by Seth King
“So. It’s just about wedding day,” he says.
“It is.”
“What’s with the weird look?”
“Nothing. No reason. Hey, would you be my date, by the way?” I joke. “I don’t know of many single girls on the island who would be in a position to come with me…”
His eyes twinkle in a quiet way. “Sure. Only with you, though. Nobody else.”
By late afternoon, though, I’m getting restless. I feel like I do when I’m hungry and become a rage-a-holic, so I eat a big early dinner, but it doesn’t help. There’s just something I can’t shake off.
This evening is the last “bonding session” for the wedding guests before the big day – a final volleyball game on the beach. We’re separated into two groups, and Lane looks directly at Nathan and me and then splits us up. I don’t even want to think about why, so I head under the net and take up a position across from Nate. My Nate…even when I’m annoyed with him, he’s still so sexy…
Maybe a little too sexy, actually. Without thinking he peels off his white shirt and tosses it onto the grass, and I catch not one, not two, but three girls looking at him like he’s a human sex toy. And he is – he’s just mine. I know he’s hot, but why does he have to show it off like that? And sure, I know he doesn’t know how hot he is, because of an awkward phase in his middle school years that damaged his self-esteem – but I still hate that all these other bitches get to stare at him, too. That should be my duty.
“Your serve,” Lane says, tossing the ball at me so hard, it hits me on the shoulder. I roll my eyes and pick it up, and then I give Nate one evil look and then spike it – directly into his face.
“Fuck!” he shouts as it hits him in the cheek, spinning around, as the same girls blush and laugh at him. I don’t feel bad, though. A volleyball isn’t going to kill him, and he needs to know what I think about him putting on a strip-show for all these girls, who are single, tipsy, and on a beach vacation. Doesn’t he know what he’s doing?
Because of my foul, the serve is given to the other team – and Nate offers to do it. As I watch, he marches to the corner of the sand court, stares at me, and then spikes it so hard it zooms inches over the net – and hits me right in the balls.
“Goddamn it,” I pant, as I bend over and get the bizarre sensation that a train has slammed into the bottom half of my body. If you’ve never gotten a testicle injury, I hope you never do, because it feels something like a 50/50 mix between a sharp, stabbing pain and a dull, but still desperate, ache deep in your abdomen. You get an instant case of nausea, too, and I’m hunched over on the grass by the time I start listening again.
“You guys are gonna fucking kill each other,” Harrison says as he grabs the ball and gets ready to serve. “Nate and Beau, take a hike and go fight each other or something, you’re annoying us.”
Nate stomps away, and when I can stand again, I start limping back to the room. As I get closer I start to take stock of my thoughts.
I love Natie – I know that now. But I’ve always loved him. How do I love him today? I will probably always have my mother’s homophobia hanging over my head, and I’ll probably never fully get over that whole thing. Is that what’s holding me back, making me angry? Or is it the world in general? Or is it nothing at all, and I’m just creating problems in my own head, as usual?
The thing I keep coming back to is when I cried, when we were discussing my mom back on the kayak. I don’t even know if he noticed, because I kept my face angled away. But maybe that’s the issue – maybe I am disgusted that I let myself get vulnerable with him. Because he’s always the person I let down my guard in front of, but that was just in the context of a friendship. He was the person who got me through my mom’s death, actually. He was just there for me in ways nobody else was. To shift that perspective into a different frame, to risk putting it all on the line and showing him who I really am, but in the guise of a relationship – I still don’t know if I can do that. And the prospect of losing the friendship in the first place still hangs over all this like low clouds in the distance at a barbecue.
It’s all so stressful…if only I could find a new release, a new vent for this steam…
“Hey, Natie,” I say that night, as we watch CNN. “I like this. I really do. Don’t get me wrong. But…”
He pauses and looks over. “But?”
“Hold on. I was thinking about the kayak thing, and…how do we know this is a permanent thing? Like, for instance – say I wake up tomorrow wanting vagina. Or what if you wake up tomorrow wanting it?”
“Um,” he frowns. “I wasn’t thinking about tomorrow yet. Why is it so hard to live moment by moment? You’ll drive yourself crazy if you live in the future.”
“You know exactly what I’m saying, Nate.”
He considers this for a moment, then starts chewing on his bottom lip. “Well…maybe you do still want a woman. But we never said that wasn’t allowed in our agreement.”
“What?”
“What we said was that you could fuck anyone you wanted, just as long as the other party knew about it. And we never said…”
“Yes?”
“We never said anything about threesomes.”
My breath hitches. “Keep going.”
“Well, maybe you want a woman already. That’s fine. We never ruled that out. Maybe that’s what we need – to explore some things. Do you know anyone who would be down to…well, hook up with two guys at once? Or maybe just watch us?”
I blush, look away, and nod. “Actually, yes. The chick I brought home the other night – she was a divorcé, she seemed a little lonely, and down for anything. And I mean anything. We can see if she’s still staying at the hotel?”
He swallows. “Sure.”
But does he really want this, or is he just pulling this out of a hat to keep me interested?
“You really want to do this?” I ask him soon, just to make sure. He smiles a little.
“I mean, why not? At least we’ll be able to monitor our reactions, and decide how much we miss the whole ‘being straight’ thing. And besides,” he says more seriously. “I don’t think you understand that I would do anything in the world to find a way to make this work, Beau-Beau. And at least she’s hot, right?”
And that does it. We put on our nicest outfits that weren’t reserved for the wedding, drink some champagne to get loosened up, and then head to the dark, fancy hotel bar overlooking the pool.
At first I’m disappointed – it’s the same business-y, middle-aged crowd as before, all murmuring to each other over glasses of wine and plates of peanuts. For a few minutes I think our plan has been dashed – until Nate nudges the back of my arm.
“Hey. I think that’s her, over there, in the black. Isn’t it?”
I catch the eyes of someone down the bar, and sure enough, I recognize her. And my memory from that night wasn’t lying – she’s pretty hot, too.
So I swallow the rest of my beer, set my eyes on her, and start for the empty seat next to her.
This should be interesting…
Birdie Lang
At first it feels like a dream. A particularly slutty dream, at that. I mean, what are the odds? Not only one hot, younger guy wants to hook up with me, but two of them do? Not only one tall, lean dude who looks like he just stepped off the set of a teen drama on the CW wants to fuck me, but a double package of them do?
I came to this place as a sort of last resort to save my sanity. My (soon-to-be) ex-husband’s family held a timeshare in one of the resort’s townhouses at the edge of the property, and when I saw that the final papers were about to go through, I jumped at the chance to stay here (and spend some of his money) before I officially become a divorced woman. And why not? Lord knows Jeffrey deserved it. I could take a million dollars from him and still not come close to getting the revenge I am owed, actually. But, ugh, don’t even let me go there, I’m trying not to sound like a Bitter Betty and bring up the whole thing every five seconds, like many of
my divorced friends who can clear out a room with their ranting and raving as soon as someone brings up the subject of their former spouses…
But pretty quickly I realized I was bored. I could only sit by a pool with a Miller Lite and Us Weekly for so long before I wanted to pull my hair out. All I was doing was thinking about my ex, revisiting the past, getting sucked back down memory lane. So I guess that’s what led to me coming to a bar tonight. To sit here. Alone. Drinking profusely. Until Beau, from the other night, appeared again to ask for a redo.
First he apologized, and said he just wasn’t on his game the other night. I can understand that – I haven’t been on my own game in years. After a drink or two, though, it became clear what he really wanted. He couldn’t stop making eyes at his little friend across the bar, and after ten or fifteen minutes he got to the point: they wanted to fool around with a “chick,” as he called me. Now, listen here: I am thirty-four years old. I spent the last twelve years playing servant to a worthless piece of shit who treated me like his executive assistant and paid me in cold stares and emotional distance. So if two hot young guys approach me and ask me for a good time, I would be fucking crazy not to say yes and see what happened, right? They look like two gay porn stars – which I do watch sometimes, by the way. But what do I have to lose? I’ve spent the last decade saying no to my own happiness, and to everything else the world had to offer me. Why not start changing that?
I roll with it. Beau invites the boy over, and he’s cute and bashful and has an ass that could strangle someone. There’s a weird electricity between us all, and they both keep glancing at each other, and then me, and giggling and looking away again. Finally I suggest we all order a tequila shot and then head back to their room. Whatever’s about to happen, I want to be good and drunk for it. This would be too weird to process if I were anything less than tipsy.
But at the same time, I don’t care if I’m making a mistake. It just feels good to be putting my hand on the button of fate in the first place.
We stumble back to the room, laughing like kids. (Oh wait, they are kids. Oops.) Beau opens the door and then I’m looking around at a large suite that smells like aftershave and sex. They really are together, aren’t they?
Before I can even get my bearings, they start making out, but in the desperate, passionate way that two people who love each other make out. It’s fucking sexy, to be honest. As I watch from the side of the bed, I can’t decide who’s hotter – Beau, for his rugged-ness, or the blonde, for the way he looks like he just stepped off the campus of a prep school. It’s one of the hottest things I’ve ever seen in person, and not just in some video. But when the blonde drops to his knees and starts hungrily reaching at the brunette’s belt, I clear my throat.
“Um, excuse me, gentleman – why was I called in here, again?”
“Oh,” the blonde says sheepishly. “Sorry.”
Beau slides onto the bed and kisses me. It’s gentle, polite, and a bit boring – so I wrap my arm around his head. He moans into my mouth, and I look down and realize the blonde has whipped Beau’s dick out of his pants and is sucking on it like there’s no tomorrow.
Okay, then. This is certainly new.
Then I remind myself of what I’d be doing if I’d stayed back in my townhouse – I’d be drinking, by myself, yet again. I’d might as well try to enjoy this while it lasts, right? If nothing else, it’ll be a story to tell my girlfriends when I get back to Toronto. Or maybe not tell them at all, actually…
Powered by the tequila, I undo my shirt and then slide out of my skirt, too. The blonde pushes aside my panties and starts teasing me, but I rock my hips into his face to tell him to go full steam ahead. And he does. Right now I just need to feel the touch of someone, anyone at all…
He’s very good at this – surprisingly good, actually. Many men think eating a woman out is like a hot-dog-eating contest, where you demolish a vagina with your mouth and expect the woman to like it. But he’s just the right mix of delicate and passionate. I lean back and get lost in the feathery, ticklish feeling…damn, he’s good…
He moans, and I look up and realize Beau has gotten behind him, his muscled chest shining in the faint moonlight. He’s about to fuck the blonde, doggy-style, while he eats me out…
“Can you eat that pussy while I fuck you from behind?” Beau asks.
“Yes,” the blonde moans.
“Louder!”
“Yes, please!”
Boom. The blonde cries out as Beau enters him, then starts eating me more hungrily in-between his moaning. I can’t say this isn’t the hottest – and sluttiest – thing I’ve ever done, and seen, too. It doesn’t even feel like I’m seeing it, actually – it feels like I’m watching the scene in a porno.
I hear myself moaning and sighing as the blonde slips a finger into me and licks my clit simultaneously. He motions his finger inside me, which is the tried-and-true way to hit the G spot of most women. My whole body clenches in reaction, and I gasp. Shit, how did he know that? How does he know my body so well?
He licks, licks, licks, and soon I’m losing focus and the pressure is building in my core and I know I’m going to orgasm. That’s right, I haven’t orgasm’d by my husband’s hand in probably seven or eight years, and yet here I am, about to come due to this twelve-year-old. (Obviously he’s not twelve, but compared to me he might as well be. I practically feel like a babysitter right now.)
“Do you like that?” Beau asks, slapping the blonde’s ass as he mounts him from behind. “I said, do you like it?”
“Yes, I do,” the blonde says into my pussy as he pauses and closes his eyes. Then it’s back to me again, and he pushes his finger in deeper and closes his lips around my clit. I cry out as my body convulses and rocks back, and he moans louder than ever as Beau fucks him harder and harder until…
Liftoff. I clench my core one more time, and then my body tumbles into a cascading world of twitch-y ecstasy. The bubbles and the lightness take over, and I yelp a few times as the orgasm explodes in me. Beau surges his hips forward one more time and then comes, and the blonde falls onto his side and does the same after only a few pumps of his dick.
Holy shit…all three of us just came, at almost the same time…
What kind of wild sorcery is going on here?
Ten awkward minutes later I’ve cleaned myself up in their messy bathroom. I turn back into the room and then stop – they’re on the bed together, shoulder-to-shoulder, touching each other’s hair and whispering about something. For a second I just smile and watch, my eyes prickling with tears in the corner. Awwww. More than anything I miss having that person. I miss someone loving me enough to touch me for no reason at all, I miss someone being so overcome for me, they want to brush my hair out of my eyes all day. I didn’t find that in Jeffrey – that much is clear now. But by God, I will find it again. Or I will die trying.
I turn for the door and leave them to their canoodling. They deserve it. They don’t ask for my phone number, and I don’t give it to them, either. I know what I was for them tonight – a guest star, and that’s fine. I’m okay with that. I’ve got a lot of shit to figure out before I’m comfortable becoming a starring player in someone else’s show. And besides, from the way they kissed and sucked each other, it was clear they’re interested in the same sex more than they’d ever be interested in me…
I take one last look at them, then head down the hall and listen to the door close behind me. Some things, I’m starting to learn after thirty-four years on this stupid frustrating planet, are just better left in the past.
Oh, and just for the record: I will be filing away every single detail from tonight into my memory, though, just for lonely nights in the future when the porn isn’t doing it for me.
the edge
from the diary of Nathan Sykes
I used to feel so small
and now
I am your Taj Mahal
I used to wonder if anyone really cared
and tonight
/>
I stand safely in your inferno
but honey,
now is not forever
and tonight
is not always
and I’m still on the edge
and soon
we’ve gotta be strong enough
to face the fire
of a world
that might not know what to do with us
so now I’m
standing at the end of that dock
we used to fish on, with your mother
back when she was alive
but I’m alone
and I’m waiting for you
and now I’m standing
at the edge of the world
wondering
are you going to take my hand?
because if you don’t,
well…
I don’t even know how to finish that sentence
I will never be strong enough to tell you this in real life,
but baby
you are the thing
that puts the air
into my lungs
and without that
I will just be breathless
Nathan Sykes
The actual wedding is being held back at the Hemingway House, in a beautiful little veranda near the mansion, in a corner of the garden. It probably cost a fortune, but oh well – it’s not my money. When we show up late in the afternoon, the last tourists are being ushered out, and House employees are busy swathing everything in shades of cream and blush and buttery-yellow. The beauty of it alone murders me a thousand times. If I have to say goodbye to him, I don’t want this to happen at all. Why couldn’t our last night have been ugly and un-magical? Oh well. Fate has always been cruel. We are having One More Perfect Night, and then I might have to close off this part of my life forever…
