by Tanya Chris
Now Lissie was pregnant and Derek was with Amanda. Our threesome was irreparably scattered, and my relationship with Deb was just as irreparable. Time to start over, time to find ... something else.
~~~
Derek’s bedroom door was shut when I got home, which meant that he and Amanda were in there, probably neck deep in some kinky scenario. I paused on the way to the bathroom to eavesdrop. Since I hadn’t gotten laid, it was going to be me and my hand tonight and live porn was better than recorded porn. If there was going to be a show, I’d happily listen to it, even if most of the noise the two of them made did tend to come from Derek. Apparently torture really got to him, because he hadn’t been so vocal that night in the tent when I’d watched him and Lissie going at it. Amanda really knew how to make him sing.
But not tonight. The room on the other side of the door was quiet. I’d just stepped back from the door when it opened and I found myself face to face with Derek, dressed in boxers and nothing else. He gave me a look that cycled from confused to exasperated to amused.
“We finished a while ago. You’ll have to get your thrills somewhere else.”
I stepped away from the door to let him out. He was obviously headed for the bathroom. “Maybe you’ll go for round two?”
“Not now that I know you’re out here.” He brushed past me.
“Ouch.” I said, referring to Derek’s back, not the friendly jibe.
He turned his back to the mirror and looked over his shoulder at himself, smiling at the thin strips of red that crisscrossed his upper back. “Nothing like fresh marks. Maybe we will go for round two.” He swung the door shut and I heard the sound of him pissing through it. That was what I’d meant to be doing.
“Hey Nate.” Amanda joined me in the hallway.
“You waiting for the bathroom, too?”
“No, I went right after we finished. Gotta watch out for those UTIs.”
“TMI.”
“I didn’t know there was any such thing with you.”
“Infections aren’t sexy.”
“I wasn’t trying to turn you on, tiger.”
I stepped backwards fast enough to whack my head against the wall behind me.
“Whoa.” Amanda reached out to steady me, her hands climber-strong on my upper arms. “You OK?”
“What’s wrong?” Derek asked, coming back out of the bathroom.
“Nate just smacked his head into the wall.”
“I’m fine. Anyway, I was waiting to get in there.” I maneuvered around Derek into the bathroom and shut the door firmly behind myself. Maybe Deb wasn’t as far out of my head as I’d like, not if the word tiger could rattle me to the point of self-injury.
Amanda and Derek were in the living room when I returned, Amanda on the couch and Derek sitting on the floor between her legs. She had the remote in her hand and he had one of her feet in his, rubbing it with lotion. She cued up a Doctor Who rerun—something we could all agree on—and dropped the remote, leaning back contentedly against the cushions, her eyes more on the man at her feet than the television screen.
“So who’d you go home with?” she asked as the opening sequence rolled. “We have a bet. Derek thinks you went with Jenny, but my money’s on that woman from the theater that Lissie brought.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I know passion when I see it. This boy’s more of a romantic.” She ruffled Derek’s hair and he turned his face up to hers with a smile.
“I don’t ever look at you like I hate you,” he said.
“Not even when I’m using the single tail on you? You’ve got your back to me then. You might be looking daggers for all I know.”
“Especially not then.” He leaned his head against her thigh.
“So which was it?” Amanda asked, turning her attention back to me. “We’ve got a bet to settle.”
“What are the stakes?”
“Definitely TMI.”
“It’s never TMI with me, remember?”
Amanda laughed. “I think you’re ducking the question.”
“I suppose I am. I didn’t get laid at all tonight, if you must know.” Leaving aside the question of who I’d gone home with, that was the truth. “That was why I was lurking outside your bedroom door, and why I’m home at nine o’clock. Don’t you think if I’d gotten lucky, I’d still be there? A little early to quit yet.”
“That means Deb,” Amanda told Derek.
“I didn’t say Deb,” I qualified.
“Jenny would have put out.”
Sometimes it was scary how smart Amanda was. I didn’t envy Derek for going out with someone who’d always see through his bullshit. Of course, I didn’t envy Derek for a lot of reasons. It was hot to imagine Derek and Amanda getting off on what they got off on, but it didn’t get me off.
“Maybe I didn’t go home with anyone,” I countered.
“Yeah, right. You went home with Deb and struck out. The bet didn’t say anything about you actually getting laid, so technically I won. And you know what that means, puppy.” She smiled at Derek with evil intention.
Derek looked up at me, urging me to deny that I’d gone home with Deb. I felt trapped. I shouldn’t have to lie about something I wasn’t ashamed of, even if Deb wanted me to. For four years I’d managed to avoid either admitting to or denying my relationship with her and now, on the day I ended it, I’d been backed into a corner.
And I wanted to talk about it, wanted to tell someone. For four years I’d had no counsel but my own, otherwise I might have put an end to it a lot sooner.
“I was at Deb’s,” I admitted.
Derek shook his head with a mixture of disgust and disappointment. “Dude. You have no idea what you’ve just done to me.”
“You shouldn’t bet with stakes you can’t afford to lose.”
Amanda laughed. “Don’t worry. He plays to lose. Don’t you, puppy?” She bent down and kissed the top of his head.
“Sometimes.” He smiled at her but he lost the smile when he looked at me. “So, what, Jenny’s not good enough for you now?” His voice rose with a hint of ire.
“I thought you didn’t want me messing around with Jenny—the whole big brother thing.”
Jenny was Derek’s most regular climbing partner—at least she was before Amanda came along—and something of a best friend. Why he’d never turned it into more than that, I couldn’t imagine. But no, I could. Jenny was soft-spoken, sweet-tempered, and petite. In other words, nothing like Amanda.
I’d had a bad moment expecting Derek to knock me out cold when he caught Jenny in my room the first morning after. I was six inches taller than Derek, but I had a lean—some would say scrawny—build and no desire to tangle with Derek who looked intimidating as hell with his shirt off. Luckily, the rage in his eyes that morning had been caused by a misunderstanding that had nothing to do with Jenny, but that moment was only one example in a long string of keep-away warnings he’d issued with respect to her. Warnings I hadn’t listened to, of course.
“The not-sleeping-with-Jenny ship has sailed,” Derek said. “Since you went ahead and got involved with her, you could at least stay involved, treat her well. You slept with her a few times and now you’ve moved on to Deb? That’s really nice.”
“First of all, it’s not either/or with me. You know that. I can sleep with Deb without breaking things off with Jenny. Secondly, for what it’s worth, I slept with Deb first. And third, I didn’t sleep with Deb tonight anyway. I told you I didn’t get laid.” I sighed. “Look, it’s a long story. Sort of a secret, for some fucking reason.”
Amanda turned off the television. “Your secret?”
“Not really. That’s why I haven’t told it. Despite the very low opinion of me that Derek has, I do try to honor other people’s confidences.”
“I don’t really have a low opinion of you. I just ... don’t get it.”
“Because you’re not like that, puppy.” Amanda leaned down to wrap her arms around his chest. “For w
hich I’m deeply grateful. But there might be some things about you that Nate has a hard time understanding.”
“You can say that again. In fact, I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to know what the terms of that bet are. It’s more fun listening to the two of you when I make up my own details.”
“You don’t have to listen to us at all,” Derek protested.
“I really do. The walls aren’t that thick. If I have to hear it, I might as well enjoy it.”
“Please,” Amanda said. “Don’t act like it’s a burden.”
I smiled a lascivious smile. Derek had known what he was getting into when he agreed to let me move in.
“Voyeurism, I can understand,” he said. “I mean, I don’t relate to it, but I get that it’s a kink and we all have our kinks.” He paused to see if I was going to make a smart remark, but I let it pass. “But jumping around from one woman to another? That’s not a kink. That’s just a short attention span and a form of disrespect, like women only exist so you can get your dick wet.”
I opened my mouth to argue, then changed my mind. What was the point? I grabbed the remote from the cushion next to Amanda and clicked play. “I need a drink.”
I fetched two beers from the kitchen and handed one to Amanda before taking a deep drink from mine. On the television, the Doctor and Rose made eye contact intended to convey their soulmatey-ness.
After a few minutes of awkward silence between the three of us during which the onscreen lovebirds murmured to each other with romantic urgency, Derek twisted around and grabbed the remote and clicked pause.
“I’m sorry. I went and judged you again. I’m trying not to.”
“It’s OK. I know what it looks like.”
“So explain it to me different.”
“He’s just not monogamous, puppy. Maybe it’s more of a lifestyle than a kink, but maybe it’s not that easy to change either.”
“If I even wanted to,” I agreed.
“I guess what I don’t get is, even if some other woman sort of caught my eye like ‘yeah, she’s hot’”—he turned his head up towards Amanda—“I’m not saying that happens.”
“You wouldn’t be human if it didn’t.”
“Well, I’m not saying that it does, but even if it did, it wouldn’t be worth it. I’d rather have all of this—the relationship, the intimacy, the future—with Amanda than a fifteen minute fuck with some random hottie. Don’t you ever feel like you’re missing out? Jenny’s a great person. You should get to know her.”
“You’re right.” I finished my beer and stood up. “I should have gone home with Jenny. It would have saved a lot of grief. And Jenny is great. I’m not breaking things off with her. I just had something else to take care of tonight.”
“Is it taken care of?” Amanda asked.
“I hope so.”
The buoyant hopefulness that had accompanied me home had fucked off, replaced by a whitewash of self-loathing. Why couldn’t I form a grown-up relationship with a nice girl like Jenny? No, not Jenny. Deb. Whatever was wrong between me and Deb was caused by whatever was wrong with me. If I could have given her the one thing she needed, she would have given me everything I needed. Four years and I hadn’t lost any interest in her.
But would that be true if it had been four years of nothing but her?
When I thought about monogamy, cold iron bars formed around my heart and started squeezing. Intimacy, yes. Relationship, yes. The future, yes. But monogamy? No.
It seemed that my inability to embrace the last meant that I’d never get to experience the rest, and when I looked at that truth, it was more than I could face full on.
“I do want all that,” I told Derek. “Maybe I don’t deserve it, but I want it.”
I walked into the kitchen with my empty beer bottle and tossed it in the recycling bin. When I got back to the living room, Amanda was leaning over Derek talking in his ear.
“I’m going to bed,” I told them. “See you tomorrow.”
“Wait, Nate.” Derek came over to me. “Did you and Deb, like, break up tonight?”
“Kind of.”
He turned and looked at Amanda over his shoulder. She smiled and shrugged.
“I don’t know how she knew that,” he said. “I didn’t even know the two of you were dating in the first place. I thought the whole point of Deb being there tonight was that Lissie was trying to set the two of you up.”
“Lissie didn’t know we were dating either.”
Derek laughed. “OK, that’s really funny. I can’t wait to give her grief about that.”
“I wish you wouldn’t. The reason no one knew Deb and I were dating is because Deb didn’t want anyone to know. I shouldn’t have told you tonight, but I’m tired of keeping it a secret and now that it’s finally over—I hope—it was a relief to get it out completely.”
“Finally?” Amanda asked. “How long has this been going on?”
“Four years, off and on.”
“Four years?” Derek grimaced. “Shit. And I’m giving you grief about not sticking with anyone. Sorry, dude.”
“It’s OK. It was four years but it wasn’t, you know, like you and Amanda. It doesn’t really count, I guess.”
“It counts,” Amanda said. “Someone needs a hug.” She used her foot to push Derek closer to me.
He opened his arms but he didn’t get any closer. Uncertainty played across his face. He was still dressed only in boxers, his chest bare and his shoulders broad above it—a whole lot of skin between those spread arms. I closed the gap between us myself, wrapping my arms around his neck and feeling his arms come around my waist, his strong hands splaying across my back. Derek’s warmth bled through the thin shirt I had on. He was strong and solid and radiated comfort. For a moment, I wished I wasn’t wearing a shirt either, that we were skin-to-skin against each other.
Physical contact was something like a drug to me, that silky slide of skin against skin, the warmth and wetness of mouth and pussy. I pulled away from Derek before my drifting thoughts led to an embarrassing reaction.
“Thanks. I did need that. I’m going to my room. Maybe you guys feel like entertaining me?”
“Derek does have a debt to pay.”
Derek smiled at that. He climbed up onto the couch and laid back with his head in Amanda’s lap, gazing up at her with his typical adoration. She put her hand on his stomach like she owned it.
Yeah, the two of them had something I wanted. I just wanted it with more than two.
Chapter 3
I was surprised to see so many black men at the read-through. When I’d been cast as Othello, I’d assumed no suitable black man had auditioned for the role.
Usually a show that called for minorities brought out enough of them to fill the roles, but this version of Othello had been advertised as “color blind.” Perhaps that had inadvertently sent the message that minorities weren’t wanted, because the night I’d auditioned, there’d been only two black men, neither of whom had read well enough for a lead role.
There were at least three in the room now, plus some who looked Hispanic or mixed. In short, there were a lot of people who were potentially going to be pretty angry about a white Othello.
I spotted the director across the auditorium and headed straight for her.
“Do you trust me?” she asked before I could say a word.
What was I supposed to say? I’d known Carol since coming to Central Playhouse, but she usually worked the front of the house. This was her first stint as a director. I had no idea whether I trusted her or not.
“I cast the people who read best for the role, regardless of color. That’s what color blind means.”
“Do you think everyone’s going to see it that way?”
“I hope so. You’d better knock their socks off though.”
Great. Normally the read-through was low stress, a chance to hear the script from beginning to end and get to know each other, but tonight I needed to convince my castmates that our director wasn�
��t racist and I wasn’t a self-entitled brat taking one of the few good roles that belonged to black men away from them.
I slunk off to find a seat at the edge of the auditorium, plucking a copy of the script off the pile at the stage manager’s feet as I went past her.
“Did I say you could take one of those?” Rebekah swatted at my ass and missed.
I flashed a devilish grin I wasn’t feeling over my shoulder and dropped into the seat I’d chosen as being very much not-center-of-attention. I flipped through the pages until I found my first lines and started studying.
I didn’t want to notice Deb when she came in, but I did. She wore a pair of skinny jeans that only a woman with a figure as boyish as hers could get away with and a fitted t-shirt in a bright red that played up the highlights in her hair. From a distance she was typically gorgeous, but as she came closer the dark circles under her eyes became obvious. Her skin was mottled and blotchy, lighter even than her usual shade of pale.
She veered up the stairs and took a seat high in the audience where I couldn’t see her without craning my neck around. I turned back to the script in my hands, searching for some kind of genius I could wring out of my first scene.
Another black guy came into the auditorium and sat down a couple of seats away from me. Great. Now there were at least four men who could have played Othello instead of me. There weren’t that many speaking roles in Othello to begin with, which meant half the guys in the room would be spear carriers. Spear carriers. Nice term under the circumstances. Probably best to avoid it.
“Where’d you get the script?” the guy near me asked.
“The stage manager. That’s Rebekah over there.” I pointed to the stack of scripts at her feet.
Rebekah was black. Would she be offended too, or would she give me and Carol the benefit of the doubt, considering how long she’d known us? She’d swung at me when I stole the script, but that was a normal interaction for me and her.
“I got yelled at for one taking one, though,” I warned him, “so proceed at your own risk.”
He went over to Rebekah and I went back to my lines. Trouble was, they didn’t really get good until the second act. In the first act, Othello was pretty much a normal guy—a war hero who loved his wife, a general who performed various authoritative acts. Iago had all the lines the audience would recognize. My chance to wow the crowd wouldn’t come until after intermission.