ASL2: Chapter 6 "Fear"

-- CHAPTER 6: Fear --

****

-- MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2008 --

“Ungh… ungh… ungh…” June moaned quietly with each of my thrusts. Her fingers gripped the far edge of our small, circular conference table, knuckles white as he clenched her eyes and groaned. I stared down at the creamy white skin of her ass laid bare, her business slacks and bikini-cut panties down around her ankles. My turgid, blood-filled cock looked dark and foreboding in contrast every time it reappeared in the open air, only to disappear within the tight confines of her snug pussy over and over and over again.

And just above my pistoning prick was a small black circular disc, the no-nonsense handle of an oblong silicone butt-plug.

Although Kim and June had first discussed gauging their assholes together with a series of increasing diameter butt plugs two weeks ago, they didn’t rush out the very next morning to get them. For one thing, Kim decided that Adrienne would be the foremost authority on the subject of sex toys, and although they texted back and forth about it, Kim and June didn’t actually go shopping with Adrienne until the following weekend. The pair of them had then returned home with a surprisingly wide variety.

As expected, June had taken to the anal incentivizers immediately. Anything that vibrated was a big hit, although she wasn’t about to try pushing the egg all the way inside just yet. A set of silver anal beads strung together in increasing sizes were also quite titillating for her, although she didn’t want to work past the first two of them just yet. But Kim, not unexpectedly, showed her discomfort right away.

She couldn’t hide her pain, and I didn’t want to hurt her. At that point, I was ready to call the whole thing off, as even the prospect of getting into June’s ass wasn’t enticing enough for me to want to put Kim through that kind of distress. But Kim, in her inimitable Kim way, put her foot down and insisted she was going to do this, for solidarity with June if nothing else.

Of course, June didn’t particularly need Kim’s solidarity. The first time she orgasmed while I fucked her pussy doggy-style and slowly pulled those anal beads out of her ass convinced her alone. At that point it became more about Kim’s stubbornness than anything else.

“I could order you NOT to use the butt plugs,” I warned my hanamuguri.

Kim lanced me with a cold gaze. “If you do that, sir, I will of course obey,” she replied. “But I guarantee you will regret it.”

Okay, raise your hand if you still think Kim’s a true submissive.

Shut up, you.

So the girls both started off with the smallest butt plugs. June could’ve probably skipped straight to the next one bigger, but at this point it was more about her solidarity with Kim. That had been a week ago, and they stayed that way. Kim only wore hers for a couple of hours at a time in the afternoons when she didn’t have classes. The plug was too distracting for her to wear to school and too uncomfortable for her to sleep with. June, on the other hand, practically kept hers in twenty-four seven and had taken to seducing me at least once every night at home in addition to daily “brainstorming sessions” at work. Even seated at her desk, I thought I caught her wriggling a little in her chair trying to get some extra sensation. The girl really was turning into an anal freak.

Today was the girls’ first day with the second-size butt plugs, and June had been on FIRE all morning. Normally she waited until around 10am before starting an office quickie. But it wasn’t even 8:30am yet when she locked the door, shut the blinds, and started pulling her pants down.

Planting my thumb on the black silicone disc protruding from June’s anus, I applied extra pressure in a circular motion, a trick I had quickly learned she really loved. I didn’t mind the way the butt plug occupied a decent percentage of June’s internal volume, making her pussy just that much tighter around my invading prick, although it did slow down my initial entry and the speed at which I could really pound her.

No big deal. It felt good for her, and it felt good for me. And we were quickly off to the races to get her a nice orgasm or two.

Definitely two. Maybe even three. Seriously, June was on FIRE.

“Ungh… ungh… ungh…” she moaned quietly, gripping the far end of the table with white knuckles. I felt her shudder even before I saw it, the way her cunt abruptly clamped down on my cock. I paused my thrusting and pushed extra hard on that black butt plug disc while she gaped her mouth open in a silent scream. And I kept up the pressure until she finally went slack beneath me, gasping for oxygen as her arms relaxed and spread outward to the sides.

Slowly, I started pumping my prick once more as she came down from her climactic high. June sighed and glanced back at me with a silly smile. “We should’ve started these things ages ago.”

“I’m ready with the real thing whenever you’d like.”

June snorted, an action that made her cunt reflexively clench up again, momentarily freezing me in my tracks. She then shook her head in the negative, saying, “This is good enough for me right now. I’m willing to enjoy what we’re doing so far before thinking about taking the next step.”

“Fair enough. I won’t push you.”

“Thank you for that,” she replied before getting her feet under her and starting to hump herself back at me. “Now let’s focus on getting you off. It’s a little early for us to be having a brainstorming session and I don’t want people to talk.”

“As long as we keep locking the door for actual brainstorming sessions that produce… you know… real work… I think we’ll be okay. You know I was in a bathroom stall the other day when Stewart and Kamar came to the urinals, and Stewart asked Kamar if he thought there might be any funny business between you and me.”

“And?” she asked breathily, still pumping herself back and forth.

“And Kamar just said, ‘Have you met June? She probably just locks the door so she can get mad and scold Ben like he’s a misbehaving teenager without scaring the rest of us.’”

“I have done that a couple of times.”

“Exactly.”

“Plus, Kamar pointed out how I keep visiting Adrienne for nooners and started saying, ‘Adrienne? June. Adrienne? June. It’s not even close.’”

“I’d tend to agree with him.”

“Not offended?”

June snorted again. “I’d rather prefer the world at large sees me as an asexual android. I have no delusions of – nor interest in – competing with the likes of world-famous Adrienne Dennis for male attention.”

“Goody-goody. Means I don’t have to worry about you leaving me for some other guy.”

We had started slowly fucking again, but that comment brought June up short. She stopped again and glanced back at me with a curious look. “Was it ever a real concern of yours that I WOULD leave you for some other guy?”

I blinked. “Um, well…”

“I thought I’d made myself perfectly clear: I may not be your girlfriend, but nor do I have any intention of going out into the world to find a different intimate partner.”

“Well, for now of course. But maybe someday…”

“Someday what? I find a great guy (or a great girl), fall in love, and then get married?”

“Well… yeah,” I admitted.

“That’s not me.”

“Well, not yet, but you’ve already come a long way since I first met you.”

June frowned. “Is THAT what this is about? You’ve made it your life’s purpose to help me grow? And anything short of me becoming… normal… would be a failure?”

“No, not at all. Let ME make myself perfectly clear: I like you just the way you are and have no interest in trying to ‘normalize’ you. Please don’t confuse me with Adrienne trying to give you a makeover, or even Moon trying to turn you into a sexual creature.”

“Although Moon did succeed in turning me into a sexual creature.”

“I think JUNE turned June into a sexual creature - with Moon’s help sure, and Kim’s and mine and even a little bit of Rania. All that happened because you took an interest, and the rest of us were willing to support you in your own self-development. As for you someday falling in love with… someone, male or female… and eventually getting married? That’s also entirely up to you. I’m not going to push you on that, just like I won’t push you on the anal sex thing.”

“But you still WANT to shove your fat cock up my ass.”

“Yes,” I admitted readily. “Yes I do. But I won’t push you. Nor will I push you about falling in love. I mean seriously, at this point I’m the LAST person who could be pushing you about falling in love when I’m in my own state of limbo about not pursuing romantic relationships.”

“You’re talking about Summer.”

I rolled my eyes and rubbed my forehead. “Why does EVERYBODY keep bringing up Summer?!?”

“Because she’s so clearly into you. And you’re just as clearly interested in her.”

“We’ve already discussed this to death. Can we just… not… for a little while?”

“Fine,” she muttered sullenly.

“Now which one of us sounds like a misbehaving teenager?”

“Sorry, Daddy. Maybe your little girl needs a spanking.”

My eyes got BIG. “Now where did THAT come from?”

“I dunno,” June giggled. “Maybe it’s because you still have your dick in me and I am LOVING these butt plugs. Next stage of my self-development, right?”

I blinked again. “Well, I’ll never say you can’t surprise me.”

She giggled again, braced her hands on the table, and started fucking me harder. “Want a real surprise? The thought has crossed my mind about marrying you.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. “Wait, WHAT?”

“Oh, not anytime soon, and it was more of an idle thought than anything else. While I’m in the mood for out-of-left field revelations, you’re actually a distant second to the thought of marrying Kim.”

I blinked. “Oh… well… Okay that one actually makes a little more sense.”

June sighed as she stopped her fucking motions, stretched herself across the table, and clenched her cunt around my cock just once before going completely still. Looking back at me, she set her cheek down on the table and explained, “I’m nowhere near ready to genuinely consider settling down with anyone. It’s just… I can see how hard you work to juggle everyone in your life. I had a front-row seat to the implosion of ‘The Harem’. Adrienne, Sasha, Dayna, Brandi, DJ… they went down like dominoes one after the other. I didn’t understand everything that was going on at the time, but Kim spent a lot of time explaining to me what she saw. You say you’re happy with the state of your current relationships--”

“I AM happy with the state of my current relationships,” I interjected.

“But you’re not. You’re not truly… content. You live in fear… fear of fucking up the way you did when your engagement to Adrienne fell apart. So much of your current decision-making revolves around not losing anyone else. Not even me.”

June sighed, pushed back with her ass until I took a step back, and then slid herself off my cock. It wasn’t difficult, since I’d already deflated more than halfway while she reminded me of my recent failed relationships.

Pursing her lips, June glanced down at my wet penis going softer by the second, and she gave me an apologetic look. Taking a deep breath, she looked up at my face and shrugged. “That’s why you made the off-the-cuff remark about not having to worry about me leaving you for some other guy. That’s why Emma starting to date Marcus bothers you more than you want to admit. You’re still traumatized from everything that happened last year. And Kim’s right: you won’t ever be whole again until you find a committed romantic partner with whom you believe you’ll eventually marry.”

I frowned. “Kim said that?”

June nodded somberly. “It’s why I at least thought about marrying you, if for no other reason than to show you my appreciation for everything you’ve done for me.”

I scowled. “I’d never want someone to marry me out of obligation.”

“I know. It was an idle thought. I’m not your type, anyway.”

“I don’t…” I began before sighing and letting my voice trail off. Dawn, Adrienne, DJ, Amber… Summer… Yeah, I had a type, and there was no point in lying to myself. I didn’t like to think of myself as shallow in that regard, but I couldn’t deny there were particular… features… that appealed to me most. I stared down at the floor for a minute, exhaled slowly, and then reached down to pull up my pants.

“I’m sorry I killed the mood,” June apologized as she watched me getting dressed.

I smirked and arched an eyebrow at her. “Sorry enough to let me put it in your ass?”

She smirked and reached down to pull up her own pants as well. “Not today, Ben… Not today.”

****

While the plush, spacious office I shared with June was located on the west corner of the JKE skyscraper and afforded us some spectacular sunset views, Dalton had been assigned the plush, spacious office on the east side, and Penny had moved in with him. The floorplans were identical, and Dalton and Penny remained at their desks while June and I had assembled around their circular conference table. Dalton’s laptop was connected to a small digital projector that put up his latest project spreadsheet on the white wall big enough for everyone to see. And he was in the middle of his presentation when my phone abruptly started singing:

// Where’d you go? I miss you so. Seems like it’s been forever, that you’ve been gone…

“Oops, sorry,” I muttered while fumbling inside my slacks to silence my phone.

“Now why is that song familiar?” Dalton asked.

“It’s his ringtone for Adrienne,” Penny explained. “You’ve probably heard it across the cubicle farm at some point on a different day when Ben forgot to silence it.”

Dalton smirked. “This would be one Adrienne Dennis, world-famous supermodel.”

Penny smirked. “She summons him for booty calls a few times a week.”

I rolled my eyes and drawled. “Thanks, Penny.”

“Well, far be it from me to keep a man from an incredibly beautiful woman, beg pardon from present company.” Dalton grinned at both Penny and June, neither of whom seemed to care. “Go ahead and answer it.”

I shrugged and held up the phone. “It’s no problem. Sent it to voicemail.”

But just then, the phone vibrated and a text message flashed up. June leaned over and read aloud, “‘Can you come over today?’”

I shot her a look of annoyance for sharing my private text messages with our co-workers, not that the content of this message was particularly scandalous or anything, but still. And very quickly I banged out: Sorry. Team in middle of something. Don’t think I can get away today. And then I quickly put the phone back into my pocket.

Looking up at Dalton, I gestured for him to proceed. “Where were we?”

Dalton glanced at the wall clock. It was a little after 11:00am. And flashing me an easy grin, he explained, “I meant it when I said I wouldn’t keep a man from an incredibly beautiful woman. And we can wrap this part up pretty soon and continue in the afternoon.”

My phone buzzed again. Dalton looked pointedly at my pocket, and with a sigh I dug it out again. Adrienne’s latest message read: You still need to eat don’t you. Bring your team. I just need to see you.

June leaned over and explained, “She’s inviting us to get lunch with her.”

Dalton’s smile broadened. “Now that’s a good idea.”

“Interesting…” Penny mused. “I’ve never actually met Adrienne before.”

Dalton looked at her. “Really?”

Penny shrugged before fixing me with a narrow-eyed glare. “Someone’s never invited me out to lunch with him before. Still hasn’t, come to think of it.”

I rolled my eyes and waved her off dismissively. “Fine, would you guys like to come to lunch with us?”

“Absolutely!” Penny agreed cheerfully while Dalton merely nodded.

With a sigh, I started typing back to Adrienne: Where when. Team coming.

Her response came back immediately. Café Soleil. Noon.

****

“Right zis way, Mees Denneez,” the maître d’ gestured ebulliently with an outstretched arm. “Zo gud to zee you agayn.”

“Thank you, Pierre.” Adrienne beamed at the portly middle-aged man, a twinkle in her eye as she led the four of us past the twenty-odd people clustered around the sidewalk and lobby of the posh restaurant. We were seated in a prime corner booth and our waiter was waiting for us as Pierre returned to the lobby. He asked for drinks, I ordered an Arnold Palmer, June got a regular iced tea, and Adrienne said cheerfully, “My usual. Thanks, Jimmy!”

Jimmy looked around the table, frowned, and asked, “Where’s Sasha?”

Adrienne’s cheery expression evaporated and she sighed. “She had to work. Long story.”

Her eyes told him to drop it, and Jimmy abruptly bobbed his head and disappeared to collect our drinks.

Penny’s eyebrows went up. “I take it you guys are regulars here?” She glanced back at the packed waiting area.

June and I shared a look. “Something like that.”

“So Adrienne? If I may call you ‘Adrienne’,” Dalton began with a warm smile, charm oozing out of his ears.

“Please,” she replied, preening prettily. I had absolute zero concern whatsoever that Adrienne would ever let Dalton so much as touch her in an intimate manner, but she did like the attention.

After that, I actually stopped paying attention to Adrienne and Dalton. Adrienne went into full flirt mode and Dalton was equally happy to have a breezy conversation with a ridiculously gorgeous woman. Penny, likewise, had never met Adrienne and was at her absolute perkiest as well. June and I were already over it and we wound up talking about “4D”, the codename for our project that was so top secret we couldn’t even use the target companies’ names.

Perhaps I’m overstating the “top secret” part. Roughly a quarter of our projects went by code names because they were of the hostile takeover type, situations where for operational security we wouldn’t want the target company to ever get wind that they were being targeted. And in this case, Dalton’s so-crazy-it-just-might-work plan involved four different companies in the Asian region (also working with the 4D codename), none of which had any idea we were in the process of taking them over.

Likewise, neither June nor I ever mentioned the target companies by name. For the project we’d coded them 1D, 2D, 3D, and 4D. And while we all waited for our food, I muttered, “Now I wish one of us had brought our laptop.”

“You and me both,” June agreed.

“Hey, stop talking about work!” Dalton admonished. “It’s lunchtime, and everybody could use a brain break.”

“Yeah, Tiger.” Adrienne smiled at me while rubbing my leg beneath the table. “Way to make a girl feel invisible.”

“You are the brightest star in the universe and will be for eons to come. You could never be invisible,” I replied immediately.

“Aww… good answer.” Adrienne’s hazel eyes flashed golden and she leaned in to peck my cheek. “But seriously. Stop talking about work you two. Be with me, please?”

There was an honest undercurrent of emotion in Adrienne’s eyes with her request for me to be with her, and I immediately felt guilty for ignoring her this long. Yes, meeting Dalton and Penny for the first time had been a welcome distraction and she’d immediately switched to her public persona, but now Adrienne interlaced her fingers through mine and it became clear that whatever reason she had for inviting me out to lunch in the first place had not been forgotten.

Not that we could have that kind of conversation right now with three of my co-workers around us. Still, I squeezed her hand three times in a silent gesture to let her know I understood, and her smile brightened in response.

As it turned out, Adrienne never let go of my hand for the rest of the meal. To our outside observers, I was sure she appeared to be just another pretty girl being a little extra affectionate in the way she kept giggling and kissing my cheek. But I could see the strain in her eyes and read the emotional turmoil behind them, and I felt really bad now for dragging my entire project team with me instead of visiting her alone.

So I did my best to eat lunch with my left hand. Fortunately, I’d ordered a sandwich I could hold in one hand and didn’t need a knife and fork. Adrienne and Dalton kept up a lively conversation, appearing to have become fast friends in less than an hour. And at the end of the meal, when the five of us stood outside on the street again with Adrienne wrapped around my right arm, when she asked, “Would the rest of you mind if I borrowed Ben for a little bit? I promise I’ll return him to work before two o’clock.”

“Absolutely. Take all the time you need,” Dalton agreed readily. “There’s nothing so important that it can’t survive Ben being gone for an afternoon.”

“Thanks, you guys are the best. Glad to meet you both.” Adrienne stepped forward and gave both Dalton and Penny quick hugs but knew better than to try and give June a hug. Seriously, they’d sucked each other’s pussy in a sixty-nine a bunch of times by now, including a lunchtime nooner last Friday when Adrienne wanted to see in person how June was enjoying the anal toys, but June still wouldn’t want to hug her in public. Anyway, Adrienne wrapped herself around my arm again and started tugging me away down the sidewalk. “See you later!”

I waved goodbye halfheartedly to the others. Dalton and Penny were smirking, as if they knew I was about to get laid. June’s expression was nearly impossible to read, but I could see those gears and sprockets at work again. Adrienne finally slid her grip down to my hand for ease of walking. We walked in silence, knowing Adrienne would want to wait until we were in the privacy of her apartment before telling me what was going on. And her plastic smile stayed on for the short walk from Café Soleil to her apartment building.

We breezed past security, took the elevator up to the 35th floor, and went into the apartment in silence. I slipped off my shoes and started heading for the living room, expecting to sit down on the couch so we could talk. But I didn’t get two steps before Adrienne grabbed my hand and spun me back around to her.

My arms were suddenly full of horny blonde. Adrienne was panting heavily, eyes afire as her lips sealed over mine and the nuclear explosion of her kiss detonated inside my mind.

But my mental faculties survived the impact enough to stare at her questioningly once we separated. She read the question in my eyes, shook her head, and replied, “Later. We’ll talk later. Please make me feel good right now?”

Nodding, I squatted to grab my lover beneath her ass and lifted her up so she could wrap her legs around my waist. She grabbed my head and shoved her tongue in my mouth, maintaining our nuclear lip-lock while I carried her into her bedroom mostly from memory. And a few dozen steps later, we fell into a heap on her bed and started tearing off each other’s clothes.

****

“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck!!!” Adrienne wailed at the top of her lungs. “Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck!!!”

Her long legs were pointed to the sky, semi-hooked over my shoulders as I drilled her into the mattress. I stared down at her, the busty blonde bombshell baying her bliss while her bodaciously big breasts bounced back and forth, back and forth, over and over and over again. Her golden-blonde hair splayed out like a halo across her crisp white sheets, her head lolling side-to-side while she clenched her eyes shut and moaned in elated ecstasy. And her arms were spread wide, having completely surrendered her entire being to me, her one and only Tiger.

Hear me roar.

Crunching my abs and thrusting forward with my back muscles as well, I persistently slam-fucked my massive schlong into the supermodel’s snug snatch. Mentally fueled by the power-trip of knowing that my potent prick would forever be the only male penis that got to penetrate Adrienne’s pristine pussy for the rest of her life, I repeatedly rammed my ravaging rod into the richest recesses of the radiant beauty’s remarkable receptacle.

“Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck!!!” Adrienne threw her head back and screamed at the ceiling, howling until her breath gave out. I continued hammering her body, fucking as if I wanted to impale my prick right through her. And while her head tossed left and right deliriously, she took a deep breath and screamed again, “Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck!”

My pelvis pounded Adrienne’s pussy with wet, meaty slaps. Over and over again, I drew back and then slammed down, banging our two bodies together.

It was our way of making love.

“Fuck me, Tiger! Harder! HARDER! Pound me! Piledrive me! Pulverize my tight pussy! FUCK! FUCK! Fucking FUCK!”

It didn’t take long for either of us to cum. This wasn’t meant to be a marathon session of epic proportions. Adrienne needed me to make her feel good, to drown away her sorrows and make her forget her current emotional turmoil, at least for a little while. We both would be clearer headed after getting our rocks off.

Mid-smashing, her snatch squeezed my shaft and she started spasming beneath me, screeching in a high-pitched voice, “FUUUUUUUUCCCKKKKK!!!”

“FUUUUUUUUCCCKKKKK!!!”

“FUUUUUUUUCCCKKKKK!!!”

Her milkmaid muscles drew me over the cliff’s edge with her, and I bellowed my orgasm all the way down. Adrienne planted her feet flat and she thrust her pelvis upward, strong enough to lift me up with her and press our loins just that much closer together. I felt my cockhead erupting great gouts of man-gunk into my lover’s welcoming body. When the first great wad slammed into the back of her wet box, she visibly flinched it hit her so hard. And that only made her scream even louder.

But eventually our combined screams died out and we collapsed back down onto the bed. Wrapping her legs around my waist and crossing her ankles behind my butt, the supremely gorgeous supermodel clutched me close, kissing me with gentle tenderness in stark contrast to our violently animalistic fucking.

Both of us were still breathing hard long after we finally separated our lips to gasp for oxygen. I planted my forehead against the mattress over her left shoulder, my chest heaving against her massive 36F breasts crushed between us.

Patting my shoulders proudly, the buxom blonde cooed into my ear, “That was exactly what I needed. Thanks, Tiger.”

“Always… happy… to please…” I wheezed in response. We hadn’t been fucking for long in terms of total time, but we’d both been fucking balls-out for the time that we had, more of an extended sprint than anything else.

She held me close with her strong legs while I slowly deflated inside her, in no hurry for me to pull out. We went back to tender kissing, almost lazily making love with our mouths until the mental high of orgasm eventually passed and she started to realize how heavy I was on her chest.

When her legs relaxed, I slowly withdrew and flopped over onto my back on Adrienne’s right side. She immediately reached down to her crotch and reached inside her own sodden snatch with two fingers, drawing them back out coated in gooey globs of creamy cum. Quickly popping her found liquid gold into her mouth, she smiled at me and sucked with relish, at least at first. But a moment later, the golden light in her eyes dimmed. And with pursed lips, she sighed with an expression of infinite regret.

I understood without her having to say anything. “Wish Sasha was here to suck it out the creampie and snowball it back to you?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You two fighting again?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What’s the story this time?”

“Same story as last time.”

I furrowed my eyebrows. “I thought you two talked about it. She’s wearing the necklace again, isn’t she?”

“Yeah…”

“And the last couple of weeks seemed to have gone pretty well.”

“They did.”

“But?”

“But we’re just at different stages of our relationship.” Adrienne turned her head and stared straight up at the ceiling.

I rolled myself onto one elbow and couldn’t help but let my eyes rove up and down her spectacular nude figure, from volcanically massive tits to taut tummy, shapely hips, and long, long legs. Even after all this time, I could never get enough of staring at her incredible body. But I quickly returned my attention to Adrienne’s face.

Exhaling slowly, Adrienne kept her gaze upward as she mumbled, “I think it goes back to our own failed engagement. No, before that. It goes back to… well… to this.”

I looked down as she held up her right hand, in particular showing me the thin gold band topped with a small diamond centered amidst a gold leaf flower with diamond accents that adorned her fourth finger. It was the promise ring I’d given her a long, long time ago.

I frowned and said, “We talked about the object itself not being the issue, at least not for you and Sasha.”

“True, it’s not about the necklace I gave her itself. If anything, Sasha promised me she’s not going to take the necklace off again. She’s committed to me, loves me, and has no intention of leaving me the way I broke up with you to be with Grace instead.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Expectations.”

Adrienne went silent after her one-word explanation. I waited for her to elaborate, but she continued to just stare at the ceiling. And while she did, I thought back to my own experience with Adrienne and ‘expectations’.

It was a term she had first brought up in high school, telling me that relationships only failed in two ways: either someone loses interest in the relationship and wants to move on to someone else (which didn’t seem to be an issue from what Adrienne had just told me), or someone doesn’t live up to the other’s expectations.

Back towards the end of our freshman year at Cal, I had given Adrienne the promise ring (A) expecting her to accept it and (B) expecting her to want to be with me forever. She accepted the promise ring when I gave it to her, but she wasn’t ready to commit to being with me forever, and in the end she gave back the promise ring and broke up with me.

On the bright side, Adrienne still wore the ring even today, so it hadn’t been a complete disaster. If anything, seeing it on her finger made me remember that Adrienne DID now promise to be with me forever. Maybe not as a romantic couple, but adoptive siblings and lovers at least. I was her rock, the one she could always depend on to be there for her no matter what. And I genuinely believed she would likewise always be there for me. I hadn’t been kidding when I told Sasha that Adrienne would never move away from me. Not again.

Adrienne still hadn’t spoken, lost in her ruminations as she stared at the ceiling. But after collecting my own thoughts, I hypothesized aloud, “As far as Sasha’s concerned, she’s promised to wear the necklace and confirmed her commitment to be with you, pledged to be your loving girlfriend, and has no interest in a breakup. But you’ve already created an expectation in your head that the two of you are on the path to marriage and Happily Ever After, and her unwillingness to promise all that is creating this internal angst for you.”

“Yeah. Simple as that, huh?”

“Well nothing’s ever as simple as that, but the broad brush strokes are there.”

Shaking her head, she continued. “I told myself not to have these expectations, to understand that she’s not at the same point in her life as I am and accept that she’s only ready to go so far, at least for now. I told myself to be patient and willing to wait.”

“Feelings don’t work like that.” I chuckled at the déjà vu sensation that phrase gave me.

Adrienne frowned. “‘Feelings don’t work like that’?”

I rubbed my forehead. “I’m trying to remember the way you said it to me all those years ago. Feelings are what’s deep down in your heart, not your head. Your head saying, ‘Don’t feel like this’… it doesn’t work that way.”

“So I’m screwed.”

“Well, you’ve got time. She put the necklace back on, didn’t she? If it’s any consolation, I don’t think she’s gonna leave you for a hot Korean babe.”

Shaking her head again, Adrienne muttered, “I changed my mind. It’s not about the time you gave me the promise ring. It DOES go back to our failed engagement.”

“Okay…”

Turning to glare at me, she muttered rather bitterly, “I genuinely wanted to marry you, you fucking asshole. You were the one who got cold feet and pulled the ripcord to bail out while somehow convincing everyone it was my fault.”

I pursed my lips and sighed. “I’m sorry about that.”

She waved me off and shook her head, her fleeting anger already passed. “I started to see settling down with you as my happy ending. I mean, I didn’t have the complete roadmap to retirement all figured out yet, but the belief that you and I would be partners together all the way through until said retirement was most definitely something that gave me a great deal of peace.”

“And then I blew up that sense of peace.”

Adrienne’s eyes hardened as she scowled at the ceiling, but a moment later that fleeting anger also passed. She turned to look at me now and reached out with her right hand. I extended my right hand to hers, and we interlaced our fingers once again. “It’s okay. I forgave you.”

“Thank you.”

Taking another deep breath, Adrienne looked at me seriously and said, “You instilled in me the desire to settle down, to have the kind of permanence I once believed was a done deal. We’re long past the days of ‘Adrienne keeps her independence’. Now I want to belong to a partnership. Now I want to feel like a wife, like one half of a matched set. I want to know who’s gonna be holding my hand at someone else’s wedding thirty years from now. I wanna know the name of my emergency contact on my senior citizen medical card. I wanna know with absolute certainty who’s gonna be lying in bed next to me when I’m in my nineties and need help to get up and down the stairs.”

I squeezed her hand, her words hitting me in waves a lot harder than I would’ve expected. Coming so soon on the heels of my rather awkward ending to this morning’s brainstorming session with June, I couldn’t help but put myself into Adrienne’s shoes and feel her uncertainty about the future.

I couldn’t help but stare out into the inky black void of my unknown future and feel… well… fear.

Fear of being alone.

Fear of never getting the Happily Ever After I’d always wanted.

Fear of never quite building the kind of life my parents had with a bunch of kids and a love that would last a lifetime.

Who would be MY other half, the one holding my hand at some wedding thirty years from now?

Whose name would be the emergency contact on MY senior citizen card?

Who was going to be lying in bed next to me when I was ninety?

I didn’t know.

Dawn? She’d sworn to forever be my best friend, and as close as we were, at this point I thought it more likely for us to end up like her parents and mine: two separate families bonded extremely close together, but separate nonetheless.

Kim? She didn’t want to get married, and I knew the possibility existed that she might someday find a man of her own.

June? Yeah, right.

Sasha? Not ready to settle down.

Adrienne?

Huh.

You know she’s with Sasha, right?

But Sasha doesn’t want that long-term commitment with her.

I can’t steal Adrienne away from Sasha.

Why not? She stole her from you in the first place. Fair’s fair.

Sasha didn’t steal her. Sasha like… got to keep her as a consolation prize when -I- walked away from both of them.

All the more reason to take her back.

I’m not seriously considering this, am I?

Says the man talking to himself once again. Need to find some hiking trail out where you can get heat stroke or something?

No, no of course not.

What are your other options? Seriously. You love her. She loves you. Dawn and Adrienne are choices 1A and 1B, and Dawn took herself out of the running. Adrienne is LITERALLY talking about settling down, getting married, and belonging to a partnership. She’s saying everything you ever wanted from her right this very minute! Now are you gonna sit there like a dumbass and just let her slip through your fingers AGAIN? Or are you gonna man up and take her back?

Adrienne was squeezing my hand, eyes shining with moisture. “I’m afraid, Tiger. I live in fear. After Adam, my family fell apart. My mom died. My father left me to fend for myself and then got himself killed too. I’m not gonna lie here and claim my abandonment issues are quite like Sasha’s, and I had the incredible fortune to have you and your family take me in. But still… I made bad decisions in high school and had all kinds of destructive relationships. I turned to drugs to drown out my pain in New York. Elyse fucking DIED. It’s just all been so…”

Adrienne turned her head to stare up at the ceiling again for a moment, collecting her thoughts. I waited patiently, although in truth I was also still trying to collect my own thoughts as well.

Adrienne finished first. She turned back to me, tears now streaming down her cheeks. Her voice cracked as she whimpered, “You really fucked me up, Tiger. Goodness knows I love you to pieces… Always and Forever… but you REALLY fucked me up.”

“Adrienne…” I began apologetically.

“I was ready for you to be my happy ending. I was ready to be your partner, to be your other half, to be your wife! Don’t you get it? I was going to finally have Mom and Dad’s last name, and I was looking forward to seeing that name on our emergency contact forms!”

She was practically sobbing now, and I reached out to hold her, but she abruptly held a hand up between us, warding me away.

“I wanted to give you all of me, every fiber of my being, and you abandoned me! You realize that? You abandoned a girl with abandonment issues, and on top of that, you made me feel like it was MY FAULT! You made me feel both unloved AND unlovable, and for a while there I was convinced I would never ever find happiness ever ever fucking EVER again!”

“Please… I’m so sorry.” My arms faltered reaching out to her again.

Rubbing her face with both hands, Adrienne shook her head. “Maybe this is all a rebound. An emotional rebound. I’m so anxious to recapture the be-all/end-all Happily Ever After I lost with you, and that’s why I’m turning all clingy-commitment-crazy with Sasha. And now I’m freaking the fuck out that SHE’S gonna abandon me!”

“Sasha’s never abandoning you,” I stated firmly. “She put the necklace back on, didn’t she? She swore she has no interest in breaking up with you.”

“That doesn’t mean she’s anywhere close to giving me the Happily Ever After that I so desperately need all of a sudden.”

“Maybe not. But then again, maybe she’s not the best one to give you that Happily Ever After in the first place.”

“Wait, what?”

My comment brought Adrienne up short, and she frowned in confusion.

I took a deep breath and looked her in the eyes. And in a quietly serious voice, I said, “You’re not the only one fantasizing about the future. I imagined you autographing modeling posters but signing them with my last name. I imagined filling you out as my plus-one for every wedding we ever got invited to. I imagined what you’d look like with your head on the pillow beside mine when we’re old and gray.”

“When my looks have gone and all that’s left is baggy skin and saggy tits,” she sighed.

“You’ll always be gorgeous to me.” I smiled. “The brightest star in the universe for eons to come.”

That got me a little smile in return.

My eyes were suddenly moist as a familiar vision popped into mind. “I imagined what you’d look like clad only in a hospital gown, flushed and sweaty from the exertion of childbirth, opening the front of your gown so that a nurse could place a wrinkled, only minutes-old infant onto your chest for skin-to-skin contact.”

My heart started pounding, and I choked up. I stared off into the middle-distance somewhere behind Adrienne, my entire being locked into the vision, at least until she spoke two words that immediately pulled me back to the here and now.

“Our baby,” Adrienne said quietly. She sniffled, and there were still tears in her eyes, but when I looked closely I found they were no longer sobbing tears of sadness. Her eyes were unfocused as she added, “I always wondered what our baby would look like.”

My heart was now thundering so loud in my ears I could barely hear myself, and I was scared to look down for fear I would see its repetitive bulbous impact denting out my chest over and again. Raising my eyebrows, I spoke in a voice barely above a whisper, “It’s not too late to find out.”

Adrienne blinked in surprise, her eyes focusing as she stared at me. “What did you say?”

Weakly, I tried to give her a hopeful smile and repeated, “I said it’s not too late. We could still have everything both of us have ever dreamed of: the last name on the emergency forms and senior citizen cards, the eternal plus-one for every wedding we’ll ever attend, the smiling face on the next pillow over, and… well…”

“The baby you always wanted with me,” she finished for me, a mysterious look on her face.

That post-childbirth vision was still at the forefront of my mind, and still rather choked up, I found tears running down my face as well. “Yeah…” I croaked, swallowed thickly, and took a deep breath. And I could scarcely believe the next words that came out of my mouth.

“Do you think you could ever give us a second chance?”

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