The Influencer’s Tale

The RA Volume IV, Part One

By Isaac Byrne

Copyright © 2023 by Isaac Byrne

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

First Edition, 2023

“Chug! Chug! Chug! Chug!” chanted the revelers at the kegstand. Erik “Ogre” Strewe guzzled what didn’t rain up his inverted face as his buddies, once teammates, now former teammates, propped him up. Former.  Everyone former  everything. Toni raised her cup to the guy. She didn’t like him, really, but she was glad to have known him. He’d asked her to prom – only a couple months ago, but it already seemed another  lifetime. Toni hadn’t known what to say. She had a boyfriend; she and Erik weren’t even friends; again, she didn’t like him.

“Would you just hurry up and say no already? Fuck!”  he’d snapped.

“I’m sorry. I, um, have a boyfriend.”  The easiest of her excuses. No sense explaining they’d already agreed to break up after graduation (i.e. earlier this afternoon). They had fairly distinct friend groups, and both said they wanted to spend these final months with them before people went their separate ways, college or jobs or whatever. Really, Toni knew the sonofabitch would cheat on her again as time dwindled down and the opportunity to fuck girls he’d never get a chance to fuck again ran out.

“I know. Just… yeah, Chris is kind of an asshole. But I get it. I just had to ask, you know? You’re, like, the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen, so I… Anyway, this was stupid. I’m sorry.”

That was that. No sweet parting words by her, just an awkwardly blurted compliment that was mostly just “I think you’re hot and maybe this is my last chance to try to impress and/or sleep with you.” But that’s not what he’d said, and there were enough guys out there who couldn’t take no for an answer that this encounter with one who flatly demanded it was a gift. Instantly forgiven, if not quite forgotten. Toni tried to see the good in people.

It was why she’d come to this party in the first place. Niece had wanted to have a small get-together, just the five of them who’d been friends forever. Toni was surprised she hadn’t felt the same. She’d never much liked high school. Teachers who treated them alternately like toddlers or employees; handsy, creepy boys splashing their testosterone all over the girls; so much tedium, so much pointlessness. Mitochondria and the quadratic formula and subordinate clauses and goddamn pep rallies for the goddamn Academic Decathlon state runners-up, the only ones who might have any use for all that stuff.

Brianne had shown Toni a meme during the graduation ceremony earlier that afternoon, a pic of some kids playing the recorder with some text block complaining they couldn’t do their taxes. (Toni wasn’t on social media, so her friends like to force their posts in her face. She’d thumbs-up them and tap their noses; they called it Toni’s Like Button.) Her parents had assured her that taxes weren’t that hard, but the meme had still spoken to something inside her. She was glad to be headed to college in the fall. Maybe there  folks would be more focused on the real world. Maybe.

Still, tonight had a chance of being… something. It was in all those teen movies, after all. Whether it was the last party of the summer after graduation or the one kicking the summer off, it was a rite of passage. Toni had seen Eurotrip  a hundred times, mostly owing to her raging crush on Matt Damon’s punk rocker character. She’d actually lost her virginity while he lip synced “Scottie Doesn’t Know.” (She’d only had to rewind to the start of the scene once. Chris hadn’t noticed.)

Ogre finally toppled, his friends too drunk to support his bulk. All around, the lights from dozens of cell phones recording the event like they were at a Rihanna concert lowered. Toni rolled her eyes. “Can you believe them?”

“They’re football jocks, Tone.” Niece shrugged. “Today’s officially their last day to revel in their snack size glory days before it becomes unforgivably pathetic. Let ‘em have it.”

Toni shook her head. “No, not the dudes. Everybody recording  it. That Jennica v. Danica brawl in the driveway earlier, I get. But so much of it is just… nothing. I saw some of Karla’s friends recording her walking through the front door . Like it was some memory they were going to cherish or something.”

Alexis gestured impatiently as she down her own contribution to keg depletion. “People record stuff. So what? Nobody’s going to tie you down and make you like and subscribe.”

“It’s not me. It’s the principle . They’re all so busy recording things, they’re not actually doing  anything. Then they record themselves doing nothing! Their friends record them recording themselves doing nothing! It’s this fractal spiral into social oblivion and we act like it’s our generation’s hula hoop instead of the death of human culture! Life is for living , you guys, not just being.”

Her friends were used to outbursts like this from Toni, especially once she had a few beers in her. She got two eyerolls, two evaded eyelines, and then Brianne simply snapped a picture of her mid-rant. Toni had to hand it to her; that was a solid one.

“Dramatic much?” mumbled Niece. “Come on, Toni, it’s a party. This could be the last time we see most of these people. You were the one who said you wanted to spend one last night experiencing all this dumbassery.”

“And I am.”

“But are you? Because all those people who recorded that keg stand, they have that forever. They’re invested in their surroundings, you know? But you? You’re already on the way to forgetting it ever happened.”

“Do you even hear yourself? That’s my whole point! Some staged, douchey stunt that you know he only did so he’d get tagged and liked and heart-emojied  or whatever. And you think my life would be richer if I had a record, so I could watch it again someday? I barely wanted to see it once, live, much less relive it. It’s just going to be something his future HR department finds at the bottom of his instagram page when they give the mouse wheel a hard spin to make sure he’s not a nazi sympathizer or whatever.”

“All I know is you better get with the times before you run off to Lakeview this fall.” Niece pulled her into a tight hug, and soon it was all five of them. “I don’t think I can handle not seeing you all every day.”

“I love you guys,” said someone, and it didn’t matter who because the argument was done and they were just lifelong friends whose paths were about to split forever. Then they were all saying it, all crying in a circle. The bonfire out by the tree line refracted in a million little sparkles in the tears in her eyes. That, and the arms of her friends held off the cold and dark of night.

“And see? None of you is recording this,” Toni laughed through the choking tears. “Which only proves my–”

 Niece pressed her forehead to her oldest, bestest friend’s . “Shut up and let us have this your way, OK? I know I won’t ever forget this.”

****************************************************************

“Can you believe this traffic? My god, the state ought to be paying us  taxes to drive in this. Like sardines!”

“Oh my god, would you just shut up about the traffic already, Dad!” Toni exclaimed from the back seat. “I swear, I will get out and walk the rest of the way!”

“Probably beat us there,” her dad grumbled.

Her mom gave his arm a little squeeze. “He’s doing his best, dear. Remember, you’re  about to go on this grand adventure and we’re  going to go home to your brother and Nibs and an empty chair at the dinner table. After today we won’t see each other for… for…”

“Twenty-four days, Mom. Just a few weeks plus a few days, Mom,” Toni finished softly. Her mom was not taking the departure of her oldest child well. Not today, anyway. Until that morning, she’d said she wasn’t coming, that somebody had to stay home and keep an eye on her brother and the dog, like he was six instead of fifteen. Toni’s dad had been a step ahead though, anticipating his wife’s regret for sitting this out, and had arranged for Aunt Sofia to babysit for the day. It meant that instead of making the four-hour drive to Lakeview in the front seat, basking in AC with her own cuprest, Toni was wedged in beside  her boxes sweating  her butt off and dreading meeting her future classmates looking like she’d crawled out of a gutter. Pictures would most assuredly be taken. She might not be on social media, but like it or not, today, as thousands of freshmen descended on Lakeview University, she would wind up on social media.

Toni was glad her mom was here, though. She still remembered her mom dropping her off on her first day of kindergarten. They’d started this together; they’d end it together.

“See, dear? Twenty-four days. Just in time for Meemaw’s birthday. Won’t that be nice?” Toni’s dad smiled reassuringly.

It was enough to stave out this latest round of tears. “Look, there’s a scenic overlook up ahead. Why don’t we stop there, stretch our legs a little, and let poor Toni breathe. Are you OK back there, honey?”

“OK? I’m fabulous .” Toni beamed. Her mother reached her hand back with some difficulty. Toni gave it a sweaty-palmed squeeze.

It took them almost half an hour from the signpost to the actual scenic overlook. Only one more outburst from her dad. (Toni had opted not to walk.) All agreed, it was a heck of a view – a broad valley, glittering in the late morning sun with a spider web of creeks that ended in a small lake, blue mountains rising in the background. There were no parking spaces, but people were just parking along the drive. It was cramped, but Toni’s dad wasn’t wrong about the volume of traffic. All agreed a little squirming around was worth it for a break and a little splendor.

Toni’s mom insisted on pictures. As always. She was as bad as Toni’s friends – Toni’s whole self-absorbed generation – and then some. She was one of those people who checked in at restaurants on facebook and took pictures of any meal that cost more than $20, even if it was a chain. Dad made his usual crack about how he didn’t get why his beautiful daughter didn’t just demand a modeling contract, and instead wanted to blow fifty grand on an education she could get at home for a buck fifty in late fees at the public library. (Every member of the family had a crush on one Matt Damon character or another. Toni liked to squick him with jokes about The Bourne Pregnancy.)

Her mom took some shots of Toni with Dad. Toni suggested one parents  only, since they’d have to get used to her not being in pictures. Mom started to cry, obviously, but Toni had done it low-key on purpose so she’d have an excuse to hug and be hugged. In a few hours she’d have to be bringing her A-game, moving in and making new friends and figuring out what the heck a college girl even did all day. She needed to start getting the goodbyes out of her system before she wound up a blubbery mess. The farewell walk with Nibs that morning had already almost broken her.

They weren’t the only huggers. Some of the other people there were in her same situation, she supposed, a parent or two with a kid around her own age, cars filled to the brim. Lakeview was still pretty far, but it was a big school, so even more than a hundred miles down the interstate, the echoes of freshman move-in day were audible. Toni studied the other kids – young adults? that term somehow sounded even more kiddish – as they traversed their own physical and emotional journeys from past to future. Lots of bleary smiles, lots and lots of pictures.

To think, her next best friend could be standing right over there. Her future boyfriend – or husband, even! Today was a day  things started. Toni supposed, for once, that it might be worth taking the time to record. They had lakes and mountains at home to see whenever she felt like it, but home didn’t have this moment.

Niece and Alexis were moving to their respective universities today, too, to meet their own new best friends. It was a bitter thought, but they’d still see each other on breaks, summers. For a couple years, at least. Probably. She’d see her friends again soon, though, if only online. They’d finally sat her down and made her, and over the past few days, had made a big dramatic production of tagging her in a million old posts and photos, some going all the way back to elementary school. Toni had promised to post at least once a month. Last night, they’d had  a teary farewell get-together, and used one of Toni’s farewell gifts, an ironic selfie stick, to get a picture.

As for their huddle at the graduation party, Toni still remembered even without the record. It was only that she’d forgotten she remembered.

****************************************************************

“Holy shit  are you pretty. Are you seriously the same Toni I talked to on the phone last month?”

Toni almost banged her head on the top bunk as she rose to greet her new roommate. Thankfully, the girl had arrived when she wasn’t crying over missing her parents. It had started about the second she got back to the room after hugging them goodbye in the lot, and lasted until about thirty seconds ago.

“Um, yep, that’s me.”

“Turn around.”

Toni arched an eyebrow.

“I’m serious, turn the fudge around.”

Not quite sure how to handle this but not wanting to torpedo a first impression, she humored the girl. Why she was making such a fuss over Toni’s looks when she herself was freaking gorgeous, Toni didn’t know. Toni knew she was hot; she wasn’t blind or deaf. Still, she knew she was a little more niche, short and skinny with boobs that were unarguably disproportionate to her tiny frame. “Shortstack,” she’d heard some pervwads call it back home. She was rather vain about her crystal blue eyes, though the bright red hair was a dye job, and an accident she’d correct once she found a good salon hereabouts. Too much Wendy and not enough Jessica Rabbit to suit her. It made her freckles pop in a way Toni didn’t like.

Her roommate – Theresa on the letter from Lakeview Housing & Residence Life, but she’d called herself Terri during that phone call – was plain old hotness. Tall, curvy in every single right place, long gorgeous hair, big boobs that were the exact right amount too big. She didn’t have freckles. She didn’t even have moles that Toni could spot. She wasn’t a hundred percent sure this girl had pores.

Terri shook her head in disbelief, then looked around the room. “You are… wow. Delish. This is gonna be a heck of a good fit, I just know it.”

Toni smiled the smile she’d been practicing for weeks now. “Yeah, same. And, um, just in case you didn’t notice, you’ve got some ‘wow’ going on yourself.”

Terri’s smile said that this was not news to her. “Right? And hey, I guess since we’re sharing this five by five dungeon, I’ll find out soon enough if the carpets match the drapes.”

“Uh…!”

“I’m kidding!” Terri laughed, patting Toni on the chest, much more familiarly than she liked. “Sorry, I come on strong.”

“Just as long as you come on me, Mama!” said a burly boy as he rounded the corner, carrying not one, not two, but three boxes, each with “TERRI” written in Sharpie on the side.

“You know it, Daddy,” Terri said, laughing. She dodged his attempt to pat her behind, and like that, the boy disappeared back into the hall.

“Is that your… boyfriend?” Toni wished she hadn’t sounded so dubious. It was only that Terri was gorgeous, the kind of gorgeous that absolutely had made a stop somewhere near campus for her to touch up her hair and makeup. Or she was a townie, maybe. Nobody looked that  good after a drive like the one Toni had been through that day. She’d had time to freshen herself up, but the prospect of taking a shower while the floor was flooded with male residents, dads, brothers and boyfriends was far too daunting. As for this particular boy, he was a three . A girlfriend’s four, maybe. In Toni’s experience, girls like this  absolutely didn’t date boys like that .

“Who, Ryan?” The girl threw her head back and laughed. “Oh god  no. He’s just a simp . I told him if he drove me to campus and did all my moving, I’d pretend to be his girlfriend for the day, that’s all. Screw a dozen trips up and down four flights of stairs in this heat, ya know?”

Simp? The boy hadn’t looked handicapped, Toni thought. Still, absolutely not a nice word to call someone with a disability. Maybe not much of one, if he was with-it enough to drive? They must be friends, though, if he was doing her all these favors, so maybe it was just their comfort zone. Some of her friends – her old friends – did that, called each other bitches and stuff. It was a thing.

“Oh. Um, well… yeah. I hope you don’t mind, but I put my sheets on the bottom bunk. I figured since I’m, ya know, short. I didn’t know if you’d be tall, but I figured I could switch. If you minded.”

“Hmm. Can’t say as I love top bunk either, but I’ll bet you can find a way to make it up to me.” Terri winked.

What was with  this girl? Toni liked to think of herself as open-minded, but this was a bit much. “Are you flirting with me? I don’t mind or anything. Like, that’s totally fine with me if you’re a lesbian, or bi or whatever, but I’m actually straight. So.”

If she’d laughed at the idea of that poor simpleton boy Ryan being her boyfriend, Terri howled at that, then patted the front of her skirt. “As an arrow, my bazoomy  roomie. Like I said, I just come on strong. I wasn’t going to ask you to do some hashtag experimentation with me or anything. But I’m a content creator, see. And you, my dear, are what old men pretending to be kids call ‘clickbait.’”

“I’m what?” Toni knew the term, but she knew it from news sites. Inflammatory headlines, celebrities with opinions, people in circumstances you weren’t in doing things in their circumstance you wouldn’t do.

“Freckled, redheaded, blue-eyed, I’m guessing F cupped shortstack?”

There it was. She really didn’t like that term. Toni didn’t think of herself as a feminist, but referring to someone by their height and bust seemed pretty far the other direction. She forced that smile, just like in rehearsals. “I’m, um, not really big on, you know, social media. Try to live in the moment and all, you know?”

This declaration only served to confuse Terri, though. “Are you kidding me? You’re ten thousand clicks in a  top with even a little cleavage.”

Toni didn’t generally like to show cleavage. She’d splurged a little today – OK, a lot – because it was the first day of college and if she was going to have to endure guys staring at them all the time, for once she’d try to get some mileage out of them to help meet people, maybe get invited to a party or something. (She’d change into something more her usual style before she posted anything for her friends, though, that was for sure.) Regardless, if she was following half of what this girl was saying, Toni wasn’t about to solicit wardrobe advice from some attention-starved wannabe “instagram model” – a term for which there was literally no criteria, Toni had often pointed out. Brianne’s dog  had over a thousand followers, for crying out loud, mostly because of Brianne’s habit of posing next to her, squatting in short dresses.

“I’ll, ah, take that as a compliment. I actually don’t do much social media. Not really my thing. Not a judgment, though!” Toni said, unintentionally making sure it sounded like one.

She had Ryan to thank for getting her out of that awkward moment, as he returned then with another load. This time it was a laundry hamper filled with clothes, and another two boxes sitting atop it. “How many bikinis does one girl need, Mama? I couldn’t help but notice–”

Suddenly Terri’s smile was gone, her dark eyes darkening. “I know exactly how many there are and what each one looks like. See also: bras; see also: panties. Even the socks. If there is a single item missing I will make sure your mother finds out.”

The hirsute fellow stumbled over the first set of boxes he’d brought up, throwing his weight aside and landing on the hard tile floor rather than on the hamper and boxes he somehow managed to set down gently. “You know, I, um, kinda dropped the hamper in the lot? I’ll just make sure nothing, you know, fell  out.”

Terri’s fawning manner returned in an instant. “Thanks, Daddy! Don’t forget to hydrate out there. Otherwise how could I get you nice and sweaty?”

Toni blinked. When had the girl gotten her phone out? Why on earth would she want to record that obsequious comment?

Terri explained, in fact, at least in regards to her second unspoken question. “Part of the deal, he gets to play the part on my feed. Plus, if I do have to rat him out to his real mama, it’ll be nice to let her know he was warned. Creep.”

Toni wished she could be surprised by the notion of not trusting male friends around her underwear, but she wasn’t thirteen any more. “Man. Oh hey, speaking of creepy, did you know we have a guy RA? Not sure what it stands for, but I guess that’s, like, the head guy on the floor.”

Terri frowned, though she managed not to look too annoyed at the suggestion she didn’t know what an RA was. (As for the acronym, she was unsure. The local narc, in effect, from what she’d heard.) Toni had met him already, if only briefly. Long enough that Toni’s parents had both liked him. Mom because he was cute and because he promised to take good care of her, and Dad because of his abiding faith in the character of men with firm handshakes. Toni just liked that Spencer’s smile was notably congenial, and he’d maintained eye contact despite the magnetism of her neckline.

Toni shrugged. “Well, it’s a coed floor. Coin toss, I guess, right?”

“That’s the thing, though. No it isn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve been hovering around here since right around noon, and not one single guy has moved in yet. I’ve been making laps, you know, introducing myself and stuff. Every single room I’ve seen, all girls.”

Since noon? Why was she just now moving in? Later, Toni would find out Terri had been having lunch with her simp – his treat – and adding everybody she could find to her socials, but for now, Toni focused on the news.

Toni cocked her head to the side, mulling it over. “Uh, is that… legal? I mean, I know there’s rules up in here  and everything, but there’s gotta be laws too, right?”

“Laws against men and women living in the same building? Won’t my Uncle Nate be pissed. He’s a landlord, sorry, don’t know why I thought you’d assume that. Anyway, not sure what gives  here, though. Freaking weird, for sure.”

Toni nodded. “I bumped into him in the hall a little bit ago. He seemed nice. Kind of a looker, too, not gonna lie.”

“You, my ravishing redheaded  roommate, are not wrong.” But Terri’s dalliance with flirty alliteration was short-lived. “Still, sucks   we don’t  have a real coed floor like they told us. Probably fire him or whatever once somebody notices. Plus the doofus misspelled both of our names, I noticed.”

“Yeah, I noticed, too. I met an Andi-with-an-I and an Alexis-who’s-definitely-not-an-Alex while I was moving my stuff up, though, so maybe it’s some kind of prank or something? I don’t know.”

Terri frowned. “Well, whatever. I’m not going to do twosies next to a dude – especially a hottie. And have you seen these bathrooms? I’m definitely  not gonna shower next to one, not unless he’s shorter than you, Red.”

Suddenly, Terri was at her side, and the phone was out in front of them. Terri’s body was turned toward her, breasts pressed against her arm, her face smiling giddily at the camera. Toni didn’t jump out of the way or anything, but she squirmed back. “Um, what are you doing?”

“What? I just met my super cool new roommate and already gave her her nickname! The world must know!” There was some sarcasm to her tone, but not nearly enough. Was this girl famous? Did she have a million followers – or a hundred? It felt like every girl with a pretty face and a phone was calling herself an “influencer” or “instagram model” or something.

Nothing wrong with being hot, nor even being known for being hot, but don’t do it for the freaking clicks. Have a little dignity, for Pete’s sake.

“I prefer Toni,” she said firmly. “But, um, sure. You can… yeah. Nice to meet you.”

“Say that again.”

“Nice to meet you,” said Toni, only this time the video was recording .

“Nice? Oh it finna  be more than jus ’ nice  having you in my bedroom, pritty   gurrrl !”

The recording ended. Toni made an excuse and fled to the bathroom. She sat on one of the toilets, wondering how obvious it would be to her friends – her real  friends – that her first ever instagram post originated in a bathroom stall. She was in hell. Her entire home, a room scarcely bigger than her bedroom – her real  bedroom – and she was trapped inside with a handsy vainglorious wannabe Z-list celebrity who used these dorks, dorks who thought clicking on her bikini shots was a form of friendship, as her personal valets.

Toni snuck in a quick cry. She was just getting to the part where she was telling herself to suck it up and get out there and make friends when Niece DMed her to say the same.

While she was down there, she took a gander at the showers. The walls went well over her head. That boy, the RA, he wasn’t that  tall, was he…? How did he feel about “ shortstacks ?”

And should she ask him if there was any way to get a new roommate…?

****************************************************************

“OK, that was the craziest fucking thing I’ve ever seen. Am I crazy, or was that literally  the craziest  fucking thing you’ve ever  seen?!” demanded the dark-haired girl. Joy? Joey? Jo? It was only a few days into college. She was still learning names.

“That was the craziest thing I’ve ever seen!” agreed Terri emphatically, snatching a bottled  water from the bin as they took a place in line. A whole food court, like at the mall, but like, in a dorm. Freaking wild. Toni was glad it was at least across the street. Put all this over in Higgins, and she might just put on that freshman fifteen after all.

“That chick – Quinn – she was, like, insane!” Kendall nodded seriously. “I thought she was going to kill… What’s her name? The blonde one?”

“Leigh,” supplied Kendall’s roommate, a Latina girl almost as short as she was  whose name Toni didn’t yet know. “We met on move-in day. Don’t repeat this, but she seemed kind of… I dunno, bitchy? Like really full of herself. But man, I wouldn’t have wished that on her. That was nuts .”

“In. Sane ,” repeated Jo. Pretty sure Jo.

A sly grin crept onto Terri’s face as Kendall put in her order. Toni’s high school friends, when they’d had time to text, had been experiencing the same problem making new girl friends. Pretty girls had to put on such a damn show about things. Smiling brightly, laughing loudly, salad after endless goddamn salad. Toni had been a vegan for almost two years now, but apparently these girls hadn’t reached the stage in their new affiliation where they could eat an appropriate number of calories in public with each other. For now, the alphas were asserting themselves, assigning the new Lakeview pecking order according to how many eyes trailed after their butts.

“What?” Toni asked of Terri’s  expression when no one else did.

Terri pivoted to the middle of the pack, leaning in. “Don’t front, Red. We’re all thinking it . Did you guys see  that monster?”

There it was, the fit of giggles that was audible throughout the food court.

“I know, right?”

“And it was hard . Like rock, concrete, man-dick  hard, the whole  time!”

“E- nor -mous.”

“If they fire him as an RA at least he can make it in porn.”

“The size of my freaking forearm!”

“I don’t know about that but I sure hope it wasn’t too big for the size of my somethin’ else, know what I’m saying?”

That last was Terri. Much as Toni wanted to chide her for being so crude, for one, she didn’t want to be the one who got the reputation as a prude. If she hadn’t already. Besides… Terri was right. That had been the hottest thing she’d ever experienced, including actual sexual encounters that she was herself involved in. Their hot naked RA heroically defending  one of them in a tangle of wet slippery violence. Fetishes were awakening in her that she hadn’t even known existed.

“It was like Captain America meets Magic Mike,” she heard herself say, spawning more giggles.

“He definitely looked like he could do it all day,” said Georgia. (Toni had heard her give her name to the food service lady when she put in her order or she wouldn’t have known it.)

The girls ate their dinner, spending most of the meal joking about or else merely describing their favorite parts of the incident. For Toni, it had definitely been this moment where he looked up from the fight and saw everyone was watching, realized how embarrassing it should be, then went back in. It had been so… take charge. Mature. Manly as fuck. A real life knight in shining armor but without the pesky armor. Kendall and Jo agreed that it had been this moment where he’d managed to lift Quinn into the air to pry her off, his back to their audience, how fucking buff he looked. And that ass! Oof. Terri liked when their RA had been bent over, shielding Leigh with his body, how it had looked like they were fucking for a second. Georgia shrugged and said she’d liked the entire thing.

Somewhere in the middle of it all, Toni reflected that she’d only wound up going out to dinner with these girls because they’d all witnessed that fight. Dinner could lead to hanging out later, could lead to becoming friends – all because they’d gotten eyeful of their tasty RA’s cock. What a thing to kick off a friendship!

“I was thinking about dessert,” said Terri only after the girls started standing up to head back to Higgins. “Toni, you mind keeping me company? I’ll share! And I wanted to finish talking about that thing from earlier .”

Did she mean the fight? Toni would be happy to keep talking about that all night.  Her brain had been churning out slutty comments faster than she could give voice to them. Without coming across like a total skank, anyway. I’ll give any one of you $50 to kick my ass if he’s ever in the stall beside me  was her favorite of them. She’d save that for later. If Terri was keen on discussing something else, though, she didn’t know what. They’d barely seen each other before that. Her roommate apparently streamed in the mornings – meaning she put on a cute outfit with some skin showing and talked to her camera. For hours . The most inane, pointless babble she’d ever heard, white noise for creeps while they leered, probably with the sound off. (Their first morning together, Toni had clocked her at thirty-five minutes on how much she was jonesing for a Capri Sun. Remember those, ohmygawd you guys just want to see me suck the straw! *giggle! )

Toni had quickly learned to make herself scarce.

The other girls gave them their privacy, though plans were made to hook up later, maybe try to find an off-campus party or something. Friendships progressing, excellent. Toni followed her roommate out of the dining area and back into the food court. Terri picked out a piece of fruit and a piece of chilled chocolate cake.

“You looked earlier like you were going to drool all over dem titties if you didn’t get this,” Terri said, grinning.

“Am I supposed to apologize for liking chocolate cake…? Besides, I told you, I’m vegan.”

“What? Hey, no – that wasn’t an accusation. Sorry. No, I just meant… you looked like you wanted some cake is all. But fruit yourself, Red. ”

Toni accepted the apple after a moment and they made their way to the checkout line. “Not many girls on our floor that look like they’re big on cake, looks like. Deprivation loves company.”

“I dunno, we got a few thicc bitches.” This was where Toni’s old friends would have added, however unnecessarily, that it wouldn’t matter if they did put on weight anyway. Terri’s silence on the matter said it all.

“So, did you really want to talk to me, or was this totally a mission of charity?”

“Since I made you pay for it, no charity. I actually did want to talk.”

They found their way back to the same table, and strangely, Terri once more sat directly beside her rather than the more logical seat opposite her. It was awkward. It wouldn’t have been, maybe, if Terri hadn’t blatantly checked her out when she was changing this morning. “Um, maybe I should, like, move over–”

“I did something bad!” blurted Terri. She suddenly slapped her phone down on the table and tapped the white triangle to play a video.

Toni stared . Her conscience hastily attempted a desperate bid to make her look away, but…

“Oh. Oh my god. Oh, my god. You really… Holy… Oh my god. You… You did something… Oh my god. Bad.”

Toni licked suddenly  dry lips as she watched a surprisingly steady recording of their RA, naked and as erect as the steeple on Toni’s church back home, attempted  to separate the two warring, equally naked girls.

“How did you even…?”

“Get away with it? That black chick, Tori, I used her big-ass hair to keep that manager lady and that other RA – the stupid hot one? – from seeing me. Besides that, all I had to do was keep in the back. Nobody else was turning around.”

Toni nodded. Tori’s hair indeed blocked a frustrating amount of footage, but what was there… Spencer’s crushingly attractive coworker had been trying to keep people back, but she’d been looking behind her as much as forward. The manager lady hadn’t even managed to strike that balance. Not that Toni blamed her. A fantasy of Spencer as her secretary blossomed and flowered in an instant, beginning with him entering her office and pointing out how stressed she looked, and ending…

“You have to delete this,” Toni said, still staring.

“I know. I absolutely do.” Terri nodded gravely. “Or…”

“Or? No, no or!”

“Or do I have a moral duty to make sure all of our new friends who might have missed out on a historically hot event get to see it, too?”

“What? No way! Terri, I’m serious, you can’t show this to people.” The video ended. Toni hit the replay button – just to see if it was as bad as she thought. Oh fuck. His cock. Spencer’s superhero cock. Oh god.

“But don’t you think it would be weird that half of us got to see it and half didn’t? Dissension in the ranks, you know?”

“Imagine half your school saw you naked. Would you seriously want the other half to see you, out of ‘fairness?’” Terri had been right, it did  look like they were fucking. Oh god. Oh wow. Oh fuck.

“Hey, if he gets to live on Higgins 3 with all of us and see us walking around in towels or PJs or whatever, surely it’s only fair that the rest of us get to share in seeing him. Right? That’s just math, Red.”

Toni forgot to scowl at this, the third attempt at tonight’s dinner to make that lazy nickname stick. That dye job had been such a dumb decision. Instead, she continued to rewatch. How much was Quinn fighting, and how much was she just rubbing her tits on him? It could be both, she supposed. Toni’s own breasts seldom factored into her fantasies, but there was something appealing in it here. So much friction, and so much slipperiness. “It’s… wrong. Plus, how would you even do it? If you email that out to everybody, somebody’s gonna rat you out and you could probably get in a ton of trouble.”

Terri shook her head. “No. No, see, I’ma let them come to me. I shouldn’t have to ask, but do you know what Discord is?”

Toni nodded at the sight of her RA pushing Quinn up against a wall. His hand slipped a little, and for a moment landed on the girl’s neck. For the first time, Toni wondered if it would be hot to be choked – by the right person, that is. Someone strong, but sensitive. “Discord. Strife. Chaos. Enmity.”

“What? No, not the dictionary–”

“I’m kidding. Yes, I know what the Discord app is.”

Terri let her watch the video on loop as she laid out her idea. A server for the floor. To create a male-free space for the women of Higgins 3. None of the girls they’d talked to or heard griping about it in their floor’s public spaces really liked the situation, having a guy in charge of all these women, but Toni could admit she did really like this particular guy. She’d thought he seemed sweet before this evening, but now? Ugh, her next boyfriend was going to have to really know how to work it if he wanted to compete with her fantasies of all that . For the first time in her life, she contemplated finding some random guy and just hooking up. Except some random guy couldn’t slam her against the wall of a shower stall and hold her there by the throat while he accepted her token of gratitude for saving her life.

She appreciated that in this creepy little scheme, Terri at least owned that some of her intentions were self-serving. She was serious about her little streaming hobby. Some of the girls on Higgins 3 had thousands of followers on Instagram and TikTok, she said, so it was a networking opportunity. Plus, it would also be nice to be able to communicate under the radar, share grievances, ask questions, and to bond. It actually sounded like a really good idea. Except…

“Tori already made one. I joined, but it’s like, official. It has rules and stuff, and not just the usual gag order on politics and religion. There’s only like a dozen of us on it so far, but… It feels more like a study hall than a coffee bar, you know? The vibe is off.”

“So you figure if you have this video, you can steal everybody into your cool coffee bar server,” Toni finished for her.

“I mean, kinda? Or maybe have Tori give me some admin powers on hers. Like she can be tech support, and I can be R&D.”

“OK, but like… why are you asking me?”

Terri sliced off a thin sliver from the plastic cake tray and shifted it Toni’s way. It was pointedly disregarded. “Because I think you’ve got it in you to be an influencer. I think the ‘cool’ girls will follow me, at least maybe. But you’ve got this kind of… wholesome, nerdy, my hotness doth not define me vibe to you. I think that’s what some of them will respond to. I tried asking that girl in the end room, Amy, similar kind of serious energy, but she pretty much slammed her door in my face. But you… well you’re on the same side of the door, I figured.” She grinned.

Toni wasn’t sure how to take that. Terri had a knack for describing someone vividly without taking a pro or con side. It definitely didn’t feel like a compliment. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable attaching my name to, um…”

Toni was having a hard time putting words to it. What she meant to say was that repaying a heroic act by sharing a naked video of them without their consent felt morally repulsive. Unfortunately, the sight of her RA sandwiched between the petite but shapely vixen and the soapy Barbie doll that was Leigh had distracted her. The subsequent scene, once Tori got her damn hair out of the way and the action moved out from behind that bitch RA’s attempt at concealing it, featured Spencer standing, hands on hips, cock throbbing in the misty air, as he interposed himself in front of Leigh like a solid wall of delicious man. At that, Toni forgot she’d been speaking at all.

“Help me out, and I’ll send you a copy of it right now.”

Terri reached out and paused the video. Water beaded all over his smooth, lean muscled chest, his expression nearly as defiant of Leigh’s assailant as his cock was of gravity.

“I shouldn’t. We would so go  to hell for this.”

“And I’ll let you have the room to yourself while I finish your cake.”

Toni sighed. The claw marks on his chest were visible. Maybe even bleeding. Would he have put himself in harm’s way for her? Fuck yes he would. He barely knew his girls. Toni had been using the bathroom when it started, those hysterical shrieks, the shower stall door being kicked wide open. She’d seen almost everything. He hadn’t hesitated. Maybe she could put her thumb over the part of the screen that showed Leigh’s face and imagine…

The greediest parts of her brain twisted themselves in knots supplying justifications. For instance, that Terri  would post it anyway no matter what she did. That Toni was no leader, no icon of wholesome whatever, that nothing would be different if she engaged or not. That there were still whispers, loud ones, of pushing to have Spencer fired and replaced with a girl, whispers that this video would go a long way towards silencing.

Besides, she already had a memory of it, so what was the difference in getting to remember it more vividly?

Also, how long would it take Terri to eat that cake?

“What do you need me to do?”

****************************************************************

“Oh my gawsh , thank you buttsurfer ! That’s so generous! You guys, can I get a round of TerriHearts in the chat? Three gifted subs! Thank you thank you thank you!”

Aside from the username buttsurfer, it was words she’d heard from Terri a dozen times that morning. And every morning for the past three days. She’d get tomorrow off only because it was a Tuesday and Terri had an early class. Then again, so did she, so not like it would allow her to sleep in.

These past couple weeks had been grating, big-time. To be clear, she didn’t hate  Terri. She just hated what Terri was. Everything about her was superficial and calculated and with this air like if you didn’t see the world in the same amoral, transactional way that she did, you were some kind of chump. Or “simp,” as she now correctly understood the term. Not that Terri ever used it, not since that first day, but Toni had lurked on her roommate’s stream several times, just to see what the other side of the incessant dialogue was like, and… fuck.

How could any guy think any woman could ever respect such blatant, fawning, shallow, public servility? They must just not care about having an actual shot. Maybe these lonely guys were aware they were sacrificing their dignity with their cash. Toni couldn’t even pity the creeps. Anybody with money to burn helping their fellow pervs watch some barely nineteen-year-old girl bounce and giggle ad-free was a testament to what was wrong with their whole generation. The past several generations, if she was even close to estimating the ages of some of those gross dudes.

Plus, Terri kept getting bolder about it. Toni’s sense was that she’d been a pretty big ho before coming to Lakeview, scaled it back so as not to totally freak out her roommate, then let herself grow incrementally sluttier until she was back to normal. That was her way, after all, her behaviors forming  not a personality but a strategy.

Saturday she’d started her stream with wet hair and a towel – hair Toni had seen her wetting in the bathroom sink, and the “water” on her chest above the towel was fucking baby oil. She apologized for not being ready on time, insisting she’d had to run back to her room from the shower, when in fact she’d been sitting in her chair checking to make sure the oil was even for twenty minutes when the stream went live. Then she stepped off camera but made sure to change (she was already wearing underwear) where her viewers could see her silhouette through the sheet she’d erected around her “work station,” as she called it.

(“Oh my god, you guys saw that? Oh frick, I’m so embarrassed! I should’ve run an ad break I guess, huh. Oh thank you, ‘ trebutchet ’ – am I saying that right? Thank you for the sub!”)

Simps. Ryan hadn’t been mentally retarded like Toni had first thought, just stupid and profoundly uncurious.

At least there was the sheet. She had Spencer to thank for that. Toni hadn’t been looking to rock the boat, but when he came around to do those roommate agreements, he’d sensed her hesitation on one of the questions. Terri had been treating the whole thing like a joke – she’d said she was fine letting Toni borrow clothes any time unasked, including underwear , just to get a rise out of him. Toni had played along, not wanting to look curmudgeonly. Even so, there had been a question about privacy concerns, and while it sounded like it was more about alone time, it had started a conversation. Toni had hesitated at first. Pissing off her charismatic roommate, a self-proclaimed influencer already friends with the entire floor (at least on social media)... It had smacked of the potential for social suicide. She was meeting people in classes, but there was no denying that Higgins 3 was the golden elevator to popularity, a home base for the girls everybody wanted to be with and get with. Spencer, though, he’d taken the time and made her feel safe being open and honest, and by the time it was over Terri had agreed she’d prefer to have a little backdrop, too. They’d high-fived over it. So at least now she didn’t have to look at all those fake smiles and skanky outfits.

She just had to listen to them.

As quietly as possible – Terri got pretty pissy if Toni made noise that interfered with her stream – she hopped down from her bunk and skulked out of the room. Hopped down, because before the sheet went up, she’d found out the hard way that most of her bed was in the frame of Terri’s camera. So a few hundred random weirdos got to see her wake up, yawn, stretch, bend over with her butt in the air trying to see where she’d left her flip flops so she could go take a shower. At least she hadn’t been stupid enough to drop her towel for them when she got back. No, Terri warned her then. Terri’s so-called “clickbait roommate” might be a handy prop to have, but nudity meant demonetization.

Toni headed for the lounge, again. She didn’t like it in there . People came and went at random; the couches were kind of uncomfortable, the fabric coarse and the padding inadequate; those triplets were right next door with their condescending looks, each of them just a Terri on steroids; plus it had kind of a painty smell from that upperclassman girl who was always down there with her canvas. It was fun watching Jordyn at her easel, but sitting there staring at a pretty girl performing her routine felt too much like her dorm room. If streaming were like that , it might not be so bad.

At least the lounge was respite from Terri and her simps.

The lounge door was propped open, allowing a pleasant late summer breeze to waft down the hall. Kim was in there, tablet in hand. Toni hadn’t meant to disturb her, but she set it down and waved on her own. “Hey… Toni, right?”

“Yeah. And you’re… Kim.” Toni was sure of it, but didn’t want to sound overfamiliar. Kim had made this really funny comment during their first floor meeting, and although Toni couldn’t remember what it was now, it had put Kim on her short list for friend-making. Plus, while she’d never say it aloud in a million years, it would be a relief to hang out with somebody who wasn’t jarringly pretty. Sometimes it was nice to bump into a friend and not have to start the conversation with the obligatory “oh my gosh you look so pretty today squee ” bullshit.

“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” Toni asked, gingerly taking a seat.

“No way! Just checking my portfolio. Stocks, I mean. Which I swear is not a humblebrag!” Kim grimaced before Toni could even contemplate a judgment, but then adopted a haughty tone, fanning her face with her tablet. “Oh spitzels, it seems the NASDAQ has fallen nearly a quarter of a point! I shall have to say fare thee well to one of my Mercedes! Not cars, of course, but as I’m sure you know the Germans make a surprisingly comfortable luxury U-Boat.”

Toni giggled, genuinely amused. “My great-grandpa actually sailed on a submarine in World War II.” Stupid thing to say, but after two weeks of getting-to-know-you conversations with other freshmen, it was hard to track what info she’d shared with whom, so esoteric facts were all she had in the tank.

“A Mercedes? Or did he have to settle for, ugh, a Jaguar?” She even pronounced the “u” as its own syllable, which made Toni laugh even harder.

Neither of them seemed to be going anywhere, so it led to less silly conversation. They started with the usual safe, familiar topics – intended majors, hometowns, did you see that photo somebody posted on discord  of their RA doing curls at the rec center oh my god  – and slowly became more familiar.

“So you’re Terri’s roommate, right?”

Toni nodded. “Guilty as charged.”

“That must be so  cool, you know? Like, I know it feels like half the girls on this floor are internet famous. I mean, the triplets! They’re freaking surreal, right? Almost eerie.”

“I bet that’s not a word they hear very–”

There was a sudden rap on the frame of the lounge’s entrance, and there was… one of them. Toni had no idea which, didn’t even remember the list of names she could guess from. The girl was in a robe, shower caddy in hand. “Were you saying something about us?”

Holy fuck they’d gotten there fast, whoever they were. Allison, Addison, Maddison… there was no telling which. They weren’t merely identical, but they dressed  identical. Different colors sometimes, but always the same style and cut. Regardless, it was an accusation, no mistake. Kim shook her head frantically. “No! No, not at all.”

“Oh. Because I know I heard ‘triplets, bleh.’ But maybe you were talking about some other triplets I guess.”

“No! I mean OK, yes, but we were just talking about her roommate Terri, who’s an influencer, like you and your sisters, and I didn’t mean ‘ugh’ ugh, just like ‘ugh’ you three are, like, so …”

The awkwardness of it finally got to her and Kim fell silent. The skinny blonde in the doorway waited, finally nodding in satisfaction. “So your roommate’s an ‘influencer,’ huh? Like us.” She smirked. Toni had a distinct impression of how Malala would look if she heard someone say they were “sort of into politics.” If she were also a giant bitch, that is.

Toni, however, had spent years being hot enough not to be pushed around by the hot popular girls. She might keep her head down in her dorm room, but she wasn’t about to sit for this. “I mean, not exactly like you.”

The girl failed to see the trap. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah, I mean, Terri actually has tits to show off, so.” Toni shrugged, smirking. If the shrug called attention to her own, far larger, breasts, so be it.

Kim’s eyes shot open. The triplet’s only didn’t because she was the sort not to give the satisfaction of seeing a burn land. “I’ll bet both of her followers really appreciate that,” was the best comeback she had at the ready. Still, she’d lost, and had the sense to retreat before Toni burned her again. Her flip-flops flipped and flopped somehow angrily as she departed the scene of such a vicious arson.

“You did not  just say that to her!”

Toni shrugged, failing to avoid smirking. “The only reason she’s even internet famous is because there’s three of them. On their own, they’d be the same as the rest of the girls here.”

“Some of us,” mumbled Kim, and Toni was glad for her naturally reddish complexion when she blushed. There were a lot of pretty girls on the floor, and Kim was, well, not. It wouldn’t matter except for how conspicuous it was. As it stood, the “Three,” as Toni had heard some jerks call them, stood out on Higgins 3 almost as much as Spencer. And not in that same delightful way.

Toni thought fast. She’d meant to flex a little, show off for her hopeful new friend, but somehow she’d made things worse. “Hey, um, are you doing anything this afternoon?”

“Um, I have a 4:15 class, but otherwise… no?” She sounded nervous. Toni’s fault, she knew.

“Oh. I just figured, if you wanted to peek behind the curtains, Terri’s been begging me to help her out with some shots. Shoots? Taking pictures, whatever you call it. I don’t really know anything about that stuff, but I was thinking it could be fun, but I’d feel weird doing it by myself I think.”

Kim brightened, but hesitantly. “I mean, I’m sure you  could… you know. Sorry, just… yeah. Look at you, huh?”

Toni smiled. “Thanks. But I actually meant behind the cameras. She’s always asking me – or anybody who’ll listen – to help her with all the lighting stuff, filming, feedback before she posts. She doesn’t really listen to the feedback, though. I think she just likes to tell people saying she looks great that she’s ‘ ohmygawsh  such a mess, blergh.’”

Kim laughed. “You’re sure? I don’t want to just barge in there and pretend I know what I’m doing. I’m pretty much at the ‘sharing funny cat videos’ tier of TikTok posting.”

Toni stood and extended a hand. Holy crud, it had worked . She hadn’t really been thinking, just seizing on how impressed Kim had sounded over the whole stupid hobby. In hindsight, she wished she’d just suggested they go do their own thing without involving Terri, but it was too late. Besides, posing while Kim snapped some pics sounded incredibly narcissistic. At least with Terri there to suck the air out of the room, they could laugh themselves stupid later over how absurd the girl was.

“We’ll never know what we’re doing if we don’t do at least a little barging. C’mon.”

****************************************************************

“I am not  wearing that.”

“You said you wanted to collab !”

“I… what? I don’t even know what that means.”

Terri doled out the syllables “Co-lab-urr-ate…?”

“I definitely didn’t say I wanted to do that.”

“Sure you did! You said, and I quote, ‘Sure, that sounds fun.’ And it will be! Just try it on. Once you see yourself in it, you’ll change your mind.”

“Nobody is ever  going to see me in that . No way. No offense, but I’m not like you, Terri.”

Terri finally paused, pulled the objectionable item back. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Toni winced. Easy to forget sometimes that saying “no offense” usually just primed people to take offense. “Nothing! Really, nothing. You just like to show off all that, which is totally fine, and I just… don’t. I’m… private.”

“Private? Toni, when we moved in, you had 7 Instagram followers, and two of them were your parents. You didn’t even have a TikTok.” Terri’s expression was more like she’d said Toni didn’t have a left leg or something. “Now you have almost three thousand.”

“So…? It’s just people from high school, half of whom are dudes who only followed me because they’re hoping I’ll take a pic in something like that .”

Terri folded her arms, cocked her hips to one side. “How big was your high school?”

“Uh, like, the regular size? Three stories, most parts. What does that even–”

Terri pinched the bridge of her nose and rubbed it irritably. “Damnit, I mean how many kids went there.”

All right, that was a little embarrassing. “Like 1400, 1450, something like that? I think? Why?”

“OK, so you’re kind of a nerd, right? Let’s do a story problem. Three thousand followers, and let’s be generous and round to fifteen hundred followers. Got your calculator handy?”

“Calculator? What are you–”

“By my math, that means your whole family, every single person you went to high school with, and everyone in all of your classes here are following you, and then  some of their buddies saw who their friends are following and they  decided to follow you. Then the algorithm picks that up, realizes you generate clicks from strangers, and puts you in front of more strangers. Ripple effect, follow?”

“Uh…”

Terri rolled her eyes at what was evidently an obtuse expression on her roommate’s face. “It means you’ve got It, bitch! It means you’ve got so fucking much of It that randos took a look at you, clicked, clicked some more, beat off to that shot where you’re like humping the tree or whatever and decided that whatever else you wanna show ‘em, they wanna keep seeing It!”

“I never humped a tree, god.” True, Toni had pressed herself up against a tree and raised one leg, which, yeah, was a little sexy. Still, it had taken place on their campus tour; Spencer had offered and she had thought it might be fun to tease the guy a little before they replaced him. Which, thanks to the massive shift in Spencer’s popularity rating brought on by that glorious horrendous video, had not happened. Thank god. That was it.

No way Spencer  beat off to that.

Was there? He’d liked it, after all. Toni would die before admitting it, but sometimes when she was masturbating while Terri was occupied with her stream, deaf to the world behind those stupid pink headphones, she browsed her own feed and imagined Spencer looking at her pictures, imagined  what he might be thinking when he tapped that Like.

“Call it what you want, Red, but you were rocking it. Come on, just try it on. See how it feels.”

Toni shook her head emphatically. “Oh yeah? Well if I’m such an influential ‘influencer’ with all of my clothes on, maybe I’ll keep at it. That’s what us ‘influencers’ do, right? Establish a ‘brand?’”

“First off, ease back on sarcastic finger quotes. Second, there’s nothing wrong giving your fans expectations of what sort of content you’re gonna provide. Or do you just pick a random channel on TV and watch whatever’s on?”

“No. Especially not if the show had girls wearing things like that . I can’t believe you think I’d–”

A soft tap at the door alerted the quibbling women to the building’s one and only and wonderful male presence, but too late. “Hey, Terri, and heeey Toni.” She beamed at having been given the longer hey. “ How we doing ?”

It was an innocuous question, a “sup,” not a probe of the pair’s bickering. Good. To Toni’s mind, the man had a talent for keeping his nose out of drama – another point in his favor. Not that he needed more. Day by day, he was running up the score on every other boy at Lakeview. If he ever decided to lower his knightly shield and take advantage of his living situation, he could probably fuck half the floor in a weekend. The girls were, to put it mildly, enamored.

“Spencer, what do you  think of this?” Terri asked hastily, holding up the offending so-called garment.

Their RA squinted, reared his head to inspect from another angle, squinted harder. “Um, is that… a handkerchief? That got chewed up by a dog, or something?” Spencer peered around. “Tell me you two don’t have a dog in here.”

“Just you, dawg, and us two bitches,” Terri quipped. Toni frowned. It wasn’t fair that a girl as attractive as her roommate should also be quick-witted. All those hours talking at her  followers must have sharpened her conversation skills. “But no, it’s a swimsuit, ya goober.”

Up went the same eyebrow Toni had raised when her roommate had tried to tell her the same lie. “It is? I thought swimsuits had, you know, pads and stuff. This thing fits in the palm of your hand. Is it for a baby or something? Didn’t you say at our first floor meeting you were going to be an aunt soon?”

She had said that, but for one, Terri’s sister was only just entering her third trimester; for two, even if she’d popped the minute that meeting had ended, they didn’t give swimming lessons to six-week-olds; and for three, Terri was on a mission, and she wasn’t about to be put off by his impressive listening skills.

“It’s for Toni! I think she’d look so hot in it, don’t you?” She held it up, pinching and tugging in various places to try to illustrate its shape. It was fairly straightforward, a sheer white one-piece swimsuit. A thong  swimsuit. Toni held little hope for it concealing much of her breasts, either. Her areolas were big; she’d had to be careful to keep them out of public view in normal bathing suits, much less this flimsy thing.

“I, um, yeah, for sure. But two models like you, you look good in everything. Sometimes I feel like I ought to have to pay for a subscription just to stop by for a knock-and-talk.” He laughed.

Toni loved his laugh. So gentle. Sammi had uploaded a reaction video to the Hottie Haven, the floor’s discord server (renamed thusly by Terri). It featured Spencer chuckling at this dumb dad joke she’d found online. Likely the first one that had come up when she googled it. Sammi had ambushed him on his way back to his room from the shower. That was always a good time to seek him out for chit chat or esoteric dorm-related requests. For those who liked to share in-the-wild sightings, it was hands down the most popular. Terri had called her roommate “clickbait” when they’d first  met, but Toni had nothing on Spencer. A candid of that man in a towel – or god , his boxers – was sure to get a react  from pretty much the whole floor. Even the lesbian couple down the hall at least hit the thumbs up. Some sights transcended sexual preference.

In the video, his towel had slipped, and if you froze it on the right frame you could just make out the base of his cock before he caught it and pulled it back into place. Toni had watched Sammi’s video so many times that the joke was burned into her soul.

“Hey Spencer, what kind of a bear is the most condescending?”

“Um, I don’t know. Is that recording? You really should record someone when–”

“A pan–DUH!”

His laugh may have been merely pitying, but try telling that to what it did to those pecs. Toni felt like she could grind herself on those pecs for days.

Spencer eyed Toni askance, eyes flitting between the nominal swimsuit and the body for which it had been purchased. “You’re really thinking of trying that on, huh? Because… dang. Fearless.”

“Fearless?” Toni heard herself ask. For perhaps the first time, she regretted that Terri wasn’t recording, like she seemed to be half of her waking life. Perhaps just as well. She didn’t know if it was true that masturbating could make a girl go blind the way it could boys, but being able to listen to Spencer Lawrence himself pay her that compliment, in that impressed tone, on loop…

Toni supposed she could get contacts. Her mom wore contacts.

Ah, well.

“Sure. Takes a lot of confidence, right? I couldn’t imagine, like, walking down the hall in my boxers, much less… Yeah.” There was no polite way to point out that every last woman on the floor knew full well that he did exactly that any time he needed to use the bathroom in the middle of the night. Casey had captured evidence of it more than a few times, mostly low-grade pics taken through a crack in her door. Terri had created a whole channel for her to post them, #nightowl. It had been Danielle who quipped that it was because Casey wanted to wrap her “hooters” around what was only somewhat concealed behind the slit in that underwear. She forgot how Casey had replied, but it hadn’t been a denial. Some incomprehensible stonerism, knowing her. That chick was always high.

Fearless , he’d said. Fearless.

“Actually,” Terri cut in, “Do you have a minute?”

“A minute? For you, I have three.” Toni wanted to kiss him. He was such  a cheesy dork sometimes, but so  adorable at being one. More than kiss, maybe. No, definitely.

“Awesome. Because we were just saying, if we’re going to collab  on a couple saucy swimsuit shots, we obviously can’t take the picture ourselves, but now that you’re here…!” She bounced excitedly. So did her boobs.

Spencer blinked. Somehow he never seemed to anticipate that any of his residents might flirt with him. Or, Toni granted, perhaps they just kept flirting harder because of his resilience to it, so he never quite caught up. Toni loved that blink. “You… want me to take pictures of you, in your swimsuits?”

“Yeah! You have a good eye for photography. I mean it! I refollowed you, remember?” (Was that the term, refollowed…?) “And we’re just doing it here in our room with the green screen.”

Toni pointed to the huge green tarp that was, as usual, pulled down in front of Toni’s closet in the morning. At least it was supposed to be Toni’s. The other side had so much of Terri’s streaming gear – lamps, mics, stands for each, cheap backups in case of equipment failure, cosplay accessories, and more makeup than Toni had ever believed one woman could ever need – that she’d only somewhat grudgingly offered to let Terri hang her clothes on Toni’s side.

Her roommate had reciprocated by offering to let Toni wear her clothes, unasked, whenever. As if she weren’t half a foot taller and two sizes bigger.

Spencer mulled it over, but finally gave a shrug. “OK, sure. That is, if you’re sure you wouldn’t be more comfortable with one of the girls doing it?”

Terri turned to her roommate, a coy smile on her lips. She knew damn well what Toni was doing, and only a total chump would believe it was innocent.

But at the same time… Maybe…

Toni felt it, somewhere deep inside. Deep, and dark, and damp. Maybe, for once, it would be Spencer would be lying in the dark in his bed, his phone held up over his face, as he  pleasured himself looking at Toni.

“I think if anything I’d actually feel more  comfortable with you,” she said. Somehow. Her parents were going to see this. Guess what, Daddy, I’m a model, like you always said I should!  

He didn’t ask why. The girls liked him, trusted him, and he was used to it by now. Never mind that it made no sense that having a single hetero male record her in a micro bikini would be more comfortable than having a hetero female do it, or better yet not putting that obscene scrap of spandex in the first place. The heroic Spencer had been told he was needed by one of his Hotties, and it was, as they’d all learned, his kryptonite.

Terri asked for a minute so they could change, and he stepped into the hall. They could hear him out there talking to Charlie. Toni personally couldn’t stand Charlie. Nobody was that… nice. It was such a transparent act. Spencer politely pretended he didn’t see through it.

(All right, maybe one person was that nice.)

Meanwhile, Toni donned the swimsuit. Terri had sponsors; they’d sold her the swimsuits for 30% off. Toni suspected they were less “sponsors” and more opportunistic marketers preying on girls with delusions of grandeur. But it was 30% off, and better yet, Terri had paid the other 70. Free to a good body.

Standing there in that thing, Toni gaped at her reflection. Nudity felt less naked than this. She kept tugging and tugging, but no matter how she adjusted it, it was designed to sneak up her slit, showcasing the two plump, lewd labia. To be fair, some of that could have been avoided, some, except to do so meant jerking it down so that the shoulder straps, which comprised most of the upper half of it, failed to cover the entirety of her nipples.

 Terri finally told her to stop messing with it and try to smile, have a little fun looking out of this world hot. “He’s going to remember you, in that, for the rest of his life,” she whispered into Toni’s ear. It was too sexy, to say nothing of the little pinch she gave Toni’s butt, but she was too horny over the idea of it to care. As Terri no doubt knew.

When Toni opened their door and invited Spencer back into the room, the look on his face when he took in Toni’s shortstack body in this walking advertisement for easy, effortless sex, she silently conceded some of Terri’s point. Looking this sexy… it did  feel pretty hot. Maybe she did have a little bit of “It,” whatever “It” was. Not that Toni was looking to use It for anything.

He was hard, she realized somewhere in the middle of it. Right around the time Terri stopped posing near her and started posing on  her. His tongue slid out, held for a moment between his lips, slipped reluctantly back in. Toni let the molestation slide.

Maybe encouraged  it. Just a little.

Spencer  was hard  for her .

“You could just ask him out, you know,” Terri said later that evening as she experimented with different backgrounds in her image editing software. Toni had insisted on final approval before anything was posted. Terri hadn’t bothered putting up a fight. No background she selected was going to make her butt less bare. Spencer had actually had to interrupt the shoot to notify her that her butthole was visible around the string that called itself a bottom.

(Would he want to fuck her ass? Toni had never been even a little curious, but then she’d seen the way he looked at her. Perhaps it would be interesting. She’d been asked out by six guys since coming to Lakeview, and she’d trade a night out with any of them to pose for Spencer in that slutty thing.)

“No, I can’t. Even if he were interested in me, he’s dead serious about that not  dating residents policy . He’s rejected Casey and Leigh . Both of them total Barbie’s. Probably rejected others who wouldn’t cop to it, too.”

Terri continued speaking distractedly, her back to her sulky roommate, focusing on her task. “Well, if you want to keep getting eye-fucked by him, I’m happy to oblige.”

“Oblige? What do you–”

Toni’s cell phone rang. Mom , it read. Her stomach lurched.

Eye-fucking.  Such a crude term, but… Terri wasn’t wrong. Polite eye-fucking, but still eye-fucking. If it was the only fucking she could get from him, she’d take it.

“Fine, let’s ‘collab ,’” Toni said, laughing with her voice but scowling daggers through Terri’s back with the eyes.

Right before it went to voicemail, she finally answered the phone. This wasn’t going to be an easy piece of news to break. Nothing for it but to push through.

“Hi Mom.”

“No, I know.”

“I’m glad you called; I was gonna call you pretty soon anyway.”

“No, it’s nothing bad.”

“No, Mom.”

“I said no , Mom. Would you just let me…!”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to raise my voice. I’ve got news, though.”

“I just… well, I’ve been doing like you said, trying new things, and well… I tried something today.”

****************************************************************

“Ta da! The t-shirts are in, you guys!”

Like everybody, Toni brightened at the news. Not only because she liked the design, but also because she wanted to make sure Jordyn saw her doing it. Jordyn was a good next door neighbor, Toni thought. At least, she never complained about the endless, high-pitched prattle of Terri’s streaming at early hours, or the two roommates prancing with their boobs and butts spilling out of their clothes, trying to trap Spencer into photographing them. Some days they reeled him in; most days, Toni tried not to imagine how she must look to whatever floor member they snared instead.

“Kinda short, don’cha think?” opined Kendall as Jordyn held one up from the box.

Toni’s eyes widened. It was fucking short . Not “look at my cute little muffin top” short. No, it was “short people won’t have to wonder if my tits are real” short. But Jordyn was already yelling out sizes and tossing shirts. Toni tried not to notice the stricken expression on Kim’s face beside her when she accepted a Large. Not like she was even the only one – except the other two were Casey, whose waist was an XS but whose tits were an easy L, and Kyu-Ri, the freakishly round Korean girl. Toni had never even spoken to her for more than an “excuse me” in the bathroom, but Terri was forever salivating over the chance to get her behind the camera with her. As if standing next to an Asian girl was going to help her break into the Asian market or something.

Which… hmm. Toni had been reading up, since she was somehow helping her roommate do this stupid thing. Maybe it would.

As for Toni, she had signed up for a Small, not having expected it to be missing half the shirt. She’d figured it would be tight, cute. Not… this!  Maybe she should be thinking less about breaking into markets and more about breaking out of her t-shirt.

“Let’s try ‘em on!” Jordyn exclaimed, the shirts distributed. She was plainly proud, and rightly so. They were an instant hit.

Dana squeaked, likely louder than she’d intended, “There’s a boy in the room!”

“Turn around or don’t, baby!” Casey yelled, already lifting her shirt up over those things. She hadn’t even been wearing a bra!

(Toni wasn’t either, but only because she’d been trying on tops for her next shoot with Terri, and she’d had little choice but to concede that clicks went up easily 35% when she skipped a bra. Ugh, there she went again, thinking in terms of metrics.)

Spencer turned around, blushing as red as the shirts. Toni saw him looking in the girls’ reflection in the window, though, and in spite of herself, took her shirt off, right there in the middle of the room. The shirt wasn’t sexy, it wasn’t revealing. It was just plain slutty . Not even. She owned a couple slutty outfits, stuff she’d bought over the summer figuring it might help her reel in a guy playing hard to get. They weren’t even in the same ballpark as these things.

These were… porn. They were soft-core porn, nothing more.

Using her phone camera, Toni studied her tits. (Somewhere along the way Terri had gotten her using the term, but in this, it undeniably applied.) The bottom third was exposed. She was nervous to move her arms; if it rose over the halfway point, it was going to snap up all the way. Then again…

Spencer turned, eyes wide, right as his own shirt whipped at him. Peer pressure – or mob rule, maybe – played out, and soon he was changing while the girls hooted and applauded.

Toni made sure to capture the whole thing, watching the literal man of her dreams take his shirt off for her through the display of her own camera feed. The girls could thank her in the morning.

****************************************************************

“Can I ask you something?”

Toni nodded. Kim’s question had a serious sound to it. That was good. Higgins 3 was not a serious place; Kim’s new floor had a much homier feel to it. No harem vibes. It felt like so much of her time was spent in deliberate, cultivated silliness that a little serious was a relief. Sadly, reels of hot girls lip synching other people’s jokes out-performed reels of hot girls talking about their thoughts and feelings. At least she wasn’t like Terri, exploiting the potential for reels of hot girls wiggling and jiggling, then giggling at their own wiggle-jiggles. It was whorish. Plus Spencer didn’t even react if it was just thinly veiled softcore porn. Flirting with him was the whole reason she’d let herself tumble so far down this rabbit hole in the first place.

Kim sighed. “What’s it like to be crazy, stupid, insanely hot?”

Toni’s eyes popped, and she burst into laughter. “What? What on earth are you talking about?”

“I’m serious! I’m not being a hater or anything. Like, I’ve known pretty girls. One of my friends from high school was really really cute. But I’m talking about hot-enough-to-be-famous hot. I’ve never had a friend that  hot.”

“You mean, like, Terri?”

“No, I mean the mad hot redhead lounging on my futon pretending she’s not a mad hot redhead.”

Kim chuckled. “I’m going to start holding up fingers . When I get to the number of zeros after your follower count, stop me. And don’t pretend you don’t know it as of this morning.”

Embarrassed but flattered, Toni stopped her immediately. “OK, OK. But I’m not  famous, not even close. Pretending you’re famous for followers on social media is like pretending you’re a master chef because you cook at a fat camp. But sure, yeah, I guess I’m… hot. Or whatever. OK.” It was weird to say it out loud, but she hadn’t spent an hour this past weekend wading through pervy comments to decide which ones crossed the line and come away from it not feeling like she was pretty hot. It was like that dumb movie where that guy could read women’s minds, except Toni wasn’t a neo-nazi, she was only seeing men’s thoughts, and they all thought the same thing: various iterations of how badly they wanted to fuck her. (Or occasionally, they wanted to see more of her feet, which… ick.)

“So?”

“I don’t know! I mean, you could ask me what it’s like to be really, really freckled, or something. It’s just… part of me, I guess.”

Kim snorted. “Oh, bullshit.”

“I mean it!”

“OK, hold up, lemme just…”

Toni waited awkwardly as Kim browsed on her phone until finally she held up a picture of herself Toni didn’t even recognize. Definitely in high school. She was in Brianne’s kitchen wearing this huge black hoodie and a dress that clashed with it horribly, her face a mixture of a snarl and a massive concussion. Her hair hung in wispy clumps. “That’s you last fall.”

Toni thought she remembered the occasion, carving pumpkins to decorate Brianne’s family’s corn maze. She’d been having a blast, but as usual, when someone aimed a camera at her, reflexes kicked in and she made her distaste known. “OK, and…”

A few more taps and she was back in the present, sifting through Toni’s most recent posts. Her  in a t-shirt that covered her panties by an inch. Her in a dress that didn’t cover them at all. A video of her “jokingly” pretending to be surprised at discovering she wasn’t even wearing any. She’d gotten Spencer to take that one. She’d come so fucking hard, watching that, remembering the way he’d tried not to leer at her ass. He pretended he hadn’t seen when she’d let her pussy make an appearance, but they both knew it. He was too much of a gentleman to admit it, and she wanted to fuck him too much to risk embarrassing him out of another shoot. So long as she pretended she was just another Terri, the game could go on.

“And this is you now,” Kim finished after swiping to a reel of Toni doing the instagram “desperado” act, holding her fingers in front of the lens for ten seconds before moving it aside to reveal her tits bouncing like crazy in her bra and panties. Maybe someday she’d even get Spencer to be comfortable filming her like that. Or less. Nothing, if he wanted. Oh, the dreams she’d had of nothing.

“What, are you trying to say I’m a skank or something?”

“No! I swear, I’m not.” Kim took her hands, squeezing reassuringly. “My literal point is that I think it’s cool and I want you to talk about it. Terri, ugh, I can hear her talking about her shit by proxy, just sitting near you. I don’t even need to hear her say it. But you hardly ever talk about it. Come on. If you were my super rich friend, you’d give me a ride in your fancy shmancy car, right?”

“Well, sure. I mean, you’re basically my super rich friend when it comes to having a car.”

“Um, it’s a Jeep, thanks.” Kim grinned. “So reciprocate already! C’mon. What’s it like to wake up to a hundred notifications of dude-bros begging to see your ta-tas?”

Toni sighed. “Is that what they’re saying? Half of them are in Arabic or use Cyrillic characters.”

Kim giggled. “I’m sorry, I meant to ask, what’s it like to wake up to a hundred notifications of dude-bros all over the world  begging to see your tits. Feel better?”

Toni laughed with her. “I dunno. I mean, at first it felt really creepy, you know? Like having guys do it online is less gross than having them do it to your face, but still. But I guess after the millionth time, you just sort of ignore it? Like, half of them are just so pathetic – the guys who try to shame you, guys my grandpa’s age who flirt like it, the ones who analyze you like they’re critiquing a painting and not a person, the guys who just go ‘8/10, would fuck but not bareback.’”

“They do that?”

“Oh yeah, they do that.”

Like that, the floodgates had been opened. She never talked with Terri about this. Terri loved absolutely every level of attention her online persona attracted. Even the most horrendously crude ones, it was an opportunity to do reactions on her livestreams, to sit on a throne of judgment as a half-naked queen, complaining about all the guys wanting to beat off to her content to hundreds of guys who wanted to beat off to her content.

Toni rambled on to Kim, who somehow couldn’t get enough. It was  kind of interesting, objectively, she supposed. The intersection of feminine empowerment– her body, her choice – and the horny randos lining up to objectify her. The increasingly delicate conversations with her family, who were trying to split the difference between supporting her new side hustle and encouraging her to remember that it wasn’t only  strangers watching. Wondering whether someone was being nice to her because they thought she was pretty, because they’d seen her online and wanted to fuck her online persona, or were just being nice.

Kim listened, and listened, and asked for more. At some point, though, it stopped being curiosity  and became letting a friend vent. Toni heard herself saying things she hadn’t even known she’d been thinking. About how her high school friends had gone from oh shit look at you!  to whoa there, Trigger  to yeesh, who is this porn star and what did she do with my Toni  to just not reaching  out. The tone she heard in her parents’ voices that made  her wonder who all back home had seen her stuff. The contemplation of how this might echo through the years. Would her future husband come home from work someday and demand to know why his coworker was taunting him about a video of his teenage wife in her underwear?

Most vexing of all was her worry that she was beginning to actually  like  it. It was sexy. She  was sexy. The raw power of knowing how easily she could satisfy the sweaty, masturbatory fantasies of tens of thousands of men, but… shrug , nah. The exhilaration of instead going shrug , why not. Orgasms were good. Great, even. The ability to dole them out en masse was some heady shit, but was she just behaving like a dumb kid? Was there anything more to it than just showing off?

When she was younger – too young, but old enough – she’d gone through a very brief phase where the practice of changing with the window blinds cracked had been weirdly appealing. She didn’t think anybody ever saw anything; the angles to her neighbors’ houses were bad, and she’d been too chicken to do it at night when she’d be easily seen. But it had turned her on, at least until she had a sit-down with her libido and reminded it how  unsexy it would be if anybody recorded it. Was she just reliving that impulse, getting off on the high of having been born with the genetics for big boobs without thinking of the pitfalls?

How stupid was it to let herself get this  carried away by a dumb crush on an RA who’d flatly said a hundred times that he didn’t hook up with residents? Even if Spencer wanted  to fuck her, he wouldn’t let himself do it. That was part of what made it so hot. And so pathetic.

“You know you could just… stop, right?” Kim pressed softly as Toni threatened to cycle into a third round of introspection into how she’d ever wound up posing in her underwear just to get some attention from this hot guy she didn’t even have a chance with.

“I know. I mean, I guess I know. It’s just… I don’t know. It feels so…”

It made her horny as hell, was the truth. Living around the corner from the sexiest fucking guy she’d ever met, a guy who was obviously attracted to her, who any day might get a little tipsy or see her in exactly the right costume or hear her espouse interest in exactly the right niche fetish, and just… ungh , drag her back to his dorm room and fuck out every last brain cell in her head.

There were rumors he’d done that with Kendall and Georgia; Terri had been partying with them in their room when it got written up, and she said that evidently they’d managed to sneak their way into a sleepover by feigning anxiety over it. Other rumors even said that sad-sack redneck girl Andi had gotten a pity fuck only a few days ago. Not the most impressive way of going about it, but it signified that it was possible.

If that girl could do it, Toni definitely could. Right? Thousands  of men wanted to fuck her. She only wanted the one. Wanted him so fucking badly. Even if it wasn’t a relationship, sneaking around, finding hidden places to fuck, surprising him in the middle of the night by sneaking into his room and waking him with a slow, sensuous blowjob. He didn’t even lock his door, everyone knew. An invitation, some girls on the floor said, but Toni knew that it was trust. Spencer loved his girls, and they loved him. Toni wasn’t honestly sure whether she meant “love” in a platonic sense, or in the same way she’d said it to Chris, or something deeper. He was everything she’d ever wanted in a man, after all, beautiful and strong and compassionate and empathetic and those shoulders and oh god  that dick, the silhouette in her mind that was the origin of every flutter of her eyelashes in every slutty TikTok, and she just wanted, just once , needed  to–

“So…?”

Toni blinked. “Sorry, lost  my train of thought. Anyway, it’s just for fun. It’s not like I’m trying to make a lifestyle out of it like Terri or the triplets or something.”

“So you are having fun, then?”

Toni shrugged. “Most of the time.”

“Good.” Kim sighed. “I’m glad I got out of there and all, but sometimes, I miss…”

Toni sidled up next to her friend and swiped on her phone. It was on the same screen she’d left it on that morning when she’d gotten so caught up low-key masturbating in her bunk, glad for Terri’s sound-canceling headphones. An AI-edited shot Destiny had created, depicting Spencer standing in the center of a room that was a recognizable likeness of the Higgins 3 floor lounge. Naked. Hard as fuck. Angry  hard. A cock that demanded service, now . Silhouetted girls rimmed the room, some of them fucking each other, some of them fucking themselves. The picture would have been better without it, but it certainly captured the essence of Higgins 3 better with them there.

Kim licked her lips. She’d left the Hottie Haven when she’d left Higgins 3. “He’s not as hot as you guys act like he is, you know.”

“Right, I totally get you. I’ll stop sending you this stuff.”

Her friend giggled. “Let’s not go crazy.”

****************************************************************

“What? No, Dad, I’m not ‘being a lesbian.’ And that’s not how you say that! Why would you even think that I’m–”

The sound quality on the phone call didn’t convey it well, but her father did apologize, albeit mostly for saying it wrong. The man didn’t seem comfortable talking about what had prompted him to say it, though he didn’t have to. Toni’s mom had DMed her – via her Instagram DMs, the fastest way to reach her these days – about how guys from Dad’s work had been razzing him about his hot daughter flaunting herself online. Evidently she hadn’t needed to wait for her future husband to embarrass someone at work.

Terri had apparently been right about what she’d said a few weeks back, the ripple effect. Most of Toni’s followers had usernames and avatars that meant nothing to her, but not all. She recognized some of the ones who didn’t, or pieced them together from clues. Her father’s coworkers, relatives of people she’d gone to church with, non-Lakeview friends of her Lakeview friends. She was pretty sure that her creepy anthropology TA was following her, but maybe it would give her a nudge when he scored her paper next week. She was really close to straight A’s, something she’d never done before. All the girls said Spencer was into smart girls after meeting his grad student girlfriend at that sex talk program. It was almost comical how quickly the study groups and tutoring requests and offers had flooded the Hottie Haven.

Toni appreciated why her father was upset. Theirs had never been a hyperconservative  household, but conservative enough that having to watch their daughter try to bounce her boobs out of her top copying some new viral TikTok dance trend crossed a big fat line.

The reactions of her high school friends’ – the few who’d been in town last  weekend when she went home for Meemaw’s birthday – had been mixed. None of them went so far as to slut shame, but in between marveling at how much of a following she’d accrued in so short a  time had come more than a few quips at her expense. I can’t believe you found a skirt even shorter than you , or So what’s your average follower per cup size?  

They sure hadn’t complained when Toni tagged them in the pics of their rendezvous, though.

Toni spent hours sulking that evening, her father’s accusation ringing in her ears. It had stiff competition, though. Terri and that disturbing binaural microphone. She knew how it sounded on stream from her own research on ASMR. It sounded hotter than sex. Toni hated how much it turned her on. She was almost always turned on these days, it felt like. That sound, a constant ambient blowjob, a tongue lavishing endless unadulterated affection on whatever bits you wanted to imagine it was licking… It was fuel on the fire. Toni thought for the thousandth time that she needed  a boyfriend, someone to help her scratch that itch. What was it Nikki had posted about hers, though? Her ex, that is. That it was like trying to scratch a mosquito bite with a feather.

“Mmmm.” Terri, between those sloppy, wet licks on her ear mics. She was so absurdly good with those things. Spencer was her muse, she said. Terri wasn’t into him like Toni was, which was to say she’d give her left tit to fuck him but didn’t want to chain herself to his bed as a live-in cock receptacle. Still, Toni believed her when she said she was channeling him when she worked. Whenever her eyes slid closed on stream , those creepy rubber ears became Spencer’s ears. Sometimes she said she streamed with a vibrator inside her, just to stir up her viewership; sometimes she did it for real. Toni seldom knew which was which until she observed whether or not Terri needed to change her panties after a stream.

She’d wondered aloud at dinner the other night about whether she ought to stop making it a laundry issue and just sell the soiled things. “We could pay down our student loans with those things, you know?”

“I’m not selling my panties to perverts, and if you have any dignity at all, you won’t either!”

Terri had let it drop. Toni hadn’t stopped thinking about it, though. If how wet Spencer made her pussy could enable her to graduate debt-free. If someday she would have a husband who would never know that the down-payment on their house had been paid for by how sticky juicy wet her pussy got just thinking about a better man. Toni already disrespected him, and she hadn’t even met him yet.

“Of course they’re not fake. Do you see these things? Do they look fake? How dare you,” whispered Terri into her mic with a sultry giggle that was basically just buttery girl-cum in audio form. Referring to her tits, no doubt. Their followers were forever asking if Terri’s or Toni’s titties were authentic as an excuse to bring them up conversationally, though both knew Toni got it ten times as often. Her roommate giggled for her stream, a throaty purr of a laugh that only made Terri contemplate probing her own nipples. She lifted her shirt up, raised one to her lips.

No. She forced it back down. This wasn’t her. She wasn’t like that, wasn’t like Terri. She wasn’t a slut. She wasn’t some horny, shameless e-thot whose whole life was performance art for pushy incels and lonely untouchables. She wasn’t. She’d posed for some pictures to get a boy’s attention, nothing more. She wasn’t… that. That delectable, worshipful tongue-bath that was making a mess out of eight hundred and forty-two pairs of men’s underwear, plus one roommate’s soupy thong. She was not.

Before Toni quite knew what she was doing, the impulse took root. Her phone was out and in moments, all of her accounts were switched to private. No more of this. She was more than two incredible tits, a waist as big as Spencer’s bicep, and then an ass you could bounce a whole handful of quarters off of. (He’d refused to try that when Toni had offered during their shoot last weekend, but he had conceded that he believed her about the outcome if he had.)

No. She combed through the comments, blocking anybody who’d said something she’d have slapped them for face-to-face. In an hour – an hour of listening to Terri slurp, slobber and grind herself to orgasm (feigned or no) – she had barely made a dent.

Her brain did the path of how many followers she’d just lost. Over a thousand. A thousand total strangers to whom she was nothing more than a sex object on a screen. So why did that feel like such a gut punch?

She closed her eyes and sought refuge in the one thing that always made her feel better. One hand between her legs, and one hand also between her legs.

Suddenly there was a voice speaking beside her, and she nearly jumped out of her skin. “Wanna join me? I’ve got an ear for you, Red.”

“I told you, stop calling me Red! And just because you get off on being some internet slut doesn’t mean I want to! God!”

Terri was still sputtering a mixed apology, excuse and expression of concern when Toni stormed out of the room, tugging her shorts back up over her panty-less pussy as she strode down the hall of Higgins 3. No need to be embarrassed; it would hardly occasion   comment  around here.

That her roommate had taken Toni’s outburst so sweetly only made her angrier. She couldn’t live like this any more. It was bad enough that living down the hall from sex made flesh was basically 24/7 edging; having to hear Terri put those feelings into her so-called artistic expression, and invite her to channel all that lust – that bottomless, unslakable lust – with her?

It was torture.

If she stopped treating it like having fun teasing the boy, and started using it as an excuse to work out all those feelings? She was afraid she might never stop. She made for  his room. Toni didn’t know what she wanted to happen, but Spencer would know. Everybody knew that if you had a problem, he was going to make it his mission to solve it. He’d done those roommate agreement forms with them, hadn’t he? Surely something on there said Terri couldn’t lick and moan and touch herself, and that vibrator, and leaky pussies and dirty panties, and undisguised masturbating without even covering herself with the sheets, and…

Spencer obeyed her summons. He followed Toni back to her room and dutifully started a conversation about the noises originating therein. For him to fully understand, though, it first required educating him on exactly what ASMR was.

Toni knew she had mostly just been pouting. Lashing out. Letting two months of Terri’s constant, progressively sluttier behavior erupt in a flash, an excuse to go to Spencer and beg him for comfort. Two months of becoming something she’d thought she despised, except every time she had a chance to commit harder, she took it, and relished it.

Seeing the way he melted into those soft, erotic sounds Terri poured into the binaural mics, Toni had no choice but to lean in and help.

His eyes were closed. Terri even tested, waved a hand in front of his face, but he was in a world of pure sound. Heart in her chest, her roommate took a leap, and confided in him.

“I love your cock, Spencer,” she whispered. Her eyes were on Toni, though. It was for her.

Terri smiled at her from her place at the other synthetic ear, the sound pumping from their lips to his. “I can still taste you from massage night.”

Could he tell which girl was which in a whisper? The anonymity, albeit a coin toss, emboldened her, as did the memory of that brief salty savoring of Spencer sweat. “I want to taste you again,” she whispered to him. And she did.

Toni moved on his zipper while Terri undid the button. Both girls licked their palms, eyes sparkling at one another, as they grasped his shaft in unison. It was long enough for each to have a handful, if they moved carefully. They were nothing but patient. They’d been working together for over a month now, but each for their own purposes.

Tonight, they were united around that shaft, throbbing in their twin grasps.

“You’re so fucking hard ,” Toni whispered with a soft moan. He was. How bad did he want to fuck them right now? It couldn’t be as badly as they wanted it. They needed to get him there.

“I’ve wanted this since the day I moved in,” whispered Terri.

“Your cock? Is my favorite  cock.” The girls nodded at Toni’s assertion around their respective slut stations.

“This is what I imagine when I touch myself at night,” said Terri, rubbing her thumb softly over his glans.

“When I touch myself in the shower,” agreed Toni. She couldn’t bear to admit it out loud, but more than once she’d used the Discord thread for alerts when Spencer was showering to treat herself to a slow, delicious come at his side.

The girls went on, whispering whorish truths and licking the fuck out of those fake ears as their RA fought to remain standing, dizzied by their dual assault.

Toni and Terri’s lips met for the first time (aside from that one shoot , but that didn’t count) around their RA’s cock. The girls both knew it was being recorded, and both knew he didn’t know. Toni didn’t care. She wanted to be able to remember this, relive this, forever. When Terri kissed her over the top of his shaft, their wet, drool-sodden chins sandwiching it as they made out, she was glad for it. If not for Terri, she never would have been able to do this. Nothing that felt this good could be bad. Nay, anything that felt this good had to be divine.

There, with his cock throbbing in my hand, Toni’s doubts evaporated in the light of clarity. This was good . He  was good. His cock  was good. All this time, worrying she was “degrading” herself, when really, all she had to do was gaze up at the intensity of his pleasure. There was no conflict there. None in Terri’s eyes. None in her heart. Being sexy, learning to manipulate and heighten and satisfy the male libido, was no mere hobby.

For the first time since she’d created her instagram account the night before moving to Higgins 3, Toni felt like having these big sexy tits wasn’t just a fact. It was talent. Eroticism was a skill, and she was mother fucking skillful.

She leaned in, the mic pressed to the space between her breasts. Her heartbeat thundered in his ears as Toni extended her tongue on her RA’s shaft. All he’d done for her, creating this safe space for her, for all of them. Never judging them. Supporting her experimentation. Rewarding her fearlessness.

Misconceptions evaporated. Lessons about the iniquity of female sexuality from her minister and his vow of chastity. Guilt at pursuing her own pleasure. Embarrassment over using her body to get it. Judgmentality at her roommate, who’d done nothing more than monetize that pleasure, taking something she wanted to do anyway and using it to get by. Terri’s dream: beauty and sex and lust and flirtation and all these wonderful things that had brought Toni to this perfect moment.

A dream she’d never realized she shared, coming true before her eyes. She licked that perfect cock with almost religious zeal.

She held nothing back. Toni poured her heart and soul into that blowjob. She could feel, feel , that Terri was doing the same. When their tongues met, there was no sense of wrongness, no sense of homophobia or territorial sentiments. They’d done this together. Would Terri teach her to use these things? She’d ask. From now on, no more holding back. No more pretending she didn’t want this. No more pretending she didn’t love this.

The next time her parents chided her, she would tell them in no uncertain terms that she was  a model. When her old friends teased her for her shamelessness, she’d look them in the eyes and tell them she was proud of her body, that there was nothing shameful about enjoying it. When Kim asked her what it felt like, she’d tell her it made her horny and she loved feeling horny. That she got men off and there was nothing wrong with getting off.

That she finally understood the comfort in having a permanent record of precious memories. If she sucked Spencer off a thousand times – and she hoped to – she wanted to be able to relive every dribble of his precum down her thirst-trap of a throat.

She made sure the next time her lips brushed against Terri’s, they held. The roommates’ drool-sodden chins gently sandwiched their RA’s cock between them as they wordlessly resolved their quarrel – then right back to this unbelievable tandem blowjob.

It was Toni who retained the presence of mind to retrieve her phone from her pocket and sneak a few quick selfies of the two of them sharing this perfect moment. She tucked it away right in time for Spencer to speak, his eyes finally open, if heavy-lidded.

“So Toni, it looks like you feel a little more comfortable with it now that you’ve gotten to try it yourself, yeah?”

She answered him into her side of the binaural mic, red lips brushing the ear as she whispered her answer. “So comfortable. I’m sorry, Terri. I should have said something weeks ago.”

“I should have invited you on the first stream,” Terri answered on her side.

Toni sensuously jacked her RA off with her spare hand. “We should have invited him  on the first stream.”

“I love you.” Did she mean Spencer, or Toni?

Toni didn’t care. There wasn’t enough love in the world. If she was learning one thing from Spencer tonight, it was that the world could always use more of it. “I love you.”

Terri giggled, seizing the binaural mic and murmuring into it. “Mmm, god, I love you.”

Toni giggled. “I fucking love  you.”

The roommates dove at their RA’s cock, slurping ecstatically as they helped one another liberate needy pussies. They didn’t masturbate one another, but they were each wondering if they ought to, if they would, when they would. It wasn’t long before Spencer’s cock absolutely erupted, the girls catching what they could in open mouths, sharing between their lips, kissing their gratitude back into the shaft that had so generously gifted them so much cum, kissing their shared passion back and forth between brightly glazed lips.

Then it was time for the girls to come, even while somehow that poor, neglected mammoth dick was still spurting its dregs. Some of it landed on Toni’s exposed breasts – when had she taken her top off? – but Terri sucked it clean without hesitation. The clicks , Toni thought, laughing to herself. Such a waste.

The girls licked his cum off the mic, and finally settled down on their bare butts on the rug Terri had bought to help control the tendency of sound to echo off the tile floor. Toni considered that she should help repay her for it, if she meant to join her.

Spencer, always looking out for his Hotties, returned to the conflict, but any enmity was forgotten. The girls agreed to his every suggestion and then looked for more ways they could come together. Terri could do her ASMR whenever she wanted. Toni could join whenever she  wanted. Toni proposed they amend their agreement so that masturbation was always fair game, so long as it didn’t disrupt the others’ streaming. Spencer insisted roommate agreements weren’t meant to include such details, but Terri was already seizing on the notion of masturbating on camera to wonder aloud if the two ought to consider creating a joint OnlyFans account.

Spencer slipped out while they were still giddily brainstorming. Terri asked if they should upload the recording to the Hottie Haven, and Toni pressed the button for her. “Good idea, T.”

Suddenly a pair of hands were squeezing her tits from behind. “You are the baitiest , clickiest clickbait, TT.”

Toni giggled. “You did it.”

Her roommate cocked her head as the file was uploaded. “Mm?”

“You nailed the nicknames. T, and TT.” Toni hefted her breasts. Terri was far from flat-chested, but nobody would doubt between the two of them which had earned a nickname a vowel away from “Titty.”

“You are such a ho, Toni! I knew it.”

“Right, like you didn’t drop down and suck that D just as easy.”

Terri grinned, then suddenly blinked. “Wait. Wait wait. Say that again.”

Toni settled into her lap. If it was weird having a bare female butt on her, bare female tits touching hers, all she had to do was listen to that file replay, the two of them absolutely ruling Spencer’s world. She could still taste his cum on her breath. It made her want to kiss Terri all over again.

“Oh my god, that’s so it . See, you’re a fuckin’ ho .” She emphasized the slur oddly.

Terri took her hand and extended the index finger, using it to type. H. O.

“Uh… What are you…”

T.  Terri paused, tapped each of Toni’s exposed nipples with a finger of her own, then another T.

Toni gasped as she comprehended, and typed the final letters herself. E. Z.

“Hotties,” they breathed in unison.

Toni kissed her. God, Terri’s mouth tasted even cummier . “The heck with stopping at paying for college, T. We’re gonna retire next summer on our own private yacht .”

The faint sound of Spencer’s voice suddenly came through their shared wall with Ellie and Tori. Terri hastily typed a reminder in Discord to keep their headphones on while they enjoyed the content.

“Retire?” giggled Terri. “Only if you can make me stop, TT.”

Toni already knew she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t stop until Spencer was taking turns fucking her and Terri on a pile of spreadsheets of monthly earnings for how much the so-called men of the internet were shelling out for the privilege of watching her get stuffed by her RA.

****************************************************************

“It’s so good to have you home again, sweetheart,” Toni’s mother told her as they respectively washed and dried the dishes. Dad had cooked, only half-heartedly complaining about having to prepare a vegan option for his daughter, same as he had all week. The boys at Penderdast food court were followers of hers on instagram. Ever since she’d tagged them in a pic, kissing one chubby, bashfully grinning boy on the cheek and thanking them for keeping her fed and happy, they’d made it a point to learn her schedule and have her meals ready and waiting. Not a word of discontent. She loved her dad anyway.

“It’s been good to be home.” Toni leaned her head softly on her mother’s shoulder until she got a peck on the forehead. Luckily, she got her height from her mom. Dad’s shoulders were way too high. “College has been so crazy. It’s good to be back where things are nice and casual.”

Her mother smirked pointedly at Toni’s outfit. “That’s ‘casual’ for you, is it? ‘Tee Tee?’” She enunciated each letter distinctly.

“What, this old rag?” It was a gorgeous cornflower blue dress decorated in a daisy pattern. With her eyes and her hair – as of Monday freshly dyed red as Red could dye it – it was technicolor vibrant. Mom was no doubt referring to the way it tended to flash a little butt cheek when she walked, or maybe the way the neckline always looked like it was about to let her tits burst free any second. It wasn’t, but it looked it .

“You’re really sure about this? This whole… social… influencer… content creative–”

“‘Creator,’ Mom.”

“Oh you know what I mean!” Her mom flicked some soapy water at her.

“I’m sure, Mom. It’s going to be great. And if I get in over my head, I’ll stop. I promise.”

“I know, I know. My Antonia can handle herself.”

She’d finally told them last night, sat down in the living room after Vinnie was in bed, Nibs curled up contentedly in the middle of the room, surrounded by his favorite people. Toni hadn’t been completely sure she meant to go through with it before then, but a long heart-to-heart with T had convinced her to stay the course. Coming home had sobered her up a bit, given her time and space to rethink things. Back at Lakeview, it was so easy to get swept up in things. Their floor was always so crazy; someone was always doing something weird and sexy. Her and T as much as any.

They’d done their homework, though. This wasn’t an impulse. Girls their age, with their looks, their follower base on their other platforms, could do very, very well. Girls like them bought their own houses at 23 and wore beautiful clothing and traveled the world. There were precautions they could take to keep themselves safe, physically and financially. (No guard dogs allowed on Higgins 3, but they had Spencer, so who needed one.)

Plus, weird as it was to think it, much less act on it… she wanted  to. Modeling was fun. She got to look cute, be goofy, act sexy, wallow in her tiny sprinkle of celebrity, cheap though it had come. She’d opened up to T about her own first impression, how Toni had thought she was vapid and fake. Like T had said, though, a lot of people had to act fake at their jobs – as if the 7-Eleven clerk gave a shit if you had a nice day. But the 7-Eleven clerk made $10 an hour, whereas the proprietors of HOTTEZ LLC could do a shoot of the two of them making out for five minutes and sell it for $40 to scores, hundreds, maybe eventually thousands of guys.

Her idle fantasies that it would convince Spencer to give her a shot like he had with Andi were silly, she’d accepted, but that wasn’t a bad thing. Silly fantasies were actually, when you thought about it, pretty great. The real world was drab and dull and hard; giving people a space to imagine a place where a couple of gorgeous girls got off to the idea of being gotten off to was  a kindness. Just an unconventional one. Her fantasies about Spencer had awakened parts of her she never knew were in there. It felt good , just lying around imagining . Now it was her turn to go spice up some imaginations herself.

Mom and Dad had taken it pretty well. They weren’t surprised, or at least not as surprised as Toni had figured they’d be. She supposed watching her feed grow steamier and steamier had primed them. Mom had taken some convincing, and yes, a couple slick lines about empowerment and the economic benefits. Dad less so. He’d always teased that she’d wind up using her looks to make a living, though he’d meant it to be annoying (and to goad her out of joining her cousin Charlene at the Hooters out by the mall). Still, he was enough of a Guy that he liked living in a world with boobs on display, and enough of a Dad that he loved and supported her no matter what.

The doorbell rang. “Go on,” her mom said, bumping her with an elbow. “Text me if you’re going to be late.”

Old enough to do porn, but still checking in with her mom if she came home after 10. Toni kissed her mom’s cheek and dashed off to the door, waving to her dad as she hastily strapped on her designer shoes. $300 retail, free to her as a promo. If the link on her post wearing them sold even one pair, they broke even. And they did wonders for her legs.

She followed Niece to her car, where the gang was waiting. It was their last night of fall break, and they were going to a bonfire at Will’s place. He was Brianne’s ex-boyfriend, and their breakup had been a nasty one; Toni had only learned of it once they’d reconnected this week. Both had moved on to happier relationships, though, and their amiability felt genuine. Chris was there too, not single, but likewise happier with his own someone else. Good for him.

God, it felt good to be back in the loop. The Hottie Haven had been so vitriolic over break, Tori (and a few others, to lesser degrees) trying to get everybody to reimagine the whole past two insane, amazing months as something bad just because their RA was a dude. Because the dude had fucked Andi and Casey and not her was more like it. Toni had been a little bitter there before break, jealous of Casey getting to play shower games, but now that she had some distance from it, she was cool. The way they teased the poor guy, it was a wonder he hadn’t fucked every single one of them. Good for Casey. Good for Spencer. Maybe they could talk Casey into talking Spencer into doing a shoot for their OF. Maybe they could re-enact the Quinn and Leigh fight, only this time when Spencer intervened, he made sure they all kissed and made up. Girl bodies were actually pretty fun, Toni had decided.

That night, though, all those things were distant considerations. She danced to last year’s hits and she drank skunky beer, she told her friends how much she’d missed them and hugged them when they told her how impressed they were with the new leaf she’d turned over. That hadn’t been their initial reaction, but being together all week, they saw she was happy. Happier than she’d ever been, maybe. And that was all they wanted for her. As the flashes flashed as they took pic after pic, it felt like maybe college wouldn’t be the wedge that slowly drove them apart after all. Or if it did, that they’d have a lot of great shots to remember each other by as their lives drifted away along their separate vectors.

The football boys were, as predicted, being pathetic, has-beens reminiscing over their glory days. It was pretty adorable, Toni thought as they invited her to help hold up Ogre for another keg stand. They tumbled over together, laughing hysterically, and he helped tug Toni back to her feet.

“Your turn!” Ogre – Erik – declared.

“No way! No way!” Toni protested with patent insincerity.

Moments later, she was upside down, legs flailing in the air as Erik did his manly best to keep a grip around her thighs that kept her dress from flying up. Or down. Whatever. He didn’t need help, nor did he want it. She sucked down beer until she was coughing it between gales of laughter, Erik depositing her back on her feet with dutifully gentle hands. A new song was just starting, one she liked, and she treated the guy to a dance, the light of the bonfire blazing her hair like it was all a part of the same conflagration.

“So are you really doing, um… You know, like an…”

“OnlyFans,” she finished, nestling into his lap. They weren’t close enough to listen in over the din of the speakers, but dozens of envious eyes followed every wriggle of her hips. “Yep! Me and my roommate, T. She’s so  pretty. Here–”

“No, I know.” Erik’s blush shined in the darkness. “I, um, yeah. I follow you. On your stuff.”

“Yeah? How am I doing?”

“So good. I mean… Wow. I don’t even… Wow. The hottest girl in my high school is, like, suddenly one of the hottest girls on the internet. It’s really cool.”

Toni knew full well that there were, statistically speaking, many thousands of girls the internet had deemed hotter, but she’d learned how to take a compliment. “I like it, too. Hopefully the new thing works out, too. We have a lot of ideas for it. We even have merch, already waiting for us back at school. Nuts how fast you can have that stuff made these days.”

Erik asked, so she showed him, swiping through the pics of what the HOTTEZ merch would, hopefully, look like. “So… yeah. That’s just for fun, really. Some of our friends at school said merch would be cool; we tried to tell them our fan base wasn’t likely to want to wear belly shirts, chokers and strapons, but they swore they wanted to support us.” She shrugged, laughing. Frickin’ Hotties.

“That’s awesome. It sounds like, um, you’re, you know, living the dream. Or whatever.” Erik tugged his collar with thick fingers. “Would it be, um… No, never mind.”

Terri shook her head. “No, would it be what?”

He shifted, delicately so as not to displace the strumpet on his lap. “No, just… Yeah. Would it be weird if I, you know, subbed? I don’t wanna creep you out or anything.”

Toni smiled. Without thinking, her phone made its way into her hand and swiped on the camera. It recorded her leaning in and dragging her tongue up the length of a very surprised, very pleased Ogre neck.

“Only if you let me post that,” she said, wrapping an arm around his bull shoulders and showing it to him. He licked his lips, head flopping listlessly to one side. “I can send you a copy, if you want. They make it kind of annoying to download–”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said firmly. “I’m not going to forget that. Ever.”

****************************************************************

“HAPPY HALLOWEEN!” the Hotties cried out in unison. Their RA, their beloved, belusted  RA had at long last arrived. He was carrying a box, too. Snacks? Toni craned her neck, raised her phone to try to see over the throng surrounding him, but it appeared to be sealed. She wasn’t the only one curious, though; after a moment of pestering, he pulled the flaps open and revealed, of all things, their Higgins Hotties t-shirts!

The girls, predictably, lost their collective friggin’ minds. They were in costume, so for now there was no putting them on, but hugs and kisses of gratitude rained down on him from every angle. He tried to explain that he had next to nothing to do with it, that Mrs. Tinsley, the hall manager, had saved them in collaboration with Tori for when the time was right.

“And is the time right, Tori? It’s your call.” He smiled at Tori in her costume. It was a bikini, basically, and a skimpy one. The “costume” part of it came in the form of a small metal ring by the rear clasp on her bikini top, attached to the end of a thin cord. Toni didn’t understand what mechanism operated it, but when pulled, it retracted quickly. She looked like a slutty baby doll, the kind who only cried for her daddy.

Tori turned, shook her butt, and after a moment Spencer understood what he was being invited to do. He tugged on the ring, recoiling as it sucked back in more quickly than he’d been ready for. It made Toni nervous, but Tori tilted her head to the side, eyes vacant, and exclaimed giddily, “Whatever you want, baby!”

Spencer stared , then broke into laughter along with half the floor. Chokers especially. “Oh my god, you’re a toy! That’s hysterical. Very nice work.”

Tori smiled, flattered. “A fuck toy!” She gestured to the way her tits were sloshing around in the utterly inadequate bikini top. “Get it?”

The RA winced a little. Sweetheart that he was, he was probably still processing that whole crazy spectacle from the night before. A triple blowjob, uniting his detractors and supporters? Say what you want about the guy’s propensity for sticking his foot in his mouth, he knew how to bring people together. Unconventional? Sure. But effective? Hell yes. T had been too busy jilling herself cross-eyed to remember to record it, but her business partner/bestie had done her work with the shower fight way back in Welcome Week. Toni hadn’t skipped a beat recording that one for posterity. It had more reacts  on the Hottie Haven than  there were Hotties, which only meant that once everybody had finished the eggplants and flaming hearts, they’d started getting creative.

It was the first time she’d decided not to send something to Kim. Not that she bothered her with every last sneaky over-the-shower-stall pic that went up on the Haven, but this felt different. It was the beginning of a new day on Higgins 3, Toni thought. Hoped . It was anybody’s guess what this new regime would look like, but it had to be better than the way it had been the past few weeks, everybody at each other’s throats. A Higgins 3 where people just fucked when and where and how they felt like it? It felt… right . Wrong, too, but if Mrs. Tinsley didn’t see fit to intervene, Toni sure as hell wasn’t going to complain. In the meantime, she was happy to keep her friend’s spank bank flush with deposits, but it felt increasingly like Higgins 3 was becoming its own thing that only made sense if you were inside it.

At Tori’s urging (pleading, really), Spencer gave the string a few more tugs.

“I’ve been bad. Spank me?”

“Good governors are good girls!”

“I just love  my RA!”

It was a bit much. It was making Spencer uncomfortable, too, which Casey rectified by pulling the string and crooning, “Vote for Tori! She’s a whorey!” Tori frowned, but everyone was laughing, and soon so was she. It was a pretty big transition from earlier in the week, but better to swallow her pride and get on with things than drag her feet over it. Either way, if it was some humiliating punishment someone had meted out for what a cunt she’d been lately, Tori hoped she felt it exactly as it had been intended. The days of divided leadership were over. Time for the days of divided thighs.

Spencer mildly rebuked Casey, as if her barb had been any worse than how Tori had been presenting herself, and turned to the assembly. “So it looks like you all get your shirts back! I just got handed the box, so just grab your size before you go, or swing by my room later and pick it up.”

Katrina, looking adorable in her sexy black vinyl kitty cat costume, volunteered to run back to her room and print a sign-up sheet, just to be sure everyone was taken care of. Her tail swished behind her, her ear headband bouncing, painted-on whiskers distending over brightly smiling cheeks. Not the most original costume, but at least her name gave her the right. Spencer and some of the Hotties thanked her, and with that, Angel shoved a cup of punch into his grasp, and the party began in earnest.

Toni kept mostly to herself. T made sure she’d caught the shirt reveal on camera, which she of course had. Beyond that, she kept her camera at the ready, clicking away, liberal with the switch to video whenever games or competitions were underway. Dancing was a given, the Hotties passing Spencer around like molly at a rave. More hugs than one might expect at a Halloween party. More kissing than one might expect at a party with one male and no alcohol. A lap dance, even, though  it seemed like it had more to do relationship drama than seduction. Toni was just glad to see how Spencer was easing into their new age. Maybe last night really hadn’t been a fluke. He was making the rounds, making it a point to have a moment with everybody. Whatever was between their RA’s legs, Toni couldn’t imagine a better leader for the Higgins 3 family.

It took Spencer most of the night before he finally made it a point to single her out from her perch in the corner, though as ever, savoring only made it better.

“Hey, you.” He grinned. Oof , that grin. No way she was going to get to suck his cock again tonight – he’d already firmly announced that there was to be no repeat of the pre-Halloween party’s funtivities – but she would have sunk to her knees and done it then and there if he asked. How had she gotten so lucky to have the coolest floor, with the coolest RA, at the coolest college in the world?

“Hi, Spencer.” She grinned.

“Hey, Toni! You  doing OK? Feels like I hardly saw you hanging out. Just sitting back here with your phone in hand.”

Toni shrugged. “Just taking pictures. You know, we’re already a quarter of the way through the school year? It feels like we just got here. I don’t want to miss anything.”

He sat down beside her. Being this close to him always made her think back to that incredible blowjob. His cum. That desperate, unleashed look on his face as they whispered their siren song into the mic, into his ears. They had  to get him to collab  on some OF content. They wouldn’t even need to show his face, just her and T worshiping that rod of his. She had dozens of fantasies she wanted to act out with him, and plenty of them were easily achievable and would even permit anonymity. If he wanted. Toni would be proud to show herself fellating the Hottie head honcho himself.

“Yeah? Because I think you missed a really cool party while you were back here wowing your followers.”

“What? No, I was taking pictures for us! See?” She opened her phone and let him scroll through, basking in his little smile as he relived memories that weren’t yet hours old. He was in nearly every shot, if only because with only one boy, the action tended to fixate around him. After a minute, he reached the end of her feed of the night’s festivities and to the most recent pic prior.

“Oh. Shit, sorry, I… wow.” He handed Toni her phone back, but she pushed it towards him. On the screen was a side-by-side shot of Higgins 307’s occupants, trying out an idea Toni had had for an OF banner. It was a zoomed in shot, a rectangle boxing in four mouth-watering tits. On Toni’s chest was an H on the right boob, an O hovering over her natural cleavage, and then a T on the left. T’s tits featured a T, E and Z in the same configuration. God, it made for good branding. There was pretty much no way to arrange those letters on those bodies that didn’t spell cash money.

She held it up for him. “I don’t mind. Actually, T and I were thinking, we could use a male eye sometimes before we upload. If you’d be willing to give us a little feedback. Some direction.” More like give them some e -rection, the way his pants were bulging, but she didn’t want to be too slutty about it. Not until they had him on the hook.

He glanced down, then back up, then back down as Toni’s smile reassured him it was really all right to stare at her digital tits. She swiped again when he looked ready to hand the phone over again, and there on the screen was the content she had created after last night’s pre-party – or as T had named her folder of pics of it, “the Unification Orgy.” After things had finally wound down in the lounge, the undersexed roommates had gone back to their studio, as they now called it, in 307. Nothing fancy, just a simple, straightforward side by side masturbating on T’s bed. (Now that the two were going to be gushing out their pussies all the time when they recorded, T finally regretted driving Toni off of the bottom bunk.) Spencer was seeing the 28-second teaser. The full video was 11 minutes long and, thanks to the recent boost they’d gotten after that collab  with the triplets the other day (which they’d half-heartedly pretended Spencer hadn’t ordained), it would pay for next semester’s textbooks.

“Oh. Well, um, looks like you two, ah, know what you’re doing,” he said as it began to replay. She let him watch it one more time before allowing him to return her phone.

“So, I’m going to make a butt of myself and admit I have no idea what your costume is. You look great, but…?”

Toni crawled into his lap sideways and snapped a quick selfie before returning it to her front pocket. The phone didn’t want to stay in. The tiny yellow coveralls were, well, tiny. A romper, really, but it had a pocket like coveralls, and the fabric for it. It was unzipped low enough to show where her panties would be if Toni were wearing any, her wax job last weekend preventing confirmation of whether the carpet matched  the drapes, as the simps liked to ask. Small as she was, it was still barely big enough, framing her vulva handsomely, the bottom of her butt cheeks creeping out in the back. It hadn’t wound up showing off her tits as well as she’d hoped; tight as it was, the open zipper would only split a few inches. Still, her titties were determined.

“April O’Neil!” she announced. She’d gotten it for a cosplay shoot, but figured it worked for the party too. It had been T’s idea, but Toni had latched right on. It checked all her boxes: authentic familiarity (her brother Vinnie loved the cartoon); hot and busty redhead (neither wig nor bra required!); and most on brand of all, it was a woman whose job was to stand in front of a camera and look good.

“Oh! Oh yeah, totally! How did I not…? Dang, you nailed it.”

With his cock pressing into her butt, Tori wondered if that wasn’t the only thing she’d nailed tonight. “I figured if I was going to sit back and record things, I may as well dress up as the hottest reporter out there. Suck it, Lois Lane.”

Spencer grinned. “Lois who?”

“Exactly.”

Over the next seventy-two hours, the photo Spencer took of his Hotties on Toni’s phone received over sixteen thousand likes. (Toni took her first step to forgiving Tori for the boost her fuck-toy costume surely provided.) The pic T snapped of her nestled on Spencer’s lap, his eyes wandering as his smile held fast, received  over fifteen orgasms, all of them Toni’s. That night, still in costume, the girls logged into their HOTTEZ account and live-streamed the announcement of their new site.

Their first subscription was a gifted one, from them, to him. He gave the notification a Heart react , and Toni knew she’d carry the memory of that little red icon to her grave.

(Still, she screenshotted it and filed it away. Just in case.)