It's Complicated

All characters in sexual situations are 18 years of age or over.

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Chad was the boy who took my virginity and ruined my senior year of high school. And when I made a deal with the devil to solve the unsolvable, it was Chad who offered me the pen to sign my name. But all that covers a lot of ground, so let me begin at the beginning.

Chad arrived as a new student in my suburban high school in the spring of my junior year. The Vice Principal delivered him to my Algebra II class about fifteen minutes into the period and as most of the two-person desks were full the teacher had him sit next to me. I glowed with pleasure for a moment while enjoying the looks from the other kids, especially a few of the other girls. The new boy was very cute; he had a very muscular build and beautiful blond hair. As he took his seat, he smiled with perfect white teeth, and his blue eyes seemed to sparkle at me. We talked a little bit during class before threats from the teacher finally forced our silence.

At lunchtime I was sitting in the cafeteria with some friends when I spotted Chad emerge from the kitchen with his tray in his hands and worry on his face. He was looking around the room for a safe place to sit when I waved my hand and got his attention. He slid into a seat across from me with a look of relief and I started to introduce him to my friends. That was the beginning of our friendship.

Chad did indeed have an athletic build which matched his many athletic pursuits. Better yet, he was no dumb jock. He was smart and funny and while he started hanging out with my group of friends a lot, it was he and I that were the closest. Within a week I had a huge crush on him.

Sometime that late spring the student council hung signs all over the school advertising the junior prom. I spotted Chad reading one of the signs as I ducked past him into Algebra II.

"Thinking about going to the dance?" I asked him as he slid into his seat.

"Sure. You?"

"Nobody asked me yet." I informed him. They had just hung the signs that morning after all.

"So go with me." Chad said casually, as if he had just commented on the weather.

My breath momentarily caught in my throat. Despite my intensifying crush on Chad, he had not shown me any signs that he thought of me as more than a friend. I quickly accepted his invitation.

We went to the dance with a large group. I spent the evening hanging out with the whole gang and dancing. During short breaks I would regroup with my closest friend Chelsea in the bathroom to obsess about Chad. In the weeks leading up I'd let my crush get away with me and I convinced myself that Chad had asked me to the dance because he was falling in love. As the dance went on I started to despair that he wasn't going to make a move. All of this build up only made the moment more magical when it happened.

Near the end of the dance the DJ told everybody to grab 'that special someone' because he was playing the last slow song. I glanced around and I was thrilled to see Chad heading my way. He grabbed my hand and dragged me onto the floor. He held me close and looked into my eyes before he suddenly leaned in for a kiss. It was so exciting and so wonderful I thought I would melt. We continued to kiss and hug on the floor for the rest of the song. When it ended the DJ cranked up 'Mony Mony' and everybody started dancing. Laughing, we joined them.

After that we were a couple. The rest of the school year went by in a blink of an eye. We were both accepted to universities in Michigan and our future together through another year of high school and then on into college seemed possible.

I remember that summer as a succession of warm evenings out with Chad, usually ending with us making out in his car in my parents driveway when he dropped me off. By July I knew I wanted to give him my virginity, and I went to my OB for a script to get the pill. Then I just had to wait three months to become safe before finding a perfect time for it to happen.

Chad's father was some kind of special 'Mr. Fix It' for his company, a huge industrial corporation. Chad had once explained to me that he had moved around his entire childhood as his dad was transferred from plant to plant, stepping in to make each losing plant profitable one at a time. The constant moving sucked, but Chad's parents also seemed to be really well off. In October Chad's dad had to travel to El Paso to visit some factory in crisis. Chad's mom was going with him and they were staying over the weekend. I saw my chance to consummate our love at Chad's house while they were gone.

Chad asked me what I wanted to do during the weekend on Friday afternoon as we hung out after school. "I'd like you to invite me over to your house and cook me dinner." I told him.

"You must have never tried my cooking before." Chad said.

I leaned close to Chad's ear. "Well, after dinner I thought you might like to make love to me." Chad looked into my eyes for several moments in surprise before he started to nod his head. Then a smile crept into his face.

"I'd like that a lot." He told me.

Chad was nowhere near as poor a cook as he had implied, and the dinner was actually quite good. After dinner he surprised me by suggesting that we watch a movie together. I've known enough teen boys to know that this was a remarkable show of patience. Most boys expecting sex after dinner would have torn my clothes off for dessert.

When the movie ended we started making out. Soon we were touching each other all over and removing each other's clothes. For being only eighteen and so inexperienced, Chad turned out to be a good lover. He brought me to an orgasm with his fingers before finally sliding between my legs to bring our virgin status to end. I felt his thick cock press against my opening. Then Chad stared deeply into my eyes as he slid it steadily into me. "Oh Chad" I whispered as I felt myself stretched to a delicious fullness.

On Wednesday the next week Chad drove me home from school. As we sat in my parent's driveway he delivered a bombshell. Chad's dad was transferring to El Paso to take charge of a factory in Juarez immediately. His mother had gone on the last trip to look for housing. Their current house was rented and the company was willing to pay the fees to break the lease. Chad was going to be gone within weeks, probably before Thanksgiving and certainly by Christmas.

I cried a lot. I fucked a lot too. Chad and I clung to each other and our new love, unwilling to let go. We made mad, passionate love whenever we could. We would have sex in his car at night on deserted roads, or in my room after school before my parents got home from work. I think we were trying to fit a life worth of loving into the weeks we had left.

All too soon the day arrived for Chad to leave. We promised to love each other forever and to stay true; all those things that naïve kids think can happen. We kissed one final time in his driveway. Then he got into the car with his mother and the drove off to the airport. I just stood there in front of his empty house for a long time after he left feeling sick to my stomach.

I moped for the next several months. Chad and I e-mailed frequently, and each new note made me feel dizzy with joy and crushed with despair at the same time. I think my parents were getting worried about me. My mother suggested that perhaps it would be best if I dated other boys at school, which I would not hear of. By February Chad's replies started coming less frequently. The week before Easter I got The Letter.

Chad had broken his commitment to attend the university here in the Midwest. He was going to some college in Texas instead. His letter was both logical and devastating. We were going to be 1500 miles apart for as long as he could foresee. We had no chance to see each other. It would be best if we both moved on.

I was despondent for the rest of the school year. I dropped a few activities, skipped the prom and mostly concentrated on my studies. It was not exactly the senior year I had been hoping for.

But life does move on, and so did I.

I went to Michigan State that fall. I made a lot of new friends, dated a few men and got a little serious with a couple of them. By midwinter I was having fun, Chad firmly in the rearview mirror. I expected I'd never hear from him again.

In the fall of my second year I met Ben, a fourth year pre-law student. Ben was different from Chad in about a million ways. Equally brilliant, Ben was more bookish and decidedly not an athlete. He was cute nonetheless, and I was a little flattered when he asked me out. Ben had light brown wavy hair with dark brown eyes that you could get completely lost in. He had a great wit and a funny streak that could turn biting at times. He was never sharp when speaking with me though, and I knew his biting humor was a little bit of a crutch for his insecurities.

The next fall I stayed at State while Ben started law school at U of M in Ann Arbor. The two schools are only about an hour apart so the distance was just an inconvenience. We kept on much the same for the next two years. This all sounds boring I suppose as I gloss through it, but the truth is that we were in love and very happy together. During the long days we were apart we were both busy with our studies and our friends, so life was very easy.

Ben took me out for a special dinner after I graduated and proposed. I remember I was so happy I burst into tears. Ben was confused momentarily, but when I grabbed him and told him 'yes' he figured it out. We planned to have the wedding in another year after Ben finished law school.

The summer Ben graduated he accepted a position as a junior lawyer at one of the biggest law firms in Chicago. We followed his graduation with a large wedding in July. I'd have been happy with a smaller affair really, but it was Ben's parents who insisted on such a large event and they were willing to pay for it. After the wedding we bid farewell to our families and moved to our new home in Chicago.

If you have ever read a John Grisham novel, you know what life is like for new lawyers at large firms. 80 hour weeks are typical and Ben's firm was no exception. I kept busy finding a job and then getting myself established at work. I tried some activities in the area, joining a bowling league that winter and then playing softball in the spring.

Still, I was lonely. Ben was frequently gone and my new friends and activities were only so fulfilling. In hindsight, I think this loneliness triggered a strong mothering desire in me. I started to crave a baby.

I brought it up with Ben a little before we had been in Chicago two years. I expected him to resist the idea and cite a million reasons not to start a family. He was working so hard, our families were so far away, he could have argued anything. Instead, I think he understood my need. Ben held me close and rubbed the tip of his nose against mine. "I think you'd make a wonderful mother." Was all he said before he gave me the most tender kiss. That day I threw my birth control pills in the trash.

They warn you not to get your hopes up for the first three months coming off the pill. Plus, Ben's work schedule often interfered with us having sex at the best times. So after three months I wasn't too worried.

When I got my period after six months, I bit back tears. It takes a while for some people I told myself over and over. Plus, a lot of the times I was at my most fertile Ben would be off travelling for a deposition or simply too tired from a hard day. I rationalized that we had just missed a few key moments and that the next month would be the one. Still, I found myself wandering the aisle with the fertility and pregnancy books nearly every time I was at the library.

After ten months I visited my OB. There was nothing obviously wrong with me, and she was reluctant to start a bunch of invasive tests on someone as young as me. "Give it to a year first and we can check more. In the meantime, the easiest thing to check is your husband's sperm. Have him tested." She told me.

That turned out to be easier said than done. When I brought up the subject, it sparked a very uncharacteristically heated argument with Ben. I was stunned. I had apparently touched a nerve, one that went straight to some insecurities relating to Ben's image of himself as a man.

I tried to bring the subject up again for a couple months, but it quickly was becoming taboo. The conversation about Ben's fertility was walled off from conversation. I finally found the leverage I needed when my OB completed a very thorough exam on me. I forced Ben to accompany me to the office for my results. There was absolutely no reason that she could find for my not having conceived in over a year. The OB told Ben sternly that he had to get himself checked out. He reluctantly agreed.

Ben made and kept an appointment with a urologist. On a Thursday afternoon Ben and I were to meet at the urologist's office for a consultation about the results. Ben was a no-show for the appointment. I waited in the lobby for 45 minutes calling his cell phone, but he would not pick up. Eventually I got the urologist to meet with just me. Ben's doctor was nonplussed. "Realistically, this information affects both your husband and you. But strictly put, it is his medical information." I pressed him to tell me the results even without Ben. Finally he sighed and agreed to share the news. He spread his hands and said "Susan, your husband has a sperm count that is similar to a man who has had a vasectomy. The simple truth is that given time, you will probably never conceive. There are some things we could discuss....."

I drove home wiping tears from my eyes. Ben came home late with no explanation for his absence and we ate dinner in silence. After that things seemed to return to normal. Ben would not consider adoption and I knew better than to bring up the idea of assisted or even worse, artificial insemination. He talked himself into believing a fantasy. "If we just keep trying, we'll conceive eventually'" he told me. I threw myself into my friends and activities with even more enthusiasm and tried not to think about how desperate I was.

Reading this compressed account of our fertility problems, you might have the impression that we were at loggerheads daily and on the brink of divorce. This isn't how things were. Most of the time we were still a happy couple. Despite my extreme frustration with Ben's avoidance of his fertility issue, I still loved him. On Sundays when he was finally free of the tyranny of his law firm we had wonderful afternoons together in the shops and museums of Chicago. Still, our union was on a precipice. The current negotiated peace could not last. I could never be happy childless and I would have to find a solution whether that was adoption, artificial insemination or even, as I considered in my darkest fears, divorce and moving on. And if Ben could not face the situation and work with me to find a solution then our marriage was probably doomed. The reality was that our apparent return to normalcy was really just a postponement of the crisis we were in.

I guess some of the strain between us was bubbling to the surface. After the office Christmas party, Ben was encouraged to take a vacation by one of the senior partners. As he explained it to me at home, they told him to 'Take that pretty wife of yours someplace warm for a week and see if you can make her smile.' And with that we planned a mid-winter trip to Hawaii.

The flight was brutally long, but after connecting through Honolulu we wound up on the island of Maui. We eschewed the huge resorts and booked ourselves into a small resort compound of individual condos that were situated off the beach. There was a nice small town in walking distance and a few large resorts down the road in case we wanted any amenities that they offered, but the idea of a small private place appealed to us.

We spent the first day relaxing on the beach. We swam a bit and mostly just lay about drinking funny drinks with umbrellas while recovering from jet lag. True to my chatty nature, I made a friend. Jennifer was from Dayton where she had some type of boring office job. She'd won a trip to Hawaii on a radio station contest and so here she was. I bumped into her when I walked up from the beach to use the bathroom by the bar. We talked a while, long enough to realize that she was a very funny person. I told her I hoped to see her around and headed back down to the water to my lounge chair by Ben.

The second day was when things turned interesting. I had taken birth control pills from the time I decided to first sleep with Chad until the time that Ben and I agreed to try and start a family. Since stopping the pill, I had gotten a lot more in touch with my cycles. My period had ended a few days before we left for the islands and I knew that I would be increasingly horny as I approached ovulation while on vacation. This was fine with me as I knew it would lead to some nice sexual episodes with Ben in our beachside bedroom.

I mention this because of my mood on day two. Once Ben and I reached the beach I couldn't help but notice this one guy standing on the sand staring out to sea. He was really good looking, and since I was feeling a little randy I looked him over in detail. He was pretty muscular, but not in a body builder kind of way. More like a swimmer. He had blond hair and when he turned to look back my way I saw that he had a very handsome face. I also suddenly realized that I knew him.

"Chad? Is that you?" I was actually in shock. The coincidence of running into my high school sweetheart here in Hawaii a decade later was hard to believe. The man turned again to look at me. A long moment passed.

"Susan?" he asked. Oh shit. It was really him.

My heart was pounding in my chest. I was so flustered I was at a complete loss. For a long time we stared into each others faces before I suddenly remembered Ben. He was standing beside me looking at me with a question on his face. "Uh, Ben. This is Chad. We went to high school together." I finished with a vague truth.

An aside is due here. Once Ben and I were serious we had the usual talk about sexual partners. We covered the who, the when and the how many. The truth was that neither Ben nor I had been with very many others and neither of us were especially experienced. Despite this, I had lied to Ben and told him my first was someone in college. I had never mentioned Chad.

I was not embarrassed about my past with Chad. It wasn't about the fact that I had slept with him in high school or anything like that. The truth was that even after all the years our loss was still a little painful to me. And as my first, Chad had been something special. He had remained my secret.

Ben and Chad exchanged pleasantries. I was fit to burst with a million questions. Fortunately, after the two men were introduced Ben sensed my desire to be alone with Chad. Ben is not a jealous type and he knew he could trust me. I'm sure he understood that two old friends would want to catch up and that our shared stories of high school would doubtless bore him. He stretched a bit. "God! beautiful morning, huh? I think I'm going to do some snorkeling out on the reef." With that, Ben left us alone for almost two hours.

First we just marveled at the incredible coincidence of running in to each other in Maui of all places. 'You arrived yesterday and I'm leaving day after tomorrow." Chad said. It was amazing that our time at the resort condos overlapped. Then Chad and I quickly caught up on the past ten years. My story as I have related to you was pretty damn boring. Then Chad filled me in on his life story from the time of our parting.

After The Letter, Chad spent one year at college in Texas. He did fine academically, but soon decided that college was not for him. As he explained it, he must have inherited his own father's wanderlust. After 9/11 Chad's urge to do something else found a purpose. Chad had left school and joined the Army with some vague goal of fighting terrorism.