One More

by Daisy May

  In the parking lot, Charlie tossed his keys from hand to hand. “Guess I can’t tempt you to come home with us,” he said to Reuben.

  Reuben pinched his lips together. “Not tonight.”

  “Not any night,” Charlie said. “You don’t even have a toothbrush at our place anymore, did you know that?”

  “I do have one.”

  “Nope,” Charlie said. “Threw it out by accident a week ago. You didn’t even notice.”

  The slurred quality of Charlie’s voice worried me, and I grabbed the keys from his hand. “I’m going to take those now.”

  “Oh, whatever. You were going to drive anyway.”

  I climbed into the car, waiting for the two of them to figure out where to sit. There was some type of disagreement—sounded like Charlie was prompting Reuben to sit in the front, and he didn’t want to.

  “Come on!” I called out of the window. “Let Reuben sit in the back. We’re just dropping him off.”

  “Dropping him off to his other boyfriend,” Charlie hissed as he got into the passenger seat.

  “Shh!” I glanced at the back seat, but thankfully Reuben was only getting in now and couldn’t have heard Charlie’s comment.

  Even if there was tension between us and Reuben, Charlie’s way of managing that tension seemed like a terrible idea to me. All the things he was saying were only making us tenser. The alcohol was partly to blame, but I still didn’t like the way he was talking to our boyfriend.

  I pulled onto the street. Maybe, if I was lucky, the beer would have a more positive effect: loosening Reuben’s lips. “So, what are you going to do tonight?” I asked conversationally.

  “Nothing much,” he said in a matching tone. “Pretty much going straight to bed.”

  My phone vibrated in my lap. Apparently I had a message from Charlie. We were coming up to a red light, so I glanced at it. Straight to bed with his new lover??? he’d written.

  I coughed several times, partly to clear my throat and partly to cough a “no!” at Charlie. “You could go straight to bed at our place,” I said, finding Reuben’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

  “That’s nice of you, but it’s all right.”

  The light went green. Frowning, I drove forward again. “We’re both curious why you haven’t been staying over,” I said softly. “We may express it in different ways…” I shot a dirty look at Charlie. “But we both really enjoy it when you spend the night.”

  “God, how many times do we have to have this conversation?” Reuben burst out. “I’d stay over if I felt like it, but I don’t. I don’t need a reason to sleep at my own place. It’s not like you’re my husbands or something.” He sat back, folding his arms over his chest. “Now, do we have to go through this again or should I just get out right here?”

  We were still a few miles from his place. I told myself to keep my eyes off the rearview mirror—or at least not to stare at it—and just drive.

  The rest of the ride was spent in complete silence. My phone vibrated a few more times, but I kept my eyes on the road. I wasn’t going to crash because I was looking at whatever ridiculous theory Charlie was coming up with now.

  At last, we got to Reuben’s apartment building. Charlie and I had long since given up hope of being invited inside. The place was too small, Reuben claimed. A studio. The explanation made sense… I guessed.

  Reuben got out of the car and gave each of us a perfunctory kiss through the windows. “See you later,” he said.

  “Tomorrow, right?” I asked.

  “We’ll see.” He spun and walked away.

  Fuck. I was still longing for another brush of his lips, but he was angry with me. With us. Where had we gone wrong? Everything had been perfect for a while—better than perfect—but now it was all going to shit.

  Was it really so terrible to want to know why our boyfriend refused to spend the night? I knew we’d pushed him a bit, but I couldn’t see how we were completely in the wrong.

  Something weird was going on, and even though I couldn’t stomach Charlie’s explanation for it, I wondered more and more if it could be true. Did Reuben have somebody else?

  I swallowed hard and swung the car onto the road.

  “Pull in there.” Charlie pointed at another apartment building.

  I looked at him, wondering why we would ever go there. He didn’t know anyone else in Brickell that I knew of, and making an unannounced visit to any of his friends at this hour would be extremely unusual.

  “Pull in!” he snapped as I almost missed the driveway.

  He was my husband, which meant I loved and trusted him, so I did as he said. “What are we doing here?” I asked.

  He gestured at the rows of parking spaces. “Park.”

  A car was coming in behind me, so again I did as he said. “Fuck, Charlie, if this is some harebrained scheme to catch him in the act…”

  “Did you not read my texts?”

  I turned off the engine and unbuckled my seat belt. “Charlie. I’ve been sitting next to you this whole time. Of course I haven’t read your texts. Now, tell me what we’re doing.”

  He looked sheepish. “I guess you could call it a harebrained scheme…”

  “Oh my God.”

  “It’s a stake-out!” he said. “Totally legitimate tactic. If cops can do it, we can do it.”

  “You realize you sound like a crazy person, right? This is something a crazy person would do.”

  “He makes me crazy,” Charlie said darkly. “He doesn’t do that to you?”

  Fine, he did, but still… “What are we supposed to do, wait outside Reuben’s apartment to see if that guy from his work goes inside?” I shook my head at him. “We don’t even know what the guy looks like, and we’d be watching an entire apartment building. How would we know which room any visitors are going to? For that matter, how do we know the other guy isn’t there already?”

  Charlie raised an eyebrow at me, and I mentally repeated my last few words to myself. All right, maybe part of me was starting to buy into this cheating-Reuben theory. Not the logical part of me, but some small, insecure, deeply buried part of me. Apparently I was a crazy person, too.

  “We’ll call him,” he said after he’d seen I was won over. “Once we think a guy is in there, we’ll call and see how he sounds.”

  “That makes no sense. Say he sounds guilty. That’s not evidence of anything. Even if we heard another guy in there, that could be a friend of his. Hell, even if we heard puffing and groaning, he could be watching porn.”

  “I’d be pissed if he was ditching us every night to watch porn,” Charlie growled.

  “Fair enough,” I said. He looked sexy when he was pissed. “But even if I bought into this idea that we could figure this out from how he sounds on the phone, how long are we planning to wait here?”

  “As long as we have to.”

  I got ready to let out a sigh of exhaustion, but Charlie wasn’t done. He opened the glove compartment.

  “I brought snacks.”

  Charlie

  I crunched the last bite of Hot Cheetos, then tossed the empty bag on the car floor with the other junk food wrappers. I licked my cheesy fingers, ignoring Jasper’s glare.

  “It’s been hours,” he said. “Are we going to give up on this stupid mission anytime soon?”

  “As soon as the food’s gone, you want to cut and run?” I asked. “Besides, it’s been half an hour, tops.” I offered him my pinky to lick.

  He turned up his nose. “I’ll take a pass on your cheese dust.”

  “You look pretty self-satisfied considering your shirt is covered in chip dust.”

  Scoffing, he settled his hands over his stomach. “I’m full, this is dumb, and I’m ready to sleep.”

  I caught a glimpse of a man outside Reuben’s building and sat up straight. The man looked like he was in his twenties, well-dressed, and walked with a particular sway that set my gaydar beeping. This was Work Guy, I was sure of it.

  “That man,” I s
aid, pointing with a shaky finger. “Give it five minutes, and then we’ll call.”

  Jasper located the one I was looking at, and at first I thought he was going to make a sarcastic comment. After a second, he must’ve noticed the same details I’d noticed. He slumped back in his seat and didn’t protest the idea of staying. Actually, he didn’t say anything at all.

  Some part of me had been excited at the idea of catching Reuben cheating. I’d almost been looking at this as an adventure, a brief foray into the life of a private investigator. But this wasn’t some hard-boiled B-movie, it was real life. And now I had to think about what Reuben might actually be doing over there.

  Was he welcoming his affair partner into his apartment—the one we’d never been allowed inside? Or, now that I thought about it, maybe we were the affair partners. Maybe he had a good reason for never letting us see his place. Maybe this other guy lived there. His real boyfriend.

  My stomach churned and churned. Without even meaning to, I hung my head. Maybe it would be better to drive out of here and forget this had ever happened. I’d be happier that way, without thinking about what was happening in Reuben’s apartment. In time, I could erase these horrible images out of my head.

  Jasper’s hand landed softly on my knee. “We should call him.”

  It was too late to back out. I’d already dragged Jasper into this. I’d put these thoughts in his mind, and we’d never be at peace until we could figure out the truth. I could’ve gotten over this if it was just me, but we were together, and both of us would be thinking about Reuben every time we looked at each other.

  I handed him my phone. “Would you do it?”

  It should’ve been me. I was the one who’d started this whole thing. But my throat was tight, and there was no way I’d be able to sound normal.

  Slowly, Jasper nodded. He dialed and put the phone on speaker.

  “Hello?”

  Reuben sounded like his usual self—a bit surprised, if anything. That only made me feel worse. Clearly he was more devious than I would’ve ever guessed. I pictured that man beside him right now. Touching him. Tugging his sleeve, waiting for him to get off the phone.

  “Hey,” Jasper said. “What’s up?”

  “I’m confused. You guys just dropped me off an hour ago. Is everything okay? Is Charlie there?”

  I cleared my throat. “Yeah, I’m here.”

  “So why’re you calling?”

  He sounded so innocent… like he had no idea why we might want to call. “Reuben,” I said meaningfully. “Are you alone right now?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  So he was lying to us. I should’ve been angry, but instead I just felt empty. I covered my face, sinking back in my seat.

  Jasper always kept a cool head. Even now, instead of bursting out like I would’ve thought a man scorned would, he spoke calmly and quietly. “We saw a man going into your building.”

  “Excuse me?” The shock in Reuben’s voice made me sit up and stare at the phone. “You’re watching my building? What the fuck is wrong with you?” He was swearing now. He never swore.

  “It was my idea,” I said weakly. “I made him do it.”

  “We just wanted to know what was going on,” Jasper added.

  “You want to know what’s going on so bad?” Reuben asked, practically barking out the words. “I’ll tell you what’s going on! Get over here and I’ll show you everything you want to know!”

  I barely noticed as Jasper ended the call and pulled the car back onto the road. My gut was churning more than ever, and I couldn’t seem to draw in a full breath.

  Finally we were about to have the answer to our questions.

  I only hoped we’d be able to live with that answer.

  Reuben

  Acknowledge the anger flaring through you. Embrace it. Thank it for its presence. Then breathe in, breathe out, and let it go.

  The mental exercise usually helped me release any negative emotions. Tonight, I was beyond that point. I slammed the apartment door behind me. After a quick glance at the elevator, I turned to the stairwell instead. I couldn’t storm down an elevator like I could with the stairs.

  And I sure felt like storming. Jasper and Charlie were outside my place, watching what I did? They’d been asking questions for a while now, but this was beyond what I’d ever expected of them.

  It was ridiculous. It was outrageous. It was some stalker-level stuff.

  And it was also maybe, sort of, kind of flattering, I thought as I rounded the first flight of stairs.

  I lived on the tenth floor, which meant I had to walk down twenty flights. By the time I got to the bottom, I was slightly out of breath and a lot less certain whether anger was what I was feeling.

  I rubbed a palm over my sweaty forehead, pausing before opening the door to the front lobby. Jasper and Charlie were clearly concerned. They cared. Even if they’d gone about this in a bit of a bad way, they’d made plenty of efforts to actually talk to me before resorting to this. I was the one who’d been shutting them out.

  The conclusion they’d come to was actually pretty reasonable. At least, it would’ve been if this wasn’t them we were talking about. I thought they knew how head-over-heels I was for both of them. How I lived and breathed for the moments we were together… how I hadn’t even looked at anyone else since we’d met.

  But if I hadn’t been as clear as I thought, I could see how they would figure I was cheating.

  I stepped into the lobby, where Jasper and Charlie were already waiting. The sight of their worried faces made me feel terrible, and I hugged them both at once in a silent apology. They were both stiffer than usual—I guessed they didn’t quite trust me at the moment. They’d see soon.

  “You can see there’s no other man with me,” I said when I stepped back. “I don’t know how I can prove to you that he didn’t run out before you got here or jump off the fire escape, but—”

  “That’s okay,” Jasper murmured. “You said you have something to show us. We’d like to know what.”

  “Okay.”

  I led them into the elevator—no need to storm anymore. The air between us was full of tension, and I fidgeted as we rose through the floors. The other two were rigid, unmoving. I hated myself for worrying them like this, but it seemed like the right thing to do at the time.

  Finally we emerged and I brought them to my door. “You’re going to see right away,” I told them. “Everything is going to make sense to you.” I turned the key in the lock. “Just make sure to hurry and get inside as fast as you can.”

  Charlie’s hands were clenched into fists. “Open the door, already.”

  He cared. Or maybe that last part just made me sound like a psycho killer who was going to chloroform them as soon as they stepped inside.

  Either way, I opened the door. Charlie and Jasper walked in and looked around. I rushed through, shutting the door behind me as quickly as possible.

  The apartment was small—that was the first thing they probably noticed. I watched their faces. I hadn’t been lying about that. It was a studio, so my desk was practically on top of my bed, which was definitely not big enough for three people. It was hardly big enough for one.

  And at the moment, the apartment was filling with barks and yips as five charcoal-colored puppies raced up to greet my boyfriends.

  “Dogs?” Charlie said, taking so large of a step back that he bumped into the wall. “You have dogs?”

  “Puppies.” I got to my knees to scratch some heads, grinning at the stunned looks on Charlie and Jasper’s faces. “This is Moon, Sky, Star, Sun, and Om.”

  “They’re so small.” Jasper dropped down beside me, reaching for one puppy after another. They were just as excited to see him, jumping up and putting their little paws on his thighs. “What kind are they?”

  “I’m not sure. I think they’ve got some schnauzer in them, but that’s just based on their looks.” I gestured at the one who was currently trying to climb onto his crouched legs. “Om
’s my favorite. She’s so friendly. And greedy. They all eat before I have breakfast, but this one stares at me nonstop while I’m having my food. As if she’d even want to eat oatmeal.” I shook my head at her fondly.

  “What the fuck.” Charlie was still backed against the wall, looking kind of… terrified? “How can you two act like this is a normal conversation to be having? I don’t understand anything.”

  “I’m really sorry that I scared you guys,” I said softly. “I never meant to make it seem like I was up to anything, but it was never the right time to tell you the truth, either.”

  “But where did these dogs come from?” Jasper asked.

  “These puppies came from the street,” I said, lifting Sky and holding her up to him. “I found them one night. Seemed like their mom was hit by a car. They were even smaller than they are now. It was so sad about the mom, but they were so darn cute.”

  “So you took them home?” Charlie asked in disbelief.

  “Well, yeah. I couldn’t just let them go to the shelter. They’re so young, and I hated the idea of them getting split up.”

  “All this time, you’ve been keeping five dogs in here,” Jasper said.

  “It’s only been a week or two…”

  “Three weeks!” he corrected. “You should’ve taken them to the shelter, Reuben. Staying at a place like this can’t be good for them.”

  “I couldn’t,” I said simply. “It was love at first sight. I needed them.”

  “Hmph,” Charlie said. “So why didn’t you tell us?”

  He still hadn’t touched Om, even though she was nosing at him curiously. Now the other puppies came over to us and circled around him, leaping to investigate as much of him as they could. Their hijinks put a smile on my face, as they never failed to do. But Charlie was frozen, glued to the wall as if he was trying to sink right into it.

  “I wanted to tell you, I really did. They’ve been such a big part of my life lately, it’s been killing me to not mention them.” I swallowed, suddenly going serious as I gestured at Charlie’s posture. “This is why. I knew you weren’t a dog person. And Jasper, I knew you were soft-hearted. I kept imagining you offering to take the puppies, give them more space to play in. And I knew Charlie would hate that, and that you wouldn’t be too happy about that either. You didn’t choose them. You never would’ve adopted five dogs at once.”