Waiting for Them

by Alie Nolan

  They looked so perfect together, it made my chest feel tight.

  I imagined how sweet they must have looked together when they were teenagers, and I knew in that moment that I was going to fight to not only get those two back together, but also fight to have Matty for myself too.

  I couldn’t explain why, but I knew that Matty belonged with us.

  Similar to the way I’d known from day one with Caleb that he belonged with me.

  TWELVE

  Caleb

  I smiled down Matty, where he was asleep on my shoulder, not able stop myself from comparing it to the times he’d fallen asleep on me like that when we were younger.

  It was such a perfect moment that I was almost holding my breath so as to not wake him up, because I didn’t ever want him to move. The moment was made exponentially more perfect by the happy and content expression on Elliott’s face as he watched us.

  I knew Elliott’s expressions well enough to know that there wasn’t a single ounce of jealousy in him as he gazed longingly at us. I searched for it, afraid that him seeing someone I’d once loved with my whole heart cuddled up to me would make him regret saying we should consider pursuing a relationship with him, but I didn’t see anything but desire—a desire for not just me, but Matty too.

  I couldn’t believe that Elliott was as interested in Matty as I was. It seemed too perfect, and I was just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  Matty murmured and shifted in my arms, letting out an adorable sleepy moan that went straight to my cock.

  There was barely a split second between when Matty’s eyes fluttered open and when he shot out of my grip and off the sofa like I’d burned him.

  The look of panic on his face as he began to wake up more made my stomach sink. I hated seeing him look that terrified.

  His gaze shot violently back and forth between me and Elliott for several beats.

  “Shit,” he cursed. “I’m so sorry.” He was looking between us so quickly I couldn’t be sure which of us he was apologising to—not that he needed to either way.

  He looked around the room frantically, running his hand through his hair and tugging on the strands. He whispered something under his breath, but I couldn’t make out any of the words he’d said. He looked like a scared animal about to run, and we needed to reassure him.

  “It’s okay,” I started. “You have nothing to say sorry for.”

  “But I… I was…” he trailed off.

  “Matty,” Elliott’s level voice radiated calm as he spoke. He stood from the sofa and went to stand in front of Matty, who was struggling to make eye contact with either of us. “Matty, look at me.” Elliott hooked a finger under Matty’s trembling chin and tilted his head up so he would look Elliott in the eyes. “You have nothing to apologise for. I promise.”

  “B-but I was literally snuggling with your husband… like, limbs flung over him, dribbling on his shoulder.”

  I watched as Elliott’s finger slowly traced a path across Matty’s smooth jaw.

  Matty’s eyes shot to me, the fear from before now laced with confusion.

  “W-what… what are doing?” Matty asked Elliott, his voice so small, if Elliott hadn’t muted the TV when Matty had fallen asleep, I wouldn’t have heard him.

  “Please sit back down,” Elliott encouraged.

  Matty did as Elliott suggested, and sat back down on the sofa, although this time leaving enough space between himself and me that Elliott could have sat between us if he’d wanted to.

  Matty looked down at his lap, where he was fiddling with the hem of his t-shirt. I wanted nothing more than to reach out to him and hold his hand, offer him some comfort to ease his nerves.

  “Matty,” Elliott took a seat on the other sofa and angled his body towards Matty. “I don’t care that you were cuddling Caleb, in fact, you looked fucking adorable snuggled together,” he chuckled. “This probably isn’t the best time to bring this up, but I don’t know if there ever will be, to be honest.”

  Matty finally raised his head and looked in Elliott’s direction, remaining silent, waiting for Elliott to continue.

  “Caleb and I,” Elliott looked to me and I shot him a reassuring smile. “We were wondering if you’d be interested in going on a date with us?”

  “W-what?!” Matty croaked, his head shooting around to me, and then back to Elliott, so fast I was surprised he didn’t give himself whiplash.

  “A date,” I repeated, and Matty turned back to me. “We would like to take you out on a date.”

  “But… but, you’re… married?” Matty’s response was shaky and sounded more like a question than a statement of fact.

  “We are,” Elliott acknowledged. “But that doesn’t change the fact that both of us are attracted to you and are interested in pursuing a relationship with you. We were planning on bringing it up at some point tonight, to gauge your reaction on the idea.”

  “Both of you?” Matty asked.

  Elliott and I both nodded, and Matty looked back and forth between us.

  “But… we were…” Matty whispered to me. “You can’t both…” he trailed off and before either of us could say anything, Matty was standing again. “I’m sorry, I need to go. Thank you for dinner.”

  He left the room at the speed of light, and a few seconds later the sound of the front door shutting echoed through the house.

  “Well, that could have gone better,” Elliott sighed.

  I nodded and Elliott came to sit next to me, cuddling up against my side, and I wrapped my arms around him, the same way I had with Matty.

  “What do we do now?” I asked.

  He shrugged in my arms. “I don’t know, really. Part of me wants to run after him, but a bigger part knows he needs space and he’ll come back to us when and if he’s ready.”

  “I really liked having him here.”

  “So did I,” he agreed.

  “I really hope he stops freaking out and is at least willing to talk this through with us,” I said.

  “Me too.” He looked up at me and smiled. “How much time do we give him before we reach out?”

  I ran my teeth across my bottom lip, thinking over our options. “A few days? Let him calm down tonight, and then give him a couple of days to think over what he wants. If we don’t hear from him by Friday, we text him?”

  “Okay, good plan.”

  He strained his neck up from his place on my chest, his gorgeous lips puckered, seeking a kiss. I leaned down and met him halfway, slanting my lips over his in a slow kiss.

  THIRTEEN

  Matty

  They were out of their fucking minds.

  They had to be.

  They had the most perfect relationship ever, so why on earth would they want to jeopardise that for… someone like me?

  There was nothing unique or special about me.

  I was an identical twin for fuck's sake, so I wasn’t even unique in terms of looks—Max was literally out there walking around with my exact face.

  Why would they both want to date me?

  And, even if in some other dimension, where they were both interested in me, in this dimension they were married.

  After I walked out on what had been a lovely evening, I’d driven straight home, and immediately gone to bed. My mind had been whirling, but I was so overwhelmed that I’d thankfully fallen asleep quickly.

  Unfortunately, my dreams were filled with nothing but Caleb and Elliott, and I woke up even more confused than I was when I went to sleep.

  In my dreams, their ridiculous suggestion hadn’t seemed ridiculous at all. The three of us worked perfectly together… but that was a dream.

  I rolled over in bed and switched off the alarm on my phone, alerting me to the fact that I needed to stop lying in bed, thinking about Caleb and Elliott, and get my arse to work.

  I got up, showered, and dressed, and went downstairs to search out some breakfast.

  “Morning,” Max greeted me with a smile. “You seemed like you were in a rush
to get to bed last night.”

  “Yeah, I was,” I said, not knowing what details to give him.

  I didn’t keep anything from Max—except things about Caleb—and I really wanted someone to talk to about the previous night’s events, but I wasn’t sure Max was the right person to talk to about it. He was, like the rest of the family, invested in having Caleb back in the family.

  I needed to talk to one of my friends who wasn’t related to me, but my list of friends not related to me wasn’t a very long one.

  “Want coffee?” Max asked as me turned the kettle on.

  “Please,” I answered with a smile.

  “Where’d you go last night?”

  To lie, or not to lie?

  “Dinner with Wyatt.” Lie it was.

  Max quirked an eyebrow at me. He obviously knew I was lying, but he didn’t say anything. He continued making two cups of coffee, and I took a seat at the kitchen table.

  “Oh, while I remember, I spoke to Mum this morning, and she wanted me to remind you that it’s game night this weekend,” he laughed.

  Mum had been trying to start a regular game night at Little Hollow, with the whole family, for months, and no matter how many of us told her it was a bad idea, she persisted.

  “It’s going to be a fucking disaster,” I chuckled.

  “Oh, one hundred per cent, but we’ll just get drunk and watch everyone fight it out amongst themselves.”

  “Okay, I suppose I can live with that.”

  We chatted as we drank our coffees and ate breakfast, until it was time for me to leave for work.

  I really wanted to talk to him about the tornado of thoughts and emotions I was experiencing, but I couldn’t.

  A part of me wondered briefly, if I didn’t want to talk to him out of fear he’d tell me he thought dating them was an insane idea, and I should stay away from them.

  Am I actually considering it?!

  No, I couldn’t be.

  I walked to work, using the time alone to clear my head before I got there—not that it did much in the way of helping.

  Luckily once I got to work, I had a series of patients to deal with, and that managed to keep me distracted… until lunch, anyway.

  “Want to go grab something to eat?” Wyatt asked as he poked his head through my exam room door.

  “Sure.”

  Wyatt would be a good distraction during my lunch break.

  We left the practice and headed down the high street, towards the small café at the other end.

  “Oh, Matty,” a voice behind us said. I turned to see Valerie—a friend of my parents’, who worked in the hair salon Steph owned—walking quickly towards me.

  “Hi, Val,” I greeted.

  “I’ve been meaning to stop in to have a word with you.” She smoothed the hair out of her face that was being blown by the breeze. “One of the dogs is expecting a litter any day now, and Chris wanted me to ask if you’d be available to stop by the shelter once they arrive, just to check them over. We haven’t had the mum with us long either, and she could do with a check-up too.”

  Christopher was Valerie’s husband, and he ran an animal rescue shelter just outside of Wiltonham, which I volunteered at whenever I had the chance. I’d been volunteering there since I was a teenager and realised that I wanted to make a career out of caring for animals. Christopher would often bring his recent rescues to me for a once over, or I would go to the shelter in some cases too.

  “Sure,” I nodded. “Tell him to give me a ring whenever they arrive, and I’ll pop over.”

  “Perfect, thank you,” she smiled.

  She waved and sauntered across the road and into the salon.

  We arrived at the cafe—Lane’s, named after its owner—and sat at a table in the corner by the window.

  Lane, an attractive man in his late forties, who was a school friend of my dad’s—I didn’t think there was a single person in this tiny village who wasn’t at one point a friend, or at least an acquaintance, of one of my relatives—came over our table.

  “Hey, boys,” he smiled. “What can I get for you?”

  We ordered our food, and then sat in semi-awkward silence, my thoughts all over the place.

  “What’s up with you today?” Wyatt asked, after Lane brought us our food.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re acting weird today. Like you’re on another planet or something. I know there’s something going on in that pretty head of yours.”

  I tried not to blush at being called pretty, but was confident I failed.

  “I…” I trailed off.

  If I was going to talk to anyone about this, it should probably be Wyatt. He was my best friend outside of Max and Jake, and I doubted he’d be fazed by my situation.

  “Ooo, is this boy drama?” Wyatt asked excitedly, clapping his hands together and leaning over the table. “Did my Matty finally get laid?”

  I shook my head. “No, I did not.”

  Wyatt and I spent a lot of time together, and we had grown close over the couple of years we’d worked together. I’d once mistakenly told him—while drunk—that I wasn’t very sexually experienced, and it had taken me weeks afterwards to get him to stop trying to set me up a Grindr account.

  I mean, we lived in a village with less than a thousand people, so I doubted anyone nearby would even be on Grindr—everyone that was gay in this place was either a Logan or Wyatt, so the odds weren’t in my favour.

  Fuck it.

  I trusted Wyatt, and he might be able to help.

  “Have you ever dated two guys at the same time?” I blurted.

  “Sure, during uni I was seeing multiple people, playing the field.”

  “No, not like that. I mean…” What did I mean? I didn’t even know. “More like, three people in one relationship.”

  “Like, polyamory?” He questioned.

  “Poly-what?”

  “Polyamory. It’s when someone is openly involved with several partners who all know about it and consent to it, or when three or more people are in a relationship together.”

  There was a word for what Caleb and Elliott wanted?

  How did I live in the queerest family in human history, and I’d never heard the word polyamory before?

  I made a mental note to Google polyamory when I got home.

  “Wait,” Wyatt beamed. “Why…?”

  “This does not leave this table,” I told him sternly, and he made a show of zipping his lips closed. “I have this ex, well not even really an ex, we kind of dated as teenagers, I don’t know. Anyway, I reconnected with him recently. He’s married now, and he and his husband… they asked me out on a date.”

  “Holy shit,” Wyatt’s eyes widened. “First of all, who is this ex? And why is this the first time I’m hearing about him? Secondly, what’s the issue, you don’t like the guy now? Or you don’t like the husband?”

  “No, I do like him, I never really got over him in the first place, I don’t think. And his husband is amazing,” I couldn’t stop the smile that split my face from ear to ear as I thought about them.

  “Then what’s the problem? You looked like you were worried about the idea, but if you are interested in them both, why aren’t you excited that they asked you out?”

  I took a sip from my glass of water. “I thought they were crazy, if I’m being honest. I didn’t know this was a thing people did. Dating as a three instead of a two.”

  “What did you say when they asked you out?”

  “I… I ran,” I lowered my head shamefully. “I was at their house for dinner last night, and when they asked me, I left so fast I’m surprised I didn’t leave a Matty-sized hole in their front door.”

  Wyatt placed a hand on mine where it was tapping nervously on the table.

  “You want to date them?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “What if dating me fucks up their relationship?”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Wyatt smiled. “Plus, I’d venture
a guess they’ve already talked this through together, and they know what they’re getting themselves into by inviting a third person into their relationship.” He gave my hand a small squeeze. “If you knew for a fact that you wouldn’t fuck up their relationship, would you go for it then?”

  I nodded meekly.

  I would. There had been a part of me that had wanted to say yes, the second Elliott had asked, but I’d been too afraid.

  “Yes, I suppose I would… but how does dating in a three even work?”

  Wyatt shrugged and took his hand away from mine to continue eating his lunch. He swallowed a bite of his sandwich before he spoke. “Depends on a lot of varying factors, and works differently for different people, I suppose. Same as in a couple, no one’s relationship is identical to anyone else’s. I can’t say I know that much about polyamory, because it’s never interested me all that much—I’m too jealous a person to make it work—but I know that there is a lot of communication involved. If I were you, I’d ask them these questions, not me.”

  I hated when Wyatt was right.

  I nodded and went back to eating my lunch, trying not to run through all the things that could go wrong when I eventually spoke to Caleb and Elliott.

  After work, I went home and spent several hours Googling polyamory.

  Googled reaffirmed everything Wyatt had told me, and I found myself more and more excited about the prospect of a date with Caleb and Elliott.

  I was still fucking terrified though.

  If I did agree to go out with them, I was convinced I’d somehow fuck it up.

  I’d never been able to successfully date one person, let alone two at the same time.

  “Matty?” Max’s voice travelled to my bedroom from downstairs. “You home?”

  “Yeah,” I shouted back. “In my room.”

  “Wanna watch a film?”

  “Sure,” I closed the Google tabs on my phone. “I’ll be down in a sec.”

  I decided to send Caleb and Elliott a text, before I lost my nerve.

  Me: About that date…

  The message was read by both of them within seconds.