by Elia Winters
“All right. Tell me all the shit you’re trying not to tell me.” Lori sat down at the desk, then looked over at the corner. “Like where your sex swing went.”
“I took it home to wash it and haven’t brought it back yet.” Hannah carried the flattened boxes out the back door to the shared cardboard recycling bin next to the dumpster. When she came back in, Lori was giving her an irredeemably smug look.
“Which one did you fuck in the sex swing?”
So much for stealth. “Ben.” Hannah reached up to remove her hair tie, letting her bun come loose. Her hair spilled down around her shoulders. “I fucked Mitchell in my bed.”
Lori whistled. “So much for ‘Oh, I can’t ask Mitchell out, he’s only looking for a serious relationship.’” She imitated Hannah with an exaggerated expression and air quotes, ridiculous enough to make them both laugh. “Tell me how this happened. You two have been making eyes at each other for a year.”
Hannah recapped her first encounter with Ben at the Chamber of Commerce meeting, then their subsequent date at the Night Owl, rehashing what she had learned about them along the way.
Before she got any further, Lori held up her hand. “Hold up. What did you just say?”
“I said that Ben told me he and Mitchell fuck sometimes.”
Lori shook her head. “Shit, I didn’t even know Mitchell was gay. I mean, bi. He’s bi, right?”
“Bi,” Hannah confirmed.
“Bi.” Lori nodded. “Do they each know you fucked the other one?”
“Yeah, of course they know. I’m not just gonna fuck two business partners, two best friends, back to back without telling either of them about the other.” Hannah dusted her hands off on her jeans. “That about does it for inventory.”
“You want to go get some tea?” Lori asked. “My treat.”
“I feel bad when you treat me.”
Lori rolled her eyes. “Don’t. Consider it payment for the sordid details.”
“And if I don’t give you sordid details?”
Lori fixed her with a death stare. “Make some up. I am on a sex drought and writing a thesis about polyamory. It’s the least you can do.”
Hannah laughed. It was hard to argue with that.
Lori kept peppering her with questions as they walked down the block to the teahouse, which would be open late. After some general discussion about the quality of the sex (excellent) and whether she’d compared the two guys (there was more than one kind of awesome), Lori moved onto the heavier questions.
“So what’s next? Was this a one-and-done thing? Notches on your headboard?” She sat down across from Hannah at a small table in the front window of the warm, cozy teahouse.
Hannah stared out into the darkness of the empty street. She’d been asking herself this same question. “I don’t know. I want to see them again. Both of them. But that seems like a terrible idea. I’ve been trying to convince myself that there’s a way to make it work, but I might be better off just leaving both of them alone and keeping this strictly business.”
“Why don’t you just date them both?” Lori tipped her head to the side, looking at her like it was the most obvious question in the world.
“Well, yeah, but I can’t do that forever.” Eventually she’d have to either choose one or choose neither.
“Why not?”
Hannah blinked. She probably should have expected this, with Lori’s dissertation topic, but having the idea of polyamory actually applied to her life felt way different than discussing the vague hypotheticals from Lori’s research.
At her silence, Lori pressed on. “There’s nothing deceitful about it. You don’t have to choose one. You could date both of them. You could even date more than just the two of them. You could sleep with them and not have a romantic relationship. You could have a romantic relationship with both of them, or all three of you together.” Lori ticked off the possibilities on her fingers.
Hannah pressed a hand to her forehead, suddenly overwhelmed. “I don’t want a romantic relationship with anybody.” Those kinds of relationships involved giving up too much and taking too much risk. Every guy she’d ever dated had wanted to be her one and only, to be the person she talked to about all her issues, to be more important than all her friendships. She couldn’t live like that. She liked her independence rather than being beholden to anyone. She didn’t like having no one to come home to, but that was a silly reason to get into a relationship. That was a reason to get a cat.
Plus, the thought of failing something else in her life was appalling. None of her relationships had ever worked out, and after a while, it was hard to pretend the problem wasn’t her. She didn’t need that kind of blow to her self-esteem, not when her business was already tanking.
“Okay, so that’s not on the table.” Lori was unfazed. “If you don’t want romance, then just date them. Fuck them. Something. But don’t force yourself to choose where there’s no choice that has to be made.”
The tea arrived, a delicious spread that included local milk and honey along with tiny ginger biscuits, and Hannah took the time to pour each of them a cup of the tea while trying to articulate the number of thoughts running through her head. Was it really as simple as Lori implied? She’d done casual dating before, but almost always in serial monogamy, where she’d see one guy for a couple of dates and then switch to a different guy when the first guy wasn’t working out. She sometimes had a few first dates within a few weeks of each other, but most didn’t lead to second dates. It felt wrong, somehow, to be having dates with multiple guys, even if there was no expectation of exclusivity.
“That doesn’t feel like polyamory to me.” Hannah sipped her tea. “That feels like…I don’t know. Sleeping around.”
Lori shrugged. “So what? It doesn’t have to be polyamory. You don’t have to be in love or have some deep emotional connection. You could just sleep around. I’m just saying, you’re inventing a problem, and there’s not a problem.”
Maybe she was right. Hannah contemplated the possibilities in silence, steam curling up from her tiny teacup.
Lori gave her a sly smile. “Lord knows it would be good for you to get some decent dick into your life. Talk it over with both of them. See what happens.”
Hannah shrugged, not wanting to make any commitments. It would be hard enough to shake Lori of this idea once she’d latched onto it. “Maybe. Enough about me. Tell me about how school is going for you.”
…
The moment Hannah walked into their living room, Mitchell thought, shit, this was a mistake. They should have picked a neutral space. Her presence filled up the living room as soon as she stepped through the door. Ben was like that, too, but Mitchell had mostly grown used to it. Plus, Ben was six and a half feet tall, so he definitely had a presence. Hannah, though, was only his height, tall for a woman but not unusually so, and yet she suddenly seemed to have sucked all the air out of the room.
“So this is where the magic happens.” Hannah put her hands on her hips and turned around in their living room, looking around at everything.
“The fucking usually happens in one of the bedrooms or the shower,” Ben offered helpfully, coming out from his bedroom. “Unless you mean something else by ‘the magic.’”
Hannah smiled. “I meant the restaurant planning, you doofus.”
Doofus? Mitchell hadn’t heard anyone called a doofus since he was a kid, and it made him chuckle. He flopped down onto the couch.
“But,” she added, “it’s good to know that you have your fucking limited to just a few key places.”
“This couch sometimes, too,” Ben added, as he sat down on it next to Mitchell, and Mitchell rolled his eyes.
“I cannot believe you are going to talk like this.” Mitchell gave Hannah a long-suffering expression. “Please don’t let him talk like this.”
Hannah smirked. “I think it’s kind of hot.” She sat in the armchair next to the couch. “But you’re right, you’re right. We have a lot of stuff to plan
before the festival.”
“I’ve submitted all the paperwork,” Mitchell offered. “I gave the description like we talked about, and I put down the deposit.”
“Right! Thanks for reminding me.” Hannah snapped her fingers. “I brought my half of the deposit. Is it okay if I pay the rest the day before the festival, when it’s due? I’m waiting for some stuff to clear.” She bit her lip as she rummaged around in her satchel, first pulling out her checkbook, then a tablet computer.
Mitchell nodded. “Sure.” He took the check from Hannah and went to tuck it into his wallet.
“Now, about the festival.” Hannah began tapping through some screens on her tablet. “I started to brainstorm some ideas for events. I thought if we could come up with enough content, we could have a selection of events that run throughout the evening. So people could come to multiple ones. We could put up a schedule earlier in the day and then try to attract a steady crowd.” Mitchell watched the tapping of her long fingers. He should probably find the notes he’d taken with Ben earlier that week.
“Here’s what we have.” Ben was already going through the notebook in which he wrote everything. It was just for show; Ben could remember whatever they’d talked about without having to put much effort into it. It was a talent Mitchell didn’t share, and one he frequently admired, even though Ben seldom talked about it.
“I agree. Pairings is a good place to start, while people are first getting warmed up to the idea.” Hannah had produced a pen from her bag somewhere and was tapping it lightly against her lips, which only brought Mitchell’s attention to how full and plump they looked and how gorgeous they’d been stretched around his cock.
Oh, fuck, not good. He pushed the thought from his mind, trying instead to focus on the words Ben had written in the notebook, the words he could read from the side as Hannah examined them.
“I don’t know much about beer, though.” She looked up at Ben. “If I go over the sex-toy descriptions with you, will you try to figure out what matches?”
“Yeah, that’s fine, or Mitchell, you could do that, too.” Ben looked over at him. “If you want to pair appetizers, we could add those.”
Mitchell frowned. “I’ve been thinking about apps and planning out the logistics of doing full food when we’ve been running a food station all day, and even just apps are going to be more than I want to handle. If it’s all right with both of you, I’d like to keep it to beer.”
“I’m fine with that,” Ben said. “Hannah?”
“Sure, sure, we can keep it simple.” She pointed at the notebook with one long finger. “What’s this mean here? It just says ‘Mitchell’s Game.’”
“Oh.” Mitchell looked over at the notebook, even though he hadn’t written anything specific in there about the game. “I had this idea when I was itemizing the kitchen inventory the other night.”
“That’s Mitchell’s idea of a good time,” Ben cut in.
Mitchell put his hand on the side of Ben’s head and shoved him away. “Nobody asked you.”
Hannah grinned, watching the two of them, and the expression on her face gave Mitchell a flush of warmth.
Mitchell cleared his throat and tried to focus. “Anyway, I realized that a lot of the stuff we use is really obscure, and I thought we could play a game of ‘sex toy or kitchen gadget.’”
Hannah’s eyebrows raised, and then she started laughing. “Sex toy or kitchen gadget?”
Mitchell nodded. “It’s perfect. It’s silly, and it ties in the restaurant with the shop. Everybody can play at once. We’ve got some pub swag for prizes, and you can give out… I don’t know, condoms or cheap toys or some kind of favors. Whatever doesn’t cost you a lot.”
“Right.” Hannah nodded. “I like that.”
“So we’ve got the pairings, and the game, and what else do we need?” Ben checked the notebook. “How long do we have the booth?”
“We’re there from eight to midnight,” Hannah said. “It’s a four-hour event. And not everyone’s going to want to spend the whole night at our tent. So we should have more short events rather than a few longer ones.”
“We could repeat some.” Mitchell could see that being a success. “Two rounds of each. I don’t know that they’ll take more than a half hour for each one, right? Maybe we can stagger them and start a new one on the hour.”
Ben crossed his arms. “Sounds good.”
Hannah was nodding, but she had a faraway look in her eyes, like she’d gone down some thought pathway and couldn’t get back.
“My main goal for the night is visibility.” Ben flipped through his notebook. “Bring new people into the restaurant. Also, boost brand recognition for the holiday beers. I don’t care as much about sales that night. We’ll sell, but it isn’t my top priority.”
Hannah didn’t seem to be coming out of her reverie, so Mitchell prompted her. “What about you? What are your festival goals?”
She looked a bit pained. “Honestly?” Her face said she didn’t want to actually give her honest answer. “Money’s tight. I’m trying to dig myself out of a bit of a hole with a boost in sales.”
Mitchell’s brow furrowed. “How much of a hole? Are things going okay for you?”
“Fine. I’m fine.” She shook her head, like she was trying to clear it, and didn’t meet his eyes. “Anyway, I’m hoping to make enough sales at this event that I can make up some of the difference.”
Her dismissal of the question wasn’t a good sign. Mitchell opened his mouth to push more, but Ben interrupted him. “Okay, so maybe we should envision some kind of third event or promotion to really maximize your sales.”
There had to be something they could do in that department. “Shit, it’s too bad you can’t just force people to come through and look at your stuff. Like how when you go to Ikea, you can’t just visit one section? You have to walk your way through the entire store.”
“That’s a great idea!” Ben jumped in. “What if we set up a sex-toy labyrinth?”
“What?” Hannah had already started to laugh.
“A labyrinth. We see if the committee will let us create a path of some kind to the booth, like with hanging curtains or cubicle walls or something, I don’t know.” Ben adjusted his seat on the sofa, tucking a knee under himself. “You can have sex toys along the way, maybe have people collect fun facts and trivia about them. At the end, you take a quiz, or maybe you try to name them all? Something like that. And we give you beer, and you win a prize.”
It wasn’t a half-bad idea, actually. Mitchell could see it working. “You pick your highest-profit-margin items to display. Then those are the toys you have available for sale. Oh! You could list their qualities, and then at the end, people have to match up which toys are best for which purpose, then that also helps people figure out what they might like.”
“That is seriously smart.” Hannah nodded slowly in approval. “I love it. We would have to get the festival coordinator to give us more space, though. I can’t…” She paused, then said the last part fast. “I can’t afford to spend any more on the booth.”
“No, that’s cool.” Ben held up a hand. “I’ll talk to him. We hit it off pretty well at the meeting.”
Ben hit it off well with everyone, everywhere he went. He pulled out his laptop and started typing away, all his attention turned to the screen. At Hannah’s quizzical look, Mitchell explained, “He’s going to send the email right now, I assume. He’ll tune back in to us in a minute.”
“He always like that? Just dives right into something, tunes the world out?”
“That’s what makes him good at what he does. Hyperfocus.”
“I can still hear you, you know.” Ben didn’t look up from his screen.
Mitchell grinned. “Completely oblivious to the world.” He started to poke Ben. “Like a mannequin.”
Still without looking up, Ben reached a hand over and swatted at Mitchell, slapping him away and making Mitchell laugh. Hannah watched them with her own smile. “You two a
re cute.”
“Ew. Don’t.” Mitchell shook his head. “Don’t call us cute.”
“Why not? You are cute.” She got up and set her tablet down on the coffee table, then squeezed herself into the nonexistent space between them on the sofa. Mitchell pushed over, complaining loudly of the invasion while Hannah only laughed.
She fit herself neatly in between the two of them, with Mitchell pressed against one side and Ben typing away on the other. When Ben finished his email, he folded the laptop and set it aside. “You just moving in here?”
Hannah put a hand on each of their legs and squeezed. “I like this. It’s cozy.”
“It’s hard to talk, though.” Mitchell stretched his arm out along the back of the sofa, angling his body slightly toward Hannah.
She looked over at Ben, then turned toward Mitchell. “We don’t need to talk, do we?”
Even having hoped for the evening to end up here, it still felt surreal looking into Hannah’s gray-green eyes while Ben watched them both. She licked her lips, a quick flicker of tongue. Then, leaning over toward him, she cupped his jaw and brought his lips to hers.
Hannah kissed delicately, teasingly, none of the deep searching of their last kisses so recently in her house. She was testing him, testing out this idea of kissing Mitchell with Ben right next to them, and fuck, it was hot. He slipped a hand into her hair and pulled her closer, tilting his head to deepen the kiss. Knowing they were being watched, feeling the gaze on him, he opened his eyes. Ben’s expression was rapt. His lips were parted, eyes focused on Mitchell’s. Fuck, this was intense, with Hannah’s tongue against his and Ben watching the two of them. Mitchell closed his eyes again to focus on the kiss, but Ben’s gaze still felt palpable even without seeing it.
Hannah sat back, giving Mitchell a smug look. She kept eye contact for a moment, then turned to face Ben. Without looking back at Mitchell, she leaned into Ben and kissed him, slow, steady, and Ben closed his eyes as Mitchell watched them. His cock stiffened in his jeans, this private pornography unfurling right in front of him. Damn, he was going to jerk off to thoughts of this for a long time.