by Tanya Chris
I followed him through the archway into the living room.
“Have you changed your mind?” he asked without turning to look at me.
“Maybe.”
He looked at me then, his expression both hopeful and wary. He moved to where I stood and took both of my hands in his.
“I won’t do it again,” he said. “I won’t cheat on you. I promise.”
He’d made that promise before, and broken it before, and could break it again, but I’d accepted and admitted my part in that and forgiven him his.
“That’s not why I’m here. I want to tell you some things about me—not apologize for them because I’m not sorry, but tell you about them. Then you can decide whether to accept me as I am now or not.”
“Sounds like I should make some tea.”
While he made tea, I prowled, cataloguing his belongings. Some I recognized, others I didn’t. The paintings were all new. The television was new—and gigantic. On a bookshelf that had come from our entryway stood the wedding photo that had been on our bedroom dresser.
Alex handed me a mug and waved me over to the sitting area. I sat down in a leather recliner that used to hang out in one of our spare bedrooms. I cradled the mug in my hands, letting the steam rise up into my face. Alex sat on a love seat he must have bought, and the silence stretched out.
“I want to tell you about Nate and Derek,” I said at last.
I told him about Nate and how he’d wrung my confession from me, how he’d shown me that sex was beautiful when it was honest, how he’d taught me that we got the sex we deserved.
More than Nate, I told him about theater, about the joy of shared creativity, about learning to stage manage from Rebekah and to design lights from Deb, about the pride of watching others watch your work, seeing them get pulled into the magic of the moment you’d created.
I told him about rock climbing, about those sudden surges when I surpassed what I’d been capable of a week or even a day before, about the physical satisfaction of finding a sequence that changed impossible to possible. I explained how it felt to look fear in the face and push it firmly aside—the total concentration, the rush of adrenalin, the odd peace of inevitability.
I told him about Derek and his quiet courage that never overcame fear, only kept pushing the edges of it farther and farther out.
Lastly I told him about the threesome, because I didn’t want it to be a secret between us. I told him how Derek and Nate were moving in together. I let him see the alternative, so he would understand what I chose when I chose him.
“And I accept all of that?” he said when I was done. He rose from the loveseat to move farther away from me.
“All of that is a fact. Unchangeable.”
“You’ve been happier without me.”
“No, not happier. I’ve been bigger without you, more expansive. I stopped growing when we got married, but that’s my fault, not yours. I won’t stop again.”
“So it continues, all of that?”
“Theater, yes. Climbing, yes. Threesomes, no. Unless you’re into it.”
The glare he gave me answered that question.
“And those guys will be there. You go climbing, that one is there. You go to the theater, the other one’s there, right?”
“Right. They’re good guys. Maybe you’ll get to know them someday.”
He shot me another look.
“Derek managed to get past it,” I reminded him.
“I don’t give a fuck what Derek managed to do.”
“At the end of the day, you trust me or you don’t.” I bit back the desire to point out that I wasn’t the one who’d been cheating. “Just like I’ll have to trust you.” But didn’t succeed completely.
Alex turned his back on me and ran his hand through his hair. I put my tea down on the coffee table, the ugly boxy thing that had been in Alex’s apartment when I met him and which I’d assumed we’d thrown out long ago. It must have been in the basement.
“Tell me your story,” I said. “I didn’t want the details before, but now I do. Before and since. Everything on the table.”
He paced wearily towards me and dropped onto the love seat, slumping forward onto his arms so that he looked drained and tense at the same time.
“Confession, huh?”
“It’s good for the soul.” I smiled at him like it would be easy and steeled myself because I knew it would be hard. A single shock of pain, I told myself.
“OK, fine. If you’re asking for it.” He glanced at me to verify that I was and then focused his eyes straight ahead on the dark television, like he was hearing the words rather than saying them.
“While we were married, there were five women altogether. The first four were one time each.”
“How did you find them?”
“The first one was an accident, almost. I would talk to her at the gym, maybe flirt, I don’t know, then one day she asked me if I wanted to get a drink, and I won’t say I didn’t know where it would lead because that’s ridiculous, but I didn’t know I knew it. I went, we drank. I texted you from the bar and said I had to stop in to see my father about something and then we went to a hotel next door and had sex. I never saw her again. I changed gyms.”
I remembered him changing gyms. Because the treadmills were newer, he’d told me. I pulled my knees into my chest and wrapped my arms around them.
“That first time, I don’t even know how it felt—the sex—if it was great or lousy. I was terrified and guilty and excited and relieved and I couldn’t tell you one thing about it, except that it happened.”
“And after that?”
“After that, it was on purpose. I found women online. I told them I wasn’t interested in a relationship and I thought that made it OK. I mean, OK how I was treating them,” he clarified, glancing over at me. “I knew it wasn’t OK how I was treating you. I never saw them more than once, so I wouldn’t get attached—that was the theory—and then with the last one, I broke that rule too.”
“You liked her?”
“Not especially.” He shrugged. “It’s a lot of work getting those things set up. It just seemed easier, you know. Bird in the hand.”
“Literally.”
We laughed, sharing the joke.
“Did you keep seeing her then? After we separated?”
“Not much. Like I said, she wasn’t anything special, just a willing woman. Did you know there’s a lot of them? Now that I’m available—” he made air quotes around available “—it’s almost too easy, and the easier it gets, the less it seems worth the effort. I don’t know if this will sound right, but the more sex I had, the more I missed you.”
“So there hasn’t been anyone special?”
“I haven’t fallen in love. Unlike you.”
“I do love them,” I admitted, “but not like I love you. I guess that’s something else Nate taught me. There’s love that you can have for as many people as you feel it for, and then there’s love that’s unique.”
I got out of the recliner and sat down next to Alex on the love seat. He made no move to touch me.
“You may not like that I’ve shared myself with them, but if it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t be able to say this to you.” Honesty, courage. I needed them both. “I love you uniquely. I don’t want our old life back, but I want my new life to include you.”
I waited for Alex to wrestle with his thoughts, knowing it wouldn’t have been easy for me to hear that he’d been emotionally involved with someone else. It might be a while before he’d come to see Nate and Derek as our marriage’s saviors, but I did.
“I’m willing to try,” he said at last. “I wish it could be the way it was before, but I say that and it doesn’t sound realistic. Time doesn’t run backwards.”
“Is it such a threat, my having some hobbies? You run.”
“You’re out every night now. You think ten o’clock is a reasonable hour to show up at someone’s house.” He smiled to show he was teasin
g about that last part. “I feel like we won’t spend time together,” he said more seriously. “I feel like I’ll miss you.”
“Not as much as you would if we were divorced. You could get involved in the theater, or try climbing.”
He shook his head.
“Then you could just listen. I’d like that—coming home and telling you about what I’ve been doing and hearing about what you’ve been doing. I want to share my life with you, but I can’t afford to have my life be all you. Climbing and theater make me feel alive; they make me feel horny. It wasn’t Nate and Derek making me horny—it was being, living, growing. I’m strong and I’m smart and I’m out there doing shit and it’s hot.”
“And it’s scary—the thought that I’m not all that, that you don’t need me.”
“If I didn’t need you, I wouldn’t be here.”
“It’ll never be the same.”
“It had better not be. If we do the same thing, we’ll end up in the same place. Think about it, Alex. You don’t want it to be the same. You want sex. Good sex.”
“Sex isn’t everything. I get that now.”
“OK, but it isn’t nothing, either. I get that now. I don’t want you to cheat on me again.”
“I promised you I wouldn’t.”
“I don’t think you can promise that. Not alone, anyway. It’s going to take two of us. We have to work on keeping a spark in the relationship, and we have to agree to stay honest, which means I stop faking orgasms and you let me know if our sex life ever slips to the point that you’re considering cheating.”
“You’ll be the one bored now. How am I supposed to live up to having two guys at once?”
“One guy is all I need, one very special guy. Will you be my guy?”
He nodded, his smile tentative. I smiled back with more assurance. In his eyes I saw Derek’s hesitance and Nate’s neediness. I leaned into him and brushed my mouth along the curve of his neck. I remembered the purr-like moan he made from our early days. Why had I stopped making him make that noise? I’d been missing out.
Alex’s hand moved to my breast, his fingers finding my nipple unerringly. These were hands that knew my body. They didn’t need to be taught much.
“Come upstairs with me, Melissa,” he said, his voice deep.
I brought my mouth to his. “Call me Lissie.”
Epilogue
“Hey, Lissie. Hey, Amy.” Derek cruised past us on his way to the bouldering wall to warm up. I waved and smiled and returned my focus to Amy who was tied in and ready to leave the ground.
“So you two aren’t ... anymore?” she asked, her eyes following Derek.
I shook my head. “Just friends.”
A couple of weeks ago I’d waited for him outside the gym under our bush, fretting about the impact what I was going to say might have on him. I needn’t have worried. Derek squeezed my hand, which I’d given him to hold as I broke the news, and said he was glad for me.
“You don’t seem surprised.”
“Nate kind of tipped me off. He’s pissed he’s not going to be able to turn my apartment into a frat house with swinging orgies in every room.”
“You’re not upset?”
“Not about the apartment. Nate can keep his business in his room. About you?” He sighed. “It’s the right thing to do. He’s your husband. If you were ditching me for Nate, I’d be pissed.”
“Still competitive, I see.”
“I wouldn’t want any woman I cared about to be in a serious relationship with Nate. He’s an OK guy, but he’s a lousy boyfriend.”
“You’re a great boyfriend. I hope you’ll consider making some girl very lucky.”
He nodded. “Don’t take this the wrong way. I’ll miss screwing around with you because, you know, sex, but there’s been someone on my mind lately.”
“Amanda.”
“Not naming any names, but I couldn’t approach her as long as we were together, so I’m not sorry really to see it end because maybe that’s the direction I’m meant to go. I needed a push.”
When it came to women, Derek would always need a push.
“I’m going to miss you,” I told him.
“What do you mean? You’re not going anywhere?” He sounded concerned for the first time.
“No, I’ll still climb, at least for now. Someday I’d like to have a baby.”
“They make harnesses for that.”
“For babies?”
“For pregnant women, and then for kids. Start her when she’s two or three. If she has her mama’s genes she’ll climb like a monkey. I’ll be her personal coach.”
“You’re the sweetest.” I hugged him hard and let him go.
Since that day, things had been easy between us. We climbed, we talked, he coached me. I even occasionally ogled his physique when he was climbing without a shirt on because there was nothing wrong with appreciating the male form.
Nate had come around too. Once he’d firmly made his argument for why two guys were better than one, he accepted my decision. When we saw each other at the theater now, he was flirtatious but not physical.
Deb had approached me and asked, much like Amy, if Nate and I were still “you know.” When I told her that we weren’t, she told me I should have known it would come out that way and I told her it had come out perfectly, which shut her up but didn’t stop her from looking daggers at Nate anytime he was looking, and just plain looking at him the rest of the time.
“Are you ever going to do something about that?” I asked Nate one day.
“Do you think it would be worth it?” he asked in return.
I hadn’t had an answer for him then and I didn’t have a better one now.
“So he’s available?” Amy stood at the foot of the wall, not climbing despite being tied in and on belay, apparently still thinking about Derek.
“He’s not taken yet,” I answered.
As if on cue, Amanda walked over to us, her face stormy.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her. Amy rolled her eyes at me and started climbing.
“Fucking shoe. I just broke a lace.” Amanda wore lace-up shoes, which was unusual.
“Maybe they have shoelaces in the gear shop.”
“I have some.” She opened her hand to reveal a new shoelace. “They just take forever to replace. Look at it.” She stuck her foot out at me.
The shoe featured an intricate lacing system—the laces running through more than a dozen eyelets on each side before winding around the sides and up the back.
“You know who’d help you with that? Derek.”
Amada looked at me like I was crazy. “Why would Derek help me lace my shoe?”
“He’s a helpful guy. Try him.”
“I’m not going to ask Derek to lace my shoe. I can lace my own fucking shoe.”
“Afraid he’ll say no?” I challenged.
Amanda stomped off towards the bouldering wall. As soon as he sensed her behind him, Derek dropped down onto the pads and turned to face her. She put her foot up onto the mat and held out the replacement shoelace. I wasn’t surprised when Derek took it.
I turned my attention to my own climbing agenda. I was in a hurry to get through my workout and get home. Alex and I had visited a clinic for a basic STD screen and we’d both gotten an all-clear call earlier. That made tonight unprotected-sex night. I wasn’t breaking out the stick just yet, but I was excited to be back on track for baby-making.
Donna had questioned whether we shouldn’t give our relationship more time to settle before we complicated it with a baby. I could hear she wasn’t completely sold on our reunion, but I was. Having Alex at home when I got back from the theater or the gym was like icing on the cake—not the whole cake, but the best part of it.
Alex had stopped fussing about the climbing once he saw my new physique and experienced firsthand the connection between adrenalin and arousal. I was always horniest on climbing nights. He was more cautious about the theater, as if he knew Nate was the more dangerous of t
he two.
With my mind on my husband and the evening to come, I didn’t think any more about Derek until I found myself belaying Amy next to Amanda belaying him.
“That was interesting,” she said when Derek and Amy were high enough to keep our conversation private. “Did you know what kind of reaction I’d get?”
“Not the reaction you expected?”
“Let’s just say that from the angle I had, there was more reaction than I was expecting.” She looked significantly at her crotch to indicate what kind of reaction she’d gotten. “What’s he got a foot fetish or something?”
“I don’t think it’s feet.” I was trying to avoid telling her outright that Derek didn’t just like her. He like liked her. We weren’t in the fourth grade.
“Aren’t you and Derek ... ?”
“Harmless history.”
“I wouldn’t have expected him to be my type, but perhaps I misjudged him.” She smiled at me, a first. “Thanks.”
“One suggestion—you might not want to wait for him to make the first move.”
Amanda smiled again, and this time her heart was in it. “No worries,” she said. “I’ve got it covered.”
Thank You!
Thank you for reading my book! I’d love to hear your feedback. Please consider leaving a review. You can also contact me via my website www.tanyachris.com or follow me on Twitter @tanyachrs
Want a little more Lissie and Nate? See After the Haircut for a hot outtake from My Guys. I thought this was just one sex scene too many, but is there really any such thing?
Please turn the page for information on my other available titles. Thanks for being a reader! The world needs more of us.
Tanya
P. S. for Kindle Unlimited readers: I’m a Kindle Unlimited reader too. I love KU because I’m a voracious reader. We KU users are great readers, but did you know we’re the worst at leaving reviews? Probably because we read so much and a lot of it is meh. But reviews are essential to how Amazon works, even the meh ones. Would you leave me a review?