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VIP-BTC2: Chapter 27
🕑 Added 2022-12-17 20:00:03 +0000 UTC-- CHAPTER 27: Kai --
****
“I miss him. I miss Kai.”
Eva’s last words hung in the air above us. There were only six of them - words, I mean. One could argue there were only four unique words, actually. But the most important of the four was the last one: Kai.
“He was your boyfriend,” I stated knowingly.
Eva blinked, her slightly off-kilter blue eyes moist and shining as she stared up at me. But then her eyes unfocused as she started staring past my left ear, and her face took on a haunted expression. Ultimately, she closed her eyes, nodded, and bowed her head back over my shoulder. And when she tightened her grip to hold me closer and pushed her face into the crook of my neck, it was clear she wasn’t going to be any more forthcoming than that.
“I don’t have all the details,” I repeated. “All I know so far is that you and Kai met in high school, got together almost right away, and were practically inseparable after that.”
She sighed and buried her face into my chest, muffling her brokenhearted voice as she wailed, “I thought we’d be together forever. Losing him… it just… I couldn’t…”
I simply held her closer when she trailed off, never quite finishing that sentence. I held the back of her head, stroking it lightly. And when she didn’t continue, I muttered, “You got depressed and tried slashing your wrists, but your dad found you and rushed you to a hospital. You went through all the psych evals - hence the crack about not needing another shrink to psychoanalyze you - pulled yourself together enough to finish high school. And when it came time to going to college, your dad thought it best for you to make a fresh start away from the islands rather than stick around in the same place where everything had fallen apart.”
“Papa wanted me to get a fresh start away from anywhere that would remind me of Kai,” Eva mumbled into my neck.
I took a deep breath, stroking Eva’s spine. And when she didn’t volunteer any further information, I sighed and murmured, “I know you must’ve loved him very much.”
Eva started softly crying again, and for a long while neither of us spoke. I cradled her in my arms - she was much taller than Belle or Lily, and yet felt so small at the moment. We sat upright together on her bed, me gently rocking us both back and forth, back and forth, over and over again until her tears dried up again.
At that point, Eva released her arms around me, and I took that as my cue to release mine as well. She sighed, pivoted her hips, and then scooted away from me and over to the desk which served as a sort of headboard for her bed to snag a tissue from the box on the desk’s first shelf. And while she blew her nose once, and then a second time, and finally a third time, I took a moment to take my first look around the girls’ bedroom.
It was not a large room, perhaps fifteen feet long and only ten across. Two small desks were in opposite corners by the window, and if the girls backed up their chairs at the same time they’d bump into each other. The twin-long beds ran parallel to each other, leaving less than three feet of space between them. I now understood what Lily meant about having a hard time taking care of herself at night when another girl was sleeping three feet away. At least the room had a reasonable amount of closet space over by the door, although even that area was packed to the gills with the girls’ belongings.
The walls and shelves on Lily’s side were covered with Hawaiian paraphernalia: posters of beautiful landscapes, knick-knacks like a bobble-head hula girl, and photographs such as a large family photo nestled within a surfboard frame. The walls on Eva’s side, however, were bare. The desk had three photographs in small frames, all three of them either of herself and her dad or just her dad. She definitely got her height from him, although their facial features were dissimilar enough that I had to figure she’d gotten her looks from her mom.
When Eva finished blowing her nose and wiping her eyes, she turned to slide her back against the wall, raised her knees to her chest, and wrapped her arms around them.
I remained where I was, seated sideways on her bed with one foot on the floor, and gave her a warm but concerned look. “Would you like to tell me about Kai?” I asked gently.
“Not really,” she muttered, but then took a deep breath and gathered herself, seemingly prepared to tell me about him anyway.
So I patiently waited her out, letting her collect her thoughts while she fiddled with her cuticles. And after a minute, she stared stonily into the middle distance across the room and began in a low, quiet tone, “He wasn’t the boy next door, like you and Belle, but we were still from the same neighborhood. Hanalei is a tiny town; everybody lives off of Weke Road. It’s expensive - like multi-million-dollar homes expensive. A lot of people rent out their houses to tourists, and it’s not the kind of place locals usually want to raise kids. I mean, the school only had one classroom per grade, and those classrooms weren’t full. So you could say that everybody knew everybody else.”
I nodded slowly.
Eva sighed and pursed her lips. “I never got along with the other girls though, even when I was little. I was a shy kid - bit of a loner - if you can believe it,” she remarked dryly.
“I can believe it,” I replied with a small smile.
“But then Kai moved into the neighborhood in ninth grade, right when I’d hit my growth spurt and grew these big boobs that all the boys were staring at. I was having a hard time trying to figure out who I wanted to be, but then he came in all swaggy and confident. I never did make any girlfriends. It was more fun to hang out with Kai and his boys - go surfing, go hiking, play video games… throw rocks at rental cars.”
I snorted at the last part.
“While Lily was taking hula classes,” she continued, “I was probably holed up in Kai’s bedroom listening to Pearl Jam, Live, and Soundgarden.”
“Nice.”
She stared off into memory for a bit, her eyes losing focus as she smiled softly.
But the smile didn’t last. A moment later, she started choking up, her eyes got moist, and she raised both hands to cover her eyes. When she started sobbing, I immediately slid over to hug her again, but she held a hand palm-out to me, keeping me at bay while she fought to control her tears. So I gave her a moment to compose herself, and she got her breathing under control pretty quickly.
Ultimately, she sat up to grab another tissue and this time just brought the entire box into her lap. She wiped her eyes, sighed wearily and gave me a look that plainly said she’d rather not continue.
So I nodded slowly, slid back to my original position, and prepared to get up. “I really just came over here to make sure you were alright,” I explained. “I never meant to hurt you by making you relive this stuff, and it might be best if I leave you alone.”
“But I don’t want to be alone,” she mumbled, nearly breaking down again, before she sat upright and gave me a wide-eyed look of surprise. It seemed to me that she was all onboard with the idea of me walking away and not making her talk about her past anymore, right up until she wasn’t.
“Then I won’t leave you alone,” I stated reassuringly, “if you really want me to stay.”
Eva bit her lip, grimaced as if in tremendous pain, and then immediately scooted herself over to my side. I opened my arms and wrapped her up in a fierce hug, and then the waterworks started again. “Don’t leave me…” she whispered hoarsely. “Don’t leave me…”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I assured her. “I’m right here, and I’ll be right here for as long as you need me.”
“You really mean that?” she asked plaintively, pleading with me, really. “You’ll stay here with me? Promise?”
“Of course I will. I promise.”
“Stay here with me. Stay with me.” She shuddered. “The two of us against the world.”
I stroked her spine, kissed the top of her head, and repeated back, “The two of us against the world.”
And then she started sobbing again.
****
My cell phone chiming with an incoming text message broke Eva’s latest crying fit. She sat up straight, shifted herself out of my arms, and then started wiping her eyes. When she reached for the tissue box, I fished out my phone to check the screen.
“Are they asking you to come back?” Eva asked quietly, her gaze on the phone in my hand.
I shook my head. “Not at all. Belle’s just asking how things are going.”
“And what are you going to tell her?”
“Just that we’re still talking,” I said while futzing around with how to type: Still talking on a 10-digit keypad. It took me a little while, but I eventually got the message sent off.
“Don’t know why they care,” Eva muttered. “It’s not like any of them bothered to come over here with you.”
“Lily and Naimh both wanted to,” I explained. “Belle suggested it would be better if it was just me. She said you’re clearly closer to me than any of the girls, and you seem to only open up when we’re alone. But if Belle’s wrong and you’d rather the rest of the girls come over, I can tot--”
“Gods, no,” Eva interrupted me with a dismissive wave. “Belle’s right: if the whole group had shown up, I would’ve locked the door and refused to let anybody in.”
I nodded. “Makes sense.”
“I’m glad you came over. I wanted to talk to you – to apologize for how things went the last time we saw each other.”
“Nothing to apologize for,” I said affably, arching an eyebrow and smirking at her. “The last time we saw each other, we had a pretty awesome sex session and you let me blow a massive load into your virgin asshole.”
Eva snorted and immediately grinned, unable to stop herself from chuckling even as she shook her head. It was the sort of comment I wouldn’t normally say to a girl in such a situation, but for some reason I could tell Eva had a sense of humor about it, and the momentary laughter seemed to help her relax.
But then her expression turned thoughtful as her thoughts themselves turned inward. She went quiet, narrowed her eyes, and sighed. “Kai could be the sweetest guy too… and then out of nowhere make the crudest remarks… just like you did. And that’s not the only way you remind me of him.”
I blinked. “Me?”
Eva’s eyes narrowed as she studied me. After a moment’s pause, she took a deep breath and then explained, “We grew up privileged. My dad and Kai’s both owned successful companies, and we could afford anything we really wanted. But most local people don’t like privileged kids, you know? Kai himself didn’t really want to BE a snooty, privileged asshole like some of the other kids we knew. So we went out of our way to fit in with the regular locals. Bought a beater van to drive around, and even slept in it sometimes. Kai dressed cheap with hand-cut tank tops and surf shorts. He acted like a tough guy and spoke more pidgin than Lily does.”
I blinked again. “I’m not seeing the resemblance to me.”
Eva chuckled. “People thought Kai was this foul-mouthed moke with his full-sleeve tattoos, wild hair, and a dozen piercings. Only our inner circle knew the real Kai – the sweetest guy in the world who was always there for me. The two of us against the world.”
It started to dawn on me where she was going with this, and why that particular sentence resonated so much with her. “Ahhh…”
“I’m sure the outside world sees you the way I saw you – a handsome playboy rolling up with a half-dozen hot girls hanging on your arms. But only The BTC girls truly know the guy who genuinely loves his girlfriends, who does everything in his power to be there for each and every one of them. You’re special. I misjudged you at first. And for that, I apologize.”
I smiled in response to her smile to me, but after a moment I took a deep breath and gave her a concerned look. “I appreciate your apology, unnecessary as it may be. But at the same time, the words you said right before you stormed out last Wednesday were absolutely true: I’m NOT Kai. And I never will be.”
Eva closed her eyes and shook her head. “I never should’ve said that to you. I know you’re not him. The two of you look nothing alike, sound nothing alike, and don’t act alike at all. I mean yeah, he was a total sweetheart with me, but he was a bad boy through and through with a violent temper. I can’t count how many fights he got into, which wasn’t such a great idea because he barely weighed more than I do.”
I grimaced and nodded.
Her eyes unfocused, and she got that haunted expression on her face again.
But rather than let her dwell on the past, I squeezed her against my side tightly and bent to kiss her crown. “I’m sure Kai had his flaws, as all guys do, including me. But at the end of the day, I’m sure he loved you very, very much. And I know you loved him very, very much. So it totally makes sense for his loss to still resonate with you today.”
Still staring out into the middle distance, she nodded slowly. Eventually she sighed, took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly while turning to look up at me. And then she pulled back the left sleeve of her sweatshirt, turning her hand palm-up so I could see the underside of her wrist.
To my everlasting relief, there were no fresh scars scratched across Eva’s forearm. Ever since first hearing Lily’s story, I’d worried whether or not Eva had turned to repeated cutting as a method of dealing with her inner demons and felt the urgent need to come over here and check on her, but as far as I could tell, the only time she’d ever actually tried to harm herself had been the single suicide attempt. There were three old scars, and they weren’t even immediately visible; no one would’ve seen them at first glance. Even knowing exactly what she was showing me, I had to lean over and peer closely to make out the darker shade of the three ragged lines marring her otherwise unblemished skin.
Still, anyone who got a good look at her wrist would immediately suspect that she’d tried to kill herself at some point in the past. So I definitely understood why she’d chosen to wear that black leather wristband all the time to cover the scars. And if I had to guess, I’d guess that the men’s wristband itself had originally been Kai’s.
Shaking her head sadly, Eva muttered, “He’s gonna haunt me for the rest of my life, even though I know I’m not supposed to dwell on him. People say that time heals all wounds, but right now it still feels like the people who said that bullshit never felt a really real wound, you know?”
I gave her a somewhat helpless look, explaining, “I can’t claim to have ever felt the kind of loss you’re talking about, so I won’t be one of ‘those people’ who give you bullshit lectures about moving on.”
“That’ll make you the first. Everyone else told me it was alright to love him forever but that I’d ultimately have to let him go. The shrinks, my dad, our old friends: everyone encouraged me to move on with my life. It’s why I’m here in Berkeley instead of back on the islands. It’s why I’m sitting on my bed next to you.”
I nodded, reached down, and closed my hand over Eva’s exposed wrist as if I could symbolically close the wound to her heart as easily as I could cover up her scars. “I’m glad I’m here: sitting on your bed next to you.”
Eva turned to look up at me again, her blue-contact eyes shimmering. “Thank you for sitting next to me.”
“You’re very welcome.”
“I still don’t really know why you’re here sitting next to me, though.” She exhaled slowly and gave me a helpless look. “I’ve treated you like shit. I’ve treated the girls like shit. There’s no good reason why they should be letting you come over here to waste time on me.”
“They’re a special group of girls,” I stated seriously before waving her off. “But we’ve had this conversation already. I’m here because I want to be here, and they’re letting me be here because they understand what it’s like to be a girl who needs someone like me to sit next to them.”
Eva gave me a grateful smile. “The first few days after we had our little… thing… on Wednesday, I just huddled up and tried not to think about Kai. I’ve spent a lot of time trying not to think of Kai, and I’m getting better at it. But then the last day or two I started to think about you, and I freaked out thinking that I’d permanently ruined our relationship. I figured you’d understand me hiding out like a hermit through the weekend, and then I’d come over on Monday afternoon to play video games and try to pick up where we’d left off and pretend like nothing had ever happened.”
“Admittedly, I thought you were gonna do that Monday afternoon, too.”
“But then I realized I couldn’t pretend like nothing had ever happened. Fool me twice and all. I’ve had to go over to the house and beg forgiveness from the girls once already. I’d promised you and promised them I’d be better… but then I went and made things even worse.” Eva blushed and stared down into her lap. “I chickened out, too scared to walk out the door. And then after that, it felt like I’d missed my one and only chance to make amends and felt even more crushed deep inside.”
“You didn’t miss your chance,” I assured her. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“You are.” She took another deep breath and stared up into my eyes. “Despite everything… you’re here. With me.”
“I won’t leave you: I promised you that. I’m right here, and I’ll be right here for as long as you need me.”
Eva’s arm slid around my back as she turned to face me. She tilted her face to look up into my eyes, leaning in closer. Her eyes then focused on my lips, and I got the distinct impression she wanted to kiss me. But then her gaze returned upwards, and she whimpered, “I don’t deserve you.”
“You don’t need to deserve me, and you never will,” I vowed in a steady voice.
Twin tears rolled down her cheeks as she blinked. She let out a tiny sob, and then suddenly both of her hands were behind my head as she pressed her lips to mine. Her kiss was one of desperate need. My kiss in reply was one of calm reassurance. What we shared was not love – not yet, and perhaps not ever. Rather, I knew that Eva needed me, and it felt rather nice to be needed, knowing that I truly had what it took to help her.
So we kissed.
And we kissed.
And we kissed some more.
Always the aggressor, at least at first, Eva shifted her weight to tip me off balance and then pushed me flat on my back across her bed. I went with her initially because I knew I would simply be more comfortable in a reclining position, and I wrapped up her skinny body in my arms while the passion of our kiss deepened and she started probing my mouth with her tongue.
Even so, I didn’t feel anything particularly sexual about this kiss. Eva had spent the better part of a week moping in her room, feeling lost and alone. This kiss was not a prelude to the kind of wild-and-crazy monkey sex that would result in her scratching up my back with her Wolverine claws or end up with me re-invading her recently deflowered ass.
Rather, Eva was a lost soul who’d gone through an incredibly traumatic loss – the kind of trauma I had fortunately never experienced myself. She needed a lifeline: something (or someone) to cling to for support. She was a girl far from home, far from old friends or family, who needed to feel a personal connection – to feel a sense of intimacy.
I had every intention of being the lifeline she needed. I had every intention of providing the intimacy she craved. I could not predict how our time together would proceed. I still had four girlfriends to manage in addition to the academic rigors of my freshman year at Cal. But I knew there was room in my heart – and in the hearts of my girlfriends – to accept Eva for who she was and provide her with the support structure she needed to ultimately succeed at moving on with her life.
Perhaps one day that would result in her moving on from me as well. If so, I looked forward to that day, knowing that I had helped her metaphorically stand up on her own two feet again.
But then I felt Eva’s hand slide into my pants.
I’d gotten half-hard just from the pleasant makeout session with a beautiful, big-titted babe, but still pulled my head back to gasp in surprise at the unexpected sensation. Eva’s fingers quickly encircled my rod, giving it a few starter pumps as she snuggled up against my right side, but I clamped my hand down over the top of the tent in my pants to arrest her back-and-forth motions.
“We can’t,” I gasped, pinning her hand down.
She blinked at me in surprise. “What? Why not?”
I winced. “Because Mrs. Morris quite specifically told me, ‘No funny business in my house.’”
Eva snorted and gave me an amused look. “‘Funny business’?”
“That’s what she said. But she did also explicitly state, ‘Do NOT have sex in my house.’”
Eva looked at me skeptically. “So you’re turning me down because Mrs. Morris scared you.”
“The woman terrifies me,” I admitted with a grin.
Eva’s eyes narrowed. “I think it’s more likely that you’re hard-wired to be whatever a woman needs you to be, even if she’s a batty old bird like Mrs. Morris.”
I shrugged. “You’re not wrong.”
“I find myself curious to meet your mom.”
I made a face. “Please lose that sense of curiosity immediately.”
Eva laughed and shook her head. “Now you’re just making me even more curious.”
“And talking about my mother is the fastest way to get me out of the mood.” Indeed, I was starting to deflate in Eva’s hand.
Eva’s long tongue darted out from between her lips, and she licked the upper one lasciviously. And as her hand started to squeeze my half-hard member, she intoned huskily, “I can put on my choker. Pretty sure I’ll know exactly how to put you in the mood after that.”
“We really shouldn’t…”
“Because you’re scared Mrs. Morris will hear us?”
“I’m scared she’ll use a master key or something to barge in.”
“She’s not gonna barge in.”
“Wanna bet?”
“We could be really quiet. I won’t make a sound.”
My eyes narrowed as I repeated, “Wanna bet?”
Eva sighed and then whined, “But I need you IN me, Matty!”
“Actually, there’s another very good reason why we can’t right now.”
Eva blinked. “What’s that?”
I gave her an apologetic look and explained, “The girls are… uh… ‘mildly annoyed’ that you only ever hook up with me when we’re alone.”
“What?”
“It started with a conversation about Isabela trying to seduce Neevie this afternoon.”
“What?”
“Long story. The point is that the girls said they weren’t too happy with you and me only sneaking around behind their backs.”
“We weren’t sneaking around behind their backs,” Eva protested, pulling her hand out of my pants and propping herself up on one hand.
“Belle’s words, not mine,” I hedged.
“I mean, every time you go and have a one-on-one with Neevie, nobody claims you two are sneaking around,” Eva contended.
“Well, Neevie also participates in the group all the time, and for all I know they could be having a threesome right now. Each of the girls has one-on-ones with me, of course, but not at the expense of the club.”
“You mean that horny little voyeur Belle still wants to watch you pound me, and she’s miffed I haven’t let her do that yet.”
I waggled my head. “Well… probably.”
Eva sighed, pursing her lips and then rolling her eyes.
“But you don’t want to do this kind of stuff with other girls around, do you,” I said more as a statement than a question.
Eva winced. “It’s not… It’s not that I can’t…” she began hesitantly before letting her voice trail off.
“You’re totally straight and simply not interested in messing around with the other girls?” I suggested uncertainly.
“I’m not totally straight,” Eva said defensively. “I’ve been with girls before.”
I blinked. “Oh. Okay…”
“But I told you that I don’t dig crowds,” Eva continued. “And three’s usually a crowd.”
“And you’re worried about… performing in front of a crowd.”
“Kinda, yeah.” Eva sighed. “I told you: other girls and I don’t normally get along.”
I chuckled. “Lucky for you, my girlfriends are anything but ‘normal’.”
“Yeah, I figured that.” Eva sighed. She then scowled and looked peeved. “So does this mean I no longer have permission to have sex with you unless Belle gets to watch us or something?”
“No… it’s not like that.”
“Kinda sounds like it is like that.”
I shook my head firmly and sat up, leaning back on both hands. “I swore I’d have your back and be whatever you needed me to be. The absolute last thing I would ever do is force you into… ‘performing for an audience’… if you weren’t a hundred percent comfortable with it. That’s the bedrock foundation of The BTC: nobody has to do anything they don’t want to do.”
“But what if the girls decide they don’t want to share you with me anymore if I won’t be a team player about it? That was the condition of my continued access to you, wasn’t it?”
I shook my head. “We talked about my relationship with you not being contingent on you coming back to The BTC. I still think you should come back to us, and I still think you’d be better off with a circle of friends. But at this point my relationship with you is MY relationship with you. And unless it comes to a point where the girls force me to choose between you and them, demanding that I stop seeing you or they’ll break up with me, I fully intend to explain to them that you’re simply not ready for that kind of stuff yet and that we’ll have to see how things develop over time.”
“Do you WANT to see me having sex with the other girls?”
I blinked. “Um, what?”
Eva shrugged. “I did that for Kai a few times. I told you I’d been with other girls before.”
“Uhhh, did you like it?” I asked lamely before mentally chastising myself for the uncouth question.
But if Eva minded, she didn’t show it, merely shrugging as she replied simply, “I came.”
I held my hands up and stated carefully, “As I’ve always said: I’ll never ask you to do something you’re not a hundred percent comfortable with.”
“But you’d still love to see me going down on Sam or Neevie while you filled me up with your big dick from behind,” she murmured while rubbing her hand over my package.
My dick twitching beneath her hand seemed answer enough, and I blushed. But rather than directly respond to her statement, I took a deep breath and said carefully, “I don’t need you doing anything for me just because it was something you did for Kai. I’m not him. I’ll never be him. And I can never take his place in your heart.”
Eva sighed and took her hand off my crotch.
“I know you’re not Kai.”
“I’m a guy you met less than three months ago, not the soulmate you thought you’d be with forever. I don’t have tats, I can’t surf, and I certainly don’t know more pidgin than Lily.” I took a deep breath and gave Eva an earnest look. “I’m your friend, and I want to do the best I can for you, but at the end of the day I can only be me. My feelings for you over these past few months can’t measure up to the feelings I know he had built up for you over years. And I know that the feelings you have for me can never measure up to the eternal love you will always have for your dead ex-boyfriend.”
Eva blinked in surprise. “Dead ex-boyfriend? Kai’s not dead.”
I blinked in surprise. “Wait, what?”
Eva sighed and stared off into the middle distance, that haunted expression back on her face. “Kai’s alive… but as far as I’m concerned, what happened to him is worse than death.”
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VIP is back on a 4-day schedule (except for Xmas)! The next chapters will post on 12/21, 12/26, and 12/30. If anyone wants to read ahead, Beta Tier has a 7-chapter lead.
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Comments
God of Tits and Wine
This hit way too close to home. I am hoping Kai is not a vegetable.
