One Life to Lose

by Kris Ripper

  Josh moved so he could pin my wrists with one hand and put the other on my stomach. His hands didn’t move, a perfect firm counterpoint to Keith, who never stopped moving.

  Or talking.

  “It’s so weird, being watched, being seen. Like, until I met Josh I don’t know if anyone ever saw me, I didn’t get that there was someone to see. I thought, you know, I thought that this kind of overachieving, privileged, just-like-everyone-else boy was all I could ever be, that anything else, any other part of me that didn’t fit into that, was false.” He brushed his cheek over my sternum. “Then I thought he was the only one who could see deeper than that, you know? But he wasn’t. Him seeing me allowed me to see myself differently—better, or maybe not better, just more accurately. And other people, too. Like I shed my skin, snake-style, and the person underneath was suddenly visible to everyone else.”

  I breathed into the weight of Josh’s hands and let myself fly a little with the sensations of Keith’s, now lightly scraping over my clavicle, now drifting up my arms where they were above my head.

  “And it’s cool that other people, you know, maybe they don’t write me off as much anymore. But you see something else again. The thing I thought only Josh could see, and only with my clothes off. You see everything I always thought made me weak, but to you it makes me brave. Which I don’t understand at all, but I like it. I want it to be true.”

  “It is,” I told him, arching between the fixed points of Josh’s hands. “It is. I see you, Keith.”

  “Yeah.” He kissed me, hard. “Well guess what, Cam? I see you, too. I see how much you want this, how hard you tried to cover it up. I saw how scared you were in the beginning that you’d do something wrong—”

  Josh squeezed my wrists just slightly. “Or say something wrong, or have the wrong look on your face—”

  “—and how you focused everything on me to try to keep from feeling anything yourself. Cam, you didn’t have to. We didn’t mean for you to do that.”

  I looked away. “It was the right thing to do. Prioritizing you—your relationship—was the right thing to do.”

  Keith squared himself up to my face, so close I was caught by how blue his eyes were, how I could sense their blue even in low light. “What our relationship wants is you. Oh my god, Cam, I fell for you, like, before we ever introduced ourselves. Josh fell for you when you got Merin’s pronouns right.”

  “And then, with the candlesticks.” Josh’s hand stroked the skin of my abdomen. “I was so nervous that night that we were going to make everything into this deep, heavy thing, but you lit candles. That made it perfect.” He kissed my cheek without letting up on my wrists. “We aren’t asking you to feel everything right now—”

  “Speak for yourself. I’m totally asking him to do that. No, I’m demanding it.”

  Josh ignored the interruption. “Just maybe stop trying so hard to protect yourself, protect us. Let it be whatever it is for a little while.”

  “I told Detective Green we didn’t need words to know it was good,” I said.

  “Exactly. We don’t.” He kissed my cheek again. “But let’s do naked time now, okay? Keith’s really got a lot of things he wants to do, and, since it’s Christmas, this seems like a good time for him to do them.”

  “Oh hell yes. Merry Christmas, let me rim you.”

  I squirmed and both of them laughed. “You are not rimming me until I’ve showered.”

  “I’m down for showering, too. We should shower together.”

  I appealed to Josh, whose grin held absolutely no promise of mercy. I tried anyway. “Your shower isn’t big enough for two people.”

  “Oh my god, of course it is! You just gotta be friendly about it.”

  “Keith . . .”

  Josh released me. “I think Keith’s idea is good. You guys shower. I’ll wait here and think really hard.”

  “You’ll wait here and not touch yourself until we get back, mister.”

  I rubbed at my wrists, which weren’t actually in any form of discomfort, and tried to think through the haze of arousal to come up with some reason why I needed to shower alone. “Keith, come on, I—I have to wash— I should be alone for that—”

  He coaxed me up with kisses, holding my head to his and backing away until he was at the wall. I stood close enough to press him harder against it, though I didn’t.

  “I’ll close my eyes if you’re shy. But when you’re alone your mind goes bad places, so I’m not leaving you alone. It’s not up for discussion.”

  “And leave the door open,” Josh added. “So there’s no barrier, no moment when you have to choose to make yourself vulnerable.”

  “Yeah, good call. C’mon, Cam.”

  I went, with one last backward glance at Josh, who sat on their bed, naked and hard, smiling at us.

  Keith washed me, except for the more private locations (which I washed while he turned his back). I expected everything to get very intense, and sexual, and serious, after we returned to the bedroom, but it didn’t.

  They kissed each other, they kissed me, sometimes all three of us were connected, sometimes it was only two, while the third watched, touching himself, enjoying the sight. Most of the time, that night, it was me they touched; I was the one never on the outside, never looking in. I knew they were doing it that way on purpose, though they didn’t have to. I hadn’t minded being on the outside.

  But this time they seemed to want me on the inside, and it was a separate pleasure, sweet and precious and unforeseen.

  We spent Christmas at my apartment, moving furniture, which is how everyone always imagines a kinky threesome: lots of grunting and groaning and the occasional cry of pain (or triumph; my sofa was heavier than it looked).

  I would have quit halfway through, because it wasn’t working. The living room area wanted to be where it was, in front of the door. The dining room area wanted to be where it was, next to the kitchen. And moving the bookcases seemed like madness to me. Taking all the books out, unscrewing the cases, moving them, finding studs so we (Josh) could screw them back in. Then, of course, putting all the books back in.

  Except a strange thing happened once we’d shifted the bookshelves. The front part of the apartment, which now had a table and chairs, was starting to look like a dining room. A real dining room. Not just an “area closest to the kitchen, so might as well put the table there” dining room.

  “This is cool.” Keith flopped into one of the chairs. “This is totally gonna work.”

  “Now we just gotta fix the rest.” Josh circled my furniture—sofa, two armchairs, coffee table—and walked the perimeter of the space. “It’s longer and more narrow than how you had it arranged over there. How do we do this configuration for a long and narrow living room?”

  It took at least another hour, but the simplest idea ended up being the only one that worked. We kept trying to run the sofa longways. Then Keith, finally, in desperation, turned it shortways, so the longest part of the sofa was along the shortest part of the space, and for some reason, everything felt bigger.

  “Oh hell yeah. We got this now!” Josh, doing some kind of interior decorating victory dance, vaulted over a chair. “Hell, Cam, you got room for more furniture if we do it like this. You could have stools up at the peninsula!”

  “Okay, cowboy, you can slow right down.” Keith, far more methodical than Josh or I, went back to the dining room and adjusted the position of the table, turning it slightly at an angle, which seemed like it should have been wrong, but wasn’t. “The thing that’s making the space feel small is all the lines. Rectangular table, all these squared off edges to the dining room chairs, the kitchen’s all clean lines without curves. Stools would actually help. But let’s do this for right now.”

  Josh and I moved everything into minutely different configurations while Keith watched, made comments, walked around, entered the room from the front door, then the hallway, seeing it from all angles.

  Finally, after what felt like a thousand ve
ry slightly different attempts, Keith told us we were done.

  “Good. Because we haven’t eaten and I’m starving.” Josh strolled into my kitchen and started opening cabinets.

  “I don’t have much,” I said apologetically.

  “Peanut butter and jelly sounds good to me. Keith?”

  “Are there bananas?”

  “Peanut butter and banana for Keith.”

  After lunch they inspected my bathroom and made me put out the “company” towels, which I argued were only for special occasions.

  “You are a special occasion,” Keith said.

  “Just change it up for now,” Josh added. “What about sheets?”

  “You two are not—”

  They changed my sheets. I shrank a little, unsettled and emotional, worried that none of it would help. I’d managed not to think about it too much, but now I was, and the world was getting smaller, beginning to crowd out all the good moments.

  When they were done, Josh pulled on my hands and brought me back to what was now the living room.

  “We’re going to do something else before we leave, and then you’re coming home with us.”

  I didn’t fight with him. I wanted to go with them. Back to their apartment. This had been good, and I thought it would help, maybe, but tonight I wanted to know I was okay.

  When he reached for my clothes, I balked.

  “We’re in my living room.”

  “And I admire whoever designed those high windows, because it means we don’t even have to worry about people watching us from the street.” He did twin come back here gestures with his hands. “Cameron.”

  “What—what are we doing?”

  “We’re reclaiming your space. This is where he made you sit, isn’t it?” He stepped forward. “I’m sorry I wasn’t with you.”

  “He kicked you. When you were . . . lying there. It happens in every single nightmare, him kicking you while you just lie there.”

  “Mine too.” Keith took my hand and laid his head on my shoulder so both of us were looking at Josh. “In some ways it was scarier than the gun, though I guess the gun was kind of the point. He held a gun on us and we couldn’t protect you, we couldn’t fight him. He made us watch while he hurt you, and you couldn’t defend yourself.”

  “Classic bully. Never starts a fight unless he has all the advantages. Babe, c’mere.”

  Keith stepped forward, allowing Josh to undress him and fold his clothes with care on the coffee table. Then they switched, and their mutual reverence still made me wonder if I should even be present while they did things like this, while they stared at one another as if no one else mattered.

  Until both of them, naked and aroused, turned to me. As if I was the only one who mattered.

  “I think I saw a spare blanket.” Keith kissed my cheek before he walked away.

  “What—what are we doing?”

  “Being in love with each other in your living room, Cam. Come here now. Let us show you.”

  They were so gentle, so soft, so sweet. Taking off my clothes, revealing me as if it were the first time, as if I was a gift to them from each other. Keith spread out the comforter that had graced my parents’ bed for most of my childhood, and it should have felt wrong, but it didn’t. It felt like the most safe thing in the world, lying back, letting them touch and kiss and lick and rub against me, no one on top, no one on the bottom, no one in charge.

  It didn’t escape me that we were exactly where I’d held Joey down until the police arrived. That Keith had placed us here on purpose. That you couldn’t be any more deliberate about reclaiming space than having sex on the spot where you once imagined dying.

  It might have felt like a cheap bandage over a gushing wound. It didn’t.

  I spent the better part of my days at QYP for the next couple of weeks. Anytime I wasn’t specifically needed for a shift at the theater, I was at the center. At first I felt ridiculous, and juvenile, as if I needed a babysitter. But sometime in that first week I realized I could be helpful. Keith was brilliant with numbers and spreadsheets, and Josh was brilliant at telling the stories of QYP in such a way that people wanted to help out, but I’d been running a business by myself for eight years, and I’d been an apprentice to it all my life. I reorganized their files to make tax season less gruesome and went over their insurance, which didn’t cover them in the ways they should be covered.

  I knew I’d finally been accepted as part of the family when Merin came over to the kitchen while I was making sandwiches.

  “Hey,” he said. “You raid my wardrobe or something?”

  Merin had never initiated a conversation with me. I had been, until that moment, somewhat convinced he disliked me.

  The jacket I’d bought myself still felt like safety and comfort, so I tugged it in tighter. “I think it suits me.”

  “Yeah, something about you just screams ‘thug.’” He paused before vaguely gesturing to where Josh, Keith, and Zane were sitting in the little conversation nook. “I can’t stand that lady.”

  “Zane? Why?”

  “She is relentlessly happy. It bugs me. Like, can’t she keep it to herself? Why’s she gotta shove it in my face all the time, that she’s happy and well-adjusted? It’s insulting.”

  I studied Zane from across the room. She’d stopped by to show Josh and Keith houses she was scouting for them. Apparently Josh’s parents wanted to give them twenty-five thousand dollars toward a down payment on a house (or maybe they wanted to take a loan out on their behalf for twenty-five thousand dollars, I was unclear on the details). They would have preferred to put the money into QYP, but the Walkers had been firm. And it was smart, too, forcing them to think of something outside the drop-in center.

  “You think she’s relentlessly happy?” I asked. “I don’t know.”

  “Nah. I don’t really think that. It’s more like she’s all up in my face about how happy she is because really she’s fucked up in the head.”

  “And being fucked up in the head somehow annoys you? What, you don’t like the competition?” I held his gaze through the flash of anger, thinking about how remote he felt most of the time, and how much he liked it when Josh challenged him.

  “You’re hilarious. Speaking of fucked in the head, what’s your deal?”

  “Guy tried to kill me. And Keith and Josh.” I shrugged like it was nothing. “Apparently I’m allowed to be a little fucked in the head for a while. What’s your deal?”

  “My dad wants to beat me into the girl-shaped kid I never was and my mom wishes she’d had that abortion she always wanted.”

  “That must be disheartening.”

  He barked a laugh, cut off almost immediately. “Yeah. It’s fucking disheartening.”

  I wasn’t sure if I should say it, but after a second I did. “I call you ‘him’ when I talk to them. Do you want me to do something different? Keith said maybe you didn’t like those pronouns. Or that you didn’t use them.”

  He looked away. “I don’t want to make a big thing about it. They want me to live with them. But I’m not a kid, you know?”

  “On the other hand, they probably can’t afford to pay you enough for you to afford your own place. It’s in their best interests to ensure you can continue working at QYP, don’t you think?”

  “You think like Keith thinks. I mean, he wouldn’t say that, but I know he’s got a plan. He’s always got something brewing in his fool brain.”

  “Do you graduate this year?”

  “Yeah.”

  Would a kid like Merin celebrate graduation? Kids like Merin were the ones who worked the hardest just to survive high school, but I bet he didn’t have plans to honor his efforts. “Are you and Keith going to have a joint graduation party?”

  He rolled his eyes, then sighted across the room again. “Very fucking funny. By the way, you hurt them and I swear to God, I’ll fucking kill you.”

  “Someone already tried. Shouldn’t you be telling me to stay away? I’m the reason they got hurt
before.”

  “No, stupid. Crazy’s the reason they got hurt before. You start taking responsibility for crazy and you’ll be pretty fuckin’ busy. At least that’s what Josh is always telling me. Anyway, I gotta go. See ya, Cam.”

  “See ya.” The colloquialism felt round and lightweight on my tongue, as if it made me a more casual person even to speak it.

  He left the kitchen and saluted. Keith waved, Josh returned the salute, and Zane called, “Don’t think I don’t know how much you secretly like me, Merin!” I was decently certain he muttered “Jesus fuck” on his way out the door.

  Keith gestured me over, so I stacked some sandwiches on a plate and brought them to the table, where Zane was in the middle of what seemed to be a monologue.

  “This wedding is killing me, boys. If you two ever get married, leave me out of it. To be honest, I had no idea they were asking me to plan the thing. When Jaq did a wedding, she just had to show up early to help set the thing up, not spend every waking hour of her life— Oh, food. Thanks, Cameron.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “So.” She looked at all three of us. “You caught the killer.”

  “We didn’t catch him as much as we got caught by him.” Keith peeled open a peanut butter and jelly, but I grabbed his hand and put it on the sandwich I’d made for him (even though putting banana in a sandwich felt wrong). “Aw, you are totally the best, Cam.”

  I kept my eyes on my tuna and certainly didn’t preen.

  Josh tousled Keith’s hair. “I had nothing to do with catching the killer, but these two are heroes.”

  “Any word on what’s gonna happen now?”

  “I don’t think they’ve officially charged him with the murders yet,” I said. “At least, I think Ed would have mentioned it.”

  “How about Ed? The Times-Record website has never been this up-to-date.”

  I nodded. “They’re making him assistant online editor.”

  “That’s great. The kid deserves it.”

  We all agreed.

  “I wish Philpott was around to see it go down, though,” Josh said. “He was always annoyed that the Times-Record didn’t do enough with its site, and he’s part of the reason they are now. Because Togg’s not around to pick up the slack.”