She humphed. “I knew he wasn’t the guy for me forever.”
“So…” I began hesitantly, afraid of the possible answer. “Are you seeing anybody right now?”
“No,” Dawn murmured softly as she moved her head up towards my face. “Are you?”
I shook my head. “No.”
“Good,” Dawn smiled and then she bent her lips to mine, giving me a soft, tender kiss.
“Mmm…” I moaned when she pulled away. Dawn had the softest lips of any girl I’d ever kissed. She was my first kiss, and in this moment I hoped she would be my last kiss eighty years from now. “Any particular reason why that’s good? Shouldn’t I be saying, ‘Oh, I’m sorry things didn’t work out and I’m sorry you haven’t found someone else just yet.’?”
Dawn shook her head. “I’m not looking for someone else. I was just waiting for you.”
I arched an eyebrow. “Why?”
“Isn’t it obvious, Ben?” Dawn smirked and did a good approximation of my arched eyebrow. “I love you. I loved you last summer and I still love you now. We may have been apart for a long time but that doesn’t mean my feelings have changed.”
I smiled, but didn’t immediately say the phrase back to her. Dawn let the first uncertain expression cross her face and she got up on one elbow. “Ben? Don’t you still love me?”
I poured out my love through my eyes, willing her to recognize it. But I sighed regretfully as I said, “Yes, I do. But…”
Dawn winced at the ‘but’ and I bit my lip. “But…” I began again. “I’m trying to make sure of my emotions. This past year has been crazy for me and I’ve done some things you might not have expected from me. You once told me that if we were together, you would be getting really, really mad at me for all the stupid things I did until the time I finally matured. I’m getting there, but I’m not sure I’ve matured enough yet.”
She frowned and brushed some of her fine blonde hair back behind her ear. The hand she used made me see she was wearing a thin metal bracelet which highlighted her slender wrist. And I noticed an engraving on it that for some reason captured my attention. I reached over, turned her wrist around, and read “Ben Forever” stenciled into the thin, silver metal.
“I wondered how long it would be before you noticed that,” she said quietly.
My eyes went wide and I noticed that Dawn was very intently looking for my reaction. I’m afraid to say that fear was the first thing that crossed my mind.
Dawn loved me. Dawn was wearing a freaking “Ben Forever” bracelet on her wrist. I should have been thrilled beyond belief.
But I was scared shitless.
Megan loved me. Cassidy loved me. But I’d betrayed them and even though we’d gotten back to the point where we were talking again, our friendships weren’t as close as they’d been before.
Adrienne had shared with me her darkest secret. She trusted me, needed my comfort and support, and let herself fall in love with me. But I’d betrayed her and even now things were still a little awkward between us.
My life after that was a string of meaningless sexual encounters plus one teen pregnancy and abortion. I was a colossal failure of sexual relationships, and the only one that had come out better than it began was with Summer, with whom I’d never STARTED a relationship.
I could handle my reduced closeness with Megan and Cassidy. At least we could be in the same circle of friends together. I could handle the awkwardness with Adrienne. We’d never been close in the first place. And I could live with never seeing Donna Kincaid or Stacey Whitehouse ever again. But not Dawn. I couldn’t live without Dawn. She was my Siamese twin until we were ten. She was my partner in exploration every summer since then. And I absolutely COULDN’T live without her in my life. I LOVED her.
But what if I fucked it up?
“Ben?” Dawn asked with deep concern in her voice. Clearly, I wasn’t having the reaction she’d been expecting. “Are you okay?”
“I can’t,” I croaked.
“What?”
“I can’t be with you,” I nearly started crying.
Dawn’s face fell and her lower jaw immediately started quivering. “Why not?”
“Because… I’ll screw it up… Always have…” I stammered and looked away, the tears bubbling out of my eyes as I simultaneously wanted to push myself away from Dawn and yet clutched her even more tightly to my body.
“Ben, Ben,” Dawn soothed and stroked my head. “Do you love me?”
Sniffling already, I winced and managed to croak, “I shouldn’t.”
“But do you?”
“Yes…” I could feel my heart cracking. “Always have. Always will. But I’ll still betray you. The same… weakness… I had with Dayna last summer… I’ve still got it.”
Dawn bypassed and further conversation and grabbed my head, tilting to her and then covering my mouth with her own. The kiss she gave me felt like a volcanic explosion of passion and emotion, and I found myself whimpering into it as she took me away to a height of bliss and ecstasy I didn’t know was possible, and when she pulled away I was left in a daze with a completely empty head.
“Do you want to be with me, Ben?”
Cleared of all thought, I went with what I felt inside. “More than anything.”
“Then believe in us, Ben,” Dawn said earnestly. “You’re not just another guy. I’m not just another girl. We’re Ben and Dawn and we’ve been destined from birth to get married and have kids and unite our two families together. Okay? We’ll make it work.”
She wiped away my tears, I looked up into her eyes, and I stared right into her soul. And then with every ounce of feeling in my heart, I said, “Dawn, I love you.”
After such an emotional moment, there was only one thing Dawn and I wanted to do. Her irises glowed bright blue as she got up and held her hand out to me. We hurriedly grabbed our things and sprinted off hand-in-hand.
Brooke and DJ were oblivious as they chatted with the five guys. We knew they’d be occupied for quite a while. I knew Eden and Emma were down by the lake as well, mingling with their other pre-teen friends. And my sincerest hope was that at least one set of our parents, if not both, had left the cabins behind to go socialize with other adults.
I got my wish. Dawn’s cabin was empty, and no sooner did we pass through the door than Dawn leaped into my arms, wrapping her legs around my waist and her arms around my shoulders while she did her best to permanently imbed her tongue down my throat.
My fingers were already opening the hook on her bikini top, and I managed to stagger us into the main bunkroom. I started to lose my balance when I tried to get her top off and see for myself just how much bigger her boobs had gotten, but fortunately I made it to her bed and dropped Dawn unceremoniously onto the mattress, rather than onto the floor. At least I managed to remain standing upright, holding her pastel blue bikini top in my hand.
Dawn giggled and immediately started wriggling out of her bottoms. I tossed the top to the side and then quickly dropped my trunks down to my ankles. And then I had to stop and admire the gorgeous young creature on the bed before me.
A little over a week shy of her seventeenth birthday, Dawn was the definition of female perfection. Her fine blonde hair haloed behind her head, drawing one’s attention to the pure white of her face and her piercing blue eyes. Michelangelo could not have sculpted a finer face. Delicate shoulders and prominent collarbones framed a slender torso, where the firm mounds of her large breasts remained firm and upright with minimal support, and they were all real. I could see the hint of her ribcage before Dawn’s taut tummy took over with just the delicate ripples of her abs. Her hips perfectly circled around a pretty pussy, her shaven labia surrounding the moist, pink center. And her legs seemed long enough to drape off the bed and wrap around me even though I was several feet away. She was exquisite.