And while so intimately joined together, we talked about the future.
In the back of my head, I always told myself that Ryan was just a living dildo for Dawn. I wasn’t there, in NorCal, so he gave her comfort and pleasure while I was gone. But I’d believed that once Dawn and I got back together she would be mine again. I didn’t want to think about them being anything more permanent. So I’d avoided talking about Ryan up until now and she didn’t want to talk about him either.
But now we had to. And it started with a phrase I’d simultaneously expected and feared.
“I love you, Ben.” It was a simple phrase and one she’d said to me several times this summer, but never with quite so much emotion.
“You and only you, Ben,” Dawn continued in the same heartfelt voice. Her crystal blue eyes shone at me from just inches away. “No matter what I told Adrienne a few weeks ago, I’m in love with you, romantically. I don’t want to be just your best friend. I want to be your lover, your partner, your everything. I want to wake up every morning in your arms and fall asleep the same way. I want to daydream about you while I’m in class and know you’re doing the same.”
Her words were bittersweet to me. I loved hearing them from her voice and yet felt incredible guilt over my own decisions. It hurt so much to hear my Dawn’s longing that at this moment, I wanted to throw everything I had with Adrienne away just to see Dawn smile again.
“Do you feel the same way, Ben?” my beautiful blonde lover asked while squeezing her pussy around my rod.
I didn’t answer right away. The hesitation was all Dawn really needed. “You’re in love with Adrienne now, aren’t you?”
I blinked and looked away in shame. Here was Dawn, MY Dawn, pouring her heart out to me, and I couldn’t answer in kind. “I love you both,” I choked.
“But you’re IN love with her.” Dawn exhaled slowly, a loud, long breath of air pouring through her nostrils as she pinched her lips together with the saddest eyes I’d ever seen in her.
I winced and felt moisture in my eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
“No, it’s okay. It’s okay. I knew it. This whole summer I knew it.” She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry I just did that to you. I wanted to tell you how I felt about you, but asking the same of you was cruel just now.”
I let out a strangled gasp, desperately trying to inhale and calm myself. It WAS cruel. And it was hard. And I HATED this feeling.
“It’s okay, Ben…” Dawn brought her hands up to stroke my cheeks. “It’s okay… I understand.”
“If you felt that way about me,” I asked through wet eyes with my lips quivering. “Why the HELL did you call and tell me you were staying with him next year?”
Now it was Dawn’s turn to look away in shame. She started to say something twice, both times pinching her lips back together while her eyes darted left and right, as if the right words were somewhere in front of her where she could read them if only she could find them. But eventually, she sighed and said forlornly, “Because I’m weak.”
“Dawn…” Now it was my turn to stroke her cheek as moisture formed in her eyes. We were on an emotional roller-coaster, both of us dipping and needing the other to help us back up. I feared for the moment when we both crashed at the same time. “You’re not weak.”
“I was weak,” she choked. “Ryan has been so wonderful for me. I was lonely, Ben. I was lonely without you. He gave me companionship without pressure, taking only what I’d give him. He adores me, Ben. He’s devoted to me. It’s like I’m his entire world. And even if I don’t feel the way about him like I do about you, I do… appreciate… how much he cares. He LOVES me, Ben. And this past year, it felt really nice to be loved. You just weren’t around.”
I went quiet and looked away. I felt guilty for not being there when she needed me.
“Hey,” Dawn got my attention with her pussy muscles and turned my face back to hers. “It’s not your fault. Life separated us, that’s all.”
“We won’t be separate two months from now.”
She sighed and went silent for thirty seconds. I waited her out before she finally said, “I told him I wouldn’t abandon him.”
“Abandon him?”
“Ryan worked so hard as my boyfriend and he’s been so great. I felt sorry for him. He knew how I felt about you and he asked if I was going to dump him when the new year started. Can you imagine what it might feel like, Ben? To know that the woman you love is just stringing you along for a few more months until the man she REALLY loves shows up?”
I winced. I might just kill myself.
“I couldn’t do it to him, Ben. I felt like I couldn’t just leave him as soon as you showed back up in my life. The guilt was eating away at me, so I told him I would stay together with him. And he was with me when I called to tell you the same. That’s why I had to do it by voicemail. I know it was pretty shitty, but I HAD to do it in front of him and I couldn’t wait any longer. I would have lost my nerve.”
So that was the phone call. Reminded of the pain of hearing her message, I put my forehead down on the blanket beside Dawn’s head while she gripped my back tightly and bucked her hips, fucking herself on my dick a few strokes. It… well… It helped the pain.
Then I pulled back, looked Dawn in the eyes and asked softly, “But you don’t love him?”
She shook her head. “No, just you.”
“Why?”
“I can’t help the way I feel. Maybe it’s because as hard as he tries, he still doesn’t KNOW me like you do. We’ve got eighteen years, Ben. We finish each other’s sentences when we’re teaching Adrienne about the hiking trails. And when she freaks out over some little bug, we just have to look at each other and I know we’re sharing the same snide joking comment without even having to open our mouths. You were my first everything, Ben. And sometimes when I’m making love with Ryan, I’m fantasizing that I’m with you. I just can’t help it.”
“Then how can you be with him next year?”
Dawn sighed and tears began rolling down her cheeks. “Because I’ll need him more than ever, Ben. If you weren’t with Adrienne, I’d dump him in a heartbeat. I’d feel really bad about it, but the fact is that you’re the one that I want, Ben. But since you ARE with Adrienne…” She exhaled heavily. “I can’t be alone. I’ll need his love and his attention, Ben, things you won’t be able to give me.”
“You could both be my girlfriends. I’ve done it before,” I offered hopefully.
Dawn shook her head. “I couldn’t do that to Adrienne. She’s my friend now, Ben. And the fact is that I want you to myself. We might last as a triple for a few weeks, but she’d always know that I secretly want to have you for myself. I wouldn’t be able to help but undermine her, even though it’s not what I want to do.”
I shook my head, still not understanding everything that was going on. “You didn’t tell her all this when you and her talked at the beginning of camp, did you?” I accused.
Dawn closed her eyes. “I told her half of the truth. I missed being close to you. I missed my best friend. And yes, I missed having sex with you. I told her all that, and I apologized for seeming jealous of her. I was just so used to seventeen years of camps where it was just me and you that I didn’t know how to be around you any other way. But I promised Adrienne I’d make it work. I realized that she wasn’t going anywhere and that I couldn’t be your friend as long as she and I hated each other. And I’d rather be your friend than be apart from you, Ben. I’ve done my best and I think I’ve held up my end.”
I nodded. “You have. You’ve been my best friend without trying to sabotage Adrienne.”