New anxiety filled the voids left by the old anxiety. And that anxiety quickly evolved back into panic. “I—I—I—I shouldn’t have said that.”
“We’re fuckbuddies, Andrea, not partners.”
I tried to wiggle my way out of the faux pas I semi-comprehended. “Of course. But we are friends aren’t we? Friends who love…” She flinched. “…each other.”
“Just friends, with a little something extra. And that ‘something extra’ isn’t—that kind of connection.”
“But friends sometimes tell each other that they love each other. ‘I love you’…” She flinched again. “…doesn’t always imply romantic attachment, it can be friendly.”
“Yes, but we both know when you used the L-word just now, you didn’t mean it in the ‘just friends’ sense, you meant it in the ‘maybe we’ll marry someday’ sense.”
She was right, and I considered myself honest enough to admit my feelings—but I lied anyway. “No. I did mean it in the ‘just friends’ sense, not in the romantic sense.” But I knew damn well she could hear my desperation.
One eye squinted skeptically. “I sensed that ‘romantically inclined’ vibe from you over breakfast at Holden’s. You’ve felt this way for most of the time you’ve known me, haven’t you?”
I panicked even harder. “I’m an idiot. I didn’t mean it. I take it back. I don’t love you, I just like you. We’re just friends, nothing more.” Wracked by terror, needing desperately to remain in her good graces, I begged, “Please—please, don’t hate me.”
“I don’t hate you, Andy.” Her words were reassuring, but her tone continued to be that of irritation. “I just need you to understand what our relationship isn’t: a romance. Please don’t cry.”
It was only with her pointing it out that I realized my eyes were watering and my lip was trembling. Which was fitting because—in spite of her reassurances—I had finally cracked. “You’re so beautiful. And perfect. And mature. And cool. I never thought anyone could be as cool as you. And even though you have so much more experience than me, you treat me like your equal. If that doesn’t warrant love, what does? And you respect me even though I used to be a cop, even though I’m planning to become one all over again, and you trust me to appreciate your body in spite of me being cisgender. Will I ever meet anyone who deserves my love even half as much as you do? Will there ever be anybody besides you who I’ll be able to sincerely tell, ‘I love you more than anything’?”
Like a punch to the gut, my words robbed her of hers—which was tragic, because she looked like she had something very difficult and very important she wanted to tell me.
I sniffed. “Call us ‘fuckbuddies’, call us ‘friends with benefits’, call us whatever you want. But the best word I can use to describe us is ‘lovers’.”
Momentarily squeezing her eyes shut in inscrutable pain, she found her words in time to reply, “You’re 34, so you’ve had some time to learn how life works, but you’ve only been experiencing sexual entanglement for a few days now. You’re still figuring out what a friendship is, what a romance is, how to tell one from the other, and when what you’re going through is actually just a friends-with-benefits situation like ours. You need practice and maybe a little bit of guidance to know enough about these things to understand when it’s time to settle down with someone or tie the knot.” I whined, and she hugged me, and then I broke down into sobbing on her chest. “Oh, Honey. You’ll figure it out, Andy. And when you do, you’ll hurt a lot less.”
I cried, gradually calming down over the course of several minutes. I dreaded the moment she would remove her cock from my pussy, because that would symbolize the live burial of the hope that she might love me back. And then that moment arrived. “Andy, I need to pee.” I clung to her more stubbornly. “I don’t want to get a UTI. You should go pee, too.” I didn’t budge. “Andy…” As gently as she could, she pried my arms off. I resisted at first, but quickly surrendered. Very reluctantly, I dismounted her, whereupon a glob of pearl-white cum dripped out of me and onto her abdomen, forming a pool about the size of a silver dollar pancake. She watched, wide-eyed, as the batter slowly congealed from the heat of her body, occasionally glancing at my drooling, dripping mound, as she muttered to herself repeatedly, “(Christ Almighty… Christ Almighty…)”
Eventually she got up and went to the bathroom with her beautiful cock still glistening with our juices and standing upright and proud and bouncing with each step, and I waited and tried not to hate myself for being such a romantic ingénue.
I was soaked in sweat, whose chilling properties were amplified by the airflow from the HVAC fan. I felt very cold. I felt very alone. I felt my heart crumbling to dust. I bundled up in my sheets and waited for the return of the woman who refused to let me love her. And return she did, sitting down on the edge of the bed, cruelly separating us with a vast expanse of sheets. “Andy, are you feeling better?”
“No.” I could never feel better than miserable so long as she was too far to touch or to be touched by her.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“You broke my heart.” ((I’ll never forgive you.))
“And I feel terrible for doing it. But I can’t lie to you.”
“You promised to help me with my mental health and with rehabilitating me after being a cop for over a decade. Even my best and only friend before you never promised anything like that, so these don’t strike me as things ‘just friends’ do for each other. These are promises partners make to each other.”
My argument must have impressed her, because she struggled to come up with a rebuttal, even though her eyes told me she was anticipating what was coming next.
“You’re devoted to me, aren’t you? You promised to help me get better as a person, and you’ve consistently followed through. You’ve encouraged me to follow my dreams. You stood by me when I made a decision that a lot of people would consider unethical, even though at best it seemed questionable to you—you chose to trust me. You put your reputation on the line for me. You’ve had my back when I doubted myself. You just now responded to my worries about parenthood by soothing and reassuring me, and you’re going out of your way to take care of me by getting me what I need to prevent a pregnancy. Doing these things requires love.”
“(I…)”
“You love me, don’t you?”
She looked like she wanted to hide under the covers. “(Andy, please… don’t…)”
“Are you afraid to say the words? ‘I love you.’”
Her muscles stiffened and her eyes bugged out.
“Judy?” She didn’t move. I shed my sheets and crawled up next to her. I reached out—slowly, lest I startle or scare her—grabbed her hands, and brought them together between mine. “If I made the kinds of promises to you that you’ve made to me, if you took the kinds of risks you’ve taken to help me, if I forgave you so easily for having been something I find morally reprehensible, if I cared for you the way you’ve cared for me, if I trusted you ‘absolutely’—wouldn’t you tell me that I’m showing you too much love for ‘just a friend’?” Her face turned into the portrait of Panic itself—and yet, desperate and driven to make her just see things my way, I pressed onward. “Wouldn’t you say that these were signs that I loved you the way girlfriends or even married couples love each other?”
Her breathing, heavy and already rapid, further accelerated.
“Judy?”
“(An—drea… these things I do for you are… just me being a decent person. A good friend. There’s nothing romantic about my respect for you.)”
“It is romantic! Only one person has ever shown anything resembling your brand of kindness towards me. Do you show everyone else the same kindness that you show me? Can’t you understand that you love me, that we are in love?”
Then—as the last domino fell into disaster—she cracked. “I can’t do this!”
“(What?)”
Her hands slipped out from between mine as she leaped from the bed and, skipping her underwear, hastily slipped into her pants.
“Judy!” She ignored me as she pulled one leg on and then the other. “Judy, are you leaving me?” She didn’t stop, and more than death itself I feared what she must be about to do. “Please talk to me!” She put her shirt on without her bra. “Judy!” She grabbed her purse. “Judy…” ((It was only meant to last a moment. This is the end of us. We were meant to be, then we were meant to not be. My world is on fire, and the match smolders between my fingers.))
She hustled to the door and opened it, doing her best to ignore me, and a damn fine job of it was she doing. She was refusing to be part of my life. We were no more. It was over. Our beautiful relationship was dead.
Yet, though she had finally broken up with me, my desperation resurged, and, as her foot crossed the threshold and into the darkness, I grasped for the magic words that would win her back as I warned her, “If you leave me you’ll be breaking all your promises!”
They worked—well enough to buy me time to either pacify her or insert my foot into my mouth the last millimeter or so I needed to fully choke on it. She stood above the threshold between the love she feared and the solitude in which she seemed to find solace, her hand gripping the doorknob tightly, her figure stiff and motionless, halfway between escape and imprisonment.
The only way forward I could see was walking the long path hand-in-hand with her. But as to whether we had come so soon to a fork in the road… it might help my case if I reminded her just how bad I was at directions. “Remember how you found me. A clinically depressed, friendless, virgin ex-cop. Without you, I’ll go back to my old, lonely ways.”
She stood stock still.
Then I realized that this was a cheap and very dirty move. “Um. I shouldn’t have brought up my mental health. That was… manipulative. I’m sorry.”
She didn’t move a muscle.
I felt awful about mentioning my psychiatric bullshit. I didn’t know what to say. A minute or an hour of agonizing silence passed through us like bullets. Eventually, I found the first four of the thirteen words I should have said from the beginning, and then the courage to say them: “I need you, Judy.” She twitched. I said the remaining nine: “And nothing makes you happier than fulfilling my needs.”
She turned her head so that I could see one terrified eye in profile.
“Am I wrong?”
The eye closed, and her brow resigned, and she sighed deeply before shakily admitting, “No… I can’t deny that what you want has already begun. When you said that you needed me inside you when I came; when your response to me saying that we needed to pull out was to tell me ‘please don’t make me get off’ before I unloaded inside you; when you resumed riding me so that you could cum on my raw, seed-slick cock, when you made it clear to me that you’re only interested in unprotected sex… I knew you were perfect for me. But before that, even… at some point before that, I don’t know when exactly, I could tell there was something special between us. And I’ve been lying to myself about what exactly that ‘something special’ is.”
Her foot retreated from the threshold. She gently shut the door, paused to gather her strength, then turned around, came to me, and sat down on the bed, her leg touching mine.
“I’ve… been ‘in… love’…” She sighed in relief at her victory over some trial. “…before, though it never works out. It’s passionate, it’s messy, it’s shameful, it’s regrettable, something always rips us apart. I didn’t want this beautiful connection the two of us share to shatter violently the way all but one of my past relationships did. So I decided, no matter what, we were only ever going to be friends. But… like those of too many mice and too many men, that plan has gone spectacularly awry. So… I guess… after two whole days of knowing you… I am forced into my backup plan.”
She nestled a hand in the small of my neck and pulled me in for a kiss—soft, yet passionate—and, with it, breathed hope into my soul… but as she pulled away and deprived me of her lips, I fell slack, suddenly lonely. Abandoned. Desolate. Lifeless.
She told me, now without even an ounce of strain, the words she needed me to hear: “I’m with you, Andrea Bachman—brains, blood, and bone.”