Three

by Chloe Lynn Ellis

  Dad is going on to Nick about this theory he has that I can’t disagree with, all about how God gave Johnny his white-knuckled fear of heights as a last-ditch effort to keep Johnny from getting himself killed, what with how enthusiastic my boy gets about diving headfirst into certain situations and all, and I just let that conversation flow around me while I take a breath and try to calm my suddenly much-too-happy stick while I try to reason out what the fuck just happened to me.

  I shift in my seat, and yep, I am legit sporting a semi right now. And I mean… maybe it makes sense that I’d have a bit of a reaction to the line of thinking I’d wandered down, because there are really only a couple of things I can imagine guys doing with each other… and not gonna lie, I do like anal. Not all girls are into it, but damn if it doesn’t do it for me when they are. And blow jobs? Sign me up, the more the merrier. So probably it’s just the actual sex acts I’m suddenly reacting to, right? Not the… the context.

  “You good, bro?” Johnny asks, leaning toward me to ask it quietly while Eden gets busy charming my dad and Nick. He rests a friendly hand on my leg as he leans in, just for balance or whatever, obviously, and oshit.

  Clearly, I am not good yet. I most definitely don’t have this shit under control, so thank God Eden had us put this dangling tablecloth on the table to hide what my best friend’s totally innocent touch is doing to me.

  He’s looking at me all concerned-like, and I nod in the hopes that we can move on. I know he doesn’t believe me, because he just knows me too damn well. Still, he squeezes my knee and lets it go—thank Christ—and I let out a slow breath, realizing that he probably thinks I’m all tied up in knots because of my dad’s visit.

  Which… yeah. I’m that, too.

  Am I just trying to distract myself from that shit by paying attention to my dick right now? Some sort of coping mechanism, the way they’ve prattled on about during some of those mental health training days at the station?

  Possible, because I’ve already been doing it, haven’t I? I’ve been kind of trying to distract myself about how I’d feel about seeing Papí again all day, and maybe some buried part of my brain just latched onto this particular set of images as yet another avenue of distraction, yeah?

  Because fuck if I ever thought about doing anything with my dick in terms of another guy before.

  I mean, not all that much, at least.

  I scoot a little farther away from Johnny under the pretense of reaching for the salad bowl on the other side of me, suddenly worried that he’ll somehow read me a little too well and it’ll fuck us up. But it’s not my fault that I may or may not have occasionally had a stray and totally inappropriate thought when it comes to my best friend, given some of the situations he and I have found ourselves in, yeah?

  And it’s not like I’ve ever tried to act on those thoughts.

  Besides, all guys wonder a little, amirite?

  And I mean… some guys are just attractive by like, genetic default or whatever, so it’s not gay to just notice that in a purely-factual-fact type of way.

  I cut a glance in Johnny’s direction, but accidentally catch Nick’s eye instead. He’s smiling at me with a sort of bemused expression on his face—and for real, does the guy ever not smile?—and I’m suddenly irrationally terrified that he’s going to be the one to read my mind and maybe like… I don’t know, lay it out for Johnny about all the things that have crowded into my head just now, maybe as some sort of revenge for the shitty way I’m just now really realizing I’ve treated my dad over the last few years.

  “You like the pork chops, Nick?” I blurt out in an effort to shut him up before he can out me like that.

  “They’re delicious,” he says, the genuine warmth in his eyes instantly making me feel like an ass.

  Of course he can’t read my mind. And even if he could… guess I don’t know the guy yet, but I have to admit, I like him. And now that I’m starting to get my own freak-out under control a bit? Truth is, I just don’t get the impression that Nick’s the type who’d try to ruin me and Johnny like that.

  Nick turns to my dad. “We should get the recipe for these, Santi, don’t you think?”

  “Sí, sí,” Dad replies, nodding enthusiastically. “We can serve them the next time Brenda is in town, no?” And then to me, with a cautious note in his voice, “Mateo, maybe you will join us?”

  I blink, my random moment of misplaced horniness going up in smoke. “You… you wanna have Mom over for dinner?” I ask, dumbfounded. “Are you crazy? She—”

  I snap my mouth closed while they all just stare at me, but okay, I’m really not an asshole, so I’m not gonna just blurt out that Mom hates him. I mean, she must, right? He’s the whole reason she’s avoided coming home to Boston for so many years.

  “She what, mijo?” Dad asks after a minute, looking genuinely confused. “You know your mother has always liked pork. Remember how she used to beg us to make pernil asado when you were small?”

  “Of course I do,” I say, feeling totally discombobulated by his laid-back attitude. And oh my God, now my mouth is watering, too. I haven’t had pernil asado—a Puerto Rican-style roast pork dish—in years. “But…”

  “But?” Dad prompts me after a second.

  Eden and Nick are both looking a little lost, and when I shoot Johnny a save-me look, I can see that he’s confused, too. For once, he’s not reading me like a book—even though he should know better than anyone why it’s surreal to have Dad talking so casually about socializing with Mom. But his constantly moving mouth is glued firmly shut right now as he waits for me to finish my sentence, so I guess I’m on my own.

  “But, uh, I guess… guess I didn’t realize you two were still in touch,” I mumble, shoving a bite of salad in my mouth and hoping that’ll be the end of it so we can just move on to a different topic already.

  Dad cocks his head to the side, giving me a quizzical look that I’m guessing means moving on is a no-go.

  “Why would we not be? She is my best friend, mijo. We shared a life together for twenty years. Of course we are in touch.” He suddenly grins, stroking his new beard and exchanging a look with Nick that screams inside joke before adding, “She is always sending us postcards from her travels. She favors… beaches.”

  Nick snickers.

  “She sends us those, too,” Johnny offers, raising an eyebrow. “But why do I get the impression yours are more fun than the ones I get?”

  “Eh, you are young,” Dad says, waving a dismissive hand as his lips twitch. “Brenda would not want to corrupt you the way she tries to do with my Nick.”

  Eden suddenly slaps a hand over her mouth, stifling a giggle.

  “What am I missing?” I ask, feeling like the answer to that is way bigger than a few postcards.

  For real, I can’t wrap my head around it. Dad and Mom… I just… what?

  Eden is looking back and forth between my dad and Nick with a gorgeous pink tint to her cheeks and an ear-splitting grin on her face. “Please tell me she’s sending you naughty pictures of naked men on those beaches.”

  Oh, Christ on the cross… no. My mother?

  “Brenda, she likes the scenery, no?” my dad says with a twinkle in his eyes that I do not want to contemplate.

  Eden laughs. “It sounds like she’d get along with my Auntie Maria.”

  “If your Auntie Maria likes naughty naked men, then I like her already,” Nick quips, neither confirming nor denying the thing about my mom that I… just… can’t…

  I grab for that wine glass again.

  Dad’s quiet accountant-type boyfriend is joking about naked pictures?

  My mother is sending dirty postcards to my dad?

  Dad wants to make her dinner?

  Get us all together again?

  Have it be like… like… well, definitely not like it was before. How could it be? Because it wouldn’t be just the three of us, a family, it would be—

  I look around the table trying to figure out what it would be—be
sides batshit crazy—to try to get us all together. Johnny would have to be there, of course. And Eden—I mean, sure, it hasn’t been long, but I already know I want her to be in my life in all the important ways. And it’s obvious that Nick and Dad are a package deal—it’s evident in every look and touch between them; in the easy way they play off each other—so that would probably be the weirdest part.

  Except that Dad makes it sound like they’ve already had dinner with Mom.

  That the three of them are… are friends.

  But if my parents aren’t at odds, then what the hell have I been doing all these years, carrying around a thousand-pound chip on my shoulder over how he ruined everything? I drain my wine glass and look around for the bottle, even though truth is I’d rather have a beer.

  Maybe two beers.

  All the beers.

  I’m more than a little thrown by having so many of my assumptions shaken up tonight, and I’m still not sure what they’ll look like once they settle down again.

  “It is good that Brenda can finally travel the way she has always yearned to, no?” my dad is saying, no animosity in his voice at all. “I am happy for her, but—” he clucks his tongue, shaking his head, “—she never eats enough when she is overseas. Eden, you will give us the pork recipe?”

  “Of course, Santi,” Eden says, smiling like he’s just given her something. She’s glowing, absolutely beautiful, and through all my confusion, I’m suddenly happy for her.

  Look at her.

  She made a comment the other day that got me thinking about why cooking has been such a beast for her, why it’s taken so damn long for her to figure out something so basic, and I’ve got an idea about that. I know she’s close with that aunt that raised her, but there’s a longing in her voice, too. A wistfulness. I hear it those few times she mentions her mom—and yeah, she happened to drop that the woman was apparently a killer cook—and Eden also gets that tone when she talks about family.

  The kind she didn’t ever really have.

  The kind I had… and thought I’d lost… but now am starting to think I might have actually thrown away, instead.

  The kind you cook for.

  She looks over and refills my wine glass without me having to ask and Johnny gives my leg another one of those supportive I’m here for you, buddy squeezes that had my dick so confused earlier, and as I listen to the four of them banter around the table, it suddenly hits me that tonight does feel like family. The kind of family I’ve missed having all these years of it being just me and Johnny… which is maybe why I can recognize the feeling in Eden.

  And that’s my theory, which could just be a huge crock of shit, but maybe isn’t—that once Eden had a family to cook for, she was able to come through and finally do the thing, yeah?

  I kinda hope that’s it.

  Hope she feels that way about us.

  Hope, too, that we are that way, or can be. Not just me and her, which I definitely plan on making happen, and not just me and Johnny, which is a given—rock solid as long as I don’t mess it up with weird confusions like I was having earlier—but now that I’ve got him back, it hits me hard: I want family to include Dad again, too.

  He changed everything when he came out eight years ago… except right now? Even with different faces around the table, it almost feels like nothing really changed at all. Like it was all just right here waiting for me to see it the whole time; to have the guts to reach for it and claim it and be a part of it again. And sure, it looks different now, and maybe it’s just the wine talking—because how many glasses have I had now? I’m starting to lose track—but tonight at least, seems to me like “different” might not be so bad.

  Might even grow into something better than it was before.

  13

  Johnny

  It’s late by the time Santi and Nick leave. I’ve got to be up early in the morning, but as Matt walks them out to the car I already know I’m not going to be able to get to sleep anytime soon. I’m too wound up. Buzzing. Just completely amped from the whole night.

  “That went well, didn’t it?” Eden says, following me into the kitchen with the salad bowl in her hands as I start loading the dishwasher. She’s smiling with her whole body, and I know she’s just as happy for Matty as I am.

  “It definitely did.”

  She hands over the empty bowl, then laughs, shaking her head. “Is there a prize for how fast you can stack the dishes in there?”

  I grin, knowing damn well that it’s going to take more than tidying up to burn off all the excess energy coursing through my veins. I toss a pod of detergent into the machine and hit start, then swing her up in my arms, laughing when it makes her squeal.

  “You offering a prize, princess? Because dinner didn’t just go well, it went hella well. I definitely think we should celebrate.”

  She giggles, and I’m mostly joking around, but no denying that I’m also genuinely stoked about how the night had gone. It had been about a thousand times better than I could’ve imagined, and while I’d been a little worried about how Matty would deal—because let’s just be real, eight years of resentment is a lot to carry around—he’d actually ended up enjoying himself, as far as I could tell. And sure, all that wine Eden had kept flowing probably helped, but the important thing—the epically awesome thing—was that by the end of the night, there had been an ease between Matt and his dad that I’d once been afraid was lost forever.

  It gives me hope that their rift might actually get mended.

  Eden wraps her arms around me, still giggling, and I guess I had a fair amount of that wine, too, because I don’t even hesitate before setting her on the counter and stepping between her legs to get a taste of what I’ve been wanting more of for weeks. She kisses me back like she’s just as ready for it… but then suddenly gasps and sort of squirms against me in a way that tells me all the theatrics are about something other than how hot I’m making her.

  “Johnny,” she squeals, pushing at my chest until I back off. “The water!”

  I start laughing when I see. Looks like I’d pushed her up against the sink and somehow nudged the faucet on. That sexy little dress she’s wearing is half-soaked from the waist down, and of course the first thing that comes to mind is getting her out of it.

  She’s still sitting on the counter, and she bunches up the material to sort of wring it out into the sink… which basically bares her gorgeous legs all the way up to the tops of her thighs.

  I grin. Perfect. She’s halfway to naked already.

  “This the kind of prize you were thinking of, Eden?” I ask, running my hands all the way up those pretty legs until my thumbs slip under the soft material bunched at the top.

  She stops what she’s doing and sucks in a tiny breath, making my cock sit up and take some real notice, because I can see that she wants to say yes. What she actually does is bite her lip, then whisper my name.

  I decide that counts as an invitation.

  I wrap one hand around the back of her neck and let her moan into my mouth as my other hand moves higher. I press against her silky little panties, right over the sweet core of her heat—and hello, they’re wet too… but not from the water.

  I don’t know whether to blame my blood alcohol level or the relief that feels almost like a high over finally seeing Matty and his dad start to reconcile, but whatever the reason, I’m not thinking about anything but this right here, like I’ve forgotten all about where we are or the fact that Matt will be back any minute. Eden remembers, though, because after a minute, she jerks her mouth away, panting, and gives me a look that’s a jumble of a whole bunch of things all mixed together.

  Desire.

  Guilt.

  Anticipation.

  Nerves.

  Her eyes dart toward the door, and suddenly I’m thinking of Matt, too. Maybe not like she is, though. I’m thinking of that moment just before Santi rang the bell, when Eden had kissed him. Then me. Then him again…

  I’ve been petting her over t
he top of that little slip of silky panty, but now I sneak a finger under the edge so I can touch her directly. I’m pretty sure that her kissing Matty confirms that they’ve done other things, too, and all the blood rushes down to my dick as I imagine it.

  “So,” I say, smirking at her. “You and Matt?”

  Eden blushes.

  “Come on now,” I whisper, letting my fingers dip into her. “We both know you wanted to… just tell me. Did you?”

  Her breath hitches as she rocks against me, and finally she nods, just a tiny one. “Yes,” she whispers, spreading her legs wider with a moan as I press my fingers deeper into her.

  And God, she’s so wet. And that one yes? Makes it so fucking easy for me to picture Matty right where I’m at now.

  Touching her like this.

  Listening to the way her breath starts to quicken.

  Feeling his cock swell into a beast with every soft, needy sound she makes.

  I keep my eyes locked on hers, imagining the two of them together, and that, plus the way she’s rocking against my hand, takes me from aroused all the way to hard as a fucking rock in the blink of an eye.

  “Did you like being with him, princess?” I ask in a low voice, wrapping one hand around the back of her neck to pull her close.

  She moans, and my cock jerks.

  “Tell me how hot it was, Eden.”

  She makes another needy sound, and I grin, pretty sure I’m gonna have a fantastic way to burn off my excess energy after all. But then—

  “How hot what was?”

  It’s Matty’s voice from behind me, and Eden freezes. I can see her pulse fluttering at the base of her throat, as fast as a hummingbird’s wings, and a whole bunch of conflicting emotions flit across her face, all variations of the ones I saw earlier. Eden’s turned on and worried, both at the same time, but me?

  I’m just turned on.

  Maybe it’s all the wine in me, or maybe it’s just how fucking horny I am, but no part of me feels worried about this being a problem for Matt.

  I let her go and turn to face him.