by Mia Kerick
“What about the dishes? I can do them while you watch TV on the couch.”
Tristan laughed, effectively dismissing my offer. “Come on, Robby.” He grabbed a few more beers, and I traipsed behind him into the living room.
We sat on either end of the couch, facing each other. “I feel 100 percent better than I did earlier. Thank you.”
“It’s amazing what a full belly can do for a man.” He shifted his ass enough to snap off the lamp over his head so we were sitting in the dull glow from the kitchen. It was nice.
“The food was spectacular, but the company is even better.” I reached for his hand before he could use it to hide behind. After giving it a brief squeeze, I let go.
“What happened between you and Mikey?”
“Oh, it was just Mikey being Mikey, I guess.”
“He doesn’t like what’s going on with you and me and Savannah, does he?” It was dark in the room, but I could still feel Tristan’s gaze on my face, trying to interpret my expression.
“I’m not going to lie—he hates it. I don’t really care what he thinks, but tonight it got in the way of our work.”
“It’s okay to care how he feels. You guys have been friends for a long time.”
My next phrase was grumbled. “Maybe too long.”
And then there was silence. Not the Tristan-hesitation kind of silence, either. It was a what-happens-now type of silence.
Surprisingly, it was Tristan who broke it. “Let’s go to bed.”
“To bed?” I repeated.
“Yeah.”
“In the bedroom?” My jaw clenched involuntarily.
“Well, that’s where the bed is.”
“Y-you go to bed, Tris. I think I’ll just stay out here, you know, on the couch.” I pulled off my tie and toed off my shoes. “I’ll be fine right here.”
“Please come with me.”
My insides were screaming—a bed, a fucking bed! To be honest, something else was running through my mind like ticker tape across the bottom of a television screen: he’s a dude and you’re a dude, not to mention that there’s a fucking third person in there sleeping.
“It’s just a bed.”
If Tristan could manage to overcome the fears of closeness that were lurking in his head for very legitimate reasons, I could get over my stupid fear of facing the truth of who I was and what I wanted. “Yeah, you’re right.”
He waited in the hallway as I used the bathroom and then he took his turn. Before he turned the hall light off, Tristan said one more time, as if he was also trying to convince himself of the fact, “It’s just a bed.”
WE LAY there, wearing just our boxers, on either side of Savannah and Runaway. And I would have assumed that my brain would be revolting big-time because of that, but strangely, I was totally at peace.
“You okay, Robby?”
“Mm-hmm. You?”
“Really good.” There was no hesitation, either. “I like it. Just us three.”
“Yeah. Me too.” Savannah’s presence was Tristan’s safety net, and maybe she was my safety net too. I felt a soft tap on the very top of my head. Then those delicate fingers of his started tentatively wandering through my hair, scratching a bit and then rubbing a little; soon I was flying. I’d never been so powerfully affected by another person’s touch. “Tristan.”
As he moved his hands through my hair, he was quiet, and for some reason I knew that what he was going to say next would change things between us. “I’ve never made love, Robby. I’ve only….” I thought he wasn’t going to finish his thought, but he did. “You should know, I’ve only been what you might call used before… in bed.”
And I found myself searching for the right words, as this was certainly the most profound moment we’d shared since the day we’d met. “You’ll never be used that way again, Tristan. Trust me on that.” I lifted my hand to my head and joined it with his. And in the cool, gray darkness of a bedroom that wasn’t mine, a woman and her large cat sleeping between us, we connected as partners.
Chapter 18
Robby
I HAD absolutely no one to talk to about this.
It was quite possible that I was falling in love for the very first time. And I wanted to share it, to discuss it, to talk about it until it made sense, to bask in its thrilling yet nonetheless terrifying glory. But I couldn’t very well do those things with the four unadorned walls in my lonely Harvard Square apartment. I needed an actual person with functioning ears.
Lindsey, that’s who I could talk to. Linds, the only woman I’d ever connected with.
After a last glance around my impersonal, fully (but very sparsely) furnished shoebox of a studio, I grabbed a sweatshirt and headed to the street where the Jeep was wedged into a too-tight spot that I’d been lucky to get, my thoughts consumed by my older sister. Both of us were tall, athletically built, light-haired, and blue-eyed, but the similarities ended there. Well, we had also both been “popular” in high school; my athletic prowess had been well respected whereas she had actually been well liked. Lindsey was of a gregarious nature, funny and open. I tended to be more of a loner, seemingly aloof and truly very wary. She had always been a tell-it-like-it-is sort of person in terms of her relationships, and because of that people were drawn to her. I’d always been more interested in pleasing my very few buddies, suspecting that if I didn’t please them, they’d just dump me on my ass. But despite and maybe because of our differences in character, I loved and respected her above everyone else.
Currently, Lindsey Dalton Clark lived the life of the quintessential suburban housewife. She, however, was not planning to focus singularly on that endeavor for the long haul, but just until her kids were in elementary school. Then she’d return for at least part of her waking hours to her other passion: teaching high school English.
After getting married to her longtime college boyfriend, now a partner in a small Boston law firm, she’d moved back to the town in which we’d grown up. It was “a good place to raise kids,” or at least that’s what everybody had told her when she’d become pregnant with Madison, my three-year-old niece. But now, two-thirds of the way through pregnancy number two, she’d confided to me that she missed the random craziness of living in the city. Mom and Dad wouldn’t be pleased when she and Brandon informed them of their decision to put their quaint country Cape with the huge tree-lined backyard on the market in favor of a compact condo with barely enough sidewalk space for Madison to play four-square. So she was holding off on telling them until after she’d given birth to baby number two. If luck was on her side, she’d manage to have a baby boy in the hopes that the birth of my father’s much longed-for grandson would dull the blow of his daughter’s family’s relocation twenty minutes south to Boston.
“Look, Maddy! It’s your Uncle Robby!”
“White Jeep! White Jeep!” Maddy looked adorable in her bright-green fall sweater with this huge red apple embroidered on the front of it and her blonde curls bouncing on her shoulders, as she ran across the yard toward the driveway.
“Hey, Maddy! How’s my baby girl?” I climbed from the Jeep.
She stopped midrun, stared at her sneakers, and pouted. “Not a baby!”
Lindsey grasped her protruding belly and laughed boisterously. “Looks like you still know how to piss off a girl!”
“Funny.” I picked up the rake that Lindsey had dropped in her spasms of laughter. “Are you sure you’re supposed to be raking leaves—in your condition?”
More snickering. “I’m pregnant, not dangerously anemic.”
I busied my hands by picking up where she’d left off with the leaves. Maddy also grabbed her pink plastic rake and started back on her own pint-size pile.
“So, to what do I owe this unannounced visit from my little brother? Not that I’m not thrilled to have a distraction from the mess Mother Nature has made of my yard.”
I started raking faster. “Can’t a guy visit his sister anymore without being given the third degree?”
“Listen, Robby, I’m ready for a break. I need to get off my feet for a while. So come on, let’s go sit at the picnic table and you can talk to me. I have a little snack waiting there for Maddy and me, and I know how to share cookies much better than I did when we were little.” With obvious effort, she lumbered toward the picnic table in the side yard. “Maddy, sweetie, are you ready to eat your animal crackers?”
Maddy dropped her rake and then ran to me. I scooped her up and carried her over to the picnic table. “Uncle Robby, Mommy says we gots to wipe off our hands ’fore we eat.” She pulled a little wet wipe out of a bright-green box and presented it to me. “I’ll do mine, you do yours.”
Obediently, I cleaned off my hands and then we sat down for juice boxes and crackers. Maddy, concentrating intently on specifically which body parts of the different animal shapes she was biting off, slipped into the head space that kids so often go to—wherever that was. It soon grew quiet.
“What’s on your mind, Robby?” One thing I loved about Lindsey was that she was always direct. Maybe that was part of the reason I’d initially been so interested in Savannah; she was as no-nonsense as my sister, who I’d always held in high esteem. “I can’t weigh in on what you’re dealing with if you don’t tell me what it is.”
I sighed.
“It can’t be that bad.”
I smiled sheepishly. “Yes, it can. In fact, it can be worse.”
She lifted a handful of crackers and dropped them all in her mouth at once. “God, I’m starving. I have to eat for two, you know?”
“Mommy’s not supposed to talk when she gots food in her mouth, Uncle.” Maddy sent her mother a stern glance.
I tousled my niece’s curls a bit and replied, “Then I guess it’s my turn to talk, huh?” Both girls nodded at me before Maddy once again got distracted, this time by the picture on the back of her juice box. “Linds, I met somebody.”
Lindsey looked up sharply from her next handful of cookies. After all, I was twenty-six and had never brought a girl home for the family to meet. “Holy shit, bro! That’s not exactly a problem, is it?”
“Dad’s not gonna approve.”
“If she’s got big breasts and wears a short skirt, Dad’ll love her.” She rolled her eyes and then picked up a juice box and put the straw between her lips.
“Um, there are no big breasts or skirts involved here, I’m afraid.”
“Oh, so you found yourself one of those flat-chested, spandex-shorts wearing, granola-eating types? Well, Dad will have to adjust.”
I stood up and turned away from the picnic table. It would be easier to say this if I wasn’t looking at her. “Which do you want first—the startling news or the super fucked-up news?” After all, she was pregnant; it was only fair to prepare her for a shock.
“I’ll go with door number one: go ahead, Robby, startle me.”
“Okay. Lindsey, let’s just say there are no breasts or miniskirts involved because ‘she’ is a ‘he.’”
I heard some throaty sputtering and then a couple of deep coughs.
“Are you all right, Mommy?”
I turned around to see Madison patting her mother’s arm, looking very concerned. And her mother was absolutely gaping at me, looking far more concerned than her daughter. “Yes, honey, Mommy’s fine.” Then very quietly, she added, “But your Uncle Robby’s not going to be fine when Grampa gets wind of his big news.” Somehow, however, Lindsey’s expression had already shifted from one of worry to one of amusement.
I turned back around to face the next-door-neighbor’s house. “Thanks for the encouragement, Linds.”
Her voice grew soft. “Are you saying that you’re gay, Robby? Because truthfully, I can’t say that I ever saw that one coming.”
Suddenly I found myself needing to look at her. For comfort, for acceptance. “Lindsey, I never saw it coming either. And I don’t really feel gay, per se, but I, uh, it’s just him. I want to be with this particular guy.”
“Mommy, can I play in the sandbox?”
Both of us turned abruptly to stare at her. I don’t know about my sister, but I’d gotten so wrapped up in my own personal saga that I’d forgotten Maddy was still in the yard with us. It was a good thing I wasn’t her mother.
“Uncle Robby, would you please take the cover off of Maddy’s sandbox?”
Obediently, I marched right over to the big turtle filled with sand and lifted off its big green back. “There you go, baby. Make me a sand pie, okay?”
Maddy plopped down on her butt into the sand and then she looked at me with an expression that could be described as no less than scathing. “I’m not a baby. Aaaand you forgot to say please.”
Despite the monumental nature of our discussion, neither Lindsey nor I could stifle our giggles. “I know, I know; you’re a big girl now. And I’m very sorry, Maddy. I meant to say please.”
Maddy nodded with satisfaction and got to work.
I looked at Lindsey again, knowing it was time to tell her the rest. “Ready for the fucked-up news?”
She honestly looked like she wasn’t sure how to answer that question, but she managed to squeak out, “Do tell.”
“You promise you won’t go into labor right here on the picnic table when I tell you?”
“I’ll try not to, but Robby, you’re really freaking me out. You didn’t kill someone, did you?”
My own laughter eased my mind slightly. If Lindsey could still joke, maybe the world wasn’t going to come to an end. “Let’s see, how should I phrase this part? Okay, here goes: Tristan, the guy I, uh, the guy I like, and I are involved in a—Jesus, this sounds kinky—we are part of a sort of threesome.” I figured I owed it to Lindsey to shut up for a minute to allow the “threesome” concept to sink into her brain.
“Um, three guys?” I could tell by the disconcerted expression on her face that she was actively fighting off the visual images of her little brother locking lips and other body parts ever-so-passionately with two burly dudes. And then suddenly, she looked skeptical. “You aren’t trying to pull a fast one on a poor pregnant lady, are you?”
“I only wish.” I stepped right in front of her and gathered up her hands in mine. “No, the third person is a girl. She’s the one I originally started dating.” I took a few minutes to fill her in on the brief history of our strange little love triangle, adding, “But the part I’m still trying to figure out is how Savannah, that’s the girl, fits into our relationship. She’s a super great woman, don’t get me wrong on that; she’s smart and honest and principled. But it seems as if she just wants Tristan and me to be her best pals, and her big concern is getting us together.”
“Maybe that genuinely is her big concern. Maybe she’s a matchmaker, and from what you’ve told me, it looks like she might have made a love match between you guys.” I felt my face grow hot with embarrassment because this certainly was a strange conversation to be having with my sister; however, I didn’t interrupt her. “But are you, and Tristan, of course, both willing to be ‘just friends’ with her?”
“I know I’m okay with being just close friends with Savannah, because it’s Tristan who I feel, you know, like, romantic for. I’m still trying to figure out her relationship with Tristan. But I do know they’ve lived together for more than four years and they aren’t, well, they aren’t lovers. She says they never have been.”
“Robby, from what you’ve told me, Tristan and Savannah seem to be more than slightly dependent on each other. Maybe she…. Okay, so here’s what I really think: I think it’s very possible she believes he won’t go along with engaging in a romantic relationship with you unless she’s right there beside him.”
“And exactly how fucked up is this situation, in your humble opinion?”
She hesitated, reminding me of Tristan. And then with a tilt of her head, she asked, “You want to know what I think? Do you really want to know?”
I nodded. I really did want to hear her opinion of this shit-hole in which I’d found myself buri
ed up to my neck.
“I think that today is the first time I’ve ever seen you fully invested in a relationship with someone other than Maddy or me. And I think it’s wonderful!” She pounced forward as delicately as a very pregnant woman could manage and hugged me hard. “Do you really want to spend your life reinventing the farce of a marriage that Mom and Dad have, with a woman who is not right for you? Or do you want to spend your life with a person who you can talk to, laugh with, relate to, and have good sex with, of course?”
Cold chills ran up my spine. I was not at all ready to think about having sex with a man, let alone to have a birds-and-bees chat about it with my sister. “Linds, that isn’t on either of our minds right now, or Savannah’s either, for that matter.”
“But you feel attracted to him?”
“I think he’s beautiful—incredibly so. And it’s not just because of how he looks.”
Lindsey was quiet for a moment while she digested my words. “Then I’ll tell you this much: I don’t give a crap what the gender of the person is as long as he can reach your heart, Robby, and it seems like Tristan has done that. You’ve been alone long enough. I say, go for it, baby brother!”
“Uncle Robby is not a baby!” At that very moment, I was presented with two equally precious gifts: a surprisingly well-constructed mud pie built on a yellow Frisbee from my niece, who’d incidentally just defended my honor, and a candidly satisfied smile from my big sister.
Chapter 19
Robby
WHENEVER the Red Sox made it to the playoffs, Mikey, his cousin/buddies, and I routinely got ourselves some “break the fuckin’ bank” (Mikey’s words) expensive tickets to at least one of the games, and off we’d go to Fenway Park to party. But because of the big chill currently occurring between Mikey and me, I’d decided I’d take my “boyfriend” and my “girlfriend” to the game instead; after all, they were a “package deal,” right? And incidentally, they were turning out to be the best deal I’d ever made. And being a businessman, I’d made quite a few deals.
