I was devastated, completely gutted.
Just when I'd surrendered myself body and soul to Sam. Just when I'd fallen madly in love with him, we went to a party and I discovered he regularly does drugs. And he wanted me to do them with him.
Yes, that night, he been the uninhibited life of the party, to my boring, sober, unaffected self. At the end of it I'd even let my body be used over and over to let him selfishly satisfy his insatiable drug fuelled ardour. Then midway through the third time he'd passed out on top of me.
Already, as he'd been pounded away at me, I'd decided it was over.
To have to struggle to roll the dead weight of his unconscious body off me. To feel his still rigid manhood slip from my body as I'd pushed him over onto his back as I eventually freed myself from under him. It was humiliating. I felt cheap; used.
He was still breathing. It was more like some alcoholic stupor than the death knell of a drug overdose.
For half an hour I lay there next to his naked self. I'd contemplated the still rigid erection from his third, incomplete demand upon my body and remembered all the good times we'd shared. I'd even contemplated mounting him and using it to salvage something from the ruin of the night. A single stolen orgasm as the price for the joyless sex he'd just taken from me.
All the time as I lay there, I felt the love drain from me like water running out of a sink. Drugs were a non-negotiable no-no for me. I'd witnessed too many lives ruined by them.
I left and walked shamefully home.
The discussion with him the next morning had been fruitless. He wouldn't give them up and thought me a complete bore for not joining him in his indulgence. Even though the decision to break off the relationship had been completely mutual, it left me feeling empty and destroyed.
I had already promised dad I'd help one of his other regular crew deliver our family's yacht from Sydney harbour to Pittwater later that week for a coming regatta at the Royal Prince Alfred Yacht Club. Never in my life had I less felt like going on the boat. I just wanted to curl up in my room and die. Still, a promise was a promise.
Early that morning, I did what I had to do to help Adam prepare the boat and get us out to sea; going through well-rehearsed motions; this time stripped of any sense of pleasure.
About 8 years older than me, Adam had been a regular crew member on the boat since dad had first let me be part of the racing crew a decade ago at the age of 13. He'd actually been my close mentor on the boat; taking the time to teach me how to do things properly when all the other crew were just impatient for it to happen now. Always kind and gentle, he was also enormously protective of me. He wasn't a bad looker either. By any objective criteria he was probably my best friend on the boat; someone with whom I often shared a harmless flirtatious banter and exchange of sexual innuendo as we sailed. But I suppose I'd never really got beyond the adult/child thought process about our relationship that I'd first started with, even if he was probably initially regarded by the older crew as one of the kids too.
We cleared Sydney Heads under motor on a still, windless, sunny, morning with virtually no swell. Adam was steering the boat, leaving me with nothing to do. I asked him if he'd mind if I sun baked on the foredeck.
Taking my beach bag and a long cockpit cushion, I set myself up on the cabin top in front of the mast; laying my towel over the cushion, stripping down to my bikini, stuffing my clothes in the bag and slathering myself with sun screen.
I don't usually just bake in the sun; it's too hard on the skin. But the sun was still low and I was miserable. I was also horrible, monosyllabic company for Adam; probably dragging him down in my self-pity. He could see something was wrong and I thought he might be annoyed that no amount of good spirit on his part was able to lift me out of my funk.
I like the tingle and warmth of the sun on my skin. I thought it might cheer me up and leave Adam to his thoughts without having to worry about me. I even hoped heating up my pussy with its rays warming my dark coloured bikini pants might restore some sense of sexual responsiveness and arousal to my drained, empty sense of womanhood.
For maybe half an hour I drowsed; momentarily forgetting my cares as the sun caressed me and lulled me into a mindless state. But all too soon, the destructive thoughts came flooding back; alternatively lashing myself for not seeing the problem before I became involved with Sam and missing terribly the loved up sense of completeness he given me for those few short months.
Unable to restore myself to the Zen state the sun had first given me, nor to silence the self-pitying voices going around and around in my head, I sat up; slouched, staring at my feet with tears running down my cheeks.
Too distracted in my misery, the first I knew of Adam's presence near me was his soft, caring voice. He'd set a course far enough seaward to safely clear long reef, put the yacht on auto pilot and come forward.
"What's wrong Emily?"
"Nothing." But I immediately gave lie to my statement by bursting into a sobbing, heaving mess. I felt foolish, sitting nearly naked in a tiny bikini while I sobbed my heart out in front of a guy who I'd never really revealed any emotion to before.
Adam sat next to me; our shoulders gently touching.
"I don't think that's the full answer. Mightn't it feel better to talk about it?"
Like a bursting dam, I blurted it out.
"I've broken up with Sam." Then promptly dissolved into more heaving, sobbing tears, lowering my head onto my knees.
Adam waited a moment until I'd recovered a modicum of composure.
"Did he dump you or did you leave him."
Suddenly it felt good to be able to talk about it. My parents had barely noticed my down mood; or if they had, they'd chosen to ignore it. I told him about the party, the drugs issue and our argument the next day; leaving out the bit where I'd sold myself cheap by letting him use me as an outlet for his drug induced libido.
He told me I'd done the right thing. He too had seen enough of drug induced mental health problems to say it was a not negotiable issue. He also reassured me that, until I'd seen evidence that Sam had that sort of problem, I could hardly be expected to guess.
We discussed the issue too and fro for a while and we talked about the pain of breaking up; something he'd been through recently too. Finally he teased out of me the bottom line of my feelings.
"I miss being in love. I miss that sense of having someone I can share things with. I want someone to love me in return and care about me."
Adam moved himself from sitting alongside me to directly facing me, squatting next to my folded up knees; his hips brushing them. Pulling the end of his long sleeve over his hand, he wiped the tears off my cheeks, gently following the trails of dampness down my face. Where the trails had run over my chin and down my neck he followed them as far as my shoulder bone. Where they'd dripped down and created a large dark stain on each triangle of my bikini top and wet patches on the top of my breasts, he left well enough alone.
As he brushed the tears away, for the first time I looked up at him. Looking back at me I saw eyes full of understanding and real concern. They were eyes that offered reassurance that I wasn't alone; that I wasn't the first to feel this way.
Inside me, something awoke. In some indefinable way, where there had been a dead emptiness I felt the first green shoots of returning life.
Letting go of his sleeve to expose his fingers, Adam reached out and stroked along my forehead and through my hair. It was the sort of reassuring, protective touching a parent might do; although it didn't feel patronising. And maybe as his hand slid through right down to the end of my long hair and repeated the action, it went a bit further than normal.
"Emily, you're a wonderful girl. You've got a lovely entertaining nature and you're impossibly beautiful. You can have any guy you want. Goodness, I've had a hidden crush on you for years. I know it can be hard to meet the right one, but it will happen; sooner and more easily than seems likely to you at the moment."
Maybe they were platitudes; although I knew I wasn't a bad looker. Still, it's nice to hear it said. It lifted my mood a smidgen, even as the feel of his fingers stroking my hair raised my heartbeat and sent a tingle through my body. But I was far from ready to break out of my funk.
"It's just so hard to meet someone. I hate the entire tinder process. I hate having to go to bars and parties where the whole human experience just seems so superficial."
"I'm sure you know as well as I do, these things happen when you least expect them. You just have to be open and ready to respond to them when they do."
Perhaps my brain had been dulled by my mood, or maybe I'd just chosen to ignore a comment that seemed too hard to deal with. But Adam was lifting me out of the depths of my depression. For the first time in days I managed a smile – a cheeky one – as I looked him straight in the eye.
"How long did you have a crush on me for?"
Adam blushed and looked down.
