Amber Decides

Author's Note: This is effectively a sequel series to the "Amber" series originally posted to Literotica in November 2007. While these five chapters will probably make more sense to those who have read the original "Amber," "Amber Decides" is designed to be a standalone series.

*****

There was no doubt about it: I loved her and she loved me.

"Her" and "she" were the same person: Amber -- the little girl I had watched mature, both physically and emotionally, from a happy eight-year-old child into a young woman. Her eighteenth birthday had been forever sullied by the death of both her parents, half a world apart, yet the death of her parents and my friends had brought Amber and me even closer together than I could have believed possible when I had first met her ten years earlier.

Many people in the community had known Amber's father through his military service, and the people in the neighborhood had known that for most of the past decade, I had been essentially a "second father" to Amber, so when Amber moved in with me following the deaths of her parents, no one seemed to think anything amiss. In fact, several neighbors had told me that they were happy for Amber and proud of me for taking her in, for not leaving her on her own as she tried to deal with the typical stresses of the final year of high school and the unexpected pressures of handling the family finances and estate at such a young age.

What no one else knew was that Amber and I were not just "second father" and "the daughter I never had." No one else knew that Amber and I were truly, deeply in love.

We purposely wanted to hide it. After all, few people would truly understand such an age gap. Those who knew that I had been her "second father" for so many years might possibly even consider our love to be quasi-incestuous. Plus, I remembered my own days in school and how ruthless students could be to those who were different, who did not quite confirm, or who did things which were shocking in an unpositive way, and I wanted to protect Amber from such bullying.

Yet, after several months of a seemingly perfect life together, a new reality set in:

Amber received three acceptance letters to colleges across the state.

I could possibly lose her.

Coincidentally, all three acceptance letters arrived on the same day, and as she jumped with glee, I tried to project a happy exterior while I was hurting inside, for I saw those letters as the beginning of the end. The little girl who had become a woman before my eyes and had given me her body and her heart was about to leave the nest.

I tried to console myself with thoughts of how much technology had advanced since I was in college. My college years were during the infancy of the Internet as it is now known -- instant messaging was not a reality yet, and in fact Web browsers did not even exist when I had started college. E-mail was possible, but there were many different e-mail systems, and they were not necessarily compatible. The best ways to stay in contact at the time were the traditional methods of telephone and letter.

But as the first decade of the twenty-first century drew to a close, communication was so much easier. It would not be the same as actually being able to see and touch Amber on a daily basis, but e-mail, Webcams, instant messages, cell phones, Skype, and other technologies would definitely help me to feel connected to her while she was away at college.

...and I had no doubt that Amber would be going to college, as she and I had discussed throughout her teenage years. It was simply a matter of which college she would attend.

After she had crawled into bed with me that night, as I held her close in the darkness and felt the softness of her bare breasts pressing against my naked flesh, she asked to visit all three colleges one final time to try to make a decision of which acceptance she would accept. While I softly agreed, I had to hold back my tears, for soon her education would tear her away from me -- likely not forever, but even just the thought of a single day away from my precious Amber felt like being stabbed with a dull knife.

However, this was entirely her choice to make. I could not hold her back just for my sake, especially since she could possibly never "regain" a college experience if she did not take this opportunity. I only hoped that modern means of communication would truly be adequate to help us survive the four years apart -- even longer, if she ultimately decided to go to grad school.