Alistaire Ch. 01: Carrie Croenke

One of my favorite sub-genres on Literotica is what I call the 'Shy Nerd Harem', in which a young virgin, through utterly improbable circumstance, discovers his inner sex-beast prowess, and that prowess is in turn discovered by a series and/or group of his fellow students. I had to try writing a cycle myself. It seems like it should work with my style of writing.

Please remember (as is the case with all my stories), if you are looking for 'Realism', just move right on along. As always, I aim for 'Ridiculously Plausible'. All sexually active characters are eighteen, or older, at the time of the action.

The six stories in this first arc are spread out over various categories, so if you want to follow the whole thing, please check my works page or this series page. Please enjoy.

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THE ONE WITH CARRIE CROENKE

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As I walked down the hallway leading out of the Delta Airlines concourse and into the main terminal, I saw my parents waving to me. I quickened my pace and found myself barely able to drop my backpack from my shoulders before my mom pulled me into an embrace. It took me a bit of effort to free myself from the embarrassing hug, and as I did, she kissed me on the cheeks and began to fuss about my hair like I was eight or something.

My father rescued my by stepping up to shake me hand. "Hey there, Al," he beamed. "How are things in the home stretch?" Possibly my father's greatest gift to me was his insistence that I be called 'Al' when I was little. Alistaire is an extremely old family name on my mom's side, and once I was born with a penis, there had never been a chance I'd be named anything else. But Dad had been firm that everybody call me Al, believing that the only person who should decide that I actually be known by that full mouthful should be me.

So far I have not made that decision... Check back with me in a million years. I am Al, though Alistaire has its appeal...

I go to boarding school up in Connecticut, and this was my senior year. Most of us Seniors had already heard from our colleges, with the only exceptions being the kids still held on pins and needles by the super competitive schools like the Ivies. I had been accepted Early Decision at USC back in December, thus, as my father was intimating, my spring semester was pretty much just an exercise in not flunking. It really was a home stretch. I was having fun, too. I was playing a lot of D&D, and I had buddies to hang out with. But school was still school, and it was nice to be home for the almost two weeks of Spring Break.

I am an only child, so my parents understandably kept me to themselves my first night home. I did manage to make some phone calls to the few people who had still remained buddies with me after I had gone off to boarding school. I had discovered that you don't keep a lot of friends back home when you go away to prep school. Four years is a long time to keep someone in your head when you are a teenager and you never see them anymore. I had never been exactly a social butterfly to begin with, either. I was not a loner, or a loser, or ostracized back in middle school when I was still living at home, but I had definitely been pretty shy, and just enough of a geek to keep me 'friendly', rather than 'friends with', most people.

By this point in my Senior year, I was down to about three dudes back home whom I still thought of as friends enough to hang out with, including my long-time best friend and former next-door neighbor, Chris. We made plans for me to pick him up the next day when Peachtree High, the local public high school, got out. The good thing about my vacation was that it at least partially aligned with the local school system's this year, which was rare. But for the rest of my first week home, I had nothing to do until 2:30, when Peachtree let out.

*

I did the laundry I brought home Thursday morning. Mom would have done it for me, of course, but I'd learned to do it myself over the last four years, and I had discovered that it made her ridiculously happy that her son could and would clean his own clothes. So happy, in fact, that I was never made to do the dishes...

About two, I left the house. I drive my mom's car when I am home, and I tooled over toward P-High, grabbing a Coke at McDonald's on the way. I parked on the shaded street near Peachtree, where kids tended to meet up for a ride after school. The 'official' pickup area had no trees, was blazing hot, and overflowed with clingy moms in minivans. I did not even go to school at P-High and I knew no self-respecting human wanted to get picked up there. The bus would have been better.

I didn't know too many of the kids at Peachtree in the first place, given how long I had effectively lived eight states away, and the fact that about two-thirds of them had gone to middle schools other than mine to begin with. That made most of the kids drifting out past me as classes let out, strangers. Among that number, I included a bunch that I had used to know, but who now had no recollection of me. I just sat on the hood of the car, sipped my Coke, and scanned my TikTok follows.

I periodically pulled my face away from the cleavalicious babes dancing or lip-syncing on the screen to check out the less cleavalicious but often still pretty strangers wandering by as I waited for Chris to show his mangy hide As each passed, I'd go back to the next video. When I looked up the next time, scanning the increasing flow of kids walking by, I suddenly straightened my spine and put away my phone.

Walking toward me were two girls I most definitely recognized from back in eighth grade, Carrie freaking Croenke and Mary (or was it Maddie?) Davis, two of the absolutely hottest girls I had ever known back then. Carrie Croenke had been the near-universally acclaimed prettiest girl our age, and somehow, looking at her walk toward me now, I doubted that she had lost that status. Maddie or Mary might have given her at least a run for it, though. Both the girls walking toward me had spent the years from 13 to 18 developing from pretty to knuckle-bitingly hot.

It wasn't that I had forgotten what the other girl who was walking toward me's name was, it was just that Mary and Maddie were a pair of twins, and I had never learned to tell them apart. I had no idea which one was in front of me now, for sure.

My view of them got even better when they both actually recognized me! "Al Taylor," Carrie exclaimed. "Who knew you were still alive!"

"Hey Al," the twin added. "You went away to private school, didn't you? Do your parents still live here?" she asked, in a little bit of surprise.

"Hey Carrie! Hey, uh, M..." I trailed off, realizing that I had trapped myself by naming Carrie.

"It's Mary, Al," Mary said drily, but with a smile. She tapped at the small, brown, thumb-sized birthmark on her neck. "Remember?" I vaguely remembered about the birthmark, that it was the only real way to tell between them. Those girls were utterly identical otherwise. But even back then, I never could remember which one had been the one with the mark. I never really had had much need. When you are only staring from a distance, too young to fully know why, you hardly need to actually know a pretty girls' name.

I had honestly never talked to any girls much, back in middle school. And especially not girls like Mary or Carrie. They dwelt on a higher plane of existence. Obviously, I knew them, and had managed to be friendly. The twins had actually ridden the same bus as I, but they seldom sat near me. Carrie I had talked to a little more, since we were in the same homeroom in eighth grade. But just a little more.

I smirked sheepishly at Mary. "Sorry! It has been a while. Are you guys enjoying Senior year?" I asked, changing the subject quickly.

"It's been a blast," said Mary happily, and Carrie agreed, though with visibly less enthusiasm, which puzzled me.

"And Carrie is Student Body Vice-President," added Mary sweetly. Carrie rolled her eyes.

"Mademoiselle Vice President," I intoned solemnly, making a deep, formal bow while still sitting on the hood of the car. Carrie elbowed Mary.

"Is that your car? Nice," Carrie said, changing the subject.

"Uh, it is still in my dad's name, for the insurance," I temporized, finding that I was loathe to tell these two girls that I was driving my mom's car. I am not cool. No one thinks I'm cool. But I did not need to look uncool. "I just drive it when I'm home."

"Nice," said Carrie, looking the elderly Mercedes over.

"So what's it like, going to boarding school?" Mary asked curiously.

I chuckled, happy to talk about myself a little. "Honestly, it is pretty fun, if a little weird."

"How's the food?" Mary inquired.

"Weird?" Carrie asked simultaneously.

"The food sucks," I said promptly. "95 percent of the time. The other five percent is the made-to-order omelettes on Sunday mornings. And as for the weird... it is strange having your teachers around 24/7. But the hardest thing I had get used to when I first got there was having classes six days a week."

"Wait! You have got to be shitting us," Carrie challenged me. "You go to school on Saturdays?"

"It's really not that bad," I said, instinctively defending my school. "Wednesdays and Saturdays are half days anyway, because almost everyone has a match, meet, or game those afternoons."

"A real jock school, huh?" Carrie asked. "How do you handle that?" I felt a little challenged at her easy assumption that I wasn't up to sports.

Mary felt a little embarrassed too. "Carrie! Don't be mean. Al could handle some soccer or something." Okay, my defender was possibly more condescending than Carrie.

"It's not so bad," I said easily, then couldn't help but slip in the knife and give it a twist. "But then, who would have thought that nerdy little me would end up graduating this May with four varsity letters?" I asked rhetorically with a matter-of-fact expression.

They both stared at me with grins on their faces, which faded to incredulity when I let them see that I was smugly serious.

"Really?" blurted Carrie. "Four?"

"Two in Cross Country, two in Track," I proclaimed proudly. "Turns out, even if you are a scrawny waif, when you just refuse to let the exhaustion win, you can claw your way from the last place scrub on a no-cut team, up to Varsity in a few quick years."

Mary shook her head. "Al Taylor is a jock. My world is rocked."

"Hold on! I'm no jock. I have still never won a race... ever! And with only eight Track meets left before graduation, I am never going to, not without a couple of faster dudes breaking their legs." Who knew? The old humble brag can make girls smile... noted.

At this moment, Chris irritatingly decided to show up. He called my name as he approached, and we fist bumped. He hid his surprise at finding me talking to Carrie and Mary... barely.

"Hey Chris," said Carrie absently. "Is Al your ride?"

"Yep," Chris said easily. "Thanks for waiting on me, buddy!"

This sounded like a prelude to a goodbye, and I found that I really wanted to keep talking to these two. And to just keep looking at them, honestly.

Mary was short, dark haired, tanned... and stacked. She wore a tight pair of jeans shorts with flatly rolled cuffs that ended almost two-thirds of the way up her generous but smooth thighs. Up top, she had on a horizontally striped blue and red teeshirt that called attention to her impressive rack, chiefly by how hard it strained to contain those puppies. I remembered that Mary and Maddie had been among the first of our age to start to develop, way back when, but now that she was grown, she had really grown. I briefly wondered if she and Maddie still dressed identically every day. It would be one hell of a sight now.

Carrie was... Carrie. She was tall for a girl, maybe even five-eight now. She had been taller than me back when, but I had clearly shot past her in the last four years, as I had most everyone else. Her high-waisted, cream-colored slacks accentuated her incredibly long legs, and she sported a robin's egg blue Lacoste shirt with the collar popped up, framing her elegant neck. The outfit fit her perfectly, just like everything she had ever worn. It wasn't tight anywhere, but you could still clearly see and appreciate that her slender, elegant figure had developed sweeping curves in all the right places and in all the right dimensions. Nowhere was Carrie too generous, nor was she anywhere disappointingly small. And she carried herself now with an incredible grace and poise. She wasn't proud or stuck-up, and she didn't pose, she just was... graceful.

Fuck. Was I getting goddamned hard just sitting here chatting?

The girls' body language sure looked like they were ready to move on now.

"How's Donald?" I asked Carrie quickly, hoping to extend the conversation. Donald was a handsome dude in our class who had been childhood sweethearts with Carrie since the eighth freaking grade. The only times I had heard Carrie even mentioned since, it was always in the context of 'Donald and Carrie'.

It turns out, this question was a bit of a turd in the punchbowl.

Carrie scowled and Chris winced. I looked confused.

Mary had mercy on me. "They broke up a while ago, Al," she explained with a note of friendly caution.

"Oh. Sorry," I mumbled to Carrie.

"Don't be," she sighed. "I'm over him by now," she went on in a tone of voice that suggested the situation remained complicated.

Chris seemed unhappy to be in an uncomfortable conversation with these two higher beings, and shut up to let me work my way out of it. Thankfully, he didn't try to fix things by saying, "Let's go."

"Wow," I just said, gently. I may have had zero success with girls, relationship-wise at least, while away at school, but I actually did have a fair number of friends who were card-carrying, certified girls. Through them, I had managed to learn that quiet empathy was usually helpful.

To Mary's evident surprise, Carrie responded to my quiet invitation to keep talking. "Actually, I think I really am over Donald. I mean, I should have seen it coming. I think probably did see it coming, subconsciously, when I got into Vanderbilt and he didn't," she admitted with a wry smile. She could humblebrag too, apparently.

"The problem," Carrie went on with a grimace, "is that nobody else believes that I have moved on! We broke up at Thanksgiving and I still have not had a date."

"What? Come on," I almost laughed incredulously. This was Carrie Croenke I was talking to here. It was not possible that she not be in demand if she was available.

"No, really," Carrie frowned at me getting up a head of steam. "Everybody thinks I'm just waiting around for Donald to 'take me back'."

"As if," snorted Mary. I shot her an inquiring look. "He knows what he did," she added with a mutter.

Carrie glowered at Mary. "Whether they think I'm not over him, or they think I'm still his damn property or something, I think there is not one guy here who is willing to ask me out until someone else does first. It's a vicious circle. I'm going to go through my last semester of high school with no social life?"

"No problem," I said easily. "We will break the circle. What time can I pick you up Friday night? There's that new horror movie opening."

Those words just slipped out. I swear. I heard them coming from my mouth, but it only fully dawned on my what I was doing once I had finished. When I said I had had zero success with dating, I mean zero. I had literally never even asked, much less gone out with a girl, and here I was asking out Carrie freaking Croenke. I hadn't even meant to, really. I just saw an obvious solution to a problem that someone I was well-disposed toward had, and suggested that solution before my social mind caught up.

And the intent in my mind, even before I grasped the enormity of what I had just done, had not been to get Carrie to actually say yes to my invitation, but to get her to see that her situation was really more easily solved than she had worked herself into believing.

I wanted to spontaneously die, right there and then. I only survived because I immediately grasped that I had never supposed the answer could possibly be yes. That made my imminent humiliation semi-bearable.

Carrie's eyes widened for a moment, then softened. "Friday? I'm sorry, Al. My parents have plans for the family."

Thank you, Carrie, for saving my pride.

I started to smile and shrug when she added, "But how about Sunday?"

"Sure," my mouth said. "Sounds good." That was all I could manage.

"What time?" Carrie prompted patiently.

"Uh..." I gasped. "Let me check the showtimes. Um," I added, desperately trying to search my mind for what the hell a guy is supposed to work out when asking for a date. "Dinner first?"

Carrie brightened. "Yum. Sounds good. Give me your phone."

"Huh?"

"So I can give you my deets," she said calmly.

My phone had been forgotten in my hand the whole conversation. I swiped it open and handed it to her, my fingers numb. Carrie furiously typed away into it. After a few moments, I heard the swoosh of a text message sending, and a ding from her pocket on the most delectable backside on Planet Earth. "There," she said, returning my phone and pulling her own out of said back pocket. "Now I have your number too," she said with a smile.

I told her that I would set things up, and call her as soon as I got home, and with that, the conversation was over, the two girls ambling off on down the road to wherever Mary's car was parked. As they walked away, I saw Mary steal a glance over her shoulder back at me, a strange expression on her face like I was some kind of exotic animal or something.

We got in the car and I headed off toward home.

I nearly wrecked, however, when Chris began punching me in the shoulder, hard and repeatedly. "Carrie? Dude," Chris yelled. "Carrie?!?"

I pulled over, ostensibly because I wanted to make him stop hitting me, but also because I was shaking just a little, all on my own. "What?" I protested, after I blocked a few more punches against my by now bruised shoulder.

"You have been keeping me out of the loop," accused Chris. "What have you been up to at that school of yours to make you such a fucking player?"

"I am not a 'player'," I protested. "And I have not been 'up to' anything. Any. Thing," I emphasized. "Shit, Chris! You do realize that that was the first time I've ever asked a girl out in my life, right?"

He stared at me. "So you just thought, 'what the hell, might as well start with Carrie Croenke'?"

"Get over it," I said dismissively, trying to convince myself as much as him that this was not such a big deal. "We will have dinner, we'll see a movie, and then I'll take her home. And my ego will get a boost—a fucking huge one. And hopefully this will mean that I will not strangle myself with my own tongue when I finally screw up the courage to think about asking out some other girl later who is actually in my league..." That got a bark of laughter. "But mostly, word will get around that Carrie went on a date, which is what she needs. Win-win."

"Take me home," Chris sighed dramatically. "I want to go to my room and cry."

"Fuck you," I laughed and put the car back in drive. "I haven't seen you in months."

"Fine," Chris said. "Let's go to Falwell's, eat ice cream, and you can tell me what non-player shit you have been up to."

*

As I said, I had never had a girlfriend, but I did make friends with people who happened to be girls when I was away at school, friends with whom I had bonded over running, and one academic subject or other. Among the things that my 'girl friends' had beaten into my hapless, nerdy, male head were some faint ideas about the importance of dressing well. Did I dress well all the time? Hell no. I'm still a bit of a geek, and I have better things to spend my time and money on besides clothes. But at least I don't wear mostly brown anymore, and I do have at least a few nice thing to wear.