by Daisy May
What was the point of dating them if they were only going to be in love with each other?
Jasper gave me a hug, and I stiffened in his arms. He thought he could comfort me? Did he not know he was the source of half my pain?
I stepped away, fantasies flooding my mind. Not sexual fantasies—not this time. I was imagining scenarios where they texted me and I didn’t respond. Or where Charlie showed up at the coffee shop and I wasn’t there. I pictured them driving around Miami searching for me.
But the problem with these fantasies was that at the end, I couldn’t come up with any effective revenge. At the end of the day, the two of them would still be together. And me… I’d be alone.
“You’ll come over tomorrow night?” Jasper asked, still gripping my arm.
Staring into his all-too-enticing eyes, I sighed. I didn’t want to be alone. And I didn’t want anyone but him and Charlie, either.
I was head-over-heels for these two. Even though I wasn’t getting as much from them as I wanted, I had to be happy with what they were able to give me.
It isn’t their fault. Don’t punish them for what they couldn’t help in the first place.
I bit my lip. “Okay,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I drove home, hands rigid on the steering wheel. It was early in the evening, much earlier than I ever left Jasper and Charlie’s house lately. I was over there so often that if this was a normal relationship, I would’ve expected them to ask me to move in soon.
But it wasn’t one, and no such invitation was forthcoming. I knew it. I was just being stupid if I thought anything more than sex was going to come from this. They could call me their boyfriend all they wanted, but I still knew my place in their life was secondary.
I couldn’t compete with the fifteen years of history they shared. Heck, I couldn’t even compete as an individual. They were both so mature, so successful. They were homeowners with serious careers, and even if my new job was going great so far, I was barely starting out.
No amount of mindfulness could help me now that my thoughts were going down this path. I wasn’t happy, and there was no way for me to fix things.
I glanced around before a yellow light. Something on the side of the road caught my eye, and I screeched the car to an early stop.
Was that what I thought it was? I put my car in park and climbed out.
Jasper
A few days had passed since Reuben had seen the wedding invitation, and he was still acting distant. Something had shifted between the three of us that night. I wanted to make things right again.
Spending more one-on-one time with him would’ve been nice, too. I wanted to mentor him more and give him all the advice I wished someone had given me when I was starting my legal career. But lately, he didn’t seem keen on deep conversations with either me or Charlie.
We were having sex, and plenty of it… but it wasn’t intimate like it had been before. It felt like Reuben had thrown up a wall between us, and even when he was at his most vulnerable, he was also shutting us out.
“We need to include him more,” I told Charlie after Reuben went home without staying over—again.
“He’s about as included as he can be. He gets fucked and sucked as much as either of us.” He threw on the T-shirt he’d dropped on the floor earlier. The air conditioning kept the place cool enough that he didn’t like walking around naked, to my perpetual disappointment.
“Very funny.” Propping myself up on my elbow, I gave him a hard stare. Even the sight of his perfectly squeezable butt in those plaid boxers wasn’t going to distract me from this conversation. “You know I mean include him in the relationship. I feel bad about this wedding thing.”
“What can we do?” He sat down beside me with a shrug. “Like it or not, we can’t take him to the wedding. He doesn’t know the bride or groom. We barely know the bride ourselves.”
“I feel terrible that we just assumed there was no way to include him,” I said thoughtfully. I sat all the way up, enjoying Charlie’s appreciative gaze as the bed sheet dropped to reveal more of my body. “We didn’t even think about how that would make him feel.”
“I feel bad too, but what other choice do we have?” He took my hand. “Imagine bringing him with us. First you’d have to ask Fiona for permission to bring two people instead of one. Then you’d have to explain the nature of our relationship, which would lead to a whole lot more questions.”
I nodded. We’d both told select close friends about what was going on. By now, we knew the kind of questions people were likely to ask. I felt no need to go through that line of questioning any more often than was necessary.
“Next, assuming Fiona agreed this was a valid enough reason to pay for another seat at her wedding, we’d have to actually show up.” Charlie gave me a meaningful frown. “We both know it’s distracting enough being a normal gay couple at a straight wedding.”
Again, I nodded. As much as I was happy to be there for friends celebrating their love, I’d also felt slightly uncomfortable at every male-female wedding I’d been to. There were so many people, including lots from older generations that didn’t necessarily understand homosexuality. We’d been the recipients of more than a few odd looks when we got on the dance floor.
“Now add another man,” Charlie went on. “Do you really think we could all hold hands during the ceremony and then dance together at the reception?”
“I know,” I said softly. “I want to, but I know society isn’t ready for that to happen.” I sighed. “You and I both know we’re in a normal relationship. All three of us love each other—I mean, at least like each other. We’re not hurting anybody by being together… but it’s Fiona’s wedding, and we don’t need to pull all the attention she deserves onto ourselves.”
“Exactly.”
“I understand all of that,” I said. “I’m not suggesting that we bring him.” Even if deep inside, I desperately wanted to. “I just think we should do something more.”
Charlie had started to yawn, but he caught himself at the end of my sentence. “He’s already our boyfriend,” he said. “Our secondary. What more do we want to say to him?”
“I don’t know. What we’re doing just doesn’t feel like enough.” I knew it wasn’t enough, because Reuben kept leaving instead of staying the night, and before the wedding invitation, he’d practically been living here. “I want to let him know how much he means to us.”
“Which is what?” Charlie looked at me closely. “You used the word love a minute ago. Did you mean it?”
“Well…” Yes, yes, yes. I didn’t want to sound too passionate about it, just in case he didn’t feel the same way, or in case saying it actually made him jealous. But I’d known it for a while now. “Maybe.”
“You love Reuben?” he asked, his tone dead serious.
I licked my lips. “Yes.”
“I’m glad you told me that.”
What did that mean? He looked so solemn. Was he going to flip out on me now? Tell me I’d gone too far and that we needed to immediately put this polyamory experiment to an end?
Finally he gave me a small smile. “I think I love him, too.”
Charlie
We loved Reuben. Both of us.
Never would’ve thought I’d feel that way about the cutie from the coffee shop, especially after he turned out to be a mouthy little brat, but… here I was. I couldn’t deny it.
Jasper and I loved each other, too. We were full of love, surrounded by love, drowning in love. When Reuben was at our place, we’d mouth the word “love” at each other every time he turned his back.
It was hard to keep from just blurting out a confession. We both wanted to hear that word back from him—now that we’d admitted our feelings to ourselves, we were fairly sure he felt the same.
But we agreed this wasn’t the time. He was still acting distant. Still not sleeping over with us. It’d actually been about two weeks since the last time he’d spent the night, and he wouldn’t e
ven give us a straight answer as to why.
Tonight, we were cuddling on the couch watching a cheesy made-for-TV movie. Reuben made wisecracks about the cast’s wardrobe, while Jasper repeated some of their lines to make fun of their acting skills. For my part, I kept my arms around both of them and grunted my amusement.
Simply put, it was a comfortable, cozy, domestic kind of evening—the kind of evening I liked the best, the kind I wished we could have all the time.
The kind that was best finished with an all-night, three-man cuddle puddle.
I didn’t mind admitting it. I might’ve looked big and tough, but I liked snuggling as much as the next guy. And adding a third person to the mix somehow made it ten times better.
As soon as the movie came to a sappy, poorly-acted finish, Reuben climbed off the couch. “I should be going.”
I grabbed his arm, while Jasper went for his waist. Pulling together, we dragged him back down with us. He was no match for either of us, so by working together we had him pinned down in no time.
“Don’t go,” Jasper told him.
“I have to.”
“Stay,” I growled.
The TV switched to a commercial, which was playing a Miley Cyrus song. Catching my eye, Jasper sang along in a fake deep voice. “He’s our Reuben, we can do what we want.”
“He’s our Reuben, we can say what we want.”
“Guys, seriously.” Reuben struggled against us, but he was giggling.
“The song’s not over,” I said. “La da di da di, we like our Reubey, and he’s not leaving. Doing whatever we want.”
Jasper picked up the rest of the chorus. “This is our house. This is our Reub.”
“You can’t just restrain me and keep me here!” Reuben insisted, flailing around but unable to get away. “This is called kidnapping, you know! It’s kind of a crime.”
I thought of making a crack about how the crime was actually how sexy he was, but the song was too catchy to not take advantage of it. “We can’t stop,” I sang. “And we won’t stop.”
“Look at you!” he said, squirming. “Isn’t a big strong man like you embarrassed to know the words to this kind of music?”
I just shook my head and sang some more. “Can’t you see it’s we who own the Reuben? Can’t you see it Reuben who Reuben-Reuben-Reuben?”
Reuben stopped fighting and collapsed in an exasperated heap. “Jasper, help me, please!”
All Jasper did was go back to his weird deep voice. “He’s our Reuben, we can—”
“Jasper!” Reuben’s face was flushed, and all traces of amusement were gone. “I have to get up. Let me up.”
“Okay, fine.” Jasper backed off.
So did I—although I couldn’t stop myself from humming another line of the song. “What’s so urgent, anyway?” I asked as I followed Reuben to the door.
“Nothing.”
“Sure seems like a lot of fuss for nothing.” I scowled at him. “You wanted us to be serious. I’m being serious. Why do you need to leave?”
“No reason.”
Jasper reached my side, and we exchanged a worried glance. “Charlie has a good question,” he said slowly. “You used to stay over all the time, and now you never do. All joking aside, I think both of us are wondering what’s going on.”
“I told you there’s no reason.” When Reuben saw our concerned reaction, he stood taller, his hands gripping into fists. “What do you think is going on? That I’m cheating on you, or something? That’s rich.” He laughed bitterly. “I have to go.”
Jasper’s hand found its way into mine. “Good night then,” he said.
Without any attempt at clarifying things, Reuben had vanished. I stood back from the door, my heart suddenly pounding, all the levity from a moment ago gone. I held Jasper’s hand tightly, as if I’d fallen off a cliff and thought he could pull me to safety.
“He said that thing about cheating on us pretty quick,” I said quietly.
Jasper brought me upstairs to the bedroom, where he stripped off my shirt. “He isn’t cheating on us,” he said, running his fingertips over my bare chest. “He said he wasn’t.”
“That’s not what he said. He said that was rich. What was that supposed to mean?”
“He wouldn’t cheat.” Jasper stepped close to me, holding me for a long moment before speaking again. “He’d have no reason to. I mean, look at you. Look at me.” He positioned us in front of the mirror.
I smiled weakly. Yeah, we looked good. My shirtless torso was bulkier than most twenty-year-olds’, and we both had zero doubts that Reuben enjoyed the hell out of Jasper’s stocky body. We could attract him individually or together. But maybe “together” was the problem.
“He could be jealous,” I said. “Maybe he’s getting sick of being a secondary.”
“He can’t be,” Jasper said—but the unsurprised look in his eyes told me he agreed.
“What if he met someone else?” I asked. “There was that man at his work…” Reuben hadn’t mentioned that man since the first time he’d brought it up, but that didn’t mean nothing else had happened.
Jasper bit his lip. “He would’ve told us if anything was going on. He’s not a deceitful person.”
“But is there anything to tell? I mean, there are three of us. Did we ever officially talk about being exclusive?”
He turned from the mirror to loop his arms around my neck. “He knows he’s our boyfriend. We shouldn’t have to say anything more than that.”
“What if he thinks things are different since there are three of us?”
“He knows we’re exclusive, Charlie. Otherwise he wouldn’t have made that comment about cheating.”
“Right.” I held him around the lower back, still unnerved by Reuben’s attitude. “The thing is, we can’t blame him if he does want to move on. None of us thought this was going to be a forever kind of situation.”
Jasper’s eyes were pained. “And maybe it would be better for him to move on. He could be with someone who could be with him fully. Someone who could show him off in public… meet his family… take him to weddings.”
“But, Jasper.” I clung to him, feeling adrift without Reuben. “Even if we knew this wouldn’t be forever, I’m not ready for it to end yet.”
Jasper
It’d been a solid three weeks since Reuben had spent the night with us. Three weeks of him coming over, making excuses, and leaving.
I still had Charlie, of course. I was never alone when I fell asleep, and he was always there when I woke up in the morning.
Not having Reuben wouldn’t have been so bad if I didn’t know how much better it was with him. He was more than a third body in the bed. He added something intangible but completely unmistakable to our pairing. He was Reuben, and I couldn’t stand the way he was pulling away from us.
“Did you guys pick out a gift for that wedding yet?” he asked one night over drinks at the local pub.
We were acting like “just friends,” as we usually did when we were all out together. That was annoying, because I wanted to lean over and kiss that worried pout off his lips.
“We haven’t been thinking about it,” I said. “It’s not for another few months.”
“I thought I heard you talking about a gift the other night.”
Charlie picked a fry off the plate. “Maybe you heard us talking about a birthday gift for Wendell.”
“Oh-h-h. That’s your second cousin, right, Jasper? The one who took you in after your parents kicked you out for being gay?”
I nodded, flattered that he remembered the details of my history. “The same one that put me through school.”
I owed him everything—because of both his generosity and the kindness he’d shown me. If it wasn’t for him, I would’ve been homeless. My life could’ve gone down a whole different path. It was always hard to pick out a gift that would show a fraction of my appreciation.
“So you’ll go over to his place for a birthday party?” Reuben asked.
<
br /> “No, I’ll ship the gift over. He moved to a retirement community a few hours away. I only make it out there about once a year.”
Although Reuben didn’t comment, I suspected he was thinking about how he wouldn’t have been invited to the party if there was one. Even as it stood, his name wouldn’t be on the card. But what could we do about that? Wendell was fine with me being gay, but asking him to accept a polyamorous relationship would’ve been a step too far.
Charlie gulped his beer. “Reuben, I have something for you.”
“You do?” He seemed genuinely surprised. “It’s not my birthday.”
“Don’t get too excited. It’s nothing fancy. Just a little thing I made for you.”
I had to smile at the way Reuben’s eyes widened when he saw it. To be fair, the small dog carving was one of Charlie’s nicest. He’d labored over it for hours, pulling it out anytime Reuben wasn’t around.
“You made this for me?” Reuben asked.
“It was nothing,” Charlie said gruffly. “You said you wanted a dog.”
The carving was a terrier-like animal, seated on its haunches and looking up with its ears flattened back. It fit perfectly into the palm of Reuben’s hand.
“It’s amazing,” he breathed.
“All right, enough. Let’s get going.” Charlie drained his beer, pretending he didn’t care about Reuben’s praise.
I was sure Reuben saw through him as easily as I did. Even so, he took several slow sips to finish his drink, making a face after each one.
I’d only had soda since I was the designated driver, so I paid the bill while he finished.
“It’s so nice of you to treat your friends,” the waitress said as she collected my cash. “I notice one of you always does that. Makes life a lot easier for me!”
“We take turns,” I said with the most casual smile I could manage. Inside, I was seething. Treating my friends? These were my partners.
But… discretion. We had to keep our relationship to ourselves, or else… well… I didn’t know what would happen.