Their Wonder Years: Season 1: Fall 1998
Copyright© 2025 by Tantrayaan
67: Patient B1219, The Man, The Myth
Coming of Age Sex Story: 67: Patient B1219, The Man, The Myth - Bharath always thought going to America would mean fast love, wild parties, and maybe a stewardess or two. What he got instead? A busted duffel bag, a crying baby on the plane, and dormmates he never thought could exist in real life. Thrown into the chaos of Georgia Tech’s freshman year, Bharath begins an unforgettable journey of awkward first crushes and culture shocks. A slow-burn, emotionally rich harem romance set in the nostalgic 90s - full of laughter, lust, and longing.
Caution: This Coming of Age Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa mt/ft mt/Fa Consensual Fiction Humor School Sharing Group Sex Harem Orgy Polygamy/Polyamory White Female Hispanic Female Indian Female
It had been one of those legendary, slow-drip, November kind of quiet days at Grace Memorial Hospital, the kind where the biggest emergency was Nurse Florence trying to get the ancient coffee machine to produce something that didn’t taste like battery acid and photocopier toner.
The air was thick with the scent of antiseptic and the distant, tinny sound of an NSYNC song playing from a janitor’s radio. It was the kind of calm that made you nervous, the universe holding its breath before it decided to drop a grand piano on your head. Right up until it wasn’t.
“Yo,” Jamal drawled, peering over his frosty can of Mountain Dew like a scout surveying a suspiciously peaceful valley, “you seen patient B1219? The Indian kid? The one they brought in looking like an extra from a slasher flick?”
Nurse Florence, a woman who had seen it all and documented most of it in triplicate, didn’t even look up from her crossword puzzle. She just adjusted her magnificent, shellacked perm with one finger, a gesture so precise it could have been used to calibrate a military-grade satellite antenna. “You mean the one whose girlfriend’s mom tried to gut him like a Thanksgiving turkey and then season him with crazy? Yeah. He came in last night, we kept him for observation, and now he’s being discharged this morning. We are putting the paperwork together.”
Jamal blinked slowly, his Dew can pausing mid-air. “Hold up. She really pulled a knife on him? A whole, actual knife?”
“Pulled it, waved it around like she was conducting the damn Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, slashed him good, and screamed something about him being a demon sent to corrupt her bloodline - the whole gourmet sampler of psycho,” Florence confirmed, finally looking up to squint at a monitor that was displaying a screensaver of a flying toaster. “But get this, sweetheart - he refused to press charges. Sat there with four fresh stitches in his arm and said, and I quote, ‘It’s a family matter.’ Then he had the audacity to beg us to let his stabber, have a quiet, unsupervised chat with her daughters. Like some kind of saint who just fell out of a boy band poster.”
Jamal let out a low, appreciative whistle. “For real? Dude took a chef’s knife to the arm and said, ‘No worries, y’all, let’s just all talk it out over some sweet tea?’”
“Verbatim,” Florence said, popping a stick of Big Red gum. “Except with significantly more bleeding and fewer usable vowels. The kid was shook.”
From the corner, where he was meticulously counting out Tylenol as if they were bars of gold, Kevin, the night nurse whose default expression was that of a man who’d just smelled spoiled milk, muttered without looking up, “Probably high on adrenaline. Or Jesus.”
“Or trauma,” a new voice chimed in, soft yet carrying the weight of delicious, piping-hot gossip.
Everyone turned at once, a perfectly choreographed unit of nosiness.
It was Annie from Pediatrics, who had wheeled in a medication tray five minutes ago but had strategically parked herself by the door, refusing to leave until she had disseminated her intel. She leaned in, her eyes wide.
“I heard,” she began in a reverent, conspiratorial whisper, “from my cousin’s friend who dates a cop who was here, that he’s here with his girlfriend. And also ... four other girls?”
Florence’s pen, which had been idly circling the word ‘esoteric,’ froze. Her head swiveled toward the large window that looked out onto the main waiting area. “Wait. You mean to tell me all five of those hotties camped out there like they’re waiting for a Backstreet Boys meet-and-greet are with him?”
Jamal was already leaning so far into the window his breath was fogging up the glass. “Are you talking about the Playmate-looking blonde, the Latin goddess who could stop traffic on I-285, the one with the legit pornstar body, the smoldering Middle Eastern model-type, and the sexy princess in combat boots who looks like she shops at the mall but fights in the mosh pit?”
“Yes,” Annie confirmed, her voice trembling with glee. “Them.”
Kevin, still not looking up from his pill count, deadpanned, “I thought they were just a very attractive, very lost sorority from Georgia State.”
“I thought it was a filming for a new Calvin Klein commercial,” muttered Jared, the intern, who hadn’t managed to restock a single tongue depressor since the coven of beauties had arrived, his clipboard held limply at his side like a forgotten prop.
Just then, the swinging doors to the ER whooshed open with a sound of profound medical melancholy. In shuffled Dr. Ponder. He was a man who carried the weight of the world on his stooped shoulders, his face a permanent mask of tragic bewilderment, as if he’d just been personally informed that the Teletubbies were, in fact, a documentary about existential dread. He was their very own, hospital-issued Eeyore.
“Nurse Florence,” he began, his voice a low, funereal monotone that could suck the joy out of a Chuck E. Cheese. “A word about the, ah, ... situation.”
A collective, subtle groan rippled through the nurses’ station. They knew this dance. They’d been through this a hundred times. A patient could have a miraculous recovery and win the lottery, and Dr. Ponder would deliver the news as if announcing a plague of locusts.
Florence braced herself, putting down her pen with the resigned air of a bomb disposal expert. “What’s the problem, Doctor?”
Dr. Ponder wrung his hands, his brow furrowed with the intensity of a man diagnosing the end times. “It’s about the ... the assailant. Maria. In the ER.”
“Did she code?” Kevin asked, his voice flat, already anticipating the absurdity.
“Code?” Dr. Ponder repeated, his eyes widening with a fresh wave of sorrow. “Oh, no. Nothing so ... clinically straightforward.” He took a deep, shuddering breath, his face a mask of tragic gravitas.”
Nurse Florence raised her head up in alarm, “It’s worse than a cardiac arrest?”
“I’m afraid so ... I think we’ve lost her.”
A collective, sharp gasp went up from the nurses’ station. Annie clutched her chest. Jamal dropped his Mountain Dew, the can clattering across the linoleum.
“She’s dead?!” Jared squeaked, his voice cracking with horror.
Dr. Ponder blinked, looking genuinely surprised by the conclusion. “Dead? Oh, goodness, no. We’ve lost her ... to the Paxil. She’s been fully sedated for the last two hours.”
He let the relief and sheer irritation wash over the staff.
“The Paxil?” Florence repeated, her voice dangerously calm. “You mean the sedative we ordered for her?”
“Precisely,” Dr. Ponder nodded, his expression grim once more. “And it’s worked too well. She’s achieved a state of ... profound chemical compliance. She’s not demanding to see her daughters. She’s not even demanding to see the new Godzilla movie. It’s a complete and total shutdown of the maternal-drama feedback loop. We’ve traded a Category 5 hurricane for ... the Weather Channel at 3 AM.”
Kevin put his head in his hands. “So you’re worried because the knife-wielding maniac is now ... chill?”
“I’m worried because we’ve over-corrected!” Dr. Ponder exclaimed, his hands fluttering in despair. “We’ve gone from a high-stakes telenovela to a C-SPAN broadcast on agricultural policy! The human psyche isn’t built for such a precipitous drop in dramatic tension. We could be looking at core memory corruption. A total rerouting of her personality away from compelling plotlines and toward ... Beanie Baby collecting.”
Jared the intern, who had been taking notes, whispered, “Is that a known side effect of attempted murder Doctor?”
“It’s a gateway to ... domestic bliss,” Dr. Ponder hissed, as if describing a horrifying plague. “And domestic bliss is the number one killer of interesting character arcs. We must intervene before she starts a sensible scrapbooking hobby.”
Florence stared at him for a long, deadpan moment. “So your medical recommendation is to ... what? Show her a particularly stirring episode of Jerry Springer to reboot the system?”
“I was thinking we could play her the new Limp Bizkit album,” Dr. Ponder said with utter solemnity. “Just enough controlled aggression to re-engage the limbic system without reactivating the stabby-part.”
“Quiet, Jared,” Florence and Kevin said in unison, preemptively silencing the intern who had just opened his mouth to ask if he wanted to borrow his Discman.
“And the boy?” Florence prompted, steering the conversation back to the main event. “Bharath? In the ER. I have his discharge paperwork right here.” She patted the folder on the counter.
Dr. Ponder’s face collapsed into an even deeper state of mournful despair. He looked at the folder as if it contained a positive test for the zombie plague.
“The boy,” he breathed out, the words heavy with portent. “I must advise against it.”
“Against discharge?” Florence’s professional ire began to rise. “His vitals are stable. The wound is superficial. He’s alert and oriented. On what grounds?”
“On the grounds of ... atmospheric disruption,” Dr. Ponder said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “I’ve just come from his room. The ... the energy in there. It’s not medical, it’s metaphysical.”
“He’s running a fever?” Jamal asked, playing straight man.
“A fever of the soul, perhaps,” Dr. Ponder countered, his eyes glazing over with poetic misery. “When I told him he was being discharged, he didn’t cheer. He didn’t smile. He just got ... this look.”
“What kind of look?” Annie asked, mesmerized despite herself.
“A look of ... profound ... burden,” the doctor elaborated, painting the picture with his sorrowful hands. “As if I’d just told him he had to single-handedly carry the emotional hopes and dreams of five ridiculously attractive young women out of this hospital and into the harsh, unyielding light of day. It’s a weight no eighteen-year-old spine is designed to bear. We could be looking at a catastrophic failure of his ... charisma infrastructure.”
Kevin put his head in his hands. “So you’re saying we should keep him here because he’s too popular?”
“I’m saying we are discharging a walking, talking paradigm shift into a world that still uses dial-up modems!” Dr. Ponder exclaimed, his voice rising for the first time. “The culture shock alone could cause a localised seismic event! We haven’t done the necessary environmental impact studies! What will happen to the local dating ecosystem? What will become of other, less ... magnetically endowed males in a five-mile radius? We are playing God, Nurse Florence! And God, I fear, is a teenage boy with a bandaged arm with incredible charisma!”
The nurses’ station was silent. They had fallen for it again. Hook, line, and sinker. He had taken a simple discharge and turned it into an apocalyptic crisis of social dynamics.
Florence took a deep, cleansing breath, reaching for the last dregs of her sanity. “Dr. Ponder,” she said, her voice dangerously calm. “Is he medically cleared to leave this building? Yes or no.”
Dr. Ponder sighed, the wind leaving his sails of sorrow. “Yes. Medically, he is ... perfectly adequate.”
“Then he should be discharged,” Florence said, sighing. She then looked at the betting pool notepad with fresh determination. The doctor’s lament had only solidified the stakes.
“Alright, that’s it. Betting pool is officially open,” Florence declared, slamming her crossword down and grabbing a fresh notepad with the kind of authority usually reserved for declaring martial law. “Which one is the actual, for-real, makes-him-soup girlfriend? Winner takes the whole pot. No splitsies. Ten bucks a pop.”
Kevin grunted, finally glancing up. “Gotta be the blonde. The way she was pacing out there - looked like she was about to sprint a marathon for him. That’s main character energy, and to be honest, the hottest one there. Have you seen her figure? Plus she’s barefoot. Who would do that if not for a boyfriend?”
“Wrong,” Annie countered, tapping a knowing finger on the counter. “It’s the Latina in the green crop top. She’s the one that was all up in the cops’ faces when they arrived, yelling about patient rights and improper procedure. You don’t get that protective over just a friend. That’s ride-or-die.”
“Nah, man, it’s pornstar body girl, for sure,” Jamal chimed in, finally putting his Dew down. “No way you cry like that for a dude, with the whole shoulder-shaking, delicate-sniffling situation, unless he’s seen you naked and knows your Starbucks order. Plus, who gets a chance to be with a shorty like that? I hope it’s her for his sake. She a dime. Maybe two dimes.”
“I’m putting my money on combat boots and the fierce, sexy Latina,” Florence countered, scribbling furiously. “Combat boots the one who was kneeling on that gross linoleum floor, holding his bloody towel in her lap like it was a holy relic. That’s not just love, that’s ‘I’d help you bury a body’ territory. I think our boy has game. In my opinion it’s both girls.”
Everyone else laughed. Jared said, “Yeah sure Florence. You seein these girls? They are all dimes. You think any guy can have more than one of them?”
“I think ... I think it’s the Disney princess girl,” Jared ventured, his voice squeaking slightly. “The one who hasn’t stopped praying since she got here. The one who looks like she’s trying to telepathically heal his arm with the sheer power of her incredibly long, fluttering eyelashes. She looks like Jasmine from Aladin - but with a healthier bust.”
A collective groan filled the nurses’ station. “Alright, Jared’s in, God help him,” Florence said, jotting it down. “Ten bucks says it’s the sexy model girl in combat boots. You poor, sweet, delusional idiot.”
The financial commitments were made, tens and a single, crumpled five from Jared hitting the empty tissue box on the counter. The air was electric with the promise of drama and easy money.
Dr. Ponder, having failed to halt the discharge from a medical standpoint, shuffled away from the nurses’ station with the air of a man whose weather app had just predicted a 100% chance of spiritual drizzle. His mournful gaze fell upon the five young women clustered in the waiting area. He saw it as his solemn duty to prepare them for the emotional monsoon ahead. He approached with the gentle, foreboding steps of a man carrying a porcelain vase full of his own tears.
Marisol, who had just come from a brief, sanctioned visit where a somber but stable Bharath had reassured her, was the first to notice him. “Sí Doctor? Can we help you?” she asked, her voice a mix of courtesy and simmering protectiveness.
Dr. Ponder looked at them, his eyes lingering on each face as if diagnosing them with a rare form of beautiful-person fatigue. “Ladies,” he began, his voice a low, funereal hum. “I felt it was my duty to brief you on the ... post-traumatic aftercare.”
The girls exchanged worried glances. Sarah, the blonde, clutched the sleeve of her hoodie. “The what? Is he okay? Please tell me he is ok.”
Mia looked like she was going to burst into tears. “No! Doctor! Please tell us he is ok.”
“He is ... out of physical danger,” Dr. Ponder conceded, making it sound like a dire prognosis. “But we are now confronting the more insidious, secondary conditions.” He leaned in conspiratorially. “I’m most concerned about the onset of Affective Lability in a Multilateral Romantic Constellation. Or, as we call it in the trade, ALMRC.”
Marisol’s brow furrowed in utter confusion. “Al-Mark? What is that? He has an infection?”
“Worse,” Dr. Ponder whispered dramatically. “It’s a pathological inability to allocate his melancholy efficiently across multiple partners. He’s heartbroken over the mother, you see. But the sheer mathematical distribution of his sadness ... it’s putting a catastrophic strain on his emotional bandwidth. He may appear withdrawn. Listless. As if his internal CD player is stuck on a single, sad Dave Matthews Band track on repeat.”
Zara, the smoldering model, narrowed her eyes. “He’s sad his girlfriend’s mom stabbed him. That seems ... normal. Right?”
“Normal sadness is a gentle rain. This,” Dr. Ponder countered, his voice trembling slightly, “this is a hydraulic failure of the soul’s plumbing. We’re also monitoring for Idiopathic Charisma Drain. His magnetic fields are dangerously depleted. He didn’t smile once during his final vitals check. Not a single, megawatt grin. It’s clinically ... eerie.”
Ayesha, the Disney princess, pressed a hand to her heart. “His light has dimmed. I felt it.”
“His light isn’t dimmed, he’s just sad!” Marisol insisted, her voice rising with exasperation. “He told me he was fine! Just ... sad!”
“‘Fine’ is the most dangerous word in medicine,” Dr. Ponder intoned. “It’s the white flag of the spirit. And then there’s the risk of Psychosomatic Stitch Palsy - a condition where the patient’s profound ennui manifests as a perceived tightening of the sutures, a physical manifestation of emotional constriction!”
Sarah looked ready to faint. “Stitch Palsy? Is that permanent?”
“Only as permanent as the haunting,” Dr. Ponder said with a solemn nod.
Just as Mia opened her mouth to ask if a specific crystal could help, a voice sliced through the thickening fog of medical nonsense like a perfectly sharpened tongue depressor.
“Doctor! Your prescription for melodrama is overdosing the entire waiting room!”
Nurse Florence stood with her hands on her hips, her perm radiating the pure, unadulterated energy of a woman who had just hit the jackpot on a Wheel of Fortune slot machine. Dr. Ponder flinched as if she’d zapped him with a defibrillator set to “sass.”
“Nurse Florence, I was merely apprising them of the potential for Post-Amorous Stress Disorder...”
“You were merely apprising them of a load of codswallop wrapped in a lab coat,” she finished, stepping between the doctor and the visibly alarmed girls. She turned to them, her face a monument to no-nonsense reality. “Ignore him. He once diagnosed a case of the hiccups as ‘Spasmodic Diaphragmatic Prophecy.’ Bharath is sad. That’s it. He’s not suffering from ‘Idiopathic Charisma Drain,’ he’s suffering from a case of ‘My-Girlfriend’s-Mom-Tried-To-Kebab-Me-And-Now-I-Feel-Bad-For-Her-itis.’ It’s a common, non-contagious condition treated with time, support, and probably a large, greasy pizza.”
“But the Stitch Palsy...” Ayesha ventured, still looking concerned.
“Is what happens when you listen to Dr. Doom over here,” Florence deadpanned, jerking a thumb at the retreating physician. “The boy is heartsick, not sick-sick. Now, if you’ll excuse us, Doctor, don’t you have a petri dish to mourn?”
Thoroughly deflated, Dr. Ponder shuffled away, muttering something about “unquantifiable sorrow vectors” and “the tragic poetry of it all.”
Marisol let out a huge breath, a laugh of pure relief bubbling up. “Dios mio, I thought he was going to tell us we needed to quarantine his emotions.”
“All you need to do is be there for him,” Florence said, her tone softening. “And maybe get him one of those giant pretzels from the food court. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get back to my station.”
She winked and walked off, leaving the five girls in a state of relieved, slightly giddy confusion.
And then, as if summoned by the gods of gossip and poor life choices, the door to the treatment area hissed open with a sound that was both mundane and utterly momentous.
“Showtime,” Kevin muttered, his grumpiness now tinged with a flicker of professional interest.
And there he was. Bharath. Emerging like a wounded phoenix from the fluorescent-lit ashes of the ER. His arm was professionally bandaged, his temple sported a spectacular purple-and-yellow bruise, and he moved with that tragic, poetic walk of a man who had not only survived an attempted stabbing by his girlfriend’s mother but had also just spent forty minutes arguing with a hospital administrator about insurance co-pays. He was a symphony of teenage angst and very bad luck.
The hallway, which had been a low hum of beeps and distant pages, stilled into a vacuum of anticipation.
He didn’t even have to say a word. He just looked up, his eyes scanning the waiting area, a little dazed, a lot brave.
And the girls...
Oh, the girls saw him, and proceeded to lose their ever-loving minds in a five-part harmony of pure, unadulterated drama. It was chaos, it was beautiful, and it was, without a doubt, the best show Grace Memorial had seen all year.---- “AND WE ARE GOING LIVE, PEOPLE!” Jamal bellowed, diving behind the relative safety of the nurse’s station counter as if he were a war correspondent in Fallujah hiding from emotional artillery fire. He cupped his hands around his mouth like a megaphone. “Blonde bombshell has broken formation and is making first contact! We have movement in sector three! I repeat, we have a Code Blonde! T-minus three, two -!”
“BABY!”
The shriek that tore through the sterile hospital air was less a word and more a sonic event, a high-frequency declaration of ownership that probably shattered a distant beaker in the lab. Sarah, the blonde vision, didn’t so much run as she charged, her trajectory a perfect, unwavering laser line of devotion and highlights. She moved like a Victoria’s Secret angel who’d just witnessed her favorite boyfriend get resurrected from the dead and was late for the celebratory photo shoot. Her sun-kissed hair blew back in perfect, slow-motion waves that defied the stagnant, recycled air of Grace Memorial. Her cleavage seemed to actively challenge the laws of physics, a feat of structural engineering that would have made the architects of the nearby Varsity building weep with envy.
From his corner, Kevin, the self-proclaimed blonde-better, shot up from his stool as if electrocuted. “YES! THAT’S MY HORSE! THAT’S MY WINNER!” he roared, fist-pumping so violently he nearly dislocated his own shoulder. “I TOLD YOU! IT’S THE BLONDE! IT’S ALWAYS THE BLONDE! PAY UP, YOU SUCKERS! THE KEVIN TRAIN IS PULLING INTO VICTORY STATION, CHOO-CHOO, MOTHER -”
Then - “Cabron divino!”
The battle cry sliced through Kevin’s victory lap like a machete through warm butter. It came from the opposite end of the hall, a declaration of war wrapped in a term of endearment that was roughly 80% lust and 20% threat.
Marisol stormed forward. She didn’t run; she advanced. Her hoop earrings, the size of small hula hoops, swung with the momentum of a conquistador’s pendulum. She moved with the fierce, unassailable grace of the Virgin of Guadalupe if she’d traded in her celestial halo for a pair of heels that clicked out a rhythm of imminent possession on the linoleum.
“Jesus H. Christ on a cracker,” Kevin muttered, his face collapsing from triumphant glee to abject horror.
Marisol didn’t even break stride. She launched herself at Bharath’s back like a human missile of affection, her arms wrapping around his torso in a grip that suggested she was attempting to fuse her ribcage directly to his spine through sheer force of will.
“You’re finally out!” she whispered into his shoulder blade, her voice a husky mix of relief and smoldering intensity. “Mi corazón. My stupid, beautiful warrior.”
Florence leaned over to Jamal, her eyes wide. “Was that Spanish,” she whispered, “or some kind of ancient, pre-Columbian sex magic?”
Bharath, now the surprised meat in a very attractive sandwich, tried to form a word - probably something noble and modest like “It’s okay” or “Please, my spleen” - but the universe had other, more top-heavy plans.
Correction: Mia descended.
The woman wasn’t just a person; she was a walking, breathing act of physics denial. Her chest was a geological event, frankly illegal in several states. Her waist was so insultingly narrow it looked like it had been designed by a cartoonist with a fetish. Her black leggings appeared to have been painted onto her by a team of Renaissance masters under divine intervention. She didn’t run; she moved with a purpose that suggested the gym, the altar, and the Victoria’s Secret runway were all, in fact, the exact same location.
Her breasts moved with such defiant, pendulum-like momentum that Jared, who had been nervously sipping a Capri Sun, simply let the pouch fall from his limp fingers. A tiny river of fruit punch began to pool around his sneakers.
“New rule,” he wheezed, pointing a trembling finger. “Nobody, and I mean nobody, looks directly at her. It’s like a solar eclipse. You’ll get permanent retina damage and start speaking in tongues.”
Mia didn’t just hug Bharath; she ascended him. She leapt into his arms, her powerful legs wrapping around his waist with the practiced ease of a koala that had trained for this moment its entire life. This was her battlefield, and she was claiming her territory.
“I couldn’t breathe,” she sobbed, her voice a masterpiece of melodrama. “I thought she killed you! I was already planning your vigil! It was going to be tasteful, but sexy!”
Bharath, now supporting the full, devastating weight of Mia’s affections, staggered back a half-step, his face a kaleidoscope of pain, panic, and a dawning, primal pride. “Girls - can we - this is a ... public place...?” he managed to stammer, his voice cracking under the pressure.
Mia answered him not with words, but with her lips.
This was not a peck on the cheek. This was not a chaste, “glad you’re alive” smooch. This was a full, cinematic, IMAX-and-Dolby-Atmos, head-tilted, lip-devouring epic of a kiss. It was the kind of kiss that required a stunt double and an intimacy coordinator. The air itself seemed to shimmer around them.
“Sweet, baby Jesus in a manger,” Florence murmured, fanning herself with a patient chart. “That’s not a kiss. That’s a full-scale emotional exorcism.”
Kevin, looking utterly defeated, turned to Annie. “Toto,” he said, his voice hollow, “I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
And then, as if the director had called for the entrance of the femme fatale - Zara finally made her appearance.
The smoldering model in leather boots that cost more than Jared’s monthly rent and a crop top that defied several hospital dress codes, didn’t rush. She strolled. She moved like a show in Sin City was auditioning her live, right there in the hallway. Her hips swayed with a hypnotic, metronomic precision, as if they had a private, very lucrative contract with the very laws of gravity. She looked like danger and Chanel No. 5.
“Ladies,” she purred, her voice a low, smoky alto that could curdle milk and arouse a statue simultaneously. “Back. Away. I haven’t had my turn yet.”
She stepped up to the dazed Bharath, who was still trying to remember how to breathe after Mia’ kiss. With a single, elegantly manicured finger, she brushed a stray lock of hair from his forehead. Then, without even waiting for an invitation, she leaned in and planted a slow, deliberate kiss on the side of his neck.
Then she licked it.
A single, clean, possessive stripe from his collarbone to his jawline.
“OH, COME ON!” Jared shrieked, his voice cracking into a register usually reserved for startled dolphins. He clutched the hastily drawn betting chart to his chest like it was a holy scripture that had just started spewing heresy. “WHICH ONE IS THE ACTUAL GIRLFRIEND?! THERE ARE RULES! SOCIETAL NORMS!”
“Are they ... are they all the girlfriend?” Jamal whispered, his commentary-hosting bravado completely gone, replaced by breathless, awe-struck confusion.
“THEY CANNOT ALL BE THE GIRLFRIEND!” Jared shouted, waving the chart wildly. “That’s not how linear relationships work! This is anarchy! This is a hostile takeover of monogamy!”
Florence, meanwhile, took a long, smug sip from her mug that definitely didn’t contain just coffee. “Guess who picked two in the pool?” she said, wiggling her eyebrows.
“You said ‘Combat Boots’ and ‘Pornstar Body’! That’s one entry!” Kevin yelled, pointing an accusatory finger.
“They both kissed him,” Florence retorted calmly. “On the mouth and on the neck. Two distinct, qualifying acts of amorous contact. It’s not cheating. It’s strategic diversification.”
“It’s not a harem,” Kevin said, his voice faint as he watched the scene unfold with a kind of terrified reverence. “It’s a ... a movement.”
And then, a seismic pause. The air grew thick, the background chatter of the hospital fading into a distant hum. The final boss had arrived.
Ayesha.
The smoldering beauty with dark hair that flowed down her back like a waterfall of silk, a Disney princess who’d been given a script by a romance novelist. Her skin was flawless, the kind of perfection that made people forget their passwords and their own names. She didn’t walk; she processed. She moved with a regal grace that suggested every hallway in the world should be rolled out with a red carpet and accompanied by a celestial choir humming Enya.
She didn’t rush. She glided.
And when she reached Bharath, who was now looking less like a person and more like the overwhelmed centerpiece of a very aggressive cuddle cult, she didn’t grab him. She didn’t leap. She simply placed one elegant, cool hand directly over his heart.
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