Chapter 24: Jungle Gyms

-- TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2008 --

7:03 AM

The dawn had come.

Also, Dawn had cum.

And I had cum, too.

Both of us were soaked with sweat, bangs plastered to our foreheads and a river running down my back, but neither of us cared as we heaved together in the final throes of simultaneous orgasm. Lips locked together, we kissed and kissed and kept on kissing as my cock spat out its final wads of spunk deep into the furthest recesses of my lover’s womb. And we kept on kissing even after my hips went still and there was no more sperm to give.

Dawn hummed through her nose and into my mouth, a joyous croon of love that came on a direct line from her heart. And we stayed clinched together like that for what felt like forever, neither of us wanting to ever let go.

But eventually, of course, we did. My stomach growled, which made Dawn giggle, and at last I rolled off her so we could both get started on our day. We cleaned up, we got dressed, and I headed outside to make breakfast while she fixed her makeup. And ten minutes later we sat at right-angles to each other at the dining table holding hands, both of us with goofy, giddy smiles dominating our faces.

Just like my mood, the sky outside was getting bright and blue, the omnipresent Berkeley cloud cover giving way to warm sunshine even though it was the middle of February. The house window shades were all open to let in the morning light, with one particular ray of sunshine illuminating my new girlfriend’s absolutely perfect face with a radiantly warm glow.

Not that Dawn was exactly a “new” girlfriend. She certainly qualified as an “old” girlfriend, not that she was old or anything but just that we’d obviously been a dating couple before. So she was most definitely an old girlfriend in the sense of being a past girlfriend, but now that we’d agreed to get back together again last night and I’d been single up until that moment one could say she also qualified as my “new” girlfriend, right? Or at least she would be once we made things official.

New, old ... didn’t matter. Dawn was about to become my girlfriend, period. Awesome, right?

It certainly FELT awesome this morning, didn’t it? I mean, you’ve had some really good morning sex with Dawn over the years, but this morning? Wowww ... I mean, I don’t go out of my way to blow sunshine up your ass very often, but... Wowww...

You said it, dude.

Dawn started playing footsie with me underneath the table, which got me a little distracted from my breakfast. Actually, we were both pretty distracted from our breakfasts, spending too much time making goo-goo eyes at each other instead of actually eating. But all too soon, it was time for her to leave.

“Stupid 8am classes,” I grumbled. “You’d think a graduating senior wouldn’t have to worry about such early mornings. Sure you can’t skip it today to spend just a little more time with me?”

“Me? Skip class?” Dawn scoffed but flashed me a warm smile. “I’ll miss you too, but I’ll see you tonight, alright? It’s not THAT far away.”

“I’ll be counting down the seconds,” I sighed, puckering up as she came around to me for a kiss.

“Mmm-wah! Bye, babe!”

“Byeee...” I goosed her ass, causing her to giggle and flash me another beaming smile. But a moment later she was gone.

A moment after that, Kim walked over to the dining table, her arms folded across her chest, her mouth set in a hard line. I took one look at her expression and realized today would be one of those days. BJ’s molars were coming in, making him cranky and often unwilling to go down for a regular nap. At the same time, he was going through a growth spurt, eating ravenously and then napping for up to four hours at a time. Some days Kim got a lot of rest and she’d be her normal self, sometimes even better than her normal self after a four-hour nap of her own. But every so often BJ would wake up repeatedly throughout the night, squalling about the pain in his gums and ensuring that his mother didn’t get a wink of quality sleep. And today was one of those.

I grimaced the sheepish grimace of a papa who slept quite soundly last night, and in the arms of another woman no less, while mama had endured the fifth dimension of hell. “Rough night?” I asked.

Kim winced and nodded as she sat down at the dining table with me. “Rough, yes, but that’s not why I’m over here.”

I blinked, not understanding. “What’s up?”

“Dawn. You. Explain. NOW.”

I arched an eyebrow, a bit taken aback by Kim’s tone. “What?”

Kim gave me a knowing look. “There’s morning lovey-dovey Ben and Dawn, and then there’s today. The staring into each other’s eyes while pushing your food around your plates. The unending footsie underneath the table, not to mention the hands on each other’s thigh or forearm. Something’s different this morning, and I want to know what.”

I broke into a big grin, happily announcing, “We’re getting back together!”

Given Kim’s line of question, I didn’t expect her to act surprised, and she didn’t. But I didn’t expect her to scowl like I’d just informed her that BJ had explosive diarrhea in his diaper that had crawled up the back of his onesie and it was her turn to change him. Sighing, she shook her head sadly and muttered, “Fuck.”

I frowned. “Hey, what’s with the curse word in front of BJ? I thought you’d be happy for us.”

“Happy for you?”

“This can’t come as some huge surprise, not after the way things have been going between Dawn and me for the last month or so.”

“Surprised, no. Disappointed, yes.”

“Disappointed? I thought you liked me and Dawn together. For one thing, it gets me off your back about becoming romantic with you. And you certainly were supportive of us the first time around.”

“The first time around was significantly different from now.”

“I agree. Things are better.”

Kim sighed. “I’m not saying things aren’t better...”

“But...” I led her.

Kim shook her head. “I just want to be sure you’ve thought this through. I want to be sure you’re not rushing things.”

“Well, we’re not rushing things. For one thing, we’re not together-together just yet, actually,” I explained. “But we set a dinner date for Valentine’s Day to really hash it all out. And as long as neither of us changes our mind about it, starting then we’ll be ‘official’ again.”

“Hash what out?” Kim furrowed her eyebrows. “And why set a ‘decision’ date for Thursday?”

“To make sure we’ve both thought this through and aren’t acting impulsively. To make sure we’re not making a mistake by becoming romantic again. We’ve talked the issue to death already, and raised all the good and valid reasons for why we’re better off as best friends than as boyfriend/girlfriend. There’s a lot of risk in taking that step again. Neither of us knows what the future holds, and neither of us wants the burden of commitment to drive us back apart. We said before that we shouldn’t take this next step, and it’s kind of a big deal for us to decide otherwise. We’ve got a good thing going as best friends, and there’s a strong argument that we should let the passion simmer back down and stick with the status quo we’re both already quite comfortable with.”

Kim blinked at me in confusion. “Then why ARE you taking the risk of getting back together?”

“Because we’re happy together and never want to be apart. Why should we hold back our emotions out of fear for the future? Why shouldn’t we let the love in our hearts we both feel bloom? As friends, we would be very happy and comfortable. But as a romantic couple, as an eventual husband and wife, we could be eternal.”

Kim frowned and gave me a frustrated look. “What about Adrienne?”

“What about her?”

“She still loves you.”

“Of course she does, and I love her. But the reasons for Adrienne and me to remain close friends and even ‘siblings’ are even more valid than the reasons for me and Dawn. She’s happy with Sasha, and we both know we’ll always be there for each other. Besides, she said I’d be happier if I married Dawn.”

Kim shook her head. “Adrienne and Sasha’s prediction is finally coming true.”

“Prediction?”

“That one day Dawn would supplant them. Not intentionally. Not through any desire to hurt them or take you away from them. But they both saw this as an inevitability back at Morris Camp when you and Dawn first decided to start again. The girls were right: you two are like water and water. It’s basic science: when one water molecule bumps into another water molecule, they bond together instantly.”

“Cohesion.”

“Exactly.” Kim sighed. “And now their prediction is coming true.”

I frowned. “I didn’t break up with Adrienne and Sasha intending to start a new relationship with Dawn.”

“I know you didn’t. But the inevitable happened all the same. Maybe it was all those weekends you spent in Berkeley instead of at home, instead of spending quality time with your fiancée and your girlfriend.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Maybe it was a self-fulfilling prophecy, their fears driving them to bond with each other and push away from me in the expectation they’d eventually lose me anyway. If they’d stuck around and fought for me instead, we might not all be where we are today.”

Kim thought about that. “Perhaps. But is that what you would have wanted? To still be together with Adrienne and Sasha and only be best friends with Dawn?”

“Well, not now, obviously.” I stretched my arms out, felt the release of tension from my limbs, and sagged deeper into my chair with a content sigh. “Now, I simply can’t wait for Dawn to come home so we can be together as much as possible for the rest of our lives.”

“Well, she’ll come here,” Kim corrected. “Her ‘home’ is a few blocks away.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Of course I do, but I wonder if that’s about to officially change. Will she be moving in here permanently?”

I shrugged. “Wouldn’t make much difference, would it? She already spends almost every night here as it is.”

“Almost every night, but not every night. For one thing, you usually spend two nights a week with me.”

“And I’ll continue to do so, even if Dawn and I become official.” I reached out to take Kim’s hand and squeezed it tight. “She’s not supplanting you. I’ll still want ‘Kim nights’, hanamuguri.”

Kim blushed immediately at the endearment I’d started using only recently. It was a brand of Japanese baby carrier, my version of calling her ‘baby mama’. She squeezed my hand back and smiled before schooling her face once again. Arching an eyebrow, she drawled, “And what, she’ll sleep with BJ in my room?”

I chuckled. “Well, she’ll still have her old bedroom at the other house. It would be good for her to spend a couple of nights with the other girls every week as well. The only difference will be a difference of mentality. Before, she carried around this guilt about whether she was overstepping her bounds as a best friend by spending so much time here, whether she was smothering me with her presence, or being needy, or preventing me from casually dating someone else. I felt guilty about monopolizing her social life, wondering if us moving into this house was preventing her from moving on, making friends, or finding a new guy of her own. For us to remain ‘just friends’ implicitly meant we should both be free to find other romantic partners. But ultimately, we both realized that neither of us WANTED to date anybody else. No more Kenzies. No more Nicks. I didn’t want to see her become some other guy’s girlfriend, and I have no interest in becoming romantic with anyone else. It’s not that she wants to take me away from the other women in my life, and she thinks it’s super-important that you and I have the time we need to be parents to BJ. But when it comes to each other’s romantic life, she wants to be my Number One again.”

Kim gave me a curious look. “And you want to be her Number One?”

I shrugged. “She said I already was, even if we didn’t become romantic again. I apparently never stopped being her Number One, even when she was dating Nick. That’s WHY she broke up with him in the end, because she could never give him the piece of her heart that had always belonged to me. So she said she was mine, body and soul, whether or not I wanted to commit to her beyond best friends. And after she said that, it only seemed fair that I give her--”

“Whoa-whoa-whoa, stop right there,” Kim cut me off by waving her hands, her eyebrows furrowed and her irises sharp. She stood up straight and folded her arms across her chest again. “Please tell me you didn’t just say, ‘it only seemed fair’.”

I pursed my lips. “That’s not what I meant.”

“But it IS what you said.”

“Then let me rephrase, alright?”

“Why did you say it like that?”

“I’m trying to rephrase here.”

“You don’t get to. You already said ‘fair’, there must have been a reason why, and we’re not moving on until we’ve clarified it. We all know what happened the LAST time you tried to be ‘fair’ to Dawn.”

“This is completely different. This isn’t me ‘allowing’ Dawn certain freedoms out of fairness. This is me ‘acknowledging’ that she and I already have a deeper, more meaningful relationship than one defined by the phrase ‘best friends’.”

“I don’t give a crap about definitions. I’m trying to make sure your head is in the right place on this, alright? You and Dawn: you two are great together. This whole last month has been awesome for you two. It’s like you’re honeymooning again, even though you were quote/unquote ‘only best friends’. I get why you both are inclined to take a stab at this relationship thing again. In fact, I completely expected you both to try again. But I STILL want to know that you’re thinking about a relationship with her because you want a relationship with her, and not just because SHE asked and you couldn’t bring yourself to say ‘no’.”

I blinked twice. “You think I should say ‘no’?”

“I want to make sure you’ve considered it as a valid option, and not automatically assumed you should say ‘yes’ out of fairness to her. I get it: she’s devoted to you, body and soul, so you think she deserves an equal commitment in return. But BOTH of you decided to put off a final decision until Valentine’s rather than get back together immediately last night, which means that something inside you is still holding back and being cautious about all this. And unless you actually spend the next two days considering the possibility of saying ‘no’, then what the hell is the whole point of waiting?”

“I AM considering it.”

“Are you? Really?”

“What else am I supposed to do?”

“Consider it. Really, really, sit down and consider the idea of saying ‘no’. Let’s say you do. Let’s say you decide you two should be best friends. What then?”

I grimaced. “Well if Dawn disagrees, my decision would crush her. She put her heart out on the line again, after everything we’ve already been through. For her to ask to become my girlfriend again only to be turned down ... I don’t know if I can do that to her.”

“It would be better than agreeing to get together only to wait for some minor flaw, blow the whole thing up, and make Dawn think it was her fault.”

My eyelids dropped halfway and I glared at Kim. “This ISN’T like my non-proposal with Adrienne.”

“You sure about that?”

“I’m sure.”

“So ... you’re saying it would be better for you to cave in and become her boyfriend even if you don’t really want to.”

“I DO want to.”

“Yes, I can see that. But talk hypothetically with me here for a minute. Reverse the decisions for two seconds so that you want to get back together but she ultimately decides you should remain friends. How would you feel about that?”

“I’d...” I paused, took a deep breath, and really thought about it. For Dawn to decide to remain status quo, to not take the risk, would I be okay with that?

Do we still get to fuck her?

Well, yeah.

Then I’m good with it.

There’s more to Dawn than just sex.

I know that. But we’re starting with the bare minimum baseline here. As long as we get to keep fucking her, the rest is negotiable.

You know what? Just shut the hell up.

I’m serious. Any decision that ultimately leads to ‘Ben doesn’t get to fuck Dawn anymore’ is a decision that sucks. We’re not doing that.

The only way she’d stop fucking me is if ... Wellll...

Well what?

Well, if she started a monogamous relationship with someone else.

And if you don’t claim her right now as your girlfriend, she could potentially end up with someone else and stop fucking you.

Well THAT wouldn’t be good now, would it?

Hell fucking no it wouldn’t be good. So it’s decided. You need to take her off the market to ensure that she stays yours.

But isn’t she already committing herself to me without the girlfriend title? She’s had plenty of opportunities to go out on her own away from me, but she hasn’t taken any of them. She said just last night that she already belongs to me, body and soul, even if I only want to remain ‘best friends’. Why mess with a good thing? Why risk a romantic relationship that might fail and ultimately end up in ‘Ben doesn’t get to fuck Dawn anymore’?

You’re talking about maintaining the status quo. The status quo never stays the same.

But it doesn’t mean we have to commit romantically to each other just for the sake of ‘not staying the same’. We can continue to evolve and grow as best friends. We can even create a whole new category for ourselves, neither ‘just best friends’ but not ‘boyfriend/girlfriend’ either.

Really? Are you sure about that? Or is this wishful thinking sunshine you’re trying to blow up your own ass?

Back to Kim’s hypothetical: If Dawn wants to stay best friends, how should I react to that?

Agree to stay best friends. Keep fucking Dawn the way you’ve already been fucking Dawn. Don’t stress her out and make her start second-guessing herself or pushing her into obligations she doesn’t want to handle. If SHE wants to stay best friends but YOU tell her you want to be more, then SHE’S going to agree to become romantic just for your sake, and that decision will be the very first crack in your relationship that will ultimately lead to breakup and ‘Ben doesn’t get to fuck Dawn anymore’.

Fuck.

But if Dawn wants to become romantic and you don’t, she’ll feel rejected and unwanted. She’ll reconsider her feelings for you and second-guess the strength of your feelings for her. She’ll start to believe that you’ll never forgive her for past sins, never be able to marry her without thinking of the time she cheated on you and broke your heart. She’ll start to believe that any potential future with you would be doomed to failure, so she might as well give up now instead of continuing to hope for eventual marriage and soulmate love. And she’ll start to withdraw from you, at first spending two and then three days at her own house, until eventually she only visits every once in a while and shows up in tears for dinner one night to tell you that she’s found a new boyfriend and started sleeping with him.

Fuck.

And oh yeah, he wants to be monogamous, so ‘Ben doesn’t get to fuck Dawn anymore’.

Fuck, FUCK.

So your answer seems pretty clear.

Yeah. Whatever Dawn decides, agree with her so we’re on the same page.

What? NO! I was going to say you need to find a way to get HER to agree with whatever YOU decide, and get that stuff sorted out BEFORE Valentine’s Day.

Right, right, what you said.

Moron.

Hey, who you callin’ a moron?

The guy still staring at the ceiling having an insulting conversation with the voice in his head while Kim stares at you wondering just how crazy you really are. THAT moron.

Fine. Shut up. I got this.

Do you?

Well if I don’t, you’ll start chirping at me again, won’t you?

Damn straight.

Okay, just so we’re on the same page.

Blinking, I dropped my gaze back down from the ceiling and looked over at Kim, who’d been staring at me patiently for however long it took me to sort through all that in real time. Taking a deep breath, I gave her a frank look and said, “Sorry about that. I needed a minute to process everything.”

“No need to apologize; I do it all the time.” She shrugged. “So back to my hypothetical: You want to get back together but she ultimately decides you should remain friends. What would you do?”

“I’ll honestly do whatever I have to do to keep her and me together. We’ve got two more days to talk about restarting this whole romance thing, two more days to hash it all out. We could ultimately decide to remain ‘best friends’. We could ultimately decide to give a romantic relationship another shot. But at the end of the day, the most important thing to me is that we stay together and make this decision together.”

Studying my face, Kim remained silent for a long few seconds. She sat up straight, gave me a funny look, and her lips parted ever so slightly as if she were about to speak. But a second later, her lips closed again, she frowned, and she went back to studying my face again. I could only imagine the conversation she was having with the voice in HER head right now.

But in the end, Kim started nodding, even started to smirk a bit, and arched an eyebrow. “‘Ben keeps fucking Dawn’: that about cover it?” she asked in a knowing tone.

I blinked in surprise. “What did you just say?”

Kim grinned. “Your decision about how to proceed is more or less governed by a single underlying principle: What will it take to ensure that Ben keeps fucking Dawn? Right?”

I blinked in surprise. “Actually, it was more about avoiding any decision or action that leads to ‘Ben NOT fucking Dawn anymore’, but basically you’re right.”

Kim sighed and gave me a bit of a disapproving look. “That’s a crass way of saying that you’re still terrified of losing her, and despite the f-bomb, it’s not even just about the sex. As much as you might want all the joy of a newfound soulmate/romantic relationship, the stronger feelings guiding your decision-making is your fear of Dawn walking away from you again. Losing the ability to fuck Dawn isn’t actually about sex. It’s a metaphor for becoming estranged from her again – for finding yourself in the kind of strained, awkward relationship you two were in for that whole year after she came back to Berkeley. Things are finally good between you again, and it’s like the voice in your head is repeating over and over again, ‘Don’t fuck this up. Don’t fuck this up. Don’t fuck this up.’”

When she’s right, she’s right.

Shut up, you. And how does she even know I talk to the voice in my head?

The voice in Kim’s head and the voice in Dawn’s head have conference calls with me every week.

Son of a...

Rubbing my forehead with my right hand, I took a deep breath and shrugged, “Am I wrong to be scared? I can’t lose her ... not again. So long as I’m honest with myself about my feelings, isn’t it better to admit that fear rather than lose myself to giddy hope without considering the consequences?”

“No, it’s not wrong.” Kim shook her head. “Being honest with yourself is very good. The problem is that you let that poor girl think you were ready to say ‘yes’ when the truth is that you’re not. I saw the look in her eyes this morning. I studied the hope on her face. Dawn 100% expects you to say ‘yes’ on Valentine’s Day. She agreed to wait a few days to think about it because that’s the smart, rational thing to do, and I’ll bet the waiting period was your idea that she went along with. But she wants nothing more than to be your soulmate again, to feel that level of happiness and deep-seated satisfaction with her place in the world again. Being your Number One is her meaning in life. She can’t exist without you.”

“I’m the air that she breathes,” I muttered.

“Exactly. So she’s expecting you to say ‘yes’. She’s waiting on you to say ‘yes’. As far as she’s concerned, you ALREADY said ‘yes’ to her last night. We both KNOW her decision on the matter, but the problem now is with you.”

“Because I’m not sure yet if I’m ready to say ‘yes’. Because my worries about fucking this up might just be stronger than my excitement about letting our love bloom. Because that fear of losing her might still outweigh my desire to be romantic with her.”

“Precisely.”

Suddenly, the sky outside wasn’t so bright and blue anymore. A cloud had rolled in across the sun, and a chill settled in and raised goosebumps on my skin.

Shaking my head, I said, “I can’t say ‘Yes, I’ll be with you’ just for the sake of not losing her. It would undermine our relationship if I can’t fully commit.”

“Yes it would.”

“But if I say ‘No, we should remain best friends’, she’ll be crushed, lose hope, and start to withdraw from me.”

“Possibly.”

“Fuck.” I set my elbows down on the table and buried my face in my hands.

“You’re totally screwed.”

I rolled my eyes as I sat up straight again. “Thanks for cheering me up.”

Kim blinked. “Why do you keep expecting me to cheer you up?”

“I have no fucking idea.” I shook my head. “But the bottom line is the same: we need to make this decision together. And if she really wants to say ‘yes’, then I need to say ‘yes’ too.”

“Need to say ‘yes’? Or want to say ‘yes’?”

“Both.” I took a deep breath and gave my baby mama a quietly serious look. “I love her, Kim. If she says ‘yes’, can I really say ‘no’?”

“I don’t know. Can you?” Kim sighed. “If you really needed to, if it was the right thing to do, could you turn her down? Look, I’m not saying you should, I’m just asking if you could.”

I took another deep breath and exhaled slowly. “I don’t know. I rather hope I don’t have to find out. Wouldn’t it be nice for the two of us to sit down, talk about it, and agree to the same thing?”

Kim’s eyebrows popped. “Would be nice, yes. But are you prepared for the possibility that you two won’t agree?”

Grimacing, I started rubbing my forehead with my right hand again.

Kim sighed and reached across the table. She lay her hand on my left forearm and leaned in close, giving me a serious look of concern from only two feet away. “I’m really not trying to convince you to say ‘no’ or anything like that. I just need to make sure you’ve put careful consideration into this. You really don’t have to make any major decisions right now. Valentine’s is two days away, so you’ve got some time to really think about it. So think about it. I’m not saying you shouldn’t get back together. I’m not saying you should. Whatever you decide, I’ll absolutely support you. I know she loves you. I know you love her. And I’m sorry I ruined your giddy emotional high this morning, but I don’t want that giddy emotional high ruling your decision-making, alright?”

I nodded. “Alright.”

“Alright,” Kim said with something of a relieved sigh, perhaps glad that she seemed to have gotten through to me. And we both started to relax.

“Ma-ma? O-kay?” BJ asked quietly, drawing away our attention. He stood next to the couch, holding onto June’s leg with a concerned expression on his face.

Kim immediately gave her son a warm smile, sliding out of the chair beside me and kneeling down with open arms. Our boy let go of June and toddled forward quite happily into his mother’s embrace, and she kissed him soundly.

I arched an eyebrow at June. “Standing there long?”

June smirked at me. “Long enough. Something about you and Dawn getting back together.”

I exhaled slowly and slumped in my seat. “Care to weigh in with your opinion on the matter?”

My co-worker snorted. “If you ask me, you and Dawn are already romantically involved. So I don’t see how making things ‘official’ would make any difference.”

Kim glanced up at June, a Mona Lisa smile on her face. “Young grasshopper, you still have much to learn.”