by Tanya Chris
You ask for nothing
Chapter 13
Rehearsals got seriously fun as we moved past the stage where no one knew where they were supposed to be and everyone thought it was someone else’s line. No one had their lines completely memorized yet—except Deb—but the first act was in good shape and Joshua and I were working on dropping our scripts for the second act. All the fight scenes and clown foolishness had been choreographed. Mikaela learned to juggle with a reasonable degree of accuracy, the occasional failure only adding to the comedy. As long as none of the balls ended up in the audience.
Watching the show come together was my second favorite part of doing theater, right after performing in front of an audience. My least favorite part—everyone’s least favorite part—was the stretch called tech week, aka hell week, when the rehearsal schedule would be unrelenting. No more one-night-off-per-week deal.
I didn’t mind the time commitment, especially not for a show as good as this one. Carol had done a great job of casting, despite my initial doubts. Deb, who’d shown up sober all week after last week’s embarrassment, carried her death scene with tragic beauty. She looked at me with such devotion I couldn’t separate her acting from whatever real emotion she felt towards me.
Lissie watched a run-through to put the finishing touches on her lighting design before tech week started.
“You guys are really good,” she said to me and Deb afterwards. “And you too.” She waved at Joshua who lurked nearby and I pulled him into our circle. “I still don’t understand half of what you’re saying, though.”
“That half isn’t important.”
“You understand it though.”
“Carol makes us talk it all through,” Deb said. “Look up the words, figure out the jokes.”
“Someone should re-write it in modern language.”
“I’m sure someone has,” I said. “But hey, they’d charge royalties and Shakespeare is free.”
“They let us keep the difference,” Joshua joked.
I leaned into Lissie and pretended to whisper, “He thinks we’re getting paid. Shh, don’t tell him.”
“We’ll all split the profits,” Deb said. “As soon as there are some.”
“As long as they don’t make me chip in on the losses,” Joshua said.
“No one’s talked to you about your costume yet, have they?”
Anything an actor could possibly procure from his own wardrobe, Central Playhouse expected him to procure, although for this show Joshua and I would be gallivanting around in tight leggings and poofy shorts, probably not something either of us had at home.
I walked Lissie out to her car so I could have a minute alone with her. Her stomach made a hard boulder between us when I hugged her goodbye.
“By the way, Deb and I went out for dinner the other night. She told me what happened at rehearsal last week and that she’d decided to quit drinking.”
I nodded even though Joshua had warned me not to count on her remaining sober because relapse was part of the disease. Even for him, he’d said, five years sober but never safe.
Now I had another way to imagine this beautiful but fragile house of cards crashing down on me. Sherry could get bored with me. Joshua could get tired of sharing. They could move to New York. Joshua could start drinking.
I knew our setup was temporary. I just wanted temporary to be a really long time.
“Did Deb talk to you about what’s wrong?” I hoped Deb had broken my vow of silence by explaining it herself.
“Something about a cheating sack of shit. I didn’t even know she was dating anyone or I wouldn’t have tried to fix her up with you.”
“Joshua says it’s really about the drinking, that the rest is an excuse.” I didn’t mention that I was the cheating sack of shit in question.
“Joshua seems like a good guy. Deb says he’s been helpful, even though she’s torn about whether or not she likes him. Apparently he’s also a cheating sack of shit.”
“He’s not a cheating sack of shit. He’s in an open marriage. It’s their business.”
“OK, OK. I’m not judging.”
“Good. Don’t. Deb’s got a bug up her ass about the cheating. The whole show is cheating, cheating, cheating. She’s fixated. You should see the way she looks at me when I say those lines. I’m accusing her of infidelity when—” I stopped, realizing what road I’d been about to go down.
“When what?”
“When she’s already worked up on the subject,” I finished lamely. “It’ll be good when the show opens and she can catch a break from it.”
“A lot of long rehearsals between then and now.”
“Yeah.”
We stood in the dark parking lot in front of her car, face to face but avoiding eye contact. I knew she knew she was missing something. To distract her, I offered to help her with the lights that weekend, since ladders were contraindicated for her at the moment. Then I kissed her, my lips clinging to hers as long as I dared. I missed having her lips against mine.
~~~
On my night off from Othello, I attended a different kind of rehearsal. Sherry had a solo booking at the Moonshine Lounge that weekend—a plum gig. She tweeted out to her followers that she had a new arrangement for Freely Given and then surprised me with the news that I’d be singing it with her. With one day to prep.
When I arrived at Joshua and Sherry’s house to rehearse for this other starring role I suddenly had, Sherry brought me into the back bedroom. I scanned the room I’d never been in before, cataloguing guitars and speakers and other pieces of sound equipment I couldn’t have named. In the corner, a computer hummed on a makeshift desk. Sherry pulled a few sheets of paper from the printer next to it and handed them to me.
“I can’t actually read sheet music,” I admitted as I handed them back.
“How do you do musicals?”
“A combination of working with the music director, listening to tapes, and faking it.”
“OK, we need to get through tomorrow night, so we’ll go with that for now, but I’m teaching you to read music. You’ll need it in New York.”
“My voice isn’t good enough for New York.” Plus, I wouldn’t be going to New York.
“Well, it had better be good enough for the Moonlight Lounge. I’m counting on you.”
Sherry perched on a stool with her guitar and played the melody as I sang along to the tune I already knew. After she’d played it through twice, she kissed me like a reward.
“You’re going to do fine. Not nervous, are you?”
This would be a different kind of performance, with no character to hide behind, but I didn’t expect to suffer from stage fright. Under a spotlight, everything came together for me, and the music wasn’t difficult. There were a few spots where I needed to harmonize, but she’d assigned most of the tricky voice work to herself, leaving me with a simple melody I already knew.
“Very nice,” she said when we’d made it all the way through without a hitch a few times. She put her guitar down and stood up to stretch her back. I wrapped myself around her from behind to sneak an appreciative look down her cleavage and she turned in my arms and reached up to pull my mouth down to hers.
“Shouldn’t we run through it a few more times?” I asked, when her hands ventured inside my shirt.
“After. Let’s fuck now before Joshua gets home.”
“Kinky.” It’d been a while since it had been just the two of us.
Sherry shut the door to the bedroom and stripped me. When she pushed me onto my knees, I didn’t hesitate. I loved the way she took what she needed from me without coyness. I raised her skirt and dove into her lush wetness, then climbed onto the bed and fucked her without undressing her, enjoying the dirty desperation of a quickie without missing out on making her limp with pleasure.
“You keep condoms everywhere, don’t you?” I asked when we’d finished Every drawer I opened at their house had a box. Handy.
“Experience. Nothing worse than ha
ving to go look for one mid-thrust.” She rolled me over onto my stomach and ran her hands over my back and shoulders.
“Am I getting a backrub?”
“You’re getting inspected. I’m trying to decide where I’ll put my tattoo.”
“Your tattoo?”
“You’ll let me give you one, won’t you? How often do you have your shirt off on stage?”
“Not very, but maybe more if Joshua gets my chest built up.” Probably wishful thinking after only a couple of sessions, but I thought I could see a little muscle in the mirror.
“How about here?” She traced my lower, right shoulder.
“How about somewhere I can reach?”
“Gotcha! I knew you’d let me.” She kissed my neck, laughter bubbling between her lips. “Now what should it be?”
“I didn’t say yes yet.”
“But you will.”
In the hall, I heard the sound of Joshua’s footsteps leading to the bathroom. I reached for the doorknob, but Sherry stopped me.
“He’ll be fine on his own. We don’t have to do the threesome thing every time.”
“I don’t want to leave him out in his own house.”
“You know those threesomes are mostly for you, right?”
“Joshua doesn’t like them?”
“Yes and no. Put yourself in his place—it’s all look, and no touch. I like them fine—no woman is going to complain about having her two favorite lovers in the same bed—but I’m enjoying the me-time right now. Joshua sees you at rehearsal almost every night. Tonight is mine.”
So Thursday night belonged to Sherry. We rehearsed some more, then made love some more, before I eased myself out of the small bed. I carried her to the master bedroom and nudged the door open with my shoulder. Joshua was in bed, a tablet on his lap and his chest bare above the covers. He pulled them back and I deposited Sherry under them.
“You guys sound good.”
“The song or the sex?”
“Both. Are you staying?”
“Tomorrow.”
Sherry made a sulky face, not quite as asleep as she’d pretended to be, and rolled over against her husband. I let myself out.
Behind me, their front door shut with a solid thunk that emphasized the divide between me and where I wanted to be. If Joshua and Sherry weren’t enjoying those threesomes, if they were really mostly for me, how long could I expect them to continue?
Look but don’t touch. No genital contact, no sustained contact, no contact without Sherry in the middle of it. The unspoken rules under which we operated constrained us both, but for me it was a flow issue, not a question of longing for something I couldn’t have.
Selfish, that was what I was. Selfish and spoiled and so, so hungry for what they gave me. Not just for the sex. For the time before the sex and the time after, for Joshua’s smile when our eyes caught at rehearsal, for Sherry’s voice floating in from the back bedroom over the sound of the television, for eggs in the kitchen and pizza on the living room floor.
I’d have done almost anything to be in their bed right then, a little too crowded, naked flesh everywhere, someone’s hand brushing my arm, someone’s breath sighing through a dream. The only thing that had kept me out of their bed tonight was the fear of being kept out of it permanently. I needed to find a way to make it work for them as well as it worked for me. Whatever it took.
Chapter 14
Sherry had drawn a good crowd, partly thanks to how well she worked her social media presence. In her ongoing attempt to convince both me and Joshua to go pro, she’d offered to help set us up with Twitter and Instagram and who knew what-all else. The few years of age difference between her and us spanned a gulf of apps.
“You’ve gotta get your face out there,” she’d told me. “Let the ladies see those pretty blue eyes, create a Nate-demand.”
Well, I’d never minded being looked at. Older women liked me—which had worked for Clay Aiken—and maybe gay guys too. I shifted my appraising glance from the audience to the man next to me. Joshua impressed in a sapphire-blue silk shirt, his hair and beard freshly trimmed and sharp against his skin. He slapped me on the back, then left his hand there to rub between my shoulder blades.
I hadn’t dressed up. In fact, I was intentionally dressed down to match Sherry’s artistically-tattered outfit. I didn’t own anything artistically-tattered so I’d donated a pair of jeans to the cause and Sherry had modified them into something more air than cloth. I’d had to decide which of my undershorts I wanted the audience to see.
“Not nervous?” Joshua asked, his hand still rubbing my back.
“Not really.” My number wasn’t until the end of her first set, a sort of hook to keep the crowd around for the second set. I hated late-show entrances. Better to be the first one on-stage. When I experienced butterflies, it was always in those final moments of lead-up.
Joshua flagged down the waiter and ordered me a drink. The lights dimmed further than the low glow they’d already been at and Sherry walked onto the little stage at the front with her guitar. I sipped slowly at my beer, not wanting to feel it, the nerves settling as I got caught up in her performance.
I didn’t have her playlist memorized, so when she introduced our song, it came as a surprise. I walked on stage to a smattering of polite applause and stood on my mark just over her right shoulder. I put on the face of a man who loved Sherry—not a hard role to play—and the performer in me took over. I connected to Sherry, and somewhere out there beyond us, the audience connected back.
When we finished, I ad-libbed a kiss, bending her back precariously over the top of her stool until she let go of the guitar and clung to me. The applause ratcheted up a few decibels.
I returned Sherry to a full and upright position and she told the crowd we were taking a break. Backstage, we waited for Joshua to fight his way around to the side entrance to join us. He swooped us both up into giant hugs and kissed Sherry as hard as I’d kissed her.
“The three of us make a good team,” he said with his arms around his wife. “Looking forward to some more teamwork after the show.” He flashed a smile at me over Sherry’s head and my heart stopped.
Fuck, I wanted this.
~~~
Sherry and I were both giggling as Joshua steered us towards the bedroom. Sherry was definitely high on tequila and I’d probably had one shot too many myself. It’d been a night for celebrating, and knowing we had a designated driver hadn’t hurt.
“Who’s fucking me first?” Sherry pulled her own shirt over her head before anyone else could get to it.
“Joshua.”
“No oral?” he asked.
“After.” She dropped her bra on the floor.
“You’ll taste all latexy,” he warned.
“It wears off fast. She’s juicy.”
“We should get those strawberry-flavored condoms,” Sherry said. “Or tequila-flavored. Strawberry margarita flavored. I wonder if they sell those.”
“For the alcoholic sex-addict,” Joshua joked.
“In other words, you.” Sherry laughed too hard at that. She sat down on the bed to get her boots off, having already pulled her skirt down over them.
“I’d rather you tasted like you than strawberry.”
The scene in the room amused me, each of us undressing ourselves at separate corners of the bed, a less-than-sexy banter ricocheting between us, and yet I was fully hard and a surreptitious glance at Joshua confirmed he shared my predicament.
Sherry tossed herself back on the bed. She spread her legs and ran a hand between them. It came up wet. Yeah, I was clearly not the only person in the room looking forward to what was about to happen. I leaned over the bed and sucked on the slippery fingers she fed into my mouth while Joshua put on a condom.
“Doggy, doggy.” She flipped herself onto her knees and elbows.
I pulled her mouth down to mine, relishing her moaning exhale when her husband slid into her from behind. I kissed her until her mouth wouldn’t form s
hapes anymore, until her body rocked too much for me to latch onto, then I crawled into the space between her stomach and the bed.
I felt for her clit, trying not to interrupt Joshua’s rhythm, using my other hand on myself. I couldn’t figure out how to get my mouth in there without his thrusts breaking my neck, but the view was good and my fingers were doing their job. Sherry spewed filth at us, definitely tipsy—open and loose and wild.
When Joshua tried to rotate her into another position, or perhaps give up his position to me, Sherry swatted her hand back at him.
“More, more.”
He growled and gave her more, until his own pleasure overcame him. Sweaty and breathing hard, he bent over his wife’s back and she slumped down onto the bed.
“Hey,” I said, trapped at the bottom of the puppy pile. Joshua pulled himself off the pile and dropped onto one side of the bed. I wriggled my way out from beneath Sherry’s damp abdomen and lay down on her other side. My hand continued to work my cock which was ready for some attention.
“You gotta take care of Nate, baby.” Joshua poked her limp form.
She opened her eyes narrowly at me. “Let Joshua do it. A mouth’s a mouth.”
“I could do that.” He shrugged so lightly that his shoulders barely moved, the nonchalance in his gesture belied by the way his tongue snaked out to lick at his lips. I involuntarily licked my own lips in response and Joshua closed his eyes and I closed mine.
I rolled onto my back. I released my cock, letting my arms fall to the bed. My cock was so hard it hurt and the thought of Joshua sucking on it didn’t make it any softer.
Why not give him what he wanted? A mouth was a mouth. The bed dipped in the center as he climbed over Sherry and positioned himself between my legs. His hands were a foreign warmth on my inner thighs.
“Is this OK?”
I nodded without opening my eyes. My cock needed to be touched. By what, I almost didn’t care. By Joshua. Yes.
Tongue first, lapping at my balls, those hands sliding inward to cup me, their strength and roughness immediately new, the suction of wet kisses up and down my shaft, teasing out what was to come.