Alistaire Too Ch. 04: Poppy

The story of Al becoming Alistaire was such a big hit, I decided to go ahead and write a sequel series with all the seeds I planted but never germinated in the original. These tales will be a little more disjointed, and jumbled up chronologically. Please understand that while a few things in the early parts of each entry in this second series may overlap each other, the endings are arranged chronologically.

I'd like to make a special shout out to the readers and commenters who responded so wonderfully to Alistaire's first cycle. His further adventures are dedicated to you.

—————

THE ONE WITH POPPY

—————

I didn't know when it was going to happen, or where. But I knew it was going to happen. Turns out it took all of two hours. I was sitting in the Tuck with Bridget, Petra, and Beth. They all, or at least Bridget and Beth, knew I was upset. Beth was actively probing to get me to talk. Bridget was passively trying to screen me from Beth's questions. She knew I'd have already told them if I thought I could.

Suddenly, an ice cold voice spoke over my shoulder. "You!"

I just winced.

"Hi, Poppy," Bridget said, momentarily missing the tone of voice.

Poppy ignored Bridget. "You," she hissed again at me. "Get up. We need to talk," she growled, no one missing the hostility in her voice now.

The three girls I sat with all shrank back. "See you later, Alistaire," said Beth.

"Maybe," added Petra darkly.

"Don't trust this shithead," Poppy growled at them, angry that they had simply sat with me.

I dutifully got up and muttered, "Later, guys." I kind of hung my head and let Poppy lead me out of the Tuck.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the three sharing wide-eyed gazes.

Poppy led me out of the basement level and outside. It was full on dark out, and we wandered around a corner into the open. It was not private, but it was at least out of people's direct vision.

She rounded on me. "You fucked my mother!"

I had no answer. There was no answer. The evidence had been abundantly clear.

"What the fuck were you trying to do, you cocksucker?" Poppy went on, angrily but quietly. Even in her rage, she knew that Mr. Phelps's apartment was only two stories above us and his windows were always open.

"I..." I started to say, though I had no idea what words were going to follow 'I'. Turns out I needn't have worried. Poppy ran right over me.

"I can't even go home now, you asshole. Not after what I saw. How am I supposed to make my mother's bed ever again? I'll have PTSD!" She balled up her fists and glared at me. "She has texted me like a hundred times since that God-awful moment. I've had to block her."

"You should talk to her," I started to say in alarm. I could handle any consequence other than coming between Poppy and her mom.

"I am not at home to you handing out advice!" Poppy spat. She stamped her foot. "Here I thought it was kind of cute that you were following me around. I thought maybe you were maybe going to try to ask me out or something. But no! You were macking on my mom?"

"Poppy..."

"Do. Not. Talk. To. Me."

*

Less than a minute after Poppy had stalked off and I had swung in the opposite direction to walk through the night outside around a couple of buildings to the stairs of my dorm, my phone dinged. More or less automatically, I looked at the text. I was not in conversational mood.

It was a new text group, Beth, Petra, Bridget, and of course me. Wait, those three together in this conversation? Apparently the compartmentalization of my life was breaking down here at the end of school.

BETH: Is she done with you?

I sighed.

ME: I don't know. Hope so, I think.

PETRA: Where are you?

ME: I'm going to my dorm to sulk. ALONE

I shoved my phone in my pocket and climbed the stairs.

Less than two minutes after I was in and flopped down on my bed in the dark, the room lit only by nighttime ambient light from the window, my door swung open and all three girls slid in.

"In the dark? Really?" was all Bridget said, sitting quietly on the other end of my bed.

"We knew you were interested in her," Petra said. "Did you get a little too aggressive too soon?"

Before I could object to that idea, Beth cut in. "Alistaire? Not a fucking chance."

I shot Beth a look of gratitude at her somewhat misplaced faith me, but said nothing.

Beth perched on the edge of my desk chair. Petra leaned against the far wall.

Bridget slid a little closer and patted my thigh. "Come on dude. You look traumatized. You know you can talk. I know you worry about secrets 'that aren't yours to tell', but you need to talk about whatever happened. And you know we can all keep it quiet."

I looked back and forth significantly from Beth to Petra, whom I had certainly not told about each other.

Bridget shrugged. "Sometimes people guess, dude. When Petra got close to the truth, we thought it was better to tell than to lie. And it is all in the family."

I sighed and nodded.

"But you pissed that girl off, man!" Bridget went on. "This is a case where you need some outside advice. I don't think I've ever seen you piss anybody off for any reason, much less a girl you like. Fess up."

I took a deep breath.

"Did you fuck her finally, and it got all tangled?" Beth guessed.

I shook my head. "I didn't fuck Poppy. I fucked Sloane."

They all looked at me.

"Who the fuck is Sloane?" Petra asked.

I looked up. "Poppy's mom."

Now, that bought me a few moments of blessed silence. A few moments.

"You fucked Miss Manning?" Bridget gasped. I thought my days of shocking Bridget had passed.

After another hesitation, Beth asked. "When the hell did you decide to do that?"

"About ten minutes before I did," I sighed again. "We had been flirting harmlessly, then all of a sudden... whoosh!"

"You don't flirt harmlessly, Alistaire," Bridget said. "You flirt like a hurricane."

"How did Poppy find out?" Petra asked.

"She walked in on her mom riding me on the bed," I confessed. Another few moments of blessed silence. "Poppy was pretty stoked actually, on first seeing her mom was finally getting laid. But then she saw by who... and here we are."

"Weeeell," Beth said in a silly, cringy voice. "I think the Poppy campaign can probably be set aside."

"Yeah, dude," Petra said, "that is done."

"Alistaire, what possessed you, when you were chasing a girl like Poppy, to let yourself get distracted by her mother?" Bridget asked sympathetically.

"Have you seen her mother?"

They all three laughed.

"Alistaire," Beth said, "you are a great guy. Separate from that, you are a great lay. But you are one seriously elemental dude, you know that?"

"Yeah? Well, I am seriously elementally bummed," I growled. "I've got to fix this."

Again, they laughed at me.

"There is no fixing having fucked her mom," Bridget said gently.

"Yeah," Petra said. "Move on." She leaned forward, arms still folded under her breasts. "I imagine that you might be able to find an avenue or two to distract you from the disappointment." Petra and I had finally made the chance to get together without having Bridget there to make things all complicated and athletic and awesome. The results had been... extremely gratifying. Yes, I had plenty of distractions available.

"That isn't my problem," I said miserably. "Look at yourselves. I'm the luckiest guy on the planet, and that has't changed. But I have to fix this." I waved my phone at them. "Poppy blocked her mom. She won't talk to her at all. I can't have that go on. It's my responsibility. If I blocked my mom, she'd slit her wrists!"

They all looked at each other.

"I have my mom blocked right now," said Bridget. "And she has another two days in the box before I let her out."

"I block my mom all the time," said Beth.

Petra looked at them both. "I've never even thought to block my mom. But that is brilliant!"

"Alistaire, in a day or three, Poppy will walk over to her house, yell at her mom in the kitchen, and they will hug it out. They will be buddies again, and Poppy will get to be the grownup for once," Beth said.

"But she's still gonna hate you," Petra added.

"Oh yeah," Bridget agreed. "Come on, you got to tell us, how did she react when she saw it was you in bed with her mom?"

"She screamed, 'You stuck that into my mother?'" I said miserably.

I really didn't need the last round of laughter. I just hoped that they were right about the rest of it.

*

Poppy actively avoided me. Big surprise.

The big surprise came the next day. I was chilling out on the grass beside the campus pond in the afternoon, with nothing to do because it seemed like a super bad idea to go hang out by the tennis courts, much as I wanted to see how Sloane managed with Poppy at practice.

Ben suddenly appeared and came toward me at a hell of a fast clip. "You!" he exclaimed with an intensity I had not thought him capable of. He plopped down on the grass, next to my puzzled ass. "It's you! You are Beth's other guy!"

"Oh wow, dude!" I started say. Great. Just what I needed—another uncontrolled revelation. Now Ben was going to be pissed with me.

But he wasn't. He was burbling.

"First those three hot chicks back where you live, now you get with Beth here?" Ben exclaimed. "You are even more of a legend than I thought!" He slapped me on the shoulder, then sobered suddenly. "But not as legendary as you are as a friend. You practically brow-beat me into asking her out. Truer friendship hath not been seen on Earth, than when Alistaire chose to share that girl."

"She has told you that she asked me to do that, right?" I said, dryly. At least this did not look like it was going to go sideways...

"Really? I mean she did say that, but I didn't believe her."

"It happened. I'm happy to have helped." I did not tell him that she had made the request while I was buried balls deep inside her, much as his reaction would have been a top five priceless moments in my life. His ego did not currently appear to need a boost. "Are we alright?" I asked, slowly.

"What? Yes. Of course," Ben said, then paused. "Long as neither of us hurts Beth, we just keep riding the greatest wave ever, right?"

We fist bumped.

"I do worry though," Ben said.

"I thought you just said not to worry," I replied, antennae perking back up again.

"It's just... I hope Beth hasn't seemed less satisfied with you lately..." Ben said, uncomfortably, but with this weird edge of glee.

"Why would she?" I asked very slowly.

"Well, you know how girls always say size doesn't matter?" he asked.

Spoiler alert: Girls never told me that size did not matter.

"Well, even if it doesn't," Ben went on, oblivious to my inner commentary, "comparisons could be unfortunate. You know what I mean?"

I stared at Ben. He stared at me. Was he hiding a smug expression?

"Ben," I ground out, a little irritably. "Is this seriously a conversation that you started just so you can allege to me, your male buddy, that you are hung?"

"No! Of course not. I came over here because you need to know that now I know about you. But I thought you might want a heads up, since we are talking."

"You are going to tell me anyway," I said, hanging my head to hide my incipient laugher. "Just how hung are you Ben?"

"Dude! Boundaries!" Ben laughed. He paused. "Seven and a half."

"Looks like Beth is a very lucky girl," I said.

*

A couple of days after that, I saw Poppy in the halls again. Instead of avoiding me like the plague, she rolled right up on me this time. She literally poked me in the chest and declared. "I talked to Mom this morning..."

"Excellent!" I interrupted enthusiastically, and probably unwisely.

"...and I want you to know that she is in a great mood," Poppy overrode me.

"Excellent," I repeated, a little more slowly. This was not the face of a girl happy that I had cheered up her mother.

"Not because of you, Mister!" Poppy almost taunted. "She went out on a real date with a real, adult man. I'm not even sure she came home last night."

"Excellent!" I said again, displaying my encyclopedic grasp of vocabulary.

"I think she decided she needed to finally get back out there, after her..." Poppy spluttered, "fucking... pony ride!"

I almost snorted in laughter. I did not, because I do have some self-control, but I almost did. "I'm really glad," was all I trusted myself to say, since that was one hundred percent true.

"Oh, and I'm sure that you aren't jealous," Poppy went on sarcastically. But she seemed a little upset that I was not.

"I am not," I said calmly. "How could I possibly justify being possessive of Sloane? I'm not possessive of anyone, and no one should feel possessive about me."

"Sloane?" Poppy said, starting to get wound up again. "Sloane?!? Look, Al Taylor, you may have come out of your shell enough lately to do things like actually finally talk to people, including me, but that doesn't make you some kind of player. Four years of being invisible doesn't lie. Lightning struck and you got lucky."

Okay. That stung. I had not been reminded of just what the world had felt like all the time up until March in a while. I may have snarled a little. "Look, Poppy, I am glad your mom is happy. But it is not because she was my First Time or anything, because your mom most certainly was not. And it isn't because it was our third time around that afternoon that you interrupted, which it most certainly was. I'm happy because your mother is a genuinely nice person and deserves to be happy."

And I stalked away.

As I did, I did not feel proud, but I did feel like several springs had loosened. Sloane was in a good mood. Poppy was actually talking to her. My main worries were settled. And I had done something I had wanted to do for a long time. I'd told off a girl for treating me like a loser. Three months ago, I'd probably have been a little excited to have a girl be sufficiently aware of me to even call me a loser.

*

That evening, I found myself in a booth in the Tuck with Ben and Beth and nobody else for the first time. Ben and I had rolled in for shakes and found Beth holding down an empty booth. We had a brief, silent standoff over who would sit next to Beth, which I had won by simply hip-checking Ben to the side and sliding in next to her. We all three had just grinned at each other.

And there we sat, hanging out and having a great time, sharing dreams of college days to come.

When I finally got around to actually going to get us some shakes, Ben took the opportunity to slide over to Beth's side of the booth. I knew he would. When I returned, I handed out shakes to Beth and Ben and sat down on the other side with a smile. The conversation resumed happily, until an inevitable, completely natural pause in our discussion arose.

Beth had probably been waiting for it. "Well, Alistaire, this is a new thing for you isn't it?" she asked. We both looked at her, puzzled. "It's usually you sitting in the booth with more than one girl you are sleeping with. Tonight, you are one of the harem members!"

Ben looked scandalized. I just laughed. "Got that Ben? We are Beth's harem. We need official veils or some shit."

"I like it," Beth chortled, clapping her hands in delight. "Though," she said, taping a finger to her pursed lips a she thought furiously, "veils would look stupid on you. I should get you ball caps, maybe in black, with white letters that say, 'BDH'."

"BDH?" I asked, curious.

"Yeah, BDH... for my Big Dick Harem," she laughed.

Ben snorted. Then he winked at me, and murmured, "I guess she thinks you rate too, dude." We all laughed for a moment, then Ben stopped in shocked recognition, and slapped his hands down loudly on the booth's table.

Beth's name for her collection of males was instantly forgotten. Ben was suddenly in the know some more. "Hold on. 'More than one girl you are sleeping with'? Beth isn't the only one?" he asked me. He turned instantly to Beth. "He is sleeping with someone else here?"

I just grinned, almost sheepishly. I had gotten my Alpha shit out of my system earlier in the day while beating up on poor, undeserving Poppy. I wasn't even interested in torturing Ben... much.

Beth fucking laughed hysterically.

"Who?" Ben asked desperately. We both just grinned cruelly at him. We did exchange enough of a glance to reassure each other that Ben was indeed 'part of the family' now. What he figured out, he figured out.

Realizing we were not going make it easy for him, Ben started thinking out loud. "Okay, who do you hang out with here in the Tuck?" He mused for a moment. "Dang, Al, you actually hang out with a lot of girls these days, don't you? I mean, like Carla, Bridget, and Beth, of course, but also at least that one night you were on the other side from Beth and me with Bridget and Petra of all people. And I saw you in here one time with Jenn, Poppy, and Chelsea... The suspect list is long, dude."

"Chelsea? Really?" I said. "Not that girl."

"Well you are really narrowing it down for me," Ben said snarkily.

"Not Poppy either," Beth chirped.

"Beth," I said quellingly.

Ben shot me a look. "Did you try to make a move on Poppy? Ballsy move dude. But even the Twin Whisperer has to get shot down occasionally. No shame."

"The Twin Whisperer?" Beth asked.

"Trey's new name for him," Ben grinned. Adam and Trey had gotten out of hand one evening a week or so back, and I had finally clued them in to Mary's twin sister Maddie, and how that all went down. It had put them in their places. Unfortunately, it also had garnered me yet another nickname.

"That still leaves me with a bunch of suspects," Ben murmured. He stared hard at me, looking for clues in my face and finding none. He looked at Beth, but she was out-blanding even me.

"Come on guys!"

"Your reasoning is sound so far," Beth said evilly. "But you are going to have to figure it out on your own."

"Yeah, content yourself with your place in Beth's harem, right?" I grinned.

Ben almost blushed. "I'm a lucky man," he said quietly, looking into Beth's eyes.

"Could be worse," I piled on. "I mean, the first time Beth brought you up in terms of being interested in you, it was in the context of a threesome," I said. His eyes shot to me and I twirled my finger around the booth to indicate what three people she had had in mind.

Ben froze for a moment. Then the fucker said, "What are we waiting for?" and started to get up out of the booth!

I just gawped at him like a beached whale.

Beth's laughter pealed out through the Tuck. It was so loud, we had multiple other groups staring at us. She pulled Ben back into the booth. "We'll work on him, buddy," she told him.

I wanted to get up and run, but I hung in. It had been five whole days since I had last had sex with Beth, and running away from her teasing now might mess up my plans to end that streak during third period the next day.

*

This next bit of the story, I didn't see. Forgive me if I go all narrative shift and tell you what I learned later. You don't need to be as confused as I was at the time.

"My life is a living hell," Poppy said, slamming her way into Jenn's room in their dorm and flouncing down on her bed.

"I figured," Jenn said tartly. "Come in, by the way. What the hell kind of bug crawled up your ass this week? You've been insufferable."

"An Al Taylor-sized bug!"

"You've had Alistaire up your ass?" Jenn gasped, almost horrified.

Missing the nature of Jenn's reaction entirely, Poppy just snorted. "He f..." she started to blurt, then realized that she was going to need to build up her resolve. Even with Jenn, this was going to be a hard story. But she had to tell it to somebody. "Look, he has started hanging around the tennis facility lately, going up or back from Track, and even more so after their last meet. I thought it was kind of sweet. I mean, I thought it was pretty clear he was there to see me, given where he was always looking or standing. The only other person he talked to or even looked at was my mom, once she took over coaching us."