House Party Time Shrunken First Semester: (S)Mothered chapter 3 by maximally

They got back to USD a little before four. Campus was already tilting into Saturday night. Victoria counted kegs going up the front steps of House Diana on the walk and found the confirmation taped to the USD lobby door.

 

“Huh.” She plucked a flier. “Eight PM to sunrise. Girls drink free. Sounds like my kind of party.” A look down into the blouse. “What do you think, sweetie?”

 

“Honestly?” Sandwiched, he tried to shrug. “I don’t know if I’ve got another party in me this weekend. Not after last night. I was thinking we could maybe just… watch a movie or something.”

 

“Oh, nonsense. That’s all you ever did at home. Well. That, and play with your—” She stopped. Looked down the hall. “Oh, my. Is that Zeke?”

 

Max followed her gaze and sighed. Black Star Wars shirt. Gray Ventus sweatpants. Slides. Fluffy black hair that had not met a comb since Friday. Stocky, five-ten, same roommate, zero hangover. The energetic little swagger was intact. Max still felt nauseous from his first blackout.

 

“Yeah. That’s him.”

 

“Hey!” Zeke took in Victoria, then the three-inch head poking out of her shirt, and grinned like this was a good bit. “You must be Max’s… stepsister, right?”

 

Twenty-four hours out from the party that had wrecked Max’s life, Zeke was still Zeke. Including the part where he flirted with anything that moved.

 

“You’re sweet.” Victoria’s eyes flicked, traitorously brief, to the front of the sweatpants. She put out a hand. “I’m his stepmother. Victoria. Friends call me Tori.”

 

“Nice to meet you, Tori.” He kissed the top of her hand like he’d stolen the move from a period movie. “I’m Zeke.”

 

She giggled. From the blouse, Max grimaced. Four weeks of coming up short against his roommate, and now this — Zeke working the usual game on his stepmother.

 

“‘Sup, Max.” Zeke caught his eye, still smiling. “Dang. Last night was wild, huh?”

 

“Hey, Zeke. Yeah. You could say that. Where’d we even go?”

 

“More like where didn’t we go.” Another boyish look at Victoria. “Started at Juno, but the vibes were hella sus. Bounced to Diana. Minerva for a hot sec. Fortuna.” He shook his head. “I think a couple girls were even trying to get you back to Proserpina at one point.”

 

Max shuddered. Loser House as a wake-up spot put the coffee table in perspective. “Guess I’m lucky I didn’t wake up there.”

 

“Yeah, seems like it.” Zeke was already mostly back on Victoria. “So you’re gonna be Max’s new roommate now?”

 

“That’s right. Across the hall.”

 

“Oh, dope.” A not-subtle glance at her chest. “Guess we’re gonna be seeing a whole lot of each other, then.”

 

“That’s one way to put it.” She giggled. “Speaking of — you wouldn’t mind helping me move his stuff out, would you?”

 

“Not at all. After you.”

 

Max took the old room in one last time on the way through. Deku and Master Chief on his wall. Dragon Ball and Star Wars on Zeke’s. Shared PlayStation. The cheap plastic bong from the store just off campus. He was not getting a room like this again unless he found a way back to normal, and that was not happening today.

 

“Home sweet home,” Zeke said, behind Victoria. “How do you want to do this?”

 

She shrugged. “Start with the big stuff.”

 

Boxes. School supplies, books, games, clothes, sheets, pillowcases, toiletries, snacks, posters, anime figures, the sad little dorm furniture that had made the first month feel like his. Across the hall the empty RA suite was waiting: in-suite bathroom, king bed, walk-in closet. Unheard of for USD. Bea had pulled something.

 

The problem, from Max’s side of the desk, was policy. Victoria wanted most of his things boxed in the closet to leave room for whatever Izzy was mailing down from Sunnyvale. Swankier than the old bunks. Less his. Watching her and Zeke make eyes at each other for half an hour did not help, even when he could not tell how much of it was just Victoria being friendly.

 

“Well.” She surveyed the space, satisfied. “I think that’s everything. Thanks again, Zeke.”

 

“Anytime.” He drifted toward the door. “Guess I should let you two get settled?”

 

“Yeah, thanks,” Max said from the desk, before she could answer. “That’d be great.”

 

“Geez, man.” Zeke put his hands up, mock-offended, hearing the impotent snap. “Tell us how you really feel.”

 

“Don’t mind him.” Victoria and Zeke shared a look. “He’s had a very long day. I’m sure he’s just cranky.”

 

“Oh, I bet. What about you?”

 

She raised an eyebrow. “What about me?”

 

“First Saturday night on campus, right?” The cocky smile came back. “Maybe we could do something later.”

 

She smiled back. “Something?”

 

“Dude. Seriously.” Max rolled his eyes. “I’m right here.”

 

“Alright, alright.” Zeke laughed his way into the hall. “I’m going. Later, Tori.”

 

“Later, Zeke.” She closed the door. Listened for the one across the hall.

 

PPRRRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPPPPPPP

 

“Whew.” She bent and waved a hand over the desk while Max lost another fight with the smell. “Sorry, hon. Didn’t wanna let that one loose until your cute little roommate got out of here.”

 

“Right.” Unwise to pick at cute little roommate after a rare mercy. “So, uh. What’s the plan for tonight?”

 

“If that’s your way of asking if I’m gonna take Zeke up on his offer — no. Not tonight, at least.”

 

“Oh, thank god.” After the day he’d had, watching his old roommate hook up with his stepmom was the other worst case. “So you’re cool with taking it easy?”

 

“Don’t get ahead of yourself.” She dug the flier back out. “Honestly, the only reason I’m not considering going across the hall right now is this.”

 

His shoulders dropped. The move had almost let him forget the kegger. Hours in her cleavage while she worked the biggest party of the fall was not a thrill. Neither was staying here and trying not to hear Zeke. “Right.”

 

She saw the resignation and smiled. “Aww. What’s wrong, sweetie? Worried Mama’s gonna embarrass you in front of all of your classmates?” She turned and gave her rump a shake in the jeans, demonstration-size. “Or should I say, all of our classmates?”

 

The denim-clad bounce a few inches off the desk did the thing it always did. She had been pulling this since high school — walk in, ask a question, put the ass in the argument so his brain shorted. At three inches it was a front-row seat to the greatest show on earth and also a trap. It took him several seconds to remember she had asked him anything.

 

“H-huh? Oh. Well. I dunno.” Last night flickered. Graduation flickered harder. “I guess parties just make me anxious.”

 

“And you think I don’t know that?” She turned back, caught the dazed look, and grinned. “That’s half the reason I want to go. To help you get out of your shell.”

 

He knew that speech. She had used it all summer, marching him to graduation parties he would have skipped, standing next to him in someone else’s backyard while every guy in his class tried to put a number in her phone. He had come home from those nights with no new friends and a running count. Forty, at least. Forty classmates who had looked at his stepmother and seen an opening. Nobody had looked at him long enough to get his name right. Nikki calling him Matt later would not even be a surprise. It would be the same party with worse math.

 

“I don’t know, Victoria. The last time you tried to get me out of my shell I found out half my graduating class wanted to date you. Maybe you could just leave me here.”

 

“All by yourself?” A scoff. “Don’t be ridiculous. What if someone came in? What if you fell off the desk? What if Izzy’s boxes aren’t the only thing coming through that door tonight?” She shook her head. “No. Absolutely not. I’m here to look after you. That includes making sure you don’t spend your first Saturday as a tiny person hiding under a takeout menu.”

 

“I… alright.” There was no contesting her in this mood. “Let’s just get this over with.”

 

“That’s the spirit.” She headed for the closet. “Now the real question. What am I gonna wear?”

 

He was used to being asked. At home it had been a ritual: she came out of her room in option A, turned, asked, did not wait for an honest answer, tried option B. At three inches it was worse, because there was no polite place to put his eyes and no way to pretend the clothes were the point.

 

First out of the closet: the white blouse from the morning, unbuttoned one more notch, over a black skirt that stopped mid-thigh. She did a slow circle at the foot of the bed. The skirt made her ass look like it was trying to escape. “Too Parents’ Weekend?”

 

“It’s fine.”

 

“That’s not a compliment.” Off it went. He got the bra and the span of her stomach and the jeans sliding down before he could look at the wall.

 

Second: a red bodycon leftover from some dinner with Dad that Dad had not attended. It clung like it had been painted on the modeling measurements and never updated for the rest of her. She bent to adjust the hem and the neckline poured toward the desk. “Too much?”

 

“Victoria—”

 

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

 

Third: one of Izzy’s old band shirts, stretched into a dress it had not been designed to be, hem riding up when she walked. She laughed at herself in the mirror. “Okay, no. I’m not going to a jock party dressed like my daughter’s laundry.”

 

Fourth was the one she kept. Campus-store gray tank that was a rumor of a shirt, green booty shorts that turned the twerk-off later into a foregone conclusion, flip-flops. Nothing about the 6'1", 250-pound situation left to guesswork. She stood in front of the desk and gave the tank a testing jiggle, then turned and gave the shorts the same.

 

From the plywood he could see the underside of her breasts moving in the cotton, the crease where the shorts vanished between her cheeks, the faint darker line of sweat already starting at the small of her back. The room smelled like her closet: perfume, warm denim, the ghost of this morning’s taco fart still hanging in the RA suite whether she admitted it or not.

 

“Well.” Another chest shake, close enough that the tank breathed on him. A turn. The shorts did a slow eclipse of the lamp. “How do I look?”

 

“Great.” He had nowhere else to put his eyes and she knew it. That was the ritual too. “Can we go now?”

 

“I thought you’d never ask.” She plucked him off the desk. For a second he was in open air, cold after the afternoon on the wood, and then the tank opened and she nested him into the new pocket.

 

Different from the blouse. Thinner cotton. Less structure. Her breasts settled around him bare-skin close, hot from the outfit changes, a little slick where the underboob had been working. The neckline was low enough that if he craned he could see the room; if he didn’t, he was just in it. She bounced once on purpose to seat him, and the world went up and down on a tide of flesh and detergent and the salt of a long day.

 

He sighed into it because there was nothing else to do with the air.

 

The day still was not over. Somewhere on the other side of campus, forty hypothetical phone numbers were about to become a house full of real ones, and he was going as jewelry.

 

*

 

Another walk across campus. House Diana announced itself before they reached the lawn: strobing color in every window, bass you could feel in your teeth, a mob on the grass trying to get in on it. Victoria had gotten into worse rooms than this in her modeling years. She cut through the undergrads like shallow water and stopped on the front step.

 

Max tried to disappear into the tank.

 

The blonde on the door had not changed since high school. Dirty-blonde ponytail. Big brown eyes. Freckles. Green compression shirt, black basketball shorts, the same knockout athlete’s build — perky chest, a rear that had ended more than one conversation in the hallway after gym. Six feet of varsity freshman who had just come from practice and had not bothered to pretend otherwise. Nikki Allais, eighteen, out since sophomore year and uninterested in pretending otherwise. She had never needed to remember him. He had never gotten to forget her. From the tank he felt like a sentient bug someone had decided to bring to the door.

 

“Oh my god.” Her face lit. “Tori?!”

 

“Nikki!” Victoria smiled. “I totally forgot you went here. Still playing basketball?”

 

“Yep. Starter on varsity.” Nikki nodded at her own sweaty clothes, unbothered. “I literally just got back from practice. Otherwise I would have had time to, like, change.”

 

Max swallowed a groan. In high school Victoria had been the known quantity, not him — Izzy’s fault, and the face, and the way rooms bent toward her. Now she was his chaperone. The dynamic was not going to get better.

 

“So what are you doing here?” Nikki scanned her, impressed. “I thought Izzy was taking a gap year.”

 

“She is.” Victoria shook her head. “I’m actually here with Max.”

 

Nikki scowled. “Who?”

 

“Izzy’s stepbrother. My stepson. I think you were all in the same graduating class.” The blank look held. Victoria chuckled. “Here. One sec.”

 

He had avoided detection up to that point. Then he was in the open, face to face with the biggest basketball name out of his high school.

 

“Nikki,” Victoria said, holding him out. “Max. Max, Nikki.”

 

“What the…” Surprise. Not disgust. “Whoa. He’s so small.”

 

“H-hey, Nikki.” He forced a smile through the usual freeze. “Remember me?”

 

“Not really. Sorry.” Still stuck on the size. “What happened to you?”

 

“Shrinking serum,” Victoria said, taking over when his voice thinned. “He got dosed last night, so I’m going to be looking after him from now on.”

 

“Huh. Lucky guy.” They both laughed at the sheer fact of it. Then Nikki noticed the line stacking up behind Victoria. “Oh, whoops. I think we’re holding people up. Great running into you, though. Hopefully I’ll see you inside later.”

 

“I hope so too.” Victoria settled him back into the tank. “Do I need to pay a cover for this guy?”

 

“Him?” A last amused look at the head between the gray cotton. Nikki shook her head. “Nah. My treat. Have fun, Matt.”

 

He did not get the name out before Victoria was already moving — through the doorway and into the strobe and the volume and the heat of the kegger.