Author's note: This story is a continuation of "Poolside: Ch. 04, Pt. 3" which was intended to be the conclusion for Chapter 4. Immediately below are the final two paragraphs of Ch. 04, Pt. 3, showing how I planned to end this series a decade ago.
~~~~~~~~
Katrina grinned, then got into her car, backed out, waved, and drove away. I watched her car until it disappeared. "Farewell, Katrina! Good luck, my love!" I whispered.
My four-hour drive to campus went really fast. Every memory of Katrina was a good one, and I sang and smiled as I drove. I smiled when I thought about the summer and her Volcano orgasm - even the cleanup afterward. I smiled when I thought about the things we'd done the past few days, including our incredible public mating in the ballroom. "You were lucky to get to know that one, Don!" I heard myself say aloud. "You loved her and she loved you, we made love to each other, and we loved each other enough to let each other go." How many people can say they've experienced love like that? As Katrina had said, "Ever?"
~~~~~~~
Now the story continues, soon leading into a new Chapter 5 (which will be described at the end of this submission).
~~~~~~~
My euphoria lasted until I awoke the following morning. I'd been dreaming about making love to Katrina, and I reached for her, anticipating the joy of finding her lying next to me. The reality that she wasn't in my bed crushed my happy mood. I missed her more than I'd believed was possible. My love for Katrina caused my emotions to fluctuate between the overwhelming joy our shared love brought me and the depressing sadness that saying farewell had generated.
I was trapped between positive and negative thoughts and fears regarding Katrina. One huge doubt kept intruding into my emotions: If I really loved her, how could I let her get away? Countering that negative worry was one positive hope: If our as-yet- undeclared love really was as strong as I believed, surely after she and I had completed our separate tasks, we would reunite. Essentially it was a conflict between "absence makes the heart grow fonder" and "out of sight, out of mind."
Even though I was working like a dog in graduate school, Thinking about my short time with Katrina invariably caused me to remember making love with her - in considerable detail. As a result my cock kept trying to rip itself out of my pants at inconvenient times. I seemed to be perpetually horny. My weekly program of running, swimming, and weight training merely helped to take the edge off, but I had to still had to frequently beat off to relieve the build-up of sexual tensions. Katrina-inspired masturbation was adequate to provide temporary relief, but it was far from satisfying.
I also felt peculiar, almost guilty, that my feelings for Katrina had devolved into something so self-centered and one-sided. Love is meant to be shared, and certainly so is making love. Barely two weeks after returning from New Year's I decided that I needed a willing and horny woman so that together we could reduce our sexual tensions. In retrospect I can't find any way to justify this decision, and I won't even try.
Fortunately, within a month of beginning my graduate studies half a year earlier, I'd stumbled into what is now called a friends-with-benefits relationship with Evie, another graduate student in my program. She was a year ahead of me in her studies, and she'd been helping me figure out a confusing statistical problem when she had abruptly turned to me. "I could really use a good fuck," she'd announced. "Are you available?"
I was, and yes, we shared a good fuck. After that we managed to get together for a bedroom romp every week or so. Evie was an enthusiastic if unimaginative lover, and our time in bed left both of us temporarily both sexually satisfied and exhausted. Sexually we were compatible, and we shared the same field of study. Unfortunately that was nearly everything we had in common, and we quickly realized that we would never share a romantic relationship. The sex was still good, however!
Now that I'd returned from my New Year's celebration with Katrina, I briefly wondered if I would be able to continue my relationship with Evie. Even though Katrina and I had never promised to wait for each other - and in fact we had not even arranged a time when we would talk on the telephone - waiting for each other was precisely what I hoped would happen. To that end I surprised myself when I realized I wanted to be faithful to her, even without such an agreement between us.
It only took me a few minutes to realize that my being faithful to Katrina was partly based upon my fear that we would never again be lovers. I wanted her to be faithful to me, too, and how could I ask that of her if I weren't willing to do the same for her? "Sometimes you really are a doofus," I muttered to myself. How could I kid myself into believing that both of us would still be interested in each other several years in the future? We weren't even planning to communicate with each other again!
Moreover, even though both Katrina and I knew we had been in love with each other, neither of us had actually said "I love you!" to the other. So, for the foreseeable future, Katrina and I were free agents, and I did the rational thing: I gave Evie a call.
"Oh goodie!" Evie exclaimed when I told her I wanted to see her. "I was just telling my new roomie how good you are in bed - and it made me all hot and drippy! How soon can you get here?"
Less than an hour later I was knocking on Evie's apartment door. Previously we'd almost always used her apartment for our passionate romps because she hadn't had a roommate whom we could disturb. Evie was unashamedly and delightfully vocal during sex, so disturbing a roommate, either hers or mine, was now inevitable.