Caught in the Middle

by Kira Barker

  Looking out over the crowd milling around, Simon’s attention latched on to something behind my back, and he wasn’t one bit apologetic when he excused himself.

  “There’s someone I need to talk to. You’re staying a while longer, right?” He waited for my confounded nod, then leaned close enough that when he went on, his breath fanned across my cheek. “And, just so you know, he’s not the only one.”

  Then he left me standing there, staring into space with my glass of tequila, wondering what I could possibly have eaten that would give me hallucinations like that. And yes, I was definitely staying a little longer.

  Chapter 3

  The party wound down around one in the morning, way too soon for some of the hipsters, but to me it felt like a small eternity. Maybe because I’d spent the hours in between trying my hardest to sober up, a mission that failed horribly and just left me feeling slightly nauseated from the greasy pizza and gallons of water I’d decimated. Maybe it was because I’d done a good job avoiding both Jack and Simon, which left me without anyone interesting to talk to. That gave me time aplenty to mull over what Simon had said—and clearly hadn’t—leaving me horny, confused, but also convinced that this was all going to turn out to be a huge misunderstanding.

  Normally I could take being ridiculed by the guys, or mostly Jack, but this cut a little too close to home for my comfort.

  Consequently, I felt ready for war by the time the last guests were more or less evicted and the guys returned to where I had taken up a defensive position in the middle of the couch.

  My wank fantasies were one thing, but if Simon had actually meant what I thought he had, we were heading into unfamiliar, possibly dangerous territory. The three of us—four, if I included Kara—had been good friends for a long time, and as much as my sex-starved body was clamoring for release, I couldn’t help but feel a certain level of trepidation rise inside of me. With all the stupid things I’d done in my life, I’d always known that none of them could in any way negatively influence our friendship. Would adding sex to the equation change things now?

  It was probably unfair, but my worries regarding Simon were much less pronounced than concerning Jack. I’d been friends with Simon for over a decade now, and while both of us had changed since starting college, our friendship had always been on a mostly mature level.

  Thinking back, it was only too easy to still remember the slightly awkward if terribly blunt boy he’d been when he got assigned as Jack’s new roommate mid-term of our first semester in college. Of course, back then his accent and the words he used had made him seem like an adult to me, so much so that I couldn’t help but develop somewhat of a crush on him. In all fairness, it had always been more of an intellectual attraction than me lusting for the man-child he’d actually been. The feeling had certainly not been mutual, and it had taken a while for him to warm up to me, but once we got over our rocky start, things had been great. Not behaving like any of the scores of girls who kept flirting with Jack had likely helped a lot.

  I’d never allowed myself to develop that tiny crush I’d had on Simon into more, although I doubt I would have rejected his advances had there been any in the past. Even when he’d fleshed out and physically became the man he was now, things hadn’t really changed. Come to think of it, being Jack’s roommate for forever had automatically enveloped him in the pseudo platonic bubble that had surrounded Jack and me since we’d become aware of the fact that, technically, we could have been doing other things together than playing tag and ratting each other out to our parents. Things might have gotten awkward quickly if we’d started something that later went up in flames, so avoiding that issue altogether had always been my prerogative. Simon was my friend, usually hilarious to be around, and while I might on some level still lust after him, I’d never seriously considered him a viable option to physically get off with.

  Jack was an entirely different matter.

  Maybe it was because I still vividly remembered him as the grinning boy from next door, but if I was honest, my mind automatically blocked any serious sexual thoughts about Jack, even though I was aware that he was a very sexual being. Jack made sure that no one who spent more than a day or two in his vicinity was left unaware of that, and while I liked to pretend to be immune to his charm, things had been a lot more complicated for longer than I liked to admit. While I didn’t see it as my right to judge his preferences or actions, I seldom approved of them, and it was kind of hard not to let that affect me more often than not. Someone who hadn’t known us for a long time might wonder about the dynamics between us, and thinking about it now made it hard for me to put how I felt about Jack into words.

  All his faults aside, he had been there for me when my mom died. He was the only one who joined me in my mission to make life a living hell for my stepmom when my father had finally moved on and fallen in love with another woman. Heck, I even still had the letter he’d written where he’d sworn to avenge my death if she did turn out to be the proverbial evil stepmother. He’d been there to comfort me when I felt pretty much exiled from home when my little sister had been born, and he was likely the only one in the world who knew that, all animosities aside, I loved Jenny more than anything, even if we only shared half our DNA and I had a good sixteen years on her.

  He’d always had my back, and it was impossible not to instantly forgive him minor nuisances like his bad taste in tacky girls. Jack was Jack, and on more levels than one I was happy that he wasn’t really a commitment kind of guy, because this way there was no one else around who could lay claim to “my” Jack.

  Growing up together, both with only one parent left—me due to my mom’s death, his father gone after the divorce—in a place and time where most families were still of the nuclear kind and anything else was considered abnormal had created a bond between us that so far no one had ever managed to cut, or even strain.

  It had always been like that, and I guess I’d expected things to go on like this forever, stupid as that might sound. Thinking back over the past ten years, there had been a few instances that had made me think, a few remarks exchanged that could have been loaded rather than innocent, but I’d never let myself read too much into them.

  Until now.

  And as I was already trying to have some kind of honest, if hopefully silent, conversation with myself, I had to admit that, all reasons for seeing the guys as just friends aside, I couldn’t think of anyone I knew I’d rather get intimate with than Jack and Simon.

  The fact that Jack looked relieved that the bimbos were gone was telling, or so I tried to convince myself, then tried even harder to banish that newfound conviction from my mind. So what? He’d kicked out three very blonde, very perky potential bed bunnies—that didn’t have to mean anything. Yet more than five minutes had passed since the last feminine trill had been cut off by the closing door, giving the guys plenty of time to talk between them, if they hadn’t done so beforehand. It certainly didn’t take that long to load the dishwasher.

  Jack paused on the invisible threshold between the kitchen and living room, then came over to sag down onto the couch to my left, his customary place when I was, as usual, hogging the corner section. He seemed slightly strung out, but that could have been entirely my misconception. He offered me the fresh bottle of beer in his hand, then chugged down half of it when I declined. Simon’s eyes seemed to linger on me a little longer than usual as he sat down on the remaining part of the couch to my right, but then I had to admit that I usually didn’t pay much attention to how much he looked at me in general.

  I was obviously overanalyzing everything, and that was very soon going to drive me insane! And like that, potentially being laughed at for my silly ideas wasn’t that bad an outcome anymore.

  “So,” Jack started, drawing the word out overly long while his eyes flitted from me to Simon and back again. “Exactly why are you two acting like someone put itching powder into your unmentionables?”

  I hadn’t even noticed that I’d started fidget
ing and promptly forced my fingers to stop. Simon gave Jack a deadpan stare in return that communicated plainly that he didn’t think he had been acting differently, but that made me feel a little better about my paranoia.

  “No particular reason,” I tried to deflect, but it came out too fast.

  Jack’s brows drew together, but when I wasn’t volunteering any more information, he turned to Simon.

  “What the fuck did you say to her?”

  I hadn’t thought Simon capable of a comical, “who, me?” face, but he pulled it off rather nicely. When both of us kept staring at him, he dropped it, donning a wry smile instead.

  “Erin was a little angry when you ran off that guy Barry.”

  “That’s it?” Jack asked, then took a swig of beer, likely to hide a grin that might have incurred my wrath under different circumstances. What could I say? It was known to happen. Often.

  “Pretty much,” Simon replied, and shrugged. “I might have also explained that you likely did it because you want to bone her, and I thought I should include that I’m not opposed to having sex with her, either, mostly for full disclosure’s sake.”

  How he managed to keep a straight face saying that, I had no idea, but Jack did a spit-take with his beer that ended in an impressive coughing fit.

  “Dude, you have to warn me when you talk shit like that!” he got out once his airways had cleared up again.

  I couldn’t help but laugh at him, but the way he looked at me then, partly cautious, partly relieved, shut me up quickly.

  “Why? It’s nothing that we haven’t talked about before,” Simon pointed out.

  Now that caught my attention, and the somewhat guilty look on Jack’s face was easier to latch on to than Simon’s smugness.

  “Hey, wait… what business do you two idiots have talking about screwing me?”

  The guys shared one of those typically male looks that on a good day would have driven me insane, and now was downright infuriating.

  “Do I really have to spell that out?” Simon asked, the way he focused on me somewhat unnerving.

  My first impulse was to fly into a rage, but I cut down on it. It was the easy way out to accuse them of making fun of me, then storm off before anyone got a chance to get another word in edgewise, but that wasn’t really my thing. Besides, if he was serious, that wasn’t a door I wanted to slam shut quite yet, at least not before I managed to weasel a few more details out of them.

  “I think she’s going to hit you if you don’t,” Jack interjected our staring match, now fully recovered from his untimely beer inhalation.

  “Could be worse,” Simon replied, and I somehow got the sense that he said a lot more with it than I could glean from his words. A sidelong glance at Jack revealed that indeed, there was some inside joking going on, and I really didn’t like being kept in the dark.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Settling more firmly back into the sofa cushions, I crossed my arms over my chest, not giving a shit whether that made me look defensive or not.

  “Rough sex can be fun. Foreplay, too,” Simon informed me succinctly, making Jack cough again.

  I really didn’t know what to make of Simon’s statement, and it was so much easier to focus on Jack’s inability to breathe like a normal human being right now.

  “You know, you maybe should get that checked if you repeatedly choke on something.”

  “You’re looking at the wrong guy here,” he got out between one fit and the next, and ended up with what I thought was laughter now. Simon and I shared a look, but again I got the sense that I only got half of what that might have meant.

  “You still haven’t answered my question,” I huffed once Jack had quieted down.

  Simon chose to answer me.

  “Which one—why we talk about having sex with you, or why we want to have sex with you?”

  I could feel color creep into my face, and suddenly wished for my still-unfinished glass of tequila.

  “Maybe you could start with why you always say ‘we.’”

  His shrug was nothing if not nonchalant.

  “We, because obviously we are both interested in having sex with you, and because it wouldn’t be our first threesome, if you were up for that.”

  Who needs sanity, anyway? Completely overrated, if you asked me right then.

  I couldn’t help but stare at him for several seconds, although I tried to force my brain into jump-starting again, or at least to stop sinking deeper into wank fantasy territory. Simon held my gaze calmly, although his smile got a little more conceited with every moment that passed.

  “So that’s a thing you do,” I hedged, kind of proud that my voice remained somewhat steady.

  Now that smile dipped into darker registers that, incidentally, did terrible things to my clarity of thought.

  “Among other things, yes.”

  I opened my mouth to inquire what that was supposed to mean, but because that question hadn’t gotten me anywhere the last time I’d posed it, I swallowed it instead. It took a lot more conviction than it should have to tear my eyes from Simon’s and look over to Jack. In the meantime, he’d won the battle against the elements and had almost finished his beer, looking very comfy and at home with his feet propped up on the couch table. When he saw me looking, he flashed me a typical Jack grin, bright and kind of leery.

  “Don’t even think about saying that’s so much of a surprise.”

  “With you? No. You?” I turned back to Simon, a light frown creeping onto my forehead as I considered. “I honestly haven’t given that much thought about who or what you do, but I consider myself open-minded enough to say with conviction that I don’t give a fuck about it.”

  I knew that my words held a challenge as soon as Simon’s smile widened into a grin, and I didn’t need Jack’s muttered “Oh, here we go,” to realize that my view of one of my oldest friends would likely change any second now.

  In typical Simon fashion, he was completely unperturbed by my claim, and there wasn’t even a hint of anything but ease about him as he replied.

  “I sometimes have sex with men, too, and not in a ‘it’s just a phase’ fashion. I do consider myself bi. And what might concern you more, considering that Jack has so far been a firm believer in loving just the ladies, is that I’m into BDSM. Mostly the ‘S’ and ‘M’ parts of the acronym, but it’s a wide playing field, and I’ve spent my time rolling around in the various corners. While I’m not opposed to switching things up sometimes, I’m most at home being on the controlling end of business, if you get what I mean.”

  “I think I do.”

  And I think my ovaries just exploded.

  I had to admit, there was a flicker of unease that crept up my spine at listening to him explain, but it was entwined with a hefty dose of fascination. For one thing, as I’d said, it wasn’t my business what he did in his free time, and I really couldn’t care less when it didn’t concern me, but considering that he’d only minutes before stressed again that his sex life might eventually, if I wanted to, bump uglies with my sex life, it was something I should maybe spend a little time considering. The problem was that right now my brain was in no condition to do any analytical thinking at all.

  “Good,” Simon replied, somewhat belatedly. My silence probably spoke volumes, but I honestly didn’t know what to say, and it was incredibly hard to even want to look away from him right now.

  “If you two don’t need me anymore, I’ll go catch some shut-eye,” I heard Jack say from somewhere to my side, and the irritation his amused tone brought up in me finally broke the spell.

  “What do you mean? I don’t think this conversation is over yet,” I pointed out, only to get another one of those infuriating grins from him.

  “No? So you’re just drooling all over him, now that you know he’s a kinky bastard, on principle?”

  “I’m not drooling!”

  At least I hoped that I wasn’t. Checking now was out of the question.

  “
So you say,” Jack unhelpfully supplied but settled back into his seat.

  “I’m not,” I repeated, then groaned. “Drooling, I mean. I have a little more self-control than that.” Which was a lie, but a white one.

  “Yeah, I can see that,” Jack continued, but reined himself in when Simon shot him a warning glance. Interesting.

  “Okay, I admit, Simon might just have given me some extra material for my wank fantasies, but look at my life right now. I simply can’t add anything that has even the potential to add stress or complication to it.”

  “And that’s exactly why you need to get laid,” Jack retorted. I was a little surprised that he didn’t pick up on that tidbit that had slipped by my inner filter, but I was grateful for that.

  “You think?”

  “And he’s not the only one who thinks so,” Simon added, which earned him a sharp look from me. “What? It’s true. You’re completely overworked, and you just admitted that you’re stressed out and don’t appear to have any way of successfully relieving all that tension. Why does uncomplicated, no-strings-attached sex sound so bad to you?”

  “It doesn’t, or else I wouldn’t be here anymore,” I pointed out.

  Simon looked over to Jack as if he were seeking confirmation, and when Jack shrugged, he turned back to me.

  “Can I take the fact that you just kept Jack from running off as a sign that you are, indeed, up for a threesome with us?”

  “Right now?” I meant that more as a joke, but particularly the lower half of my body was much in favor of the idea.

  “Once you’ve sobered up and slept enough not to doze off in the middle,” Simon proposed.

  “I doubt that will happen,” Jack offered cheekily, but shut up when Simon and I both glared at him.

  “Sounds good,” I agreed, my voice weirdly thick. On so many levels, I still hadn’t quite caught up to the fact that this was really happening.

  “When do you have to work tomorrow?” That I was working weekends seemed to be a given, but then that wasn’t much of a surprise to me.