Chapter 1

It was Tuesday and I was looking for Lori while I headed towards the cafeteria for lunch. I hadn't seen her since we had split up to go to our classes. I got to the double doors leading into the cafeteria when I saw a cluster of girls over to one side of the hallway. There were some gasps and squeals coming from the circled girls.

One girl exclaimed "No way - not SIX TIMES!"

That's when I noticed Lori on the far side of the group. She was grinning and nodding her head vigorously. She looked over the heads of her friends and saw me. Suddenly her face broke out into the biggest, largest, widest, broadest, most open smile that I've ever seen.

"Bye, guys! I've got to eat lunch with Mark!" And with that she parted the group and came running over to me. She grabbed me by the arm and dragged me through the doors leading into the cafeteria. I had enough time to notice that every one of the other girls was staring at me like I was either a Jovian alien or else a Jovian god.

Lori was beaming at me as we got into the cafeteria line. Even though I had what I suspected was some reason to be embarrassed - I smiled. "You told your friends about last night?"

"Oh! Mark, I hope you aren't upset with me! I just had to tell them how wonderful I felt.

I said you were smart and wonderful and able to take care of me better than I had ever hoped!"

"Uh, you told your friends that?"

"Oh, YEAH! I told them how I orgasmed twenty or thirty times! And I told every one of them that you are the most wonderful guy I've ever known. I said you knew just what to say and especially what to do to make me experience things I never knew I could feel!

I said you were very, very smart and obviously very studious. I explained that you're really attentive to what I liked. I told the girls that they should be checking out math geeks as boyfriends!"

I blushed. I regressed into the sputtering, terrified, stuttering idiot that I had been when I first started tutoring Lori. That lasted for perhaps one to two seconds. Then I got over it and again smiled. "Are you really going around and bragging about me?"

"Bragging? No way! I'm preaching to my congregation!" Lori laughed as we advanced down the line towards the food servers.

I had noticed that several guys had been looking at us oddly for the last minute or so and I thought that there might be trouble. "Lori, let's cool down the happiness for a while. Some people are staring at us."

Lori looked around and suddenly grinned. She spoke to a guy a few feet behind us in the line. "Hey Tom, how it's goin'?"

The guy Lori spoke to grinned. "Hi Lori, things are OK. Who's your friend?"

"Oh, Mark's my math tutor. He's a great guy! He's helping me out with math and other stuff, too!"

"Hi Mark - nice to see someone is helping Lori with math. I've known her since before elementary school and she's always been worse at math."

"Hey Tom. It's not hard to help Lori. She was only missing some of the concepts that link things together. She was seeing all of the parts, but without making some of the connections that explain everything."

Lori grinned with what I could only think of as a purely and unadulteratedly evil expression. "Oh yeah... Mark knows how to make all kinds of connections. He's really good at explaining and demonstrating connections..."

I blushed. I flat out turned pink... Red... Maroon...

I did manage to notice the raised eyebrow that Tom directed towards Lori. And I noticed a slight nod from Lori.

The line moved forward and I leaned over close to Lori's ear.

"You've known Tom for a long time, haven't you. I saw what the two of you did. You just told him that we're a couple, right?"

"Oh, you noticed that, did you? Yeah, I've known him forever. Tom's my cousin. Uncle Thomas is my mom's older brother. Anyhow, we've been helping each other for years. Don't worry about him. He's one of my best friends."

"OK."

We got through the end of the line and walked out into the cafeteria. I saw my usual table and friends and turned to Lori. "Would you like to sit with some of my buddies?"

Lori grinned. "Sure! I'd like to meet them."

Just as we started to walk towards my friends we saw Tom come out of the food service line. "Tom, would you like to join Lori and me with my friends?"

Tom grinned. "Yeah, sure."

The three of us walked over to the table where four of my friends were seated. They looked up as we approached.

"Hey guys, do any of you know Lori and Tom?"

What I saw were three heads shaking no and one nod.

I first spoke to Greg. "Who do you know?"

Greg nodded at Tom. "I've had several classes with Tom over the last three or four years. We've been stuck with dealing with the same classes and problems over the years and we've had to work together. He's an OK guy."

Lori smiled. "Tom's my cousin. He came along with me. I'm here with Mark."

I noticed a slight smile and a bit of a sparkle appear in Timothy's eyes. "So Mark, is this the girl you've been tutoring?"

"Yeah, Lori needed some help in Algebra."

Timothy's smile got a bit broader. We had just sat down when he spoke. "So, Lori - did Mark help you with your Algebra studies?"

Lori put on her best and biggest smile. "Oh, he's been the best possible tutor."

Lori turned to me. "You haven't introduced us..."

"Oh, OK... Tom's pal is Greg Templeton. He and Timothy and I have known one another for years. Greg's our computer hardware expert. He can build computers out of tin cans!" Greg grinned at this and gave a slight bow while still seated.

"Harddrives, CPUs, DIMMs, and OSes are my specialty, dear lady."

Lori squealed! "That's the first time anyone ever called me "dear lady."

She smiled and looked directly at Greg. "I have a friend whose computer has gotten sick. Do you think you could help her with fixing it? She's a computer dufus and her parents don't believe her when she tells them it's broken."

Greg grinned. "If she's anything like you I'll do whatever is needed to assist her!"

Lori grinned in return. "I'll tell her you're Mark's friend and a total computer geek. She'll be so happy to meet you!"

Greg's grin got bigger and broader.

I nudged Lori and pointed to the end of the table.

"That guy there is Timothy. He's our head computer geek and humorist."

Lori eyebrows furrowed down a bit. "I thought Greg is the computer geek."

Five of us laughed. Lori and Tom looked at us with questions written across their faces.

Greg spoke up. "Oh, I'm the hardware geek and guru. But, Timothy is our code-writer. He's the best of us when it comes to putting together webpages, databases, or whatever else we need."

Timothy showed us his patented, slightly twisted, ever-so-lopsided grin in response to Greg's comment.

I need to take a moment and describe Timothy - he's slightly odd in appearance. I've met his parents and the rest of his family. Timothy's father is just your typical blue-eyed, blond haired guy with some sort of northern European ancestry. Timothy's mother looks about as exotic as any woman can get! She's part African-American and South American and Mediterranean and Asian and I don't know what else! Whatever all it is that's contributed to her - she is flat-out the most beautiful woman I've ever seen! I couldn't hardly ever say a word in her presence. I was worse around her than how I acted when I first started tutoring Lori.

Anyhow, Timothy's eyes have epicanthic folds, his nose is both a beak and also broad, his skin is chocolate-au-lait, and his brunette hair is wavy and kinked but also nearly straight. His eyes were some sort of grayish tan or something - not the grayish green to blue of hazel, but something else. He does not look like most people on this planet.

Lori laughed. "You mean there are two computer geeks sitting here?"

Again, the five of us laughed. And again we got odd looks from Lori and her cousin Tom.

Even before I could tell her the truth, Greg said it all. "Lori, these five guys you see here are all computer geeks! Didn't Mark tell you about what he does for fun?"

Lori turned to me with a question on her face. "Mark, besides me - what do you do for fun?"

Timothy and Tom both lost their cool as they nearly spewed portions of cafeteria food.

Greg and my two other friends just smiled and chuckled. They hadn't had food in their mouths...

I got my shit together and thought furiously for a moment. "Lori, honey - I tickle numbers for fun."

Lori sighed. "Mark, I ALREADY knew that! You tickled my numbers way beyond my wildest imagination last night! What is it that you do with computers that makes your friends think that you're some sort of computer geek?"

Timothy, Greg, Tom, Marcus, Darren, and I almost lost it at that moment. We all looked around the table at one another. Then it happened. We all burst out howling! We laughed. We beat our fists and slapped our palms on the table. And we kept glancing at Lori.

Lori just blushed, ever so slightly. "Did I say something funny?" Her smile was like that of a cat... A cat that eaten the canary and a whole lot of other birds!

"Lori, I write formulaic expressions for Timothy and the others. I do the math part of what we work on. If it has to do with maintaining or exploiting computers, then I handle the mathematical component of what they are working on."

Lori smiled. "Well, no wonder you know how to tutor me about Algebra!"

She then looked to my two friends who she still hadn't yet been introduced to.

"Hi, I'm Lori and we haven't been introduced yet!"

Marcus and Darren glanced at one another and then looked to Lori. Both grinned.

Darren managed to actually smile (which was a small miracle). "Hi Lori, I'm Darren. I'm just another member of this computer geek group."

Lori got that gleaming smile of hers going. "Darren, I doubt that you're just another member of this group. And you don't look all that geeky to me!"

Lori glanced to Marcus. "What's your name?"

"Hey, Lori. I'm Marcus. Sometimes referred to as Mark-II."

"Mark-two? What does that mean?"

"Oh, I check Mark's formulae and also Timothy's code. I'm their backup math and code writers."

Lori grinned again, and looked at me. "Oh, you need a backup? What's a girl supposed to think?"

More howls of laughter ensued. I noticed that several tables of people surrounding us had started to look at us suspiciously.

We had been enjoying ourselves so completely that the first bell announcing the end of the lunch period was an intrusive interruption.

Lori and I said goodbye to my buddies and her cousin Tom and headed to our Algebra class with Mrs. Hargraves.

Mrs. Hargraves stopped us at the end of class and asked Lori how the tutoring was going. Lori just smiled and told her that I was the best possible tutor "in the whole world."

Mrs. Hargraves just smiled at us. Her next comment was very interesting. "You two just be careful. You're still young. Don't make any mistakes that you'll regret later."

Lori just smiled. "Mrs. Hargraves, the best thing that's ever happened to me has been having Mark tutor me in Algebra. I don't know how to thank you for having arranged this."

Lori grasped one of Mrs. Hargraves hands while she leaned against her and kissed her on the cheek.

I almost died at the thought of what Mrs. Hargraves might do to Lori.