by Kent, Julia
Ah, but you didn’t, her conscience reminded her.
Oh, how I want to, she retorted.
Dylan stared at the computer monitor, completely unsure and yet painfully, deeply certain of what he was reading. Mike and Laura? Mike was hitting on Laura at the online dating site? What? He scrolled through the history of the chat window and realized that—that the first chat took place the morning after his date with her.
Oof. His stomach twisted and his balls felt like lead. Stretching his neck and clearing his throat, he fought back a tearful rage. Ease up, Buddy. Last time you let your temper flare you had a $400 door to replace.
He’d been a bit confused when he woke up that morning and she had been gone. But he’d had plenty of encounters where that happened—yet he’d expected her to answer one of his phone calls or his texts. She had plenty of opportunities.
While he wasn’t quite ready to stomp over to her house and hold a boom box over his head, with Peter Gabriel’s In Your Eyes blasting from it, he was definitely in that uncomfortable zone where he expected to have a second date with her, anticipated it—really, frankly was excited by the prospect of it and had been stymied by her refusal to talk to him.
Mike had sniped her? This wasn’t a rare baseball card on eBay, for fuck’s sake.
Even though it had been less than twenty-four hours since he last saw her, and he knew he shouldn’t be so eager, it stung. He had an inkling about why she was blowing him off now— some inkling. A 6’5” inkling.
According to the times on the chat window, it looked like within a few hours of leaving his bed, she was planning a date with—Mike?
Mike? Mild mannered, boring old Mike?
This didn’t make any sense! Dylan was the one who went out and found someone for them. Dylan had found Jill, who had been their one and only.
Jill.
He sighed, his shoulders slumping, and as he leaned forward, cradling his face in his hands, a wash of nostalgia, of mourning, of pain came over him. And this time he let it. Normally, he pushed it away, manned up and did what a lot of guys do —went for a run, watched the football game, ate too many wings, pumped iron. But right now he let his feelings sink in. Watching her die had been one of the most—no, the most difficult thing —Dylan had ever experienced. The helplessness had nearly killed him, too. Mike had just retreated into his own world. Running tens of miles, half marathons, day in and day out until his shoes wore out within weeks, until his feet blistered, until he put his body into a state of pain that let some of the agony in his heart leak out.
Dylan wasn’t like that. Dylan had fought and fought, and fought, had argued with the doctors, had argued with Jill. Bargained with God and anyone who could help. Had tried to convince her to try all sorts of alternative therapies that he had read about on the Internet, from vitamin C to certain yoga positions to chelation—and while the doctors said none for it could hurt, none of it helped.
Jill had gently accepted her own fate after a valiant struggle; Dylan had never accepted it. Ever. Here he was, a year and a half after her death finding someone like Laura, hoping that maybe she could help to repair some of the scars that were still fresh from Jill’s death.
And then Mike goes and turns into a snake.
Why would he do this? This wasn’t Mike’s style at all. He wasn’t the type to poach a girl. Mike was the beta. They joked about it. Dylan was the alpha and Mike was the beta and that was just the law of nature and how things worked between the two of them—between the three of them, with Jill. Jill had liked Mike’s sensitive touchy-feelly, new-agey nature and she’d loved Dylan’s arrogance.
Oh, that had hurt. She had called him arrogant all the time, as if his self-confidence didn’t have a bedrock foundation for his firm grounding. Here he was a fire-fighter, a paramedic—built, a former model and he was arrogant? He could wave it away most of the time, but now he just chuckled to himself, thinking about the times she had put him in his place. Frankly, he had needed that, needed her steady, sardonic wit, her—
“Oh, stop it Dylan. She’s gone. Just stop it,” he mumbled to himself. He looked up stared at the monitor again, and the nostalgia came to a screeching halt.
He narrowed his eyes.
It was time for the alpha to put the beta in his place.
Whistling some Lady Gaga tune that he’d caught in the car on the long drive home from the mountain, Mike was feeling pretty pleased with himself. He had just proven that he, on his own, could catch the same woman Dylan could catch.
And boy, what a catch Laura was. Way more than he ever expected. She was absolutely, positively nothing like Jill. And yet, he had a feeling that if the two had met, Jill would have really liked her—and probably would have given her approval. Laura accepted the fact that he was quiet sometimes and he was able to sit in absolute silence with her, out in a field, staring at the mountain. The two of them could just coexist in peace together. You couldn’t find that in many people. Very few, in fact.
Jill had been one of them. Dylan definitely wasn’t, but he had other traits that made him worth being with, hard as it might be these days to remember them. As he pulled into his parking spot his mind was filled with nothing but plans to see Laura again. A niggling irritant scratched deep within his brain, though, ruining the absolute perfection of this new beginning.
Dylan.
He had to tell Dylan at some point and it wasn’t going to go well. He and Dylan had been together since high school and he knew him backwards, forwards and upside-down. Even though Mike’s intentions were pure, Dylan would view this as a threat, as a challenge, as some sort of—as Dylan put it—alpha-beta problem.
Mike just rolled his eyes and ignored the alpha-beta crap because he knew that on the surface he looked like a beta. They weren’t wolves, though, and this wasn’t a pack; they were human beings who were complex and nuanced. And he could show Dylan, and himself, that he was capable of going out on his own and finding a woman.
Well, okay, that wasn’t quite fair. Dylan had found the woman. Fair enough—but he could go out on his own and test the waters. Make sure the woman was attracted to him on her own and not as part of some package with Dylan at the lead.
He had just done that today. Quite pleased with himself, that sense of pleasure faded, like a light switch being flipped off, the second he walked in the apartment and saw Dylan’s face.
“You slept with her, didn’t you?” Dylan wasn’t just pissed. Betrayal was too mild a word to describe his feelings. He was itching for a fight, his fingers clenching against his hot palms.
Mike walked through the door, a cheerful smile on his face, a loose, languid quality to his joints that made Dylan want to throw him against the wall and beat the ever-loving shit out of him for taking his woman.
Their woman.
Funny, how history seemed to repeat itself. Because this is exactly what had happened with Jill almost ten years ago when they’d all first met. Mike would deny it, but the reality was that Jill had been Dylan’s girlfriend and Mike had been the interloper then. So, even though Dylan knew that they had this running joke, that he was the alpha and Mike was the beta. Mike was neither—he was really just a snake.
A snake Dylan couldn’t live without.
“You son of a bitch, you went and—you found Laura and you—the morning after my date with her, you contacted her and got her to go out with you!” He couldn’t help but stammer, and the sputtering made him feel small and insignificant, reduced to babbling like a lovesick teen. Fury plumed in him, hot and fast, with a taste like blood.
Mike stopped dead in his tracks and shoved his hands in his pockets, staring ahead at Dylan, eyes boring into his.
“Yep.”
That enraged Dylan more than anything, because he knew at this point Mike would only give one-word answers. Like a robot, the man shut down and steeled himself, becoming an impenetrable fortress of quotidian bullshit.
“So you knew how important this date was, you knew that I was checkin
g her out for us, not just for me, you jerk!” Dylan seethed now, his anger fueled by Mike’s withdrawal. “So, why in the hell would you go behind my back and contact her? And a few hours after I slept with her!”
“I didn’t know you slept with her!”
Dylan cocked his head, rolled his eyes, and made an Oh please! gesture. “Right, like any woman I wanna sleep with isn’t going to sleep with me on the first date!”
Mike let out a puff of laughter. “Do you know how much you sound like a total douche? Like any woman I wanna sleep with is gonna to turn me down,” he mocked, his hands gesturing like Dylan’s, chest puffed up and prancing around like a peacock. Animated, mocking Mike was way worse than Robot Mike.
Dylan could feel his heart rate zoom, and, he feared, his skin turn green as he morphed into something so angry he couldn’t control it, a firefighter, billionaire Hulk.
And it was all aimed right at Mike.
“What you do or don’t do on your dates, Dylan, is up to you.” Mike replied. A cold wall, unreadable. Typical Mike.
“When you’re poaching women that I find for us, it becomes my business, Mike!”
“I never asked you to go out and find women for us, Dylan!”
“Well, you never asked me not to! It’s been eighteen months. When are you gonna get over Jill?”
Mike pursed his lips, his nostrils flaring, the affable good guy now morphing into something that Dylan knew was under the surface. “I think I can ask you the same question, Dyl. When are you gonna get over Jill? When are you gonna get over this idea that there’s some perfect woman out there for us. There isn’t. There’s a good woman for you and there’s a good woman for me, but the perfect woman for us? That’s...” Dipping his head and hiding his face, Mike’s voice faded out as if it were too impossible to voice.
“Then why did you date Laura—why did you go after her? Doesn’t make any sense Mike, what you’re saying man.” Dylan’s heart rate started to slowly drop. He knew where this was going and he knew that picking a fight with the man he loved was about the last thing on earth that he needed right now. And yet he couldn’t help himself, because, son of a bitch, the guy had just gone and taken away the woman that he was trying to court for both of them.
“You wanna know the truth?” Mike ran a hand through his thick blonde hair and shook his head, smiled ruefully. “The real truth, Dylan?”
“No shit, Mike, of course I wanna know the truth. Don’t lie to me. Oh, wait a minute. Hey—you already did!”
Mike rolled his eyes again. “The truth is, I wanted to prove that whatever woman you try to find for us is independently attracted to me. I’m sick and tired of getting your sloppy seconds.”
“Oh, so now Jill was sloppy seconds!”
“I did not say that!” Mike straightened up to his full height. Six feet, five inches. A wall of runner’s muscle. Now the aggression was coming out, the anger was reaching the surface, and Dylan could watch it, but all he could do was respond to it, instinct taking over.
“I never said that about, Jill. But you know how that worked. I had—”
“Dylan, you can’t just go out and find some woman and throw her down at my feet like a table scrap and expect us to live in threesome harmony. You have to respect the fact that I need to care about her, too. I need to make sure that she cares about me as well.”
Dylan had known at the back of his mind that this was true. Of course it was true. Of course Mike should feel that whoever they shared was in love with him—in love with both of them but in love with him. Dylan knew it. Dylan had known from the moment he met Jill that she was head-over-heels in love with him and the other night with Laura he had felt something awfully close to that, maybe even the same as that, but he was holding back. Grief had a way of messing with him.
Now here stood Mike, pissed as hell at him. The two of them facing off, the anger tangible, so palpable he could almost lick its bicep.
And then suddenly, both men pulled back. Mike peered at him. “You know, there’s only one way to find out where this is going.”
Dylan shook his head. “She won’t answer my texts. She won’t answer my phone calls. She won’t—it’s like, man, she just cut me out.”
Mike frowned. “That does not square with the woman I met. Laura’s warm, she’s intelligent, she’s eager to find someone to connect with to develop a relationship with.” As Mike continued, Dylan screwed up his face, a bit jealous that Mike got that much out of her whereas Dylan had had more of a surface level experience. More entertainment than emotion.
“Dylan—you listening to me?”
“Yeah, sorry. My mind just wandered.”
“What the hell are we supposed to do about this mess now?” Mike asked.
Dylan threw his hands up in the air and made a sputtering sound. “Hell if I know. Then again I’m not so sure we have a situation if she keeps ignoring me.” He reached his hand out to shake Mike’s. Mike gave him a confused look but grasped his hand. “Then,” said Dylan dramatically “the better man won!”
Mike screwed up his face in a grimace. “That’s not how this is supposed to work.”
“No. I know. That’s not how it’s supposed to work,” Dylan answered, “but what am I supposed to do? She won’t let me even say a word.”
“I think you should go find her.”
“Find her where?”
“You know where she works, right? You even know the floor. Can’t be that hard. You know her name. You know what she looks like. You may not be the brightest bulb on the string, but...”
“Hey!”
“It’s not hard to find her. Go after her, Dylan. Maybe that’s exactly what she’s looking for.”
“Why would she want me to chase her when she’s cutting off all contact with me, or at least not answering anything? I mean 34 messages is pretty...”
“You sent her 34 messages?” He knew it, but the reality hit him, hard, in this moment, with adrenaline making his veins feel like balloons, the steady throb of blood rushing through him like the beat at a Blue Man Group concert. “Jesus, Dylan, are you nuts?”
“What? I was impatient!”
“If I were Laura and some guy sent me 34 messages through an online dating site after our first date, I’d run away screaming, too! And I’m a guy.”
Dylan laughed ruefully. “Alright, you’ve made a good point. I just, you know...”
“So how many texts did you send her?”
“Just three.”
“Three?”
“Yeah, and I left a couple...a few...okay.” Faltering, he confessed. “Six voicemails.”
“Oh, God. Really? You’re worried that I’m blowing this for us? How about you? Come on, Dylan. It’s one thing to be the alpha, it’s another to be the nutso!”
“Hey!” Mike was right. He’d gone overboard. “So, you’re saying the only way to make this right...?”
“Yep, go find her.”
“Don’t you think, if I would have scared you off from all the messages and texts, and phone calls, and voicemails, then won’t showing up at her place of employment pretty much guarantee me a visit with the cops?”
“Well, it all depends on how you present yourself.”
“What do you mean?”
“Go there with flowers and a latte, make it a double with some vanilla, and you may have a chance.”
“How do you know how she likes her coffee?”
Mike grinned.
“Ahhh, geez. You spent more time with her than I did, didn’t you?”
“After our date, we ended it with a nightcap. She got hers decaf but I’d imagine that during the day she drinks it straight up. Go find some coffee shop, get her a double latte with...”
“With vanilla?”
“...with vanilla. And show up with a dozen roses and see what happens next. Just don’t go all Richard Gere and do the Officer and a Gentleman thing.”
“Well, I am a firefighter. I’m used to carrying people up and down stairs and acro
ss places.”
“Yeah, I know. You are used to carrying people.”
A silence hung between them.
“But you weren’t gonna let me do that this time were you?” Dylan asked Mike. They stared off at a stand off.
“Just go see her. See if you can fix this.”
“But what about...us, the three of us?”
“I don’t know. That’s a good question.”
Nostrils flaring, Mike’s answer pissed him off. Dylan puffed up and got closer, in Mike’s personal space, his own boundaries barely drawn. “I don’t want to go see her till we’ve —until you and I have settled that.”
“Fine. So what are we doing here?”
“Um...”
Neither man knew what to say.
Mike’s eyes lit up. “I have an idea, but it’s really out there.”
“How out there?”
“Way out there! It’s kind of a long shot. I...I don’t know.”
“Spit it out.”
“Tell you what, you go and talk to Laura and see if you can convince her to date you again. Don’t bring me up, don’t talk about us. Don’t talk about our...you know...relationship.”
“Our threesome.” The men spoke in unison.
“Okay,” Dylan said “Fair enough.”
“Just get the lines of communication open and get her to have a date with you. Not tonight. Tomorrow night.”
Dylan scrunched his face up. “Why?”
Mike smiled “Because I have a plan.”
The idea hit Dylan as the elevator dinged and the doors opened on the thirty-second floor of Stohlman Industries. He was holding a giant vase filled with eighteen red and pink roses sprinkled with baby’s breath and was carrying a double latte with vanilla as well. He could pretend to be the deliveryman—that’s how he’d get access to her.
The receptionist made it easy. “Hey there,” he said, grinning madly. “I’m looking for Laura.” Pretending to fumble with the card to read her name, he shot the woman his conspirator’s grin. She smiled back, leaning forward on her desk.
“Last name?” He paused. Let his smile deepen enough for the dimples to show. Flirting with receptionists was one of his finest arts; helped him with fire investigations. As her face changed from all business to wishful pleasure, Dylan knew that he was about to get access to Laura in two seconds.