Friends With Benefits

Will being out the whole week due to his party acquired mono only seemed to make Fletch bolder in his open and obvious demonstrations of how couple-y he and I were now. He seemed to make sure everyone in our school knew we were no longer “Fletch and Lenny” but had morphed into “Fletch-and-Lenny,” one of those couples so joined at the hip you cannot mention one without thinking of the other. At first, I could only focus on the negative of having Fletch follow me around as a willing love slave: how annoying it was when he yelled out to me in the hallways, how he tried to be all gross and share food as well as saliva during our lunch breaks, and how creepy it was to have him pop up at random times to see me.

However, I began to soon see the advantages of allowing Fletch to think he needed to step up his game after our whole drunken sex incident. I found Fletch was more than willing to carry around my backpack and books as well as his own. If I wanted an extra pudding cup or another soda, I had a willing servant ready to complete those menial tasks for me. Best of all, I was finally the girl who everyone else was jealous of because she had a boyfriend, even if I still vehemently denied Fletch and I were boyfriend and girlfriend to anyone who asked. I would respond that things were “complicated” between us and, as the week wore on, I became comfortable enough to tell people we were “sort of seeing each other.”

“Do you have any idea what you’re getting yourself into?” Sara asked me during first period.

Ms. Rafferty was having another emotional break down after finding out her soon to be ex-husband’s fiancée was pregnant and wanted the house so his future progeny could utilize the nearby school system. Ms. Rafferty herself had wanted children and would occasionally talk about her wasted youth with a husband who said he didn’t want kids. Now he was expecting twins with her “replacement,” as Ms. Rafferty referred to her husband’s new squeeze. While Ms. Rafferty intermittently sobbed into her tissues or attempted to nap away her hangover, our first period class was left to its own devices.

This meant Sara was going to berate me for the display she had just witnessed in the hallway a few moments before. Fletch had again dutifully walked me to class, carrying my backpack and holding my books the entire way so I wouldn’t have to lift a finger. I made the mistake of saying to Sara how I was getting sick of my daily sandwich in my lunch box and how cafeteria food was even less appealing. She and I were talking about how great it would be if we could go out for burgers and milkshakes for lunch, which promptly made Fletch offer to sneak out during lunch and go out to the local drive thru. As nice as the offer was, I had quickly deterred Fletch from risking suspension from school by leaving during class hours.

“He’s still gonna go,” Sara said to me once we had settled in to our seats.

“He isn’t that stupid,” I snorted.

“I don’t know,” Sara shrugged. “He reminds me of Eric when we first started going out… Willing to bend over backwards to do anything for me, no matter how stupid or inane.”

“Well, I told him not to go, so he shouldn’t,” I replied defensively.

“I should have given you the lecture about how much responsibility boyfriends are before you went and got one,” Sara sighed.

“Fletch isn’t my boyfriend,” I insisted.

“Oh, then what is he?” Sara asked pointedly.

“He’s a friend of mine who’s a guy who… does stuff for me,” I shrugged.

“He’s just a guy who carries your books, buys you food, takes and has sex with you?” Sara snorted.

“He’s actually not really taken me out,” I frowned. “I mean, we had breakfast together a couple of times… like the morning after he’s drank a lot at a party… but he’s never taken me out on a date…”

“I’m sure he would take you out on one,” Sara shrugged.

“Why would I want him to do that?” I grimaced. “It’s already embarrassing enough the way he acts around me at school. I mean, he hovers and acts like a junkyard dog when anyone gets too close to me that he doesn’t like…”

“Eric used to be like that,” Sara nodded. “He got more secure in our relationship after we’d been together a while. Fletch will get used to it.”

“I think you’re missing the point,” I sighed. “I don’t know if being seen in public with Fletch would be good idea. I don’t want to encourage him too much… I don’t think I’ll be as good a girlfriend as Fletch thinks I will be. I just… I don’t think I can do this. I don’t think I’m going to be able to measure up to this pedestal or whatever he’s put me on. I’m going to wreck things.”

“You need to talk to him,” Sara said. “Things changed after you guys had sex and you have to change your ground rules to reflect that. You need to sit Fletch down and have a sincere talk with him about this.”

“I know,” I admitted.

“Have you given any thought to how you’re going to explain this to Will when he comes back to school?” Sara asked. “I mean, it’s going to be a little odd for him to be out of school for a week with mono and then to come back to see Fletch feeling you up against his locker…”

“Fletch wasn’t feeling me up,” I insisted. “He came up behind me and gave me a surprise hug. Nearly squeezed the life out of me, too. And I about crapped my pants because he was so quiet and then there were this arms like tentacles around me…”

“You’re avoiding the subject,” Sara pointed out.

“I haven’t thought about it, okay?” I shrugged. “I was sort of…”

“Leaving that up to Fletch the Love Slave?” Sara snorted.

“Whatever,” I grumbled.

“You just like digging yourself deeper and deeper, don’t you Lenny?” Sara sighed.

As Friday rolled around, I knew Will would be back at school soon and that meant he would see that Fletch and I were certainly more than friendly around each other now. Part of me thought this might be the push Will needed to realize what he was missing out on but the larger bit of me was afraid that Will might be furious and betrayed that his two best friends had hooked up. I knew I would have been mad if Will and Fletch had hooked up behind my back for more than the obvious reasons, and I didn’t want to rock our threesome, which had been in a rocky state since Fletch had moved to the area in fifth grade anyway.

With a not so subtle raise of his eyebrows, Fletch mentioned to me Friday that he didn’t have to work, his parents were both working late, and Kristy was hanging out with her new beau. Since our actions of the previous weekend hadn’t been repeated, I could only anticipate Fletch was trying to let me know his house was empty and he had every intention of filling his bed with me. I quickly realized I was in over my head. I hadn’t been prepared to have sex with Fletch the first time and I definitely wasn’t ready to do it again considering the fact that I couldn’t own up to whatever awkward relationship status we had. After a thorough discussion and being chewed out by Sara, I decided to use Friday afternoon as an opportunity to clear the air.

I quickly found myself alone with Fletch, cuddled up on his bed, which was probably the least appropriate place to be setting new ground rules and boundaries for our rapidly changing relationship. Before I could even think about what I had wanted to say, I found Fletch slyly positioning himself on top of me and smothering my lips with his own. It didn’t take too much of his intoxicating scent and breathtaking kisses for the majority of my clothes to be discarded into the floor. In a matter of minutes, I was in a fog of exhilaration as he moved inside me. The feeling was better than I remembered, granted I didn’t remember much from our drunken encounter the week before When the haze of pleasure began to dissipate, I found myself laying back against the pillows on Fletch’s bed, breathing heavily and positively enthralled from the hormones pumping through my body.

It was then I realized I was naked, in Fletch’s bed, and we had just had sex again. And this time, I was one hundred percent sober but had just let my hormones get the better of me. . However, I was resigned to the fact that, this time around at least, I was conscious of the decision I was making. I hadn’t put up a fight and, if anything, I had encouraged the whole series of events, especially by the rather seductive way I realized I had taken off Fletch’s pants and boxers. Fletch was lying beside me, still panting from the exercise. Sure, it had been immensely satisfying for the moment and I had never thought something could be as fantastic as experiencing my first non-drunk orgasm, but the pleasure soon faded into a depressing sense of worthlessness. I felt sort of like a slut, like I had given it up to a guy just to fit in or to feel better about myself. I hated myself.

I was near tears at how stupid I was when I felt Fletch’s arms come around me, bringing me to his chest and then lovingly tucking the cool sheets over my shoulder to keep me warm. I looked up at him and hated myself anew for the look of love and devotion in his eyes, feelings I knew I would ultimately betray one day. It was in that moment that I realized that I, Aileen Iverson, was the worst person on the face of the planet. I knew it was pretty emo of me to be feeling the way I was, but I couldn’t help it. I was the source of my own misery and now I was dragging good people like Fletch and Will down with me.

“Are you okay?” Fletch asked me, his eyes full of concern.

“I didn’t mean for that to happen,” I admitted quietly.

“What? What’s wrong?” Fletch asked, panicked.

“Well, I came over here today…” I began nervously, “to prevent this… from happening again…”

“What do you mean?” Fletch demanded to know.

“We’re moving… a little fast for me,” I said. “I think… I think we’re going about this all wrong… I mean, we’re… doing this… but you’ve never actually taken me out on an official date or anything. I mean, I’m at least supposed to get a dinner and a movie out of you before I put out, right?”

“Oh, Lenny,” Fletch said, sounding relieved for some reason. “I didn’t know you wanted that. Sure. If you want, we can go out. You just name the place and time, okay?”

“It’s more than just that,” I blushed. “I mean, we went about this all wrong… you’re supposed to go on awkward dates before you get physical and we’re doing it backwards…”

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with what we’re doing,” Fletch shrugged. “There are many different paths to relationships and we just have to find the one that works for us…”

“You’ve been reading the self-help books your mom accidentally leaves in the bathroom again, haven’t you?” I grimaced.

“Hey, when you’re on the toilet for the long hall, you need something to entertain yourself,” Fletch shrugged.

“That’s gross,” I snorted. I sighed and then refluffed the pillow before laying back down on it. “I think we need new rules.”

“New rules?” Fletch questioned.

“Well, the ones we had about the whole secret-make out thing didn’t exactly work and since things have definitely changed between us since last weekend… I think… I think we need to take a step back and reevaluate where we stand,” I said.

"You've been talking with Sara again, haven't you?" Fletch grimaced, his face scrunched up.

"What's wrong with that?" I said. "Besides, things change after people have sex and since the physical side of our relationship has changed, other areas have to change as well to keep up."

“And what does that load of mumbo-jumbo mean?” Fletch snorted.

“Come on, Fletch. You can’t deny that seeing each other naked has changed the dynamic between us,” I rolled my eyes.

“Changed things for the better,” Fletch muttered. I rolled my eyes.

“I think we should… stave off… being so… physically intimate with each other for a time…” I said. “Do the dating thing like we were just starting out, you know?”

“Why?” Fletch grimaced. “Why can’t we do both? We can go out and have sex at the same time…”

“No,” I shook my head. “If you want this… really want this for us… I think we need to start over. We need to start back like you’d asked me out for the first time and progress from there. We need to start fresh…”

“You haven’t suddenly gone on some fucking born-again virgin kick, have you?” Fletch snorted. I glowered at him, suddenly feeling very conscious of my nakedness next to him.

Furiously, I pushed myself up out of Fletch’s comfortable bed and started throwing on my clothes. I couldn’t believe he was acting so flippantly about something so important. It actually hurt me, making a physical pain in my chest cavity that Fletch was behaving the way he was. It was like he didn’t care about how I felt or that I was at least trying make what we had work. I was trying to turn our relationship to what it was supposed to be rather than the mess of sex, fighting, and emotional chaos we were currently in. I had thrown on my bra, shirt, and was going for my pants when Fletch suddenly realized something was amiss, jumping up off the bed and throwing on his own boxers to confront me.

“What are you doing?” Fletch demanded to know.

“Well, if you don’t want me here, I’m just going to leave,” I said. I was starting to sniffle and I couldn’t understand why the tears were tempting to fall from my eyes.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Fletch said, sounding exasperated.

“I’m trying to make things work the way they’re supposed to and you don’t care,” I said, sniffling. “You just want a hot piece of ass with no strings attached, huh? That’s all you wanted, isn’t it? You just wanted to get into my pants and now that you have, you don’t care about anything else. You don’t care about me…”

“Don’t be a drama queen, Lenny,” Fletch rolled his eyes. I stumbled in an attempt to put on my jeans only for Fletch to snatch them away and toss them across the room. “Was this all about that virgin crack? God, Lenny, I’m all for going out to the movies and to dinner and stuff like that. I don’t understand why we can’t hook up a little in between then though…”

“Because that’s what I need,” I insisted. “I’m just… I’m not sure of myself anymore, okay? And I’d prefer if we started over, if we gave it some time before we let things get as… intense as they are right now… I don’t think… I don’t think I’m as ready for sex as you are and I guess it took me having sex to realize I’m just not there yet…”

“What kind of logic is that?” Fletch snorted. I glared at him and he sighed. “Okay, okay. I’m not going to like it, but if that’s what you want, I’ll try.”

“I need you to do better than try,” I shook my head. “Fletch, if you’re only in this to get into my pants, this ends right now. If you actually think that there’s something here… that we could be… together… you’re going to have to respect what I want.” Fletch was quiet for a moment and I held my breath, anticipating that he was going to order me out of his house until I was willing to put out again.

“Fine,” Fletch sighed. “Okay, fine.”

“You mean it?” I asked skeptically.

“If you want, we can put our clothes back on and I’ll take you out right now, okay?” Fletch sighed.

“Maybe just to the mall,” I suggested hopefully.

“Sure,” Fletch said with a sigh.

“Great!” I smiled before rushing to put on my clothes. Fletch took more time sliding his on, looking at me every few seconds as if he was hoping I would change my mind. When he realized I wasn’t about to change my mind, Fletch fixed the rest of his clothes, grabbed his keys, and reluctantly followed me outside to his car.