by Mia Kerick
Ripping a small square off the edge of her napkin, Savannah scribbled down a phone number and slid it across the table to me. “After you’ve thought it over, I want you to call Tristan. But only make the call if you have room in your heart for both of us.”
I slapped down a crumpled pile of cash on the table, looked blankly at Savannah, and left the coffee shop without a backward glance. Once I was on the city street, I guzzled in as much cool air as I could fit in my lungs, and then I tried to mentally chop up this situation into bite-sized morsels, ones that my brain could easily chew on.
Before this morning’s coffee date I was a heterosexual guy (okay, possibly bi-curious when it came to one man) making an attempt to get back on the good side of the girl he’d screwed up with. If I signed up to be part of this fucked-up gay/straight/bi love triangle, maybe that hole in my heart, the empty ache that no woman alone had ever been able to satisfy, would finally be filled. But then what would that make me? Was there even a word for it?
Attired in a business suit and Italian loafers, briefcase in hand, I started to run.
Chapter 11
Tristan
“UH, TRISTAN?”
“Yes, this is Tristan.”
“Oh, okay. This is Robby here.”
I switched my cell phone to my right hand and said nothing. I wasn’t trying to give him a hard time or anything. It’s just I hadn’t expected to hear from him. Not even one little bit. So at this point, just managing to take my next breath was a challenge.
“Um, it’s Robby Dalton.”
“Yes, I heard you. I’m just wondering why you’re calling me.”
More silence. Well, except for the sound of dishes clattering (folding napkins didn’t make any noise). But that was coming from my end.
“Robby, how did you get my number?”
“I, uh, I got it from Savannah. Uh, is this an okay time to talk?”
“Hang on a minute.” I turned to Sandy, my closest friend who worked with me at Michael’s. “I’ve got to take this call. Can you make sure my section is ready for lunch?”
Once she nodded, I took off for the back door of the restaurant where the loading dock was located. Outside, a couple of cooks were standing around smoking, but for the most part, I was alone.
“Robby? I’m back.”
“Oh, okay. Great.”
I leaned right up against the side of the building so that the other guys couldn’t see me so well. “I… or, Savannah didn’t expect to hear from you. It’s been like three weeks.”
“Yeah, well, I’m really sorry about that. I had some thinking to do, I guess.”
“Thinking?”
“Uh-huh. About, well, I thought about what’s important to me.”
This was sort of an awkward moment. I didn’t want to be too hard on Robby, but I was angry. No, that wasn’t really it. I was hurt that he’d taken off on us. Very hurt, in fact. But as far as Robby knew, he hadn’t been dating me, he’d been dating Savannah, so I knew I had no right to be upset. I just hoped I didn’t sound too flippant. “So what did you come up with? Tell me what’s important, Robby.” And why you felt the need to call and tell me this.
He didn’t hesitate. “You and Savannah—that’s what’s important.”
I couldn’t think of anything to say to that, mostly because my heart was bouncing all around inside my chest with emotions that were changing too fast to name.
“Tristan, I want another chance. With both of you.”
“What? Why?” I was using monosyllabic words. That was usually a bad sign for me in terms of the direction of a conversation.
This time Robby hesitated. “I missed you guys. I missed you guys a lot. I was thinking that maybe we could work something out, you know, all three of us.”
A light breeze could have knocked me over. “You what?”
“Tristan, will you try it?”
“You and me and Savannah?”
“Yeah, that’s what I was hoping for. What do you say?” He sounded sort of impatient. “I know it might sound crazy, but can’t we just try to be together?”
My knees started shaking so hard I knew that if I didn’t sit down I was going to fall down. And even through my jeans the cement felt cold on my backside, but still, I just had to sit. “There are things about me, things that you don’t know.” My voice rose a couple of octaves when I admitted that.
“Well, of course there are. There are things about me that you’ll find out too. That’s part of being in a relationship, Tris.”
That was the first time Robby had ever called me Tris. And I liked the way it sounded when he said it, which made this even more difficult. “I can’t really be in a relationship, you know. There’s so much shit in my past, so much, and Robby, I can’t really talk about this right now….” I wasn’t ever going to talk about it, either.
“You don’t have to talk about anything right now. Just give me a chance. And believe me, I won’t push you in any way that you aren’t, in any way that you aren’t comfortable. Know what I mean?”
Yes, I knew exactly what he meant. And because of that, my heart was beating way too fast, and I was hot and nauseated. In fact, I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to make it back to work without vomiting beside the loading dock.
“Tris, this is all new for me too, in more ways than one.”
I managed to make this kind of strangled sound. “Urgh.”
“It’ll be okay, you’ll see.” Robby was quiet for a moment, and then he said much more softly, “I mean, let’s just take the sex part completely off the table. Us three can just work on getting to know each other, you know. And then we can see what happens, I guess.”
“I, uh….” I couldn’t believe he was willing to try this with us. Am I as willing?
“Tristan, just say you’ll give it a shot.”
“Will Savannah try too? Because I can’t try anything without Savannah.”
“I’ll call her next, but I think she’ll be open to it.”
Oh, Savannah will be perfectly fine with it, I thought. This was exactly what she had wanted all along: a relationship for the three of us. And I’d promised her I’d try, if she could get Robby to go along with it. Who would’ve ever figured that he’d actually agree? Certainly not me. What’s more, none of us had a clue how a love relationship would work with three people in it. But I’d do about anything so Savannah could have a man who functioned properly in the bedroom, in more ways than just changing the sheets. Maybe she and Robby would totally hit it off, and then they’d get married, have kids, be a real family, and then I could just fade away into the background.
“Okay, Robby, I’ll give it a try.”
Chapter 12
Robby
SO WHAT had been up until now merely a hypothetical plan was going to turn into reality today. Yes, Robby, I’d had to remind myself numerous times on the drive over to Tristan and Savannah’s apartment, this is actually happening. You are going on your first date with Tristan.
In all honesty, I’d struggled quite a bit with what I should wear on my first official date with a man, seeing as I was also a man. And I couldn’t realistically call Mikey for advice.
“Hey, dude. I’m taking this gorgeous guy out on a date to a football game and probably to dinner after. I really want to make a good impression, so should I dress in business casual or go with relaxed weekend attire?”
I’m pretty sure Mikey would toss his cookies, those colorful Italian ones from his mother’s bakery, at the very thought.
And as much as I was into playing team sports, I was more or less a loner in life. I was close only to Mikey, if you could call it that, and when I went out in a group, it was usually on the fringes of Mikey’s hometown cousin-filled crowd from Revere. I guess I was a one-on-one type of guy, which made it seem even weirder that I was trying to enter a love relationship with two people.
On second thought, weird might be too mild a word.
In any case, I ended up going with my standard
weekend uniform: T-shirt, sweatshirt, jeans, and sneakers. I was taking him to a football game, after all.
When I got to their apartment, only one spot was left on the street. Struggling to wedge my Jeep into it, I realized I hadn’t had so much trouble parallel parking since I was sixteen. In any case, I chalked that up to a case of general first-date jitters rather than to first-date-with-a dude jitters. As soon as I stopped the engine, Tristan came running out of the front door of his apartment building. I breathed a sigh of relief; I wouldn’t have to face Savannah this morning.
Tristan trotted right up to my Jeep, thankfully sporting similar attire, but looking much more like a model for a fall Ralph Lauren Denim and Supply advertising campaign than I did. He jumped in. “Hey, Robby!” His flawless face was flushed in exactly the right way. I would have expected no less of the perfect man. “I could barely sleep last night ’cause I’ve been so excited about this ever since you called yesterday!” He looked over at me, a blush rising on those high cheekbones.
“Me too.” Catching a glimpse of his innocent eyes, I felt my pulse rise. You can do this, Robby, I assured myself as I pulled out of the parking spot. “Are you into college football?”
I could immediately tell that Tristan was embarrassed by the way he dipped his head down, lifted off his ball cap, and ran his hand through his hair. “Well, I watch as many games as I can ’cause sometimes they’re on at the bar at work. I like all of the Boston and New England teams but I really don’t know too much about sports.”
“Well, thankfully, today we don’t have to get out there and play.” I found myself wanting to make him feel comfortable. “All we have to do is grab a beer, find our seats, and watch, right?”
I glanced over and Tristan nodded at me. “I guess you’re right. You know, I always wished that I had a chance to play sports when I was a kid.” He offered no explanation and I didn’t ask for one. “You must’ve played tons of sports growing up, huh?”
When I told him about the many sports I’d played, I wasn’t trying to brag in the “I dominate” way so much as I wanted to impress him, like any other guy on a date would want to do. And very satisfyingly, Tristan listened with every bit as much interest as Savannah had when I’d told her about my childhood. “Sports were a huge part of my life. Not that I’d had a choice. You see, Tris, if I didn’t play a sport for a season, my father would pile on the after-school chores. Dad was more into my sports than I was.”
“Did he go to all of your games?” His voice sounded wistful.
“Hell yes. In fact, up until high school, he coached most of my teams. And the expectation was that I wouldn’t screw up. So I didn’t.” When I looked over toward Tristan to make a right turn, what I saw touched me deeply, in that lump-in-my-throat kind of way I was getting used to when it came to him. It was almost as if a little boy had taken Tristan’s place in the passenger seat. He gazed at me, wide-eyed with respect and admiration bordering on reverence, and practically salivated in his eagerness to hear my next glorious high school sports memory. And then it hit me: while I was blocking and passing and dribbling my way through my school years, Tristan had been busy being molested by his perverted uncle.
Well, no one said that life was fair, but that really sucked. I had to breathe deeply a few times to stop myself from reaching over and squeezing his thigh.
“Did you guys ever pull any locker room pranks like on television shows?”
“We did all of that stuff.” Tris made a small sound, a “go on, I’m listening” sound, but instead of telling him about how we stole all of the point guard’s clothes when he was in the shower that one time my junior year, I decided to go in a different direction. “Maybe sometime you and I could go outside, like to the park or something, and I could show you how to throw a nice spiral. You know, with a football.” Every guy deserves a chance to learn stuff like that.
“Oh my God, Robby, I’d love that!” More than satisfied with our conversation, Tristan leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, an expression of bliss on his face. An expression I was already pretty sure I was going to want to see again and again.
I SORT of felt like a replacement for Tristan’s absentee father at the football game, but I actually didn’t mind at all. The truth was I rather liked it. Usually my father and Mikey were the ones blabbing on and on to me about who “screwed up big-time” on the sports field and how it “shoulda gone down if they coulda got their tiny jock-brains outta their asses,” and since I was the “jock” with the tiny brain, I’d always sat there passively, with no choice but to agree with their very loud and very critical commentary. But today, I was the one who got to point out the different positions in the lineups, explain the rules and penalties, and offer criticism on the plays and the calls. And Tristan wasn’t a passive listener when it came to football; he asked questions about every aspect of the game. I felt smart and proud of my own knowledge of football, as well as happy that Tristan was learning so much.
To my relief, no one in the crowd had seemed to notice that we were on a date. In fact, nobody even looked twice at the two guys wearing ball caps, sweatshirts, and jeans, sucking down brews in their prime seats at the fifty-yard line. Nobody even seemed to notice us that is, except for this one crowd of more than slightly tipsy college girls.
“Hey, is that Brad Pitt and Ashton Kutcher over there?” A particularly well-imbibed girl pointed us out to her friends. I suppose if you were drunk enough, and if Brad and Ashton were each a decade or more younger, that was not beyond the realm of a vivid imagination. “Can we have your autographs?”
Suddenly we were surrounded by a disorderly crowd of nineteen-year-old girls, all of whom were clamoring for front position in the pack. One girl actually produced a sharpie marker and a large bare breast. “Sign it!” she ordered, pretty much poking the marker into Tristan’s chest.
Tristan, however, seemed completely unaware of their interest. “Robby,” he said, trying to peer over the sharpie-holding girl’s head, not even acknowledging the existence of her exposed flesh, “I thought that it was only the third down, but that guy looks like he’s getting ready to kick.” If Mikey had been presented so directly with a woman’s naked breast, I’m pretty certain I wouldn’t have seen or heard from him for the rest of the afternoon because he’d be in her dormitory room introducing himself to her other breast as well. For some reason, I couldn’t help but make the Tristan/Mikey comparison.
Tristan was literally enthralled with the game. After clearing the girls out from the area surrounding our seats, I heard myself saying, “I bet I could score us some Patriot’s tickets, Tris. If you like this, you’ll go nuts over the Pats!” That sure sounded like another “outing”—I’d decided I liked that word better than “date”—with Tris. And I wasn’t even slightly dissatisfied with that prospect. Today’s BC football game “outing” hadn’t gone half-bad so far.
After the game, we wandered aimlessly through the extensive tailgate parties that the parking lots near Alumni Stadium were famous for. Tristan seemed to just enjoy taking in the rowdy adrenaline-fueled atmosphere. But it wasn’t long before I was feeling hungry, and although Tristan hadn’t said anything, I assumed the same was true for him.
“If you’re up for a little walk, we can grab a burger in Cleveland Circle before we head home.”
“Yeah, I could definitely go for a burger.” He glanced at me shyly, as if he was thinking exactly what I was thinking—going out to dinner felt a heck of a lot more like a date than sitting on metal benches in a football stadium drinking beer.
And that’s when the awkwardness set in. Walking side-by-side around the Chestnut Hill Reservoir on a beautiful, breezy fall afternoon was possibly just a little bit more romantic than either one of us had anticipated. But sure as shit, Tristan trudged along beside me, making an attempt to do whatever the hell it was we were trying to do together, so at least I was pretty sure I wasn’t in this alone.
“This is really strange for me.” I figured that t
he truth was the best way to go. “I mean, not the walking to get a burger part, but the walking to take a guy out for a burger part.” Tristan looked down at the well-worn dirt pathway, and I could tell he was uncomfortable with what I’d just said. And it was time to make him more uncomfortable, because someone had to say it. “And I don’t know how two men can share one woman, anyways.”
Still staring down at the path in front of him, Tristan took a few more steps and then he stopped. “We’re not just sharing Savannah; I mean, we’re supposed to be sharing ourselves as well.” He kicked at a little rock on the ground near his foot.
Shit! I hadn’t expected him to be so straightforward. Was I ready for this discussion? Were we ready? “I guess. But what it comes down to is two men, one woman.”
“True enough.”
“I can see that you love her; when you look at her, it’s in your eyes. Why are you letting this happen?”
He smiled at me sadly, and for the first time since we started walking, his somber brown eyes met mine. “Robby, I’m not letting this happen. I’m making this happen.”
My chin dropped. I was startled. “You mean you want to share Savannah?”
“What I want is not of much concern to me anymore. What matters is what I am going to do. And I’m going to share Savannah, and I’m going to share myself. I’m going to share us both with you.”
I immediately stumbled and Tristan grabbed my bicep to steady me. My arm tingled where he’d touched it; my desire for him was that fierce. I actually had to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other, or else I was pretty sure I’d find myself flat on my face on the cool ground. But there was something I desperately needed to know if I was going to be able to continue in this relationship, or whatever the fuck it was. “Tristan, are you doing this just for Savannah’s benefit? Or are you into it too? What I mean to ask is, are you into me at all?” I shook my head, in awe that I’d found the fortitude to ask that question.
