Fuck Buddy (7 page)

CHAPTER SEVEN

LIV

We walked along the beach no differently than we had a thousand times in the past, but to me, the experience was much more satisfying. I would have never guessed it to be possible, but I felt a deeper connection to Luke since we started having sex. I had convinced myself during my campaign to become fuck buddies that nothing between us would change, but things sure seemed to be different. The differences weren’t things I could identify or pinpoint, but I had become much more satisfied in his presence than I had ever been before.

“How was Black’s?” I asked, referring to his day of surfing at Black’s Beach.

“Racetrack lefts all day, but the offshore wind kept ‘em coming in, and I kept riding ‘em,” he said.

“Sounds like a good day.”

“It was.”

Lefts and rights were some of the types of waves, referencing whether or not the wave broke to the left or right. I understood very little of the terminology, but I knew enough to smile and nod if Luke was happy about his day of surfing.

“So,” he said. “Are you enjoying this new arrangement?”

I was enjoying it, but didn’t necessarily want him to fully understand just how much I was. At least not completely. I was afraid if he felt things were changing between us he would want to go back to the way things were. Personally, the thought of that
ever
happening was beginning to scare me.

“I am, are you?”

He nodded. “Strange, but I’m fucking loving it.”

Strange?

“Why strange?” I asked.

“I just never thought we’d end up here,” he said.

“Is that bad?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “It’s not bad, it’s just seems odd. I mean, we’ve been friends for almost twenty years, and here we are. Friends with benefits.”

I turned to him and grinned. “I like fuck buddies.”

He chuckled. “Okay. Fuck buddies.”

In the past, I often felt embarrassed when looking at Luke with his shirt off. Even at the beach, I felt a need to turn away after a quick glance, almost as if I didn’t have the right to admire him. After we started fucking, I felt differently, and now enjoyed gawking at him at length.

As we walked along the edge of where the ocean met the sand, I pressed my toes into the beach and twisted them as we walked, trailing slightly behind Luke. He walked in a steady pace, and never really goofed off, always seeming to be on a mission with a much deeper meaning. After falling behind by a considerable amount, I would run to catch up, admiring the form of the muscles in his back all along the way.

“I don’t want to sound like a weirdo,” I said as I ran up to his side. “But you seem bigger than normal. You know, more muscular.”

“Think so?” he asked.

“Uh huh,” I said. “I do.”

The San Diego sun was warm on my shoulders, but the breeze off the ocean was cool, as always. Luke seemed unaffected by the temperature changes, always wearing shorts and rarely wearing a shirt. He was a person who enjoyed nature much more than technology, and it seemed he felt a tighter connection to the earth the less clothing he wore.

“I may have gained a few pounds with all that you’ve been feeding me. That, and as much surfing as I’ve been doing. Carrying that board up and down to Black’s is a bitch.”

To the best of my knowledge, he didn’t own a scale, and probably had no idea of what he even weighed. I, on the other hand, weighed myself sometimes more than once a day, always worried I was on my way to becoming obese, although I really knew it would never happen.

“Do you have a scale?” I asked.

“A what?”

“A scale.”

“Like, to weigh myself?”

“Yeah.”

“Sure don’t. Can’t see much sense in it.”

I shrugged. “You’d know how much you weigh.”

He stopped walking and turned to face me. “And what good would that do me?”

I stopped and twisted my hips back and forth, grinding my feet into the wet sand. “Well, you could see if you’re gaining weight or losing it, and change your diet or whatever to try and be where you wanted to be. Just like everyone else who has one.”

He glared at me for a second and turned away as if I had just recommended he rob a bank. After he was ten or fifteen feet away, I shook my head and ran to catch up.

“I was just wondering if you’ve gained weight, don’t get all butt hurt.” I chuckled.

He paused and turned toward me. “When I’m hungry, I eat. When I’m full I stop. I exercise because I enjoy it and it provides me peace of mind. A scale isn’t going to change anything,” he said.

“Fine. But you look like you’ve gained weight,” I said.

“Good.” He grinned. “I guess.”

I liked how I could tell Luke he gained weight and he didn’t care. Women, on the other hand, would be in tears after hearing the exact same thing. 

“So, are you hungry?” I asked.

He glanced toward the sun. “Actually, I am.”

Luke didn’t own a watch. He was the type of person to gauge the time of day based on where the sun was in the sky. If the sun was rising, it was morning. If it was in mid-sky, it was noon, and when the sun set, it was night time. His life, in that one respect at least, was pretty simple.

I shielded my eyes with my palm, glanced toward the sun, and turned toward him as I lowered my hand. “Me too. Looks like it’s about lunch time.”

He glanced up the beach toward the boardwalk. “Smart ass.” 

Hand-in-hand we walked to
Draft
, a pub at the end of the boardwalk that faced the beach. We often held hands, something that started long before we began fucking. It was something I always admired about Luke. As masculine as he was, when it came to caring for those he loved, he knew no limits.

Luke’s parents divorced when he was twelve, and it seemed he changed considerably immediately following his mother’s departure from the family. I had the luxury of growing up with both parents, and as far-fetched as their separation was for me to imagine, it wasn’t difficult for me to envision the difficulties Luke was faced with at the time.

In the first year following his mother’s absence, not only did we become much closer as friends, but he and his younger brother became inseparable. It was then that we began holding hands in our walks to and from school, and I soon learned that Luke wasn’t one to be bullied into – or out of – anything.

A group of kids at school gave him a hard time for holding hands with me, and called him a sissy. His hair at the time was long, not much different than most of the girls in school, but Luke was no sissy. One day on the way home from school, he proved it by fighting the entire group of boys.

After that, they avoided us on our walks home.

For the most part, we held hands ever since.

“So, I was thinking,” I said.

“About?”

“Well, you said sex with you was going to be this big deal. Like it was going to turn me into a blubbering mess. I’m not complaining, but I’ve got to say so far I don’t see what the big deal is.”

“Do you remember me telling you I was going to take it slow and easy?”

“Uhhm. No, not really. We talked about a lot of stuff.”

“Well, I did.”

I bit the inside of my lip and gazed down at my menu, trying my best to think of the content of our many sexual conversations that followed my life altering Tinder date. I came up with nothing.

I shrugged. “I got nothing.”

“Doesn’t mean I didn’t say it. Okay, here. I’ll say it again,” he said.

“Liv, I’m a sexual deviant. I don’t think you’re going to be able to keep up with my sexual needs when it comes right down to it, but we can give it a try. If we decide sex isn’t working between us, we need to be sure we always remain friends. There, does that sound familiar?”

I shook my head. “Nope.”

“You have a shit memory.”

“You
think
things, and somehow you convince yourself when you think about it, we’ve talked about it. You’ve always been that way,” I said.

He picked up his menu, opened it, and began to scan the pages for lunch options.

“Well, back to what I was saying. If you’re wondering whether or not to turn up the heat, go right ahead. I’m good to go,” I said.

He peered over the top of his menu and chuckled. “Good to go?”

“Yep. Good to go.”

He shifted his eyes down to the menu. “We’ll see about that.”

“Sure will,” I said.

Fucking Luke was good for me. Not only was it sexually satisfying, convenient, and fun, it convinced me I was more sexually diverse than I thought I was. Some of the things we were doing weren’t things I ever would have done without him – and if asked by anyone, I probably would have declined. But with Luke, I felt no need to refuse, knowing I had nothing to lose if things went awry during one of our sexual romps.

I wasn’t just becoming extremely content fucking him, I was slowly falling into a more comfortable place with him, one stroke at a time.

And it was scaring me.

“You want my suggestion?” he asked.

My face still artificially buried in my menu, I responded in a carefree tone hinting at a lack of interest. “Sure.”

“Eat a light lunch,” he said.

“Oh really?”

“Yeah.” He folded his menu closed. “I don’t want you to barf later when we’re going at it.”

“I’ll be fine,” I said.

He brushed his hair away from his face and grinned. “Yeah, you’re
good to go
.”

I lowered my menu and glared at him. “What makes you think I’m not?”

“You may be, I don’t know. I haven’t got much experience to go on, but based on what I do know, we’ll reach a point where you give up.”

“What makes you so sure?”

He shrugged. “I’m a weirdo.”

“I don’t think so. So far, I’ve loved everything.”

He grinned a playful grin. “On a scale of one to ten, I’ve probably given you a three. My mind goes in weird places.”

“So, what is it that gets you off?”

He shrugged again and shifted his focus to the restaurant’s open wall that faced the beach. “I don’t know. Weird stuff. Thinking that you’re confused. Or suffering. Not suffering like you’d think, but mentally suffering. I don’t know, it’s hard to explain.”

“What do you want to do to me? Can you tell me?”

“You know Valerie and I broke up over sex. She said I was too unpredictable. She said I liked knowing she was willing more than I actually liked her.”

“Well, we both know that’s not the case here,” I said.

“I know,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean you’ll agree to everything. Or that I won’t make you take a step back and say
what the fuck were you thinking?
That day’s gonna come, I’m sure of it. Fuck, I don’t know. Just know that whatever happens, I don’t want to do anything to make you uncomfortable, so if that day or that time comes, you let me know. I guess being friends with benefits has its perks, because when I do something stupid, we can sit back and talk about it, right?”

“Right,” I said.

“So, hell, it doesn’t even matter. If you decide I’m some weirdo, we’ll just quit, right?”

I tried to convince myself he was right, but regardless of how I looked at it, it
did
matter. As convinced as he was that he was a sexual deviant, I sure didn’t see it. I couldn’t help but wonder if his one and only love, Valerie, was just a prude.

She went to school with us, and as much as I hated her, Luke chose to date her through the end of school and until he was twenty years old. As hard as I tried, I could never imagine them lasting, and was actually quite relieved when they broke up. Personally, I thought she was a self-important bitch.

“So what if it isn’t you? What if you’re just adventurous, and Valerie was some prude?”

He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

I shrugged. “Might be true.”

“Doubtful,” he said.

“What would be like, I don’t know, your perfect sexual experience?”

He gazed beyond me for a moment and stared out at the beach. After a short time, he shifted his gaze to meet mine. “All kinds of things, especially something that confuses you or mixes you up. Like fucking you while you were trying to compose a really important email at your office. Or while you were on a deadline at work with a few minutes to spare. Or maybe while you were in a conference giving a speech or something.”

I squinted. “Fucking me while I’m in a meeting?”

“Yeah.”

“Wow. Yeah, that’s kind of weird. I mean, not like bad weird, but like
weird
, weird. Huh, that’s interesting.”

As we sat silently for a moment, I thought about what his sexual fantasies were. They all seemed to be with causing me to lose my focus on something critical or important.