Chapter 14: Just Friends

April 2002, Spring Break

There really are few simple pleasures in life better than just laying out on a beach, feeling the ocean breeze ruffling through your hair while you look around and ogle all the female flesh you can find. Yeah, I would probably choose naked over bikini any day; but nakedness stimulates me the point of boiling over.

Bikinis, on the other hand, let my arousal simmer well above normal but below the threshold of instability. I could perpetually be aroused and kept at that state for hours on end, staring at the abundance of females, many of them my friends, with just the tiniest wisps of fabric covering their goodies. And that warm flush through my limbs and slightly accelerated heartbeat felt quite pleasant.

So sinking deeper into my beach chair, I spread my legs and stretched them out in the sand. My hand reached out to the side, I snagged the cold IBC root beer bottle, and I took a healthy swig. And I ogled all the girls before me. Megan, Cassidy, and Elaine were face-down in a line, sunning themselves with unhooked bikini tops and wonderfully tight, little asses aimed toward us boys. Megan was even so daring as to pull the buttcheeks of her bikini bottom into her crack to get an even fuller tan, while also giving her boyfriend (and the rest of us), quite the picture of what she looked like fully naked from behind.

Stephanie and Abbie were tossing a frisbee around with Sung, Daniel, and Kenny. The guys were trying to throw the disc just out of reach of the girls, forcing them to dive or at least stretch out to catch the frisbee, giving themselves views of athletically toned bodies in motion.

And then there was Adrienne, Candy, and Heather, flat on their backs with oversized sunglasses shielding their faces. Candy's and Heather's big tits thrust into the air, drawing the attention of males from hundreds of yards around.

But if Candy's and Heather's bosoms were mountain ranges in the sand, Adrienne was the Mount Everest of up-thrust cleavage. It was those E-cups, only half-clad by wafer-thin fabric, that had guys drooling and repeatedly attempting to engage the three babes in conversation.

But despite the wonderful view of Adrienne, I wasn't looking. Oh, I noticed all right, like I noticed every girl on the beach, even beyond my own friends. But my eyes didn't linger on the stunning blonde. I didn't have to; I'd long ago memorized Adrienne's physical beauty from every possible angle. She wasn't just a stunningly hot blonde babe anymore; she was ... Adrienne ... and I didn't need to soak up every moment of viewing her as if it would be my last.

Besides, I didn't want to give Allie the wrong idea. There had been an awkward moment early after Adrienne's arrival when she first laid her beach blanket down and pulled out a bottle of sunblock. Out of sheer habit, I asked, "Want me to get your back?"

Adrienne smiled dazzlingly and began to offer up the bottle, but then her gaze darted to my left and she quickly retracted it. "No, I'm fine. I should be able to reach everything."

"I got it," Lynne pitched in, snagging the bottle out of Adrienne's hand and lathering the creamy liquid between her fingers.

I realized that Adrienne had pulled herself back because Allie was by my side. So shrugging as if it didn't matter, I nodded and then lay back against my beach chair. Allie had decided to cut through the awkward tension and just plopped herself in front of me for one of my patented backrubs.

So instead of ogling Adrienne, my attention was on Allie, currently sitting between my legs with her back to me as I massaged and rubbed her shoulders, pausing every now and again to stretch my hands or take another swig of my root beer or even handing it off to Allie for her to take a few sips of her own. I focused on the task at hand, my fingertips instinctively searching out knots and other stiff spots before gradually stroking radially outward to spread the tension and soothe her muscles. When I was younger, even though I was short and far less of a sex object, I'd learned that the quickest path to female friendship was through backrubs, and I'd become something of an expert amongst our social circle.

Allie was chatting with Lynne while I gave my 'not-girlfriend' a backrub. Speaking of the 'not-girlfriend' status, Lynne was the first to figure out, "Hey, if Ben's not your boyfriend, then I can get a backrub from him too, right?"

Allie shrugged, "Sure."

So the two cute brunettes got up and switched places, continuing their conversation while I quietly went about my business. The incident got me to thinking it wasn't fair I felt guilty about putting my hands on Adrienne's back but I was allowed to rub Lynne, but I quickly shut down that line of thinking before it drove me nuts. My hands worked automatically, freeing up half of my attention to resume scanning the beach and ogle whichever girl happened to pass by. There was a lot of nice scenery to distract me.

For example, there was a hot blonde with big fake tits, probably in her mid-20s, cruising by with her muscle-bound boyfriend. I observed the unnatural jiggle of those almost spherical D-cups with great interest, letting my imagination run wild until she passed in front of me and continued on, changing my ogling target down to her perky ass almost completely exposed in the microscopic g-string.

Then there was a stunning mid-30s pair of brunettes, with big tits in slightly-too- small bikini tops to help them compete with the younger girls, and thin sarong wraps to help obscure their slightly thicker thighs. The two brunettes cruised past some of my sunbathing friends, and my attention dropped just in time to see Cassidy fix her bikini top, get up, and pull a wrap around her shoulders. With the naturally pale skin of a true redhead, she burned easily. She glanced over at me massaging Lynne and chirped, "Next."

I snorted and head nodded towards Cameron, who was surfing with Kaito. "Someday, your boyfriend is gonna have to figure out how to do this, Freckles."

Cassidy smiled. "Cameron gives me massages all the time. But don't tell me you don't appreciate the value of a new pair of hands every now and again."

I chuckled and glanced back at Lynne's neck, where I was delicately stroking my thumbs outward with the smooth grace of an Olympic sculler. Then I looked back at Cassidy. "Gimme five more minutes. I'll have turned Lynne into a limp puddle by then."

"Ben," Lynne intoned softly while hanging her head. "You can turn me into a limp puddle anytime you want."

I smiled. I LOVED going to the beach.

Feeling sharp, searing pain shooting up my side, I groaned, twisted, and crumpled to the ground. The commotion around me came to a halt as Kenny yelled, "Whoa! Whoa!"

My supposed best friend then turned and bent toward me, holding out his right hand while trapping the basketball against his left hip. "You okay, Ben?"

I glared at his proffered hand. "Watch your fucking elbows, man." I was still bruised from the fight with Drew and Marco.

Kenny grinned unsympathetically, "Then get out of the way."

I glowered at him before slapping my right hand into his and letting him pull me to my feet. We re-set and then I checked the ball back to him, grimacing a bit as I shifted into my defensive stance and then leaned left trying to block his pass to Kaito.

They scored on us to finish off that particular game 15-12 and we trudged over to the benches where our girls were waiting for us with an ice-chest of water and Gatorade. Adrienne met me halfway across the court, her hands instantly at my side. "Ben! Are you okay?" Without waiting for my response, she was lifting my shirt to look at the purplish bruise as if she could somehow determine whether Kenny's elbow had caused a new one.

I just stood there and let Adrienne cluck over me like a mother hen, letting myself look at her pretty face all twisted up with concern. But then a few seconds later, Allie showed up with a frosty Gatorade bottle in her hands. "Here ya go."

I nodded and took the bottle gratefully, twisting off the cap and then starting to chug the energy-giving magic elixir. I closed my eyes and tilted my head up, but not before noticing Adrienne blush as if in embarrassment and then slide herself away from me to head back for the benches.

It had all felt so ... natural. For the past year, everyone had known Adrienne and I were closer friends than ordinary and it was commonplace for her to worry over me like a girlfriend, despite our protestations to the contrary. But that was up until February. Since then, we had NOT been close and for a few moments, we both forgot about that. It wasn't Adrienne's place anymore to walk up and check out my bruises. And while I didn't see any jealousy or concern in Allie's eyes at Adrienne's actions, I couldn't help but feel a need to reassure Allie of her priority in my life.

So I wrapped my arm around Allie's waist and pulled her against my side. And when her head came within reach I ducked down and planted a kiss on her cheek. The petite brunette giggled and then pushed me away, laughing, "Eww, you're all sweaty!"

I chuckled and then raised my eyes, automatically glancing toward Adrienne to see what her reaction was. She was smiling almost nervously, glancing toward me in the corner of her eye before refocusing her attention on Stephanie and Sung.

This was stupid. Adrienne and I were going to have to sit down and talk about how we were going to be around each other. I cared about her too much and tiptoeing around each other like this would only strain the friendship I so desperately wanted to repair.

But before Adrienne and I could get the time to do that, Allie decided to breach the subject herself.

We were finished for this Sunday afternoon and people were starting to break up and head off before reuniting tomorrow. Even though we were graduating Seniors and this was our last Spring Break, none of us had made plans to travel anywhere. After all, we were already in Southern California. Where else would we want to go?

Kenny had driven both Sanders twins to the game, but he was bringing Abbie back to his place while leaving me to make sure Allie got home. "Tell Mom I won't be home for dinner," Abbie told her sister. "That is, if you're going to be home for dinner, either." Abbie grinned mischievously at her twin then at me.

But Allie was too preoccupied to reply. She just nodded and then looked across the parking lot where Adrienne was getting into her Mustang. And then without a word to me, Allie set her jaw and began striding straight over to the red convertible.

Kenny furrowed his eyebrows and shot me an inquisitive look. I looked just as bewildered and after a moment's hesitation, hurried after Allie. I got there just as the petite brunette knocked on the driver's window. Without killing the engine, Adrienne lowered the window and turned to face Allie with a questioning expression.

Allie just folded her arms over her chest and said, "If you want him, you can have him."

Adrienne frowned and furrowed her eyebrows, glanced at me, and then killed the engine. When the roar went silent, everyone could feel the awkward tension in the air. "Excuse me?" the gorgeous blonde asked.

Allie indicated to me with her head. "If you want him, you can have him," she repeated. "He was yours first anyways."

"What are you talking about?" Adrienne shook her head in confusion.

Allie sighed. "Do you love him?"

"Allie, I don't think-"

"Do you want to be with him?" Allie cut her off.

Adrienne's eyebrows went up. Carefully, she began, "Allie, I respect your relationship with Ben and I would never-"

"Do you or don't you?" Allie interrupted a little more harshly.

Adrienne just blinked several times. She bit her lower lip and looked back and forth between me and Allie, still blinking more often than normal with a pained expression on her face. The seconds drew out into a minute before Adrienne seemed to deflate, looking downwards before sighing and saying, "No. I don't."

We all heard the truth in Adrienne's voice, and my heart sank. It was an old disappointment that felt new. Before, even when I was completely single and so was she, Adrienne hadn't wanted a real relationship. We'd hovered around being 'nottogether' then, and hearing that she didn't want to be with me now felt like being rejected all over again.

Allie just took a deep breath and then began, "Adrienne, if this is about me, then-"

"No, Allie," Adrienne interrupted and then stared at me, locking her gaze onto my eyes. "It has nothing to do with you and everything to do with Ben and me. We're just friends."

Allie took a step back, her eyes darting from Adrienne's face to mine and then back, evaluating the situation. Clearly there was a connection between me and my stunningly gorgeous neighbor. Everyone could see it. But just as clearly there was still some chasm between us, something separating our friendship from full- blown romantic love.

Adrienne and I just stared at each other for what seemed like forever before Allie once again stepped between us. She turned to Adrienne and said, "Okay. Now that that's out in the open, can we drop all this awkward shit around me?"

"Huh?" Adrienne frowned.

"Come ON," Allie rolled her eyes. "No more tiptoeing around the obvious. What, you think I don't notice that Ben can tickle Lynne and have his hands all over her without feeling weird? But the instant he offers to put sunblock on your back you both get all tense and awkward."

Adrienne blushed and looked away. I looked at my feet.

"Yes, Ben and I are together ... ish, dating, whatever," Allie continued, shrugging. "But I know that the two of you have some serious history and even now, you're probably closer to him than I am. I can handle that. I'm happy with what I'm getting from Ben and I'm not going to get jealous. So ... be how you guys want to be, okay? I'm really fine if the two of you want to go back to exactly the way things were before."

Adrienne looked at me, bit her lip, and then blushed again. "Well, maybe not exactly the way things were before."

Allie got the innuendo. "No, I mean it," she huffed. "Go ahead and fuck him. I don't care. I'm not Ben's girlfriend and I don't own him."

"Allie..." Adrienne began.

Allie just threw her hands up. "Ugh. Why do you guys have to be so damn difficult?" She looked at me and then across the lot, where Kenny and Abbie still hadn't left. Abbie was staring over at us, trying to read lips while looking concerned about her twin.

"Work this out," Allie said to us and then jerked her thumb back towards the others. "I'll get a ride home with them."

"Allie, wait," I reached for my girl, even if she wasn't totally committed to being 'my girl'.

"Call me later, Ben," Allie twisted while still walking away from me. "We'll see each other tomorrow, okay?"

"I..." My voice trailed off as I couldn't really think of what to say. Allie just went up to her sister. And while Kenny wasn't thrilled, he motioned to the backseat of his car and the trio got in and left.

Then it was just me and Adrienne and our two cars. I sighed and looked back at her. "Now what?"

Adrienne shrugged. "I guess we need to talk."

It was a familiar place, Adrienne's bedroom. I might have been more comfortable in the living room and away from the bed, but Adrienne spent as little time in the common areas of the house as possible. She just never felt like the place was home, outside of her bedroom. Every time she looked at the dining table was just a reminder that instead of four place settings, it was just her and her dad. And most of the time, her dad wasn't even there, either.

So we were in her bedroom, Adrienne sitting with her legs crossed on the bed while I sat in a plush armchair. I had fond memories of this armchair. Many an hour had been spent with Adrienne riding my pole up and down while I sagged into the cushions and watched in rapt attention as her sweaty, naked body undulated before me, those glorious tits right in my face.

"So what do you want from me, Ben?"

My mind flashed to the naked undulation and I blushed. Adrienne could read my expressions and she rolled her eyes. "Besides that. Isn't Allie keeping you satisfied?"

I smiled tightly and didn't answer. Instead, I asked, "What do you want from me?"

"I asked you first," she pointed out.

I turned and sighed. "I don't know what I want. I just know that I was happier before this whole thing blew up." I waved my arm.

"Were you really happy, Ben?" Adrienne asked cautiously. "I seem to remember you getting upset with me pretty regularly that I didn't want to be your girlfriend."

"Seems like no one wants to be my girlfriend," I sighed. Dawn was lonely and wanted to let herself accept Ryan's attention. Adrienne had commitment issues. And Allie said she didn't want to pretend like we were going to last very long.

"Stop getting all depressive about it and answer the question," Adrienne said a little harshly. "Were you really happy with our relationship before, Ben?"

"HappiER," I said, emphasizing the last syllable. "Anything was better than having you pretend I didn't exist, Adrienne." I looked straight at her, willing with my eyes that she see the pain I felt at her disapproval. "It really hurt having you think I was some sort of monster."

She looked down and bit her lip. "I'm sorry," she said softly and kept her gaze down for another few moments before looking up at me. "I've apologized before. But I still need to know, Ben: Were you happy with our relationship before? Would you be happy if we went back to the way things were?"

"Which is what, exactly?"

She smiled almost bittersweetly. "Just friends."

I blinked. "Just friends? Or..." I mimed fucking motions with my hands. "Just friends."

Adrienne inhaled and looked away, her lower jaw quivering. "I don't know yet. I want to, Ben. Gawd damn I want you. I've said it before, I love sex and I'm ... I ... I crave to be with you like that, Ben."

I pinch my lips and raised my eyebrows. "I smell a 'but' coming..."

"But..." Adrienne began. "I'm afraid, Ben. I'm still afraid of losing you."

"How can you lose me if we aren't together?" I said in exasperation.

"That's exactly my point." Adrienne said, leveling her eyes at me. "There are some lines that are almost impossible to uncross, Ben. Before, when we were together, it was really just about great sex and fun. We had a good high school relationship, and even though it hurt when we broke up, we were able to get over it. Look at your friendships with Megan and Cassidy. You guys got over it and became friends again."

"Okay..." I wasn't following just yet.

"But if we got together again, Ben, it would be for real." Her hazel eyes glowed and she simply held my gaze, letting that sink in.

I paused and thought about what she really meant: Love. A relationship based on love. Total commitment to loving the person that she was and vice versa. Me and Adrienne, never apart. Basking in our love for one another. For REAL. It sounded glorious.

"If we ever broke up, Ben," Adrienne said softly. "It would ruin us. We would never get it back. And I can't imagine my life without you in it right now."

"You've told me this before," I started.

"But apparently you still don't understand," Adrienne interjected, shaking her head slowly. "I can't take the risk, Ben. Maybe someday, in the future, when we're ready to settle down. But not right now. I need you too much as a friend who loves me and as a friend I can lean on. Can you understand that?"

I frowned, feeling my brain starting to hurt. It still didn't make sense. I loved her. She clearly seemed to still love me. Why the hell weren't we together? Was I just not mature enough to get it?

Her voice came softly, but her words shot straight into my heart. "I got into Berkeley, Ben. I'm coming with you."

My eyebrows shot up. Adrienne? At Berkeley?

Adrienne crossed her arms around her own body, rubbing her arms and looking downward. "It's not entirely about you, Ben. Berkeley's a great school, one of the best I got accepted into. But I'd be lying if I said your presence wasn't a big factor."

My eyes popped open. Berkeley was when I was supposed to be with Dawn again. But if I was supposed to be with Dawn, and I was with Adrienne at the time, then what? Now my brain REALLY hurt. And so did my heart. College started in little more than four months. How had I not thought that far ahead?

I had gone silent for quite a while. Adrienne could clearly see the gears were still turning in my mind, and she waited me out until at last my eyes refocused on the real world and my mouth started opening and closing as I searched for something to say.

Eventually, I reverted back to my original question. "What do you want from me?"

This time, there were no counter-arguments that she'd asked first. Adrienne just looked me in the eye and said, "I just want you to let me be a part of you and your family's life, Ben."

"Just friends?"

"Maybe close friends," she smiled innocently and hopefully. "But just friends."

"Friends with benefits?" There was no leering sexuality in my voice. I was just asking matter-of-factly.

Adrienne sighed, looking away. "As much as I want to, I don't think it's a good idea. Every time we have sex I'm this close to throwing the whole friendship thing away and just surrendering myself to love. I DO want to be with you, Ben. I just ... can't..."

I nodded.

"Not yet..." she added, a note of hope in the word "yet".

"I understand."

We both nodded and for the first time since before she caught me screwing Brooke, Adrienne and I were at peace.

"Want me to get your back, A.D.?"

Adrienne smiled dazzlingly and offered up the bottle with only the briefest glance to my left, just in time to see Allie roll her eyes. "Have at it, Tiger."

I took the bottle and then knelt behind a seated Adrienne, working the cool creamy sunblock into the bare skin of her back, not even hesitating to run my fingers underneath the cross-strap of her bikini top.

Elaine had invited the whole gang over to her house to celebrate a Monday not at school. Since it wasn't a full-blown party, she hadn't set up any elaborate sound systems or hosted racks of steaks and burgers. We all just pitched in a few bucks and ordered pizza while enjoying the pool, playing ping pong, and generally hanging out to kill time.

After I finished up with Adrienne's back, I got roped into doing Lynne's and Heather's as well. Candy had classes or undoubtedly I'd be lotioning her up too. And this time, when Adrienne, Heather, Stephanie, and Megan decided to spend some time sunning themselves on the lounge chairs, Kenny and I weren't shy about parking ourselves on a couple of chairs about fifteen feet away, wearing comically big mirrored sunglasses and drooling obviously over the abundance of female flesh presented before us.

True to her word, Allie showed absolutely no jealousy of any flirting I did with Adrienne, or with any other girl for that matter. And while it took Adrienne and me a few hours to gradually get used to being so open with each other again, we eventually settled into old touchy-feely habits without fear of admonishment.

The big turning point for us was when the Sanders twins challenged Adrienne and me to a ping-pong match. When we won, Adrienne was so excited that she simply launched herself into my arms and wrapped her legs around my waist, hugging me fiercely and cheering loudly while I spun us around and around. Allie just congratulated us afterwards and then immediately challenged us to a rematch.

And at the end of the day, while the fifteen of us all piled into Elaine's family room to watch Shrek on Elaine's big plasma TV, I found myself sandwiched on the couch between Allie and Adrienne. My right arm was casually draped over Allie's shoulders due to her shorter height, my hand dangerously close to her right boob. But just as the opening bars of Smash Mouth's "All Star" began playing, I found Adrienne snuggling herself beneath my left arm, pillowing her head against my chest and stretching her legs over the armrest beside her.

I settled in a little deeper and smiled to myself. Life could certainly be a lot worse.

"Ungh, you're so deep, Ben!"

Allie stretched out in front of me, awkwardly contorted with her left foot on the couch cushions and right foot on the floor, a position that tilted her body to the right. She was barely keeping herself from falling by gripping the armrest with both hands while her head hung precariously over the edge. The back of her skirt had been flipped up and tucked into her own waistband and the crotch of her panties shoved aside to permit my entry, but otherwise she was still completely clothed.

My own left knee was on the couch as well, which put my hips beneath her left thigh. I gripped her waist and rhythmically thrust myself up and into the petite girl's tight snatch, getting incredibly deep. Normally, if my dick bottomed out I would be bumping against the back wall of her vagina; but for some reason, this contorted position allowed me full penetration without hitting that wall and because of it, I was freely thrusting in until my pelvis impacted her buttcheeks and then pulling back to start all over again.

And as the spontaneous pleasure flowed through both of us, I marveled at the sequence of events that had led us to this position in the first place.

It started with me picking up Allie and bringing her back to my house to take advantage of the rare opportunity for nookie in my bed. With my parents at work and my younger sisters all visiting friends, we had free reign over the house for once.

But Allie was not the type of girl who could fuck at the drop of a hat. She needed the gradual buildup of touching and affectionate caresses. She needed conversation and mild flirting to spark her arousal. And she needed my undivided attention for several minutes, watching me undressing her with my eyes.

So after we arrived, I got her some juice as we settled onto the couch to talk. My plan was to go along with her usual philosophical musings while dropping some not-so-subtle hints of my desire to move things into the bedroom. Eventually she would start firing back some sexual zingers of her own. My gentle rubbing at her legs would start inching closer to her pussy and as her breathing sped up, I would finally lean in for a kiss filled more with passionate lust than playful affection.

Things went mostly according to plan. Allie's philosophical musings of the day ran towards the nature of fate and destiny and reincarnation. She mused on whether we had just a single soulmate, in which case the odds of meeting that person were astronomically bad and so the world would be almost entirely full of people who weren't with their soulmate and we should just settle for Mister or Missus Close-Enough before dying of old age. On the other hand, maybe we had some number of 'compatible souls', any one of which would make us just as happy as any of the others, and yet also leading us to the possibility of meeting two such perfectly-compatible romantic interests and being forced to choose between them. And that didn't even get into oddball questions like: "What if you're straight and your soulmate is another dude?" or "What if you and your soulmate are born like twenty-five years apart?"

Unfortunately, the discussion of soulmates wasn't as good a vector towards sex as I might have thought. Allie was adamant that I wasn't her soulmate and that she was just using me for practice for as long as she could, so my little innuendoes to the contrary didn't go anywhere. But my musings into how soulmate-compatibility must also mean better sexual-compatibility and thus more spectacular orgasms DID start pushing us in the right direction. I managed to get my hands on Allie and get her breathing heavily as we inched closer and closer to dropping the discussion and making a mad dash for my bedroom.

But that's when the plan went off the rails. Today was a Friday and the previous day, our gang plus a few others had hit the beach again. I was nibbling on Allie's neck while she moved her hand over the bulge in my shorts when she murmured, "Speaking of sexually-compatible soulmates, don't think I didn't notice how hard your cock got when you were staring at Adrienne in that white bikini. The thing was pretty sheer to begin with but she drew the attention of lighthouses in Seattle when she stepped out of the water in that thing."

Even though there was nothing negative about Allie's tone, her words felt like a reprimand and I pulled my lips off her neck. "I thought you said you didn't mind me looking."

"Oh, I don't," Allie giggled. "But just because I don't get jealous doesn't mean I'm blind."