Chapter 21: The Holiday Party

-- SATURDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2008 --

A stray beam of sunlight woke me up. The curtains had been shut, but there was a half-inch of space between them, and at this very time on this very date, the sun’s rays came through at just the right angle to hit me right in the eyes.

The morning air was cold against my right cheek, the pillow reassuringly warm against my left. I snuggled deeper into the covers and their cocooning heat while pressing my chest against her back, covered only by a thin layer of cotton. My left arm snaked beneath her pillow to hold her from the opposite side, and as my senses came alive, the fingers of my left hand reflexively squeezed the large breast I was currently palming. My right hand firmed up over her hip, gently holding her in place while I reflexively ground my erection into her panty-covered ass. And breathing deeply, I let my head roll forward to push my nose into her golden-blonde hair, smelling her sweet fragrance.

Adrienne had not participated in last night’s foursome with Dawn and the twins, nor had she even stuck around to watch. Seeing her walk out the door and then close it behind her had almost made me toss Eden off my chest and go after her.

Almost, but not quite.

Perhaps it was the lingering smile Adrienne flashed me over her shoulder right before the closing door blocked her face from view. It had been quite a serene smile, one that told me that despite everything going on in her life, despite all her depression over the break-up with Sasha, Adrienne was completely at peace in that moment.

Perhaps the only way she could bring herself to be ten feet away from me was if she knew I was being taken care of. In fact, that smile reminded me of the one she’d given me at the end of senior year in the aftermath of her dad’s death when she invited Candy over to fuck my brains out. Like, finding me replacement pussy assuaged her guilt over not feeling up to satisfying me herself.

Not that Adrienne was obligated to satisfy me herself or anything.

Or ... well ... maybe she was.

See, I was about to make the argument that Adrienne wasn’t my girlfriend and that I had no right to expect her to put out for me or blah-blah-blah. But the truth was: our relationship had always hinged on expectations, and in plain simple fact, I expected sex from Adrienne. She expected sex from me. Who gave a fuck whether or not we were in a formalized boyfriend/girlfriend relationship? That was just who we were together.

Now granted, even a husband or a wife can say ‘no’ to sex when they’re not in the mood for whatever reason. Adrienne’s situation certainly gave her all the reason in the world to ‘not be in the mood’, and I definitely know I didn’t expect her to put out for me. But still, we both knew our relationship was a sexual one. We both knew her occupying my bed night after night was, in effect, cockblocking me. And we both knew she ‘wasn’t in the mood’.

She had a lot going through her mind right now. She had a lot making her feel stressed out. Inviting the girls over to satisfy me (and them) to make up for us not having our usual Friday night post-basketball foursome relieved a little bit of Adrienne’s guilt, took a little bit of her stress away.

Hence the serene smile on her way out the door.

Hence the way she touched Dawn’s arm for a moment as they crossed paths, the way they stared into each other’s eyes for just a little too long, as if metaphorically handing off the relay baton. I was still linked to Dawn, of course, and I could practically hear her telling Adrienne, ‘I got this. You go chill out for a bit.’

An hour and a half later, I was taking another shower. Alone. Dawn and the twins were walking back home.

But for the first time in over a week, Adrienne wasn’t sitting on the toilet watching me.

She was in my bedroom, waiting patiently, perfectly comfortable to be more than ten feet away from me.

She didn’t kiss me when I crawled into bed with her. She merely rolled onto her side and turned her back to me, curling her knees up into a semi-fetal position. I spooned myself around her. She grabbed my right hand, pulled it beneath the hem of her nightie, and planted my palm on her beautiful bare breast. Within minutes she was fast asleep. And tired as I was from the drain of being Adrienne’s emotional support on top of the physical exertion of satisfying Dawn and the twins (seriously, Eden had been rabid), within a few minutes I was fast asleep as well.

But that was last night. This morning was this morning. With a full night to recharge, my erection was rigid and ready to go. Complete consciousness had not yet flooded my brain, so all I was really aware of at the moment was the awesomely big breast in my hand and the deep cleft inviting me to hot-dog her buns. And I exhaled softly with an aroused groan as I prepared to make my erotic dreams into reality.

“Ben,” Adrienne murmured quietly.

“Hmm?” I mumbled, still not fully awake just yet.

“Please stop.”

My eyes popped open and I jerked my head, now waking up completely and realizing the situation I was in. My left hand released her breast and my right pulled off her hip as I rocked my hips away from her ass. “Sorry, sorry,” I muttered and suppressed a disappointed groan.

The rest of our conversation proceeded silently. I knew she’d tell me it was normal for me to wake up horny in the mornings and then apologize for not being up to having sex, I’d tell her I was fine and didn’t need sex, and then she’d start feeling guilty all over again. It wasn’t quite like having a two-way telepathic conversation with Dawn, but it was pretty close.

In the end, she simply rolled over, held my head, and gave me a quick kiss. I tried to reassure her with warm eyes that I loved her unconditionally, and would always be here whether or not she felt in the mood ever again. She nodded, gave me a look that was ever so grateful, and then slid off the bed to start getting dressed.

Despite everything going on, I watched Adrienne change her clothes, my erection unflagging. I’d have to be dead before I stopped admiring her beauty. Only then did I get up to start changing as well.

Time to get her out of the house.

Adrienne and I walked hand-in-hand along the Stream Trail in Redwood Regional Park. The morning air was crisp, and the tops of the trees were shrouded in fog. Adrienne was bundled up in a thick jacket and comfortable pants that covered up her outrageous curves so that she was merely “voluptuous” instead of “traffic-stopping gorgeous”, along with a black beanie that let her golden-blonde hair hang out.

Beneath the shade of the towering trees all around us, we walked the first mile in silence, just enjoying the quiet solitude as we descended into the canyon to get down to the actual stream.

After that first mile, the two of us went to sit on a downed log being used as a boundary marker to keep hikers on the trail. There were no sounds around us except for the babbling brook and the occasional bird call. I’d brought a backpack with water bottles and snacks, and we each took a drink before I capped the bottle and sighed at the peaceful serenity of being out in nature on a foggy December morning. At the moment, it felt like we were the only two people in the entire world.

Neither of us spoke for a long while. She looked out at the scenery. I looked out at the scenery, although I glanced over at her every now and again just to ... well ... just to check on her. My concern for her wellbeing was evident, and after the third or fourth time, she smiled and looked back at me.

“So often throughout my life,” she said, “I surrounded myself with people who could ... entertain me. Friends who would laugh at my jokes walking from one classroom to the next. High school boys who would pay me lots of attention and give me compliments if I so much as winked at them. Pretty young things on modeling shoots who wouldn’t resist when I grabbed the back of their heads and pushed them down into my crotch.”

I snorted at that last one.

Adrienne sighed and stared up at the trees around us. “What I really needed in my life were the kinds of people who would just come sit down beside me and silently be there in case I needed them. Somebody like you.”

Reaching out, Adrienne took my hand again. Her skin was cold, and I silently cursed myself for not having us both bring gloves. I put both of her hands between mine and rubbed them vigorously for a bit before simply enclosing them between my very warm palms. I had always been a calorie-burning factory of body heat, which was probably why the girls always loved snuggling up to me at night, and today was no exception.

Adrienne glanced down at our enjoined hands and pursed her lips. Taking a deep breath, she flicked her hazel eyes up to mine and murmured softly, “I love you, Tiger.”

I smiled warmly and replied, “I love you, too.”

“You’ve been amazing. You welcomed me into your home, into your bed. You’ve put up with my cloying need to hold your hand as often as humanly possible and you sit there on the toilet seat watching me shower just so I won’t panic about feeling abandoned again ... even knowing I’m not gonna put out for you when I shut off the water. You haven’t complained once about me cockblocking you from the others and you stay up into the wee hours of the night listening to me ramble on about Sasha between bouts of burying my face into your chest and crying until I run out of tears.”

“I’m glad to do those things for you. I’ll be glad to do those things for the rest of our lives.”

She started to smile as well, but the corners of her lips stopped halfway before dropping down. The shine in her irises likewise dimmed. After raising both eyebrows, she then narrowed her eyes and asked, “Do you really mean ‘for the rest of our lives’?”

A chill went down my spine, and I suddenly feared that when Adrienne was at her lowest and desperate for love, that I was accidentally leading her on into a promise of romantic permanence I didn’t intend.

But before I could say anything, Adrienne shook her head fractionally and said, “I’m not going to try and win you back on the rebound. You deserve better than that. You deserve better than me.”

“Thank you for not trying to rebound with me. I genuinely think this...” I held up our enjoined hands “ ... is what’s best for us right now. I’m your Rock, and I love that I can support you like this. But at the same time, I want to make sure you understand that you ARE deserving of love.”

“No I’m not.” She frowned. “You said it yourself: I’m a selfish and manipulative partner.”

“You can be sometimes. Not always.”

“Most of the time.”

“You’re a good person, deep down. You try your best to make your partner happy. It’s just that ... well ... you try your best to make yourself happy at the same time. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. At the end of the day, we all need to take care of ourselves. It’s just that when faced with a choice between doing something that is the absolute best for your partner, or doing something that’s kinda okay for your partner but really good for you, you always pick the latter.”

“See, I AM a selfish and manipulative partner.” She sighed and shook her head. “No wonder Sasha left me. No wonder YOU left me. The two people in my life who mean more to me than anyone else in the world both rejected me. I don’t deserve either of you. I don’t deserve to be loved.”

“You DO deserve to be loved.”

“No ... I don’t. And I never will.”

“First of all, I didn’t leave you because you were selfish or manipulative. I walked away from our engagement because of my own issues. Your biggest sin in that situation was literally doing nothing. You got complacent and maybe took me for granted, but that’s behind us now. Second of all, Sasha didn’t leave you because you were selfish or manipulative.”

“I’m willing to grant that our broken engagement wasn’t all on me. But our college relationship certainly ended because I was selfish and manipulative. I kept you from Dawn freshman year because I didn’t want to be lonely even though, at the time, I already believed you belonged with her. Pushing Paige at you on Valentine’s Day so I could be with Grace instead is still one of the greatest mistakes of my life and I’ll regret it forever. And then I left school entirely ... I abandoned you ... to start my modeling career.”

“I didn’t WANT to be with Dawn freshman year. I chose YOU. The Paige/Grace thing I forgave because you were really confused about your sexuality back then and while it hurt at the time, I can see now that you absolutely HAD to explore what it meant to be in a lesbian relationship. Had Grace turned out to be a nicer human being, maybe you wouldn’t have regretted it so much. And I am absolutely not going to hold you going off to be a model against you. I was as happy as I’d ever been with Dawn and you followed your dream. And look where you are now? World-famous, rich, popular. I’m proud of your career.”

“But I wasn’t there for you when you needed me.”

“Yes you were. You became MY rock. When everything was going well with Dawn, you had your growing career but still made time for me. When the Dawnpocalypse happened, you flew all the way back for a single night just to make me feel better. And how many times did I call you that year to ask for advice?”

Adrienne winced. “Even then, my advice was laced with self-interest. I even told you that marrying DJ when she got pregnant would get me off the hook so I wouldn’t feel so guilty about not filling that role for you.”

“Your heart has always been in the right place. Admittedly, your advice hasn’t always been very good, but you’ve always made those decisions trying to make me happy.”

“I DO want to make you happy. In the end, that’s why I know you and I should never get married. I don’t deserve you. I’m not worthy of you.”

I took a deep breath. “That’s not the reason why we aren’t together right now.”

Adrienne shook her head. “I AM selfish. I DON’T deserve to be loved. Sasha recognized that. She could tell I wasn’t enough to make her truly happy, because I’m NOT enough on my own, hence her need for you too, otherwise she’s incomplete.”

I shook my head. “Sasha feeling incomplete without both of us has everything to do with her and nothing to do with you. Okay, maybe it has something to do with you not having a penis and trying to make do with Ben Juniors, but I’m getting off topic. The point is: you ARE enough.”

“All evidence to the contrary.”

“Sasha LOVES you.”

“She’s better off without me. I’m a cancer. I’m a force of destruction, better at ruining relationships than building them. I spent years breaking high school boys’ hearts. I blackmailed you over your relationship with Miss McNeil and then stole you from Megan and Cassidy. I started flirting with other boys while we were together and ignored you to the point that you felt neglected and cuckolded, so that you ended up sleeping with Cassidy. I’m a manipulative bitch who insists on getting my way no matter what, and everyone lets me get away with it. When push comes to shove, everyone caves to the great and powerful world-famous supermodel Adrienne-fucking-Dennis. Fuck, haven’t you gotten to the point where the phrase ‘Trust me, Tiger’ fills you with dread instead of excitement?”

I shrugged. “Admittedly, I always end up drowning in pussy galore.”

“Pussy I drown you in for my own selfish desires. I manipulate the situation so that -I- get laid. The gateway to Ben’s dick is through my pussy, remember? And let’s face it: my number is WAY higher than yours.”

I shrugged. “You’re a sexual creature. Nobody says you aren’t allowed to be.”

“I’m manipulative. I’ve always manipulated the situation to my advantage.”

I sighed. “Fine, you’re manipulative. One would say that’s a smart thing to do instead of being a doormat who just goes along with whatever’s happening to him like me.”

“I’m evil and self-centered and I don’t deserve to be loved. You said it yourself in Bora Bora.”

“You’re not evil, and I never said you don’t deserve to be loved in Bora Bora.”

“But you did run off a list of ways I’d been selfish and manipulative in Bora Bora, and you were right. I knew Sasha wanted alone time with the three of us to try and re-start the triple. What did I do? I went and invited the twins along so they could distract you. Every time Sasha made it clear she wanted to spend quality time with you, I interrupted and pulled her away, or pushed the twins at you as a distraction.”

“Because you didn’t want to re-start the triple.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t.”

“You didn’t want to marry me.”

Adrienne inhaled sharply and let her head fall backwards so that she was staring up at the skyscraper redwood trees above us. “I didn’t.”

“You only asked me to marry you because Sasha had been pushing that agenda for the entire trip and you were trying to make her happy.”

“Basically, yeah.”

“Sounds to me like you were doing the exact opposite of being selfish in that moment.”

Adrienne blinked and dropped her head to look back at me again. “What?”

“Making a decision that you clearly opposed in order to make your partner happy? Sacrificing something extremely important to you because you chose to value her needs above your own? That’s selfLESS, not selfish.”

She shook her head. “No, I chose to sacrifice YOUR happiness trying to make MY happy ending come true. In hindsight, I totally agree it was an unfair question. You called me out on my bullshit and got pretty pissed off about it. I can still see the rage you had in your eyes that night.”

I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. I still had Adrienne’s hands between mine and I rubbed them a little more. Pursing my lips and bowing my head in contrition, I said quietly, “I owe you an apology. I was kind of an asshole to you in Bora Bora.”

“No, you were justified.”

“I was mean and hurtful.”

“You had every right to be.”

Taking a deep breath, I raised both eyebrows and gave Adrienne a serious look. “Okay, it looks like we both agree that you proposing marriage to me at the end of that crazy orgy was a bad idea all around, right?”

Adrienne’s shoulders slumped, but she eyed me curiously, not quite knowing where I was going with this yet. “Riiight...”

“I did get really angry that night. I felt betrayed and used. I felt like I was being used as a tool, as a band-aid to fix your broken relationship. I didn’t feel wanted in the sense that either of you truly wanted me for me.”

“You’re not wrong to feel that way. It’s the truth. I DID try to use you as a band-aid to fix my broken relationship.” Adrienne closed her eyes and bowed her head. “Sasha made clear to me that day that she needed you in her life. It wasn’t an ultimatum, exactly, although it certainly felt like one. She was just doing her Open Communication thing, trying to make me understand that she felt incomplete without you, and that she felt like she was down to only two choices: either we figured out how to get you to re-start the triple, or she’d have to walk away.”

“Then I turned down the triple ... and she walked away.”

Adrienne shook her head. “You weren’t wrong: it WAS a desperation chess move to try and salvage my relationship.”

“And I knew that. I knew you were desperate. I knew you weren’t thinking all that clearly. But instead of being understanding and supportive, I was really, really mean to you.”

“Yes you were,” Adrienne agreed. “But I understand why you were.”

“Seems to me that ultimately, Sasha was being the selfish one. Sasha knew exactly what you wanted. She knew exactly what SHE wanted. Despite all your opposition ... Despite everything you’d made clear about marrying Sasha being your end goal, as it turned out, her stubbornness trumped YOUR stubbornness and she somehow got you to give up that goal and ask me to marry you instead. For HER sake.”

Adrienne shook her head. “That’s not being selfish. That’s just knowing what you want and making clear what you want. Nothing wrong with that.”

“I agree.”

“She took action to try and get the outcome that would make her happiest.”

I smirked. “I agree.”

“And there’s nothing wrong with that.”

I gently shook Adrienne’s hands with mine, raised my eyebrows, and gave her a curious look. “I agree.”

Adrienne blinked at me. “This is the part where you say that there’s nothing wrong with ME taking action to try and get the outcome I want to make ME happiest.”

I grinned and popped my eyebrows again. “I agree.”

Adrienne shook her head. “Inviting the twins to Bora Bora still qualifies as a selfish, short-sighted action without realizing the long-term damage I was doing, and this isn’t a new behavior for me. I’m repeating the same mistakes as before.”

“Well, yes you are,” I agreed. “Instead of being honest with Sasha, you chose to frustrate her and keep her in the dark about inviting the twins. When you KNEW she wanted to spend time with me, you worked the situation so that she’d be separated from me instead.”

Adrienne winced and nodded.

“We’ll work on it. Together. Like, what are you gonna do the next time you get a hankering to watch me destroy a roomful of Tri-Delts?”

“Seriously?”

I shrugged and smiled.

She blinked in surprise but mused on that for a second. And then leaning in close so that her face was only inches from mine, her hazel eyes glittered golden as she purred, “First of all, I’ll tell you plain and simple that I’m super fucking wet and horny and that I need to watch you ... MY man ... turn into a Greek God and bask in glorious conquest. I’ll mentally undress those tight coeds and tell you how I’ll peel their clothes off and then hold them down one-by-one to watch you and your beautiful, gorgeous cock penetrate their puffy pink pussies. We’ll blow their minds together, sister by sister. At the end of the night, I’ll ask you to choose a favorite ... or two ... We’ll take her home with us - maybe tie HER to the bed. And then we’ll give that poor unsuspecting innocent the most incredible sexual experience of her young life, knock her unconscious, and then I’ll exult in victorious ecstasy as you cream her cunt full of your tasty cum while panting in eager anticipation of the moment when you pull out so I can slurp it all out of her before I get you hard again so you can sink yourself into me.”

My eyes were big when she finished. I blinked a few times and just sort of gawked at her for a minute, by which time she’d started giggling a little.

“Wow,” I breathed. “I was just hoping you’d say, ‘I won’t ask you to ‘Trust me, Tiger’.”

Adrienne giggled again, and it truly put a smile on my face to see her with an expression that wasn’t all doom, gloom, and self-recrimination. And really, that little soliloquy was the closest she’d been to ‘sexual’ in over a week.

“Anyways,” I continued, “before you sidetracked me with THAT little mental image, I was saying we can work on your impulses to be manipulative together. Recognizing that you’re making long-term mistakes in favor of short-term gains is part of that.”

Adrienne made a face. “You’re talking theory and I’m still stuck with the pain and regret of the mistakes already made. I can’t undo inviting the twins. I can’t undo unfairly asking you to marry me and restart the triple.”

I took a deep breath. “In the end, I wouldn’t have agreed to the triple anyways, whether or not you, me, and Sasha spent more time together. So when you stop and think about it, by inviting the twins I got to have an amazing vacation in a tropical paradise with FIVE nubile, gorgeous babes. Not gonna lie: I’ve had some pretty good sexual experiences in my life before, but some of the stuff we did on that trip? I mean, that orgy at the end, holy shit ... The date I got to go on with the twins where nobody knew we were related ... Fucking out in public like that? I ... I mean ... Sure, it all went to hell at the end and I wound up flying home three days early, but when I look back at it, I’m glad the twins were with us to experience all that. So on balance, it was a great vacation overall.”

“Not for me it wasn’t.”

“Well, your girlfriend broke up with you. It’s understandable you’d feel that way.”

“I pushed her too hard, too fast, towards a sense of permanence I knew she wasn’t ready for.”

I snorted. “Isn’t that my M.O.? Taking a girl who isn’t ready to settle down yet, scooping her up in a delivery truck dolly and then racing for the altar?”

Adrienne snorted at the imagery.

“I’ve been in the position you’re in now, staring into the abyss of a failed relationship flagellating myself for all the mistakes I made.”

“You’ve been in this position because of ME.”

“So then the fact that I’m still right here holding your hand lets you know for sure there’s a light at the end of this tunnel. It sucks right now. It really does. But it’ll get better.”

“When?”

“I don’t know,” I replied immediately. But after a moment’s thought, I took a deep breath and said, “Well, actually ... I first gave you that promise ring and we broke up what ... five years ago? You and I were at different points on the relationship cycle then, but now you’ve come to the point where settling down, thinking about marriage and kids and all that is finally on your radar. So if Sasha is you in this same scenario, then maybe five years?”

Adrienne snorted and shook her head. “I TOLD you this was karma coming to bite me in the ass for what I did to you back then.”

“Maybe. Well, it’s not gonna take five years for you to feel better. But maybe Destiny is giving you this speed bump right now in order to give you a life lesson you’ll be able to impart on someone else five years from now the way it’s doing for me.”

Adrienne eyed me curiously. “Thought you didn’t believe in Destiny anymore?”

My eyes flashed, and I stated emphatically, “I don’t.”

Adrienne sighed. “I’m not gonna bank on Sasha coming back to me in five years. You and I aren’t getting back together, are we? It’s for the best, really. Dawn has the right idea: a relationship with you as siblings is the most stable thing for us. I need you as my rock more than I need you as a romantic partner. But I don’t have that option with Sasha. I HAVE to make things work with her right now before I lose her forever. You just said you’ve been in my position before: If you had the chance to do it all over again, what would you do differently? What is it that I need to do right now so that she and I can unpause this break and go back to working things out together?”

I sighed and shook my head. “You can’t unpause this one. Sasha’s not coming back, Adrienne.”

She looked up and frowned at me. “Don’t say that. Of course she is. This is just a setback, that’s all. We agreed to take a pause. She needed time and space to collect herself and decide whether or not she’s ready to be everything I’m asking her to be.”

“That’s just it,” I muttered with a grimace. “I talked with her yesterday. She told me she’d made her decision.”

Adrienne pulled her hands out of my grasp. “Wait, what?”

I took a deep breath and raised my eyebrows. “She said this isn’t a pause. She said this IS a break-up. She can’t marry you. She can’t marry ANY woman.”

“No ... I...” Adrienne started trembling, and I grabbed her hands in mine again. “She ... I mean ... She’s skittish, I get that. She feels like she’s not ready to settle down and she still wants to have fun exploring the world together. With me. With US. The two of us are her endgame, right? She said that. She meant that.”

“Maybe not anymore,” I said softly.

“Tiger! I can’t...” Adrienne’s eyes were wild. “She told you this yesterday?!?”

“I was going to tell you but after dinner we headed out to play basketball and then you invited over Dawn and the twins and it all...” I sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“No ... No ... It’s not over. It can’t be over.” Adrienne lurched forward into my chest, and I hugged her in reaction.

Rubbing her spine and clutching her close, I repeated, “I’m sorry.”

“Tiger!” Adrienne started sobbing. “What am I gonna DO?!?”

Taking a deep breath, I collected my thoughts and tried to think logically. Really, there was only one solution in my mind.

I pulled back far enough to look into Adrienne’s eyes. She stared back at me, a bit wild-eyed. “I think you need to hear this straight from Sasha herself.”

Adrienne blinked, not understanding right away.

I held up my phone, unlocked it, and started typing.

And then I took Adrienne by the hand, pulled her up to her feet, and started leading her back to the car.

Normally when I visited the San Francisco apartment for a nooner with the girls, I walked over from the JKE building and entered through the lobby and swiped my access card at the security gate to gain access to the elevators. In this case, Adrienne and I used my access card to drive straight into the parking garage and then took the elevator up to the 35th floor. Likewise, I fit my key to the door and went right in, although I rapped my knuckles against the wood while entering just to be polite. Behind me, Adrienne knocked too.