Lauryn was never comfortable when Sean was around. In fact, the twenty year-old would have much preferred to never see him at all, but he was part of the bigger circle of her college friends, and there was no way around it. It just made every gathering more complicated.
Part of the problem lay with Lauryn herself. She was a flirt. She meant nothing by it; it was just the way she interacted with men. She was a very good flirt, and knew that she had gotten a lot of false hopes up, but she simply didn't know another way to be. At five-four with a lean but curvy figure, the honey blonde received plenty of attention. She just flirted her way through that attention, keeping it light and fun.
Lauryn also had a boyfriend of three years, Barry. Barry was exquisitely handsome -- tall, dark, and very masculine. He was not particularly warm, but Lauryn managed to love him, just the same. They were a cute couple, and they had some good times together. He also didn't seem to mind her innocent flirting, which made the relationship a lot smoother than many of hers.
Sean also made himself unfomfortable to be around. He was as much of a flirt as she was -- and as good of flirt, as well. A little skinny, he had blonde hair and was cute enough that he was worth looking at, but nothing like Barry. Even so, when he and Lauryn had flirted on and off, it had always felt terrifying differently. She could not put her finger on why, but it always made her uncomfortable. Probably, it was because she always suspected that he had a crush on her that went beyond a normal appreciation of her as a cute girl.
He was the one man she no longer flirted with. She couldn't. It didn't keep things light and fun. It made things tense and weird, as if there was a subtext she did not understand.
Subtext has a way of becoming apparent -- and unavoidable.
It was close to midnight one late spring day, a big party at the house she and some friends rented near the campus. Lauryn and a few girls were talking around a coffee table in the expansive living room. There were lots of others around, but that didn't seem to matter. They talked openly and freely. Until Sean walked into the room. Then Lauryn started to get uneasy.
"So," said one of the girls, a strawberry blonde named Kim, who was feeling her cranberry and Grey Goose, "is it true that Barry's cock is like this big."
She held her hands in an approximation. Lauryn glanced at Sean, hoped he wasn't paying attention to their conversation, and then adjusted Kim's hand positions. Further apart.
The girls laughed hysterically with envy.
Another of the girls, a brunette named Rachel, who may or may not have lit up earlier in the evening, said, "That must be the best sex ever."
"Like fucking a bull god," Kim added with a giggle.
Lauryn checked Sean. He seemed to be ignoring them. "It's okay," she answered.
"Just okay?" Rachel was surprised.
"It's good, I mean," Lauryn tried to correct herself. "Really."
Kim cackled. "I think I would ride that fucker until I couldn't walk!"
Lauryn forced a smile. Truth was, while she loved Barry and had no intention of leaving him or even of complaining about him, they just weren't that sparky. She had been enamored of the idea of Barry, and he had turned out to be very kind, and had not lost a single ounce of his hotness, but she just wasn't infatuated with him. They had good times, but she wasn't googoo over him, big cock or no.
"Are you guys having problems?" Rachel asked seriously.
"No," Lauryn scoffed. "Not even close!" She glanced at Sean. He was still ignoring them. "It's just... I don't know, never mind."
"We mind!" Kim insisted. "Tell us!"
"It's just that being gorgeous doesn't mean Barry's not a shitty boyfriend,"interjected the fourth girl finally interjected, an auburn-haired bombshell named Betty. She was the only one in the room who objectively would have been in Barry's class, but she had never liked him, and he didn't trust girls that were hotter than him, so it had never happened for them.
Lauryn winced on Barry's behalf, but did not exactly object. "He's fine."
Betty looked at her appraisingly. "I'll bet he just lays in bed and makes you do all the work."
"No!" Lauryn objected. He wasn't that bad. He was fine. She had said that. He was fine. They were fine. Their sex was fine. Fine! Frustrated, she stood up. She glanced at Sean. Thankfully he seemed to have missed everything. "I'm done with this conversation," she declared. "I'm going for a swim."
With that, Lauryn went upstairs to change. Before she pulled on her suit, she looked at herself in the mirror. She was pretty happy with her body. She might have made her breasts either bigger so they'd be really impressive, or smaller so they'd be perkier. She probably would have liked fuller lips, and she would have definitely preferred less elven ears. But, basically, she thought she was a pretty enough girl. She had sweet eyes, she thought, and a cute butt.
Sighing, she remembered how she used to stand in front of this mirror to masturbate. She used to imagine the hands that she was watching move over her body were Barry's.
God, she had always wanted him. And when she got him, she had been really into him. He was sweet enough, and he never neglected or abused her. But he had never seemed quite as excited to have landed her as she felt to have landed him. And soon that had taken its toll and her own excitement had gone down.
She ran her hands across her breasts and tried to imagine that they were Barry's like she had done before, but she just couldn't conjure the image up. He was a nice guy and a devout boyfriend, but, as Lauryn's mother had insisted for so many years, love was about loyalty and dedication, not about romance and excitement. It was not unpleasant, just a different sort of pleasant. Lauryn smiled -- weakly, but still smiled. It was real love, not Hollywood love.
She pulled on a two piece swimsuit with powder-blue and white horizontal stripes and then glanced out the window. It was crowded.
She felt more like being alone with her thoughts. She had become moody, as often happened when she spent too much time thinking about Barry. She would crash the neighbor's pool, which was behind a privacy fence. They were gone for a week and wouldn't care.
She walked downstairs and got plenty of looks as she did. She definitely had a body for a swimsuit. She appreciated the looks, but only after she'd glanced around to make sure Sean was nowhere to be seen. She would normally have walked slowly and flirted her way around the room, but since she wanted to be alone, that didn't make any sense. She slipped out as quietly as she could and padded over to the neighbor's backyard.
The water was cool and calm and it felt refreshing as she slipped into it. She swam lazily around a few times before settling in to just float.
She was drifting in her own private world, floating lazily on her back, arms stretched out, legs slightly spread, when suddenly she heard a voice say, "This is like every dream I have, except that it's a pool instead of my bed."
Startled, Lauryn yelped, and splashed into the water. Treading water and spluttering, she turned until she saw Sean standing at the edge of the pool wearing trunks. "What are you doing here?"
"You're lonely," he said, sitting on the edge of the pool, and dipping his feet in.
She felt his eyes on her, and she became acutely aware of one of the reasons she was uncomfortable with Sean. Men always looked at cute girls. Perverted men always leered at them. Lauryn was used to those kind of looks. But when Sean looked at her, it was almost as if she could feel his eyes physically caressing her face. She swam further away from him before finally objecting, "I'm not lonely."
"You are," he insisted, but his voice was gentle, not bullying. "I know your moods. I know when you're happy with your friends, when you're excited to see Barry, when you're uncomfortable with me around, and when you're lonely after thinking too much about Barry."
Lauryn felt herself blush, but she did not yet concede him anything. "How could you?"
"Because I love you," he said very matter-of-factly.
"You what? Are you high?"
He ignored that suggestion. "Ever since poli sci class," he explained. "You were the smartest person in the room, even smarter than Dr. Kennedy, but you were way too nice a person to upstage him or to gloat over the rest of us students. Brilliant and sweet. I was hooked."
"I forgot you were in that class," Lauryn said, fighting a sudden urge to look at him. She the the water around her to distract herself with the play of the waves. She heard him slip into the water, though, and couldn't help but look. He only took a few strokes and then tread water, not really approaching her. And she realized one of the other reasons she was uncomfortable with Sean. He was no Barry, objectively, but he was still cute, and there was something about his looks that was endearing and even attractive. Lauryn paddled a little further away.