Their Wonder Years: Season 1: Fall 1998
Copyright© 2025 by Tantrayaan
75: Flowers and Forgiveness
Coming of Age Sex Story: 75: Flowers and Forgiveness - 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
If someone had told Maria two weeks ago that one of the most profound, fun-filled, and healing nights of her life would be with a group of college girls - all of them also her daughters’ boyfriend’s girlfriends - she would’ve flung a chancla at their head and crossed herself twice.
But tonight? Tonight, she felt more alive than she had in decades.
The laughter spilled from the kitchen first. It started as polite giggles over store-bought sangria but had mutated into loud, wheezy belly-laughs over the retelling of a certain Calculus professor’s coffee breath and an incident involving Sarah accidentally flashing a whole classroom when her wrap dress betrayed her.
“I swear to God, it was like ... whoosh!” Sarah mimed the dress unraveling with wild hand gestures, cheeks pink from sangria.
Ayesha doubled over, wheezing. “You just stood there, and that pervy TA dropped his chalk.”
“Not his jaw. His chalk!” Mia squealed. “That’s the part that gets me.”
Maria’s hands were wrapped around a warm mug of cinnamon tea, but her heart held something warmer. She had forgotten what this felt like. Women, laughing with her. Not whispering behind pews or murmuring in grocery store lines. But full-throated, unfiltered joy.
She hadn’t felt like this since she was seventeen. Before the marriage. Before the babies. Before the long nights clutching grocery lists and praying the washing machine didn’t die that week.
She watched them. These vibrant, reckless, brilliant girls.
And her daughters - her daughters. How they had changed! Especially her lioness, her eldest.
Marisol sat with one knee drawn up, wine glass in hand, her laughter free and real. It hit Maria like a punch to the chest. For so many years, that girl had been clenched like a fist. Cold, unreachable. The one who would lock herself in her room and not cry, not even as a child. Her armor had been impenetrable. Until now.
“Marisol,” Maria said softly, interrupting the story about a rogue raccoon in the dorm laundry room. “Mija. You’re ... you’re happy.”
Marisol blinked. “I am, Mama. Really.”
Maria nodded, her throat thick. “I see her now. The girl I would’ve been. If...”
If life had gone differently. If she’d had choices. Time. Freedom. That sentence stayed unfinished. It didn’t need to be said. Marisol’s eyes brimmed with understanding.
Mia was curled up beside Zara, who had braided a tiny plait into her hair and adorned it with a leftover ribbon from the birthday gift wrapping. Mia was radiant. She always had been. But tonight, she was a comet. Unleashed. She was on her third glass of sangria, telling a story so animated that her hands kept knocking into the tortilla chip bowl.
“And THEN - then I told the DJ, ‘Play Prodigy or I walk.’ And this man looked me in the eye and said, ‘Girl, you’ve got taste.’”
Ayesha snorted into her guacamole. “And you walked?”
“I sashayed away, ” Mia corrected, flicking the ribboned braid like a diva. “He couldn’t take his eyes off me.”
Maria laughed till her stomach hurt.
These girls ... God, they were beautiful. Inside and out. She had known Marisol and Mia’s friends would be decent. She trusted her daughters to make friends with good people. But she didn’t expect to love them.
Sarah was next to her now, legs tucked under her, balancing a plate of tamales she’d eagerly accepted. She had Maria’s shawl draped over her shoulders. She kept hugging Maria unexpectedly, as if she couldn’t believe that Maria had accepted her as a daughter. Maria was touched seeing how happy it made Sarah. She knew she was an orphan. Maria was determined that Sarah would never feel the absence of a mother in her life again.
Looking at Sarah - her beauty, her impossible figure and her obvious intelligence, one could never guess how fragile she really was. However, now that Maria knew her better, she could imagine at her most broken. When she heard about her past, she was heartbroken. She was now glad that Sarah found Marisol and Bharath when she did. The world would have been a poorer place without Sarah in it.
“I still can’t believe you’ve never been to college, Maria,” Sarah said gently.
Maria waved her off. “I didn’t have the fortune. By the time I was nineteen I had two babies and a husband who thought romance was not burning the rice. Perhaps that’s why he left us.”
They all laughed, but the ache behind her words lingered.
Sarah leaned in. “I would’ve loved to study with you. You ask sharp questions.”
“You are sharp too,” Maria replied. “More than sharp. You are ... polished. Like something precious that took pain to shine.”
Sarah’s eyes widened. Her lip trembled for just a second before she looked down.
Maria placed her hand over hers. “Mija. Don’t worry. Marisol told me what you went through. Mia too.”
Sarah went still.
“I would have fought that man,” Maria said, her voice low and sure. “I don’t care how many years back. I would have found him and put him in the ground.”
The silence that followed was broken only by the sniffles from the couch.
Ayesha was crying.
“Oh my God, I’m sorry,” she blurted, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. “I just ... when you said that ... I...”
Maria got up slowly and went to her. She sat beside her and pulled Ayesha into a motherly embrace.
“You’re okay, mija. You’re safe now.”
Ayesha buried her face in Maria’s shoulder and sobbed. “I’m sorry I was such a bitch to Bharath. I was so lost. I thought being seen was all that mattered.”
Her voice cracked, and the words came tumbling out, raw and jagged like glass in her throat. “You don’t understand. In high school, everything was about the spotlight. Who had the best clothes, the best parties, the cutest boyfriend, the perfect hair. I made people envious, I made them stare. I thought that meant something. I wore this ... this armor of glitter and gloss, and thought that people loved the image of me. But they didn’t know me. They didn’t care to.”
She sniffled hard, gripping Maria’s blouse with trembling fingers. “And then... “ her voice broke again, “ ... when those guys grabbed me at the party when I was drunk, I realized how invisible I really was. No one saw me. Not really. Except him. Bharath looked at me like I was human. Not a trophy. Not a tease. Not a joke. My own friends turned on me when I didn’t want to play their game anymore. I was ... such a phony!”
Maria tightened her arms around her, motherly and fierce. “You are human. And beautiful. And worthy. Always.”
Ayesha let out a broken little laugh. “Even after all the ways I messed up?”
Maria pulled back just enough to look her in the eye. “Especially then. That’s when we need love the most. When we don’t think we deserve it.”
Zara had crept behind them silently. She knelt beside Ayesha and wrapped one arm around her waist, resting her cheek against her shoulder. “She’s not the only one who lost herself chasing the wrong things.”
Maria looked up at her, surprised by the seriousness in the usually playful girl’s tone.
“I’m the one who turned her against him,” Zara said, surprisingly quiet. “I was bored. I was cruel. And it wasn’t even personal at first. Just ... sport. He was new. Weird. Nerdy. Easy to mock.”
She looked down at her manicured fingers. “I used to be the girl who twisted people like strings around my finger. I could make anyone jealous, make anyone beg. I was the queen of petty manipulation. It gave me a sense of control. Like, if I could control how people saw me, I didn’t have to admit how hollow I felt inside.”
Maria tilted her head, her brow creased with concern. “And now?”
Zara smiled sheepishly, but her eyes shimmered with something fierce and sincere. “Now it’s not a game. It’s ... home. He’s my home.”
She looked at Ayesha, who leaned into her touch. “He loved us even when we didn’t deserve it. Not because he’s a saint - but because he saw who we were underneath all the armor. And somehow ... somehow he still wanted us.”
The room fell quiet. Maria’s throat tightened.
“I was scared as well...,” she said after a pause. “Of losing my daughters. Of being replaced. Of not being needed anymore. That’s why I became the animal I...”
“You are my Mama,” Marisol said, voice raw. “You always will be.”
Mia rushed to Maria and hugged her hard. Maria felt herself tear up.
“I didn’t know how to share them,” Maria admitted. “And then I saw how they look at that boy. And how you all look at them. Like they’re ... precious.”
“They are,” Sarah whispered. “To him. To us.”
Maria’s voice cracked. “I didn’t even know I needed this. This night. You girls...”
“You’re not alone anymore,” Zara said. “You have five daughters now.”
Maria barked a laugh. “Dios mío, that’s a lot of tamales I have to make now when we get together.”
That cracked the dam again. They all collapsed in laughter, the kind that made their cheeks hurt and their stomachs ache and their hearts feel lighter.
Even Marisol was crying, the kind of crying that came not from sadness, but from the pressure of too much emotion finally given permission to escape.
“I used to walk five miles to work,” Maria said, sniffling as she sipped her tea. “In winter. Through Atlanta snow.”
“That’s not a thing,” Mia teased.
“It was in ‘83!”
“Oh, here we go,” Ayesha groaned, rolling her eyes. “Back in my day...”
“I’m telling you, the wind came from Alabama and slapped you in the face like a drunk tío!”
They were off again ... laughter rising like incense, bright and healing.
Later, as the clock ticked into the early morning hours, the girls passed around a half-eaten tub of Blue Bell ice cream like it was communion. Someone found an old Spanish record in the cabinet - Luis Miguel, scratched and full of static - and Mia insisted they play it.
And dance.
Zara tried to tango with Sarah, got too ambitious, and stepped on her foot. “I’m so sorry!”
Sarah winced. “Girl, you just flattened my toe like a pancake at Waffle House!”
“Let me fix it with my lips,” Zara offered, dramatically kneeling.
“You do that and I’m calling the RA,” Sarah deadpanned, and everyone howled.
Ayesha attempted to salsa and spun straight into the bookshelf, knocking over a ceramic figurine that looked vaguely like the Virgin Mary.
“Sorry! Sorry!” she cried, holding it up like the ape did Simba when he was born.
“You better pray that wasn’t blessed,” Marisol muttered.
“Don’t worry,” Mia shouted over the music, “It was ugly anyway!”
Maria just laughed. Full, throaty, womanly laughter that echoed through the house and seemed to shake dust off the very bones of the place. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes sparkled. She looked twenty years younger at that moment.
Eventually, the record spun to a slow, scratchy stop. The music softened. The girls settled.
Sleep crept into their limbs like a warm tide.
The hugs were long and full of meaning. Each one was slow, grateful. Maria kissed each girl’s forehead like they were her own blood.
“Thank you,” she said, voice thick. “For healing an old woman’s heart.”
“You’re not old. You’re just 39,” Mia said sleepily. “40 is the new 30 anyway. You have plenty of dancing left in you Mami.”
Maria grinned. “Tell that to my knees.”
As she walked to her room, shawl around her shoulders, she glanced over her shoulder one last time. The girls were a pile of tangled limbs, laughter fading into soft yawns. Her daughters. Her unexpected daughters-in-heart.
She closed her bedroom door softly.
The silence was peaceful now.
She slept like a woman forgiven and loved.
The laughter faded behind them like the final notes of a lullaby as the girls tiptoed down the hallway and into Marisol’s room. Someone - probably Zara - snuck one last brownie from the kitchen, still warm from the microwave, which she nibbled on in dramatic silence as she shut the door behind her with a soft click.
But once they were all inside, the energy shifted.
No more dancing. No more cackling over bad salsa footwork. Just a soft exhale as five women slumped onto the bed, the floor, and each other like deflated balloons. The room, still carrying the faint scent of vanilla lotion, tamales, and warm wine, suddenly felt too quiet.
Too empty.
Ayesha flopped belly-down on the bed and groaned. “Okay. We did it. We were good little harem angels. We bonded with the mama. We cried. We hugged. We danced to scratched Spanish vinyl. Can someone explain to me why the hell our man isn’t here right now?”
“He was trying to be noble,” Marisol mumbled, hugging a throw pillow to her chest.
Zara kicked off her heels. “Noble, my ass. He could’ve at least stayed till midnight. It’s not like your mom was gonna check our bed or anything.”
Mia sighed and dramatically flopped into Sarah’s lap. “Almost sixty hours,” she declared.
“What?” asked Sarah.
“It’s been almost sixty hours since I’ve had sex with Bharath,” Mia said solemnly, holding up her fingers. “I counted. That’s sixty hours longer than I’ve ever gone since my virginity left the building.”
Sarah snorted and smoothed Mia’s hair, but she didn’t laugh.
Ayesha pushed herself up on her elbows. “Seriously. I know we said tonight was about Maria, and I’m so glad it went well, but I don’t know how you are functioning. I haven’t had Bharath inside me in a whole damn day. A day. I feel like I’m in tantric withdrawal.”
“I feel like a nun,” Zara grumbled, throwing her head back dramatically. “A very horny nun who got kicked out of the convent for being too freaky.”
Marisol looked around and saw the truth on every face.
They missed him.
Not just the sex. Though that was definitely part of it. But the way he touched them - held them, whispered to them, kissed the corners of their mouths. The way he looked into their souls and made them feel like miracles. The way he grounded their chaos with his calm, and turned each of them into something holy just by being with them.
They weren’t used to sleeping without him anymore.
Zara leaned back against the wall, looking wistful. “He usually kisses my forehead before bed. Every night. Even if I’m half-asleep. Tonight it just ... didn’t happen.”
Ayesha rubbed her thighs together unconsciously. “I miss the way he grabs my hips and just - ugh. I’m not even horny, I’m just lonely-horny. There’s a difference.”
“There is a difference,” Mia agreed, voice high and tragic like a soap opera star. “Like, you want to cry and hump the furniture at the same time.”
Sarah rolled her eyes, but even she looked wistful. “You know he’s probably missing us too. He’s probably curled up on that couch in Smith 202 with the boys, pretending to enjoy Street Fighter and dying inside.”
“He better be dying inside,” Ayesha muttered.
“Maybe we should call him?” Mia suggested.
“No,” Marisol said quickly. “He needs this. He earned his game night. He hasn’t had one in weeks. Let him be with his boys.”
“Yeah,” Sarah said softly. “Let him be just ... a boy for a night.”
Zara grumbled. “Fine. But I’m leaving him fifty voicemails tomorrow.”
The mood softened into something more reflective. The girls were curled in various formations now - Marisol and Sarah at the head of the bed, Mia curled between Ayesha and Zara, a chaotic tangle of arms, legs, and clinginess.
After a long silence, Sarah spoke again. “Maria ... she treated me like a daughter tonight.”
The words hung there, delicate and heavy.
“She made me tea,” Sarah continued, her voice a little watery. “And she kissed my head. No one’s done that since I was ten.”
Zara reached out and held her hand. “You are her daughter now.”
“I just ... I didn’t know what it felt like. To have a mother like that. Who wasn’t scared of me. Who didn’t use me.”
There were tears then. Quiet, trembling ones. The others huddled closer. No one said anything profound. They just let her feel it.
Finally, Ayesha whispered, “You deserve it, Sarah. You deserve all the forehead kisses and hot tea and sleepy hugs in the kitchen.”
“We all do,” Mia added. “We’re all Bharath’s girls. But tonight, we were Maria’s too.”
“Maybe,” Sarah said, voice soft and stunned, “Maybe I can call her Mama someday.”
Marisol nodded. “She’d love that.”
They all hugged again, messy and tangled and full of girl-heartache. But eventually the ache turned into something else.
Mia sat up suddenly. “Okay. So tomorrow we are going to jump him when he gets here.”
Marisol blinked. “Jump him?”
“Yup,” Mia nodded. “No more letting him play the martyr. We’re going home with him after Thanksgiving.”
“And we’re not letting him be alone again,” Ayesha added.
“Ever,” Zara agreed.
Sarah smirked. “So what’s the plan for tomorrow night?”
“Oh honey,” Mia purred, “I have plans.”
They leaned in, the air in the room suddenly warmer.
“I want to ride him,” Mia said boldly, “until he forgets his name. But gently, because of his arm.”
“Same,” Ayesha chimed in. “I want to lie on my side and have him spoon me and impale me. Soft, slow, but deep. And then when he’s better ... the naughty resumes.”
“I’m going to lube up my breasts and just glide him between them until he begs for mercy,” Zara said, licking her lips.
“I want to kiss every inch of his body,” Marisol said, her voice husky. “Like it’s a temple. I want him to know we’re thankful. We see him.”
Sarah smiled shyly. “I want to hold his hand while he’s inside me. Just ... hold him. And whisper all the things I’ve never said. Then I want to choke on him. Ugh ... I miss him so much!”
There was a long, quiet moment where they all just breathed together. In that moment, they weren’t just lovers. They were a collective. A family.
“I want to wake him up with kisses,” Mia said, voice sleepy now. “Tomorrow morning. I want to curl around him like a kitten and purr.”
“Don’t purr,” Sarah said. “That’s weird.”
“I will purr, ” Mia declared. “With my soul.”
Laughter bubbled again. They were exhausted. But full. Loved. Loved so much it almost hurt.
Zara mumbled, eyes fluttering shut, “Tomorrow night. No mercy. Except, like, sexy mercy.”
“Soft dom?” Ayesha asked.
“Sacred recovery session,” Marisol corrected.
They all nodded like monks at prayer. Then finally, sleep started to claim them - one by one. They curled around each other, murmuring last thoughts like bedtime prayers.
“I miss his scent. Even if it’s that stupid WildStone,” Ayesha whispered.
“I miss his lips,” Zara murmured.
“I miss his hands,” Sarah sighed.
“I miss... him,” Mia finished.
And Marisol, the last to close her eyes, whispered into the quiet dark: “I love him.”
The room was still.
The first light of dawn spilled through the lace curtains like a soft blessing.
Maria stirred awake without the shrill tug of an alarm clock, her body guided not by duty but by something gentler - peace. For the first time in years, maybe decades, she felt light. Not in the way of girlish giddiness, but like something unspoken had been unburdened from her soul.
She sat on the edge of her bed and exhaled, surprised to find a smile already waiting on her lips.
Last night.
It came rushing back - not in flashes, but in soft waves. The laughter. The dancing. The tears. The way those girls had wrapped her in their circle as if she belonged, not as someone to be tiptoed around or obeyed, but as one of their own.
Maria chuckled softly to herself as she pulled on her slippers. Dios mío, when was the last time she’d tried to salsa in her own kitchen? And terribly, too! Her knees still ached from Zara’s flailing. That girl was half firecracker, half hurricane. But underneath that mischief ... Maria had seen it. Intelligence. Loyalty. Hunger - for love, not attention. A hunger that had found its answer in that boy.
Maria moved through the house on quiet feet. The living room was still a mess from the night before - half-melted candles, a forgotten wine glass, a shawl draped over a chair. Evidence of women living, loving, laughing.
The silence was soft, golden. Not the lonely silence she had grown used to over the years. This one hummed with life. The calm after a storm of joy.
Her feet carried her down the hallway almost of their own accord. She stopped in front of Marisol’s door. It was slightly ajar.
She peeked in.
And her heart bloomed.
All five girls were tangled together like kittens in a basket, hair draped over shoulders, limbs overlapping, breaths slow and steady in shared rhythm. Marisol’s arm was thrown protectively over Mia’s waist. Sarah was curled up beside Ayesha, her cheek resting on her shoulder. Zara’s long legs were dangling off the edge, one bare foot twitching every now and then in a dream.
They looked ... safe.
Not just physically safe. But soul-safe. Held. Seen.
Maria put a hand to her chest.
Mis ninas ... My girls!
They were now her girls, indeed. Last night they kissed her cheeks, poured her tea, teased her for her music taste, cried in her arms. They had treated her not like someone older, but someone with them. Not above them, not beyond them - just among them.
And Sarah. Ay, Sarah.
The look in that child’s eyes when Maria kissed her forehead. That stunned, wide-eyed awe. That trembling lower lip. Maria had recognized that look. She had worn that look as a girl - on the one day her mother hadn’t been too tired to braid her hair before church.
So much love, waiting for somewhere to go.
Maria quietly closed the door.
She tiptoed to the kitchen with a resolve blooming in her chest.
Today, I feed my girls. My women. Before that strange but sweet boy returns to sweep them all away again like a prince in some scarcely believable fairytale.
She stood in front of her pantry, hands on hips. “What do queens eat?” she murmured.
And then, with a grin: “Everything.”
She tied her apron around her waist like a warrior donning armor and set to work.
The skillet hissed to life. Oil met onions and garlic with a crackling sizzle that whispered welcome to the rising sun.
Maria moved like a maestro - platanos sliced and caramelized golden-brown; eggs whisked with a flick of wrist; spices blooming in the pan like old songs remembered. She pulled out the griddle for fresh arepas. Fried up tiny cubes of chorizo and sprinkled them with paprika and lime. Whipped up pancake batter with cinnamon and vanilla for the Indian girls - because she remembered Ayesha mentioning she liked “sweet breakfast with syrup and hugs.” She had laughed at the time.
Now she folded the memory into her batter like sugar into flour.
She chopped fruit into little heart shapes because - why not? There were strawberries, mangoes, kiwi, and bright green grapes. She didn’t have whipped cream, but she made do with sweetened yogurt, chilled to perfection.
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