A Package Deal

by Mia Kerick

  The tender touch of his lips to mine completely shattered me. My body, and I mean my entire body—from my lips to my toes—tightened and tingled and nearly burst apart with the pure thrill. And my heart, well, my heart wasn’t unaffected by that thrill, and that’s a fact, but there was also something else there. Something I’d never known and had never sought out. This puzzling feeling was safe, yet scary. Comforting, yet disturbing. Yeah, the kiss was powerful in the same way as an earthquake—frightening yet exhilarating all at once. In fact, I couldn’t have reasonably bet my life as to whether or not the earth had actually shaken when our lips met.

  And when that extraordinary kiss was over, four loving hands remained on my body, calming and stilling me with their presence. When I opened my eyes, Robby was looking at me with the very same soft sweetness in his eyes. He was okay; he was fine.

  I turned to study Savi’s face. She wore an identically soft, sweet expression to Robby’s; Savannah was okay too. Looking back at him one more time, the fall afternoon sunshine brightening the slight smile on his strong jaw, I realized that the kiss had been right for all three of us. Today’s kiss had moved our uncertain little group in a definite direction, although I had to admit I was far from prepared to examine our new course very closely at this point.

  So I just took a deep breath and moved so that I was again on my back between them, looking up at the blue sky and bare trees. Then I reached for my partners’ hands and tried to smile.

  Looking back…. Savannah

  I GUESS what had happened next had been predictable in the way a made-for-TV movie was predictable. You know how they always went; the boy found the girl, the girl fell in love with the boy, the boy sacrificed himself for the girl, the boy lost the girl, the girl found the boy, and then came the happily ever after. But this had been real life so I hadn’t expected any of that. And the fact was, what I’d found that day had been merely the tattered remnants of the person I’d met years ago. I’d hated to admit it back then as much as I hate to admit it now, but since I’d always tried to stick to a pretty firm tell-it-like-it-is policy, I had. What had been left of Tristan hadn’t been pretty. I’d realized I had a lot of work to do if I was going to achieve that Hallmark movie happy ending I so desired.

  I’d only been working at my job at the S-Squared Diner for two days, mostly shadowing Lil as I learned to be a waitress, when Gus had asked me if I could do him a favor and go down into the basement and get another tub of mayonnaise. He’d explained exactly where it could be found, and had warned me that he had a boy working down there, cutting up cardboard with a box cutter, and he was a “good kid” who’d been doing odd jobs for him off and on for years, so I shouldn’t be startled when I saw him. I’d stepped down the creaky basement stairs, on the lookout for rats and roaches, and I’d stumbled right into Tristan.

  For as long as I live, I will never forget Tristan’s expression when he saw me and recognition set in. My old friend had looked like he’d seen the face of God. And I’m fairly sure I’d looked the very same way. His bloodshot dark eyes had narrowed and then quickly widened. When he’d opened his scraggly, bearded lips to speak, I couldn’t miss a wide gap where a good portion of a side incisor was missing, but no sound had come out except for a nasty cough. After his brief coughing spell, he’d just let his jaw drop and his mouth had hung open.

  I had tried to approach him, but he’d stepped back each time I’d gotten closer, hurting my feelings deeply, but at the same time giving me a better perspective of his alarmingly bony frame. And finally he’d spoken. “Just stay there. Stay where you are and don’t move. Please don’t move.”

  When I’d stared back at him in wounded disbelief, now fully taking in his disheveled hair and frayed clothing, Tristan had rushed to explain. “I’m afraid that you’re not real, Savannah, and if I try to touch you, you might disappear.” His voice had been rough and raggedy, a perfect match to the rest of him. He’d looked like a street person, and it had dawned on me quickly: it was very likely he was still living on the street.

  And so I’d immediately set my mind to proving to Tristan exactly how real I was. I’d flung myself into his smelly and gangly arms and then had hung onto one of his trembling shoulders like it was a lifeline. Because he had, indeed, long been my lifeline: the memory of how he’d put me first when I’d needed someone the most had truly kept me going through my lonely teenaged years. Tristan had swayed away from me a bit when I’d run my fingers through his dirty, tangled hair, as if the familiarity of my reassuring touch had been too intimate for him to endure, and so I’d dropped my hands, stepped back, and allowed him to use my shoulder to steady himself.

  “I told you I’d find you. I told you, Tristan.”

  By then, I’d been crying and he’d been crying, and I’d gone back to clinging to him, to his wrists this time, my grip now desperate and clawlike.

  “Savi, I never expected to see you again.” As he’d put words to his utter shock at seeing my face in this dank and chilly cellar, I’d mentally summed up his condition the way a social worker might have done. Tristan had been close to starving and filthy and sick with a cough that he couldn’t seem to suppress. “I can’t believe you’re really here. How long can I have with you before you gotta leave?”

  “Leave you?” And that had been the moment that I’d made a promise to myself and to him. “You’re not alone now, Tristan. And you’ll never be alone again.”

  And finally, I’d felt his wrists twist out of my grasp and his hands had closed possessively around mine.

  Chapter 22

  Tristan

  THE only person who would understand this was Sandy.

  I mean, it wasn’t as if I was kicking Savi to the curb as my number-one confidante, but she was just too close to this situation for me to separate her feelings and her needs from my own. In fact, Savannah’s heart and mind and soul had been completely wrapped up with mine ever since the day she’d found me in Gus’s basement.

  “Sit down, T, and tell me what’s got you acting as serious as a heart attack, instead of your usual goofy self.” We stood together outside near the loading dock. Sandy lit up a cigarette and puffed in.

  It was cool but not too breezy, even though we were near the water, so I knew it wouldn’t be too cold to stay outdoors and talk for our full break. Outside near the busy street, I could relax a bit and stop clutching onto my feelings with such a tight fist. “I’ve just been thinking a lot about, well, about how—you’re gonna think I’m nuts to ask you this—but how did you know for sure that you wanted to be with women?” I reached up and ran my hand through my hair. “No, no, that’s not really it. I know my sexuality, even if I don’t broadcast it. What I really want to know is more like how did you know without a doubt that you wanted to act on it with a woman, you know?”

  “Why? Do you think you’re a lesbian?” She smacked me hard with her free hand, and then pulled the red lipstick-smeared cigarette from her lips to laugh at her own joke. “I’m just kidding, honey, you know that.”

  “Seriously, Sandy, I need to know.” I didn’t even smack her back. “How do you know when you’re ready? I mean, when it’s the right time to do something?” I blushed, knowing that these questions must’ve sounded extremely naïve coming from the mouth of a twenty-three-year-old man who’d started having sexual intercourse when he was barely eleven.

  “Okay, Tris, I’ve told you before, I always knew I liked girls. Back in grade school, before I even knew about sex, I just wanted a lot of closeness with other girls. As I got a little older, I had these minicrushes on some of my friends, if you know what I mean. I was ready to act on it, and I actually did act on it at the end of high school. And I’ve been acting on it ever since!”

  This was a perfect example of what I loved about Sandy; she put my needs first. Her curiosity over why I was asking her all this stuff took a backseat to her desire to help me by providing me with the answers I needed. Often, in more detail than I wanted. “Well, Sandy, I don
’t really know anything about how normal sexual relations play out, that’s why I’m asking. My grade school years didn’t offer me much of an opportunity to reflect on who I was or what I wanted, that is, beyond food and a corner to hide in. Mostly, I was trying to survive the ride with my family. And with my Uncle Ben.”

  Sandy dropped her cigarette and ground it into the cement with her sensible black waitress’s shoe, which she absolutely despised. Then she raked brightly painted fingernails through short black spikes of hair that she kept gelled into a single point. “And your teenage years out there on the street weren’t exactly introspective years for you either, were they?”

  “Not even slightly. And since I’ve been with Savannah, it’s been so easy to shut out the whole sexual side of me. You know, to say that I’m just not a sexual person and be done with it.”

  She threw her arms around my neck and whispered into my ear. “You’ve been too comfortable living as brother and sister with Savannah, honey, that’s all. I think it’s time to break out of your comfy little box, hmm?”

  “But I never felt much sexually—I mean, I’ve never really felt anything—before I met this person.” God, could I sound any more cryptic? She already knew I was talking about a guy. “Sandy, up until recently, I really didn’t think I was a sexual person at all. I thought I’d lost all of that when all those things happened when I was young.”

  Sandy was on the small side, but she was still sort of a bruiser. She put her hands on the collar of my coat and pushed me backward until my back was pressed up against the building’s brick siding. “How could you have expected to feel anything when you were just an object for assholes to use to satisfy their lust?” I winced at her words because they were so blunt, and she saw me do it, but she still pressed on. “That doesn’t make you asexual, Tristan. You just never got a chance when you were growing up to feel safe enough to figure it all out. Now you do.” She was studying me so intently I could almost feel her gaze on my face.

  “Yeah, I guess, but it’s so weird. Feeling this way.”

  Her cherubic face split into a grin. “You’re falling, honey, ahh yes, my boy is falling in love.” And she didn’t ask about who he was, because she knew I’d tell her when I was ready. “Don’t worry, T…. This may sound cliché, but just follow your heart.” She slid her hand over to where my heart was. “You have a beautiful heart, hon, and it won’t steer you wrong.”

  “Okay, Sandy, talking to you about this helped. I guess I owe you some good advice now.”

  “Don’t worry about it, kid. I’m always glad to help, and you know you’re the first person I’ll come to when I need to get my own ducks in a row.”

  Chapter 23

  Robby

  “ROBBY, what are you doing here?” Savannah looked a bit surprised, but she’d asked me with a smile so I knew she wasn’t pissed off that I’d more or less snuck up on her.

  “Figured that my number-one girl would be here getting her Tuesday night mocha latte. And I wasn’t wrong.”

  Savannah slid over in the booth and patted the place beside her. “Sit down, Robby.” Then she flagged down Lil and ordered for me. “Lil, can you get Robby a cup of coffee, a bit on the dark side? And how about a piece of Gus’s apple pie with just a single scoop of vanilla ice cream? Oh, and don’t forget to warm up the pie.” Lil nodded and was rewarded with one of Savannah’s sweet, gap-toothed smiles. Then Savannah redirected her attention to me. “So how did you come to be in this neck of the woods tonight?”

  “Well, the head of maintenance from the university called and asked me to meet him at the end of his work day. Seems that they liked the job we did on the classrooms and they have a few more projects in mind for Dalton Builders.”

  Clapping her hands together, she squealed, “Oh, Robby, that’s awesome!” Then she sipped her mocha and said more seriously, “Good things happen to good people. You must have some excellent karma, hmm?”

  I shrugged at her and placed my hands on my lap as Lil served my coffee. “Thanks, ma’am.”

  I could tell by her crooked expression that Lil wasn’t quite certain whether to like me or to be suspicious of me. “I’ll be back in a couple of minutes with your pie.”

  “So, will you give me a ride home? Then you can come in and see Tris if he’s home from work.” She looked hopeful, as she always did when she was trying to arrange for Tristan and me to get together.

  “Sure, but Savannah, I thought that maybe you and I could spend some time together. You know, maybe we could hang out here for a while.”

  First, she looked perplexed, followed immediately by an expression of deep concern. She was worried I was still more interested in her than in Tristan.

  So I set her straight. “Don’t worry, Savannah, I’m into him. That’s what you wanted all along, isn’t it?”

  Her expression didn’t change. But she nodded once.

  “You have nothing to be concerned about, then. Tristan is amazing. It’s like since I’ve gotten to know him, I can finally feel that way for someone. Really feel it, you know?”

  Savannah’s tight expression loosened into one of relief. “Oh God, it’s so good to hear you say that!”

  “But you’re an important part of this equation too. You mean a lot to both of us.”

  Before Savannah had a chance to respond, Lil stopped in front of our table and sort of slung the plate of pie across the table toward me. The ice cream was already melting over the top. Savannah pushed the ice cream off the pie with her fork.

  “So what’s your plan, Savannah?”

  She pulled the plate in front of her and took a tiny, genteel bite of the pie, as if she was just sampling it. “I don’t know what you mean—my plan?”

  I ignored her protest. “I’m ready to take things to the next level with him. I need to know what you want—how you want to fit in—with us.”

  “You ask too many questions, Robby.”

  I grabbed my own fork and allowed myself to be distracted by the delicious pie. While I was doing that, Savannah showed her cards, I guess you could say. Her nervousness was betrayed in the way she twirled her finger in her hair and by how she repetitively shifted her weight, leaning side to side. So I did what I’d learned to do with Tristan; I waited for her words to come.

  When they came, they were in her straightforward, I-mean-business manner. “Let’s just allow things to just fall into place, hmm? A ‘relationship of three’ isn’t necessarily modeled after an equal-sided triangle.”

  “You mean an equilateral triangle.” My fork clattered onto the half-empty plate. “Are you comparing our relationship to an isosceles triangle?”

  “Only if isosceles is the kind with only two equal sides.”

  “Congruent sides.”

  “Whatever, Robby. Equations, congruent, isosceles—we’re not in geometry class. And you know what I mean. I told you that it was okay if you and Tris got close in ways that I’m not necessarily a part of, remember?”

  “Yeah, that’s a pretty difficult thing for a guy to forget.” I took her hand into mine. It was cold, despite the fact that she’d been holding a hot drink. “I’m falling for him really hard, Savannah. I didn’t know that I could feel like this. But you, you are part of us too.”

  Strangely, Savannah didn’t seem at all shaken up by my confession. “I want you to do what feels right with Tristan, and we don’t have to have a formal discussion about it. So don’t worry about me—this is exactly what I’d hoped would happen with you guys. And yeah, I’ll admit it, maybe I did have a plan.”

  “Why? Why would you do this? What’s in it for you?”

  “Just don’t hurt him.” She’d become quite skilled at dodging my questions. “You know how innocent he is.”

  Many people wouldn’t refer to Tristan as innocent. He’d been having sex since he was a boy, he’d been gang-raped as a teen in an attempt to protect Savannah, and it was not unlikely that he had even sold himself when he’d lived on the streets. But he was still so inno
cent. “I know how innocent he is, Savannah. Much more so than me.”

  She smiled at me with satisfaction because she knew I understood.

  “I never was interested in the pure and innocent type of girl, you know. Maybe I knew deep down inside that I couldn’t take a girl’s innocence, seeing as I wasn’t planning to keep her. But it’s different with Tris.”

  Savannah studied my face, in the mood to listen now, so I didn’t disappoint.

  “I know he’s had sex before, probably more times than I have, but he’s never experienced sensuality. You know, he’s completely innocent to the pleasures of the flesh.”

  “Robby, that sounds almost biblical.” She smirked and then squeezed my fingers. “But I know what you mean.”

  “I want to show him all of the flirting and the thrill and physical pleasure that can come with sex.”

  Savannah’s face scrunched up a bit, once again revealing signs of concern. “Yeah, Robby, satisfying sex is great and all that. Just don’t hurt him.”

  Realizing that she’d already given me that exact same warning before, I took her chin in my hand and said evenly, looking directly into her eyes, “I promise it won’t hurt him. I’ll go slowly. Very slowly.”

  “Oh, Robby. Don’t you get it?” Her eyes were wide and intense. “There’s more than one way to hurt someone.”

  That’s when I realized she was referring to his heart not his body. She was pleading with me to never break Tristan’s heart. “I won’t. I won’t hurt him that way eith—”

  “I don’t know if he could stand it.” Her eyes had filled. There was no question of her love for Tristan. None whatsoever. Only my love for him was in question now.

  “Put that worry to rest, Savannah. I’m in this with Tristan for the long haul. But that doesn’t answer my question from earlier. So just tell me, what do you get out of all of this? What exactly do you want from Tris and me?”