First Year After Ch. 04

"That's too generous, Mom!" I said.

"What happened to 'my money is our money'?" she asked. "All of this discussion of ownership and debts and gifts is for public consumption, Drew, especially for the IRS, so most of the money and property that's legally mine today wind up in your hands as tax-free as possible before I die, hopefully many, many years from now. I didn't have to pay taxes on what your Dad left me, because he was my husband, but legally you're only my son, so we have to consider some estate planning. Getting back to the subject of this house, we want it to look to everyone else like you're setting up an independent household from mine, and taking advantage of an excellent opportunity in a real estate market that's just now recovering, so having you be the owners on the deed is the better way to do that, without having to constantly update the deed with new ownership percentages every year. But we are one family where it matters, and 'mine' and 'yours' really have no place in that. Okay?"

I nodded as Carmen came back in with the paperwork, and Patti and I filled out our parts, listing Mom as our lender of record. Mom started on the Private Mortgage paperwork at the same time, and Patti and I signed that when she was done. Carmen shook hands with us again, and walked us out.

Patti and I were now 12 days away from being homeowners. This was so not what I was expecting out of my summer. But if it would help protect our secret even a little more, it was worth it. As a plus, Grandma Marion freaked out when I called her with the news, actually thanking her for her question, as I doubt it would have happened otherwise.

But not as freaked out as Patti's parents, at the sudden developments, when we went to their house for dinner and told them. Carrie said, "Aren't you guys getting things a little out of order? Usually, you graduate, then get married, then buy your first house together. You're doing it in reverse."

"I never have been a conformist, Mom." Patti said, to which Carrie sighed.

Her dad Jack clapped me on the shoulder, and said, "Well, I guess I don't have to worry about you providing for my girl, do I?"

"I aim to do my best, Mr. Taylor." I responded. "Sad as it is, my Dad's life insurance has gotten us off to a pretty good start."

Jody asked, "Can I have a room?" and got four simultaneous noes in response, followed by laughter she thought was directed at her, as I saw her lip trembling.

Patti clarified, "Kiddo, there will be two empty bedrooms, at least until we have kids, and you can stay in one if Mom and Dad have to travel somewhere, or they just want a date night, or once Drew and I do have kids and want you to babysit, but this is your home until you're done with college, okay? I'm not playing Baby Sister Ping Pong, where you threaten Mom and Dad with moving out every time you fight, then back again when they offer you some incentive. I've had friends with divorced parents who do that to them, and it's deplorable."

"Okay, sis." she said. "I get it. But can I help pick out decorations like my room here?"

"I'd like that," Patti answered. "It won't hurt to decorate one room for a girl and one for a boy, will it, Drew?"

I shrugged, saying, "I'm okay with that."

"Have the two of you agreed on a number?" Carrie asked.

Patti nodded. "Yeah, either two, a boy and a girl, or a third if the first two are the same. But no more than that."

-----

June 3, 2013

We saw workers over at the investor's house, but when we went over to talk to them, they indicated that they'd just been hired by the investors. On TV, it shows most of these house flippers doing the work themselves, so I wondered at what effect that would have on the final asking price, if we were still going to try and buy it. Mom was researching the process for forming an LLC, and started the application for a home equity line of credit, anyway, not deciding yet whether to turn it in.

The home inspection on our new house went off without any problems on Friday, thankfully. We expected no problems with the title search, since the foreclosure itself would have cleared any liens. Mom had to work both weekend days, so we didn't have any opportunity to shop for furniture, but weren't in any hurry, anyway. Patti and I spent the weekend browsing places, though.

Our stock trades cleared, and we wired 185 thousand of that money from the brokerage to my bank account, the extra to cover closing costs, and Mom transferred some to her account to replace the funds she'd used for the deposit, and to provide a budget for furnishing the house. As my Mom requested, I reinvested the extra money, into stocks that would hopefully perform better for me.

Monday rolled around, and Patti and I went to ABC for our first day of our internship. We identified ourselves to the receptionist, and she said Mike would be out to escort us in in a few minutes. There was one other woman sitting in the lobby, holding a similar paperwork package, and we approached her to see if she was the third intern.

"Hi, I'm Drew Barnes, and this is Patti Taylor. Are you the other summer intern?" I asked, extending my hand.

She shook it, as she stood up, saying, "Jean Parker. Sure am! Nice to meet'ya both." It was then that I realized how short and thin Jean was. Getting a closer look at her, the word that immediately popped into my head was 'Pixie'. She was barely five feet tall, if she was that, bright red hair with some blue at the tips, sparkling green eyes, an upward turning nose and full red lips. She was nearly flat chested under a loose blouse, her thin waist flared into hips that hinted at a nice tush under a denim skirt which came to mid-thighs. The overall package was pretty sexy. Girls with that build can sometimes look like they're still 14, but something about Jean never let me think that she was anything but a woman. Heck, my 14-year-old cousin Angie was taller at 5'4" and had more curves than Jean, but I'd never confuse Angie with an adult like Aunt Toni, who was the same height and overall built.

"I see you've introduced each other, good. Let's go to your orientation," came a voice from the door that led into the rest of the building. Jean led the way, and her butt was even cuter than I expected, and as her hair swished, I caught sights of even more blue under an outer layer of red.

Patti saw me staring, and gave me a nudge to get me moving, and fanned her own face, a motion I knew meant Patti thought she was hot, too.

After we were through the security door, Mike turned his head and said, "Hi, I'm Mike Thomasson, one of the IT managers you'll be working with this summer. There are three of us who'll be handing you work to do, but my first task with you is orientation, giving you the tour, taking you to Security for badge pictures, getting you logged onto the network and so forth. Your Network IDs have already been set up, so it's mainly getting you logged in and your own passwords selected, and any other configuration on your laptop that you'll need, like printers."

He stopped at a conference room, where there were three boxed laptops and a box of donuts waiting for us. He looked at me, and said, "I assume you're Drew Barnes, but which of you is Patti and which is Jean?" The girls identified themselves. "The donuts are kind of a Monday thing around here, and bagels on Fridays, but they're usually in the break room, which I'll show you soon. But right now, why don't you sit down and grab a donut and introduce yourselves, and try to tell me and each other something about yourselves that isn't on your resume. Drew?"

"Hi, I'm Drew Barnes, I was born here in Dallas, and fell in love with computers at the age of 10. It'll come out eventually, but I already know Patti. She and I have been dating since Freshman Year, and got engaged back in March and are getting married next March. We're actually in the process right now of buying a house that we'll live in after college."

"Wow," Mike said. "How'd you manage that, at your age?"

"Well, my Dad died last December, and I'm using life insurance money for half, and my Mom is lending us the rest. The house had just gone on the market, and we decided to move on it."

Mike and Jean both told me they were sorry for my loss, and I thanked them automatically. "Okay, Patti?", Mike asked.

Patti cleared her throat, before saying, "Well, Drew just spoiled my big reveal, but I'll forgive the lug. Hi, I'm Patti Taylor. I was actually born in Denver, before my parents moved us here when I was 10. They're both still alive, thankfully. I didn't catch the computer bug until I was 14, but love working with them. I also love computer games, as a player. Not sure I'd want to program them, though."

"I guess that leaves me," Jean said. "Hi, I'm Jean Parker. I was born in Austin, but it seems like my parents move every five years or so, first Denver, then Albuquerque, then San Jose for a while, then back to Denver. They're both programmers, so I was banging on keyboards before I could walk, and they started to teach me to program when I was eight or so. I knew binary and octal and hex long before the school ever introduced exponents and number bases in math class. I never imagined any other career. It's in my blood."

"You should get to do some coding later this summer," Mike said. "But a lot of the tasks we have lined up for you first are more along the lines of data entry and testing. Our programming manager for our IT Department gets really nervous about giving interns write access into the codebase, so you'll have to prove first that you can read our code and understand it, before being allowed to change any of it. And even that will be strictly supervised by one of the programmers, as you would be using one of their IDs to submit your code, and they'll have to enter their password as you do it. I'm the QA manager, and you'll be working with me before that You'll actually be starting with Jose Sanchez, our data entry manager, for the rest of the first two weeks, but he asked me to handle orientation today. You ready for the five cent tour?"

Mike escorted us through the building, which didn't turn out to be one of their manufacturing facilities, but was instead mostly administrative offices, including the IT Department for the company, handling all the applications which ran on the company's PCs and servers internally. He showed us the cubicles where we would be assigned, where the restrooms were and the break room, where we each grabbed coffees, and then led us back to the conference room, and led us through setup of our laptops.

Most of that day was similar, one time tasks that took up time, but wouldn't need to be done again. Our real work in data entry would start the next day.

At the end of the day, as we were walking out, Patti said, "So, Jean, if your parents are in Denver, where are you staying while you're working here?"

She answered, "Well, the company's salesmen live all over the country, and internationally, handling different regions, right? Well, occasionally they need to come here to Dallas for one reason or another, so ABC maintains three apartments at a complex near here, and they're actually letting me stay in one of them for the summer, and because I had originally been approved for my internship at an office in Denver that cancelled out on it, they're not charging me rent for its use, either."

"Not bad. Any friends in Dallas?" I asked.

"Just the two of you. Or is that presumptuous?"

"We're going to be together a lot over the next ten weeks," Patti said. "We're going to wind up either friends or enemies. I'd prefer friends. So that's the way I intend to treat you. Sound good?"

"Sounds great. I'd invite you guys over to my apartment for dinner, but I haven't had a chance to unpack anything yet, after driving down here yesterday, never mind shop for any groceries. Another night, maybe?"

We agreed, and Patti and I headed to our respective cars. Patti was expected home for dinner with her parents, after she'd spent the night at my house, so we'd had to take both cars.

-----

June 8, 2013

There's not much to say about closing on a house that will excite anyone who's actually been through it. Page after page of signatures, mostly for Patti and I, but occasionally one for Mom as our lender. But it only took us about an hour, and the bank manager who was handling the sale handed me three sets of keys to the house, along with a bag that held two garage door openers, and shook my hand. "Congratulations, Mr. Barnes and Ms. Taylor!" he said.

We drove back to Mom's house, pulled our car into our driveway, and walked down the sidewalk, and entered our house. OUR house, whether or not I mainly still lived with Mom. I got chills thinking about it, as I looked at the blank walls.

Patti moaned, and said, "Am I nuts for already wanting to have sex in every room here?"

Mom said, "I'm not a big fan of rug burn. Let's go bed-shopping instead. If we buy early enough, we can even get a bed for the master and one for a guest room delivered and setup today, and be able to fuck here this afternoon. Then we can start shopping for couches tomorrow."

-----

June 10, 2013

On lunch break, I was eating with Patti and Jean, and checked emails on my phone. "Shit!" I blurted out, before noticing that Jose and Mike were both three tables away. I muttered, "Sorry," to the room.

"What's wrong, babe?" Patti asked.

"I just got an email from Matt," I said, running my fingers through my hair. "He and Sophia broke up. We are so screwed."

Patti actually slapped a hand over her mouth, cutting off several curses. "Does he say why?"

"Just that things had been getting rocky last semester, and Sophia ended it - by email of all things." I said, sighing afterwards.

Jean coughed, and said, "Would either of you like to explain who Sophia and Matt are, and why their breakup affects the two of you?"

I touched Patti on the hand to signal that I would start, and said, "Well, it's like this. Freshman year, I was assigned Matt as my roommate, and Patti was assigned Sophia, and we were all in this same co-ed dorm, a floor apart. Patti and I met about 3 weeks into the semester, and we hit it off pretty quickly. Once we wanted to have sex, of course, it meant either doing it quickly when one of them were in class and we weren't, with the usual signal of a sock hanging over the door handle to let them know not to come in, in case we weren't done. Which was the case a lot. Matt was more accepting of it than Sophia, so we wound up doing it more in my room, which left Matt with a lot of time sitting in the dorm's lounge area, or going to the library to study, which wasn't that close to our dorm."

Patti cut in, saying, "Well, Sophia knew where I was spending my time, why Matt was in the lounge, and she finally took pity on him, telling him that he was welcome to study in our room, at my desk, if he wanted. That eventually turned into him sleeping in my bed while I spent the night with Drew on Friday and Saturday nights. It turns out, that Sophia was really attracted to Matt, and saw this as a way to spend more time with him. She was flirting her heart out, and he wasn't picking up on it, so after about a month of these overnight stays, she just crawled into bed with him, and made her intentions clear."

"You should have seen the grin on his face the next day," I said. "Still, they weren't really pursuing each other. If I wanted to be with Patti, he'd go see Sophia, and maybe one time in three, they'd have sex. But there wasn't a relationship between them outside of the room. Then it became sex every other time, then two out of three, and finally he was asking me to spend more time with Patti so he could spend more with Sophia. But for some reason, it was still just in the room. They acted like they didn't know each other, otherwise. It wasn't until right before Christmas break that they actually declared themselves a couple. A couple months later that I found out that he'd been trying to maintain a long-distance relationship with his high-school sweetheart. In his head, he thought that having sex behind her back was okay, so long as he didn't think of Sophia as his girlfriend. And because he knew that a couple of her friends were also on our campus, he needed to keep the relationship with Sophia from being public, and Sophia was going along with the secrecy. Didn't help much, because one of those friends found out about it anyway, told his girlfriend, and the whole thing blew up in his face at Thanksgiving."

"You never told me that!" Patti growled.

"First, he asked me not to tell anyone else, and that included you. Second, I thought Sophia would have told you, afterwards."

Jean asked, "So, has this been the arrangement between the four of you all through college?"

"Yeah," I said. "Except for one more part. Second semester, after they were publicly a couple, we surreptitiously switched Matt's things into Sophia's room, and Patti's into mine, and we've been living that way ever since, with the RAs looking the other way. For the years after that, we selected our dorm rooms to be close to each other, and our parents never came to visit, given the distances. We've already made our housing selections for next year, and Matt's email said Sophia has asked to be reassigned, so that she won't even be in the same dorm with us. Patti will get a new roommate, while I still have Matt as mine. Except we'd actually have to live together, again."

"Oh, great," Patti said. "They'll probably stick me with some freshman student who signed up for housing late and forgets to do everything else, too. Drew, what are we going to do?"

"It'd be too much to hope that Matt and your new roommate hit it off, so I only think there are two options. Either we look for an off-campus apartment, or we get married right away and look into married housing on campus, and hope there's an opening."

"Not too likely. I heard there's a waiting list every year," Patti sighed. "Besides, my mom and dad have already put down some non-refundable deposits for the wedding. So I guess, it's an off-campus apartment. Can we afford it?"

I nodded. "For sure. If we take what our parents were going to pay towards our housing anyway, we can use some of the remaining life insurance money I got when my Dad died, and cover the rest, if needed. Or we could even think about looking for a two-bedroom, and asking Matt to take the other one, to help cover the costs, so he won't have to deal with a freshman roommate, either, and we could probably swing that without touching the benefit money. We got along as roommates Freshman year, and have double-dated often enough with him and Sophia. And if he and Sophia make up over the summer, she could move in, too."

Jean asked, "So, you two and Matt and Sophia. Ever...?"

"Had sex together? Nope, not once," I said. "Matt is a bit squeamish about being naked with another guy around."

Patti chuckled, and said, "Sophia once jokingly said she wouldn't mind giving Drew a try, but that was before she'd started screwing Matt, and she never mentioned it again."

"Have either of you ever done a threesome?" Jean asked. "Is it something that you would be open to, in your relationship?"

"Never done it," I lied, knowing that our threesome with Mom couldn't be revealed. "But we've talked through our sexual ethics a lot over the last three years, and if it were with the right person, I could see us doing it."

"Hmmmm," was Jean's only response.

---

At home that night, I had to retell the Matt-Sophia story to Mom, to explain why Patti and I needed to look at apartments. Patti was at her parents for dinner, and would come over later, after making the same pitch to them.

"Oh, so you thought you were sneaking one by on your parents, didn't you?" Mom chided me.