The Back Up Benefit

The Best Friend With Benefits

We spent the rest of the night talking, laughing and generally feeling better that neither of us were in relationships.

But then it got kind of weird. For some reason we started kissing. At first just quite innocent kisses, as if this was to prove that Ricky liked women. Then things got lustier. Hands started to wander. Next thing I knew we were taking each other's clothes off and having amazing sex. That wasn't the weird part though. The weird part was that I was totally ok with it.

I wasn't this kind of girl. I usually over thought everything. I didn't go straight from the end of a relationship to rebound sex on the sofa with my best friend. But I was too busy enjoying it. And besides it was just Ricky. We had nothing to hide and trusted each other.

Well, it didn't seem so amazing the next morning when I got round to the over thinking part. I sat up in bed wondering if I should wake Ricky for breakfast. Normally I would make him something and take it to him in bed when he stayed over. But he wasn't normally naked when he stayed over and we'd never even kissed before last night. Would we still be friends after this? Maybe he wanted us to be together. I had to get out of the room before I freaked out and woke him up.

I was trying to find some clothes quietly in the half light when I heard him waking up. The bed side light clicked on and he looked over at me sleepily.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Putting some clothes on." I said as if the awkward one leg in my knickers and one leg out stance wasn't obvious enough.

"I can see that. Why didn't you put a light on?" he asked.

"I didn't want you to see me naked." I said. This also seemed pretty obvious.

"I saw you very naked last night. It's nothing new." he told me.

This was becoming a case of state the obvious.

"Well, I'm going to finish this and make breakfast." I said shyly.

I turned away as if blocking him out meant he wasn't there and got dressed in the first clothes I could grab. Then I went through to the kitchen, still not looking at him.

I was putting some bread in to the toaster when I saw him out of the corner of my eye. I turned to see he was just wearing my pink pyjama bottoms with cartoon owls on them.

"I couldn't find my stuff. I thought I must have left it around here somewhere." he muttered as he went to pick up his clothes.

I pushed a mug of coffee and a plate of toast across the table to him. We sat and ate in silence. A kind of silence we'd never had before. Occasionally he'd open his mouth to say something but seemed to think better of it and return to silence.

"So." I said.

"I'm so sorry Lizzie." he groaned and put his head in his hands. "I never planned that. It just happened. Can we still be friends? Or is this going to be weird?"

"I don't want to lose you." I said in a small voice.

"Thank god!" he sighed and looked up at me. "I know it's not the right time but I have to tell you we were amazing."

I gave him a small smile. "Yeah, we were pretty awesome!" I giggled.

"Probably the best ever!" he grinned.

"Thanks." I laughed shyly.

I was washing up when he came to stand next to me and leant against the side of the work top.

"Just throwing something out there." he said in a pondering tone.

"What's that?" I asked.

"We're friends who had amazing sex last night." he said and hesitated.

"Are you asking me out?" I asked.

"Not really. Why don't we stay friends but have benefits?" he said.

"I presume you're not referring to financial benefits from the government." I noted.

He gave a little chuckle. "Very clever. You see we know we get along well and we have fun. We're both single. I think we might have to change the plan if either of us meet someone. What do you think?"

"Yeah. Why not?" I shrugged.

As we agreed we were still friends. We still hung out together in public and would text and phone each other as usual. We kept up our weekly ritual of emailing each other cute and funny pictures or videos that reminded us of the other one. But a text message with the words "Are you free later?" was the code for our benefit.

At first I felt a bit dirty if I did something like sneak off to his place in my lunch break for a bit of fun. He would always drive me back to work afterwards. After a while I stopped caring that I got dirty looks from the rest of the staff at the pub I worked in. So what if I went to spend my break with someone who cared about me albeit only as a friend. He valued me as a person as well as someone to "keep you warm at night." He was the first man to treat me like that in a long time.

Nearly a year had gone by since that night. In some ways everything had changed with us. In other ways we were just the same.

Neither of us had met anyone so we continued the same way we had. We could have one night stands with anyone we wanted to, not that I did, but if one of us ended up in the relationship we would put our benefit on pause. The band did a lot of lot of touring and publicity around the world so Ricky wasn't always in London. For all I knew Ricky could be with a different girl every night. In a romantic relationship this would probably have been taken it's toll on us. As long as he used protection and didn't pass anything on to me it wasn't anything to do with me. We still called each other "bestie" and I tried to go to their gigs more if they were in the area.

At one of the gigs we were all hanging around backstage. There was the usual group. The band, their girlfriends or wives, a few friends and family. I often ended up chatting with Peanut who played keyboard. He was such a nice guy and Ricky often playfully took the mickey out of him which earned Ricky an elbow in the stomach.

"You know our Rick as good as me." Peanut said quietly. "How come there's not a girl on the scene lately?"

"Hasn't there?" I asked. I was just as much in the dark as he was.

"I haven't seen him with anyone and he hasn't said anything to us." he replied.

"No news from me either." I shrugged. Well, nothing other than that we often met up for a quick one.

"I think maybe he likes someone but he doesn't know how to tell her." he noted.

"Where'd you get that from? I didn't know he had those kinds of feelings." I replied.

"There's a lot more to him than just the charm!" he laughed.