Three Men and a Woman_Jubilee

by Rachel Billings

  But Jubilee was pretty sure not a one of them was ready to hear she’d fallen in love with three men. Three friends, as close as brothers, as significant to each other as they were to her. She wasn’t ready to hear it, and she was living it.

  Wishing she was still small enough to curl up in her dad’s lap and have him make everything better, she rested her head down on the arm of her little sofa. She listened quietly as the other four talked about their plans for the New Year. Like for many artisans, the end of the year meant the end of their biggest production season. Jubilee dozed off while her mother was making noises about going somewhere with blue water, white sand, and a lot of sunshine. She’d heard Rita lobby for such a vacation in the past. But this year, it seemed her words were falling on more fertile ground.

  * * * *

  The next morning, Rita packed lunches and took Jubilee for a hike to see Rainbow Falls in the Pisgah National Forest. She’d revealed her plan at the breakfast table, saying she wanted some alone time with her daughter before Cary and his family crowded the house with their happy chaos. The others at the table—Marnie and Aaron and James—appeared unsurprised by Rita’s plan, almost as though they’d already heard it, Jubilee thought.

  In her life, Jubilee had spent many hours hiking with her mother. Always, even when Jubilee was just a girl, they’d enjoyed the physical activity of a hike and shared a deep appreciation for the beauty of nature. For both of them, it was a theme that showed up in their art. Many times, she’d heard folks in her parents’ generation comment that they saw similarities between Jubilee’s fabric work and her mother’s glass art. Neither of the two required spectacular scenery—both could find endless amazement in pebbles along a creek, or the shades of green in a single tree, or a field of wildflowers.

  Gone were the days when Rita put out a hand to help Jubilee up a slick boulder or over a small stream. Now, it was Jubilee’s hand that reached out an assist. But still, her mother was fit. She strode easily along the moderate climb in her blue jeans, hiking boots, and embroidered denim jacket.

  Weather had never kept them from hiking—or from finding a pretty spot to sit and have their sandwiches, even if they were huddled in blankets. But it was cool enough in December that they had the trail mostly to themselves, and they were alone when they took their lunch at the base of the falls.

  “I have something I want to tell you.”

  Jubilee smiled. Her mother had spoken, but it was a phrase either one of them had used often on their hikes. Sometimes, the discussion that followed was the whole purpose of the hike. Other times, it was just the mood of the day—their attachment to each other, their connection to the beauty around them—that led to a cozy, intimate conversation.

  She was still smiling when she stuffed the wrapper from her sandwich back into the backpack she’d carried and looked at her mother.

  “Your dad and I want to tell you,” she corrected. “And Marnie and Aaron.”

  “Oh,” Jubilee said. “Okay.”

  Rita smiled. They had an unspoken rule about these talks of maintaining a completely open and nonjudgmental regard for the other. It had gotten them through topics like Jubilee’s squabbles with her brother, her first experience with sex, and James and Rita’s recreational use of marijuana.

  “You said in the car yesterday,” Rita started, “that you know your father and I love Marnie and Aaron. We do. And they love us.”

  “I know, Mom.”

  “I mean, really. They are…” She stopped and took a breath. “We are all…lovers.”

  She said that last word quickly, like it might slip by Jubilee’s notice.

  It didn’t.

  “Whoa. Mom.” Jubilee knew her eyes must be big as saucers. She wouldn’t be surprised if they were sproinging out of her head like in an old cartoon. Her heartbeat suddenly quickened. She put her hand over her chest, rubbing her sternum. “Mom.”

  “It happened,” she said. “We have always loved each other. And then we lost Bill…”

  Jubilee knew that even Marnie and Aaron would agree that Bill’s death had been nearly as hard on her parents as his. He’d meant so much to all of them. Silently, too shocked to feel her usual sadness at hearing his name, she nodded.

  “We agreed then to take love where we found it. To appreciate that it could be gone from us just like that.” She waved a hand that Jubilee knew encompassed all the pain of Bill’s illness and death. “Gone.”

  Rita reached that hand out, took Jubilee’s, and gave it a squeeze. “We came to feel it was a sin to turn down what was there for us. Like failing to appreciate the beauty around us.” She gestured to the water. “I know you understand that.”

  Like turning down a gift from God, her mother had once said, decades before. To not see what was before you. To not recognize beauty and hold it in your heart.

  To not recognize love? To commit the sin of turning away from it?

  Wow.

  “Mom.”

  “Can you not understand?”

  “I can. Of course I can. I love all of you. You’re all…wonderful. Why wouldn’t you all love each other?” Jubilee noted what a freaking good question that was. “It’s just…”

  “We weren’t sure whether to tell you. I was, but…well, it was difficult for us all to agree to it. For Aaron especially. But I didn’t want there to be this big lie between us.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” Then Jubilee checked those eyes that were so much like hers. “That wasn’t sarcastic. I mean it. I’m sure it wasn’t easy to tell me. I also don’t want to have a lie between us.” She took a breath. Maybe, before long, she’d have to say to her mother, “I have something I want to tell you,” or she’d be the cause of that kind of lie. But it wasn’t time yet, and there was this.

  “I’m not ready to tell Cary yet. We’re not.”

  “I understand.”

  Everyone loved Cary, but his wife Lucy had a kind of rigid, disapproving personality that didn’t fit entirely well with the rest of the family. They loved her and made her welcome as much as they could, but Jubilee could see this bit of news not going over so well with that one. And if Cary knew it, Lucy would worm it out of him.

  “I know it’s a lot. To take in. To accept.”

  Now Jubilee’s hand squeezed her mother’s. “No, it’s not. Not if it makes you happy. You, and Dad. And Aaron and Marnie, too. It doesn’t hurt anyone else, right? So it’s no one else’s business.”

  Rita smiled. “Thanks, baby.” She peered into Jubilee’s eyes. “What was that?”

  Jubilee shuttered her gaze, reminded of how astute Rita was when it came to reading her daughter’s face. She shook her head firmly. “Nothing.”

  It had been something, though. Her mother had never quite stopped calling Jubilee “baby.” She used the endearment rarely these days, usually only at moments when the pair were feeling most loving or connected with each other. The term was a kind of sweet comfort to Jubilee and, hearing it, she’d remembered how often Keith and Brody and Henry used it. She hadn’t objected like she’d thought she perhaps ought to—and now she understood why.

  Rita’s eyes continued to evaluate. “Okay.” Of course, she knew an evasion when she heard one, but that was part of their accord about their talks. On occasion, they got to duck an issue if they wanted to. “We good?”

  Jubilee considered maybe “good” was a stretch. “Well…I don’t know if I should ask, but—”

  “Sometimes we all sleep together in the same bed,” Rita blurted out.

  That surprised a laugh out of Jubilee. She lifted a hand.

  “TMI?” her mother asked. “What else?” She thought about it. “We’re pretty much heterosexual about it, in case you were worried whether you or Cary might have inherited some gay genes.”

  “Okay.” Pretty much. “Enough. I wasn’t worried.” Really. She wasn’t worried.

  Rita smiled. “We love you.”

  Jubilee returned both the smile and the words.

  Chapter Elevenr />
  Jubilee flew back into bitter cold in Rochester on New Year’s Eve.

  She hadn’t contacted Henry. He’d told her to do so if she was ready to choose only him, and she was very far from that. Instead, she was trusting that he’d have let Keith or Brody know to meet her at the airport.

  Not that she’d heard from either of those two, except for the single text she’d received from Brody just the day before. I’m thinking dress size 8 for you, and shoe size 7. How am I doing?

  She’d smiled at the odd, out-of-the-blue question and texted back. Eight for both. Why are we having this conversation?

  Apparently, though, it wasn’t a conversation. She didn’t hear from him again.

  But they were there, both of them, looking deliciously casual, when she came through the terminal.

  She’d spent ten days with her family in North Carolina. She decided the term “family” very much included Marnie and Aaron now, knowing it from the first moment when she and Rita had returned from their hike. She’d gone directly to the studio and found that pair and her father there. They’d all hugged, a warm acknowledgment of a new relationship.

  Definitely, they had all felt like family. The group expanded when Cary and Lucy and their kids came, and they celebrated the holiday with traditions pulled from the Reynolds family, and the Wrights, and even Lucy’s. For the Reynolds, that meant having a solstice bonfire, an event that culminated in a spectacular inferno as they tossed on their last year’s very dry and flammable yule tree. Cary, an enthusiast of the tradition, had saved his family’s tree from the last year and brought it tied atop their minivan, since it was the parents’ first winter in their new home.

  Jubilee had enjoyed all of it, including joining one of Lucy’s traditions and decorating cookies with her niece and nephews. She’d had a private conversation with Cary as they’d taken their own hike. He’d been friends with Bill, and so they, too, had a shared loss. Gently, he’d asked her about the Rita and James–Marnie and Aaron situation. He worried, he said, that the two couples had become too enmeshed in their grief over Bill’s death.

  For three days after the big reveal, Jubilee had had a chance to come to terms with her parents’ “life choice.” She’d watched as the four of the older generation gradually became more demonstrative of their love for each other in front of her. She’d seen gentle touches and kisses from both of the men to both of the women, and arms encircle for quick hugs. The women were fairly affectionate with each other, and even James and Aaron exchanged an occasional shoulder pat.

  Still, Jubilee made it a point to go upstairs to her own room every evening before there was any need to know the downstairs sleeping arrangements. But she found she smiled as she tucked into bed, satisfied that her parents and Bill’s were happy, and not feeling she needed to know more.

  In her mind, she’d come to think of the four of them as the “quads.”

  The quads became more circumspect in their behavior with the arrival of Cary’s family. The touches between them and their pairing as they sat or walked together fell back into spouse-only patterns.

  She understood their hesitation to share their choice with Cary, but she was sad for them about it nonetheless. And she found it troubling to discuss the situation with her brother without revealing what she knew about the quads. Obviously, even not knowing the depth of the bond among the four, Cary was concerned.

  “They were good friends for decades,” she said to him in response. “Dad and Aaron were close, like siblings, and Mom and Marnie, too. I think they’re happy, having these friendships to share with each other.”

  “I know,” Cary had said. “I get that. It’s just that it looks a bit…too friendly. You know, right, that the Guild culture we grew up in was fairly permissive? The rest of the world might judge this more harshly.”

  Jubilee sighed internally. The family had hoped Cary’s influence might soften his wife’s rigid attitudes, but perhaps the opposite was happening. “They care for each other. They work together in their studio and share a home. They’re hurting nobody. I don’t believe anyone has reason to judge.”

  Cary had looked at her with a bit of surprise in his eyes. Maybe she’d spoken more harshly than she’d meant.

  “Some will, though.”

  He was probably right. She supposed it was a good reminder, given the “life choice” she was contemplating. “They’re strong,” she said. “As Aaron points out, they’ve learned what they can survive. They’ve been dealt a rough life lesson. One of which is to hold close those you care about.”

  Cary halted along the trail they were hiking and looked at her for a long moment before he nodded. “You’re right, of course.”

  They’d finished the hike with his arm around her shoulder and hers at his waist.

  And this morning, she’d hugged the quads good-bye. Rita and Marnie had driven her to the airport. From the back seat, Jubilee had listened to the two women talking about their work and their men and the trip to Aruba that was now being planned. Like the two old friends they were, sharing their lives. Having the courage to choose their way.

  Setting an example for their daughter.

  So when Jubilee walked through security toward the two handsome men waiting for her, she went into their arms. She chose Keith first, his eyes lighting up, and put her arms around him and kissed him.

  He was all the way into it, circling her with his arms to pull her close and kissing her deeply.

  She wasn’t sure how long he’d have continued that very claiming, public kiss, but she wasn’t so distracted by it that she forgot the other man at Keith’s side. So she drew away and turned to him.

  Brody looked back steadily at her with a little uneasiness obvious in his eyes. It cleared when she put one hand on his shoulder. With her other, she kept hold of Keith’s hand.

  Brody grasped her waist and seemed to consider her. “Are you going to kiss me the same way you kissed him?”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  He gave her a sweet grin. “I don’t. Why’d you chose him first and make me wait?”

  “I thought you’d have more patience.”

  He was closer now, lips just a breath away. “I suppose that’s fair,” he said. “But don’t make a habit of it.” He kissed her then, like his patience was at an end. Like he’d missed her very much. Like he was very glad she’d come back to…them.

  She was glad, too, happy in her heart. The habit she would try to develop would be one of making sure her men knew she loved them, every day, so they didn’t have to worry about it.

  They all laughed when Brody finally was done with the kiss, their laughter an expression of pleasure and relief. Then, for a sweet, long moment, they stood huddled together, her forehead resting against both theirs. Finally, Keith patted her ass, turned, and brought her along. “I’m happy,” he said cheerily.

  Arm in arm, Jubilee tucked in the middle, they strode through the terminal and out to the parking lot. They stopped at the side of a big, shiny new vehicle. Brody took her bag and tossed it in the back while Keith helped her into the front seat—and scooted her to the middle before he climbed in beside her.

  When Brody settled behind the wheel, she looked up at him. “A Ram truck?” She was pretty sure she’d last seen him in an entirely impractical but eminently pricey sports car.

  “Hey,” he said, while he fired it up and turned on seat warmers. “I’m from Texas, which, in itself, is ’nuff said. Plus, my girl’s got a farm.” He leaned in for a quick kiss. “And, there’s this,” he pointed out as he put his hand on her left knee. Keith’s hand was already on her right one. “Bench seat, girl in the middle, what could be better than that?”

  “Nothin’,” Keith answered for her. He put his gloved hand on her cheek, turned her, and took her lips. “This is what you want? Both of us?”

  She put her hand over Brody’s on her knee, and his fingers twined immediately with hers. “Yes,” she said. “If it’s what you want. Both of you.”

>   “It is,” Keith said, his fingers still touching her face.

  Brody’s fingers squeezed and she turned to face him. “Exactly,” he said. “It’s exactly what I want.”

  They shared a soft smile, and Jubilee’s heart fluttered with happiness. Then she settled deeper into her jacket against the cold.

  “What convinced you?” Keith asked.

  “I’ll tell you,” she answered. “But—” She looked out the window and saw they were already off the highway. “—where are we going?”

  “To my place,” Keith said. “We’re going to crash Henry’s New Year’s Eve party.”

  “Well, not exactly crash it,” Brody told her. “We’ve gone for every year for almost a decade. We consider it a sort of standing invitation.”

  “You mean he didn’t invite you this year.”

  Keith shrugged like it was a minor point. “No doubt it slipped his mind.”

  “And I haven’t been invited, standing or no.”

  “You’re my plus-one,” Brody said.

  “No, she’s not. She’s mine,” Keith argued.

  Brody looked across her to Keith. “I got the dress.”

  “What dr—oh.” Jubilee didn’t need their help any longer, though both men spoke together.

  “The size eight.”

  She sighed a little, though it was mostly happily. “You guys.”

  “You’re gonna look great,” Keith told her.

  * * * *

  She did look great, Brody thought, a few hours later. Spectacular.

  They’d gone to Keith’s place straight from the airport. Brody was staying there, which was not the ordinary deal.

  For a fact, he didn’t know if the three of them would be welcome at Henry’s party. For every one of the last several years, Brody had been staying at Henry’s place while all the prep was going on, because that was where he always stayed when he was in Rochester, so his presence for the party was a matter of course.