Deliciously Obedient

by Julia Kent

Home now, he had to make sure it really was his resting place, where he could build a life.

  The way he needed.

  If you love something, let it go. If it comes back, it was yours. And if it sleeps with your best friend, maybe it can be yours, too.

  “Earth to Jeremy! Want to go and eat at Jeddy’s? Caleb’s there. The new marmalade garlic aioli made Krysta have a foodgasm.”

  Jeddy’s? Under her brother’s watchful eye? No fucking way.

  “How about someplace else? The coffee shop we walked past on the way here? Not the one in the lobby,” he hastily added. Too many eyes.

  She made a skeptical face but shrugged. “Okay. I like to try new things.”

  He was about to hold her to that statement.

  Weaving her fingers in his, she clasped his hand and they took off, waving to the mothers, who looked up to wave back, walking quietly to the elevators, riding down. The ding as it reached the lobby reminded Jeremy of yesterday. He half expected to see Mike standing there, Lydia throwing herself in his arms, Mike fucking Lydia on the multicolored rug in front of doctors and visitors.

  That was an image.

  So was Lydia right now, swinging his hand in hers and happier than he’d seen her in days.

  “Hey, you two! Familiar faces!” Pete appeared, carrying a box of something from Jeddy’s, looking like he’d just escaped from a lumberjack camp in Maine plaid, wearing jeans and brown work boots.

  “Daddy!” Lydia squealed, letting go Jeremy’s hand and launching herself into her father’s arms, almost knocking him over. Jeremy couldn’t help but smile.

  Maybe, someday, he’d have a daughter like that.

  For once, the thought didn’t make him slog down three shots to drive away the unreality of imagining his own progeny.

  “Hi, sweetie! Hi, Jeremy,” Pete greeted them, hugging his daughter back. “How’s Madge?”

  “Jeremy just had a lovely conversation with her about her sex life.”

  Pete laughed.

  “And ours,” Jeremy joked.

  Pete stopped laughing.

  Ooookay. Some jokes cut a little too close.

  “She looks so much better,” Jeremy added, lowering his voice, trying to sound intense and serious. Not like some guy fucking Pete’s daughter.

  Which, um, he was.

  A tic formed inside, a series of impulsive words that he fought to keep under control. Sometimes his subconscious sabotaged him and he’d blurt out the first thing that came to mind, making him the object of admiring laughter and, occasionally, derisive judgment.

  What Jeremy’s mind wanted him to blurt out was “My friend and I want a permanent threesome with Lydia,” the words corroding, rusting, oxidizing and grinding into him, relentless and perseverant to the point of pain. Biting his tongue, he drew blood, all the while maintaining a pleasant expression on his face.

  Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it.

  When he found himself in the company of normal, steady, mature people, the impulse was always strongest. Deep inside, he doubted he was anything like these people—and his brain set out to prove it.

  “Jeremy, you okay? You look kind of pale,” Pete said, genuinely worried. He let an elevator go up, motioning for the people ahead of him to go on, staying behind.

  “Fine.” Reduced to one-word answers, Jeremy knew he didn’t have much longer for that. The compulsion to out himself was so strong. Too strong. Like a porno version of the Jedi mind trick.

  “You don’t look fine.” Damn it. Reasonable, caring people were the worst. Just let him suffer in peace and get out of this.

  “Just hungry,” Jeremy barked out. To have your daughter ride me.

  Pete looked relieved, though his brow remained creased. “Go on and get something. We don’t need any more sick people in our life!”

  I’m the sickest person you know.

  They both waved as Pete mercifully left to get on an elevator, and then the walk through to sunlight and air was like being reborn.

  Whoosh. His long exhale made Lydia look at him in bemusement. “Was my dad right? You do look kind of sick.” Staggering in the sun, he walked to a small park bench and sat down, head between his knees.

  “Jeremy?” She began rubbing between his shoulder blades.

  “I think that sleeping with one person is overrated.”

  The hand froze.

  “Come again?”

  “Monogamy, you know, is a social construct—”

  “Oh, God, Jeremy, what the fuck are you talking about?” She looked like she was about to have a heart attack. That, or rip his dick off and beat him with it.

  “I’m trying to explain how I feel about—”

  “You’re dumping me? Right now, as we get ready to walk into my grandma’s hospital room and my family is in crisis? And after everything we’ve been through these past two days? After we...you know...”

  “No! No! Not dumping! Not dumping you!” he protested, voice so loud people started looking at them.

  “Dude, that’s low,” a guy his age muttered as he walked past carrying a balloon bouquet.

  “He’s right!” Lydia hissed.

  “What part of not dumping you did you not understand?”

  “The part where you pulled the anthropological asshole argument.”

  “The what?”

  “Oh, please. This is what assholes do, Jeremy. They claim that monogamy is unnatural and that’s why they need the freedom to dip their penis in every vagina that walks by.”

  “That is not what I’m saying!”

  “And that’s part of the cliché, too. What are you saying?”

  “I’m—”

  “Oh,” she mocked him, “let me guess, because if you’re following the anthropological asshole blueprint, you’re about to tell me you want a threesome, and how men aren’t built for being with just one woman.”

  “You’re halfway right.”

  Stunned silence.

  “You want me to sleep with you and Mike?” As she uttered the words and made them real, his tension when he thought of Mike dissolved, like a nightmare monster that disappeared when you awoke. Strong and fierce in the subconscious, the light of day makes it innocuous—even destroyed. He didn’t want Mike to be destroyed.

  He wanted his own fear to be gone.

  Speaking the truth, now, vanquished it. All that was left was Lydia’s reaction and the forward path.

  That held no fear, but it could hold considerable sadness and grief, depending on what unfolded before him.

  “Um...yes, but we’re not quite there yet.”

  “It’s like you’re speaking Aramaic here, Jeremy, with a Jersey Shore accent.”

  “I want you to feel free to sleep with Mike if you want to.”

  More stunned silence. And then:

  “You,” she said, poking him with one pointed finger on his rib, “want me to sleep with Mike?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I can’t blame you.”

  “Are you…is this you…breaking up with me?” A harsh laugh. “Do we even have something to break? I don’t even know what this”—she waved her hands between them—“is.”

  He grabbed those flailing hands and brought them to his lips, kissing the trembling fingers. “No. I am not breaking up with you. How many times do I have to say that? You’re my…girlfriend?” He asked the question with raised eyebrows, and when she didn’t respond, just sharing eyes filled with incredulity, he continued.

  “Mike and I have been best friends for years. Many years. I’ve know plenty of the women he’s slept with, and you’re the one he fell for the hardest.”

  Lydia’s neck flew back in shock. “He did?”

  “And I can’t blame him, because you’ve done the same to me, Lydia. I’ve never cared for any woman as much as I care for you.”

  Her mouth shaped into a tiny O, her breath coming out in pants, her eyebrows frowning, then stretching high, a series of nonv
erbal signals that meant everything and nothing to him.

  “And you show that,” she said, fingers playing with the soft skin of her throat, “by asking me to sleep with…with someone else?” What should have been outrage was a softer tone of certainty. She seemed to be trying to make sense of what he was saying, and not just react to it.

  So far, so good.

  “Mike and I have a friendship that transcends most.”

  “Bromance?”

  “Yuck. No. I hate that word.” But it came damn close, and that was what rattled him. Add in sharing a woman and it was actually pretty apt.

  “Then what do you call it when one woman sleeps with two best friends?”

  “Every guy’s dream?”

  “Every woman’s dream,” she hissed, the words low and slow, her body involuntarily pulling back from him. Body language said, No!

  Her words, though, were neutral enough for him to push. Unbelievable that she hadn’t spat in his face.

  Mike could deal with that part. Jeremy was just the messenger of a concept he needed Lydia to get through her beautiful head: It’s okay.

  It’s okay to want someone else, too, as long as it’s really love.

  It’s okay to be with them both, because love can multiply. It only subtracts when jealousy is allowed to bloom.

  It’s okay because we both want you.

  And, most of all:

  You’re okay. Better than okay. Always and forever, because you’re Lydia.

  If he were the kind of man who could be eloquent and say what he thought with a swift turn of phrase and words that made women wet with desire, he’d have said all that, and more. However, he was Jeremy, which meant his short-circuiting, ever-impulsive brain merely blurted out:

  “Then give Mike a second chance.”

  Narrowing her eyes, she studied him, biting her lower lip, clearly unable to believe that he was sincere. “Why? Why would any guy hand their…girlfriend…off to another man just—because?”

  “Because I don’t process feelings the way most guys do.”

  “Oh, give me a break.” Eye roll. “That’s some bullshit crap men use to justify cheating on women. More cliché.”

  “I have no desire to cheat on you. If I did, I’d be asking for the same privilege. I don’t want that. And trust me,” he laughed, the sound scraping against his throat, “there is nothing cliché about this situation.”

  Now she looked at him like a giant shark from Sharknado had just eaten his head clean off. “Let me get this straight, because what you’re saying is something that I—a woman with a graduate degree in gender and sexuality—have never heard a man say, in print or verbally. You are giving me permission to go and sleep with Mike, but you only want to sleep with me.”

  He nodded his head against a brick wall. Metaphorically.

  “This is like a fucked up version of Sister Wives.” Her laughter had a tinge of the hysterical. “Sister husbands!”

  “Nothing sister about this, Lydia.”

  “Why?” The word was a plea, not a question. She pulled the hem of her shirt down and stared at her hands, which rested between her knees.

  “Why what?”

  “Why do you and Mike want this?”

  “I can’t speak for Mike.”

  “So you’re doing this for you? For what?” The flush of her cheeks, her steady—though emotional—words and the way she kept reasoning through this gave him hope.

  “I’m doing this because it’s what I want.” The certainty of that kind of knowing felt rock solid now. Talking to her had been the right thing after all. Even if she walked away, he’d been true to his heart.

  “And if I don’t sleep with Mike?” Yesterday he would have been happy to hear that question. Today it triggered nothing. Just a question, like any other, in an emotionally tough conversation with your partner. Not loaded, not threatening.

  “Then that’s your choice.” And with that, his entire back released with relief, muscles he didn’t know he’d been clenching all relaxing, the slow uncurling of self like a flower in bloom.

  Or a Venus flytrap done with its lunch.

  “Why?”

  Again with the why? “Why not?”

  She cleared her throat. “Because ten thousand years of gender history says this doesn’t exist.” Taking a few beats, she added, “Polyamory is the closest.”

  “Not quite. It’s just one woman and me and Mike.”

  “No other relationships?”

  He shook his head slowly. A light grew in her eyes.

  “You’ve done this before!”

  Nod.

  “Did you two set me up? Is that why you came to Iceland?” Launching herself to her feet, she glowered down at him. “Was this some sort of sexual game to you two? Are you fucking kidding me?”

  “No!” The word thundered out of him as he, too, shot to his feet, body in a full state of fight-or-flight fear.

  Fight for her.

  “Absolutely not, and let me assure you that was never, ever an element here.” His voice scared a flock of starlings out of a small bush next to them, the chatter reflecting his own mind’s chaos that she triggered with the accusation. His chest rose and fell with emotion.

  Hers, too. “How am I supposed to believe you?”

  That made the words grind to a halt. He stared at her, mouth frozen, unable to speak. How could she know? All she could do was trust him. And Mike.

  Was that impossible?

  “Good question,” he said with a sigh. Fighting for her took a different tack now. Lydia wouldn’t respond to any of the normal trappings of conversation. How could he expect her to? He’d just thrown a giant emotional and sexual curveball her way.

  “I’m so glad to be validated.” Her acerbic words sliced his heart in two.

  “Your emotions are valid no matter what,” he said quietly. His turn to stare at his hands. The separation between them might as well have been an ocean and not the three inches of wooden bench.

  She closed her eyes and tipped her head to the sky, hands clenched in fists on her thighs. “Did this really all have to happen now?’

  “It was going to happen eventually.”

  “How do you know?”

  Taking a chance, he reached for her soft, strong jaw, appreciating the angle of her face, her cheek turning as she faced him. She didn’t flinch.

  Cupping the back of her head, he didn’t try to kiss her. Oh, he wanted to, but this wasn’t the time. Besides, she wasn’t his to touch.

  She was her own woman, with her own ideas, and right now, she clearly didn’t know what to think of him. Or Mike.

  “It would happen eventually because you’re a very special woman, Lydia. I’ve never met anyone so loving, compassionate, sharp and exciting. Being with you is like living in a parallel world, where all the crazy-making of society gets put on hold. You’re a pause button in a world that moves at double speed. And my heart wants to beat your rhythm. Only your rhythm.”

  Eyes wide and chest rising and falling, Lydia just started at him, immobile. Say it all now, he pushed himself, because this may be your last chance.

  “When I am with you I am whole. Whole. I’ve spent ten years trying to find the other pieces of myself. I’ve spent time in jails in places where English was nineteen levels away, and eaten parts of animals I didn’t know the human stomach could digest.”

  “You’re so romantic,” she said in a robot’s voice, then bit her lips to keep the words back.

  “I may not be eloquent,” he said, smiling with ten thousand emotions at once, “but my soul and heart are—and they have fallen for you entirely.” The words he wanted to say, though, didn’t roll out.

  I love you couldn’t be spoken yet, because if she rejected him, he would carry the pain of revelation for longer than he would the regret of never saying it.

  Jeremy hated himself for knowing that.

  Yet he honored it.

  “What does asking me to sleep with Mike have to do with any o
f this? Couldn’t we just be together…just you and me?” she asked.

  “Is that what you want? Only me?” His heart should have soared but, instead, it remained tethered, like a balloon that can only climb so high, never released to see how far it can go.

  The long pause that extended into eternity after his question stretched that tether line so tight it felt like a garotte.

  “No,” she said finally.

  “Do you want Mike?” He knew it was a rhetorical question, but he still had to ask.

  “Yes.” She didn’t even hesitate. That surprised him. A touch of the conventional did remain inside him, after all.

  “Then have him.”

  “And you?”

  “You can have me, too.”

  “I don’t understand.” Her upper lip curled up in a confused half-frown, half-smile that made him want to kiss it away.

  “Relationships between humans don’t have to be binary. We’re not programming code.”

  “You’re asking me to believe that the sky is green.”

  “Sometimes it can be. There’s this meteorological phenomenon called—” And then she was kissing him, her hip pressed into his, palm caressing his shoulder, lips urgent and knowing, searching and seeking.

  Unable to interpret, he could just feel. Really feel who she was and who they might become.

  But he had to let her go and explore what she needed to learn with Mike before they could really know anything.

  Truly know themselves.

  It should have been so much harder than it was. Letting her kiss him was so easy. Letting her go to Mike tonight would be, too.

  The hard part would be seeing her after, in understanding where her heart wanted to go.

  She pulled away, eyes unfocused, and asked, “What do you want from me?”

  “Right now?” He glanced down at his erection.

  That made her chuckle as she followed his look. “No, not that. I mean…what do you envision our future to be?”

  Our future. The weight of those words used to be a lead balloon, uttered from every woman’s mouth except Dana’s—when Dana had asked, it felt like the tether had been cut.

  “You mean, what do I want?”

  “Yes.”

  “I want…love.” There. He’d said it. The world remained intact.

  “But this unconventional…thing you’re talking about. What does love look like within it?”