Committed by Gina Bristow

In the beginning

Friendships are just committed relationships that usually do not involve sex. I have way too many friends. Just how did I get so freaking lucky? I’m not going to say that I haven’t had a more-than-friend type of relationship with anyone, but I will say that they are few and far between. I feel that I am ready for a new love but it seems that the guys I'm around are not.

I began my spinster’s lifestyle back in high school. Just remember, this was back in high school where almost everybody was selfish and highly self absorbed. My last high school boyfriend, oh how I hated him, (well not hate but as close as you can get on a Sunday.) He wore really thick glasses, high-water pants and breathed loudly through his nose like he was snoring. You would think that he was asleep standing up.

Nevertheless, It was nearing February and I had never before been caught without a boyfriend on Valentines Day. So, since he had liked me even before he knew me, to what I heard tell of him. I used him to complete my record then broke up with him in March, because I didn't want to seem like I was breaking up with him after the holiday of love was over, wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am, (the present was lovely, now, please leave…) even though that was my original plan.

Still, for some reason after that fiasco I didn't really feel like having a boyfriend. Whether it is because I had a guilty conscience or because superficial relationships like that didn’t catch my fancy, I’ll never know. All I did know was that I just didn’t want a boyfriend. Or so I thought, until that summer when Sesshoumaru Hirohito and I became friends. Now, that was a really weird one, I had hated him since the beginning of the tenth grade, when he began to tease me relentlessly about being a virgin; among other things.

When I was fifteen, my mom sent me off to virginity camp. I know, you’re there reading this with a look on your face, scoffing and laughing because you don’t believe that there is, or ever will be, such a thing. Well, open your eyes buddy because there is or at least there was. However, I was not alone in this excursion, my older sister, Kikyo, was also forced to go. So we were off to a week at a resort where virginity camp counselors repeatedly shoved that ‘It’s great to wait’ slogan down our throats.

This week long hymen hyping ended in a ceremony in a church in front of friends and family where we vowed to wait to have sex until we were married. I think back on it now and, with the white dresses and exchanging of rings, it sort of make me think that I was married to Christ until a guy, I had a little less faith in, came and asked for my hand. All in all it’s a noble idea but it left me stuck in a position where, in this day and age, if you want to get married you got to thump the melon to see if it’s fresh, if you know what I mean. Whereas, because of my vow I can’t even think about giving the milk away until you’ve bought the cow. I’m mixing metaphors here, but think you get my drift.

Hiro’s little sister Rin was also a bride of Christ, so he was in attendance. He even had a few pictures taken from the event that he likes to flash around and show everyone (and their mom) that I was ‘Married to the Lord’, he always said this with a very grave inflection. This, and his other actions during this time, didn’t actually make me swoon for him. And let me tell you, I can usually hold a grudge with disastrous consequences, but there we were, the summer between our junior and senior years, in a Drivers Ed course together, becoming fast friends because of an alphabetized seating chart.

It was nearing the end of the course we only had a couple more weeks left and soon I wouldn’t be forced out of boredom to converse with Hirohito. We were in groups of four but it was really hard to hold a conversation of any sort with the stoner exchange student so I had given up on that long ago.

The other girl in our group thought herself so popular that she would not deign to talk to me. She had given Hiro a try but her form of popularity involved being a bit whorish and he informed her, quite frankly, that associating with her was just not suitable. She pretty much didn’t like that so he was also on her black list.

I woke up in a snitty mood that day so to offset my attitude, I wore my favorite black and grey flowered dress and cute head band with little butterflies on it that I had painted yellow, because it was my favorite color. Hiro and I were sitting on our self assigned fallen log waiting for our turn to drive. He was humming to fill in one of the silences in our conversations. I thought I knew the song but I just couldn’t place it. I looked at him and found that he was already looking at me with a weird grin.

I stood up for some unknown reason and he followed suit. Suddenly he grabbed me around my waist forcing me into some pantomime of a dance and he started singing that song from reading rainbow. You know ‘butterflies in the sky I can fly twice as high’ . . . and as I gazed into his eyes. After that I was gone. Done for. Toast. I had fallen for him, like a chump.

I flatter myself that I did a pretty good job of hiding it. I was sure that he had no idea. I still treat him as if he is just a mere irritation just not worth the effort of ignoring. I never told him about it, or anyone else for that matter, because I didn't want to like or love him like that, all I wanted was to be his friend. Aw, who am I kidding? Of course I wanted to tell him that I loved him. It’s just that I wasn’t too fond of rejection. And if it turned out that he didn’t want me that way, then I didn’t want to not be able to face him and, eventually, lose him after we had become such good friends. I did like, at the very least, having him as a friend.

But, to tell you the truth, he really messed me up inside. He messed with my head! All because he just had to be the sweetest, funniest, nicest, dorkiest guy I knew. And that was why I just couldn’t seem to get him out of my mind or even think about wanting to be with anyone else.

I had always seen my virginity as a sort of catch-22 type situation. It was something that at times I desperately wanted to get rid of but then other times I hoarded like water in an endless desert. Now at the ripe old age of 25, I thought I was stuck with it. I really had no hopes of ever getting married. I mean, sure, like every other girl I had my fantasy colors, dress, and bridesmaids picked out but I never put any stock of finalization into my dream wedding. That was the case for three major reasons.

1. My fantasy was just too damn expensive; that is unless I married Donald Trump or Bill Gates (alas sadly both are currently taken and very old. Yuck…)

2. No one could convince me that any guy with half a brain would want to marry me, not that I was actually looking for a guy with that much cognitive reasoning skill.

3. The only guy I would even consider marrying only saw me as his ‘home girl.’ (Good God! You don’t even know how much I hate being called a home girl!)

But no matter what I say now about that damn virgin camp the message stuck and stuck hard. I must have missed that item on the schedule where they taught you how to ignore what they said and never let it affect you because my sister, who has never been engaged, let alone married, is now 27 and has four kids, two with Sesshou’s younger brother InuYasha.

I find it ironic that, she obviously broke her vow time and time again but she still has the ring from the ceremony. I lost mine. And sometimes I wonder if the dang thing is helping her get laid. After going down that line, I wondered if it could possibly be true and that leads me to wonder whether I was actually lucky or unlucky for losing my ring.

I don’t know if you know this, but I’m a bit geeky and nerdish. Not ‘computer-RPG-gamer-all-night-long-and-all-your-potions-are-belong-to-me’ kind of nerd. Just the study all weekend, never go to a club or party with the Greeks until the break of dawn type of nerd. Sesshoumaru Hirohito, is neither of those. How could he be? I think it’s a requirement in the Hirohito bloodline to be super hot and Sesshou, with no trouble whatsoever, has easily set the bar. He has long, silky, flowing hair; gorgeous, blazing, golden eyes; killer lips, mmm-good, broad shoulders and a body that was so stupefying it would make your grandmother’s mouth water. God. The man was a walking wet dream. That body captivated me into doing extremely stupid things.

The gym was always nearly empty at this time of day. Only the most diehard of workout-aholics actually utilized the 24-hour part of the facility. I wouldn’t be here either if it wasn’t so hard to resist Hirohito when I was hypnotized by the dream him and practically asleep.

So here I was on the treadmill trying to build up a quick sweat so that Sesshou would think that I had been working out the whole time, instead of asleep like I had been on that vinyl couch in the trainer’s room. I was having a nice dream of a normal day with Sesshou in my room back in college while I was trying to study. I was ignoring him as well as I could. It’s hard to completely ignore the man you’re secretly in love with. But as usual he took my silence as a welcome and flopped down on my bed as if he owned the place.

He didn’t say anything and the room was filled with silence, except for the sound of the springs on my bed creaking. I turned to look at him and his image morphed from him lounging in boredom to him lying there with just a white sheet across his hips to hide his more interesting parts. But before it could get better the alarm on my watch went off and I jumped up to begin my subterfuge.

I was just adjusting the elevation when the machine suddenly stopped. I was headed face first into the console when I was bodily yanked back. It didn’t take much to deduce what had just happened, especially with the soft chuckles sounding in my ear. I jerked out of Hiro’s arms and rounded on him to give him the verbal thrashing that he so regularly receives from me when I was struck dumb, but, when I turned, all I could see was sweat, glorious, glistening sweat on his shining porcelain skin.

He could forgo the showers cause I would lick him clean here and now.

He was talking. I knew he was because his mouth was moving; only I couldn’t actually hear him. I could feel the sonic waves of his baritone wafting across my highly sensitized skin. I almost moaned when he grabbed my shoulder until he snapped his fingers in front of my face, then his voice came rushing to me and I could understand the words that were coming out of his mouth.

“Will you come?”

It was probably due to the fantasy that I just snapped out of and the fact that most anything he says sounds like an innuendo that I said yes. Hirohito actually mesmerized me enough to get me to accompany him to Vegas. A very dirty trick. But, then again, I mean, can you blame me? He was shirtless for pity’s sake! If you had all those abs in your face believe you me, you’d be stupefied too. But I did and that was how I ended up in this Las Vegas motel room staring at the ceiling trying to bore myself into sleep.

*****