General Chemistry Ch. 01

A humid, blue-gray sky pressed down on my shoulders as I waited for my study partners. It was a Friday afternoon late in my freshman year and an endless mob of students coursed through the walkways of the athletic complex behind me. Dozens of young people walking, jogging, or riding bikes, all buzzing with the possibilities of the weekend.

The heat was unusual for this time of year and the kids were going crazy. It felt like mid-July, like the campus ought to be abandoned by everyone except those poor bastards doomed to summer classes. Instead we were all trapped between spring break and finals week, like ants caught under a glass.

I sat on the baseball bleachers, watching the girls' practice on the horizon. A sheen of sweat coated my arms and chest. There was shade in the dugout but I preferred to wait where I'd be able to see them coming. And maybe I needed to torture myself a little, to keep my mind sharp before Pri and Liv finally found me.

I sighed and tried to ignore the way my stomach clenched like a fist. It may have had something to do with the text I received last night.

「Hey

「Do you want to study tomorrow

「For gen chem

「Me and pritha need to go over chap 10 to 13

「BAD

」Sure thing

」Friday though?

」What about dorm B mixer 🙁

「Wah

「Pri said you know more

「We can go to my dad's house after practice (its not far)

Liv's text had kicked my brain into overdrive. We'd always met in the library or the cafeteria, or rarely in a common room at the girl's dorm. Never somewhere private. And chemistry was Liv's specialty. For her to say that I was the resource, the study leader in this situation, was just too weird.

Was this just an excuse to hang out? That was really hard to believe with both finals and soccer nationals creeping up. It was clearly an abundance of caution on their part. Skipping dorm mixers, or whatever it is that hot student-athletes did on Friday nights, in order to study, that was a sign of nerves.

I heard the team break down their huddle from here, two hundred feet away or more. After a tangled moment, I saw them emerge from the crowd, laughing and waving goodbye to the others.

Liv had her arm around Pri's shoulder, heads close, almost conspiratorially. Pri pushed her away, shrieking playfully, before breaking into a run. Like kids, they chased and jostled, trying to trip each other, gym bags swinging wildly from side to side. When they were within fifty feet, I climbed down from the bleachers to greet them.

Liv was thin with narrow hips, and tall, only an inch shorter than I was. Not quite lanky, more tom-boyish than elegant, with a heart-shaped face covered in freckles. Tom-boyish or not, she was a natural athlete, with long, supple arms and lean legs. Her brown hair fell in waves just below her shoulder although she typically pulled it back in a ponytail. She was beautiful, but not dramatically so. I'd sometimes joke that she looked like a department store model and she played it up, voguing against the wall in loose jeans and hoodies.

I knew how funny she could be but most people thought of her as tough. She would say things that were too honest sometimes. On a soccer team full of knockouts, she had magnetism, an effortless energy that made her the center of attention.

Pri was similar in some ways. Smart but dedicated, always the last to tap out during study group. Funny, but more sarcastic, almost sly, not nearly as direct as Liv. And an athlete, obviously. Although she was short she was in remarkable shape even compared to her teammates with wide hips and thick, powerful thighs. There was a physicality to her that was hard to explain, as though her movements were more real, more natural than other people. When she looked at you, you could truly feel the weight of her attention. Her magnetism was not social but visceral.

She smiled and waved.

"Hey hey, let's get out of here!" she shouted across the baseball diamond.

"For sure!" I called back. As they got closer, I saw how brutal their practice must have been. Their orange practice uniforms were drenched with sweat and liberally sprayed with mud. Their knees and shins were scraped and filthy. "You guys, and I mean this with all due respect, look disgusting."

They both laughed and struck poses, modeling their mess with pride.

"If you like that, take a look at this," said Pri. She turned her smooth, brown calf to show a bloody gouge. "Cleated in the first fifteen minutes."

"You're pretty sweaty yourself, Jacky," said Liv. She was the only person to ever call me Jacky, and I didn't mind it. It made me seem slightly more outgoing than just Jack, and it was miles better than Jackson. "We'll clean up at the house. We can eat too. My dad's got all kinds of stuff."

"Do that talk walking," said Pri. "Because I am actively bleeding."

Liv's car was a short walk away in the athlete's lot while I was parked a bit further down. The girls discussed the merits of hydrogen peroxide versus alcohol, and then vodka versus isopropyl, for wounds or otherwise. No one mentioned studying.

I'd met Olivia and Pritha in Bio II, fall semester. We realized pretty quickly we learned well together and we were looking at similar course loads. Soon we'd evolved from Olivia to Liv, Pritha to Pri, and, of course, Jackson to Jacky. We'd been organizing study groups ever since.

We even picked some spring classes together. Having friends along took some of the sting out of morning lectures. I was usually over-caffeinated and was the first to raise my hand. The girls had grown up in the same town and they'd learned how to ask questions together, picking at every detail until the professor gave up and pushed us to office hours. Our Bio prof once called us a 'coordinated attack, akin to the German blitzkrieg,' which was the bizarre sort of comment that Liv held on to for months.

"Are you listening?" Pri poked me in the arm. "I said no mixers on the 25th. We need you bushy-eyed and bright-tailed for the drive to Concord."

"But not too bushy-eyed," said Liv. "Let's not repeat the mistakes of Bio II cram-pocalpyse. I think you were weeping tears of espresso by the end."

"Hey now, I got us through all the sperms, didn't I?" I counted on my fingers dramatically. "Gymnosperms, angiosperms, flangiosperms..."

"Anglosperms," offered Pri. "Uh, mangosperms..." We broke up laughing at that.

"I'm excited though," I said. "Really. I still haven't seen either of you out there. I'm assuming you're the greatest to ever take the pitch."

I'd been to one game earlier in the season. The tickets were free but the girls never played so they asked me to keep away. ('Save your Saturdays,' Liv had said. 'Unless you're just feeling some supreme Timberwolves pride.')

"Field, Jack," said Liv with exaggerated intensity. "We call it a field in this country."

"Speaking of foreign sports," said Pri. "I heard Jack has been playing squash with Morrison." I groaned.

"Squash?" Liv raised an eyebrow. "For real? What, are you up for a big promotion at the firm?"

"Okay..." I said, not really having anywhere to go with it. "He asked me. As a favor. It's not that bad. And it's a great workout." That part was true. I wasn't a college athlete but I was in damn good shape. I'd been swimming since high school, lifeguarding every summer, and the cardio of squash was no joke.

"He said you wear the goggles."

"They're his goggles! You have to protect the eyes!"

"You expect us all to believe..." Pri paused dramatically, like a TV lawyer. "That Morrison owns multiple pairs of squash goggles?"

"I can't believe that you don't believe it." That set us going for a minute. My roommate was a bizarre guy and everyone had their own special Morrison story. That occupied us the rest of the way.

Liv had parked her green SUV in the rear of the lot. The cab was stifling hot and the girls stepped away after tossing their bags in. The car was new, or at least new-adjacent, and the two of them were filthy.

"Your poor seats," I said. "To receive such disgusting bodies."

"Don't worry your head," said Liv. "I've got some towels and stuff."

I shrugged. "So, come to the west entrance and I'll follow you?" My four-door was still a few minutes walk. "And you said your dad's is close?"

"Close-ish," said Liv. "Hold on, we'll take you to your car and leave from there."

"Oh, okay. It's not a big deal though." I hiked my thumb in the right direction. "I can just walk it."

"We'll only be a minute," said Pri, cryptically. A minute for what? "Stand over there and keep an eye out." I narrowed my eyes a little but did as she said.

I stood on the opposite side of the car, squinting against the gleam of dozens of windshields. No one nearby, not really. Casually, mumbling something about moldy towels, Liv pulled her jersey over her head. Her full, freckled breasts strained under a black sports bra. I straightened up, panicking a little, and aimed my head towards the inner lot.

Did they not realize I could see them through the window? My heart thumped so loud I thought they might hear it, but no, they chatted away like it was nothing. Slowly, carefully, I angled my head. Jesus Christ! Pri had her jersey off too and she just dropped her shorts to the pavement.

Olivia was incredible. Tall, fit, with a pert ass and taut stomach. A knockout.

I barely noticed her.

Pri shook out her thick mane of black hair, pulling it back into a ponytail. Her sports bra was orange and it barely contained her perfect handfuls of tit flesh. Yanking at the strap, she dabbed herself with a towel, revealing the stark brown on brown tan line across the top of her breasts. Blood flooded into my cock. My mouth filled with saliva.

Pri propped her foot in the door, scrubbing her knees and shins, the towel coming away with dirt and blood. Her incredible, muscular thighs bulged against white compression shorts. Soaked with sweat, the shorts were practically see-through, and I could easily follow the trail of dark hairs on her stomach as they transitioned into the thick mass of pubic hair between her legs. Her vulva, dear lord. The white fabric was pulled up into her and I could plainly make out the lips of her pussy.

My jeans were suddenly too tight. I turned away completely and adjusted myself, my entire body baking in the heat. I took a few deep breaths and willed myself to look anywhere else. I even alternated pinching my forearms, hard, trying to distract my body from its masculine impulse.

"Okay," said Liv cheerfully. "Let's boogie." They'd changed into loose shorts and over-large logo'd t-shirts, outfits that were about as anti-erotic as possible. They looked like those characters from Pulp Fiction, dressed in donated clothes after a bloody murder.

"Great." I climbed weakly into the backseat and we were off. We found my car quickly. "So," I choked out. I cleared my throat. "How far are we talking?"

"It's not that far..." said Pri, and at the same time, Liv said, "Thirty minutes."

That was much farther than they'd let on and I'm sure my face was a mess of confused feelings. I was stifling lust, covering the erection in my lap, invited to a strange location with two beautiful women, one of which was the sexiest creature in human history, and no one had actually mentioned studying yet.

"Why don't you just grab your bag and I'll drive?" Liv asked. "No sense in wasting gas." Pri nodded her head as though this was sensible.

I think they could have told me to walk the whole way and I would have agreed. I retrieved my backpack, heaved it really, weighted down as it was by two textbooks and a laptop, and slid back into Liv's car. The seats were still scalding hot.

"Maroon 5 or Ed Sheeran?" Liv asked.

"Trick question?" I guessed.

"Trick question," said Liv, tapping her phone to play some Beyoncé.

The ride was mercifully uneventful. Whether by accident, or whether they sensed that I was feeling off, the girls ignored me for most of it, content to talk podcasts and tournament prep. I was a little shaken, and it got worse when I saw it in the backseat.

Pri's compression shorts.

They were hastily stuffed into a webbed pocket on her bag, right next to me. Intrusive thoughts crawled around my brain. Had I really looked away at the moment she had taken them off? What was she wearing now? Was she wearing anything? Or wearing nothing? What did they smell like? Fuck, what did they taste like? I really considered grabbing them, or pretending to drop something so I could lean down and sniff. What the fuck was wrong with me?

I'd given up trying to relieve my erection. Excitement was the wrong word. I was like a teenager spying on his first real tits. There was nothing in the world that would get my cock to lay flat. I breathed in counts of five and stared into the roof of the car.

College had certainly been an adjustment. The textbooks were hardcore, not to mention murderously expensive. Dorm showers were, in a word, disgusting. I had to learn how to smoke weed without anyone catching on that I'd been stone straight my whole life. My highschool of a thousand kids in Bumfuck, Connecticut did little to prepare me for university life among twenty thousand strangers.

Out of my many struggles, however, I was the worst with women. I'd never seen so many beautiful women in one place outside of my occasional trips to New York City, but in the city there was the anonymity of the crowd. You could look, you could stare even, and it didn't matter. You were just a wisp of exhaust, ready to blow away on the next wind.

At U, there were gorgeous, available girls everywhere and they could see you. It seemed like everyone was getting to know everyone, like they instinctually knew to collect as many friends as humanly possible, and people were fucking each other like crazy. Even Morrison was getting laid.

And here I was, cock hard in the backseat, still a virgin.

I wasn't completely inexperienced. I'd had my share of hookups in highschool and in college. Two highschool girlfriends suggested that I wasn't unattractive, but whether at Middlefield High or at U, things always seemed to sputter out right before I would actually have sex. And I knew that, factually, statistically, going into college as a virgin was normal. What wasn't normal is how virginity clung to me despite four mixers a month and an active Tinder profile. I'd been on a dozen dates with perfectly fine people but it never seemed to click.

Except with Pri and Liv. Click wasn't the right word though. The way we got on was something different, something I was terrified to mess with. Morrison would groan whenever I came straight home after a study session.

'You're hopeless, my dude,' he'd said, banging his head against the door like he thought it would knock sense into me somehow. 'These are, like, beautiful, complex, hot women, and you do nothing. It's like some Greek myth of virginity. If you're not gonna make a move, at least introduce me.'

'Mo,' I told him, not for the first time. 'You have actually met them already.'

'You don't have to say it like that, man.'

Even then I knew that it was all about Pri.

I liked Liv too, and I'd even had a crush on her for a few weeks at first, but she was dating someone. Ryan. Nice guy, a senior public admin major.

Pri, on the other hand, was still single. I heard that she went on a few dates with another freshman early in the year, a Cal-something. It hadn't gone very well and she'd been unattached since then.

So Pritha invaded my thoughts and my dreams. The way she moved, the way she spoke. She had this wonderful, barky laugh but she didn't give it away. She was cool, and not in a showy way, more like she had seen it all before and was patiently waiting for the world to conform to her and not the other way around. I wasn't stupid enough to think this was love, but I was clearly into all-consuming-infatuation territory.

And we were driving together to a distant, possibly private, definitely personal location. My fantasies from last night had been conservative to a fault. A gentle look. A laugh and a soft touch on the hand. A kiss, god! A kiss and a 'text me later.'

Now, despite my fatalism and the warning bells ringing in my mind, I thought of pushing Pri against a wall, squeezing her full breast in my hand, her fingers drifting down towards my stiff cock...

We finally pulled off the highway into a placid looking suburb.

"And Maury's gone? Doing his thing?" Pri asked as we turned down a deadend street that revealed itself to be a cul-de-sac. My anxiety took control, deflating my dick to something I could tuck and hide.

"Yep," Liv chirped. "Doing his thing." She parked in front of a ranch style house made of brick. Distracted as I was, I thought it was nice. Big but hidden back behind some oak trees. Though I knew Liv's mom was still in the picture, her dad apparently lived alone. It was a hell of a house for a single man.

Heaving our things, we shuffled to the door, making small talk under a wicked sun. It was no cooler inside. When we entered, the girls kicked off their slides and walked into the kitchen while I untied my sneakers. I couldn't quite hear them, almost like they were talking low on purpose. Liv came out with some bottles of water in her arms and fiddled with the thermostat.

"We can sit on the patio while this place cools down," she said. I spied Pri opening the glass doors leading out back, carrying some oranges. Their gym bags had disappeared.

I carried my own bag over my shoulder and walked through the house in my sweaty socks. The furniture was... comfy, I guess is the word. Lots of patterned quilts and big potted plants. Not really a man's touch, if I was being honest, and I couldn't remember if this was where Liv had grown up. He had interesting art though, lots of it, and even had a piano. The house felt lived in, a tough job for one guy.

Through the glass I saw that there was a decent sized pool, a grill, and a line of vinyl lounge chairs. The water looked cool and inviting. The girls were already sitting at the patio table and they looked up abruptly as I came through the door, as though I was interrupting something. I leaned on a chair and Liv tossed me a water.

"You didn't say there was a pool," I said, holding the cool bottle against my forehead. The yard was big and secluded, with tall trees hanging over the fence line. "I'd have brought my suit. Man, it's really nice back here."

Liv waved her hand like it was nothing. "My dad's project. There was just a scrubby yard here six or seven years ago. He did a lot of it alone."

"Hell of a project," I said. No wonder his daughter was such a badass. I saw the glint of a huge glass construction around the side of the house. "And a greenhouse too? He's a man of many talents."

"Huh?" said Liv. She followed my line of sight and laughed. "No, that's a solarium. My dad could kill a cactus. If it's green around here, I'm keeping it alive."

"Ah," I said. For the first time in the months we'd known each other it was like we'd run out of things to say. I looked around the yard, nodding mindlessly.

"So, you guys want to chill first or study first?" asked Liv. It was the first time anyone had mentioned studying. I actually sighed. In relief or despair, I didn't know.

"You don't want to wash up?" I asked. "I can just hang out here for a bit." Liv was looking at Pri and didn't turn when I spoke. It was like she didn't hear me.

Pri paused for a moment and then blew out some air. "Chill first," she said. Liv grinned and clapped her hands like she was breaking a huddle.

"Cool, I'll get some towels," said Liv. "Be right back." She trotted into the house and out of sight.

"Uh, towels?" I asked. Pri looked at me with a thin smile.