Senior Year Memories Ch. 13

(Usual Disclaimer Time: Even though this story almost entirely takes place in a high school setting, all the characters in this story are 18 years old or older, and since we're living in the wide wonderful world of porno-land here, where clichés roam free and things might get a little unrealistic from time to time, please remember it's all in good fun, I swear.)

(Author's Note: Apologies for this one having a bit of a slow start while I build up some coming story arcs, but stick around, I promise it'll get suitably messy by the end. As always, if you're enjoying this, please, please, please drop some stars, reviews or shoot me some feedback. Though I may not always respond, I do love hearing from all of you and seeing that you're enjoying the series. It keeps me going and motivates me to continue writing more. You've all been wonderful and I can't thank you enough for all of your kind words and encouragement and yes, even the criticisms!)

Previously, on Senior Year Memories: After a long, hard month and an even longer, harder, day, nerdy 18-year-old Ryan Collins and his friends finally ran their haunted house at Regan Hills High School's annual Halloween Scream carnival. Though it mostly went off without a hitch, Ryan felt guilty about scaring a girl, April Martel, into a panic attack, though thankfully his best friend, Tori McNeil, was able to escort the girl home safely. After the event was wildly successful, Ryan discussed a possible future with friend and co-haunted house mastermind, Josie Wong, and though she was interested, due to bad experiences in the past she wasn't ready to pursue a relationship with him. Riding his bike home late on Halloween night, Ryan was pursued by a mysterious girl dressed in a creepy ragdoll costume who'd been following him throughout the day. As it turned out, she was looking for sex, and after a striptease delivered some of the most intense sex Ryan had ever had. Though he still had no idea who she was aside from the alias she went by, Sam, it turned out to be one happy Halloween after all!

***

Mistakes happen.

I've made them, you've made them, everyone's made them.

Some mistakes are little, and some are big. The little ones are easy to forget and easier to move on from, even if you might kick yourself from time to time to make them, but the big ones... they stick around.

Sometimes you can avoid making mistakes, and sometimes you can't. Sometimes you even find yourself in a position where a mistake seems like the greatest idea in the world, and only looking back do you realize everything you fucked up.

I won't say that's entirely how my November went, because it wasn't all mistakes. I had good times and great times that were in line with the rest of the year I'd been having so far, and you'll get to see all of those in their graphic details, but it did start and end with two of the biggest mistakes I'd ever made in my life and had fallout that'd follow me for the rest of my senior year. For those of you hoping for an unaffected status quo, one where I only make friends and lovers instead of doing shit so stupid I wind up losing them, then I'm sorry to disappoint you, I really am.

I never claimed that all of my Senior Year Memories would be good ones.

Time and again I'd think about everything that happened, if there was anything I could've done differently to prevent this all from going to shit, and while there was plenty, in the periods where I'd shift the blame more and more onto outside factors I tended to blame one thing: distraction.

If I wasn't so distracted, I could've made better choices. If I weren't so focused on what had happened on Halloween and other events that came up in its wake, I would've been more alert and I wouldn't have been so impulsive. This was bullshit of course, a poor excuse for an excuse, but it's the one that's the closest to any truth.

If I hadn't spent so much time obsessing, there's a chance I'd have had a very different November. Not a big chance, but a possibility, and when you're stuck in the woulda, coulda, shoulda cycle, those chances are things you hold on to.

If only...

***

"I have to know who she is. That's all there is to it," I said.

In response to this, Josie Wong just barked out a loud, single laugh, one that if you didn't know her would've seemed out of place on this small, busty Goth girl, but one I'd become accustomed to. For all of her dark trappings, I'd found it pretty easy to make her laugh and smile even when I wasn't using my mouth, fingers or cock.

This laugh wasn't as welcome as many of the others I'd elicited from her, though; not when we were in the school lunch line and it was loud enough to grab the attention of half the room.

"You could keep it down, you know," I told her.

"I could, but I won't," she said.

I poked her. She poked me back. This wasn't getting us anywhere, but that was about right lately. Halloween was three days past, and we'd finally finished removing the last pieces of "Dr. Happy's Asylum" from Bungalow 237. It was as bittersweet tearing down the haunted house as I expected it to be, but that bittersweetness was tempered by distraction.

Distraction all because of Sam, the masked girl who'd seduced me on Halloween, the girl whose name I didn't even know, the girl who'd given me some of the hottest sex I'd ever had. I had to know who she was, at the very least to thank her for a great night (though I wouldn't say no to a repeat) and when I told Josie about it, all I got from her was laughter and changing the subject.

I wouldn't let her laugh it off today, though. Not anymore.

"Seriously, I can't stop thinking about her, and it's driving me crazy. I need to figure out who she is," I said.

"Why?" Josie asked.

"Well, if you fucked someone and had no idea who they were, wouldn't you want to find out eventually?" I asked, keeping my voice low so we weren't overheard.

"It depends on how good the sex was," Josie said. I glowered at her, but she had a point.

"It was good. Fucking great, really. You think I'd be like this if-"

"Okay, okay, you've convinced me, you need to find out," Josie said. There was a smirk on her black painted lips, but it was hard to read. "What do you know about her?"

It says how much I'd been thinking about Sam how easily the answer came. "Pale skin. Shaved pussy, so I don't know her hair color. B-cups. Fit but not too muscular. Short. Good dancer. Good at handmaking costumes, and she's definitely not Mallory. She's in a club, and she knows you."

"I know a lot of people," Josie admitted.

"Yeah, but any who fit that basic profile?" I asked.

"None that immediately come to mind, but let me think it over, I might be able to get you a list of suspects," Josie said.

"Thanks," I replied. On inspiration, I leaned over and planted a quick, soft kiss on her lips.

"That might get a list of suspects sooner," she replied.

"Really?"

"No," she responded, sticking out her tongue at me. I returned the gesture.

She smiled at me. It was a nice smile, if one that hid an edge of nerves.

"You sure you want to do this?" I asked.

"No. Yeah. I mean..." Josie trailed off.

I didn't blame her for being nervous, considering I was fucking nervous myself.

Today, I was going to meet Josie's friends.

The past month the two of us spent together at school, we mostly spent our lunches either in the Puma Press offices or Bungalow 237 or on one of the many countless tasks we had to do to pull of our haunted house. I knew Josie had friends, but had never gotten a real chance to meet them. At the time it didn't seem like that big a deal, since we were busy and why would I want to meet her friends? Now, though, that Josie and I were dancing around the possibility of maybe kinda sorta dating, I was regretting that I didn't get the chance to know her friends earlier. It might've made an easier in.

"It'll be fine," I said. Then, quickly, "It will be, right?"

"Sure. It should be, anyway," Josie said.

"Should be?" I asked.

Josie leaned into me, planting another kiss on my lips. "You'll do fine.

***

We got our food and headed outside toward one of Josie and her friends' preferred lunch spots. Call it a gut feeling or maybe being nervous about the way Josie put it, but I was feeling like I could use a little backup. I knew Josie and Tori got along pretty well, and though I hadn't seen much of her since Halloween, I thought I could call her for help.

Me: Hey, Tori, got a sec?

After a short pause that wasn't nearly as short as I'd have liked, Tori replied.

Tori: What's up?

Me: You doing anything right now? I could use backup.

Tori: What kind of backup?

Me: Meeting Josie's friends. Kinda freaking out. Don't want them thinking I'm shit date material.

Tori: You kind of are.

Me: Not helping.

Tori: Sorry. I've hung with them before. They're good people. Should do fine.

Me: But if you're with me, you can help talk me up. Please?

Me: Pretty please? I'll make it up to you. Do anything. Swear!

This time the pause was longer.

Tori: Can't today.

That hit me, hard. I liked to think that if Tori ever asked for anything from me like that, I'd come to her rescue without question. I mean, okay, I did lie to her some when I was fucking Kaitlyn and Brooke and didn't let her know, but, still...

Me: Why?

Tori: Sorry.

Me: Seriously?

Tori: Good luck. Sorry. See you for game night, though.

Tori: I'm gonna kick your ass.

I scowled. What the hell could she be doing that was more important? No, no, that wasn't fair, I shouldn't take it out on her just because I was freaking out. Tori had a life too, one that I wasn't the center of.

"You okay?" Josie asked.

"I'm fine," I lied.

"Good. Because we're here," Josie said. I'd been so focused on my phone that I hadn't paid enough attention to the fact that we'd made it to the collection of bungalows that dotted the north end of our school's soccer field. Not far off were the ruins of our haunted house, but in the shade of this one bungalow sat four girls eating lunch and hanging out.

"Hey girls, I, uh, well, I brought Ryan. Thought we should make all formal introductions and all that," Josie said, about as nervous as I'd ever seen her.

Her nervousness couldn't have come close to mine, though, not with four pairs of eyes from four girls I sort-of-but-didn't-really know suddenly locked onto me, and I realized that today held major importance in Josie's and my relationship. We weren't quite dating but weren't exactly not dating either, and the way I was being appraised, I knew that Josie was using them to size me up before pulling the trigger on whether or not dating me was something she was interested in. The weight of that was scary, but it was a challenge I hoped I was up for.

I ran through what I knew about them and found I didn't have nearly as much as I'd have liked.

The tall, willowy blonde with wide glasses and her hair done up in a bun who sat cross-legged and munching a sandwich, Hope Harris, was the one I knew best. A proud band geek, she was a writer with the Puma Press and had helped Josie and I build the haunted house, though her loyalty to marching band and their booth kept her from actually working the house on Halloween. She was generally pretty quiet, but put her in the Puma Press office and she had a set of pipes and some serious opinions. She smiled up at me briefly, but then went back to the tarot reading she was getting.

Doing the tarot reading was a short emo girl with bright pink hair and a number of piercings in her nose and ears. Her dark, tight t-shirt revealed an impressive set of tits and a number of tattoos on her arms. Mia Roth. I knew she was in a band and wasn't generally that friendly, and the scowl she gave me when she looked up at me said that she was going to be trouble.

The third girl, small and pale, sat with her knees to her chest. She peeked out from underneath the hood of her hoodie with bright green eyes hidden behind horn-rimmed glasses and a few stray locks of blonde hair. I didn't know her very well, but I was familiar with Sarah Kent.

The final girl was tall and fit and unbelievably gorgeous, with a strong, striking face, flawless light brown skin and silky black hair tied back in a ponytail. As a star member of both our school's track and archery teams, I'd have thought Fatima Hassan to hang out with a more popular crowd than this, but if this year had taught me anything so far, it was not to be surprised by the company people kept.

"Hi," I said, my voice a little too soft. I cleared my throat, said an even louder, firmer, "Hi," but by then the damage was already done.

"Hey, Ryan," Hope said, friendly but more focused on her cards.

"Hi," Fatima said, eying me carefully.

Neither Mia nor Sarah said anything, though Sarah was nice enough to smile and nod at me slightly.

"Don't mind them, they can all be assholes sometimes," Josie said, motioning me to sit in the shade with her and dig into our lunches.

"We can be assholes? What about your taste in guys?" Mia said.

Fatima pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration. "Are we really going to get into this now, Mia?"

"Come on, we're just here to have lunch. I wanted you to meet Ryan because we've been hanging out a lot lately and I thought it was time you all met," Josie said.

"We've already met, but, I don't mind him much, so he's cool with me," Hope said, flashing me one of her wide, awkward smiles. At least she was a vote of confidence.

"I don't have any reason to be cool with him," Mia said. "And it's gonna take a lot more than a couple of you telling me he's nice before I'm gonna be cool with you going out with a guy again."

Angrily, I interjected, "Hey, wait a second-"

"No, you wait a second," Mia shot back. "I don't know you, and if you're as nice as Hope and Josie seem to think you are, then I'm sorry, I really fucking am, but simple fact is this: I've seen Josie drop into some pretty fucking dark depths of depression because some asshole took her heart and stepped on it for kicks. We all saw her through it, and it was fucking horrible, none of us sure we'd see her alive the next day, and none of us want to see her go through that shit again. They say you're a nice guy, and I'm not prone to disbelieving my friends, but I've also heard believable rumors about how you've been whoring yourself around school, so begging your fucking pardon, it's gonna take a lot for me to believe you're better than the piece of shit who put her there before."

I... fuck. I didn't know that about Josie. We hadn't really had all the deep conversations about our pasts yet, and though I was kinda annoyed that she'd held that part of her history back, I wasn't exactly any better. I hadn't talked to her about my mom's death at any length, so why should I expect her to go into as much detail about a horrible part of her life?

Fatima cut off my train of thought. "I've seen you around and you seem decent enough, and I am intrigued by the stories I've heard about your... capabilities, but... I have to echo Mia here. We all understand that Josie is a big girl who can make her own decisions and mistakes, but none of us want to see her in that position again. It was bad. Real bad."

Josie looked worriedly at me, then to the rest of her friends. "Hope? Sarah? Back me up here, please."

"You don't need my or any of our permission to do anything," Hope said. "I don't want to see you like that again any more than the others, but you've gotten a lot better since Jackson, and I've seen the way you and Ryan look at each other. It feels like there's something good there. Don't let us tell you what to do."

"You're not helping, Hope," Mia said, her eyes burning through me.

"Hey, Mia, calm down," Fatima said, putting her hand on Mia's shoulder. Mia shook out of her grasp.

"No! I will not calm down until I've said my part! You didn't see her! You didn't have your finger on the phone ready to call 911!" Mia proclaimed.

This was going about as bad it possibly could've gone. Mia and Fatima weren't happy with me being here, and if what they were saying about Josie and her last bad breakup was true, I didn't think I could blame them. I really liked Josie, and I wouldn't have wanted to see her in as bad a spot as her ex left her, especially if... god, did she really get that close? I could tell them I wouldn't do that to Josie all I wanted, but I doubted it would do any good.

I stood up. "I should go."

"No, you shouldn't," Josie said.

"Yeah, I should," I said.

"He's got some sense. Good," Mia said.

Angrily, Josie whirled on her friends, "You guys fucking suck, you know that?"

Calmly, Fatima replied, "We only want to look after you."

"Then fucking let me make my own decisions!" Josie replied.

"For the record, I was all for letting her make her own decisions," Hope said, raising her hand.

"Can't we give him a chance?" Sarah said softly, easily ignored by the others.

I started to walk away. Josie followed, but I said, "Hey, stay with your friends, I'll be fine."

"I'm not staying with them if they're gonna be assholes to you like this," Josie said.

"Look... as someone who's nearly fucked up a lifelong friendship recently, I don't want the same to happen to you. Stick with them. Talk out what you need to talk out. I'll be fine," I lied. My heart ached almost as much as it did when Tori rejected me, but I wasn't going to let that show to Josie. She and I had a lot to talk about, but I think she needed to talk with her friends more. They'd known her longer and they'd seen her through some hard times, while I'd built a haunted house with her, talked horror movies and had a lot of sex.

Josie bit her lip indecisively, then said, "Okay."

Okay.

It wasn't okay. I wanted it to be okay, and I wanted her to be okay and I wanted her to be okay with them, but in a stupid, hopeful, maybe even irrationally stupid and possessive part of my mind, I'd hoped she'd want to turn her back on them and come with me. It wasn't fair, but it was also hard not to feel.

She didn't leave them, but I did. There was arguing and raised voices, Josie's and Mia's the loudest among them. I knew Josie to be a fierce fighter (I mean, she did manage to hold her own against a zealot like Sophie), and to see her stumble like this was unexpected.

Then again, friends always do have a way of driving us crazy, don't they?

***

Even if lunch with Josie and her friends hadn't gone exactly to plan and left me in a sour mood for the rest of the school day, I still had game night with Tori to look forward to. I'd gotten so geared up that I told myself I could turn this to my advantage. Whenever we played a battle royale match online, Tori was always more aggressive than me, but the way I was feeling I knew I'd be able to kick some serious ass tonight. Maybe even hers.

Maybe.

So, I was starting to feel a little better by the time I got home and picked up my laptop, and by the time I reached Tori's place I was even starting to feel a little better about myself. Josie had spent the afternoon sending me texts apologizing for her friends and how she meant to make it up to me, and when I texted her back about how she didn't need to make a damn thing up to me and she said she would anyway, I couldn't help but get a little hard in anticipation.

It didn't make it any easier to ride my bike, but it was worth looking forward to.

When I was greeted at the door to Tori's house, my mood only improved.

"Hey Ryan!" Tori's mom, Mrs. McNeil (or Lauren as she'd correct me), said.

She was jaw-dropping most of the time with her youthful, pretty face, porcelain skin, mid-back length straight red hair, and tall, fit physique, but today I might've needed to put a hand under my chin to keep my mouth closed for the workout clothes she was wearing. Her hot pink sports bra and pale blue yoga pants were tight, straining to hold back her amazing body. Her DDD-cup tits swayed with the slightest movement, while her yoga pants showed off her toned legs and bubble butt amazingly. I must've caught her working out or something because her normally pale skin was flushed pink, her hair up in a messy bun and a faint sheen of sweat all over her chest and toned abs. Lauren moved unconsciously to whatever energetic music was on in her earbuds, dancing slightly in a way that made her body jiggle all the more uncomfortably for me. I was used to seeing her in business suits or casual attire, but this was a new view entirely.