If you are looking for porn, this won't get your attention. This is a story, a true story, but one of love. All characters are real and this event happened...
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"Where are you?"
My phone beeped as the message popped up on the screen. I saw it was Heather. Oh, Heather.
Heather and I had been friends for about ten months, both attracted to each other; both finding emotional solace in each other after endings to painful relationships.
I hesitated to answer the text, as I was afraid of Heather. Ten months ago, when we first met, at that restaurant in Lawrence, Kansas, our eyes met, and I was immediately in love. I remember that day like it was yesterday. I remember the sun, the smells, the sounds, but most of all, I remember the beautiful eyes of the hair dresser/model standing outside the restaurant waiting for my cousin and I too arrive. My cousin, Jo, had gone to beauty school with Heather and was hoping beyond hope to see a spark kindled between Heather and I.
Three months after that first meeting, Heather and I slept together. There was no sex. There wasn't even kissing. There was more. An intimacy I had never felt in any other relationship I have ever experienced. We held each other for a few morning hours, two friends, both in need of each other...
Two weeks later, as my heart opened from the dark shell I had placed over it, protecting it from pain again, I received a text out of the blue from Heather. "I love you, I just thought you should know." I could not believe the pain and exhilaration I found at that moment. I had spent months perfecting my cold heart. I had several sexual based affairs which consisted of one and two night stands. I had one ten day relationship, but, I had completely withdrawn myself from the probability of passion or feeling. I was becoming comfortable in my choice of logic over emotion. As soon as that text rang upon my mind, my heart beat faster, on fire, in need.
I confessed my feelings a few days later. I told Heather about my love at first sight experience and how I had tried to keep the cover over my heart. Heather looked me in the eyes and told me I had nothing to offer her. Heather walked away.
Heather came back a few days later, and we held each other in my bed. It was beautiful, but not the same as before as there was a block in between us emotionally. I regretted what I had said, sharing my feelings. At the end of our "snuggling date", Heather walked out the door, and never turned back. Two days later she told me she had began dating a man a few weeks before and didn't want to tell me. I was hurt. I felt the fresh scar upon my heart re-open. I felt the adrenaline strike the veins and arteries, causing so much pain I could barely breathe. I have been shot, stabbed, beaten; nothing hurts like watching the one you love walk away.
For the next six months I avoided Heather. I went out on dates. I had sex. I talked and flirted. Sometimes I was rejected, sometimes I was awarded. On every date though, I thought of Heather. There was a connection there, one that seemed so hard to break. At the end of the date, just when Heather had escaped my mind, and I was leaning in for the kiss from the date I was with, my phone would beep. Every time. There would be a text; a text from Heather. She wrote one of two things. Either a smiley face, or "I miss you." I prayed every night, sometimes crying, that God would take Heather away from my thoughts, as I could not think of anyone else.
Eventually, I stopped hearing from her. She stopped sending me pictures of her and her son. I heard stories about how her boyfriend, the pro ball player, and she were so happy. I also heard another side; about how when they were together there was a certain lack of intimacy that she and I shared when we hung out. I would say together, but, although during those three months we went on several lunch dates, called each other daily, and spent as much time together as we could, we never dated. We never kissed.
I looked at the phone again. I was almost sure it wasn't for me. I thought for a few moments as I was cruising Topeka Boulevard in my Jeep. I thought maybe I shouldn't answer. I thought maybe I should.
I opened the phone and I replied "Topeka."