by Tanya Chris
“Jenny.”
I looked up from the easy chair I’d slouched into. Deb stood over me, her arms crossed in front of her, her chin thrusting forward.
“What?”
“People call her Jenny, don’t they? She goes by Jenny, not Jen-Jen.”
“What’s the difference?” I tucked my phone into my jeans and sat up. I wanted to walk away altogether, but I’d have had to push through her to do it.
“People have the right to decide what their own name is. Say my name, Nate.”
“Deb.” I wasn’t obeying her. I was trying to reason with her.
“That’s not my name. My name is Debra.”
“Everyone calls you Deb.”
“Because you made them. My name is Debra. It was always Debra. You had no right to change it and get everyone to, to follow you.”
“Jesus, Deb.”
“Debra! Say it.”
“OK, Debra. I’m sorry. I had no idea it bothered you.”
“Like hell you didn’t.”
A crowd had gathered behind her. People who’d been going about their pre-rehearsal business had stopped to witness the scene. She tossed her hair and addressed her audience.
“From now on I expect to be called Debra,” she announced authoritatively, as though she hadn’t just been throwing a toddler-sized hissy fit. “I’m not answering to Deb anymore. Got it?”
“Little Debbie?” Pete responded. “The Daily Debble? Rub-a-Deb-Deb?”
Deb picked up a bowling trophy that had been standing in as a scepter for the throne room scene and flung it at Pete’s head. Repeat caught it before the gold-plated bowling ball could connect with Pete’s teeth. Deb made a low sound of frustration in the back of her throat. She walked straight towards Pete and Repeat and then, pushing between them, out the door that led to the auditorium.
“The Daily Debble,” Repeat repeated into the silence of the stunned room. “Classic.”
“Thanks for the save, dude.” Pete held up his hand for a high-five and the two of them gyrated through a slapstick of hits and misses.
Joshua’s head poked through the stage door. He raised his eyebrows at me questioningly. I shrugged. I didn’t know what had just happened any better than he did. I could only assume she was drinking again. Rebekah barged in behind Joshua, pushing him through the door so she could occupy the doorway.
“It’s seven o’clock, people. I don’t care what drama you’ve got going on. Get your butts in that auditorium.”
I picked my butt up out of the chair and moved it into the auditorium. Taking a seat on the left end of the front row—the spot that unofficially belonged to me and Joshua—I looked around the room and found Deb—Debra—sitting quietly near Carol, her nose in her script even though she’d been off-book for weeks.
“You’re going to have to explain that to me,” Joshua said as he took the seat next to me.
“Couldn’t if I tried.” I settled in for another fun rehearsal.
~~~
After rehearsal, I tried Irene.
“A date?” she questioned, laughing.
“Yeah, like go out. When was the last time I took you out?”
“I don’t think you’ve ever taken me out. I used to take you out.”
Well, I’d only been eighteen when we first started sleeping together. Irene had had to make do with time in place of money, and enthusiasm in place of finesse.
“Then I owe you one,” I told her.
“Why don’t you just come over now, sugar? I’ve got my best nightgown on and I just finished painting my toes. Save Friday for whatever young thing you’re romancing these days.”
I went over, as commanded, but I wasn’t romancing any young thing these days and so Friday night I swung by a liquor store and a Red Box and headed home for a reluctantly quiet night in.
After a shower to wash away the sheetrock dust, I settled in front of the television in a t-shirt and sweat pants. I was down half a beer and a whole Subway sandwich when Derek came in looking conventionally preppy in slacks and a collared shirt buttoned high enough to make my Adam’s apple throb. No one would ever guess what golden boy hid under that collar.
“What are you up to tonight?” Derek asked, his fingers already reaching for the buttons of his shirt.
“This.”
“Oh.” He hovered on the edge of the sofa, bouncing on his toes, his shirt now open enough to reveal a hint of purple-red where his neck joined his right shoulder.
“Is that a problem?”
“I guess not. It’s just ... you’re never home Friday night. If you don’t have a show, you usually have a date. You haven’t even been coming home to sleep on Friday nights lately.”
“I’ve been staying at a friend’s but I thought I’d take a break from it this week.”
“A friend, like a friend?”
“Kind of.”
Derek continued bouncing lightly on his toes.
“Is it a problem for me to be here?”
“It’s just that it’s Friday night and you’re not usually here Fridays.”
“And?”
“It’s like our date night. Not to go out kind of date but to ... you know.”
“Swing from the chandelier? Is having me around going to cramp your style?”
“I don’t know.” Derek paused to consider it. “I doubt I’ll even remember you’re here once we get going, but it can get kind of loud. Don’t come charging in to save me, even if I really, really sound like I want to be saved.”
“Understood.”
Derek shuffled his feet, still eyeing me.
“And?” I prompted. Obviously there was more
“She uses what’s around. Improvising I guess you’d call it.”
I nodded my agreement with the word.
“You remember what happened that time you put in the hooks? Which work great, by the way, thank you. They’re really secure.”
“Glad they’re doing the job.”
I did remember the day I’d mounted the hooks in his bedroom ceiling. Amanda had taken the opportunity to tease and torment him in front of me until I called her bluff, leaning into her with Derek hard between us. I’d been hard too, my erection brushing his, though they didn’t quite line up because I had six inches on him. Height, that is. Derek had a couple inches on me where it counted. I smiled at the thought and then the next thought was that Joshua and I would align better and then I put that thought out of my mind as irrelevant to the conversation at hand.
“I didn’t mind Amanda using me that way,” I told Derek. “It was hot.”
“You think everything’s hot,” he said accusingly, if not inaccurately.
“You didn’t think it was hot? Because it kind of seemed like you did.”
“Sometimes not wanting to do something is part of the kick of doing it. Now that I know Amanda won’t take it any further, I suppose it would be OK.”
“Well, if she won’t take it any further, what’s the point?”
“Don’t even push that button. You know how I feel about it.” Derek’s struggles with jealousy were nearly legendary.
“Then maybe it’s best if I don’t get involved.” I’d already made a mess of enough relationships with my penchant for threesomes.
“Maybe Hannah’s going out with Pete and we could play at her house. I’ll ask Amanda.”
“Pete’s probably at the theater helping with the set. Which, you know what? I should do that too.”
Which was how I found myself down at the theater hanging out with Repeat—lost without Pete, who apparently did have a date—and everyone else who had nothing better to do on a Friday night.
Lissie was up in the light booth making lights pop randomly on and off, highlighting the sawdust floating in the air like the theater was a construction site disco. Mikaela followed me around in a way that made me nervous. She had big green eyes heavily outlined with eyeliner and long straight unnaturally black hair that she wrapped around her wrist when nervous or bored,
but she was literally still in high school, even if she was eighteen and technically legit.
“How’s that juggling going?” I asked her when I got tired of her hanging over me, helpfully handing me tools I didn’t need.
“I can do four balls sometimes. Want to see?”
“Sure.” I knew that as soon as the balls came out, Repeat would take over keeping her company. Maybe Repeat and Mikaela would make a good couple. Repeat was nearly as mature as the average eighteen year old.
Sure enough, when I hauled myself out from under the platform I’d been bracing, the two of them were center stage tossing balls back and forth to each other across a floor strewn with pieces of two-by-four and open paint cans. And then, plop, exactly what you would expect to happen happened.
“Repeat!” Rebekah screamed from the ladder where she’d been painting with the exact color that had just had a plastic ball splashed into it.
Repeat fished the ball out of the paint and headed backstage to clean it off. Nobody, not even Repeat himself, brought up the fact that Mikaela had actually dropped the ball. She trailed after him, embarrassed but with maybe a touch of new interest in this man who presented as a goofball but could be gallant too.
Almost as soon as the stage door swung shut behind Mikaela, it opened again, and there was Joshua coming through it. He spotted me immediately, even though I was still on the floor half hidden by the platform I’d been under. He came over and sat on top of it.
“Your date blow you off?”
When I’d told him I had a date tonight, I hadn’t exactly been lying. I’d had every intention of it being true.
“It didn’t work out,” I answered, leaving the details vague, “and my roommate wanted the apartment for his own dirty deeds, so I figured I’d come help. Still a lot to do considering we open in a week.” The state of the show seemed like a safer topic than why we weren’t spending Friday night together for the first time since rehearsals started.
Joshua nodded his agreement that there was a lot to do and asked for an assignment. I looked around for Dave, the dude in charge of getting the set built. “Do you know what you’re doing?” I asked Joshua, steering him over to Dave. “Or do you need something easy, like painting?”
Joshua pushed on my shoulder, nearly tipping me over. “I can swing a hammer.”
Dave assigned us the task of building Deb’s death bed. Joshua did know how to use tools, but I took the lead in navigating through the work. A lot of years of building sets out of scraps of wood had made me an expert in constructing something solid but simple.
“If it’ll hold you, it’ll hold Deb,” I told Joshua, standing over him while he modeled the bier.
“Debra,” Rebekah corrected from across the room. “I don’t know what’s with the two of you and this show, but let’s please just make it through the next week.”
“Debra,” I repeated obediently. I looked down at Joshua, kicked back with his arms behind his head and his knees bent. “Comfy?”
“It’s kind of hard.”
“Oh, really?” Even knowing better, I couldn’t stop myself from making the joke by looking pointedly at Joshua’s crotch.
“You kill me,” he said, sounding uncomfortably like he meant it. He took my hand and brought it to his throat.
“Be thus when thou art dead,” I recited softly, “and I will kill thee and love thee after. So sweet was ne'er so fatal. This sorrow's heavenly; it strikes where it doth love.” I put a second hand on Joshua’s throat and leaned over him. This was the spot where Othello kissed Desdemona before he killed her.
I could kiss a man on stage, I realized. I’d never needed to, but I wouldn’t let the requirement stop me from taking a role. But that was acting and this was much too real. Instead of kissing Joshua, I sat down next to him and let my hands slide off his neck to his shoulders.
“Let’s go home,” he said finally, after we’d stared at each other for far too long. “If we’re done here.”
Home? Did Joshua mean home like together?
“I should probably go,” I said, not sure if I was agreeing with him or directly contradicting him. Either way, it conveyed the message of where I planned to go. “Derek should be done screwing around by now. I gave them two hours.” I grinned my rakishly suggestive grin, even though I could tell that Joshua was puzzled and hurt.
“Right.” He sat up, my hands dropping off his shoulders as he moved, then swung his legs to the far side of the bier and walked away.
I went about the business of saying goodbye to everyone. Dave thanked me for coming down to help. Repeat, huddled with Mikaela over her costume—probably making unauthorized modifications to it that Rebekah would be yelling about on Sunday—waved at me distractedly. Rebekah only grunted as she leaned precariously off her ladder to touch up a piece of trim no one in the audience would ever see.
I’d almost made it out the door when Joshua stopped me by handing over his phone.
“You can tell her you’re not coming over yourself.”
“Hey,” I said into Joshua’s phone.
“Why aren’t you coming over?” Sherry went straight to the point. “I’m on my way home and I was expecting you to be there.”
There really wasn’t a reason. Joshua wanted me over. Sherry wanted me over. I wanted to be over. There just wasn’t a reason. Except that I was afraid. Though looking into Joshua’s layered brown eyes, it was impossible to explain why.
“I could come over.”
Sherry said “that’s better” and hung up. I handed Joshua’s phone back to him with a shrug, as though I’d only been waiting for an invitation.
As I followed him back to his place, I reminded myself sternly that male-male interaction was the likely result of a male-female-male threesome with a bisexual man. If I put myself in that position again, I knew what would happen.
But if the opportunity arose, did I really believe myself capable of turning it down?
No.
Chapter 18
Safely alone with Sherry in her bedroom, Joshua banished to the other room, I tried to relax in this place that last week had felt like Eden and this week felt like a consolation prize.
“Shouldn’t it be Joshua in here?” I asked. “I could go home to sleep.”
Sherry and I had already screwed around and, although it was entirely likely that we’d screw around again if I stayed, we were at a point where more sex felt optional. For now we were enjoying a cuddling closeness that strummed the strings of guilt running through my physical satisfaction.
“Joshua’s in here six nights a week.” Sherry ran her hand over my ribs. She continued to enjoy my leanness, scolding us every time she heard we’d been at the gym.
“He’s your husband.”
“And you’re my boyfriend.”
“I am?” I peered down at the top of her head. I’d never been anyone’s boyfriend before. The term implied a level of exclusivity to which I’d never been willing to agree.
“What else would you call it?”
“I guess I’m your—one of your—lovers.”
“My lovers don’t sleep over every weekend. Or hang out with Joshua watching movies. No, I think you’re something more than that. Boyfriend works for me. Is that too committed for you?”
“No, it’s ... it’s nice.” I kissed the top of her head and ran my hand along her arm, squeezing her in tighter. I had a girlfriend.
“So you belong here and you’re not going anywhere, right?” Sherry fixed me with an angry glare. “No more shit like tonight.”
“I didn’t know you had Fridays reserved for me,” I said in a joking tone, still trying to pretend I’d had other plans.
“It doesn’t have to be Friday, but save me a spot in the rotation. I’ve been lazy, letting Joshua schedule my dates with you. If he’s not going to do that anymore, we’ll have to make our own plans.”
Sherry and I exchanged text messages during the day, but completely impractical ones. It was Joshua who kept everyone or
ganized.
“I told him I had other plans,” I admitted. “It was me, not him.”
“But you didn’t have other plans.”
“I ... no.”
Sherry reached over me to grab the bottle of tequila from the nightstand and took a deep swig, then handed the bottle to me. I eyed it warily and decided no. I put the bottle back on the nightstand.
“You’re freaked out about what happened last weekend,” she prodded.
“Not freaked out, exactly.
“You don’t think you can trust Joshua? He’d never do anything you didn’t want him to do. Besides, it was my idea. If you have to blame someone, blame me.”
“I don’t blame either of you. I blame myself. No, not even that. I don’t blame anyone. Nothing blame-worthy happened.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“I just don’t want it to happen again, and I don’t trust myself to stop it from happening, at least not if I’m here in bed with the two of you.”
“If it wasn’t horrible when it happened before, why can’t it happen again?”
“I’m not gay.” From before I’d even known what gay meant, I’d known I wasn’t. I loved women.
“Neither is Joshua.”
“I know, I know.”
“You know,” Sherry said, “but you don’t believe.”
I shrugged. “Joshua can be who he wants to be. I’m attracted to women like you’re attracted to men. You’re not attracted to women, are you?”
“Not yet, not that I know of. But if I came across a woman who turned me on, I’d be willing to accept it. I think Joshua turns you on.”
I didn’t answer the part about Joshua turning me on. “If I was gay, I’d be gay. I don’t have anything against gay people, but I’m suspicious of people who claim to be bisexual. It feels like a cop out.” Even though I had to admit that Joshua demonstrably went both ways.
“You’re thinking of sexuality as black and white when it’s more of a spectrum. When we’re closer to the hetero end, it’s easy to be hetero, to brush off any attraction that’s inconvenient or uncomfortable. Joshua’s square in the middle, so he can’t ignore what he feels for men, but you and I? Maybe we’re ninety-nine percent het, but who’s to say there isn’t a one percent out there waiting for us? Maybe Joshua’s your one percent.”