ASL2: Chapter 31 "The Chain"

-- CHAPTER 31: The Chain --

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-- SATURDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2008 --

A stray beam of sunlight woke me up. The curtains had been shut, but there was a half-inch of space between them, and at this very time on this very date, the sun’s rays came through at just the right angle to hit me right in the eyes.

The morning air was cold against my right cheek, the pillow reassuringly warm against my left. I snuggled deeper into the covers and their cocooning heat while pressing my chest against her back, covered only by a thin layer of cotton. My left arm snaked beneath her pillow to hold her from the opposite side, and as my senses came alive, the fingers of my left hand reflexively squeezed the large breast I was currently palming. My right hand firmed up over her hip, gently holding her in place while I reflexively ground my erection into her panty-covered ass. And breathing deeply, I let my head roll forward to push my nose into her golden-blonde hair, smelling her sweet fragrance.

Adrienne had not participated in last night’s foursome with Dawn and the twins, nor had she even stuck around to watch. Seeing her walk out the door and then close it behind her had almost made me toss Eden off my chest and go after her.

Almost, but not quite.

Perhaps it was the lingering smile Adrienne flashed me over her shoulder right before the closing door blocked her face from view. It had been quite a serene smile, one that told me that despite everything going on in her life, despite all her depression over the break-up with Sasha, Adrienne was completely at peace in that moment.

Perhaps the only way she could bring herself to be ten feet away from me was if she knew I was being taken care of. In fact, that smile reminded me of the one she’d given me at the end of senior year in the aftermath of her dad’s death when she invited Candy over to fuck my brains out. Like, finding me replacement pussy assuaged her guilt over not feeling up to satisfying me herself.

Not that Adrienne was obligated to satisfy me herself or anything.

Or… well… maybe she was.

See, I was about to make the argument that Adrienne wasn’t my girlfriend and that I had no right to expect her to put out for me or blah-blah-blah. But the truth was: our relationship had always hinged on expectations, and in plain simple fact, I expected sex from Adrienne. She expected sex from me. Who gave a fuck whether or not we were in a formalized boyfriend/girlfriend relationship? That was just who we were together.

Now granted, even a husband or a wife can say ‘no’ to sex when they’re not in the mood for whatever reason. Adrienne’s situation certainly gave her all the reason in the world to ‘not be in the mood’, and I definitely know I didn’t expect her to put out for me. But still, we both knew our relationship was a sexual one. We both knew her occupying my bed night after night was, in effect, cockblocking me. And we both knew she ‘wasn’t in the mood’.

She had a lot going through her mind right now. She had a lot making her feel stressed out. Inviting the girls over to satisfy me (and them) to make up for us not having our usual Friday night post-basketball foursome relieved a little bit of Adrienne’s guilt, took a little bit of her stress away.

Hence the serene smile on her way out the door.

Hence the way she touched Dawn’s arm for a moment as they crossed paths, the way they stared into each other’s eyes for just a little too long, as if metaphorically handing off the relay baton. I was still linked to Dawn, of course, and I could practically hear her telling Adrienne, ‘I got this. You go chill out for a bit.’

An hour and a half later, I was taking another shower. Alone. Dawn and the twins were walking back home.

But for the first time in over a week, Adrienne wasn’t sitting on the toilet watching me.

She was in my bedroom, waiting patiently, perfectly comfortable to be more than ten feet away from me.

She didn’t kiss me when I crawled into bed with her. She merely rolled onto her side and turned her back to me, curling her knees up into a semi-fetal position. I spooned myself around her. She grabbed my right hand, pulled it beneath the hem of her nightie, and planted my palm on her beautiful bare breast. Within minutes she was fast asleep. And tired as I was from the drain of being Adrienne’s emotional support on top of the physical exertion of satisfying Dawn and the twins (seriously, Eden had been rabid), within a few minutes I was fast asleep as well.

But that was last night. This morning was this morning. With a full night to recharge, my erection was rigid and ready to go. Complete consciousness had not yet flooded my brain, so all I was really aware of at the moment was the awesomely big breast in my hand and the deep cleft inviting me to hot-dog her buns. And I exhaled softly with an aroused groan as I prepared to make my erotic dreams into reality.

“Ben,” Adrienne murmured quietly.

“Hmm?” I mumbled, still not fully awake just yet.

“Please stop.”

My eyes popped open and I jerked my head, now waking up completely and realizing the situation I was in. My left hand released her breast and my right pulled off her hip as I rocked my hips away from her ass. “Sorry, sorry,” I muttered and suppressed a disappointed groan.

The rest of our conversation proceeded silently. I knew she’d tell me it was normal for me to wake up horny in the mornings and then apologize for not being up to having sex, I’d tell her I was fine and didn’t need sex, and then she’d start feeling guilty all over again. It wasn’t quite like having a two-way telepathic conversation with Dawn, but it was pretty close.

In the end, she simply rolled over, held my head, and gave me a quick kiss. I tried to reassure her with warm eyes that I loved her unconditionally, and would always be here whether or not she felt in the mood ever again. She nodded, gave me a look that was ever so grateful, and then slid off the bed to start getting dressed.

Despite everything going on, I watched Adrienne change her clothes, my erection unflagging. I’d have to be dead before I stopped admiring her beauty. Only then did I get up to start changing as well.

Time to get her out of the house.

****

Adrienne and I walked hand-in-hand along the Stream Trail in Redwood Regional Park. The morning air was crisp, and the tops of the trees were shrouded in fog. Adrienne was bundled up in a thick jacket and comfortable pants that covered up her outrageous curves so that she was merely “voluptuous” instead of “traffic-stopping gorgeous”, along with a black beanie that let her golden-blonde hair hang out.

Beneath the shade of the towering trees all around us, we walked the first mile in silence, just enjoying the quiet solitude as we descended into the canyon to get down to the actual stream.

After that first mile, the two of us went to sit on a downed log being used as a boundary marker to keep hikers on the trail. There were no sounds around us except for the babbling brook and the occasional bird call. I’d brought a backpack with water bottles and snacks, and we each took a drink before I capped the bottle and sighed at the peaceful serenity of being out in nature on a foggy December morning. At the moment, it felt like we were the only two people in the entire world.

Neither of us spoke for a long while. She looked out at the scenery. I looked out at the scenery, although I glanced over at her every now and again just to… well… just to check on her. My concern for her wellbeing was evident, and after the third or fourth time, she smiled and looked back at me.

“So often throughout my life,” she said, “I surrounded myself with people who could… entertain me. Friends who would laugh at my jokes walking from one classroom to the next. High school boys who would pay me lots of attention and give me compliments if I so much as winked at them. Pretty young things on modeling shoots who wouldn’t resist when I grabbed the back of their heads and pushed them down into my crotch.”

I snorted at that last one.

Adrienne sighed and stared up at the trees around us. “What I really needed in my life were the kinds of people who would just come sit down beside me and silently be there in case I needed them. Somebody like you.”

Reaching out, Adrienne took my hand again. Her skin was cold, and I silently cursed myself for not having us both bring gloves. I put both of her hands between mine and rubbed them vigorously for a bit before simply enclosing them between my very warm palms. I had always been a calorie-burning factory of body heat, which was probably why the girls always loved snuggling up to me at night, and today was no exception.

Adrienne glanced down at our enjoined hands and pursed her lips. Taking a deep breath, she flicked her hazel eyes up to mine and murmured softly, “I love you, Tiger.”

I smiled warmly and replied, “I love you, too.”

“You’ve been amazing. You welcomed me into your home, into your bed. You’ve put up with my cloying need to hold your hand as often as humanly possible and you sit there on the toilet seat watching me shower just so I won’t panic about feeling abandoned again… even knowing I’m not gonna put out for you when I shut off the water. You haven’t complained once about me cockblocking you from the others and you stay up into the wee hours of the night listening to me ramble on about Sasha between bouts of burying my face into your chest and crying until I run out of tears.”

“I’m glad to do those things for you. I’ll be glad to do those things for the rest of our lives.”

She started to smile as well, but the corners of her lips stopped halfway before dropping down. The shine in her irises likewise dimmed. After raising both eyebrows, she then narrowed her eyes and asked, “Do you really mean ‘for the rest of our lives’?”

A chill went down my spine, and I suddenly feared that when Adrienne was at her lowest and desperate for love, that I was accidentally leading her on into a promise of romantic permanence I didn’t intend.

But before I could say anything, Adrienne shook her head fractionally and said, “I’m not going to try and win you back on the rebound. You deserve better than that. You deserve better than me.”

“Thank you for not trying to rebound with me. I genuinely think this…” I held up our enjoined hands “… is what’s best for us right now. I’m your Rock, and I love that I can support you like this. But at the same time, I want to make sure you understand that you ARE deserving of love.”

“No I don’t.” She frowned. “You said it yourself: I’m a selfish and manipulative partner.”

“You can be sometimes. Not always.”

“Most of the time.”

“You’re a good person, deep down. You try your best to make your partner happy. It’s just that… well… you try your best to make yourself happy at the same time. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. At the end of the day, we all need to take care of ourselves. It’s just that when faced with a choice between doing something that is the absolute best for your partner, or doing something that’s kinda okay for your partner but really good for you, you always pick the latter.”

“See, I AM a selfish and manipulative partner.” She sighed and shook her head. “No wonder Sasha left me. No wonder YOU left me. The two people in my life who mean more to me than anyone else in the world both rejected me. I don’t deserve either of you. I don’t deserve to be loved.”

“You DO deserve to be loved.”

“No… I don’t. And I never will.”

“First of all, I didn’t leave you because you were selfish or manipulative. I walked away from our engagement because of my own issues. Your biggest sin in that situation was literally doing nothing. You got complacent and maybe took me for granted, but that’s behind us now. Second of all, Sasha didn’t leave you because you were selfish or manipulative.”

“I’m willing to grant that our broken engagement wasn’t all on me. But our college relationship certainly ended because I was selfish and manipulative. I kept you from Dawn freshman year because I didn’t want to be lonely even though, at the time, I already believed you belonged with her. Pushing Paige at you on Valentine’s Day so I could be with Grace instead is still one of the greatest mistakes of my life and I’ll regret it forever. And then I left school entirely… I abandoned you… to start my modeling career.”

“I didn’t WANT to be with Dawn freshman year. I chose YOU. The Paige/Grace thing I forgave because you were really confused about your sexuality back then and while it hurt at the time, I can see now that you absolutely HAD to explore what it meant to be in a lesbian relationship. Had Grace turned out to be a nicer human being, maybe you wouldn’t have regretted it so much. And I am absolutely not going to hold you going off to be a model against you. I was as happy as I’d ever been with Dawn and you followed your dream. And look where you are now? World-famous, rich, popular. I’m proud of your career.”

“But I wasn’t there for you when you needed me.”

“Yes you were. You became MY rock. When everything was going well with Dawn, you had your growing career but still made time for me. When the Dawnpocalypse happened, you flew all the way back for a single night just to make me feel better. And how many times did I call you that year to ask for advice?”

Adrienne winced. “Even then, my advice was laced with self-interest. I even told you that marrying DJ when she got pregnant would get me off the hook so I wouldn’t feel so guilty about not filling that role for you.”

“Your heart has always been in the right place. Admittedly, your advice hasn’t always been very good, but you’ve always made those decisions trying to make me happy.”

“I DO want to make you happy. In the end, that’s why I know you and I should never get married. I don’t deserve you. I’m not worthy of you.”

I took a deep breath. “That’s not the reason why we aren’t together right now.”

Adrienne shook her head. “I AM selfish. I DON’T deserve to be loved. Sasha recognized that. She could tell I wasn’t enough to make her truly happy, because I’m NOT enough on my own, hence her need for you too, otherwise she’s incomplete.”

I shook my head. “Sasha feeling incomplete without both of us has everything to do with her and nothing to do with you. Okay, maybe it has something to do with you not having a penis and trying to make do with Ben Juniors, but I’m getting off topic. The point is: you ARE enough.”

“All evidence to the contrary.”

“Sasha LOVES you.”

“She’s better off without me. I’m a cancer. I’m a force of destruction, better at ruining relationships than building them. I spent years breaking high school boys’ hearts. I blackmailed you over your relationship with Miss McNeil and then stole you from Megan and Cassidy. I started flirting with other boys while we were together and ignored you to the point that you felt neglected and cuckolded, so that you ended up sleeping with Cassidy. I’m a manipulative bitch who insists on getting my way no matter what, and everyone lets me get away with it. When push comes to shove, everyone caves to the great and powerful world-famous supermodel Adrienne-fucking-Dennis. Fuck, haven’t you gotten to the point where the phrase ‘Trust me, Tiger’ fills you with dread instead of excitement?”

I shrugged. “Admittedly, I always end up drowning in pussy galore.”

“Pussy I drown you in for my own selfish desires. I manipulate the situation so that -I- get laid. The gateway to Ben’s dick is through my pussy, remember? And let’s face it: my number is WAY higher than yours.”

I shrugged. “You’re a sexual creature. Nobody says you aren’t allowed to be.”

“I’m manipulative. I’ve always manipulated the situation to my advantage.”

I sighed. “Fine, you’re manipulative. One would say that’s a smart thing to do instead of being a doormat who just goes along with whatever’s happening to him like me.”

“I’m evil and self-centered and I don’t deserve to be loved. You said it yourself in Bora Bora.”

“You’re not evil, and I never said you don’t deserve to be loved in Bora Bora.”

“But you did run off a list of ways I’d been selfish and manipulative in Bora Bora, and you were right. I knew Sasha wanted alone time with the three of us to try and re-start the triple. What did I do? I went and invited the twins along so they could distract you. Every time Sasha made it clear she wanted to spend quality time with you, I interrupted and pulled her away, or pushed the twins at you as a distraction.”

“Because you didn’t want to re-start the triple.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t.”

“You didn’t want to marry me.”

Adrienne inhaled sharply and let her head fall backwards so that she was staring up at the skyscraper redwood trees above us. “I didn’t.”

“You only asked me to marry you because Sasha had been pushing that agenda for the entire trip and you were trying to make her happy.”

“Basically, yeah.”

“Sounds to me like you were doing the exact opposite of being selfish in that moment.”

Adrienne blinked and dropped her head to look back at me again. “What?”

“Making a decision that you clearly opposed in order to make your partner happy? Sacrificing something extremely important to you because you chose to value her needs above your own? That’s selfLESS, not selfish.”

She shook her head. “No, I chose to sacrifice YOUR happiness trying to make MY happy ending come true. In hindsight, I totally agree it was an unfair question. You called me out on my bullshit and got pretty pissed off about it. I can still see the rage you had in your eyes that night.”

I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. I still had Adrienne’s hands between mine and I rubbed them a little more. Pursing my lips and bowing my head in contrition, I said quietly, “I owe you an apology. I was kind of an asshole to you in Bora Bora.”

“No, you were justified.”

“I was mean and hurtful.”

“You had every right to be.”

Taking a deep breath, I raised both eyebrows and gave Adrienne a serious look. “Okay, it looks like we both agree that you proposing marriage to me at the end of that crazy orgy was a bad idea all around, right?”

Adrienne’s shoulders slumped, but she eyed me curiously, not quite knowing where I was going with this yet. “Riiight…”

“I did get really angry that night. I felt betrayed and used. I felt like I was being used as a tool, as a band-aid to fix your broken relationship. I didn’t feel wanted in the sense that either of you truly wanted me for me.”

“You’re not wrong to feel that way. It’s the truth. I DID try to use you as a band-aid to fix my broken relationship.” Adrienne closed her eyes and bowed her head. “Sasha made clear to me that day that she needed you in her life. It wasn’t an ultimatum, exactly, although it certainly felt like one. She was just doing her Open Communication thing, trying to make me understand that she felt incomplete without you, and that she felt like she was down to only two choices: either we figured out how to get you to re-start the triple, or she’d have to walk away.”

“Then I turned down the triple… and she walked away.”

Adrienne shook her head. “You weren’t wrong: it WAS a desperation chess move to try and salvage my relationship.”

“And I knew that. I knew you were desperate. I knew you weren’t thinking all that clearly. But instead of being understanding and supportive, I was really, really mean to you.”

“Yes you were,” Adrienne agreed. “But I understand why you were.”

“Seems to me that ultimately, Sasha was being the selfish one. Sasha knew exactly what you wanted. She knew exactly what SHE wanted. Despite all your opposition… Despite everything you’d made clear about marrying Sasha being your end goal, as it turned out, her stubbornness trumped YOUR stubbornness and she somehow got you to give up that goal and ask me to marry you instead. For HER sake.”

Adrienne shook her head. “That’s not being selfish. That’s just knowing what you want and making clear what you want. Nothing wrong with that.”

“I agree.”

“She took action to try and get the outcome that would make her happiest.”

I smirked. “I agree.”

“And there’s nothing wrong with that.”

I gently shook Adrienne’s hands with mine, raised my eyebrows, and gave her a curious look. “I agree.”

Adrienne blinked at me. “This is the part where you say that there’s nothing wrong with ME taking action to try and get the outcome I want to make ME happiest.”

I grinned and popped my eyebrows again. “I agree.”

Adrienne shook her head. “Inviting the twins to Bora Bora still qualifies as a selfish, short-sighted action without realizing the long-term damage I was doing, and this isn’t a new behavior for me. I’m repeating the same mistakes as before.”

“Well, yes you are,” I agreed. “Instead of being honest with Sasha, you chose to frustrate her and keep her in the dark about inviting the twins. When you KNEW she wanted to spend time with me, you worked the situation so that she’d be separated from me instead.”

Adrienne winced and nodded.

“We’ll work on it. Together. Like, what are you gonna do the next time you get a hankering to watch me destroy a roomful of Tri-Delts?”

“Seriously?”

I shrugged and smiled.

She blinked in surprise but mused on that for a second. And then leaning in close so that her face was only inches from mine, her hazel eyes glittered golden as she purred, “First of all, I’ll tell you plain and simple that I’m super fucking wet and horny and that I need to watch you… MY man… turn into a Greek God and bask in glorious conquest. I’ll mentally undress those tight coeds and tell you how I’ll peel their clothes off and then hold them down one-by-one to watch you and your beautiful, gorgeous cock penetrate their puffy pink pussies. We’ll blow their minds together, sister by sister. At the end of the night, I’ll ask you to choose a favorite… or two… We’ll take her home with us - maybe tie HER to the bed. And then we’ll give that poor unsuspecting innocent the most incredible sexual experience of her young life, knock her unconscious, and then I’ll exult in victorious ecstasy as you cream her cunt full of your tasty cum while panting in eager anticipation of the moment when you pull out so I can slurp it all out of her before I get you hard again so you can sink yourself into me.”

My eyes were big when she finished. I blinked a few times and just sort of gawked at her for a minute, by which time she’d started giggling a little.

“Wow,” I breathed. “I was just hoping you’d say, ‘I won’t ask you to ‘Trust me, Tiger’.”

Adrienne giggled again, and it truly put a smile on my face to see her with an expression that wasn’t all doom, gloom, and self-recrimination. And really, that little soliloquy was the closest she’d been to ‘sexual’ in over a week.

“Anyways,” I continued, “before you sidetracked me with THAT little mental image, I was saying we can work on your impulses to be manipulative together. Recognizing that you’re making long-term mistakes in favor of short-term gains is part of that.”

Adrienne made a face. “You’re talking theory and I’m still stuck with the pain and regret of the mistakes already made. I can’t undo inviting the twins. I can’t undo unfairly asking you to marry me and restart the triple.”

I took a deep breath. “In the end, I wouldn’t have agreed to the triple anyways, whether or not you, me, and Sasha spent more time together. So when you stop and think about it, by inviting the twins I got to have an amazing vacation in a tropical paradise with FIVE nubile, gorgeous babes. Not gonna lie: I’ve had some pretty good sexual experiences in my life before, but some of the stuff we did on that trip? I mean, that orgy at the end, holy shit… The date I got to go on with the twins where nobody knew we were related… Fucking out in public like that? I… I mean… Sure, it all went to hell at the end and I wound up flying home three days early, but when I look back at it, I’m glad the twins were with us to experience all that. So on balance, it was a great vacation overall.”

“Not for me it wasn’t.”

“Well, your girlfriend broke up with you. It’s understandable you’d feel that way.”

“I pushed her too hard, too fast, towards a sense of permanence I knew she wasn’t ready for.”

I snorted. “Isn’t that my M.O.? Taking a girl who isn’t ready to settle down yet, scooping her up in a delivery truck dolly and then racing for the altar?”

Adrienne snorted at the imagery.

“I’ve been in the position you’re in now, staring into the abyss of a failed relationship flagellating myself for all the mistakes I made.”

“You’ve been in this position because of ME.”

“So then the fact that I’m still right here holding your hand lets you know for sure there’s a light at the end of this tunnel. It sucks right now. It really does. But it’ll get better.”

“When?”

“I don’t know,” I replied immediately. But after a moment’s thought, I took a deep breath and said, “Well, actually… I first gave you that promise ring and we broke up what… five years ago? You and I were at different points on the relationship cycle then, but now you’ve come to the point where settling down, thinking about marriage and kids and all that is finally on your radar. So if Sasha is you in this same scenario, then maybe five years?”

Adrienne snorted and shook her head. “I TOLD you this was karma coming to bite me in the ass for what I did to you back then.”

“Maybe. Well, it’s not gonna take five years for you to feel better. But maybe Destiny is giving you this speed bump right now in order to give you a life lesson you’ll be able to impart on someone else five years from now the way it’s doing for me.”

Adrienne eyed me curiously. “Thought you didn’t believe in Destiny anymore?”

My eyes flashed, and I stated emphatically, “I don’t.”

Adrienne sighed. “I’m not gonna bank on Sasha coming back to me in five years. You and I aren’t getting back together, are we? It’s for the best, really. Dawn has the right idea: a relationship with you as siblings is the most stable thing for us. I need you as my rock more than I need you as a romantic partner. But I don’t have that option with Sasha. I HAVE to make things work with her right now before I lose her forever. You just said you’ve been in my position before: If you had the chance to do it all over again, what would you do differently? What is it that I need to do right now so that she and I can unpause this break and go back to working things out together?”

I sighed and shook my head. “You can’t unpause this one. Sasha’s not coming back, Adrienne.”

She looked up and frowned at me. “Don’t say that. Of course she is. This is just a setback, that’s all. We agreed to take a pause. She needed time and space to collect herself and decide whether or not she’s ready to be everything I’m asking her to be.”

“That’s just it,” I muttered with a grimace. “I talked with her yesterday. She told me she’d made her decision.”

Adrienne pulled her hands out of my grasp. “Wait, what?”

I took a deep breath and raised my eyebrows. “She said this isn’t a pause. She said this IS a break-up. She can’t marry you. She can’t marry ANY woman.”

“No… I…” Adrienne started trembling, and I grabbed her hands in mine again. “She… I mean… She’s skittish, I get that. She feels like she’s not ready to settle down and she still wants to have fun exploring the world together. With me. With US. The two of us are her endgame, right? She said that. She meant that.”

“Maybe not anymore,” I said softly.

“Tiger! I can’t…” Adrienne’s eyes were wild. “She told you this yesterday?!?”

“I was going to tell you but after dinner we headed out to play basketball and then you invited over Dawn and the twins and it all…” I sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“No… No… It’s not over. It can’t be over.” Adrienne lurched forward into my chest, and I hugged her in reaction.

Rubbing her spine and clutching her close, I repeated, “I’m sorry.”

“Tiger!” Adrienne started sobbing. “What am I gonna DO?!?”

Taking a deep breath, I collected my thoughts and tried to think logically. Really, there was only one solution in my mind.

I pulled back far enough to look into Adrienne’s eyes. She stared back at me, a bit wild-eyed. “I think you need to hear this straight from Sasha herself.”

Adrienne blinked, not understanding right away.

I held up my phone, unlocked it, and started typing.

And then I took Adrienne by the hand, pulled her up to her feet, and started leading her back to the car.

****

Normally when I visited the San Francisco apartment for a nooner with the girls, I walked over from the JKE building and entered through the lobby and swiped my access card at the security gate to gain access to the elevators. In this case, Adrienne and I used my access card to drive straight into the parking garage and then took the elevator up to the 35th floor. Likewise, I fit my key to the door and went right in, although I rapped my knuckles against the wood while entering just to be polite. Behind me, Adrienne knocked too.

Sasha had been seated on the couch in the living room, but she stood up at our entrance, arms folded across her midsection as she gave us a pensive look.

Adrienne was behind me, and given that she hadn’t seen Sasha since they first separated at the airport, I was expecting her to act shy or nervous or something.

I have no idea why I would’ve thought that. C’mon, this was Adrienne. Once she’d wrapped her head around the fact that we were going to see Sasha, she had no reason to act shy or nervous. She’d spent the entire drive over quiet and lost in her thoughts, clearly gathering herself for this moment. This wasn’t a girl who got stage fright, you know. So instead of shrinking like a violet, the blonde bombshell behind me walked into the living room as if she owned the place (which she kinda did, even if it was actually owned by the Kwongs – you know what I mean). With a snort and a chuckle, she remarked, “I do believe that’s the first time I’ve ever come into this place while knocking the door.”

Sasha was still hugging herself. I quickly crossed the room to embrace her, and once she was able to take her eyes off Adrienne the beautiful brunette gave me a warm smile and a sweet kiss. I squeezed her tight and picked her up off the ground, waggling her around just a bit before gently setting her back down on her feet.

That little move did seem to ease the tension on her face, and she gave me another sweet kiss and pressed her forehead to my cheek for a moment before sighing and letting go. I took a step back and to the side to give Sasha an unimpeded view of Adrienne. The brunette started to look nervous again, looking down at the floor as she pulled a long lock of hair back from her eye and tucked it behind her ear before raising her gaze and offering up a shaky, “Hey, honey.”

Adrienne had been staring out the window with what amounted to a resting bitch face. She looked… cold. Not cold in the sense of temperature. Rather, she seemed aloof from the situation, above it all, like a supermodel who couldn’t be bothered to even look at a production assistant who was so far beneath her.

It was such a stark contrast from the despondent and broken-hearted girl I’d first put into my minivan back at the hiking trailhead. But before I could say anything, Adrienne sighed and looked back at her now ex-girlfriend, making no move to approach any closer. “Hey, sugar.”

Now that I thought about it, I realized I hadn’t heard those particular endearments in quite a while. What other signs of the deterioration of their relationship had I been missing?

Sasha took a deep breath and glanced at me. “I understand Ben told you I’d decided on this being a complete break-up and not just a pause.”

Adrienne went back to staring out the window. In a dismissive voice, she stated, “Yeah, he told me.”

Sasha blinked a couple of times and looked at me. I gave her a bewildered shrug. And then Sasha finally looked back at Adrienne, taking several steps towards her. “‘He told me’? That’s it?”

“What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to say you’re hurt. I want you to say you don’t want this to be a complete break-up.”

“I AM hurt. I DON’T want this to be a complete break-up! I didn’t even want this to be a pause!” Adrienne charged back immediately, turning on Sasha with her golden eyes aflame. If looks could kill, Sasha would’ve been dead a hundred times over. As it was, the brunette merely shrank and took a step back.

Instinctively, I stepped in behind Sasha to hold her shoulders steadily. And she raised her right hand to hold my left hand atop her left shoulder - clutching it, really.

Adrienne blinked, and as she did so the fire in her eyes dimmed. She pursed her lips and perhaps realized she was being more intimidating than she wanted at this moment. It was a little awe-inspiring on my part to see the kind of… well… Tigress she could be, and I imagine quite a number of people had been similarly awed by Adrienne’s presence and force of personality at one modeling shoot or another. At the same time, it reminded me just how much of a… kitten… she could be around the people she truly loved and trusted. I thought back to how hard she’d worked to control her anger with me in Bora Bora, how difficult it must’ve been for her to stop calling me ‘Tiger’ just because I asked. And I silently cursed myself once again for ever calling her selfish in the first place.

As if on cue, Adrienne’s Tigress façade melted almost immediately. The fire went out of her, and with a clenched jaw, Adrienne shook her head and walked over to the dining table. She pulled out her usual chair and dropped into it with a sigh. For as erect as her posture had been a moment earlier, now she’d gone practically spineless. And setting her elbow down atop the table surface, she set her cheek against her open palm and closed her eyes.

Taking Sasha by the hand, I led her over to join Adrienne at the dining table. We all sat in our usual spots, and Adrienne picked her head off her palm, although she remained slumped in her chair like a sullen teenager. I knew this was a highly-emotional moment for her and she wasn’t acting this way out of malice, so instead of remaining in my usual spot, I got up and shifted over to take the available chair next to her, and then reached out to squeeze her hand.

Adrienne’s eyes were already moist, and she gave me a grateful smile at my presence before we both turned our attention to Sasha.

“I’m sorry,” she began softly. Sasha’s posture was prim and proper, shoulders back, head erect, and hands neatly folded in her lap. She could get as emotional as anybody, but Sasha had always strived to be the coolly logical one divorcing her emotions from her decision-making. And her present state told me that now we were here, where the rubber meets the road, there was no uncertainty in her decision. “I never meant to hurt you.”

“Then don’t hurt me.” Adrienne bit her lower lip and suddenly looked so small. It was as if she’d bundled up all of her confidence and poise to fake it ‘til you make it and strut into the apartment as if she didn’t have a care in the world. But all it took was one look at Sasha’s face and all that puffed up strength had fled her. Her voice was almost a whine as she pleaded, “Take a break. Take a pause. Smash some Tri-Delts. Go out with Ben and have him help you smash some other hot co-eds around campus or something, I dunno. Just… come back to me! Please.”

Sasha shook her head slowly. “This isn’t about feeding my voyeuristic fantasies. This has nothing to do with sex. This has everything to do with you and me. I mean seriously: is there anything left to say that wasn’t already said in Bora Bora?”

“I’m SORRY for bringing the twins to Bora Bora. I know I was being a selfishly manipulative partner. I’m sorry I kept pressuring you into long-term commitments you weren’t ready for. I’m sorry for everything, but I’m aware of my mistakes and I really AM going to be better!”

Sasha shook her head. “This isn’t something where you can just ‘be better’. We want different things. There are serious incompatibilities between us, and you deserve better than just sitting around waiting for me to become something I’m not.”

Sasha raised her hand and reached across the table towards Adrienne. She opened her hand and then returned it to her lap, leaving a small rose gold chain in a heap atop Adrienne’s placemat. I recognized the two interlocking hearts immediately.

“I can’t marry you, Adrienne. I never will. I never thought you were selfish OR manipulative. You’re decisive and you know what you want. I love your fire. I love the way you just go after something when you really want it. To be perfectly honest, I wasn’t even all that mad at you for cockblocking me with the twins. I rather enjoyed the way you went to so much effort to butter me up and make me feel like a queen, even to the point of saying you wanted to make sure I knew I was your Number One over him. I mean, you’re allowed to want to make sure your girlfriend doesn’t drift off and fall more in love with someone else. Really, it’s my fault for emotionally straying in the first place.”

“I don’t count it as emotional straying when it’s with him. You made it clear you wanted us in a triple. It was never a Ben versus me kinda thing.”

“Thank you for that. In the end, we spent some serious quality time together in Bora Bora AND I still got plenty of sex with Ben and the twins,” Sasha continued. “I mean… you’re a goddess… And it really was quite flattering to know that the one thing you wanted most in this world… was me.”

“It was. Still is.”

Sasha glanced over at me for a moment, although her words were still for Adrienne. “You know, I always thought your love for Ben would eventually trump your love for me, even before you two got engaged at Morris Camp. You two were the primary couple and I was just the side girlfriend tagging along. Hell, even in the last few months I always thought your love for Ben would ultimately lead you back together, which is one reason why I started pushing for you to marry him instead of me.”

“Well I DID ask him,” Adrienne muttered before blushing at me. “That didn’t go over so well.”

“My fault, not yours.” Sasha sighed. “You made it clear from the beginning that your endgame was marrying me, not him. You only asked him that night because I more or less demanded it, and then he burned you for something that was really MY fault.”

I squeezed Adrienne’s hand and cut in, “I’m sorry about that. I did tell her I was sorry about that.” That last part was directed at Sasha.

“In the end, it would’ve been a bad idea anyway,” Sasha reasoned. “Ben’s right: it was a desperation move to try and patch up our differences by neatly slotting him into the holes in our relationship. It was unfair of us to think he could ever be content to be your sperm donor and co-parent and then leave us alone to go spend the rest of his time with Dawn.”

I frowned at Adrienne again. “Is THAT what you thought our marriage would be like?!?”

Adrienne winced. “She’s oversimplifying.”

“Again, MY fault and my words. Not hers,” Sasha explained.

I sighed and sagged in my seat a bit, feeling a sense of peace with turning them down in Bora Bora. For the past two weeks I’d continued to feel a bit of regret every so often for giving up what had long been my dream outcome.

I didn’t regret that anymore.

“I can’t be what you need me to be,” Sasha continued, her focus on Adrienne. “I can’t walk down that aisle and pledge, ‘To have and to hold, in sickness and in health.’”

“Because I’m a woman.”

Sasha sighed. “No, actually, it’s not even that. I mean, I know I’ve been saying over and over again that I’m not really a lesbian and I can’t wrap my head around being married to a woman. But now that I’ve had time to stop and think about it, I realized I don’t want to be married, period.”

I frowned. “Just yesterday you said you could still marry me.”

Sasha shook her head and gave me a sad look. “I said that when I stopped to think about marriage and kids, I always imagined standing next to you: my man.”

“You mean: not a woman,” Adrienne muttered sullenly.

“Marriage is just a vague, abstract concept. Just… ‘being married’.” She mimed the air quotes. “Buying a house. Having children. Having responsibilities. I don’t want that. I don’t even like having a full-time job, when it gets down to it. Being tied down. Being chained. I… I don’t want that at ALL, with either of you.”

Adrienne leaned forward. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying this is my chance to be free. I’m saying that I long assumed I’d stay here in this apartment, with you, for however long you wanted. And I assumed I’d simply follow you wherever our relationship led for however long it lasted. I’ve told you both before I’ve never been good at thinking more than a month ahead in my personal life. I try to live in the moment, to enjoy where I am and what I’m doing right then and there. And maybe now I have that chance.”

Now it was my turn to ask, “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I’m ready to leave San Francisco. I’ve got so many airline miles racked up its not even funny. I’ve got enough money saved – man, when did THAT happen in my life? – that I can afford to like backpack around Europe or something for more than a year. You both know how much I’ve loved traveling the world with Adrienne. And you both know how much Adrienne’s at the phase in her life where she’s kind of over the whole jet-setting thing. I’m not. I still want to get out there and find new experiences. This is my chance.”

Adrienne and I sort of gawked at each other.

“I want to LIVE,” Sasha said rather brightly, a wide smile on her face. “It doesn’t mean I felt like I wasn’t living with both of you. But things WERE getting… stale. You’re both in settling down mode. Ben’s got a family and a toddler he needs to come home to every night. Adrienne stopped wanting us to hit up models’ parties and smash mousey PA’s together.”

Adrienne arched an eyebrow. “And you’re gonna find mousey PA’s on your own?”

Sasha grinned. “The nice thing about having hit up so many models’ parties with you the past couple of years is that my phone is just FULL of hot babes in foreign countries who would love to have me visit. There’s always a models’ party somewhere in the world.”

Adrienne’s eyes narrowed. “Models’ parties full of hot guys with ripped abs.”

Sasha blushed and looked at me. “You’re still the only man for me, Ben.”

Adrienne chimed in, “That’s an easy decision to make when you know Ben’s right across the Bay Bridge. It’ll be a harder decision when he’s halfway around the world and you get that itch to feel plugged up full and fulfilled.”

Sasha sighed and glanced over at me again. “Am I still your fish?”

“You are if you want to be. Even halfway around the world.”

Sasha’s dark eyes flashed for a moment. “And if I didn’t want to be your fish anymore?”

I exhaled slowly. “I would respect your decision.”

Sasha’s eyes narrowed. “You know that’s not what I wanted to hear.”

“It’s the truth, though. I can’t make any commitments to you, and--”

“I’d better not fucking hear the word ‘fair’ come out of your mouth,” Sasha snapped.

I chuckled and shook my head. Taking a deep breath, I thought about my response, and finally said, “I’m going to tell you something you once told me back in college.”

Sasha frowned. “What’s that?”

“You don’t need my permission ahead of time.”

Her frown deepened. “I don’t understand.”

“Our relationship – the way we defined it way back when – isn’t about monogamy or permission.”

She caught on quick. “It’s about communication and trust.”

“If I have expectations about you maintaining fidelity to me, I’m gonna end up stressing out while wondering whether or not you’re actually maintaining that fidelity. I trust you to take care of yourself, and I don’t want to carry those expectations anyway. If you find yourself in a situation where you stop and realize, ‘Yes, I wanna do this’… then go ahead. Don’t hide from your emotions or feelings or avoid doing what makes you happy. You said your entire relationship with Rod was spent tiptoeing around the truth trying to protect each other’s feelings. That’s not who we are. Open communication, right?”

“Right.”

“If you find yourself getting into a situation where you stop and think, ‘I’m gonna feel guilty if I do this’, then don’t do it. If you stop and think, ‘I can tell Ben about this and he’ll be happy for me’, then by all means go right ahead.”

Her eyes narrowed. “How can I know you’ll be happy for me?”

“Because you’ll be happy for YOU,” I stated sincerely. Taking a deep breath, I gave Sasha a serious look and said, “Some people are meant to settle down, buy big houses with white picket fences, surround themselves with everyone they love, and never have to worry about feeling lonely ever again. That’s me. That’s my Happily Ever After. I don’t think I necessarily even need a ring or a wife to make that happen. If there’s anything I’ve learned in the last few years, it’s that I’m never going to have just one woman in my life. Dawn is pledging me ‘‘Til death do us part’. Adrienne right there is so freaking important to me that even after the nuclear fuck-up of the Bora Bora marriage proposal, the instant she came home I welcomed her straight into my home and my heart without a second thought. Kim is my hanamuguri. She and BJ will forever be a part of my life. So right there, that’s three women I can’t imagine ever living without, and it doesn’t seem likely I’m going to marry any of them.”

Adrienne sat up straight and leaned forward. Sasha cocked her head, wondering where I was going with this.

“Then there’s you. You’re not like me or Adrienne. You talked about never being comfortable with the abstract concept of being married. You don’t want to buy a house, have children, or settle down. You’ve never been the clotheshorse Adrienne is, you don’t buy a lot of stuff, and you’ve always valued unique experiences over worldly possessions. Maybe you’re a bit of a gypsy, a nomad. It would certainly explain a lot about your attitude on the world and life in general.”

Sasha smiled shyly. “I guess I never really thought of it that way.”

I shook my head. “You spent years trying to be Rod’s perfect girlfriend out of obligation to him. You became MY girlfriend in part because of obligation to me. And maybe you never stopped to think about WHY you enjoyed living life the way you did, under the assumption you had to stay and be with Adrienne out of a sense of obligation to HER.”

Sasha flicked her eyes back to Adrienne, who had her chin jutting forth and was scrutinizing the tabletop. She then looked back at me and stated, “You’re wrong.”

I blinked. “I am?”

Sasha nodded and stated emphatically, “I never stayed with either of you out of obligation. I love you. I love BOTH of you. Of THAT I have no doubt.”

I arched an eyebrow.

“I used to doubt that. Back during Amber’s wedding, I realized I didn’t have that all-encompassing, soul-encapsulating, I-can’t-breathe-without-you kind of love for you and I started to doubt myself. On the other hand, I DID find that passion for YOU, honey.”

Adrienne picked her head up at that.

“I do love you. I STILL love you. I just…” Sasha winced. “I can’t marry you.”

Adrienne sighed. “I get that now.”

“I’m sorry.”

Adrienne sighed again. “I’m not gonna say ‘Don’t be’, because gawddammit I’m still really, really unhappy that you don’t want to marry me. But… but I get it.”

“I’m sorry,” Sasha repeated.

Adrienne just scowled and shook her head.

We were all silent for a moment, but then after a deep breath, Sasha turned to me.

“I never did find that all-consuming passion for you,” she apologized.

“I know.”

“That disappointed you for a while.”

“Very briefly, when you first told me. But I quickly realized that just because your fire for me didn’t burn as white hot as I might’ve liked, that didn’t make it weaker or less important.”

“You have no idea how much it’s meant to me to feel that comfy blanket I’ll-always-be-there-for-you kind of love. Knowing that no matter where I am across the globe, you’ll be here waiting for me, it’s… well… it means the world to me.”

“I will be. For however long you need me, I’ll be here. I get it. You want to try new foods, see new places, have new experiences, and know that both of us will be here, reading your texts, clicking ‘like’ on your Facebook photos, and wishing you well on your journeys. And that’s cool. Nobody here is going to chain you down.”

I gave Adrienne a significant look before turning my focus back to Sasha. “I think that at the end of the day, we both love you enough to let you go.”

“Thank you for that.” Sasha gave me a warm smile.

But when both of us turned to look at Adrienne, we found her shaking like a leaf with tears streaming down her eyes. She’d pulled her heels up onto her chair and had her arms wrapped around her knees.

“You’re really gonna leave me, aren’t you?” the blonde whimpered pitifully.

“I’m sorry,” Sasha repeated. “I never meant to hurt you.”

Adrienne didn’t respond except to bow her head and keep sobbing her poor little heart out.

I was about to get up and go around the table to go give Adrienne a hug. But before I could do so, Sasha reached across the table to hold Adrienne’s clasped hands.

It didn’t seem to help. Adrienne just kept shuddering. But then Sasha let out a mirthful chuckle, a happy sound that felt so completely out of place in this somber moment that it got Adrienne to pop her head up in surprise.

“I know what’ll make you feel better,” Sasha stated warmly. She let go of Adrienne and pulled her hand back about a foot. Then, she delicately scooped up the heaped pile of the rose gold necklace, fiddled with it until she could find the clasp, and then pulled the chain – quite literally a chain - up to her own neck.

Adrienne went wide-eyed at the sight.

Sasha fixed the clasp behind her neck and then sat up straight once more, prim and proper, with a wide smile across her face. “I’ll never take it off. I guess this thing really did turn out like Ben’s promise ring. Every time you see it in one of my photos from around the world, you’ll know I still do love you, even if I can’t be with you right in that moment. Because you’re my honey, honey.”

I snorted and shook my head. “That is such a corny line.”

Sasha chuckled and gave Adrienne a bright-eyed smile. “It’s the truth.”

Adrienne furrowed her eyebrows and stared at Sasha, still a bit in shock. “You’ll really keep wearing it?”

Sasha grinned. “Forever and Always.”

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