Desire

by Mariella Frostrup

  “Wait,” Josh says. Natalie doesn’t stop.

  *

  The next morning is aggressively sunny, white light spilling hot across the expensive sheets until there’s no way for Nat to ignore it any longer. She stands motionless in the shower for forty minutes before she goes downstairs.

  “Well, hey.” Amanda’s in the kitchen eating toast and reading the paper; she’s got her bathing suit on under a different dress than yesterday, hair up in a knot on top of her head. Her eyes are puffy, so Nat can tell she feels like garbage, but to the casual observer she could be a model for J.Crew’s end of summer style guide. All she needs is a floppy hat.

  “Look,” Natalie begins, padding over to the coffeemaker. They’ve spent a hundred mornings hungover together – they’ve gotten in a hundred drunk fights – so there’s no reason for this to feel any different except for the part where it really, really does. She mapped out a game plan in the shower, though, figures the best way to handle this is to confront it head-on. “I was an asshole.”

  Right away, Amanda shakes her head. “We were all assholes,” she says, flicking her hand like she’s swatting away a bee at a picnic. “Seriously, don’t worry about it. It’s fine. Josh is out by the water, he said come down when we’re ready and we can lay on the dock.”

  Well. Natalie nods and busies herself digging milk out of the stainless refrigerator. She should have forced herself out of bed earlier – hungover or not, Josh and Amanda are perpetual early birds both and she cringes at the idea of them talking this out over lattes this morning, let’s just forget it and get through the weekend. In a weird way those two have always been on the same bro-y, easygoing wavelength.

  (“You know Josh still loves you, right?” is a thing Amanda’s fond of saying. “You are absolutely Josh’s perfect woman except for the part where you like girls.” She said it the night of the baby shower, too, right before she pulled Natalie’s shirt off, like she was worried they were going to wind up hurting him somehow. Nat kissed her hard and sloppy to shut her up.)

  “I meant what I said, though,” Amanda tells her now, right before she pulls open the sliding door and heads outside into the sunshine. “It wasn’t an experiment.”

  Whatever that means. Natalie blows out a breath, not letting herself hope. Wanting Amanda was easy enough before they slept together – Nat only ever thought about it between girlfriends, and the thinking always had the same hazy focus she imagines other people use to contemplate winning the lottery, planning fantasy boat purchases and trips to Europe. Natalie planned for the lines of Amanda’s shoulder blades the same way. She never expected to get them.

  Then she did. And – of course, of course, stupid not to plan for that part – she couldn’t keep them.

  She gulps the coffee and changes into her bathing suit before joining the others, head still pounding. They’re on the dock just like Amanda said, lying out next to each other with matching aviators and one of those liter Evian bottles between them on the warm wood. Josh sees her first.

  “Hey,” he says, sitting up and removing the sunglasses. “How you doing?”

  Natalie hasn’t seen Josh without a shirt in years, and for a second she just stares. He looks like a grown-up, not the kid who took her to prom and ate her out in his mom’s unfinished basement, a hollow in his skinny breastbone where you could rest a golf ball. He looks tanned. “I’m okay,” she tells him finally. “Head’s a bitch, though.” She chucks the bottle of sunscreen on his towel then drops down beside it, nudging his foot to say sorry. She and Josh hardly ever apologize outright. “Do my back, okay? Not all of us belong in a freaking Coppertone commercial.” It’s true, too: they would make a good-looking couple, Josh and Amanda, but they could also be siblings, the same tan skin and eyes and thick curly hair, albeit in completely different shades. They’ve both got real pretty mouths.

  I have a type, Natalie thinks, and nearly laughs.

  “Oh my god, at least rub it in,” Amanda says out of nowhere. “She’s going to burn and whine at us all weekend.” Natalie hears her sitting up and all of a sudden there are two pairs of hands on her freckly back, Amanda lifting a bikini strap and smearing the sunscreen underneath. “You have to get everywhere, she’s like a porcelain doll.”

  “I’m right here,” says Natalie, who is in fact nothing like a porcelain doll. She has brown hair and brown eyes and brown freckles, all in the same uniform shade. Still: she guesses this means the embargo on casual touching has been lifted. She breathes into it, trying not to shiver under their hands.

  They spend the rest of the morning and a good chunk of the afternoon that way, Nat lying on the dock letting the hangover bake out of her while Amanda floats on her back in the water and Josh reads last month’s Wired. It’s quiet. When she opens her eyes she finds Josh gazing back at her, his expression mostly hidden by the sunglasses and his neck gone pink and warm-looking in the sun. They’ve known each other so many years.

  “I’m glad you came,” he says, reaching for a newer, chillier water bottle and rolling it back and forth across her naked stomach. Natalie grins at him. “Even if you are a pain in the ass.”

  Later they go into town for dinner, the kind of divey burger bar that exists specifically for rich people in tourist towns, sticky tables and pitchers of beer. Amanda feeds a fistful of ones into the jukebox. “We should dance,” she declares, but Natalie shakes her head so Amanda rolls her eyes and takes Josh by the hand instead, their faces gone candy-colored in the twinkle of the Christmas lights strung up on the walls. Natalie drinks her Corona and watches them, tries to put a word to whatever she feels.

  Amanda leads Josh back to her when the last song is finished, the faintest sheen of sweat on her skin. Her hair is long and loose down her narrow back. “Now we should go home,” she decides.

  So: that’s what they do.

  *

  “I feel like the cast of Friends,” Josh says on the dock, toeing off his expensive old-man loafers and dangling his feet in the lake. In high school all he ever wore was baggy jeans and t-shirts, these sneakers that Natalie and Amanda stole during one free period and drew all over. They read Property of Nat Boutilier down the tongue in purple Sharpie.

  “What like, incestuous?” Nat asks, rolling up her cropped jeans to sit beside him. They’ve been circling around the subject all night, feeling it out, trying on different sorts of jokes. (“It figures,” Amanda said over dinner, sucking the rim of her neon-bright cocktail. “Nat was always the coolest. Probably Julie and Mac would probably jump at the chance to hit that, too.” Her mouth left kiss prints in the grainy sugar, the soft outline of her bottom lip.)

  “Don’t be boring,” Amanda tells them now, hands up and fiddling with the halter tie of her sundress. “Come swim.”

  She isn’t wearing a suit. Nat and Josh watch as the dress pools, her bare back and the dimples at the base of her spine, the slow curve of her waist. Then she dives.

  “Oh,” Josh says, voice like a man who finally heard the pin drop. “Right. Should I, um. Should I go inside?”

  Amanda surfaces, twenty feet out. She does a starfish float, breasts exposed like a dare.

  “Do you want to?” Natalie asks Josh, turning to face him. “Go inside?”

  Josh just stares. “No,” he tells her quietly. “But I can.”

  Nat looks from him to Amanda and back again, his open collar and his solemn face. She’s loved him since they were fifteen years old. “Don’t,” she says, and pulls her tank top and bra over her head in one fell swoop.

  The lake’s cold now that it’s dark out, goosebumps rising everywhere on her body and her bare nipples drawing up right away. It’s shallow enough that Nat can touch down. Amanda got closer as Nat tugged her jeans off, Josh slipping into the water behind her with a quiet splash; Amanda left her panties on, this pale cotton thong that stood out against her summer tan, so Natalie did, too. She can feel her heart thrumming in her chest.

  “Don’t be mad at me,” Amanda says, reachi
ng out and lacing her fingers through Natalie’s. Nat’s body’s gone water-weightless, save a heavy ache in her breasts and between her legs. “Josh, tell her not to be mad at me.”

  “I’m not mad at you,” Nat mutters before Josh can answer, thunking her forehead lightly against Amanda’s. She stays there for a second, nudging Amanda’s chilly nose with hers. “Of course I’m not mad at you.”

  Amanda kisses her instead of replying, soft mouth and slippery body and a whimper caught in the back of Natalie’s throat. Behind her she can hear Josh breathe in. She reaches blindly back for his hand and yanks until he’s flush against her, the wet heat of his rib cage expanding and his cock pressing into her ass. He hooks his chin over her shoulder so he can watch. Amanda pushes one long thigh between Natalie’s, reaching up to scratch the hair at the back of Josh’s vulnerable neck; they’re pressing her tighter against one another with every breath, hands and mouths on her stomach and nipples and jaw.

  “Okay.” Natalie gasps, and it sounds a lot more like a sob than she means for it to. “We should – um. Is this – are we –?”

  “Bed,” Amanda says, the same tone of voice she used to steer them to dinner, then to the dance floor, then back home again. Natalie breaks away from her slippery mouth to stare. Amanda only smiles.

  “Bed,” Nat agrees.

  *

  The walk inside is awkward, all of them drenched and half-naked. Ridiculously, Natalie finds herself worrying about the expensive birchwood floors, the thick, piled area rugs. Then Josh takes her hand, and she stops worrying.

  They end up in Natalie’s room, the white queen bed and the floor-to-ceiling windows. “Here,” Amanda murmurs, producing one of yesterday’s beach towels and rubbing it across Natalie’s skin, leftover sand scraping against her stomach and breasts. Nat reaches up and wrings out Amanda’s hair gently, then turns to Josh and helps him shuck his sopping boxers. They have lobsters on them.

  “Your underwear still sucks,” Natalie tells him, wrapping a fist around his cock. It’s the only one she’s ever seen up close. Amanda slips up beside her to touch too, thumb rolling over the sticky head.

  “What’s this about sucking?” she teases, sliding a hand down the back of Natalie’s boyshorts. Her palm is clammy-warm and Nat pushes into it thoughtlessly, letting Amanda strip her. Then Amanda does something with her fingernail that makes Josh’s knees buckle, and they all go swaying into the side of the bed.

  “Let’s –” Josh starts, but it seems like he’s forgotten all words entirely. Natalie crowds him until he lies back, helpless, then climbs on top. Amanda watches them with both hands planted on her hips, cotton thong gone see-through and clinging with water.

  “Come here,” Natalie says, at the same time Josh asks, “Are we really gonna do this right now?”

  Amanda raises her eyebrows as she gets her knees up on the bed behind Natalie, sucks for a moment at the back of Nat’s neck. “Do you want to do this?” she asks, running her hands down Nat’s body: palms flattened over her stomach, two fingers snaking lower to rub between her legs. In Nat’s ear a moment later, off Josh’s nod: “Do you?”

  “’Manda.” Of course she does, Jesus, how wet she is as Amanda opens her up a bit, slides those curious fingers over her clit: fuck, Josh is getting a show. She reaches back and snaps the elastic on Amanda’s underwear like, take those off. “Come on.”

  “You come on,” Amanda says, but she does what Nat tells her, backing off long enough to peel them down her legs. Nat’s still got one hand on Josh’s cock. She’s jacking him almost absentmindedly, this twist of her wrist like muscle memory from years and years ago; his gaze is flicking from her face to her breasts to the V of her thighs and back again, his eyes gone impossibly dark. Amanda presses herself against Nat’s ass.

  “Okay.” That’s Josh struggling to sit up a bit, tilting both Nat and Amanda onto their backs on the mattress, Amanda’s breasts bouncing with the motion. She giggles, trailing one hand up Josh’s thigh. He groans as she lifts to nip at the flat of his stomach, threading his fingers through her curly hair and tugging. Groans louder when she rolls over and settles herself between Nat’s legs.

  “I want to,” Amanda says, kissing a hot, wet trail down Natalie’s stomach. Josh settles one big hand on the back of her neck. “You gonna let me? Nat Nat Nat, I wanna try.”

  “Amanda.” She didn’t, the night of the baby shower; every time Amanda’s head drifted that way, Nat yanked her back up, finally flipping them over and grinding herself to a teeth-gritting orgasm against Amanda’s thigh. “I don’t –”

  Josh slides an arm between Natalie’s back and the bed, lifting. “Come here,” he tells her, supporting her lolling neck the way you would a baby. Natalie used to think about their hypothetical kids sometimes, back in high school – even now, he’d still be her first choice for a donor. She wonders if he knows. “There,” Josh says, settling her into the cradle of his chest like he’s a human armchair. Then, to Amanda: “She’s gonna let you. Right, Nat?”

  Natalie swallows, sifting a hand through Amanda’s wet curls. “Right.” They all three of them smell like the lake, stale water and shadows. Then Josh starts applying pressure with the hand on Amanda’s neck, pushing her head down, and Nat loses her breath.

  “Good.” Amanda’s getting situated, hooking an arm around Nat’s thigh and nudging her open with one elegant shoulder. Josh plants a kiss on her jaw. Natalie squeezes her eyes shut and opens them again, wanting to see this, Amanda’s lashes lowered in concentration as she works two fingers inside.

  Nat gasps. She arches into it before Amanda even licks the first broad stripe along the length of her, careful tongue and the faintest, gentlest nip of her teeth. “S’that right?” she asks, more unsure than Natalie’s ever heard her; Nat whines her encouragement and tilts her hips so Amanda will go harder, threading her fingers through Josh’s in Amanda’s soft soft hair.

  “That’s hot,” Josh tells them quietly. He’s poker warm against her, pressed along Nat’s spine. “I mean, sorry if I’m not supposed to say that? But fuck.”

  Amanda laughs, a huff of air that’s got Natalie squirming. Her fingers crook up deep inside. “It’s hot,” she agrees matter-of-factly; for someone who’s new at this she’s taking to it real easy, like she understands instinctively how Nat’s body works. One more twist of her wrist, sloppy tongue at Nat’s clit and Josh sucking at her favorite secret spot behind her ear – yeah. Nat’s pretty much done.

  “Please,” she says. And: “’Manda.” And then that’s it, a sharp arch against Josh and a blinding white light behind her eyes, this helpless keen she would be embarrassed about at any other time, any other place. With any other people. Amanda backs off too soon, unpracticed, but she leaves her fingers inside so it hardly matters.

  “Fuck,” Josh repeats against Nat’s neck, hands skimming around to roll her nipples. His palms are warm warm warm. Natalie reaches back to tug at his hair mindlessly, hard the way he used to like. Thinks about the mechanics of who should fuck who.

  Amanda is crawling back up Nat’s body to be eye-level with both of them, kissing as she goes. “Was it good?” she asks, breathless herself. Her chin is slippery when she nudges it against Natalie’s belly. “Nat, was I good?”

  She sounds so eager. “Yeah, babe.” Nat laughs, holding out her arms. “You were great.”

  Amanda grins, tilting her clever face up to kiss Natalie with a sharp-tasting tongue, then crawls up further so she can get Josh next. Nat’s never seen them kiss before and she twists her neck around to watch; from the way Josh’s hands tighten she can tell he’s tasting her too, the tang of it in Amanda’s mouth. All three of them are impossibly close.

  Not close enough, though: “Okay,” Amanda says a minute later, pulling back and rubbing one hand over Natalie’s hipbone. Her pretty cheeks are flushed bright pink. She looks a little uncertain all of a sudden, like she had a plan for up to now and not any further. “What are we – Josh, do you –?”

&n
bsp; “I want to watch you guys,” Natalie hears herself say, followed immediately by a hot rush of shock. She’s doesn’t have the slightest idea where that came from – just seeing them kiss, maybe, or some other secret part of her she never knew existed up until now. She loves them both so terminally much.

  Josh’s eyes widen. “Are you sure?” he asks, both his hands still around Nat’s waist, warm chest against her back. Briefly, Natalie entertains the thought of how else he might have wanted this to end.

  Still: “Please,” she tells them, crawling out of Josh’s lap so Amanda can take her place. “I just, I want to see.” Now that she’s said it, it feels like the only thing that will do. The urgency of need almost strikes her dumb.

  Amanda seems to understand. “Okay, honey,” she says, goosing Nat’s cheek as she inches up Josh’s body to straddle him, open legs and the familiar-unfamiliar smell of her. “You wanna?” she asks, addressing Josh. “Nat said you were pretty good in high school.”

  “Oh, Nat said.” Josh looks at them both, uncertain, so Nat scoots over and pulls his hand between Amanda’s legs. They press up inside her together, one finger each; Amanda hisses. “Yeah,” Josh says then, voice cracking like it’s sophomore year all over again. “Okay. Let’s.”

  “Okay.” Amanda squirms on their fingers, warm and impatient. Nat leans forward and kisses Josh’s jaw. They pull out as gently as they can, Amanda’s palms curving around Josh’s shoulders as he lines them up. Nobody says anything about a condom. Some people, Nat thinks vaguely, there’s no reason to protect yourself from. “Nat,” Amanda says quietly, right as she sinks down onto his cock. Nat leans over Josh’s shoulder for a kiss.

  “That’s it,” Nat says, pulling back and pressing her lips to the side of Josh’s neck, feeling his pulse tick against her mouth like a bomb counting down to detonation. She slicks her tongue over the tendon there, hears him inhale. “Love you so much.”

  Josh groans, a sharp, anguished sound. “Natalie.”

  “Josh,” she says back, so he’ll know for absolute certain which one of them she means. “Love you.” His hand comes up to fist in her hair, desperate. Amanda’s working her hips up and down in a rhythm now, soft wet sounds. “Love you both,” Nat adds, voice catching a bit as Amanda arches. She means to sneak it in, but the amount of emotion behind the words is so obvious she closes her eyes in embarrassment. “There,” she tells them. “Just like that.”