by Megan Hart
“What about James?”
“He hasn’t said anything to me about it. If they’ve talked about it, he hasn’t said anything.”
She laughed. “Anne, dudes don’t ‘talk.’ They shoot the shit, but they don’t ‘talk.’” Her fingers made quotes in the air around the word.
I smiled. “I know. But they do talk. I hear them, sometimes. But I don’t know if they talked about me.”
“What do you think he could say?” Claire sighed and leaned back to pat her stomach, which only looked rounded if you were looking to see the bump. She belched, long and slow. “Ah, that was a ten.”
“It’s like I didn’t mean anything to him.” It felt both better and worse to say it aloud. “Like it was just the sex.”
Claire looked a little sad. “Annie. Maybe it was.”
I had no right to cry about it, but I did, anyway. I shielded my face inside my hands, embarrassed by my tears. “But why? Why doesn’t he love me the way he loves James?”
She patted my shoulder. I hastily dried my tears with a napkin. She reached for another handful of cheese curls, and I was grateful for the time she gave me to recover.
“Sorry.”
Claire shrugged. “I wish I could tell you what to do, sissy. Do you love him?”
“Alex?”
“No. The King of England.”
“There is no King of England.”
“Duh,” said Claire. “I know that.”
I sighed and toyed with the food on my plate. “I don’t know.”
“Hey, listen, it sucks big hairy donkey balls when someone doesn’t love you, even if you don’t love them.”
I looked at her. “So elegantly put.”
“When’s he leaving?”
“I don’t know. Soon. He’s been here for two months.”
“You could kick his ass out,” she suggested. “Get rid of him. Then you won’t have to think about it.”
If only it were that easy. “Thanks.”
“Anne,” Claire said with a sigh. “What bothers you more? The fact he might be in love with James, or the fact he’s not in love with you?”
“I just feel like the biggest fool,” I replied in a low voice. “They planned this, the two of them. I’d have been angrier about that, except I wanted it, too.”
“Told you. Kink-ay!”
I smiled. “But then it got to be more than I expected…for me. But not for him.”
“Are you sure about that?”
I gave her a good imitation of one of her looks. “He’s barely talked to me in a week. After I told him I thought this was becoming more than it was supposed to. After I asked him why we kept doing it, and he said because we couldn’t stop.”
She perked up, leaning forward with her elbows on the table. “That’s an interesting thing to say. That you couldn’t stop.”
“He was right. I couldn’t stop. Even though I knew I should, that it wasn’t just sex anymore. That I…felt…something.” I refused to let myself cry again. “I know why he’s Jamie’s best friend, Claire. I know why the Kinneys never liked him. Because James around Alex is like a different person, almost. Like the only thing around him is Alex. No wonder Mrs. Kinney hates him. He took her baby boy away, and unlike me, Alex doesn’t let her walk all over him.”
“Do they fuck? Did they ever?”
Because she asked so matter-of-factly, I could answer. “I don’t think so.”
“Maybe they should. Get it over with. So they can stop thinking about it all the time.”
I pressed my fingertips to my lids to hold back the tears that just wanted to keep on coming. “I think the only reason they both slept with me was because they couldn’t sleep together. Alex only wanted me because…because he couldn’t have James. He never really wanted m-m-me at all.”
There it was. The worst, for me. I’d given up and given in to longing for someone who didn’t even want me. I’d been a substitute for something they both wanted and neither could have.
James snored beside me, but I wasn’t asleep. We’d gone to bed hours ago. Alone. Alex had gone out and hadn’t come home. Now I waited in the dark for the sound of tires crunching on gravel, the door opening. A familiar footstep in the hall.
I sensed him in the doorway as much as I heard him. He’d come in with the sort of purposeful quiet a drunk person has, which is to say not very quiet at all. He’d hit the doorjamb, possibly with his shoulder. Now he stood over my side of the bed. His gaze pressed down on me, though I couldn’t see his eyes.
His buckle clicked. Leather slid through belt loops. Metal teeth purred as he slid his zipper down.
The scent of whiskey slung around his neck like a scarf, fit his fingers like gloves. I wanted to drink him. I wanted to drown myself in him.
Fabric slithered to the ground. He grunted lightly as buttons on his shirt gave him trouble, and a moment later I heard them plink-plink on the floor. I opened my eyes wide, but shadows frustrated me. I could see the shape of him, but not his features. I wanted to see if he was looking at me.
I reached for him first. My hands found his thighs. My mouth, his cock. I took him as far as I could, making no sound even when his fingers tightened and pulled in my hair. He was so hard, so thick, I’d have choked if I didn’t grab the base of his penis. I anchored him there, guiding his thrusts.
I wanted more, but he pulled my hair hard enough to stop me. Both of us were breathing hard. His erection brushed my cheek as he leaned close. He tipped my head back. Now I could see him in the light from the window. A hint of the soft mouth, the sharp nose. The glint of his eyes.
“Wake him up.” His voice was still in shadows, deep and harsh from too many cigarettes.
“James,” I whispered, then louder, when Alex’s fingers tugged my hair again. “James. Wake up.”
James snorted and snuffled, rolling toward me but not waking.
“Jamie,” Alex said. “Wake up.”
From behind me I heard James’s annoyed grumble. Alex let go of my hair. His hand went to my shoulder, pushing me back onto the pillows as he followed. I lifted my mouth for a kiss, but he didn’t kiss me.
James got up on one elbow. “Hey, man. Where the fuck have you been?”
“Out.” Alex knelt with his ass on his heels between us, a fist slowly pumping his erection.
“No shit.” James sounded annoyed, and I didn’t blame him. He hadn’t been waiting, like I had.
“Anne. I want to see you sucking Jamie’s dick. Jamie. Get up here.”
James laughed, but he knelt, too. “You’re drunk.”
I didn’t laugh. I reached for James, his penis already stirring. I stroked him to full hardness in a second or two. Then I took him in my mouth the way I’d done for Alex just a couple minutes before.
He groaned when I sucked him. I envied them their easy arousal, how simple it was for them to come. Already James was thrusting in response to the motion of my tongue and lips against him. I slipped a hand down to cup his balls and press the spot along his perineum that made him jerk upward.
I left James’s cock to find Alex’s next to it. I sucked him, too, my mouth mapping the differences in their bodies. Back and forth I moved until my jaw began to ache and I knelt, too, and used my hands to jerk them both at the same time.
Once more we’d made a triangle. Three. I slid slick fingers over erect penises as I leaned to lick and suck and bite James’s nipples and chest. Alex put his hand on the back of my head. I lifted my face and kissed my husband, then my lover. Back and forth. They kissed me. I stroked them. Hands found my breasts and hips, my thighs. My clit. Two hands held my waist, two hands slid between my legs.
We pressed so close my hands were trapped between us. Filled. They moved, pushing into my fists. I kissed James, his mouth wet and open. I kissed Alex. One and the other, while we moved together, the sound of slapping flesh making music with the creaking springs. Someone left the heat of my pussy and trailed wet fingers along my hip to grab my ass and grind me close
r. My clit pulsed with every motion, rubbing against a palm, a knuckle, a thumb. It didn’t matter. I was going to come.
Everything got tight, pulling in, coiled. I pulled away, back arching as my hips thrust forward. Our triangle got bigger, the back and forth of my kisses paused as my orgasm rushed over me. James cried out, low, and his hips pumped forward as his hand gripped my shoulder hard enough to bruise. Alex made a noise, too. His cock pulsed in my hand. It was his hand between my legs, rubbing, and it became too much all at once. Too much sensation. I made a noise of protest but then I was coming a second time, pleasure like hard, bright sparks arcing through me.
Alex put a hand on the back of James’s neck. I knew how it felt, there, how it felt the times he’d done the same to me. They were already so close they could have felt the brush of each other’s lashes. A groan stuttered out of me on a long breath I’d been holding for too long. I had to lean back to catch a new one, and I gulped at the air as I shook with release.
I was leaning back. They were leaning in. My eyes were open. Both of theirs were closed. I had been kissing back and forth, one and the other, meeting their mouths with mine. But now I wasn’t there.
They both moved at the same time. Heat and wetness filled my hands and covered my stomach as they came. They both moved toward each other, mouths open and ready.
But it was Alex who pulled back.
He opened his eyes. He let go of James, whose eyes fluttered open. In the moonlight, James looked dazed. His mouth closed, parted a second later by the swipe of tongue.
“Alex,” he said, voice hoarse, but Alex let go of both of us like we’d burned him.
Alex broke the triangle. He pushed away from us so fast James had to pull me close to keep us from tipping, unbalanced. Alex got off the bed. He stood, staring, while we said nothing. Then he gathered up his clothes and left.
James let go of me and sank back against the headboard. His fingers rubbed the scar over his chest, over and over. I stayed frozen, my knees stiff and my body shaking, but no longer from pleasure.
“What. The. Fuck.” James’s voice was flat.
I looked at him, but shadows cloaked him and I couldn’t read his expression. I heard the bathroom door open and close from down the hall. The shower came on some time after that, all while we didn’t know what to do with ourselves.
James reached for my hand. Our fingers linked. I waited for him to speak, and when he didn’t, I kissed his hand. I got out of bed. I grabbed up a nightgown from the chair and pulled it over my head as I went down the hall.
Alex was in the shower, the curtain moving faintly with the spray. I pulled it aside to look in. He was on the floor, crouched on hands and knees, his forehead pressed to the molded plastic tub.
I got in. There wasn’t much room for two, but we managed. I reached for him, and he put his arms around me. The curved plastic fit to my back as Alex buried his face against my neck. The water pounded down on top of us. It felt good. Like rain.
“I didn’t know parents could really love their kids until I met the Kinneys,” Alex said. “My old man’s a mean bastard when he’s sober and a nasty fucker when he’s drunk, which is most of the time. He broke a wooden spoon on my ass, once. Then he switched to the belt. I started fucking guys because I knew it was the one thing that would send my old man into a stroke.”
“What did he say when he found out?”
“Nothing. I never told him.” He looked up at me, those gray eyes like storm-churned lake.
“Why not?”
Alex’s smile looked like it hurt. “Because I knew he’d hate me.”
I pulled him back to me and stroked his wet hair and said nothing.
“But at Jamie’s house, everyone was nice. All the time. Mrs. Kinney made cookies. Mr. Kinney played ball with us boys. They took me in and made me feel like they loved me, too, because I was Jamie’s friend. They threw birthday parties for me when nobody else remembered. They picked me up from work when it was raining so I didn’t have to ride my bike. I practically fucking lived in their house for four years, until Jamie went away to school. Four years, Anne. And the day after Jamie left, I went over there to see if Mrs. Kinney wanted me to run any errands for her. I got my first car, see, and I wanted to be able to go to the store for her. If she needed.”
“She didn’t.”
He took a long, deep breath. “She opened the door and didn’t let me inside. She told me that James wasn’t at home, and I should come back when he was. And she shut the door in my face.”
“What a…” I wanted to say bitch, but the word stuck behind my teeth.
“I never told Jamie. When he came home, I went over there like nothing was wrong. But when he went back to school, I forgot they even existed. If I saw them around town, and I did, I looked the other way. Jamie never knew. I never told him.”
“I’m sorry, Alex.”
“Jamie’s the only person in my whole fucking miserable life who ever made me feel like I was worth a goddamned thing. When you asked me if I love him…how could I not love him? Jamie’s the only person who ever made me understand what it was like to love someone. From the first time I saw him in that fucking pink alligator shirt with the collar up, I think I loved him.”
Alex got up and turned off the water. He grabbed two towels and we got out of the shower, our clothes dripping. He sat on the toilet while I wrapped one around me. I used the other to rub his hair and dry the water from his skin. He waited until I was done, then took my hand. I sat on the edge of the tub, an uncomfortable perch that pressed our knees together.
“When I went to see him in college to tell him I was leaving the country, I wanted him to ask me to stay, you know? To have one person want me not to go. But he was excited for me. Told me he was proud, thought this would be a great chance for me to make something of myself. We both knew I’d never be anything in Sandusky. Never get a good job. But I still wanted him to ask me to stay here. So I told him the truth, all of it. That the guy giving me the job wasn’t just somebody I met, but somebody I was fucking.”
“And he got mad. You fought. I know.”
A small smile that had little to do with humor curved his lips. “I don’t think so. When you told me he’d told you the story, I thought you got it. You understood. But I don’t think you did.”
“So tell me.”
“We got shit-faced, and I got what I wanted. He asked me not to go. He got mad, yeah. He wanted to know how I could take it up the ass for somebody else, how could I fuck just…some guy. That’s what he said. How could I fuck some guy. How could I kiss some guy. And he tried to kiss me.”
I studied his face. I believed him. “He didn’t tell me that.”
Alex laughed. “Jamie couldn’t hold his liquor. He tried. I didn’t let him.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” Alex said. “Jamie’s not…that’s not him.”
“Obviously it is.”
He shook his head. “No. I don’t think so. He’s not going to suddenly come out of the closet. He’s not queer, Anne. And I loved him, yeah, but not…not in a way that would end up being very good. For either one of us. I’m a fuckup. I can’t make things work. And I didn’t want us to screw trashed out of our heads and lose everything we had.”
“And the fight?”
“Oh, we had it. He punched me in the face and called me a fucking fairy faggot queer. We both hit the coffee table, and he got tore up. I took him to the E.R. The rest is the same.”
“And you left for Singapore.”
“I went back to the Kinneys’ once before I left,” he said. “I wanted to find out how he was. Mrs. Kinney told me I wasn’t worth the dirt under Jamie’s shoes and that I should consider myself never welcome in their house again. I’d known she didn’t like me, but I’d never realized until then that she hated me. I don’t know what he told her, but it was enough to make her crazy.”
I smoothed his hair off his face. “Alex. I’m so sorry.”
“I wa
nted to come to your wedding. I could have. I could’ve taken the time, no problem. But when it came right down to it, I didn’t think I could see him again for the first time in so long walking down the aisle. So I waited, sent a gift.”
“It was very nice. We still have it.” I smiled.
He smiled, too. “I sent him a card. We kept in touch. I ended up here. And once again, I’ve fucked it all up.”
“No, you haven’t.”
He reached to put his hand on the back of my neck, to pull me just a bit closer. Our foreheads touched. I closed my eyes, waiting for a kiss that didn’t come.
“I didn’t count on you.”
A small, hitching sob leaked out of me. “I thought you—”
“Shh.” He put his arms around me.
It was awkward, and uncomfortable, but I wouldn’t have moved for a million dollars.
“What are we going to do?” I whispered.
“Nothing.”
“We have to do something.” I pulled away to look at him, to cup his cheek. “This is something.”
He pulled away. “What you and Jamie have is something. This is just…nothing, remember? A little summer fling. I’ll leave. You’ll forget it ever happened.”
“No. I won’t. He won’t, either.”
His smile was crooked. “You’d be surprised what Jamie can forget when he wants to.”
“I won’t forget,” I said fiercely, tears stinging my eyes. “I won’t ever forget.”
He kissed my forehead. “Yes, you will.”
“Will you?”
When everything changes we learn who we really are. What’s really important. What we want most. We discover the truth in moments of disarray.
My heart waited to break.
He kissed my forehead again, softer this time. “Anne, I already have.”
Then he got up and left me alone.
Chapter 15
Good things, by their nature, are fleeting. It’s those that bring us grief that linger. Alex was gone in the morning, the only sign he’d been there a pile of used towels in the laundry basket and the faint scent of him on the pillow-cases in the guest room. The house was quiet, James had already gone to work. There was nobody to hear me if I sobbed aloud, but still I pressed the pillow to my face to muffle my weeping. I breathed him in for a long time before I stripped the bed and washed the sheets, removing the last trace of his presence.