Twerk-Off Shrunken First Semester: (S)Mothered chapter 5 by maximally

House Diana’s multipurpose room existed to throw this exact party. DJ on one wall. Open bar on the other. The middle of the floor had already made a circle around two women. One of them was Crystal, drink in hand, drunker than the photo.

 

prrrttttttt

 

A tiny, mercifully silent leak into the liner. Victoria sighed like she’d unbuttoned a pair of jeans. The old intern trick still worked.

 

Max was not having a night. Every squeak put another lungful of lunch on his face, straight from the source, and it was starting to sand him down. He could still hear the room. When she peeled him out later he was going to say so, hospital or no hospital.

 

“There you are!” Crystal bounced over. “Wait. Where’s your boy toy?”

 

“You mean my stepson.” Victoria shrugged. “He gets a little overwhelmed at parties. I put him away for a while.”

 

“Oh, bummer.” Crystal was already tugging her toward the circle. “C’mon. Someone I want you to meet.”

 

The someone was Bella Hart, Fortuna’s current queen, looking bored enough to clock out. Twin pink French braids. Big green eyes. Light-brown skin. Bottom-heavy the way her page promised — pink sports bra, basketball shorts, Jordan AF1s. Victoria recognized her on sight. She had walked in on Max often enough in high school to know what he saved to tabs, and Bella’s ass had been a regular.

 

“Hey, Bella.” Crystal was proud of herself. “This is the girl I was telling you about. The one with the shrunken boyfriend.” A grin at Victoria. “Tori, Bella.”

 

“Hello, Bella.” Victoria almost plucked Max out for the introduction. Another rumble decided against it. She would do the fandom herself. “My stepson’s a huge fan of your work.”

 

Bella’s boredom cracked. “Thanks… wait. What?”

 

pffrrrrrrtttt

 

Max heard his own humiliation from inside a pair of shorts. Big Booty Bella. Ventus’s most-followed undergrad. His stepmother had just told her, in so many words, that he was one of the pathetic ones.

 

“My stepson. Max.” Victoria chuckled. “I’m pretty sure half his allowance went straight to you all through high school.”

 

“That’s the shrunken guy,” Crystal added. “From the photo.”

 

“Huh.” Bella chuckled too, the sound of another loser story landing. “Sorry you had to deal with that.”

 

“No need.” Victoria smiled. “Seeing you face to face, I’m starting to get it.”

 

Bella’s eyes did a slow trip down Victoria’s figure. “So you’re, like, his stepmom and his girlfriend?”

 

“I don’t think I finished giving Crystal the full story.” Victoria shot the blonde an amused look. “Short version. I came down for Parents’ Weekend. He wasn’t answering. Found him in the common room. No clothes, no memory, classic serum. I was going to take him home. He asked to stay. I worked it out with the administration. Now I’m his chaperone. Liability thing. I don’t mind the extra time.” A wink. “Technically this is my first day as a freshman.”

 

pppffffrrrrrrttttt

 

From the underwear it sounded even less real. Coffee table at dawn. Bea’s office. Zeke. Nikki. Crystal’s flash. Now this — wedged in his stepmom’s ass while she narrated him to the two most visible girls in the building.

 

“Huh.” Bella’s smile turned into something with teeth. She had found a reason to stay. “So where is he right now?”

 

“Well.” Victoria grinned, turned, and gave the shorts a little shake. “Somewhere safe and warm. Let’s leave it at that.”

 

“Daaaaaamn.” Crystal’s eyes went wide. “You’re thick as fuck, Tori. Maybe even thicker than Bella.”

 

Bella crossed her arms. “No one’s thicker than me.”

 

“I don’t know, Bella.” Crystal took a pull of her drink. “Oh my god. I just got an amazing idea. You guys should have a twerk-off.”

 

“A twerk-off.” Bella sighed. “I don’t know, Crystal. I was about to get out of here.”

 

“What’s the matter, dear?” Victoria kept it light. Bella did not look like she was here to play. “Afraid you might lose?”

 

“No. I just—”

 

“HEY, EVERYBODY.” Crystal had the room without trying. The DJ even cut the track. “WHO WANTS TO SEE THESE TWO THICK BADDIES TWERK?”

 

The house, several hours deep in beer and smoke, said yes like it had been waiting. Phones came up. Victoria and Bella looked at each other, already stuck.

 

“Hang on.” Victoria’s voice dropped, just for Crystal. “I’m not on board with whoever-wins-keeps-him. That’s not a prize you get to call.”

 

Crystal was not listening. She was already nodding at the booth.

 

“Well then.” Victoria crouched. “I guess we’re doing this.”

 

“Yeah.” Bella dropped with her. “I guess we are.”

 

“ONE TRACK. BEST PERFORMANCE WINS.” Crystal pointed. “THREE. TWO. ONE. GO.”

 

They went.

 

Bella took the lead the way she had taken every on-campus contest for six semesters — low, technical, the shorts climbing her ass on the first drop like they knew the job. The room made the noise it always made for her. Victoria watched for four beats, then caught up on coordination and raw inventory. Modeling had ended before twerking had a name. The booty had not gone anywhere. When she dropped, the green shorts vanished into the crack and the tank rode up her back, and the circle recalculated.

 

Down in the fold, Max’s night got worse by the second. Every shake clapped her cheeks around his whole body. Not a bounce. A clap. Flesh on flesh with him as the wet spot in the middle. Sweat started in earnest almost immediately — first a film, then a slide, then a hot slick that glued the underwear to his face and filled his mouth with salt. The rumble in her gut said Taco Butt was not done. It was just working quieter so the house would not hear.

 

prrrraaaaapppppp

 

A squeak into his face, lost under the track. Warm. Wet. Bean-sour. He had time to think, stupidly, that this was not the first time.

 

It had been his eighteenth. Cake still on the counter. Izzy somewhere else, for once. Victoria had decided he needed a “welcome to manhood” that was not Dad calling from a hotel. She had put on music in the living room, turned him toward the couch, and twerked at him like a joke that kept not ending. He had laughed because that was the assigned reaction. Then she had dropped too low, too long, and one accidental toot had come out of her jeans and gone straight into his lap. She had frozen. Then she had laughed until she cried. He had not known where to put his hands. She had kissed the top of his head and called him a good sport and they had never talked about it except as a story she told when she wanted him red.

 

It had not been a house full of phones then. It had not been her asshole on his mouth. It had been the dress rehearsal, and he had not known.

 

Better in the shorts than in the tank. Small comfort. He could not see the crowd. He could feel it in how hard she was going — the extra snap she put on when someone whooped. He could not tell if they were going to honor Crystal’s prize. He did not want Bella. He did not love the alternative either. He waited, mashed, and tried to count beats so he would not count farts.

 

“Damn.” Bella glanced over, still going, a little shine on her collarbones. “You’re not bad at this.”

 

“Thanks.” Victoria was already panting. Forty-two, two-fifty, first day as a freshman, and she was keeping pace with the girl on every freshman boy’s lock screen. “You’re not too bad yourself.”

 

The whole party had stopped to watch. Phones at head height. Bets starting near the bar. Victoria was having the time of her life in her hips and feeling her age in the same place. Minutes in, the burn was real. A drop of sweat left her jaw, hit the tank, and rolled down into the crack and onto Max.

 

From his side it was motion, sweat, and silent gas, in that order, with no break to sort them. The world was two walls of ass slamming together and opening just enough to let him exist. Lightheaded. Ready for the track to die. She had never been able to resist a room’s attention at his expense. Tonight she was setting a personal best, and he was the equipment.

 

bbbbbrrrrttttttt

 

She covered the latest one with a harder shake and shoved him deeper on purpose — face to pucker, the fabric so thin it was a rumor. The hole kissed him. Or he kissed it. The distinction was academic when it was bigger than his head and pulsing with the beat.

 

First time locking lips with a girl, if you were being a bastard about the definition. He shivered so hard the cheeks noticed.

 

He had always assumed, based on the toilets across from his old bedroom and the way the fan in there never won, that she was packing something industrial. Up close it was worse than the assumption. Tractor-tire scale. A thick, dark pucker that filled his vision when the shorts peeled back on a drop, sweaty, flexed, a little open from the tacos and the work. Bigger than his head and torso together. The more the contest mashed him against it, the more it answered — a twitch, a leak, a kiss that was not a kiss.

 

The contact hit at the exact second she started to fade. He felt her rhythm hitch. She felt him there, a pressure right on the spot that had been bothering her since Bea’s office, and she took it as support. She bit her lip. She could not let him down after a gesture that weird. Pride did the rest. Motherhood did some of it too, which he was going to have to live with.

 

The track climbed. So did everything else.

 

Victoria went all out. Faster. Meaner. The kind of drops that made the flip-flops slap wet on the floor. The room roared like it had been waiting for a transfer student to do this exact thing. Bella looked stunned, half at the second wind, half at the sweat. Tank glued to Victoria’s back. Shorts a darker green. A puddle starting under the foam soles, spreading toward Bella’s Jordans. Still going.

 

Max had been jostled all day. This was a paint mixer. His teeth clicked. His stomach, which had nothing in it but crumbs and gas that was not his, tried to leave. The shaking did the tacos no favors. Every clap milked another silent thread out of her and into him.

 

ppppprrrrrrrrrrtttttttttttt

 

Silent. Long. Straight into his mouth through the cotton. He breathed it because the other option was Bella’s liner, and he knew which one he was voting for even while he hated the vote. Tolerance did not make it smell like anything else. Egg and heat and the faint clean of this morning’s shower losing to the party. It did not keep him from wanting to throw up. He stayed. He pressed back, a little, because if she lost he was going in someone else’s underwear, and the only thing worse than this job was a new boss.

 

Victoria felt the second “kiss” and took it as enthusiasm. A sound came out of her that the front row was going to remember. Maybe, she thought, she had finally found something he was good at.

 

The thought would have been funny if he could have heard it. He could not hear anything but bass and the wet percussion of her ass. He kept his mouth where she had put it and rode out the last eight bars like a man hanging onto a ledge.

 

“MAKE SOME NOISE FOR OUR CONTESTANTS,” the DJ said, and the track died.

 

They stood up into applause. Victoria offered Bella a real smile.

 

“Nice work.”

 

“Yeah.” Wary. Impressed. “You too.”

 

“Toriii.” Crystal parted the leftover circle. “Oh my god. You’ve got some fucking moves.”

 

“I don’t know about that. Bella’s technique was way better.”

 

Bella smiled back at that. Whoever Tori was, she already liked her more than she liked her blonde neighbor. The view did not hurt.

 

“It’s not about technique!” Crystal grinned. The bit was for Fortuna politics. Tori did not have to know that yet. “It’s about energy!”

 

“I’ll leave that up to the judge. Who is judging this thing?”

 

Crystal turned to the room. “WHO WON? BELLA, OR TORIII?”

 

The extra juice on the last name did the work. “TORI!”

 

“There you have it. The winner is Tori.”

 

Cheers. From the shorts, Max groaned. His stepmom had just become the new name on campus a few hours into freshman orientation, and he could not do a thing about it.

 

Ten seconds of ovation. Then the party put itself back together, music first, as if the circle had never happened. Everyone except the three women still standing in the wet spot.

 

“Well.” Victoria smiled at both of them, tugged a soaked strap, and watched a drop fall. “I think I have to call it there. Didn’t think I’d work up that much.”

 

“You know where you are, right?” Crystal giggled toward the bar, where two oversized wrestlers were ordering. “Jock House. Pretty much the only place on campus nobody cares how sweaty you are. I mean, besides the Loser House, but, like. Ick. C’mon. Let me buy you a drink.”

 

“Now that you mention it.” Bella stepped in, smile warmer, eyes doing another full pass. “I’m pretty sweaty too. My dorm’s just down the street. I’ve got a really big shower. Maybe we could go get washed up together.”

 

Max swallowed. All he wanted was out of the shorts. She had options. The next hour was hers.

 

“That’s very tempting.” A wink at Bella, then a look at Crystal. “Both offers. I should get back. I’m sure Max is feeling pretty burned out too.”

 

He exhaled so hard the fabric moved. Maybe the night ended without him watching her hook up.

 

“No worries.” Bella was already scanning for someone else.

 

“Fiiine.” Crystal had her phone out. “Before I forget. Can I get your number?”

 

“Of course.” Victoria put it in. Took Bella’s too.

 

“Sweet.” Crystal listed a little. “You’re unaffiliated, right?”

 

“Yeah. Why?”

 

“If you ever wanna change that, lemme know. I’m sure both of us would put in a good word with JJ.”

 

“For sure,” Bella said, not loving being spoken for and not entirely opposed.

 

“That’s very nice of you.” Another rumble. Victoria started for the door. “Not sure how that would work with Max.”

 

“He wouldn’t be the only shrunken guy in there,” Crystal giggled. “Right, Bella?”

 

“Probably not. There’s a couple every year.”

 

“Huh. Interesting.” Victoria winced, holding the next one in. “Maybe we can discuss it over brunch.”

 

“Sounds like a plan. I’ll text you.”

 

“Perfect.” One last warm smile, already moving. “Enjoy the rest of your night.”

 

“Later, Tori.” Peace sign.

 

“See ya.” Bella had already locked onto a doe-eyed blonde sophomore from the night before.

 

Victoria did not wait for a toot the whole room would hear. She made for the exit with Max still working as the filter, Fortuna’s invitation sitting in her phone, and a clip of the contest already living on a hundred cameras she would not get to delete.