Brandon wears a face of concern. “Your mother won’t marry me if she doesn’t have her daughter’s consent”, he jokes.
I take a seat back at the table, Jack standing to help me into it.
“I had no idea”, Jack says, as though feeling the need to confirm it for me. “I barely knew Dad was dating someone.”
“I guess whirlwind romances are really a thing”, Logan says.
“Three months isn’t exactly whirlwind”, Mom says, taking a moment again to admire her ring. “And anyway, it was love at first sight.”
“Ten thousand meters in the air”, Brandon adds jovially, as though he’s worked through the line before.
I try not to wonder whether they’ve joined the mile high club but my imagination isn’t as kind to me.
Mom pours the new bottle of champagne, refusing to allow me to refuse any.
“Do you have a date already set?” Logan asks.
Mom’s eyes twinkle while she pauses dramatically again. Once more and I’ll be convinced she’s doing amateur theatre on the side. “We didn’t see the point of waiting”, she says.
“What does that mean?”, I ask her gravely, unable to hide the concern in my voice.
“Don’t look so worried, Penny!” Mom says. “You look like I’ve just told you I’ve got six months to live.”
“I just want to know how long we’ve got”, I say, without being specific about what I’m referring to, “to prepare, I mean.”
Brandon jumps in. “You don’t need to worry about the money, or taking time off work”, he says, “I’ll be paying for everything so all you need to do is relax and have a good time.”
Mom claps her hands together like an excited schoolgirl about to receive a chocolate. “It’s so exciting!” she declares, a message that seems superfluous considering her animated behavior.
“Are you going to let us know the date”, Jack asks, “Or shall we just expect a call on the day?”
“March twenty five”, Brandon says. “Put it in your diaries. Oh, and Katie tells me you have a friend who works in floristry, Penny.”
“That’s three weeks from now”, I say in panic. “Three weeks.”
“I told you we didn’t want to wait”, Mom says proudly.
Logan, Jack and I share a terrified look, and then Mom goes and ruins every chance any of us have got to keep our dream alive. “You guys will then be stepbrothers and stepsisters, how neat is that? Penny always wanted a brother to play with when she was growing up.”
I shudder visibly, the word stepbrother leaving an acrid taste in my mouth and a horrible churning sensation in my belly, that’s not the delightful tingle I’ve grown accustomed to in the presence of my identical husbands in waiting.
“What’s the rush?” Logan asks. “Why not leave it a little bit longer.”
Jack and I are nodding together in agreement like two marionettes under the control of a parkinson’s sufferer.
“Why wait if now feels right?” Mom says, as though the question were absolutely redundant because the answer is obvious for everyone to see. “Brandon and I love each other, and getting married just seems as natural a step in our journey as waking up in the morning together.”
“You two look just as shocked as Penny does”, Brandon adds. “This is supposed to be a celebration, and I thought you’d be happy for us both.”
“I am happy”, Jack says. “Sorry, Dad, it’s just-. I guess I wasn’t expecting it either.”
“That’s the whole point of a surprise”, Mom says, her cheeks even redder now than they were before. “It wouldn’t be much of a surprise if you saw it coming in the first place.”
Three weeks before these incredible twins become my - no, I still can’t bring myself to say it. What if Jack and Logan decide they want to end it now? What then? Sitting on my hands doesn’t help, neither does rearranging every single item of kitchenware on the table. I have to start tapping, and when I start tapping, I know it’s bad.
“You’ll have to get a dress, Penny”, Mom says. “Do your hair up, get some nice shoes.”
It’s real, it’s really real and there’s nothing I can do to avoid it.
“And suits for both of you boys”, Brandon adds, “As much as I know you love dressing up like Indiana Jones, Logan, I’d really appreciate it if you made an effort to scrub up this time.”
Logan shrugs. “Don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll be able to find something suitable. A fedora, a whip, a pair of desert boots.”
Brandon ignores him, and Jack and I are both still too stunned to make light of this horrible situation. Any other time I would have given him the giggle that joke deserved.
“So I guess that’s it”, Mom says. “Our news.”
Brandon raises his glass, encouraging us all to do the same. “A toast”, he begins. “To my fiancée and future wife Catherine, Jack and Logan, my irreplaceable twin boys, and Penny, my future stepdaughter. If anyone gathered here today knows of any reason why Katie and I can’t legally marry-”,
“Keep it to yourselves”, Mom cuts in, and while the two of them suppress their giggles, Jack, Logan and I reluctantly chink our glasses together.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I’m pacing again, just like Poiret. Up and down Jack’s open plan living room, through his dining room, around the island in the kitchen and back again, past the sofa where Logan is slouched flicking absentmindedly through a magazine, in front of the armchair Jack is sat contemplatively in, his finger tips pushed together like a philosopher about to declare his latest theory.
“That’s not going to help”, Logan says.
“It’s helps Poiret”, I insist. “He can’t solve anything without a good pace.”
“There isn’t anything to solve”, Logan says. “Your mom and our dad are getting married, that doesn’t change our situation at all, if anything it just makes it a little bit stranger. It doesn’t change the way we feel about each other, right?”
“No, but it does change everything else”, I shout from the kitchen. “It was difficult enough before, right now, it’s going to be impossible.”
“Nothing’s impossible”, Logan says. “You should know that more than any of us. Look at what’s happened already, you dreamt it and we came.”
“It’s not the time for field of dream’s quotes”, I say, “I’m seriously worried about this. Your dad is getting married to my mom, we’ll be-.”
“Stepbrothers and stepsister”, Logan says, making me visibly shudder. “And so what? I’m sure we won’t be the first step siblings in history to get down and dirty with each other. It’s not like we’ve grown up together or anything, it’s just a weird piece of bad luck that your mom and our dad are getting married. We can’t help that, if anything, we should be happy for them.”
“How can you be so chilled out about this?” I say, my rhythm around the circuit I’ve just invented refusing to decrease.
Logan finally puts the magazine down. “There’s nothing we can do about it”, he says. “As much as we want to change the situation, we can’t, which gives us two options. One, we stop seeing each other because there is some kind of unwritten rule somewhere that says even if you want the opposite, you can never fall in love with your stepbrothers.”
“And two?” I cut in, my voice echoing around the dining room, careful not to agree or disagree with the suggestion I might be falling in love.
“We carry on as we are”, Jack says, finally coming out of his trance.
“That”, Logan agrees, before laying back down on the couch. “Either we tell them or we don’t, but it’s not something I think we need to worry about now.”
“And that’s it?” I ask, refusing to believe something like this can be so simple. “We either carry on or we stop entirely?”
Logan shrugs. “Unless you have a number three, one and two is all we have.”
I don’t want to even consider One, nor think that Jack and Logan might be considering it either, but is Two really that easy to achi
eve?
“It’s still early days”, Jack says. “We’ve been seeing each other in secret anyway, it isn’t too much of a leap for us to continue.”
My fear gets the better of me, freezing me solid mid-pace. “Is that what you both want?”
Jack and Logan look over to me, a shared expression that tells me they know how much this whole thing has shaken me up.
“What I want in an ideal world”, Logan says, “is to get rid of the dead weight that seems to be sucking the life out of us constantly and have you entirely for myself.”
I kick into pacing again, like a robot that’s just managed to reboot itself. “Don’t joke, Logan”, I say. “You and I both know this relationship wouldn’t be the same without Jack. You two balance me, Jack and I balance you and you and I balance Jack, that’s how it works. It wouldn’t with just the two of us.”
“Can you imagine what family holidays are going to be like?” Logan says.
“Logan!” I remonstrate.
“Come on, I’m only kidding”, he says.
“Just ignore him, Pen”, Jack adds. “He uses humor to cope with problematic situations.”
“I just don’t see the situation as being problematic, that’s all”, Logan says. “And I agree with you, of course I agree with you, we are three people not two, that’s how we began and that’s how I want us to continue. I’m even beginning to like Jack.”
That does make me laugh but only out of desperation.
“The way I see it”, Logan continues, “is that at the end of the day, nothing is going to stop you, Jack and I going upstairs together and forgetting all about this.”
Maybe that’s what I need, an amazing session with these two to completely de-stress myself. The problem is, we’re not trying to forget about a bad day at work, or a knotted back, we’re talking about becoming a legitimate, official family, and as much as I try, I can’t get that out of my head.
“I choose option Two”, Jack says. “Obviously. Option One isn’t even an option for me. I don’t want us to stop seeing each other because of this, Penny, nor do I think we need to.”
“Me either”, Logan says. “For a start, the sex is too good, and aside from that, no, nothing, I like the sex too much.”
“For a man that excavates things that are buried meters below the surface of the earth for a living, you are oddly shallow at times”, Jack says. “It’s amusingly paradoxical.”
“What about Mom and Brandon?” I say, still unsure if I can allow myself to believe that really nothing between us is going to change.
“What about them?” Logan asks.
“What if they find out?” I say, just the thought of them knowing creating the kind of panic inside me that gives me the sensation that my vital organs might be shutting off one by one.
Logan shrugs so I look to Jack for an answer. “We deal with it when it happens”, he says diplomatically. “It might be best if they find out after the wedding, just in case it messes with their plans.”
I hadn’t thought of that at all.
“You think that’s possible?” I ask.
Now Jack shrugs this time. “If they think we’re in love with each other”, - there’s that word again, love, as though I’m not the only one thinking it, - “it might make them think twice about getting married so it doesn’t make our situation uncomfortable. If we wait until after they’ve tied the knot, we won’t give them a chance to change their minds. I don’t know what the right thing to do is, or whether we’ll be able to hide it that long, but at least that way it seems fair to me.”
“Maybe we should stop seeing each other until after the wedding”, Logan says, still not looking up from his magazine. “You know, three weeks without the kind of orgasms that make the whole house shudder.”
Yeah right, I can barely go half a day without having the same kind of withdrawal symptoms as a crack head going cold turkey.
Logan restores sense to the silence that follows his statement by speaking the truth, just in case we weren’t sure, “I’m kidding”, he says with his hand in the air, “Totally kidding.”
“And if they find out before?” I say, paused again, my heart beating way more quickly than is probably healthy.
Jack takes my arm and pulls me over to him. “Then they find out before”, he says. “And we confess to our terrible sins, lay all of our cards out on the table and move forward as adults. The most important thing we need to be sure of between the three of us is what we want to happen, both now and in the future, when the inevitable happens and they do find out, or we just don’t want to hide it any more.”
“You know how I feel already”, Logan says. “It’s how I’ve felt from the moment I saw Penny in that weird bar with those even weirder kids. I don’t care who knows. I don’t even care if we tell Dad and Katie right now.” He sits back up again. “Penny, I know I joke around all the time and half of the stuff I say doesn’t sound at all serious, well I’m being serious right now. I want you. I wanted you when I first saw you, I’ve wanted you every time I’ve seen you since and I want you so much right now it feels like something burning inside me. And you know what the weird thing is? Every time it gets stronger, like the more time we spend together somehow makes the feeling more powerful. I’m not going to let anyone get in the way of that because I wouldn’t even think about getting in the way of someone else experiencing the same thing. If the way that you feel is the same, which I hope in the absolute bottom of my heart that it is, then you will know as I know too that nothing, no matter what it is, can even think about coming between us.”
Beyond smiling like a maniac, I don’t know how else to respond.
“For an archaeologist, that was pretty impressive”, Jack says.
Logan puts on his best Indiana Jones accent and says, “fortune and glory kid. Fortune and glory.”
“And you, Penny?” Jack asks. “How do you feel?”
I look to each of them in turn, suddenly embarrassed by the strength of my feelings after only a couple of weeks, and not at all comfortable with being put on the spot. I hesitate, feel myself going red and then try to gather my emotions into thoughts I’m actually able to articulate.
“I’ve never wanted anything more in my life”, I begin. “Half of the time I’m with you two I think I’m dreaming, the other half I’m wondering when someone is going to say ‘okay, time’s up, joke’s over’. I’m not the most confident girl, nor the easiest girl to be around, I’m not like other people, it takes me fifteen minutes to leave the house on a good day and twice as long to find a parking space just how I like it. I’m overflowing with neurotic obsessions and compulsive behavioral traits, I tick, and I tap and I pace, but none of that seems to matter with you. You both accept me for who I am, which makes me feel so comfortable with you, I don’t want to be anywhere else. From the moment I saw you both, I knew we were all meant to be together, not as platonic friends, not as stepbrother and stepsister, but as lovers in a three way relationship, that is erotic at times, loving at others, complicated and challenging and everything else, but always meant to be.
I don’t want this to end a week after it’s begun. I don’t want to see you two and know I can’t kiss you when the urge explodes inside me. I don’t want a situation where we don’t share everything ever to be even considered as a possibility. And more than that, I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you, because I’d feel like I was losing something of myself in the process. I don’t want anyone else, I want you Jack because you make dreams a reality and I want you Logan because you make reality look like dreams, and I can’t think of anything more perfect.”
When I’m done a kind of reverential silence falls over the room, and I can’t help but want the floor to open up so the entirety of the known universe can swallow me whole.
“Wow”, Jack says.
“Wow times two”, Logan adds.
“So I guess that’s me”, I say, my face so red I could hang clothes off the top of my head and dry them
&nbs
p; Jack clears his throat. “Penny, when I saw you for the first time in my office, I thought an angel had somehow got lost on its way to heaven. I was stunned not only by your looks, but by your imagination, your artwork and the incredible way that your brain worked. I wanted more, but I knew I had to wait for the right moment, seeing as Logan had somehow managed to find you first. I guess the whole thing was fate, which tends never to have that straight a path. Without your mom and our dad getting together, I would never have found you, and without Logan we would never have all found our way together. What I want to say is this: I have never felt like this in my life. I never thought it would even be possible in a two way relationship, not to mention the incredible three way relationship that is rapidly developing between us all. You are so right that it wouldn’t work anywhere near as well without the three of us to balance it out, and I don’t want that to end. I don’t want anything to change between us, except for the whole world to know how we all feel. I’m in this for the long run, Penny, there is nowhere else I would rather be. Fortune and glory, leaps of faith and X never ever marking the spot, this is an adventure I have absolutely no intention of backing out of.”
“You look serious”, Logan says. “He looks serious, Penny.”
Now I can’t help but giggle.
Jack shrugs, “I am the serious one after all.”
“He’s dangerous when he’s serious”, Logan continues. “It’s a look of intent.”
“I intend to make this work”, Jack says, indulging his role. “Whatever happens.”
My eyes go from Logan to Jack and back again.
“Can I make a suggestion?” Logan says. “That might benefit us all.”
“Penny?” Jack asks.
I nod, the color in my cheeks now from pride rather than embarrassment. “Go right ahead.”
Logan’s eyes go from mine, to Jack’s and then up to the ceiling, where we all know the master bedroom lies beyond.
“Race you”, I say without even needing to think twice, already primed to break into a sprint.
Jack and Logan look at each other and then like greyhounds exploding out of the trap, they are at me before I’ve even got half way through the dining room.
Obsession: A Twin Menage Romance Page 18