Like that Episode of Seinfeld

"We'll find out, I guess. But as long as you're not creeped out if you find out I owe you dinner, I won't worry about it."

"Truth be told, Alan, I'm super competitive and I always want to win any time I play a game. Surely Geoff's told you about my overturning board games and stuff when I was younger?"

I nodded. Katie's hyper-competitive streak had been a bone of contention for her more laid-back brother for a long time.

"If you pull a Kramer at the next rest stop bathroom, that'll suit me just fine," Katie continued. "I don't want to hear details, but you caving in will make me happy to be one step closer to victory."

The rest of the day passed as quickly and efficiently as the previous day hadn't. We made good time to Nashville before pointing the car west towards Memphis. Once we were on the far side of Nashville, we woke Sonia up for lunch, and once we were comfortably seated at another fast food joint, I asked another question that had been on my mind.

"So how do two young women wind up working in oil refineries, anyway?"

Katie smiled. "We're working for different companies, but we're also working in different jobs. Like we said yesterday, Sonia's more on the exploration side and I'm on the lab side."

"What I'm going to be doing is mostly field work," Sonia added. "Obviously everyone knows there's oil in Texas, but most of the oil reserves that are known to exist were exhausted ages ago. With us having passed peak oil, and renewable energy still a few decades off from being ubiquitous, the oil companies are re-examining some of their old stakes to see if they might have left anything behind.

"I'm going to be spending a lot of time in the field with old historic geological maps from the nineteenth century, updating the old mapping into modern software and seeing if there's anything I can spot that might have been missed. The company still owns claims on a lot of these properties, so it would be easy to move in and vacuum up anything out there that's been left behind."

"As for me," Katie continued, "you know I'm more into lab and indoor work than anything. You may know that an oil refinery receives crude oil from wherever it's been extracted, and refines it into finished oil products like kerosene, gasoline, etc. My job is going to be running quality analyses on the finished products before we ship them out to clients."

"And this relates to each of your theses?" I asked.

"Yeah," Katie answered. "Sonia's thesis is about computer modelling of stratigraphic sections and mine is about a new refining technique, so we're both having the opportunity to put the academics into practice before coming home and writing it all up."

"Plus we get to skip winter and live in a town with beaches and hot weather, so that's a big plus, too," Sonia smiled wistfully. "I can't wait to go swimming in the ocean."

We finished lunch and headed back out on the road. It was three hours' driving to Memphis, and we kept up a friendly conversation for the whole trip about a bunch of meaningless stuff; small talk about movies and TV, about people, sports, job opportunities after graduation, our families, etc. By the time we rolled into Memphis I was feeling like I knew both girls far better. Katie was still roughly the same girl I'd known before, only older, with a real sense of maturity. The entire Broadmoor family were geniuses, and Katie's expansive and creative mind clearly fit in with the rest of them. She was still a little awkward, but in a way I found surprisingly charming.

Sonia, on the other hand, was a social butterfly in a way that Katie wasn't, and despite the fact that things still seemed prickly between them, I thought they might actually be good for each other as roommates - Sonia for forcing Katie out of her shell and to go out and have fun; Katie for making Sonia buckle down and work when it was needed.

We were so much on track for a good day's driving that I decided, with the girls' enthusiastic consent, that we were going to stop in Memphis. We did the tour at Graceland and saw the motel where Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. We had dinner at a soul food restaurant before going for a walk on the Mississippi River downtown, and then we finally crossed the river into Arkansas. The rest of the day was a breeze. Katie and Sonia got along just fine, the conversation was pleasant, and this morning's unexpected sexual tension hadn't returned.

An hour or so past Little Rock, it was getting quite late, and we'd all had enough time in the car, so I pulled off Interstate 30 in the town of Arkadelphia. There were a few comfortable-looking corporate motels just off the highway, so we picked one at random and pulled up into the forecourt. It was still cool out, but no longer cold, and I was pleased to discover that the temperature even at night was warmer than I was expecting.

A few minutes later, though, we had a complication.

"What do you mean, no double rooms?" Katie asked incredulously.

"Sorry." The clerk's expression indicated he was not at all sorry. "There's a lot of people travelling for the holidays. Every hotel in town is booked. All I have left is a single room with a King bed, and if you don't take it, I'm sure those people behind you will. Otherwise you'll have to head to Little Rock."

I glanced behind me to see a middle-aged couple in hunting gear waiting patiently behind us.

"We'll take it," I decided. "I don't want to backtrack an hour. Do you have any cots left?"

The guy shook his head.

"We're fine," Sonia interjected. "If there's no couch in the room, then a King is big enough for three people in a pinch. We'll manage."

We repeated the previous day's check-in, where Katie and I lugged in our gear from the car while Sonia went on a beer run. We weren't about to make the same mistake as yesterday, though - we'd looked it up on restaurant wifi while stopped for dinner, and Clark County, Arkansas was gloriously wet. Fifteen minutes later, I was comfortably set up in a small motel room with a mediocre American beer in hand and feeling good about the day's progress. By tomorrow night, we'd be in south Texas.

Sonia was last to come back to the room, having gone for a couple of trips to the ice machine to keep the beer cold. As soon as she was safely in the room with the door locked, she reached behind her back, did the quick arms-crossing manoeuvre women learn as teenagers, and soon tossed a black bra onto the bed.

"Nothing beats taking your bra off at the end of a long day, eh Katie?" she asked.

"I generally leave mine on..." Katie trailed off.

Sonia wasn't done, and she pulled the hoodie she'd been wearing off next, revealing a thin, form-fitting purple v-neck t-shirt. It was the first time I'd really gotten to check out her body in any detail. She was pleasantly curvy, broad-shouldered with heavy breasts and wide hips. She wasn't an athletic body by any stretch, but she wasn't overweight either, just voluptuous. Her curly black hair fell just past her shoulders, and her face was cute, with full lips, lively dark eyes and a wide nose. Her complexion was stunning, a dark skin tone that wasn't quite black or white but somewhere in the space in between. As my eyes lingered lower, I noticed something that Katie beat me to verbalizing.

"Are your nipples pierced?" Katie asked.

"Yep!"

"I don't believe you," I deadpanned.

Sonia snickered. "All men know the password, huh?" I thought for a moment she was going to flash us, but instead she pulled her shirt taut, running her fingertip over her nipple and showing us a barbell-style piercing through her shirt. The material was thin enough I could see a hint of dark areola, and I was instantly horny again. I had a feeling she knew exactly what she was doing.

"...Don't those hurt?" Katie asked as she stared.

"They hurt getting them done, but no, they don't now, any more than having your ears pierced does. To be honest, they hugely increase sexual pleasure. My nips weren't very sensitive before, and now having them touched really turns me on. Plus, men seem to love playing with them."

"I'd be worried about loss of sensation," Katie mused. "But mine are really sensitive. I love it when Aaron touches or sucks on them. They're like my 'on' button."

We sat quietly for a while, drinking our beers, while watching the news on TV. I was trying not to look at Sonia - the shape of her breasts was evident beneath her form-fitting shirt, slightly saggy and with two piercings and nipples making themselves very obvious.

"Anyone else more tired than you realized?" Katie asked with a yawn. I looked at my watch and saw to my surprise it was already after 11, which to our bodies felt like after midnight with having crossed into the Central Time Zone earlier that day.

"I could go to bed," I agreed. "We've got another major day of driving tomorrow. Are we sharing the King bed?"

"I think it makes the most sense," Sonia said. "It's big enough, and there's no other furniture in here anyone could sleep on."

"I'm comfortable with it if you guys are," Katie agreed.

We took turns in the bathroom brushing our teeth and changing into pyjamas before climbing in. I wound up on one side, with Katie on the other and Sonia in the middle. Katie killed the bedside light on her side, and I was asleep before I knew it.

I awoke the next morning with another roaring case of morning wood. As I came to, almost painfully hard, I realized that in the night Sonia had cuddled up with me in a spooning position, her as the big one and me as the little one. I could feel her arm tightly around me and her breasts digging into my back. Part of me wanted to extricate myself from her grasp, but I hadn't been cuddled by a woman in months, and I couldn't deny that I liked the feel of her soft body against mine.

And so I lay still there, not able to jerk off for more than one reason, feeling my cock throbbing and focusing on the beautiful body pressing into mine. It felt like time was moving backwards.

Finally I felt Sonia stir behind me and release me, and I rolled over to face her.

"Sorry," she whispered sheepishly. "I cuddle in my sleep, as Katie found out last night. I usually sleep with a body pillow."

"It didn't bother me," I whispered back, truthfully.

She stretched, still waking up. "Sleep well?"

"I did, actually. You?"

"Not really. Being stuck in the middle sucked. Plus..." she trailed off for a moment. "How are you holding up with the contest?"

"Still Master of my Domain." I tried to continue ignoring my boner, which I knew she wouldn't have noticed. "How about you?"

"Still Queen of the Castle." She smirked sheepishly. "Can't say I haven't wanted to, though."

"I would have by now," I admitted.

"Oh, me too. I had a lot of trouble getting to sleep last night. You and Katie were out so quickly, and orgasms are my usual sleep aid. I could probably have gotten away with doing it secretly, but that would defeat the purpose of the honour system. I got to sleep eventually, but not well. I'm definitely finally feeling it."

I tried not to think about Sonia's pussy growing achingly wet while I slept beside her. "I wouldn't have tried it in a bed with the two of you, for the mess I'd leave after if nothing else."

"That's probably a good decision. And at least we're in this together." She fist-bumped me.

We lay there having whispered small talk for another fifteen or so minutes, during which my erection finally, thankfully, went away. Eventually Katie woke up.

"Good morning," she mumbled sleepily. "Ready to drive to Texas?"

Sonia decided she wanted to be first in the shower. As soon as the door was closed and I heard the water turn on, Katie got out of her bed. She was wearing a tank top and pyjama bottoms, and for the first time I got a real sense of her body, too. She was average-sized, with maybe B-cup breasts and a nice hourglass figure. Her skin was pale and dotted with moles, and even in the early morning I liked the way she looked. She'd literally been the girl next door for a lot of my life, but she was exactly a 'girl next door' in appearance and personality, too.

Katie headed for the door to the bathroom, then put her ear to it.

"What are you doing?" I asked her.

"Shhhhh!" She motioned for me to come over.

"What?"

"Sonia's the type of girl who'd cheat on the contest, and this is day 4 for her," Katie whispered, barely audibly. "She said yesterday that the shower would be her only chance to get off, so if she's going to cheat, I'm going to catch her."

"So you're trying to listen in on your roommate fingering herself?"

Katie looked horrified. "You're making me sound like a pervert!"

"Don't worry, your secret is safe with me."

Katie shook her head and turned her attention back to the door. I joined her at the door and listened with her. I could hear the steady sound of the shower and little else. If Sonia was touching herself in there, I couldn't hear any signs of it, though the idea of her masturbating in the shower was turning me on a little. When the water shut off, we both hastily went back to bed, covering ourselves up.

When Sonia emerged, wrapped in a towel, Katie decided to go next. I remained in bed, watching Sonia as she pulled a pair of teal panties up, then, with her back to me, dropped the towel. I couldn't see any of her private areas, but as I watched her pull her black bra on and fasten it from behind, I had the thought that I really kind of wanted to.

Once Sonia's bra was on, she turned around, facing me as she continued to get dressed. She was completely nonchalant about her state of undress, despite (or maybe because) of the effect it was having on me.

"Did you look at the weather this morning?" she asked as she pulled on a pair of leggings.

I hadn't, but I quickly checked my phone. "It's going to be warmer. Probably t-shirt and jacket weather this morning, and no jacket by the time we hit the Gulf Coast later."

"I'm so happy to hear that. My Caribbean side never got used to the cold."

I watched Sonia throw on a simple black v-neck t-shirt. The sight of her in her underwear had caused my erection to come back, and I prayed it wouldn't still be there by the time it was my turn in the shower.

Shortly I heard the shower shut off, and Katie emerged soon after, fully dressed. I tucked my cock into the waistband of my pyjamas and quickly made for the bathroom.

My dick was still hard as I stepped into the shower. I stroked it gently for a bit, conscious of both the contest I was in and the possibility that Katie and Sonia might be listening at the door, before I forced myself to stop. As I washed my body, the erection went down again, and I finished showering before brushing my hair and teeth and quickly shaving.

It occurred to me as I was getting ready to leave the bathroom that in my haste to get in here with my modesty intact, I hadn't remembered to grab my clothes out of my bag. I shrugged, remembering Sonia's confidence in walking out with a towel on, then I wrapped myself in my own towel and made my entrance back into the room.

Both girls were sitting on the bed on their phones, and both looked up as I entered. I noticed a flash of what I thought was attraction on Sonia's face as she realized I was nearly nude, while Katie's face registered recognition but no sense of interest. I threw a pair of boxer briefs on underneath the towel before dropping it and facing the girls, knowing I'd have at least a little bit of remaining bulge to show off to them. If Sonia had been trying to turn me on prancing around in underwear, well, two could play at that game. And I still wanted to win the contest. Katie seemed nonchalant, but the way Sonia's eyes thirstily followed me as I got dressed made me feel good about myself.

I caught sight of myself in the mirror as I pulled an undershirt on. My skin was pale from lack of sunlight in the winter, but I still liked how I looked. My light brown hair was getting shaggy - I could use a haircut, apparently - and I liked the way the clothes fit on my 5'11" frame. I'd probably put on a few pounds over Christmas, but I was still trim and in good shape. I noticed Sonia was still watching me as I finished dressing in a blue soccer jersey and jeans.

Once I was dressed, we checked out and headed to the car. Google said it was about 550 miles to the apartment the girls had rented, so we fuelled up, bought coffees, set the GPS and drove out onto the interstate. It would be about an hour southwest to the Texas state line at Texarkana, then we'd spend the rest of the day heading south to the Gulf.

The morning passed in relative silence. None of us seemed to be morning people, but the silence wasn't awkward or oppressive this time, and soon both girls were asleep. I focused on the road, enjoying the drive alone in light traffic and bright sunshine.

Katie was the first to wake up again after a long nap. "Where are we?"

"We just passed the Texas state line."

"Huh." She thought for a moment. "May as well get used to being here."

"Are you not wanting to be in Texas?" I was confused.

"I want to work in a lab for an oil company, but I don't know how I'm going to do living in Texas. I've never been, but it seems like it's going to be a major culture shock from where we grew up. I've never even seen a gun in real life, I don't like football, I don't eat meat, I don't go to church... I don't know. I'm just worried about fitting in."

"It does seem like a lot of the oil industry is associated with that cowboy culture," I observed.

"It is, and I can't say I like that. I've kind of been expecting that once I graduate I'll find a job in one of the refineries in Sarnia. At least that way I'm close to home. I am a total homebody. All I want out of life is to marry Aaron, buy a nice house, start a family. This is going to be a cool experience working down here, but I don't want it to be the rest of my life."

"You haven't said much about Aaron so far," I observed.

Katie nodded. "I know. It's because I miss him. I've been trying not to think about him. Mostly because my heart aches, and a little bit because of this contest I somehow impulsively suggested we do to try and one-up Sonia."

"Still Master of your Domain?"

She beamed. "Yes. I already told you, I'm going to win. How about you?"

"Still holding out. And you don't have to tell me about Aaron if you don't want to, but I'd love to hear more about him. All I really know is his name, plus Geoff told me he approved of him."

Katie pulled her phone out, sorting through it briefly before holding up a selfie of them together on a patio. He looked, if anything, like a male version of Katie - the same nerdy, bespectacled face, the same brown hair, the same smile, even.

"Aaron's a biology undergrad, but he wants to go to med school someday."

"Do you think he'll make it?"

She nodded. "He's a genius. I mean, my Dad's a dentist, my Mom's a real estate attorney, my brother's a Ph.D. I know what goes into reaching that level, and Aaron totally has it. He can achieve whatever he wants out of life."

"How did you meet?"

"We met in first year chemistry. He was my lab partner. I'd never had a boyfriend before. I managed to graduate high school without even being kissed. But I thought he was so cute, and so smart. I'd never really had a real crush on someone before meeting him." She smiled wistfully. "I was shocked when he asked me out, because I figured he was out of my league. But we're still together, almost six years now."

"That's sweet," Sonia piped up from the back seat. I hadn't realized she was awake. "No, really, that's awesome. If you met someone who makes you happy so young, that's wonderful for you. I'm still wondering when I'll ever meet Mr Right."

"What's your story?" Katie asked her.