by Brill Harper
Jenna the one person who I would share all the details of my sex life with except I just had sexual relations with her older brother.
And his best friend.
Two guys. Two hot guys. But what kind of girl has threesomes with her best friend’s family?
Needless to say, I am bright red. I don’t need a mirror. I can tell. I feel like she can read my mind, like she can see the dirty thoughts about what I’d just done. Well, had done to me.
Oh, my God. Her brother just ate me out in this room. She is never going to forgive me.
“You okay, Pen?”
I rush to hug her. At least I can hide my face for a few seconds. “You’re really here?”
“I am! I didn’t have a project due like I usually do on Mondays, so I figured it was a good time to get a weekend visit in.”
I let her in and yell, “Fletch, your sister is here!” I know I sound maniacal. My voice is about two octaves higher than normal. I bring her into the kitchen, not stopping once in the living room. I don’t even look at the couch. The Couch of Debauchery. God. This can’t be happening. Can she tell? Does she know? Will I give it away by acting so stupid?
Shane enters the kitchen first. “Hey, Jenna.” He’s cool and collected. Why can’t I be cool and collected? Like ever?
Jenna hugs him. “You’re looking good,” she says, squeezing his arm.
He flexes. “Eating all my spinach,” he jokes.
She’s checking him out. Oh, God. I’m jealous about it. This is bad. At least I know she won’t check out Fletch.
I don’t know what to do with these angry green feelings bubbling in my chest. I’ve never had them before. I pretend everything is okay while I get a pot of coffee going. This sucks.
I absolutely cannot get jealous feelings about either of these guys. We are not in a relationship. We are not dating. We are roommates with benefits.
Shit. Why did I ever think this was a good idea?
Fletch comes in and very carefully avoids my eyes.
Everyone talks normally, but inside my head, I’m replaying the raw desire I experienced not half an hour ago. In their hands. In their mouths. My God. I’m utterly mortified that I’m still turned on. This can’t be good. We don’t even know what we are or what we are doing with each other yet. It’s not like I can explain it to Jenna in a way that makes sense. But I’ve never held back anything from her. And this is the biggest thing that’s ever happened to me. I’m torn in two over this.
“Whose night is it to cook?” Fletch asks.
“Pizza night, dude.”
Jenna takes a sip of her coffee and grimaces at me. I shoulder shrug. I guess I’m getting used to cheap coffee. “You guys have nights to cook?”
Shane wraps his arm around me and pulls me into an almost brotherly hug. Which is so weird. “We’re a happy little family unit. Though little bit’s cooking skills are still pretty lame. She helped Fletch make cookies the other day, though.”
“Little bit?” she asks me.
I shrug again.
I notice Shane and Fletch having eye-talk again. Fletch nods.
“We should go out instead of delivery tonight,” Shane says out loud. “Show Jenna around some.”
I really want to get out of the house and away from the living room and the couch, so I agree. Probably a little too vehemently.
We all head out for pizza. Jenna wants to go to a party later, but this crowded restaurant is all the peopling I can manage tonight. That’s when I run into Jones.
“There you are,” he says. He hugs me, and it’s a weird sensation. He smells good, but not...right to me. Not like the men I’m getting used to. Maybe it’s pheromones. Maybe it’s soap. But he’s foreign to me.
Jenna is making eyes at me like, “You go, girl,” if that were a thing we actually said to each other. Shane and Fletch are acting aloof and ignoring us, and I don’t know how to deal. At all. Objectively, Jones is a good-looking guy. His neck is kind of thick, but I gather that is a thing as he’s not the only guy I’ve seen like that on campus. He’s got eyes that remind me of the sky in June, and he texts in complete sentences. Why am I not excited that he’s showing me attention right now?
“Hey, let’s go out Sunday night,” Jones says.
“Um...”
“Oh, that’s perfect. I have to leave Sunday morning, so don’t say no on my account,” Jenna says, nudging me.
“Um...”
“Yeah, you said you didn’t have any homework this weekend,” Fletch says, his face a mask I just can’t read. “You should go.”
His words ping against my heart the way a rock does to a windshield on the highway.
Shane is looking at Fletch like he just sprouted a second head. Jenna is either not sensing any tension or she’s not addressing it. Jones seems like he earnestly wants to get together. And I...I don’t think I want to. He’s a nice guy. But I have some mixed-up, confusing feelings about my roommates. Which is probably exactly why I should go. So I can unconfuse my feelings.
It’s not like we’re dating. They’re helping me learn about men so I can find one of my own, right? I mean, they obviously aren’t the jealous types—cue recent memory of them urging me to come from the other’s administrations. It would be weird maybe to not go out with Jones since getting asked out by guys like Jones was the point of all this tutoring anyway.
But I want to keep going with the lessons with Shane and Fletcher. I want to see what comes next. I don’t want anyone else. In the brief minute I had between getting dressed and answering the door earlier, I had already been wondering what it would be like to taste them. To feel the weight of them on my tongue. I wanted them to teach me how to give a blow job next.
And I don’t feel that way about Jones.
“Seriously, Penelope. You study too hard. You should go out with Jones,” Fletch says again.
I put on the mask I used to save for PE class when they were picking teams for dodgeball. The one that says rejection doesn’t affect me. That says I don’t really care if I’m picked for a team or not. Because I am definitely feeling not picked for Team Fletch. Not only does he not want to pick me, he wants someone else to pick me so he doesn’t get stuck with me.
“I’d love to.” I look down, feeling so stupid. What did I even expect? “Sounds great.”
The pizza in my stomach is turning to stone. God, my best friend is finally here to help me navigate my social life, but I can’t share any of it with her. When did things become so complicated?
When we get back to the house, the guys start their shooter game, and Jenna and I hit the kitchen with the wine we got on the way home and a cheesecake we got to-go from the pizza place. We don’t bother with plates for the dessert. Two forks is all we need.
“So, what’s going on with this Jones guy? He seem nice, and he’s totally hot. Why aren’t you into him?”
I shrug. “He is both those things. You know me, I’m just awkward. I’m into him.”
“Not buying it. How did you guys meet anyway?” She’s talking with her mouth full of cheesecake like we used to do when we were kids.
“My roommates introduced me to him at a party they took me to.”
“Oh, this is the guy you said invited you to coffee, but things kept getting in the way. I remember now. Well, if my brother introduced you, then he’s probably fine. Fletch won’t let you go out with a douche-canoe. He’s your honorary big brother.”
I slug down some wine, trying really, really hard not to remember the way he growled over my clit earlier in the evening. How he told me how pretty my pussy is.
“If I didn’t like Steven from Art History so much, I’d make a play for Shane. Do you think Fletch would get pissed if I hooked up with his best friend?”
My wine glass is mysteriously empty. Just when I need it the most. “Um, I guess I don’t really know Fletch enough to say for sure.”
I can’t tell her that Shane made me come. That I’ve jacked him off. That would technically make
him off limits, but my whole life is this gray area now where normal limits may or may not apply.
“Tell me more about this Steven guy.”
She fills me in on her latest hookup who kind of sounds like he might be a little more. I realize after I’ve eaten half the pie and drank more than half the bottle of wine that I am drunk. This is a perfect excuse when the conversation steers back to Jones.
“Man, I’m so wasted. I need to go sleep this off.”
She blinks at me weird. “All right. I’ll hang out with the guys until I can kick them off the couch. Tomorrow, I want to go shopping. Hit all the thrift stores.”
“That sounds great. Maybe you can help me pick out something for my date?” See? I can be a normal girl.
Her eyes light up. “I would love that. Don’t forget to take a couple aspirin. Oh, and drink some water.”
I’m feeling very smug with myself at getting out of talking about Jones until I am staring at the ceiling of my bedroom and wondering what Shane would do if Jenna makes a move on him. I have no right to jealousy, but it sours my stomach and turns that cheesecake into yet another brick inside my gut. I hate that I’m keeping things from my best friend. I hate that I am catching actual feelings for the guys when that wasn’t part of the deal. I hate that neither of them even cares if I go on a date with another guy.
What seemed to make so much sense when I was naked now feels like a world I don’t know the rules to. And now I have nobody to talk to about it because the only three people I trust in the whole world are in the other room but might as well be on Mars.
Chapter Eleven
“So what’s really going on with you?” Jenna asks as she pulls outfits off the rack and holds them up to me.
“Nothing. I’m just hungover a little.” I mean if being wasted got me out of deep talks last night, then being hungover ought to work for today, right?
She raises her eyebrow. “Why aren’t you excited to go on this date with Jones?” She pauses, wincing as if she’s thinking too hard. “Is Jones his actual name? Like first or last?”
I take the very tiny dress out of her hand and put it back on the rack. “I actually don’t know. I passed the point of being able to ask without it being weird that I don’t know. Everyone just calls him Jones.”
She holds up a super bright red outfit, and I shake my head. I cannot pull off that color. “Okay, but why don’t you want to date him? He seems nice.”
“I do want to date him. I’m going out with him tomorrow, remember?”
She frowns at me. “I know how you are when you are excited about something. And this isn’t it. After all, I was there the day we learned how to graph sentences in Language Arts, remember?”
Oh, that was a good day.
“Truth?” I ask, and she nods and assesses an electric blue top against my skin. “I like someone else.”
She shrugs. “So?”
“Two someone else’s,” I add.
Her eyes practically glow at me. “Well, this just got interesting.”
“Does that make me a slut?”
Cue eye-roll. “Being attracted to more than one man does not make you a slut, Penelope. But also, stop saying slut like it’s a bad thing.” She smiles at a woman wearing a blonde helmet-bob haircut and a disapproving scowl as she passes us. “Having a healthy sexual appetite is good for you. And normal. And fine. Just don’t promise someone to be exclusive unless you actually are exclusive. That’s bad juju.”
“So I shouldn’t disclose to Jones that I’m attracted to two other guys?”
“Well, not over mozzarella sticks, no. But if you guys get intimate, you might want to make sure he understands that you’re still seeing other people right now and don’t want to stop.”
“And that is socially acceptable?”
“Yeah, of course. If you guys have sex on date number one, it’s pretty much a given that it’s a hookup but with potential. If you hold out for date three, he might assume you’re a couple, though. So, make sure you know how you want to go on.”
“This is confusing. What if we have sex on date two then?”
She shudders. “Just don’t. That’s no-man’s land and the rules are foggy.”
I hold the hanger she shoves into my hand. “That makes no sense at all.”
“Who told you this was all supposed to make sense? Men are weird. They’re hard enough to figure out when you know what you want, but if you’re still exploring, it’s even worse.”
“Why do we put ourselves through this then?”
“Penises,” she answers matter-of-factly. And we dissolve into giggles when helmet-bob woman huffs from the next aisle over.
The outfit Jenna styles for me includes the electric blue top. It’s a color I don’t normally wear, but it’s not crazy. I kind of like it. It’s less comfort-zone but not out of the galaxy for me. We also spend about an hour in front of the bathroom mirror practicing mascara when we get back to the house. Much to the chagrin of Shane who ends up taking a piss in the yard, according to him.
I still don’t like the way she eyes him up. Like he’s a cupcake and she’s on a diet, but she’s calculating the calories in her head just in case.
When it comes time for Jenna to leave on Sunday morning, I sob and cling to her the way I did my mother’s leg the first day of kindergarten. Luckily, she is crying as hard as I am, so I don’t feel like a total loser. I really wish I could tell her what is going on with me. I need her advice more than ever about Shane and Fletch.
I go back to bed for a couple hours and when I get up, I’m confronted by a shirtless Fletch in the kitchen. He’s just back from a run, and sweat is running down his muscles in little rivulets. The scent of his workout is clean, masculine. Damn those pheromones. My core tightens, clenching around air, and I want him so bad.
He pulls the orange juice carton out of the fridge and starts drinking it right out of the container. I watch his throat working until he lowers the juice and sends me a direct stare. “So, you have a date tonight?”
Bucket. Ice-cold water. Poured over my head.
That’s how I feel.
My veins turn to ice and any and all sexy time feelings I might have been entertaining are flash-frozen by the tone of his voice.
I raise my chin. “That’s the rumor.”
He sneers at me. “Going to add him to your notebook, little bit?”
Blowtorch. Flamethrower. The ice melts, and I’m suddenly going up in flames. Frustrated rage fills my veins, my head. I want to howl like a wolf at the full moon. I take a deep breath, trying to hold on to my sanity. I do not like these crazy conflicting emotions or the ride they are taking my body on. I opt for something logical to say and aim for a neutral tone. “You never call me “little bit.”
He shrugs. He must not see that my blood is roiling to a boil. That I’m about to tear my skin off my own bones and dance like flames in a bonfire. God, his eyes are cold.
Breathe. “Should I have told him no? Even as you were telling me to go out with him.”
He shrugs again. “You’re a free agent. You can do anyone you want to. Take all your newly tested hypotheses to the next jock. Gonna give him your V-card, or is that for me and Shane?”
It feels like he hit me. Like his words are a physical punch. I’m unable to think or process, and I hate him for that. Thinking and processing is who I am, and he somehow took that away from me. I’m just in wordless shock for a few minutes.
His face is blank. Emotionless. I don’t even know this guy. Did I ever?
“What?” he asks, shrugging in dismissal at me.
“Why are you doing this?”
The hard edge of his voice doesn’t soften the fake-innocent smile on his face. “Doing what?”
“Acting like this!” I yell.
“Mom. Dad. What have I asked you about fighting?” Shane stops in the door, and his eyes widen when he gets a look at my face. Maybe I really am on fire. “Whoa. What the hell is going on in here?”
&nb
sp; “Fletch is being a dick,” I say and Shane sputters.
“Little bit, I’m surprised at your language.”
“Well, he is.”
Fletch narrows his eyes at me, and he tosses the empty juice container into the corner wastebasket. “How am I being a dick?”
If he doesn’t know, then there really is no point in telling him. I guess my feelings are not as confused as they once were. I can’t believe this is the same guy that made me feel so safe. That I let my guard down in front of. “It doesn’t matter,” I say and hope nobody hears the crack in my voice.
I’ve never been betrayed before. I’ve never let anyone close enough to do it. Except Jenna. And I’ve betrayed her trust in me, so I guess I deserve it, right?
But I don’t think I’m capable of letting anyone in range of my heart again. Not if this is what it feels like to trust and be iced-over for it.
Shane pulls me into a hug. “Of course it matters. What’s going on?” I don’t say anything, so he directs his questioning to Fletch. “Dude? What?”
“I was just asking her about her date. I gotta grab a shower. See you guys later.”
I squeeze my eyes really tight. I should be all cried out from this morning’s tear-fest, but I guess all the hormones I don’t understand also come with eye leaking. Shane pulls back so he can look down at me. He’s searching my face, but for what I don’t know. “He hurt your feelings.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“He’s jealous.”
Now that makes me laugh. “He is the opposite of jealous, Shane. You heard him Friday night. He wants me to date Jones.”
“No, he wants you to think he wants you to date Jones, so that if you date Jones, you won’t know he’s jealous.”
“That makes no sense at all.”
“Welcome to the world of men, Velma.”
I bring a shaky hand up to my cheek and wipe away the moisture. “This is not the first time I’ve wished I was a lesbian.”
That easy smile curves across his face. “This isn’t the first time I’ve thought about you being a lesbian.”
I smack him. He smacks a kiss on my forehead.