by Sammi Cee
“Can I ask you guys a question then?”
“Sure,” Coop and I answer together again, sharing a small smile because we do that a lot now.
“Did…um…”
Coop says, “What, Eli? You can ask us anything. No matter what.”
Talking so quickly I almost don’t catch what he’s saying, Eli asks, “Did me watching you guys that night feel different to you, I don’t know, maybe—”
“Special? It felt special to me,” I say.
Coop turns that warm smile on me. “It was definitely special.”
For the first time since this started tonight, well really, since Eli came over so upset earlier, Eli gives us his boyish grin, and says, “So I guess this didn’t just start, huh? We really have something going on here, don’t we?”
Coop
Gah! I’ve missed that grin. When the weight of the world comes off him and Eli just enjoys living in the moment he’s in. I’ve seen it more at different times through the years. Like when we were out of the country, it seemed as if he could push away his troubles from home and concentrate on the here and now. But at the end of the day, when he’d shower away the filth from a hard day’s work, the haunted look would return from seeing his scar while he washed. He could clean the skin, but there was no way to erase the scar or the pain it represented to him.
After he’d first got settled in with me and started spending more time with me and Shayna, he’d seemed happier, and his grin came more frequently. But the last month with Jeannie, his haunted look had returned more than ever. Reluctant to stop the little love fest that Shayna had started, there is one thing we need to deal with up front.
“Eli, you’re not gay.”
Unexpectedly, he bursts out laughing, leaving me and Shayna exchanging startled expressions. “Well, about that, I can honestly tell you, Coop, there’s not another man on earth I’ve ever looked at or felt about the way I look at and feel about you. And I know that may sound strange, but it’s the truth.” Swiveling his neck toward Shayna, he says, “And Shay, you’re the most incredible woman I’ve ever met.”
Almost shyly she asks, “I am?”
Shaking his head, he gets a sheepish expression, but I guess we’re all feeling bold tonight because he squares his shoulders, reaching over to grab my hand, too. I watch his fingers skim over my knuckles, and out of my peripheral, I notice that he’s turned Shayna’s hand over to do the same thing with her. We all sit in silence for a moment, soaking up the connection before he quietly begins to explain.
“Before my accident, I wasn’t really looking for the one. My life was a party with the focus being on the next high. The biggest thrills for me being what I could get away with. It didn’t matter who came with me or what they wanted from me as long as I wasn’t alone.” He snorts out a disgusted laugh, shakes his head, and raises his voice to speak at a more normal level. “So yeah, I did have women. Not dates per se, but girls who wanted to be seen with me. And I was wasted all the time so yeah, if they were in it to get lucky, I was a teenage boy, of course, I was happy to give it to them.”
When he pauses to search for the words to continue, I turn my hand over in his so that we’re palm to palm, and I begin to rub circles on the top of his finger with mine. “That’s why you were so aggressive when you’d go out when I first met you. It was probably weird having to try to land a date for the night, wasn’t it?”
Snorting, he replies, “Coop, that was part of it. But the other part was, I really didn’t know how to try to woo a lady. I’d never had to before. When I say my next high was all I was worried about, I mean that. I’d pick up the guys, and they’d be yammering about who was gonna be at the party that night and whose pants they were trying to get down, and I literally didn’t care. Every now and then I’d tell them to shut it, that I didn’t care. And you know their response?”
He gets lost in his thoughts for a moment again before Shayna urges, “Tell us Eli. We want to know. We want to understand everything that makes you, you.”
“Yeah, okay, they would say I didn’t care because I always got laid by the end of the night. I couldn’t even tell you if that was true or not.” He snorts and shrugs his shoulders. “When I say I didn’t care, I just didn’t. Getting laid was something to brag about if the situation called for it and sometimes yeah, it scratched an itch, but I really was just looking for my high.”
He looks so sad as he recounts his life before his accident. Whenever he’s talked about chasing the high, it’s like the ghosts from the past envelope him, and it’s always made me feel so helpless. This is where I’ve usually tried to distract him, but I know it’s important for him to get through this for us to all move forward. However, it’s hard for me to listen to it and not be able to fix it for him.
Shayna suddenly grabs Eli’s hand tighter and gives a little jerk. He looks up at her, and she says, “Come here, get comfortable against me while you finish.” She spreads her legs out and Eli looks between her open legs and me and back again.
I chuckle, squeeze his hand, and then reach up to nudge his shoulder. “Go ahead man, apparently this is a new thing. When we talk, precious rewards us by letting us near her hidden treasure.” After snorting, I continue, “Not that she’s keeping it too much a secret tonight.”
“Oh, you hush,” she laughs out. “Better watch it or you won’t be getting near my special place for a while, sweets.”
Breaking out into a full belly laugh, I wink at her. “Keep telling yourself that, precious. Keep telling yourself that.”
Eli still hasn’t moved, but his head is ping-ponging back and forth as we volley at each other. He’s gone from sad to amused at our playful banter.
Eli
Coop and Shay’s playfulness is exactly what I needed to feel comfortable again. Talking about the past tends to make me feel weird in my own skin. “It’s really okay, Coop?”
Coop tilts his head at Shay, and says to me, “Eli, if you don’t get over there, I’m gonna go. You never hesitate when a beautiful, desirable woman opens the pearly gates to you.”
I finally laugh, I can’t help myself. These two are ridiculous. I’ve seen them be loving toward each other, and I’ve witnessed how smoking hot the sex is between them, but I’ve never been privy to these silly times like this. I like it. I like it a lot. And I want to be included, so I need to reveal to them what I’ve never been willing to analyze myself.
Crawling up between Shay’s legs, I feel my face grow warm. I don’t know what I’m embarrassed about, but I feel shy that this special woman would want to hold me close while I open myself up to them. Turning to settle my back against her chest, her arms come around me rest on my shirt. It occurs to me that if I took off my shirt, I’d be able to feel her breasts against me. I wonder what it would feel like to share that kind of intimacy, but even though Shay saw, and touched, and even kissed my scar, I still feel the familiar humiliation trying to sneak in. Except with Coop, or unless the lights are down low, I’ve never taken my shirt off and just hung out, and I’ve always been quick to put it back on immediately after sex.
I open my mouth to continue, but hesitate when I see the strange face Coop is making at me. I should’ve anticipated my best friend knowing me and reading my thoughts. “Eli,” he says. “Precious is completely naked, I have on my boxers, but you may as well be fully dressed. If we’re going to bear our souls to each other tonight, I think we all need to be exposed.”
My eyes track his movements as he gets off the bed and sheds his boxer briefs. My skin begins to prickle as he kneels back onto the bed and comes straight up my body to grab the top edge of my boxers. I lift my body so he can pull them down my legs. Once they’re gone, he crawls back up between my and Shay’s spread legs and gently grips the bottom of my t-shirt.
“Eli.” I look up into his green eyes, and he continues, “This is up to you, baby. I won’t force you. But what do you say? Can you trust us this much?”
There have only been a few times in ou
r friendship that Coop has called me baby, but every time has made me feel emotional. It’s made me crave being someone’s baby. Tonight, I’m willing to admit, to them and myself, that’s it’s always made me crave being Coop’s baby. With the slight nod of my head, he pulls the last of my coverage off of my head and tosses it on the floor.
Before I have even a second to get self-conscious, he leans in and places a few gentle kisses up the length of my scar. As he leans back again, he bestows that sweet smile on me, and I feel Shay’s fingers gently begin to trace up and down it. In my ear, she says, “Go ahead, Eli. Finish your story.”
And I realize right then, that I want to. I want these two people to know me like no one else. So I do, I continue, “Okay. So time for the truth. I liked sex because I got off. But back in the day, I was just as happy getting myself off to porn really quick whenever I felt like it. Then there was the accident.”
Coop, who has settled down cross-legged between my legs now, rubs a hand up either of my thighs and waits patiently. Shay’s fingers are still tracing over my hideous scar, but she doesn’t hesitate or act like it’s gross. Her fingers glide over each little imperfection. And the feel of her big full breasts pressed into my back feels more wonderful than I could have anticipated. I feel their warmth; between these two-amazing people, I feel secure.
“So, Coop, it’s true I wasn’t used to having to pick up ladies. But the full truth was, I had no idea how. The deep-down truth is it wasn’t just about my scars, it was about me. I didn’t desire anyone. I didn’t desire anything. Thankfully, after the shit storm the drugs had caused, I didn’t desire those either. But when you made me your pet project,” his face splits into a huge grin, “I felt nothing.”
With a deep breath, I lay it all out there, “I felt nothing until the first time we got someone alone and I watched you cup her cheeks and lean in to kiss her. All I could think was how I wanted you to pull back enough so that I could get a look at your tongue connecting with hers. As time went on, the more we did that, the more that’s all I craved was seeing every little thing you did to their bodies. The first time you touched me, too, that’s when I realized that the desire I was feeling had just as much to do with the hardness of your body as it had to do with the softness of theirs.”
My confession should embarrass me, but it doesn’t because Coop’s face transforms into pure joy, he looks as happy as he does when he’s playing with Bear or when he pulls Shay into his lap. My words, which have always been so hard for me to admit, aren’t the breaking point of our friendship, but they’ve given birth to something new. Something I’ve always been so scared to admit I wanted.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” he asks.
“I mean, well, I knew you were bi, but you never treated me like you wanted me. Just more like it was fun, or you didn’t mind me being around. Even the times it was just us giving each other a hand job, I felt like it was more about getting off.”
When his face falls, I realize he thinks he’s failed and I can’t have that. “The whole truth, Coop. My biggest fear is that you would want me back, and then I’d be a failure again in my family’s eyes. I would’ve gone from being misfit druggie to bisexual, still a disgrace to my family.”
“And now?” Shay whispers.
Wrapping my arms around hers to lace our fingers together and staring Coop straight in the eye, I face my life head on. “And now I realize my family is right here. Coop has been my family for years. Shay, you stepped in and gave peace to my life I didn’t even know was missing. Anyone who doesn’t like it, well, their opinion doesn’t matter anyway because my heart is finally complete.”
The next thing I know, Coop’s lunged up my body and his tongue is seeking entry into my lips as Shay’s tongue traces over the shell of my ear. We have so much more to talk about. Decisions that have to be made. Boundaries that have to be established. But for right now, I’m right where I belong.
Diary Excerpt
I’ve taken those scenes that wouldn’t get out of my head, the ones Irene suggested I just type up, and I’ve organized them. My series will have to go on hold. Right now, the only voices I hear belong to two men and a woman, and I’m going to write the best story I can. Maybe it’ll just be for me, or maybe I’ll never tell my family about it at all, I haven’t really decided. But I know that this is what’s in my heart right now.
* * *
Now that Elijah is with us all the time, no longer running around with Jeannie, or hiding in his room trying to give Cooper and I space, it’s mind-blowing how well we all really fit together. But I’m also learning a lot about Eli’s job. Now that he comes home and shares his day with us, I’m not sure how he ever kept up that schedule with that bitch in the first place. Eli works so hard and his are responsibility are huge. When I express how in awe of him I am, Coop said that’s why he was so annoyed the whole time Eli was dating Jeannie. Unlike me, Coop understood the pressures and demands of Eli’s job as foreman.
* * *
But now that it’s just us, it seems that Eli is figuring out that he really is good at his job. I’m going to have to bake Cecile something extra special for Christmas to express my appreciation. My Eli is starting to see himself differently, learning to value the man that he is. He says it’s because of me and Coop, but I think it’s a combination of everything in his life coming together at the right time. It can only get better from here.
Shayna
Thirteen
Shay
The last couple of weeks have been a learning experience for all of us. And not in a bad way. I’m at Coop and Eli’s practically full-time now. If it wasn’t for the fact I need to write, I’m not even sure I’d go home at all. Even Kitty has taken up residence at Coop’s house. At first, I took her back and forth with me, but her and Bear have become best friends. Bear would whine every time I loaded Kitty into the carrier, and eventually, Kitty wouldn’t get out of her carrier when I got her home. I can’t bear to part them anymore. Plus, neither Coop nor Eli could understand why I didn’t just let her stay. I made the mistake once, only once, of saying I didn’t want to assume it was okay to—that was as far as I’d gotten before my two men had me naked and on my back while they smothered me in affection.
Tonight is basically our coming out dinner. My daughter will be home in a week and a half and my boys tell me I need to prepare her. I know they’re right, but I’m so nervous. Coop invited Bobby and Sean over for another meal with us, and we’re going to see how they handle it. Coop thinks everything will be fine, I’m only mildly apprehensive since it’s Bobby, and he’s always supportive of everyone, but Eli’s a mess. It’s not only about proclaiming a ménage relationship for him. It’s also the first time anyone will know outside of us that he’s bisexual.
“Hey, Shay,” Coop yells as he walks down the hall toward me. It’s cute how he’s adopted Eli’s name for me.
“Yeah, sweets? I’m in the kitchen.”
“Of course, you are,” he says as he enters and pulls me into a hug. “Where else would you be when we’re having company. You know, the whole purpose of me saying I’d grill tonight was to give you a night off.”
Snuggling into him, I draw comfort from his strength. It’s not just that he’s built like a rock, which I definitely appreciate, but it’s the quiet steadfastness that he naturally exudes. I’ve never met anyone more comfortable in their own shell. “I know. But Bobby really likes that corn casserole I make, and I wanted to make some cupcakes for dessert.”
“A special treat for Eli, huh?”
“I know he’s nervous about tonight; I think he deserves a special treat.”
After kissing the top of my head, Coop releases me and turns to the fridge to grab a bottle of water. “I agree. And we both know he’ll appreciate it. Those little things you always do mean a lot.”
As Coop leans back against the counter, I open the oven to check the cupcakes and glance up. “What’s up with you? Why are standing there smiling at me like that?”
“No reason. Eli jumped in the shower and the steaks are marinating. I already took Bear out for a walk, so I thought I’d just come keep you company.”
Snorting, I say, “You’re trying to keep yourself from following Eli into the shower, aren’t ya?”
With a shrug, he mutters, “Maybe.”
I use the excuse to pull the cupcakes out of the oven to gather my thoughts. Once I’ve put them on the cooling rack, I turn back and go to Coop, leaning into him. He sets his water bottle down on the countertop behind him so I can get closer. After his hands are settled on my hips, I reach up and grab his cheeks and turn his face down to look at me.
“Coop, we’ve talked about this.”
“I know.”
“The rules have been established, there’s absolutely no reason why you can’t act on them.”
He sighs. “I don’t want to rush him.”
I blurt a startled laugh right into his face, and he blinks at me in shock. “Cooper, are you kidding me right now? You two have been fucking around together for years.”
His hands squeeze my hips as he says, “Well, you don’t have to curse at me.” He sounds like such a pouty child at this second, it’s almost hard to take him seriously. However, I know how important this is to him, and I know he means it. The most important part of this new dynamic between them to Coop is not doing anything to make Eli pull away from him.