting happily with a couple of drinks in their hands. Adrienne and Dawn, while unspeakably gorgeous, at least would tolerate my presence. And I really did think Lynne was cute, so I headed over their way.

You can do this man, I told myself. You can do this.

“Hey guys!” I greeted Adrienne and Dawn. Then looking down at the pretty brunette, I gave her a wider smile and added, “Hey, Lynne.”

“Sheldon!” she said brightly, a twinkle in her eyes.

My face fell. Was I really so unmemorable that she didn’t remember my name correctly? “Uh, it’s Bert, actually.”

Lynne giggled. “Pecan pie...”

The When Harry Met Sally reference immediately perked me up. She DID remember me. I sat down on the armrest next to her with warm fuzzy feelings in my stomach.