Chapter 3 – The Scorecard
A few weeks later, Crystal and I were having a casual dinner at a Thai place in Southport. She was wearing a nice black dress with red flowers and cute heart-shaped pendant earrings. I was dressed in my grey chinos and a dark blue satin shirt I’d bought that day.
After commenting on how great the green chicken curry was, Crystal said there was something she wanted to tell me. I had no idea what was coming, but I told her to go ahead as I took a sip of my beer.
“Well, I met this guy who’s in some of my classes at uni.”
“Oh okay,” I replied.
This one sentence and the way she said it was enough to make my heart sink. It shouldn’t have felt like that. We agreed this type of thing was always part of the rules, but I immediately overreacted all the same. Let her tell you what she’s going to say, for God’s sake.
“Yeah, and I like him.”
“Okay.”
“He asked me if I wanted to go out for a drink next Friday night.”
She was drip-feeding me information to see how I reacted.
“I see.”
“Yeah. So how do you feel about that?”
I tried to cover up how I was feeling while also telling myself I shouldn’t be feeling it.
“What do you mean? That’s all good,” I said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, of course,” I said, taking another sip of my beer.
There was a pause before Crystal continued.
“Sweetie, we’ve been getting pretty intimate over these last few months, and it’s totally understandable if this is uncomfortable for you.”
I went to speak, but she cut me off.
“Look, I love you. You know that I love you. You’re the most special person in my life. But we did agree that our relationship was best friends and that at some point we would explore other avenues.”
“Yes, I know. You’re right, and seriously, I’m okay with it. It’s just because we have been so close, I might take a little while to adjust, but it’s perfectly okay. I promise.”
I wasn’t sure if it was or not, and I had no idea where this might even lead. Maybe it would be one night of drinks, but maybe it could be the start of Crystal has a boyfriend now.
---
Crystal came home after the drinks on Friday night and told me all about it. I asked her to tell me. I wanted to know, and we were close friends after all. We talked about everything.
The new guy’s name was Daniel, and Crystal said they’d had a good time. He was kind and polite, and she said they’d decided to go out to dinner next week.
In a way, I was genuinely happy for her. I loved her so much, and I wanted her to be happy, of course. In another way, this was obviously hard for me to take. I tried not to overthink it, though, and just took each step at a time.
On Sunday morning, Crystal came in for cuddles, a nice surprise as I wasn’t sure this was going to continue now that Daniel was in the picture. She was wearing her bra and knickers as per usual, but there was a distinct difference this time. No kissing.
She always kissed me, every time we cuddled. Today, she was making a clear statement: I want to keep having morning cuddles with you, but I have shifted the boundary back out of respect for my new boyfriend.
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From that point on, the cuddles continued, but there were no baths, and she certainly wasn’t naked under the covers with me anymore. I expected all this, of course, and I also really missed it. I loved caressing her bare skin in bed and looking at her all naked and wet in the bath. The kisses were the part I missed the most, though. Those soft lips against mine and the gentle flick of her tongue always felt amazing.
One thing that remained, though, was the way she touched me. It was sensual and heartfelt. The way she stroked her fingers over my body, gave me soft little squeezes, and sometimes just rested her hands in one spot, those things felt wonderful, and it was her way of communicating, I do still love you, silly.
For a while, I felt that as long as the cuddles were there and she touched me like that, I was happy. She hadn’t exactly gone anywhere, and we still spent a lot of time together. We were best friends, and maybe this was for the best. Maybe we were just going too far with all that physical affection. That’s what I told myself anyway.
As time went on, though, some of those Sunday mornings when we would probably have gone out for breakfast, she was now going to have breakfast with Daniel. Other times, I’d ask if she wanted to go shopping and have lunch, only to be told she already had plans with Daniel.
The final blow for me came over something incredibly silly. I went to take her jacket to her room that she’d left in the kitchen, and out of the pocket fell a scorecard from mini golf. The names at the top said “Daniel and Crystal.”
It had been a long time since I’d cried about anything, but when I saw that card with their names on it, a tear immediately came to my eye. I went to my bedroom, lay down on my bed and cried some more.
In that moment, I felt Crystal was slipping away from me. I assumed this trend would continue, and soon she’d be spending far more time with Daniel and far less time with me. And what then? I thought. Next thing they’ll be engaged, she’ll move out and I’ll only see her from time to time, and mostly by the side of another man.
What have I done? I should have told her how I felt when I had the chance … But I didn’t know I felt this way. I was an idiot. I had the chance to have a proper relationship with Crystal and I blew it. I should have known better. I thought I was protecting something special, when all along I was just risking losing it.
I was definitely overthinking all this, but I couldn’t help how I felt. My only hope was that it didn’t turn out this way and I would eventually get a chance to tell Crystal my true feelings. If I told her now, I felt that would go against everything we agreed on. If I didn’t tell her and their relationship grew stronger, I might lose the opportunity altogether.
Either way, for now I decided to just let things be and see what happened. Finding the scorecard hadn’t changed how much I wanted to be around her. Quite the opposite. The next time we cuddled, I held her so close and never wanted to let go.
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The coming months seemed to drag on forever. Things were going well at work, I’d met a couple of good mates I’d have a beer with from time to time, and there was the occasional girl who caught my eye. To be honest, though, I wasn’t interested. I wanted Crystal.
As time went by, I agonised over whether to come clean and tell her how I felt. On the one hand, she would want me to be honest with her. On the other, we had always agreed that seeing someone else was going to be okay. I did think it was best to tell her, but she and Daniel seemed really happy together, and I didn’t want to ruin that by putting her in a difficult position. Also, if I told her and she chose to stay with Daniel, then things might end up worse than they already were.
Crystal was finishing her course that year, and that meant she was moving on with her life. She had no immediate plans, although she had mentioned travel a few times. I felt like she was slipping further and further away from me, and to be honest, I didn’t want her to go overseas for some months-long adventure. Not without me anyway.
Daniel was also graduating from uni on the same day as Crystal, and when December came, Rebecca and I were invited to attend. Rebecca had gone to dinner with both of them a few times, but I had only met him once, when he dropped Crystal off at the house. He seemed nice enough, and from Crystal’s perspective, he was.
Chapter 4 – The Talk
It was a warm, sunny day in Southport, and the sky was pretty much completely blue except for the long stream of a jet passing overhead. I arrived at the university with Crystal and Rebecca and immediately noticed the smell of a sausage sizzle. Crystal was texting Daniel, who was already there, and I was anxious about having to see them together. We made our way further through the grounds and then met up with Daniel, who was there with his family.
We all met each other, the introductions went back and forth, and Daniel seemed very friendly. I looked on as Crystal gave him a kiss on the cheek and then they held hands. My heart was melting, but I had to stay composed.
The day went on, and Rebecca and I watched as everyone received their degrees. Afterwards, we all took photos of each other, and looking back on the one that was taken of me and Crystal, I could see my smile was completely fake. After the ceremony, we all went out to lunch with Daniel and his family, and I saw how well Daniel and Crystal were getting along. They made a good couple, and his family was nice too. I could definitely see why Crystal liked him. He was polite, funny and interesting.
The coming days were terrible for me as I agonised over whether to say something to Crystal about my feelings. If I did, I could potentially break up her relationship with Daniel, or I could make things really awkward between us. Their relationship seemed to be going really strong, and there was every chance, I thought, that an announcement of their engagement could come at any time.
One of the main reasons I was holding back was that if I told her how I felt, she broke up with Daniel to be with me, and then it didn’t work out for us as a couple, I would be the one who had potentially destroyed something that could have been beautiful for her. Maybe our friendship would never be the same again, and as heartbreaking as all that would be for me, I never wanted to leave the love of my life in that position.
But as I heard myself think those words, I realised that she was the love of my life. I wanted to be with her now more than anything else in the world. She had been by my side through everything all these years, and she was the most beautiful person I had ever met, in every way. Her affection meant everything to me, and I cherished every moment of the cuddles we still had. But it wasn’t enough. I wanted all the physical affection back that we once had, and more importantly, I wanted Crystal.
I decided it was time to tell her. I knew Rebecca was going to be home late on Friday night, and that’s when I planned to have the talk.
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I arrived home around 5:00 pm, got changed, then went and knocked on Crystal’s door.
“Come in,” she said.
“Hey sweetie.”
“Hey babe.”
I could see that something was up. She didn’t seem as chirpy as usual.
“How was work?” asked Crystal.
“Yeah, it wasn’t too bad, just the usual … and umm, there’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Oh? … I was going to say the same thing.”
“Oh okay … well, you go first.”
“No, it’s okay. You said it first, you go.”
I was dying to get it off my chest, so I decided I would, having no idea what she might have to talk to me about.
I took a deep breath. “Okay, here goes,” I said.
“Well, you know I love you, right?”
“Of course, baby.”
“And well, uhh… how do I say this?”
Tears began to well up in my eyes, but I did my best to stay composed.
“Aww, what is it, sweetie? You know you can tell me anything.”
“Yes, I know. It’s just, I know we always had the agreement that it was okay to see other people. We had our super affectionate thing going on, and we promised that we’d both speak up if we wanted more and all that, and that was something…”
At that moment, Crystal cut me off.
“I broke up with Daniel,” she said.
There was a long silence. I had to process what I’d just heard. I couldn’t believe it. I thought the two of them were going strong and possibly close to getting married, even though I’d invented that part myself. After I gathered my thoughts, though, I realised the first thing to do was be sympathetic to Crystal.
“Aww no, baby, that’s terrible. What happened?”
Crystal sighed. “Ahh, it just wasn’t meant to be. I know I painted the picture that everything was great, and it was in a lot of ways, but deep down I knew it wasn’t going to last. He’s always been good to me, it was nothing like that, but I just knew we had different ideas on things.
“He’s been planning this big six month trip to Europe that he’d told me about a few times. He wanted me to come, and I hadn’t given him a definite answer either way. Yesterday it came to a head, and I told him I wouldn’t be going. I just wasn’t ready for that, and we weren’t close enough to wait it out until he got back.”
“Oh okay, I see.”
Part of me was happy about this development, of course, but I genuinely felt for Crystal in this moment. Her feelings were the most important thing to me.
“Yeah, and well,” she took a deep breath. “I think he could tell that I was madly in love with you.”
In that moment, a warm rush came over my body. I was absolutely stunned. It seemed surreal, and my body reacted before my mind could catch up. I sat there on Crystal’s bed in silence for a few moments. After that, all I could come up with was, “Really?”
“Really, darling. I love you with all my heart, and I know we never wanted to jeopardise our friendship, but I’ve come to the conclusion — fuck all that, I wanna be with you.”
“Ohhh my God,” I said with a huge smile.
I was in such an emotional state.
“Ohh baby, sweetheart. Oh, I am so happy you just said that. The whole reason I came to talk to you is that I wanted to tell you the same thing. I could no longer stand to see you with Daniel. I’ve been agonising over whether to say something for weeks, months even, and just … Crystal, you are the love of my life, and I want to be with you forever.”
Crystal looked at me with a loving smile.
“Come here,” she said softly.
She didn’t need to say anything else. Everything was just perfect in that moment, and we both knew how each other felt.
She hugged me close and ran her hands over my back. It was that familiar sensual feeling we'd always shared. It had never gone anywhere. The only difference now was that I knew it was here to stay, and that made it feel magical.
She leaned back and then gave me a short, soft kiss on the lips. It was the first kiss we’d had in all the time she was with Daniel, and it felt lovely. A teardrop ran down her beautiful face, and I could tell that after coming clean with her feelings, she was just as emotional as me.
I felt that we both needed some space to process all this now, so I didn’t initiate any more kissing or affection. I knew her well, and I'd gauged things correctly.
“I need a moment to myself if that’s okay, my love. You wanna get pizza for dinner?”
Sounded perfect to me, and that was the first time she'd ever called me “my love.”
Chapter 5 (Preview)
Crystal poured another couple of wines, then we went into the living room, where she put on some slow background music. We sat next to each other on the lounge, and Crystal looked at me with a characteristically cheeky smile.
“Now what?” she said with an innocent little twist of her lips and big eyes.
I giggled. “I’m not sure. What did you have in mind?”
She continued gazing into my eyes and flicked the thin strap of her dress off her shoulder, then did the same on the other side. She leaned in and gave me a short kiss on the lips, then looked at me as if to say, Your move.
I leaned towards her and started to softly kiss her on the neck as she let out a quiet sigh of appreciation. Then she climbed onto me, kneeling on the lounge on either side of my legs. Through her dress, I brought my hands up from her tummy and gave her breasts some soft squeezes, my thumbs running over the exposed skin at the top.
She still had that cheeky, sexy smile as she shuffled the top half of her dress down. Her gorgeous tits popped out one by one in front of my eyes, and I immediately grabbed hold of them.
