by Cara McKenna
“So what do you think?” she asked. “Movie?”
“Nah. We’ll just end up spending forty minutes trying to agree on something and get scrolling fatigue.”
“The curse of Netflix,” she agreed, nodding. “The more choices you have, the more impossible it is to pick.”
“The paralyzing abundance of variety—the curse of the entire hookup generation.”
“That leaves board games, then.” She skirted the coffee table to stand by a bookcase, wine in one hand, a matching glass filled with yellow Gatorade in the other.
He laughed. “Classy.”
She set both drinks down and switched on the lamp, then perused the stack of board games on the shelf. “Clue, Sorry!, Parcheesi, Apples to Apples—I think that’s for more than two, though—and a bunch of card games. Oh, and there’s a chess set someplace, though I’m so bad at chess it wouldn’t be much fun for either of us.”
“Clue’s not much fun with two, either, I don’t think. Too bad. You said you had Uno?”
A sound turned Clare’s head, footsteps from down a hall. “Hello,” she called. “You just get in?”
“Maybe twenty minutes ago,” said a woman’s voice.
“I thought you must be out with What’s His Name.”
Clare’s roommate appeared, a short white girl with her red hair twisted up in a sloppy bun, wearing a black bathrobe and plaid pajama bottoms. “What’s His Name is out of town at the moment, so me and my hairy legs are staying in. I just worked late. I saw your text—sorry, honey.” She came over and gave Clare a long hug on tiptoes, rubbing her back. “That blows about your job.”
“Thanks. You turning in? Should we keep it down?”
“No, I was just about to do a quick e-mail check before bed that would inevitably lead to three hours lost in a YouTube vortex. But then my spidey senses detected the clink of a wineglass.” She looked to Vaughn and offered a little wave. “Hey. I won’t crash your party. I just wondered if you wanted some company, drowning your sorrows. But it looks like you already have some.” She smiled as she edged past the couch and Vaughn met her halfway, shaking her hand.
“I’m Vaughn.”
“Bree. Nice to meet you.” He searched her eyes for some sly, knowing glint, anything that told him she knew what her roommate had been up to, all those nights when she’d not come home. Two men, I hear, and are you one of them? he imagined a smirk asking. But if she knew, the girl had a killer poker face.
“You want to play Clue?” he asked her. The goner in him might want Clare all to himself, but the realist knew his romantic chances with her sans Mica would be slim. Plus, the point of the evening was to cheer her up, and her friend might be of some help there.
Bree made a face, considering, then looked to Clare.
“It’s no fun with two,” Clare said. “And if we don’t finish off this bottle tonight it’s going to go sour, and Vaughn’s no help.”
“Can’t fault that logic.” Bree headed for the kitchen. “I call Miss Scarlet.”
Clare slid the box off the shelf and opened it on the coffee table. “Vaughn, which of these many white folks would you like to be?”
He laughed again. She was good at making him do that. There was an old wooden chair with a faded red velvet cushion nearby and he slid it over, sitting opposite her. “You pick for me.”
“Colonel Mustard, then,” she announced, setting the yellow token on the wood, then the red one. “I’d be Mr. Green, but I think we’re missing that piece. Bree, do we still have that random box of Jujubes?”
“Someplace . . .” The sounds of drawers being rooted through concluded with a triumphant “Aha!”
“Bring me a green one. We’ll use that for when somebody accuses Mr. Green, but I guess I’ll go with Mrs. Peacock.” She set the aqua piece on the table and unfolded the board.
Cards were sorted and dealt, the murderer, weapon, and room secreted away beneath the board. Vaughn required a refresher, but it came back to him quick enough. The leftover pizza wound up getting eaten, along with the ancient Jujubes, and Bree won the game before Vaughn had figured out more than the killer.
“I knew it was you,” he told Clare—Mrs. Peacock had done it, with the wrench, in the library. “I always suspected you were capable of bludgeoning.”
She offered a sinister “Bwah ha haaaa” as they stowed the pieces and cards, then refreshed her glass from the dwindling bottle. She held it up to show Bree. “Top you off?”
The girl yawned widely and waved a dismissive hand. “No, I’m wiped. I’m going to bed to read whatever dirty texts may be awaiting me.”
“Good plan. Night.”
“Night. Nice meeting you, Vaughn.”
“You, too.” He grabbed the game’s lid and pressed it in place, then sought Clare’s eyes. “This was fun, thanks. Nothing like how I’d imagined my night would look, but a damn good time.”
“No, thank you. I’m sure at least half of all this is down to you feeling bad for me, so really—thanks.”
He shook his head. “I don’t feel bad for you. I mean, I don’t pity you, that is. Half of this may be down to wanting you to have a good time tonight, but the other half is down to me wanting the same for myself. Trust me, this was for both of us.”
She smiled at that, and he smiled back. She was contagious that way.
“Whatever the case, I appreciate it,” she said. “Clue wasn’t quite the level of debauchery I’d been hoping for earlier, but at least when I wake up tomorrow the game’ll still be here, right?”
His smile soured to a smirk, and he lifted his empty glass in a glib toast. “And at least you’ve got the memories, right? Even if you and he never hook up again.”
“True enough. It stings now, but it’s not like I was in love. In a few weeks or months or a year from now, yeah, I’ll have the souvenirs.” She tapped her temple to mean every fantasy she’d be carrying with her into whatever came next.
“I better head out,” Vaughn said, eyeing his phone’s clock. It was half past ten.
“You can crash, if you want. It’s still pouring out.”
He turned to check the window and she was right—the pane was streaked with rain, a thousand dancing drops lit orange by the streetlights. Then he eyed their couch—an old silk-upholstered mahogany relic, not nearly big enough for him to get comfortable on.
“No, I meant in my bed,” she said, catching his skeptical glance. “After everything that’s gone on, that’s not that salacious, right? Us literally sleeping in the same bed? It’s not like we haven’t done way more crazy crap together. It’d be the least of our scandals.”
“I guess that’s true . . .” But she also didn’t know he liked her—liked her as she liked Mica. But he supposed that made accepting the invitation creepy only if he was secretly getting horny over it. He’d have some measure of lust simmering in his body, no doubt, but also a deep and lucid knowledge that it was pretty doomed. It did seem harmless enough . . .
“Come on,” she said. “We chat, we sleep, we wake up, I make us coffee. I owe you a morning-after coffee or three. Don’t deny it.”
It would save him either a drencher of a walk or cab fare, he supposed. “Only if you’re sure.”
She shrugged. “Why the fuck not, right?”
He smiled at that. “Yeah. Why the fuck not?”
“Come on and I’ll show you where the bathroom is. We don’t have any spare toothbrushes, but I’m not afraid of your cooties, if you’d like to use mine.”
They took turns getting ready, then Clare led him to her room at the end of the hall.
“This works better when the drenched party is a woman, doesn’t it?” she asked, flipping on the light. “I mean, if this was reversed, I could sleep in one of your shirts and some boxers. Whereas I can’t picture you in a camisole and bikini briefs.”
“You
wouldn’t want to, I’m sure.” He looked around her private space, confirming his suspicion that the good taste evident in the living room was likely down to Clare. Her room was feminine: lots of patterns and colors and textures. Her bed was a queen, made up in a turquoise and rust patterned bedspread, clashing artfully with the knitted crimson throw tossed across it. Her pillowcases gleamed in the light when she switched on a bedside lamp.
“Satin sheets?” he noted. “Classy as fuck.”
She laughed. “They’re actually kind of shitty for sex—ask me how I know—but, man, do they feel awesome when you’re just sleeping on them.”
“Can’t wait to find out. Wait—why are they shitty for sex?”
“Because you slide everywhere. You need to, like, brace your knees or your elbows or whatever and before you know it you’re doing a split.”
“Oh, right.”
“Would you hit the overhead light?”
He did, then it was time to get undressed. Weird. And weird that it was weird.
She read his mind, grinning, then laughing, as she unbuttoned her top. “Why does this feel dirty? We’ve had sex with each other.”
“I don’t think it feels dirty,” he said, peeling off his tee. “Just funny. But why, I have no clue. We’ve done way more than, like, accidentally bump our bare legs together in bed.”
Clare stripped all the way, to his surprise, and he looked away when her panties dropped to the floor, his face heating. He turned his attention to his own disrobing, stopping at his tee and boxers. When he next looked to Clare she was wearing a black tank and gray drawstring shorts, tossing the far side of the covers open. Her outfit didn’t do much to thwart his cock’s baser ideas—she looked like sex in everything from a parka down to the bare skin God gave her.
He got under his side of the bedclothes, and immediately his body felt awkward. His arms were folded atop the comforter, his legs crossed at the ankle. It felt like he was doing some stiff impression of a man ready to fall asleep. Clare, on the other hand, looked perfectly comfortable. Her glasses were gone, folded on the bedside table. She switched off the lamp, leaving just the pink cast of the small red paper lights strung along the bay window at the head of her bed. She turned onto her side to face him, curling her legs up toward her chest, tenting the covers. She had one hand under her cheek and the other arm bent, resting between them.
“Thanks again,” she said. “And for leaving my roommate with the impression that I’m scoring with you—she’s been waiting ages for me to move on from my ex. She’ll be delighted to think I managed it with a guy who’s nice in addition to also being hot.”
“Oh, well, good. Does she know about . . . you know?”
“No. Not about the three of us, at least.”
He felt his face go warm again, even as relief softened his muscles. “No? I thought girls talked about everything.”
“And I would’ve thought I’d tell her anything . . . but I haven’t. And if I ever do, I won’t tell her you were involved—I’m assuming you’d prefer I didn’t.”
“You’d be right.”
“No problem, then.”
They were quiet for a time, Vaughn feeling dozy and warm and pleasant, and sure, sexually charged up beneath it all. How could he not? He was in Clare’s bed.
“There’s a fancy name for this, right?” he asked, holding up a bit of the bedspread. “The pattern, I mean. Nobody calls this zigzag anymore, do they?”
“Chevron is the ten-dollar word for it. But you’re right, it’s pretty bougie. Like, who would be pompous enough to say Charlie Brown wears a chevron shirt?”
“Exactly.”
Clare sighed and rolled onto her back, stretched her arms up above her head, slipping her hands under her pillow. Beneath the chevron sea, the points of her feet moved back and forth like she was making a snow angel. Sheet angel. Vaughn did the same, liking the swish of the satin against his calves.
“It was nice, tonight,” she said at length. “Nice hanging out with a guy and just feeling like . . . I dunno, just enjoying it, without wondering the whole time what he must be thinking, or whatever. I was never, ever really relaxed around Mica, when I think about it. Excited, and anxious, and, like, really fucking horny—”
Vaughn couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Sure.”
“But I was never relaxed. He kept me edgy, and a lot of times that feels pretty hot, but it’s not the sort of feeling that’s going to make for a relationship, is it?”
“Not a healthy one, no.”
She sighed again. “Oh well.”
He thought back to when he’d first met her, and how he’d assumed she must be more like Mica than she was like him—that impulsive flings just went hand in hand with her funky clothes and her artistic nature. Funny how deep down, she was far more like Vaughn. Caught up in Mica’s spell, but wanting more. Wanting passion, but not at the expense of stability. Could you have both? He wasn’t willing to believe they were mutually exclusive.
She slid her hands from under the pillow to toy with her curls. “Like I said, tonight was really nice. Really fun. Just what I needed, after the day I had.”
“Glad I could be of service.”
She smiled at him in the near dark. “You mean what you said earlier? You want to maybe stay friends, even with him not yanking us toward each other? Grab a drink once a week, or just hang out, like tonight? If it’s just too weird, after all the sex stuff, that’s fine. My feelings aren’t that delicate.”
“No, no, I’d like that.” Though whether he would actually call her, when the time came . . . It had little to do with the things they’d done with Mica. What it came down to, really, was whether Vaughn could settle for just friends, when he was already falling for her, and already knew how she made him feel in bed. That was a lot of shit to walk back, and he wasn’t sure he was capable of it without reducing himself into a besotted idiot. It’d hurt if they did stay friends, and then she started seeing someone else. He could admit that. And he wasn’t sure it was worth it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The conversation took a casual turn, the two of them chatting in the dimness, the topic flitting easily from restaurants to movies to their first cars. As Vaughn was telling her about a harrowing incident involving a Buick LeSabre, Clare got caught for a moment, just watching him. Staring at him. Huh. Normally a man as good-looking and well put together as Vaughn would be tough to overlook, but while he was handsome, Mica was something all together different—startling, heart-stopping, rare. Mica was an orchid, nearly baffling to look upon, and even a rose set beside such a specimen would seem mundane.
But really, Vaughn was beautiful, in his more accessible, ordinary way. Lovely skin, and those warm brown eyes, strong jaw, strong hands. And he was so many things Mica wasn’t and couldn’t ever be. He was grown. Mature. Only a year older than his best friend, yet so thoroughly a man at twenty-nine, while Mica was in many ways still a teenager. Vaughn embodied qualities that Clare never would have included on her requirements list for a serious boyfriend even a few weeks ago. She’d been too preoccupied with what she was losing—freedom, abandon, adventure—she’d not stopped to wonder what she might gain with someone else, as her fling with Mica came to a close. And all those things were right here, embodied in this kind and sexy person. He was reliable, responsible, responsive, present, both articulate about his needs and feelings and also unashamed of them, unafraid of them. He’d dedicated his life to service, and not for the money or glory. He valued family, both his own and as an institution, and as a life goal.
What Vaughn was that Mica was not, she realized, was full. Both were beautiful vessels—Mica was breathtaking, but largely empty. Vaughn was attractive, sturdy, and full to the brim with feelings and plans and values. Mica dazzled, but Vaughn delivered.
I like him. She always had. She’d been more than happy to enjoy his body and his company,
and he could excite and please her, and she imagined he probably could without Mica present. Maybe he couldn’t blow her mind the way the two of them together could, the way Mica’s pushy, kinky dynamics could, but sex with Vaughn alone might still be perfectly satisfying. And sustainable, unlike the high she’d been chasing these past few weeks.
Unless I royally fucked myself, sleeping with both of them. Could a man fall for a woman who’d been with his best friend—who’d been openly and mortally infatuated with his best friend? It was a lot to hope for. But then again, nothing about the situation was ordinary. The sex they’d all shared had been exceptional, as was the two men’s history together.
But would the sort of sexual history we’ve all shared enrich a one-on-one relationship, she wondered, or undermine it?
It was dumb to be getting keyed up about it, when she had zero clue if he even liked her that way.
He came over, didn’t he? He’s here with me now, isn’t he?
She rolled onto her side and poked his arm where it lay atop the covers. When his eyes opened and turned her way she told him, “I’m really glad you came over. I wouldn’t have ever asked you to. Not while I’m this bummed out and lacking in charm.”
“That’s why I didn’t wait for an invitation.”
“This is way beyond the call of duty for . . . whatever we are.” Fuckbuddies?
“You mean friends?” he asked, perfect teeth glinting in the shadows.
She shrugged. “With benefits.”
“Why should the benefits make me care any less?”
“I dunno . . . Because you’re a guy. Not to generalize, but guys have a tendency to get cagey when simple things start getting more complex.”
“We were never simple, Clare. The three of us, this whole situation. You walked into the middle of something that’s been complicated for years. In fact . . .” He reached for her hand, gave it a squeeze. “Tonight, this, right now? This is the simplest any of this has gotten.”