by Tanya Chris
“Then the answer is no.” Shit, what was I saying? “Never mind. The answer would be no either way. I’m sorry. We had a lot of great times together and I’m sorry it ended badly and sorry there was so much anger along the way. Maybe if we stop sleeping together, we can get back to being friends. We liked each other once.”
“I still like you.”
“I still like you, too.”
“Right. You like me and you’ll sleep with any willing woman, so why not sleep with me?”
“I actually don’t sleep with any willing woman.”
She snorted, which drained the last ounce of my sympathy for her.
“Here’s a great way to prove it,” I said. “I’m not sleeping with you. Never again. You can be friendly or you can be pissy. I don’t give a fuck. I’m not sleeping with you either way. Not if you’re drunk, not if you’re sober, not ever again. Get it?”
She winced, and even though I was the one who’d made her hurt, my arms twitched to touch her in consolation, but then she pulled herself up taller and tossed her head so the points of her hair swung around her chin.
“Maybe bodyguard was the wrong word. Maybe Joshua’s more your boyfriend.” She pushed through the door.
I washed my hands a second time to give myself something to do and because I felt unclean. Blowjob or not, Joshua wasn’t my boyfriend, not that it would be Deb’s business if he were.
Out in the auditorium, Deb stood next to Lissie, angry words I couldn’t hear spilling from her hard-set mouth. Lissie scowled at me and put an arm around Deb. After a minute, Deb went over to where Joshua stood uncertainly at the foot of a ladder and Lissie beckoned me over to her.
“I guess you’ll be working with me now, since Deb apparently never wants to see your face again.”
“Sorry.”
“You couldn’t even try, Nate? You know she hasn’t been doing well. Why not give her that boost?”
“My getting involved with her wouldn’t improve the situation.”
“How do you know that?”
I sighed, frustrated by the subterfuge. “She’s upset about a cheating sack of shit, remember? How would getting involved with me help? Lissie, you knew I was sleeping with other women when I was sleeping with you, right?”
“I knew you hadn’t promised you wouldn’t, but until that day at Anabelle’s salon—” she broke off and I was horrified to see that it still hurt her. “It wasn’t until I saw you with that other stylist that I knew you really were.”
“But you were OK with it.” I needed that to be true.
“I was learning to be OK with it. Derek helped. He’s so loyal, you know? Even though I wasn’t being loyal to him and you weren’t being loyal to me, him being loyal made it all hang together in some warped way.”
“I was loyal to you, Lissie. Not faithful, but loyal.”
She frowned, either not following me or not believing me.
“Listen, I’ve known Deb longer than you have. As hard as it was for you to handle a non-monogamous relationship, it would be harder for her. It would be impossible for her.”
“You don’t have to be like that.”
“I do.”
“Not if you found the right woman. I really think you and Deb are right for each other. That first day I met you, Deb was being all glarey at you and you ducked around the subject whenever her name came up, and I knew there could be something intense between you two. I was right about Derek and Amanda, wasn’t I?”
“Derek wanted Amanda before you showed up.”
“Yeah, but if I hadn’t given him a push, he’d still be yearning for her instead of moving in with her. Maybe you just need a push.”
“And then I’ll fall in love with her and never want to be with another woman again?”
“Why not? Don’t you want something more, Nate?”
Yes. Fuck. My eyes sought Joshua where he stood beneath Deb’s ladder, holding an instrument up to her, his forearms taut and gleaming in the fluorescent light. I wanted more and it had something—everything—to do with that man over there, but Lissie’s version of more wasn’t mine.
“It wouldn’t be more. Not to me. To me, it would be less.”
“How do you know until you try? When you love someone—”
“I loved you.”
“I don’t believe that. You told me you loved me once, but then nothing changed.”
“Why would anything have changed? That’s how I loved you, the way we were. I loved that you let me have all of you without restricting me from—” I groped for the words to explain it. You ask for nothing, my mind sang “—from the rest of life,” I finished. “I loved the three of us together and the people on the fringes and all the possibility. The whole world was available to us, unlimited potential. I want that. I don’t want Deb.”
In the quiet of the nearly empty theater, I realized I’d said that last sentence much too loudly. Deb and Joshua had stopped working to stare at me.
“Sorry,” I muttered to nobody, and nobody responded. Deb and Joshua went back to work. Lissie rustled her papers.
“You could hang the back pipe,” she said without looking at me. “You’re tall enough to do that without a ladder.”
“Sure.”
I didn’t figure this day could get much worse—I’d fought off Deb’s advances and hadn’t figured out what to do about Joshua’s—but the hostile, silent hour that followed was definitely worse.
“You said this would be fun,” Joshua said accusingly when we’d been dismissed at last from the dark, uncomfortable auditorium.
“I said it would be more fun with you there.” I leaned against the brick wall outside the theater and let the sun fall over me.
“Maybe for you, not for me.”
“Sorry.” I was seriously glad Joshua had been there. Without a witness holding them back, Deb and Lissie might have teamed up to take a pair of shears to my balls.
Joshua braced a forearm on the wall behind me and leaned into me. His other hand toyed with the curls at the nape of my neck, stirring sensation.
“How about we go do something that’s my idea of fun?”
“The gym?”
If another blowjob happened, it would be because the three of us were in bed together and Sherry was tired or otherwise engaged, because Joshua happened to be there and I happened to have an erection. I couldn’t stand in a public place in the sunshine on a Saturday morning trying to decide what to do next and pick blowjobs. I drew the line there. Sexual contact might happen, but it couldn’t be intended.
“Sure,” Joshua agreed easily, “the gym. Maybe go back to my place for some lunch first. Man can’t live off donuts alone, not that chocolate glaze isn’t satisfyingly delicious.”
I was pretty sure it wasn’t only my mind being dirty this time. His mouth hovered close to mine, waiting for me to reach for it.
Deb banged through the door, Lissie right behind her. I jerked my head away from Joshua’s.
“Well,” Deb said, sweeping the two of us thoroughly with her eyes, “apparently I was right.”
Trapped between the wall and Joshua’s body, I struggled to add space between us. He took a half step back, allowing me to slide away from him, towards the two women who stood, one hostile, one surprised, watching us.
“Let’s go get some lunch.” Lissie tugged on Deb’s arm. “I owe you for all that work.” She regarded me curiously. “Maybe I can take you two out another time.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Joshua said when I didn’t answer, even though Lissie was looking squarely at me.
Lissie pulled on Deb harder and the two of them walked away.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit. I kicked the wall hard enough to hurt.
Shit.
“Do you know what I just did?”
“I know how it felt.”
“I just fucking—shit.”
“I put you in an awkward situation.”
“No, not your fault. I let you do something to me la
st night because I wanted you to. Whether I would have said yes if we’d started with our clothes on or if Sherry hadn’t been there or if I’d cut myself off at one shot, it doesn’t fucking matter. I wanted you to do it, I said yes, you did it. I’ve got no fucking right to, to treat you like—”
Like Deb treated me, like something only good enough for the anonymity of a dark bedroom.
Shit.
“So don’t treat me like that.”
“Right. Right.” If I wanted Joshua’s mouth on my cock, then I had to accept Joshua’s mouth on my mouth. In public. If I couldn’t kiss Joshua after a blowjob, then I didn’t deserve a blowjob. Normally that post-blowjob kiss was the cherry on my sundae, but last night— and just now— shit.
I was no better than Deb.
I won’t let you make me look like that, Deb had told me in the men’s room.
While I’d been hanging lights, humming to fill in the silence, my mind had been ticking it over, putting all the pieces together for the first time. If people knew I was sleeping with Deb, they’d know I was sleeping with Deb and. And whoever. Carol in the beginning, Jenny most recently. And knowing that, they’d pity her, think less of her, apply their own judgments to her.
It wasn’t even about jealousy. It was about appearances. Just like Othello. Who steals my purse steals trash; But he that filches from me my good name . . .
I could look down on Deb for worrying about what other people thought of her as though I were above that kind of teenaged angst myself. I could play the bigger man. Until Joshua telegraphed our intimacy and I reacted like he’d had just blown my cover, my strictly heterosexual why-would-I-want-my-cock-in-some-guy’s-mouth cover. Because I wasn’t going to let Joshua make me look like that.
“Can’t do this,” I told Joshua.
“Can’t fuck around with me or can’t let anyone know you’re fucking around with me?”
“Can’t fuck around with you if I can’t let anyone know.”
“And you can’t let anyone know?”
“Apparently not.” I hadn’t even thought about what I was doing, just jerked away—instinctively, fearfully.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not true. I’m not like that. I’m not gay.”
“Neither am I.”
“Gay, bi, whatever. That’s semantics.”
“It’s not semantics. It’s me. I get to define myself the way I see myself. You can do that too. So what if you want to fuck around with me? Because you know what? I think you do.”
“Yeah, sometimes I do.” I owed Joshua honesty. “Not right here, right now, but sometimes, when you’re looking at me the way you look at me, I want you to touch me. I want you to do what you did last night. But right here, right now, if you tried to kiss me, I couldn’t. And I feel like if I can’t kiss you, if I can’t be with you in the daylight, then I’m treating you like a sex toy, and you’re a lot more important to me than that.”
“Nate.” He flashed me a look of pure exasperation. “Sexual attraction plus important doesn’t add up to anything for you?”
“There’s a big number missing out of the middle of the equation.”
“What does x represent?”
“Me. My sexuality. I’m not gay. I don’t want to kiss a dude. Even if ... even if it feels good to have his mouth on my dick. It’s only what Sherry said—a mouth’s a mouth. It’s not me wanting to have sex with you, like, as a person.”
Joshua jerked his head away.
“I’m sorry. That came out way wrong. I love you as a person. You smile at me and you fuss over me and you take care of me and you make me feel like the greatest thing in the world and I’m just—”
“What?”
“Greedy. Selfish”
“So you want me to dote on you and you didn’t really mind when I gave you a blowjob, but you draw the line at kissing me and so the whole thing’s off?”
“Not the whole thing. You could keep doing the rest of it.”
“From afar.”
“From a little further. Maybe the threesomes were a bad idea.”
“You think?”
“I really had no idea it would end like this.”
“You invited a person who’d expressed sexual interest in you into your sex life. What did you think would happen?”
“That I’d get everything I ever wanted.”
“At my expense.”
“As it turns out.”
Joshua threw up his hands, disgust with me drifting across his face, but the disgust settled into something like resignation as his hands lowered to his sides. “OK.”
“OK?” What did that mean?
“What else am I supposed to say? It’s not like I get to force you to have sex with me, and I … I appreciate your explanation of it.” He paused, scuffing the toe of one shoe at a dried wad of bubble-gum stuck to the sidewalk. “You know, when I’m with guys, they usually are sex toys to me. I mean, I’ve got no problem kissing a guy—sex is weird and awkward without kissing—but if I run into him on the street the next week, I don’t kiss him then.”
He’d told me before that he didn’t fall in love with guys, but I hadn’t realized it was as casual as all that.
“Basically, use them once and you’re done?”
“Don’t make it sound so bad. They’re up for it and I’m up for it. No one’s getting hurt. Maybe the best thing about guys is it can be straightforward like that. No romancey, lovey-dovey bullshitting. Like, am I going to respect you in the morning? Sure, I’ll respect you like I’d respect any guy who got himself laid last night, only I’m not going to see you in the morning anyway, so what difference does it make?”
“It doesn’t have to be like that.”
“No, but it can be like that. For me, it’s what I like. I’m not speaking for all guys who like to fuck guys, just me.”
“It’s not what I like. I’ve never even had a one-night stand.”
“Never?”
“No, I don’t think so.” I cast my mind back. Some relationships had been shorter than others, but even on those rare occasions when I slept with someone immediately—Sherry came to mind—it was only the beginning, not the end.
“You’re looking for more than a one-night stand with me,” I pointed out.
“Interesting point. And if you don’t sleep with me again, you just had one.”
“Also an interesting point,” I conceded.
“Which leaves us where?”
“If it’s feasible, I’d like to go back to where we were twenty-four hours ago.”
He scowled. “Undo button, huh? Not so easy in life.” He stepped back into me, surrounding me the way he had been when Lissie and Deb found us together. I straightened my spine.
“Twenty-four hours ago, I was allowed to touch you.” He twisted a curl around his finger. “You like it when I dote on you, remember?”
He was right. I liked it. I didn’t understand it, but I liked it.
“Sure,” I said. “Nothing has changed.”
Chapter 17
I tried Jenny first. I wanted a date for Friday because it was my last Friday of freedom before performances started and because it felt like a good idea to put some separation between The Blowjob, as I was coming to think of it—as though any future blowjob would have to be called something else—and my next interaction with Sherry and Joshua.
I had nervous, ecstatic fantasies about the three of us naked together and that moment coming—Joshua’s hand wrapping around the base of my dick, his mouth moving towards the tip—and me not saying no, followed by the sight of that dark head bending over me and the feel of his hair under my palms.
Despite the long week of rehearsals leading into Friday, I found time every night to take my own dick in hand, and when my mind played my personalized mental playlist of porn against the back of my twitching eyelids, that new video featured prominently.
Arriving at the theater with fifteen minutes to spare Wednesday night, I tucked myself away in a quiet
corner of the green room and called Jenny. I didn’t have a lot of confidence that she would say yes and she didn’t, although it took her a while to get to the point of saying no.
“Things are going well with Tommy then?” I asked after she’d found a few complicated ways of not exactly answering my question.
After their last climbing date, Jenny had grabbed the back of Tommy’s head and planted her mouth straight in front of his, and he’d found the courage to take it from there. I hadn’t gotten a lot of details, but I knew they hadn’t taken it beyond the car. No one had gotten laid that night, including me.
“I feel like I’d have to tell him,” Jenny said. “I’d have to say I’m sleeping with someone else if I slept with someone else.”
“You’re not even sleeping with him.”
“Not yet.”
“This week?”
Jenny’s breath came soft through the phone. “Probably not,” she answered with more determination than her words suggested. “I’d like to, but ...”
“He’s got more dues to pay, huh?”
“You know how men are.”
I only knew how I was, which wasn’t like that. “We could go get dinner. We don’t have to screw around.”
Jenny giggled.
“Am I that irresistible?” I wasted my boyishly-flattered grin on the phone. “Not sleeping with me is not an option?”
Jenny giggled again. “Maybe. I don’t like my chances.” She sobered up. “This is a nice thing I’ve got going with Tommy. You don’t want me to screw it up.”
I sighed. No. “Should I stop calling you?”
“I’m not saying you can’t call.”
In case things don’t work out with Tommy after all. I’d been Plan B before. I knew how these things worked. Irene was always finding some guy, putting me on hold, dumping said guy, and picking me back up again.
“Then I’ll call you,” I told Jenny. “And maybe see you at the gym again once the show opens and rehearsals are over.”
“No one’s at the gym now, silly. It’s April. But you can come climb outside with us. Even if, you know—Tommy—we can still be friends.”
“Thanks, Jen-Jen. Good luck on Saturday.” I made a kissy noise into the phone to hear her giggle again and then hung up.