Three For All

by Elia Winters

  Geoff released the belt and staggered back, his knees hitting the bed, sitting hard on the edge. He pressed a hand to his forehead, like he was just coming out of a dizzy spell, the belt falling to the hardwood floor. Patrick caught his breath, sitting back on his heels.

  “Fuck.” Geoff shook his head and closed his eyes. “I don’t know. I wasn’t planning on doing that.”

  “Shh.” Patrick shook his head. “It’s okay. It’s all right. It was—”

  Geoff slid his fingers into Patrick’s auburn hair, his dark eyes wild with something Patrick had never seen, and the words died in Patrick’s throat. “Touch yourself,” he commanded.

  Patrick fumbled his dick out of his jeans, anything to relieve this aching pressure, and began to stroke in fast, furious motions. Geoff wouldn’t stop staring into his eyes, his grip on Patrick’s hair keeping him down on his knees, and Patrick was on the edge in no time at all. He hadn’t realized how close he was, and now holding back was a painful type of pleasure.

  “Please?” Patrick asked, gasping, and he didn’t usually ask, but it felt right in this moment. “Please let me come.”

  “Yes. Come.” Geoff tugged his hair, painfully tight, and Patrick spilled all over his own fist with a harsh cry rasping through his throat. The orgasm left him weak, nerves firing like a web of electrical sparks. Geoff released him, and Patrick collapsed backward.

  They cleaned up in silence. Geoff pulled on new boxers and shorts, and Patrick washed up in the bathroom with hands that wouldn’t stop trembling. When he returned to the bedroom, Geoff was sitting on the bed, still a little wide-eyed, like he couldn’t reconcile his expectations to his own actions. Patrick sat beside him and pulled him in for a kiss. Sometimes, Geoff needed to be reassured everything was okay, especially when he got aggressive in bed.

  As soon as Geoff opened his mouth, Patrick pressed his fingers to it. “No apologizing.”

  “I wasn’t going to apologize,” Geoff murmured against Patrick’s fingers, and Patrick put his hands in his lap. “I wanted to say thanks. I think I needed that.”

  Patrick nodded. “Bad day at work?”

  “No…” Geoff’s voice trailed off, and his brow furrowed. “I guess a thoughtful day.” He turned to face Patrick. “You invited Lori to your gig on Friday night.”

  Oh, fuck, he’d been meaning to talk to Geoff about that today. “Yeah, we were chatting last night. I meant to tell you.”

  “How long have you two been chatting?”

  “Since she came over. We’ve been texting. Why?” He blinked. “Are you upset about this? I thought you were fine with friendship. You’re friends with her already. You could be texting her too, you know.”

  “Yes, of course, it’s fine.” Geoff shook his head like he was brushing the thought away. “It took me by surprise, though. I didn’t know we were seeing her again so soon.”

  Patrick rubbed his beard. “We’re getting to be friends. That’s what friendship is. We see each other.”

  Geoff’s back straightened. “Are you going to sleep with her?”

  “What? No, of course not.” Why would Geoff even think that? “That’s not what this is. She wants to hear my music. I don’t want to fuck her.” He stopped, and Geoff looked over with a raised eyebrow, prompting Patrick to amend. “Okay, yes, I do want to fuck her. Saturday was incredible. We already went over this, right? We’ve talked about it. But I’m not going to push you like that.”

  “It’s fine if you want to. It’s why I first wanted you to meet her. I knew you two would hit it off.” Geoff’s voice sounded closed-off, resigned, and Patrick tried to put these pieces together.

  “If it bothers you that I invited her, I can tell her I changed my mind.” He put a hand on Geoff’s. “But I hope you don’t feel that way. This is about all three of us, together. A friendship. It doesn’t have to be anything else.”

  Geoff hesitated. He opened his mouth a bit, then closed it again, looking at the bedroom wall as he seemed to frame a response. “I don’t mean to overreact. It just surprised me, and it made me think about what I want out of this. What a friendship with her would mean. After Saturday, I feel mixed up about things.”

  “Do you want me to tell her to stay home?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “Not just because it would be rude, but because I also would like to see her.”

  This was treading into delicate territory, and Patrick framed his next words carefully. “We’re just texting. There’s nothing else. I’m not cheating on you. I would never cheat on you.”

  Geoff rubbed the back of his neck, looking away for a moment before turning back to his husband. “I know. I trust you. I’m not accusing you of anything. I guess…” He paused. “I guess I am still trying to figure out what I want.” There was more, judging by the way his lips hovered open, forming the start of words that he didn’t say, but then he closed his mouth.

  “Okay. Okay, that’s fine. Just talk to me.” Patrick kissed his cheek. “Or, fuck my face. You know, that’s all right too.”

  10

  Patrick dragged his bow across the strings of his violin a few times, as he always did, the familiar motion settling him into his body. Around him, the other members of the band were doing their own similar warm-up routines: Theo and Dixie tuning the electric and bass guitars and fiddling with amp settings, Dean riffing on drums. Russell the cellist was finagling his pickup. On vocals, Maddy was doing some weird buzzing and whooshing noises that she’d once tried to explain to the group as Linklater-something, but nobody remembered the specifics. Patrick paused to look out at the Rusty Carousel, their currently empty venue. The place would start to fill up in an hour or so as folks arrived for the opening acts and then, finally, for their band: Nine Possum Thursday, often affectionately called NPT. The Rusty Carousel wasn’t much, but it was their home, and the worn wooden stage and wide-open dance floor had replaced formal concert halls and theaters in the shifting spectrum of his musical life. If he didn’t think about it too much, he didn’t even miss the way things used to be.

  “Knock knock!”

  The door to the green room opened, and a familiar face popped his head through the opening.

  “Harrison!” Maddy was the first to greet their old friend and former bandmate, blond hair bounding as she ran and threw her arms around him. Similar greetings went up from the rest of the band, including Patrick.

  Harrison stepped farther into the green room, looking around like he wanted to memorize the place. “Shit, it’s been a while. Thought I’d swing by and say hi to you all before heading out. I’m moving to New York.”

  “New York?” Theo, tuning his guitar, stopped and set it aside. “What are you gonna do there?”

  Harrison scrubbed at the back of his curly light-brown hair. Although he was in his thirties, like all of them, the freckles across his pale skin made him look a lot younger. “I got a spot doing sound design for a TV studio. It’s not a lot, but it’ll pay the bills, and leave me my evenings free to do music in the city.”

  “Good for you.” Dean tapped his drumsticks on his legs, his normal habit. “Glad to see a guy doing what he loves.”

  Patrick forced a smile despite his muddle of emotions. No one could deny the pull of the big city, least of all him. But hadn’t he been through this already? He’d made his peace with Mapleton. Leaving New York let him take care of his mother when she needed him. Leaving New York had brought him Geoff. Geoff made enough money that Patrick could pursue his music as a hobby, rather than risk everything to make it work as a business. He should be grateful for how things had turned out.

  “Good thing I’ve already left the band, right?” Harrison shrugged. “I’d hate to fuck you over.”

  Maddy waved him off. “Nah, man, you know the deal. We’re adults. Shit happens and people move on. The band stays.” She smiled, her teeth white against the startling red of her lipstick. Nine Possum Thursday was more than the sum of its parts. They’d always been clear with one another that w
hen people moved on, the band would remain, and they’d fill the spot. Maddy was around since the beginning, and she kept everything running. It wasn’t much, but as local bands went, they had a good time together.

  They pressed Harrison with more questions, about where he’d be staying, when he made the decision, his time frame for moving, the usual stuff.

  When the questions eased, Harrison shifted his attention to Patrick. “Okay, what should I know about living in New York?” They knew Patrick’s background and where he’d gotten his start, although people didn’t tend to ask him much about it.

  Patrick stroked his beard. He wanted to say something cynical, like, Get ready to live with three roommates, or Don’t let someone piss in your bag, but the cynicism wasn’t genuine. Days like this, seeing someone else ready to go off and pursue their dreams made his heart twinge—just a little bit—for what might have been. “It’s great,” he said truthfully. “It’s expensive and tough and sometimes ridiculous, but there’s nothing like New York. You’re gonna kill it.”

  Harrison smiled. “Thanks, man.”

  “Okay, you fuckers, we gotta warm up.” Maddy gave Harrison another hug, then shoved him away affectionately. “Get outta here.” The rest of the band members got up to also wish him luck. Patrick was last, throwing an arm around his former bandmate and clapping him on the back. With a flurry of goodbyes, Harrison was gone, leaving them alone again in the green room. In his absence, the group felt smaller than before, even though the band was the same size as it had been for months.

  Dixie fingered a fast bass line, breaking the somber feeling in the room. “Maddy, what do you want to go over first?”

  Maddy cracked her knuckles and shook her head from side to side. “Let’s do a run through of ‘Void Light’ and see how we feel.”

  Patrick checked his pickup and adjusted his violin back onto his shoulder. Tonight, he could lose himself in the music and remember all the wonderful things he had in his life. He had so many reasons to be grateful, and this band was one of them. Whatever possibilities he’d left behind were gone. The future lay ahead of him, and the future was stable. He couldn’t let stable go for the pie-in-the-sky dreams he’d chased as a teenager. He was Patrick Walsh, and he was a grown-ass adult.

  Dean counted them in on the drumsticks, and they began to play.

  Lori wasn’t really prepared for Nine Possum Thursday in concert. She had heard some of their songs after Patrick sent her the link to their site, but listening online was a different experience than rocking out with a crowd of strangers all dancing and jumping around. The music was supremely danceable, and she loved to dance.

  And Patrick? Fuck, the man could play. His violin work was somewhere between “classical” and “fiddle,” and his fast finger work looked effortless. It was hard not to watch him, even with the rest of the band as talented as they were. She knew why he’d dropped out of Juilliard, and she couldn’t say she was a music expert or anything, but it seemed a crying shame to have a guy with this much talent playing in a rock violin band in Nowhere, Massachusetts. But she couldn’t think about that for long, because dancing was too much fun.

  Geoff was the biggest surprise. He’d met her here in slim-cut jeans and a snug navy-blue T-shirt, and he fucking danced. A couple of times, she stopped dancing to watch him, but before long, she was too caught up in the music to stay still. Somewhere in the middle of the set, they’d shifted from dancing near each other to dancing together. He spun and whirled her around to the music until both of them were breathless and laughing. After one particularly rousing song, they fought the crowd for a seat at the bar to catch their breath.

  “What do you think?” Geoff asked, leaning toward her to be heard over the din while the bartender made her way over.

  “It’s great! He’s fucking fantastic.” She looked back toward the stage where Patrick was smiling as he wove his bow across the strings. “How do you keep everyone’s hands off him?”

  She wasn’t thinking about the ramifications of that last line, intending it as a compliment, until Geoff paused. His smile seemed tight. “Apparently, I don’t.” He turned to the bartender and ordered a beer, an order which Lori echoed.

  “I’m not trying to steal your man, you know.” She took a long drag from the bottle as soon as it was handed to her. “I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”

  Geoff smiled more easily. “I don’t know about that.”

  “It’s true. Anybody could see how much he loves you from a mile away.”

  Geoff’s lips curled around the mouth of the bottle, and Lori suddenly wanted to be that bottle. Whoa. They hadn’t discussed a repeat occurrence from the other night. She leaned back away from him and looked for a subject change. “You read those books yet?”

  “A little. Not too much.” He stepped away from the bar. “Come on. Let’s go dance again.”

  “You could just say you don’t want to talk,” she said, but she let him take her hand and drag her back into the crowd, holding her beer aloft. Another song picked up. Talking was hard, and dancing was easy, and she could lose herself here without having to think about these guys, and the possibilities they presented, and the terrifying and wonderful future she wanted away from Mapleton.

  They were both in that overtired-but-energized state when Patrick found them after the set. He leaned in to kiss Geoff, holding his husband close for a long moment, and then reached over to pull Lori in for a hug that he stopped at the last second. “Oh, shit, I’m so sweaty. You probably want to stay away.”

  “It’s okay. We’ve been dancing.” She leaned in to hug him anyway, indulgently, because there was something decadent about the press of a gorgeous, sweaty man against her. “You killed it up there. I had no idea you were that good.”

  “Thanks.” Patrick beamed. “You all want to go grab a drink somewhere? Night Owl?”

  “Actually.” Geoff laughed, kind of to himself. “Do you want to get some ice cream?”

  They found themselves sitting on the grass of the small street-side park across from the ice cream parlor as late-night wanderers passed by, the town streets alive on a Friday night in spring.

  “This is better,” Patrick observed, taking a lick from his cone of black raspberry. Geoff had chosen butter pecan, which seemed to suit him somehow, and Lori had ended up with a sundae after being unable to choose between a few different flavors. The streetlights overhead buzzed with electricity, and the first moths of the season hovered around them.

  “So, tell me about your band. First off. Your name.” Lori had been meaning to ask ever since they first started talking. “Why are you called Nine Possum Thursday?”

  Patrick laughed, more to himself than to her. “Maddy named us. Her husband is in animal control, and as part of that, they clean up roadkill. Apparently, one day he came home and announced it was a nine possum Thursday.”

  Lori stared, agape, as both Geoff and Patrick laughed. “That’s horrifying,” she said. “I wish I hadn’t asked.”

  “He usually tells people not to ask,” Geoff said, grinning. He seemed much more relaxed tonight. Maybe it was all the dancing, or the ice cream.

  Patrick winked at her. “Lori deserves the truth.”

  “I’m starting to wonder if that’s true.” She scraped some ice cream onto her spoon and savored the rich flavor. Though it wasn’t summer yet, she could taste the season ahead of her. “Tell me how you all got started. More about your music.”

  Patrick told the band’s origin story, with Geoff interjecting a few fun details now and then. She listened to him, of course, but also watched him and Geoff. They were beautiful together. Geoff leaned toward Patrick subconsciously when Patrick spoke, and Patrick did the same to Geoff. They ended up on a tangent about some concert they’d gone to see up in Portland, Maine, and they moved into each other’s spaces as gracefully and naturally as only long-term couples did. Something ached in her stomach watching them, and it had nothing to do with too much ice cream.

  She’
d hoped to be invited back to their apartment after the concert. She’d even put an overnight bag in her car, just in case. Watching them like this, though, her desires had been foolish. They were settled. They didn’t want her complicating their relationship with anything other than friendship, and she had been silly to think otherwise. Not that it was bad. She was planning to move away…eventually, anyway. She’d sent out those resumes and cover letters days ago.

  She could deal with friendship, though. If she felt a little remorse at not having something else, those feelings were normal, and they didn’t mean anyone was doing anything wrong. She could be happy like this, dancing at a concert, then sitting and eating ice cream at the park. Patrick leaned into Geoff, the two of them laughing together, and she smiled.

  When they’d long since finished their ice cream, and as the conversation reached a natural lull, Lori checked the time on her phone. “It’s late.”

  Patrick made an unconcerned noise. “It’s a weekend. We all get to sleep in.”

  He wrapped Lori up in their “we all,” like she was going to sleep in with them. The thought tempted her. If she asked to go home with them tonight, they’d probably say yes.

  She wanted to ask.

  But she was just getting to know Patrick, still, despite texting with him this week. And whatever friendship she was cultivating with Geoff was new as well, unformed and shifting. She liked them. They were fun to hang out with. Jumping right into bed with them again was going to send a message that she was only looking for sex.

  “I’m gonna head home.” She went to stand, but Geoff’s hand on her leg made her pause.

  “Just like that, without saying goodbye?”