Taking The Class Pt. 03

"I guess..." Alaina began before lapsing back into silence. Her fingers drummed on the center armrest.

"It seemed like it made sense at the time," she said. "I was so busy with everything, y'know? I'd get home at eight or nine most nights, then I'd have a few hours to study before bed. That or go over drama club and class budgets to try and squeeze out a little more here and there. I've been spending a lot of time looking at medical degrees and universities, and that takes up time, too."

That seems like a big workload for someone my age.

She deflated into her seat. "Mom's been working extra hard, so whenever she's home I have to be extra cheerful and relaxed so she doesn't have more things to worry about. Ayanna was doing a winter training camp that took up all her time, so she wasn't around to hang out with much, and when she was I had to be extra on guard because she's like a bloodhound if she thinks anything is wrong."

Alaina beat her head softly against the back of her seat. "It was like being in a pressure cooker. Did you know I've never gotten less than a ninety eight on any exam since sophomore year?"

More than a little unbelievable, or so I'd say if it were anyone else.

"And even... I never got less than a ninety on anything from seventh grade on. Straight A student. Every class. Every year. With everything going on, I guess I was worried that I was slipping. Or that I was losing focus. It seemed like after all the time I put into the school, maybe the school owed me something back."

She sighed. "It sounds stupid saying it now after last week, or after hearing about what you've gone through."

It feels like there's a piece still missing. Why does she push herself this hard? Ah well, no point in rushing. He pulled into a parking spot in the grocery store's lot. Just have to take things slow, Vin was right about that. "It's not stupid, Alaina." He reached his hand over onto the center armrest and laid his hand over hers, stroking lightly with his thumb. "Everyone has problems, and everyone's problems are meaningful to them. Comparing your problems to someone else's—or even your past problems—is only going to give you more problems. Things are better now, aren't they? Look, you even have time to go on a grocery shopping date after role play sex at school today. And cook dinner for me out of gratitude for my heroic efforts in satisfying your needs on your desk—at great personal risk!"

He put on his best innocent smile and almost lost his composure to laughter when she turned to stare at him with her mouth hanging open. Flustered Alaina will never stop being cute.

After a moment, a grin spread across her face. She freed her hand and whacked him playfully on the shoulder with it. "Personal risk my ass."

He made a show of leaning back in his seat and trying to look at her butt. "Well if you want to do that next time I wouldn't say no..."

Alaina snorted a laugh. "Not in a million years. And it's not a grocery shopping date. You wait here while I go in. I'll only be a few minutes, and I don't need you hovering over my shoulder. Or ogling my butt." She unbuckled her seatbelt and grabbed her purse off the floor in front of her.

Will put on his most overly-dramatic look of disappointment. "Are you sure you don't need me to do either of those things? Mainly the second one, though."

Alaina giggled. "I think you've already done enough to my lower body today." She bit her lip, then leaned in and gave him a surprisingly tender blueberry-flavored kiss.

Will blinked. That was nice. "What was that for?"

His not-girlfriend licked her lips. "Gratitude," she said, giving him an unreadable smile before she opened the door and swung herself out of the car. The door closed, and she was gone.

"Huh," said Will, a smile on his face as he ogled her butt while she walked towards the store.

Things have really come a long way from last week. I still feel awful about that. That was so fucking stupid of me. He stared off into space for a melancholy minute, then pressed the button next to the steering wheel and turned the car off. Looks like I've got a bit. I could read... Ah, shit, I finished my book during class, didn't I.

Will shifted in his seat, unbuckling his seatbelt. May as well get comfortable. What a day so far. Can't believe we just fucked on her desk again. When I got that message I thought it was going to be like Friday, but she seemed a lot more aware. Er, minus the whole being naked for anyone walking by to see. Damn, that was hot. If I hadn't already been rock-hard when I came in just from imagining what I was going to find then that would have done it.

He leaned against his door. That was pretty weird before, too. Why would Laura pick today to try and make up with me? I suppose she did message me yesterday, too, now that I think of it. Dragging my hand up under her sweater in the library was sort of a nice start—and I can't deny that she's got the best boobs—but it was also pretty weird considering I told her not to talk to me again. Ugh, if my Trait wasn't working I think she actually would have tried to kiss me. She's messed up, that's for sure.

His pocket buzzed, breaking him out of his thoughts. Will retrieved his phone and checked his messages.

Vin: Rita won't know until tomorrow. How goes?

He tapped on the keyboard. Pretty good. Slow and steady. Lot less nerves now. Thanks for the pep talk.

C♡rl♡: Club Friday? ♥♥♥

Maybe. Might need motivation. He pressed send.

Will grinned. No harm in teasing a bit. I think the guys had fun last week, and it'll be nice to see Tiff again.

His phone buzzed, and he opened the new message. A photo appeared, showing a close-up of a double string-tie pink lingerie bottom with the left side untied. The loose part was draped so that it just barely covered her mound, exposing a scandalous amount of coffee-colored skin. Her toned stomach was visible just above, and the photo ended at the undersides of a pair of impressively full breasts which were exposed from a matching bra by one of her hands near the edge of the frame.

That's a hell of a motivator. He felt himself hardening. What the hell, I ended up getting teased instead.

He went back to the message and typed out a reply. Motivated. Very motivated.

I should double check and make sure I didn't miss any more messages. He scrolled through his history, but there was nothing he hadn't already replied to. That's a relief.

His phone buzzed again.

C♡rl♡: I'll wear on Friday. Use ur teeth!

I'm feeling like I really do need to go back to Sky on Friday now. He adjusted himself in his seat again, leaning his right elbow on the center armrest. Is Alaina really going to go along with clit poker? A thought struck him. Wait, does she like girls? A fantasy of his classmate locking lips with the sexy club dancer flashed through his mind before it was changed to the student council's president eating out his former Spanish teacher.

Will chuckled. Not sure which of those is less realistic. The only thing that's probably more unrealistic would be Alaina in a threesome. The idea made him giggle. I think it'd go something like, "Sure, Will, I'd love for you to bring another girl to bed, and I'm totally into eating pussy! Oh also, you wouldn't mind me bringing these rusty garden shears to cut your dick off with, would you?" Yeah, that sounds about right. I'd be happy enough with a simple, "Will, I missed you." Alright, maybe I've read too many of Tremaine's romance novels; that's also pretty unrealistic. I wish she'd come out with another book though, I'd kill to be able to read one just after it was released—maybe even get it signed.

His phone buzzed for the fourth time. Carla's really—Oh. Ugh, I really can't deal with this. He grimaced.

The passenger side door opened, and Alaina poked her head in. "Got everything," she announced, pressing the door unlock button on her door. She backed up, then pulled open the door behind hers to stow her shopping bags.

Why does she keep messaging me? Will deleted the new message, just as he'd done to the other three from earlier that day and the one from yesterday, then put his phone away just in time to watch Alaina reclaim her seat and close her door.

"Sorry, that took a little longer than I thought," she said, strapping in. "They only had two cashiers open, and one of them had some lady buying for a family of at least ten," she grumbled. "The other was some girl on her first day and it took her fucking forever to ring up some guy's bag of lemons."

Will fastened his own seatbelt and pressed the ignition.

"And after that guy, there were three more people in front of me and they all had fruits and vegetables. I was about to walk over and ring myself up if the store manager hadn't come over to speed it along. Argh!"

He turned to look back over his shoulder as he backed out, but paused to watch Alaina redo her ponytail.

"What, is there something on my face?" she asked when she caught him looking.

He blinked. "No, uh, just waiting for a car to move." He shifted into reverse and started backing out of the parking space.

Alaina was grinning when he faced forward again, but she didn't speak.

He put the car in drive and set off towards the other side of town.

"You were scowling at your phone pretty hard when I came back," she said after a moment. "Bad news?"

"Nah, just a minor annoyance. I got some other messages while you were gone that were much more interesting." He turned and waggled his eyebrows at her while he waited for a line of traffic to pass so he could make a left turn.

"Oh did you? Let me guess, some model was sending you nude photos?"

That's just uncanny. "Alaina, you really take the fun out of everything."

"Wait, really? Can I see?"

Will glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "Er, you want to see a pic of a mostly-naked girl?" Is this when she pulls out the rusty garden shears?

"Am I likely to meet her?" asked Alaina, her face turned towards him.

"Um. Maybe?"

"Then obviously I want to see!" she said in an exasperated tone. "Will, I'm going to tell you right now, you're so lucky that you got me as your fake girlfriend. A lot of other girls would get possessive, y'know. I just want to see who's going to be competing with me."

Is she trying to say she's not possessive? After everything she said back in her office? Will laughed. "So that's how you're going to play it? Can't just come out and say you want to look at pic of a hot girl?"

"That's definitely not it," she growled. "Actually, hold on," she mused. "How hot are we talking?"

They pulled up to a stoplight and Will fished his phone out of his pocket. He pulled up the photo that Carla sent him and passed it over, grinning the whole time.

"Whoa," said Alaina. She held the screen up to her face and started panning and zooming the image around. "What the fuck, Will. This girl is ridiculously hot! I'm not, like, into girls, but... Are her boobs real?"

"Very. She sent another one a few messages earlier. Topless."

She fiddled with the phone for a moment, then gawked at it. "Okay, don't ever fucking tell anyone I said this, but she's hot. I've never thought about a girl that way before..."

He looked over. Alaina was biting her recently-moistened lip fiercely, as though trying to gnaw a hole through it. Didn't see that coming.

"It... It must be a Class thing, right? I don't like girls. I don't."

Uh oh, she sounds like she's getting upset. This could get bad. "Could be? Who knows, maybe it's just a couple really good photos. She's been trying to bribe me into coming back to play clit poker again since Friday, so she probably spent a lot of time getting the poses and angles just right."

"She was one of the girls you played it with? What the fuck, I see what Don meant by 'The Legend'."

Will frowned. "Hey, that's not fair. Tiff played too, and she's at least as attractive as Carla."

"Tiff played?" Alaina went silent for a moment after the newest revelation. "But she seemed so sweet and...cute."

"She also offered to let you feel her boobs," he helpfully added. "Carla models now and then, she said, but apparently she did a shoot with Tiff a couple weeks back. The other girl she usually shot with pulled a no-show, and Tiff was bored that day. I haven't been able to get either of them to send me any of the shots, though."

He looked over again. Alaina was staring off into the distance, her eyes glazed over. Huh.

"Any chance you'd be interested in helping me try to convince them? I was thinking of heading back to Tiff's club Friday night. You already said you were going to come next time clit poker was happening..."

His passenger snapped back to awareness, her face redder than it had been. "Um, I—Well, I'll think about it? I d-don't know what I'm doing on Friday yet." She stole another look at the image on the phone's screen before putting it into one of the center cup holders and clasping her hands on her lap.

This is almost as cute as she was on Saturday. I shouldn't push her, though. "Cool, let me know. On a totally different topic, I feel a little bad about that question I asked you on the way over. I didn't expect it was going to be so, " he paused. "Personal. So I'll answer one from you now if you have anything you want to know. Other than things I said I wasn't going to talk about, that is."

"Oh, um, that's... That's nice of you." She fidgeted. "Alright, something I was wondering since Saturday: you said you used your Skill on Friday to get me a registered Class, but I don't understand how it worked."

Will furrowed his brows. "What do you mean?"

"I mean—Alright, we've seen all the instructional videos. You sign in and consent to Truth Detection. Then you go into the booth, the proctor is behind a wall listening through a speaker to remain impartial—though I now realize it's to prevent people from mind controlling the proctor since those Skills all require physical contact, right? Anyway you go in, and the proctor is someone with Truth Detection so nobody can lie to them. And it's not like forging Class registration is common. Or possible? I mean, they've got the cameras, too."

"Yup," said Will. "I remember reading an article recently about a group that was trying to do it by hacking into the database. They got busted by some CEA agent with a crazy tech-related Class. Now that's some scary shit. Imagine someone out there who can find out all the porn you've ever watched. I'd never live it down at school if people found out about my GILF collection."

Alaina laughed. "I'd make sure of it. But that's what I mean! They have all these safeguards up to prevent it, so how did you manage to get past it?"

Will ran a hand through his hair as he pulled up to the intersection before the highway onramp. "Luck, basically. You know my Class was previously undiscovered, don't you?"

Alaina wrinkled her nose. "What? No way, I'm sure I've heard of [Conversationalist] before."

"Nope. [Talkers], sure. [Chatterers], [Speakers], [Announcers], yes. All one-sided forms of speaking, though. I had to go in for the mandatory Skill exhibition so they could see what kind of Class it was. You should expect a letter in the mail this week, by the way—they do it for all new Classes. Another fun detail they don't teach you in school since it's so rare."

"Skill exhibition?" she said, worry evident in her voice. "That doesn't sound good. Oh, no, Will, are they—"

"Don't worry, don't worry. It'll be alright. The process was really quick. They ask you up front during registration what triggers your Class's improvements, so it's not as though they'll need to ask you any questions. Since you used a proxy, they'll probably strap you into the brain monitor for a couple minutes. But other than that you just have to show them a Skill since the theory is that the first Skill is the most representative of what the Class can do. They record it, and you're done. Feels like more of a public safety kind of deal than anything else, you know, make sure nobody gets a [Terrorist] Class or something crazy where you have to kill people for your Class to improve."

Alaina let out a big sigh. "Oh. That doesn't sound so bad? Yeah, I can do that! I'll just warm up my hands a little and that's it, right?"

"Should be; takes most people at least a year to get their next Skill or Trait at rank five, so there's no way they'd expect, well, you." He rubbed at his cheek. "I actually have to go get my new Class registered within the next week or so, and I couldn't get through on the phone earlier. Maybe we can schedule together? I thought our first FCF date went pretty well." Will turned his head away from the highway for a moment to leer obnoxiously.

"So well."

I can hear her eyes rolling. "Hey, I basically fucked the sense back into your head. First time I've ever done that to a girl—I'd call it a success."

"Then you admit you gave me your fucking-sense-into-a-girl virginity?" She snickered. "How romantic."

He flashed her a smirk. "I did eat it back out of you last night."

"Yeah, well, you totally have the flavor advantage. I want a rematch."

"It's not a competition, Alaina."

"Will, you were down there for like, an hour—"

"More like an hour and a half."

"And I was blowing you for like five minutes. I don't want to feel like I owe you more orgasms."

"Alaina, I begged you to stop," he chuckled. "I honestly thought I was going to die if you continued. The way I look at it, you did in five minutes what it took me over an hour to accomplish."

"Hmph. We'll see." Alaina crossed her arms. "Now answer my original question since we got sidetracked. How come nothing at the FCF stopped you?"

"Oh, right. I think it's just down to a miscalculation on their part. When I showed them my Skill, it was just demonstrating that I could pick a topic for smalltalk consistently. Really annoyed the proctor, too, because she kept getting engrossed in the conversation and forgetting to mark down whatever she was recording. So their expectation for people with my Class is just that they're good at smalltalk, or chatting—that kind of thing.

"Switching gears for a moment, the proctors are always using some kind of Truth Detection during registration. What do you think happens if I use my Skill on someone while they're using Truth Detection?"

He glanced at her, noting her pursed lips and furrowed brow.

"That's... I don't know. What happens?"

"No clue. But I think I overloaded the poor guy. After the first time I explained what I'd seen and what you'd said he was much more friendly. Like I was his best buddy or something. Then he asked me to repeat it to verify, so I did, and he started sounding... I dunno, almost drugged. I had to give a statement about how your Class improves after, so I said it was based on helping other people. Which must be true on some level, isn't it?"

"You're not entirely wrong," she evaded.

"Great. That's basically the whole thing." It was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be. I could start a business! "Straight to Prison" is what I'd call it, since I'd definitely be caught if I started being a proxy for a bunch of random people.