Cheating Platonically with McDreamy

It was a weekend night close to the end of college. I went over to my friend's house -- we'll call her Princess, since I know she'd love that -- planning to do my first power hour. I'd watched people do it, but I'd never done it myself. I was fully prepared, having just finished a large pasta dinner.

Princess had put a 60-song playlist together, bookended by two of our favorite and/or meaningful songs ("No Scrubs" and "Bohemian Rhapsody"). Each song was set to play only sixty seconds and then end, and with each the beginning of each new song, we downed a shot of beer. All that pasta paid off, because neither of us felt that drunk at the end, even though we had drunk the equivalent of several beers. That was when the two guys came over. There was Cartel, the crazy Colombian whose lifelong goal was to become a drug trafficker and who claimed to love nothing better than pleasing a woman sexually. And then there was his friend McDreamy, the pre-med, handsome guy whom I had had an ebbing and flowing crush on since we had poetry class together the year before. I had always felt a level of attraction between us, maybe even a bit of sexual tension, but we had never even gotten close to acting on it.

The four of us drank, hung out, laughed, enjoyed some of the last moments of senior year. As time went on, more seniors kept trickling in, until Princess's living room was full of empty beer cans, solo cups, jello shot trays and laughing people. That's when the stripping games began.

It never got too serious -- it was just strip poker, nobody losing anything beyond a pair of shoes. Then, at around 1:30 AM or so, someone got the idea of us going to the beach and skinnydipping into the water. I know it wasn't my idea because I got so excited the minute I heard it! And before long, Princess and I had gathered up towels and piled everyone into two cars (driven by sober drivers).

It was FREEZING that night -- probably in the high fifties, low sixties. But that didn't stop us. Five of us peeled off our clothes -- me, Princess, McDreamy, Cartel and another girl -- and ran right into the water. What always surprises me is that I didn't look at the guys at all! Not the girls, either -- I didn't look at anyone. I just ran in and thought about how the guys were probably looking at our naked bodies, including all of our dry friends on shore. I got into water up to my waist as McDreamy ran in next to me. I held out my hand and he grinned and briefly grabbed it, then dove in.

At this point, I should explain that I was dating someone.

There was this guy that I'll call Round, for he was pretty round-shaped. I've never dated a heavier guy, and anyone who knows me knows I'm all about the skinny guys. Like McDreamy. He could just stand next to me and be classified my type. But I digress.

Round and I had met the year before, but hadn't become romantically involved until a month or so beforehand. At that time, I was still relishing in a breakup of a relationship that could have easily destroyed the rest of my life with its sheer boringness. The guy was perfectly nice and wonderful to me, not to mention well off, but he was horribly boring and I now realize that I could have gotten trapped into staying in that relationship forever. That's why meeting Round was so spectacular -- every time we ran into each other at a party, we'd just sit down and talk about travel, languages, cultures, the world. It was amazing to talk with someone who was passionate about the same things I was passionate about. Passions on top of passion, as my friend Miranda might say.

And it was great at first. It was exciting; it felt amazing. It seemed like I had finally found someone who actually got me, whom I actually respected. He'd hold my hand and he wouldn't drop it when his friends came by. I could stand back and look at him and be awed by him, and even more awed that he wanted to be with me.

And then the initial passion died out. He began acting more and more like a jerk. He'd bring me to hang out with his friends, and then promptly ignore me. That's fine when I'm in a group of people we both know -- but when you purposely bring me along with people I don't know, that is NOT cool. I once called Miranda when he abandoned me one time during a weekend away, begging her to stay on the phone with me so I'd have something to keep me from sitting alone all night. He became condescending about my best talent. He insulted me. Before long, I knew I'd had enough. But I didn't want to break up so close to the end of the school year, especially since he was going to be my date to the senior dance. Even so, it wouldn't be much of a breakup. I never considered him my boyfriend, although we were "in a relationship" according to facebook.

Anyways, back to the ocean.

So I was still involved with Round as the five of us skinny-dipped in the water in the middle of the freezing cold night. As soon as we had jumped in, we ran out and grabbed the towels, drying off, then putting our clothes back on. I think I called or texted Round, telling him what we had just done. He didn't answer, anyway.

Back at Princess's house, we kept up the drinking, even though it was past 2:30 by then. One by one, people began leaving. We kept playing stripping games, and this time more and more items of clothing came off. Soon, Princess was practically passed out on the couch, so we made her drink some water and took her up to bed. And by the time I came downstairs, everyone had gone except for McDreamy and Cartel.

The three of us kept up the strip poker for an hour or so. And then we began playing it in its simplest form -- each of us drawing a card, and whoever had the lowest one had to remove another item of clothing or do a shot. And it seemed that I kept losing. I didn't want to drink any more, but I kept taking more and more jello shots. Before long, the three of us were sitting with nothing but sheets wrapped around us. The pasta had been good to me in terms of preserving my sobriety, but it began to get fuzzy, and at the guys' insistence, I had lost even the sheet, just sitting with my legs tightly crossed and an arm in front of my boobs.

Then we got dressed and decided to go over to McDreamy and Cartel's house down the street. We did that. I think we were planning to smoke -- or at least drink some more, continuing the party. By the time we got outside, the sun was rising.

I don't remember what happened once we got inside, but I remember Cartel left and McDreamy looked at me and said, "Look, I know you're with Round. I don't even know Round, but I respect Round, and I'm not going to do anything. But do you want to sleep over? We won't do anything."

And I followed him upstairs. Even though we had spent a lot of time together naked, we got into bed with all of our clothes on -- his roommate, sleeping in a bed in the other side of the room, didn't stir -- and McDreamy was on his back the inside of the bed, I lay on my right side and pressed into him, and he put his arm around me. We must have fallen asleep immediately.

I woke up several hours later and was careful not to move. I discreetly checked the time and saw it was close to noon. He slightly moved. I nestled back into his arm. He put his other arm around me. No kissing, nothing sexual. We breathed. My heart was pounding the entire time. So was his.

Forget sex -- sometimes, not having sex is exponentially more arousing.

His hands ran down my arms and back. I felt his arms and turned my cheek against his chest. His hands were all over my body, but in such a subtle way, it was like he was still asleep. We both seemed to acknowledge that neither of us wanted to know that the other was awake. That would mean that we would have to think about exactly what we were doing, especially since I was spending the night in another guy's bed, another guy who was rock hard and holding me in his arms. We mutually decided, without any verbal communication, that we wanted to stay in the haze we were in. It was like having a wonderful dream, and doing anything to stay in it -- doing anything to enter it once again.

Eventually, we dozed in and out of sleep again. He then rolled into a sprawling position, taking up most of the bed and leaving me to cling to the edge. By the time 2:00 came around and he was still breathing heavily and evenly, I gently slipped out of bed and put my shoes on. I wanted to leave him a casual, one-line note, signed with just an initial. I found paper in a printer, but couldn't find a writing utensil. I was resigning to using a broken pencil when he stirred again and opened his eyes.

"Hey," I said softly.

"Hey."

"I'm gonna go, okay?"

"Okay." He sat up, smiled at me, and opened his arms. I gave him a hug (a long, real hug) and walked downstairs and outside, doing one of my final walks of shame as a college student. Ten minutes later, I was back at my apartment. My roommate, who had been at the party and the skinny-dipping incident at the beach the night before (yet elected to drive and keep her clothes on) gave me a look.

"Did you hook up with McDreamy?" she asked before saying anything else. I was surprised she said it so bluntly -- but this hadn't been the first time I'd cheated on someone with a friend of ours.

"I think McDreamy and I just had a platonic sleepover," I replied.

Nowadays, if I ever want to feel something intense, that's what I close my eyes and think about. Laying in bed in a guys' house, a roommate snoozing across the room, and McDreamy holding me in his arms, running his fingers up my back, his rock-hard cock pressed against me, yet doing nothing. Absolutely nothing.

That's what I always think of first.