Ryan blushed. “Yeah. Although I’m not that useful. I’m afraid of heights.”
“Really?” Adrienne giggled.
The big guy shrugged and I felt myself relaxing even further. For everything the guy had going for him, he certainly wasn’t macho or arrogant. Then politely he asked, “How about you?”
“Oh,” Adrienne’s hazel eyes flickered to me and Dawn. “Honestly, I spent the first month just getting over my dad. The last month was getting ready to come here. And of course, in the middle, we all went to summer camp.”
“Oh, right.” Ryan’s eyebrows furrowed and his jaw clenched. All that relaxation we’d been doing for ten minutes was wiped away in an instant.
I wasn’t the only one to notice. “Ryan, babe...” Dawn stroked his arm.
He just exhaled slowly and then fixed his gaze on me. “Right, summer camp. Just so you know, Ben. Dawn told me ... everything ... I think.”
I darted my eyes to Dawn. The look in her eyes told me she HAD pretty much told him everything, but there was an extra guilt in her gaze that almost no one else in the world would have been able to see. I knew the look. It was the same kind of look Dawn would give her mom when she’d confess almost all the shenanigans she and I had gotten into as kids. What it meant was that while Dawn had been honest with Ryan about our sexual activities, she’d deliberately held back just a few things; and I was pretty sure I knew what those were.
So I took a deep breath and looked Ryan dead in the eye. I was a bad liar but I didn’t have to attempt one. “It was a pretty emotional few weeks.”
“But you did sleep with her,” Ryan set his jaw and his muscles tensed.
I nodded. No sense in trying to cover up that part. “It was a part of our relationship. And Dawn said you expected we would.”
He sighed, some of the tension melting away with my frank admission and absolute lack of trying to hide it. “Expected, yes. But hoped? Well, I kinda hoped you wouldn’t. And I have to admit, Ben, it’s kinda hard to sit here and look at you knowing what you did to my girl.”
An old tension surged in me. “And you think it was easy for me to see you sleep with her last Thanksgiving?”
Ryan’s teeth were bared, but more in a grimace than anything menacing as he looked away. For all his noble intentions, the guy didn’t have a moral leg to stand on given what he’d been doing with Dawn while she was still technically MY girlfriend. Dawn started stroking his arm again and Adrienne gripped my hand as well, both girls trying to will their boyfriends into calming down.
I steeled my spine. “Look, Ryan. Let’s just get all the cards out on the table right now. Dawn is living here which means we’re going to be seeing a lot of each other. And this house is too small and Dawn too important to the both of us for there to be this awkward tension.”
Ryan clenched his jaw but nodded.
“Sex was a part of Dawn’s and my relationship, but we’ve both decided that it doesn’t have to be anymore. I’m sure she’s told you that herself. She’s your girlfriend now, Ryan, and I respect that.”
I stopped to let that sink in. Ryan was breathing a little harder than normal, but he met my gaze and nodded. “She still loves you.”
“And I’ll always love her,” I replied. “But Dawn’s my best friend, not my lover anymore. That’s a boundary we won’t cross, I promise you. I’m IN love with Adrienne, here.” I squeezed my girlfriend’s hand and smiled at her.
He exhaled and tried to work his mind around these things that he had intellectually known for some time, but never had to really face live and in-person until right now. “How am I supposed to feel about you, Ben? I don’t know that I can ever be totally comfortable seeing you and Dawn together.”
“Do you love her?”
“Yes,” he said softly and reached over to touch Dawn’s hand where she was still rubbing his shoulder.
I sighed. “You once told me that if I let her go, you wouldn’t want to give her back. Here we are. The choice is yours.”
Ryan took a deep breath. “No. It’s not.”
I furrowed my eyebrows, not understanding.
“All cards on the table, right?” Ryan asked before turning to Dawn, holding both her hands with his and staring her dead in the eyes. “Dawn, the choice is yours. I love you. I know you’re not in love with me, but I know you care about me and I still see the potential in ‘us’. But I don’t want to be trapped in a relationship if you don’t really want to be with me.”
I saw the constriction in Dawn’s chest and the tension in her jaw. Her eyes clicked back and forth staring into Ryan’s penetrating gaze.
“So Ben’s right there, Dawn,” Ryan said softly. “For the first time in a long while, you’re looking at the both of us at the same time. It’s no longer a choice between a live me and a phantom soul mate 500-miles away. I need to know: Do you want to be with me?”
Dawn didn’t have to look at me. We’d made our own choices together already. She merely took one deep breath, squeezed Ryan’s hands, and said firmly, “Yes. I do.”
Ryan couldn’t help but feel elated when she said that. Hurriedly, he jerked on her hands and grabbed his girlfriend’s head, planting his lips on hers and sealing them together in a passionate kiss. All of Ryan’s desperate love and fear poured out at the same time as he lost himself in the one girl he’d fallen HARD for.
I kept waiting for jealousy to kick in, but it didn’t. Sure, the selfish part of me would have liked to have BOTH Adrienne and Dawn (hell, and Brandi and Dayna and every other chick I could get my hands on), but life doesn’t work that way.
Actually, I felt happy for the pair of them. Except for his initial pursuit of Dawn, Ryan had never given me any reason to think he was a bad guy. He obviously was in love with her and a part of me rejoiced for a fellow man getting the girl he loved. And I felt happy for Dawn. She deserved this happiness. She deserved the love and attention I couldn’t give her.
Some might say I’m just crazy. Some question why I’d ever have let Dawn go in the first place. Well, it’s BECAUSE I still loved her. I loved Dawn so much that I valued her happiness over my own selfish desires. Brooke said it once: If you take away the romance, Dawn and I are still siblings. I loved her so much I could be her friend and watch her make out with another man, the way I might watch Brooke go make out with Kenta. Because that was what Dawn needed right then and there.
Things were the way they were supposed to be, at least for now.
Presently, Dawn broke apart from the kiss and I could see the flush in her skin, the desire in her eyes. And I knew exactly what it meant. Sure enough, my lifelong best friend turned to me and Adrienne with a naughty smile. “Uh, I think I’m going to go drive Ryan home now, okay?”
I chuckled and nodded. Adrienne chirped, “Have fun you two.”
Dawn stood up and pulled her boyfriend with her. Ryan at least had the sense of politeness to stop and turn back, saying, “It was nice to meet you, Adrienne. Ben, see you later.”
And then a giggling Dawn practically dragged Ryan out the door.
After the door closed, Adrienne squeezed my hand again and grinned. “They do make a cute couple.”
I sighed and stared at the door. Blonde, blue-eyed, both gorgeous. Yeah, they were the perfect American couple. “That Ryan’s quite the hunk, isn’t he?”
Adrienne shrugged. “I’ve got all the man I would ever want right here,” she replied while running her fingers around my face. “And you know, that gleam in Dawn’s eyes put a few ideas into my head.”
“Do tell...” I arched an eyebrow and smiled at my own gorgeous girlfriend.
“Mmm...” Adrienne stood up and pulled me with her. “I’m thinking I want my boyfriend to fuck me within an inch of my life and see if we can pull off a trifecta. What do you say to that?”