by Liam Livings
I enlisted the help of Amy for a shopping trip to buy myself a new shirt. I had a job interview. “It’s a bank in the City. That’s all I’m saying,” I told Amy beforehand.
“Tell me more, I can’t wait to hear all about it,” she had screamed down the phone.
“No more to tell. I don’t want to jinx it.” And I really didn’t. I was terrified of getting too excited about it, only to fall flat on my face again. I was also worried about Kylie and her bare-minimum work ethic and how that would affect me, down here, living my life. But I hadn’t told Amy that.
In the Topman menswear section, I emerged from the changing rooms wearing a new shirt and suit.
“It looks perfect. I’d trust you with my money—if I had any.” She laughed.
“I don’t really need a new suit. I can wear the one I’ve already got. It was just a shirt I wanted.”
“Wear the suit you were fired in? How’s that going to make you feel? Have you worn it since that day?”
“‘No reason to.” I played with the tie Amy had picked for me. “I have no money. Literally nothing.”
“Like I said, I’d trust you with my money. I’ll pay for it. You can pay me back when you get the job.”
“Lending money to friends is a really great way to fall out. You do know that, don’t you?”
“I’m not lending you money. I’m paying for this, which will mean you get the job, and you can buy me something—a nice dress or shoes maybe—when you start.”
Admiring her logic and ingenuity, I agreed. As we left the shop, I said, “Thanks. Thanks for coming with me. Thanks for being there when I was slowly stewing in my own juices about nothing. Thanks.”
“Nothing you wouldn’t have done for me.” She looked up and down the high street. “Now where?”
“I was going to head home. I’ve got loads to prepare for the interview: a presentation to write, and reading about the bank and its portfolio of work. You don’t mind, do you?”
“Portfolio indeed. Not at all. I can shop for girly things without you tugging at my sleeve every two minutes wanting to leave.” She smiled. “Just answer me one thing.”
“I’ve told you before, I am not revealing who is a top and who’s a bottom. I do not want to talk to you about those sort of things. But just for the record, life’s rarely that simple, and so people aren’t generally one or the other. Isn’t variety the spice of life?”
“Oh yeah, I did mean to ask you that, again. But no, that wasn’t what I was thinking of now. Just tell me, are you happy?”
“Define ‘happy’?”
“You know what I mean. Don’t get all existential on me. Are you happy at this point in your life? Now?”
“I think I am as into Bobby as he’s into me. It was probably always there. I just didn’t see it. I couldn’t see it, with all the dread and worry swirling about all over the place. So yes, I am happy.”
“That’s all I wanted to know.” She hugged me. “Good luck. You go home and research the arse off their portfolio. Bye.”
And she was gone, disappeared into the crowd of shoppers along Oxford Street.
Chapter 22
One afternoon, on a weekday—I didn’t get the job, and Bobby had not gone back after a long client lunch—we lay on our backs, panting on the floor in front of the sofa, basking in our shared glory, when he asked if I remembered that weekend in Margate and had I thought about what he’d suggested?
“Us, having a threesome?” This again? I thought we’d ended that particular conversation in Margate. Evidently not.
“You know how much I love you, right?” He was still lying on his back with his arms above his head, revealing his armpits, which at that moment I wanted to dive into.
I sat up and stopped looking at him lying in front of me, for it was a distraction. The way we felt at that moment was also a major distraction. “Yes,” I replied.
“And it’s just sex, not love. It’s nothing to do with how we feel about each other. You know that, don’t you?”
Before, I had been all about the difference between sex and love. In fact, I could have taught an evening class about it, so well versed was I in the former and not the latter. I’d lost count of the number of times I’d slept with a man, to find him cuddling up to me the next morning, asking if I wanted to get coffee or check out some shops together.
Er, why? I’ve got friends for that, I’ve got Amy for that, in spades. I just wanted to come… and go, like the shampoo. What was there to hang about talking for?
So I would make my excuses. “It’s my friend—he’s just called. Something wrong with his brother. I’ve got to meet him at the hospital. Sorry. I’d have loved to. Maybe another time, yeah?” And I would be gone.
I was pretty well versed in the latter too now, actually. I would describe how I felt at that moment in my relationship with Bobby as love. He’d told me he loved me. I said the same. We weren’t at the “calling each other every day five times and ending each call with ‘I love you’” stage. Thank God, we were past that. That part I didn’t deal with so well. That part had made me want to run for the hills screaming and demanding some air and my life back. No, now we were in a comfortable stage, where we said it to each other at appropriate times—not every time we saw each other. When I found out I hadn’t got the job, I called, and he dropped everything, leaving his client lunch immediately, and came home with a box of luxury muffins from the little bakery in Soho we visited on Saturdays together. “There’s other banks,” he said. “Better luck next time,” he said. He even said that they were fools to miss out on me, which I knew was slightly bunging it on a bit, but it made me smile nevertheless, and that was exactly what I needed. So we were in love.
What I wasn’t too experienced with was mixing the two: being able to maintain the love bit while doing the just-sex bit with someone else. I knew plenty of men who could. Plenty of women, in fact, who could compartmentalise their lives so that one hour they were fucking their mistress-stroke-rent boy-stroke-fancy-man in an anonymous hotel, the next hour they were kissing their wife-stroke-husband-stroke-boyfriend at home and saying goodnight to the kids-stroke-dog-stroke-cat. Delete as appropriate. I’d heard combinations of them all.
“You don’t mind sharing me?” I asked nervously, really wanting to find out if I minded sharing him but not daring to ask. “’Cause you said you didn’t want anyone else with me here all the time.”
He had, I remembered it well. I had savoured those words at the time. I had basked in the wonderment of the two complete and utter players, who’d shagged their way through most of London and some other major UK cities, finding one another and not only getting on, but making it work, just one-on-one.
“I don’t think of it as sharing you.” He smiled. “Because I’m not losing you. I’m not having any less of you. You’re still here when I come home every night. You’re still here when I leave for work every morning….”
“I will get a job, I promise.”
“That wasn’t what I was getting at. The point I’m making is it’s still us, but just that time, it’s us… and someone else. You said you’ve had threesomes before.”
“I’ve had more than that as it goes, but that’s not for this conversation. I’ve not had a threesome with anyone I was likely to see again, never mind a boyfriend, a proper live-in, love-in boyfriend.”
“Neither have I, I’ll admit to that. I just want to try it with my first boyfriend. We can get someone from the Internet, keep it simple. If we do it and one of us doesn’t like it, we never need to do it again. What do you think?”
I had a whole truckload of doubts, niggling issues with there being no going back. Once that particular thing was done, there was no undoing it. The thing about sex is you can’t unfuck someone. Once you’ve fucked, you’ve fucked. It’s quite stubborn like that, sex. “A bit of something to spice things up,” I offered half-heartedly, before he said the thing I was dreading him saying, because once he said that, I knew there was no g
oing back.
Then he said, “Trust me.”
A relationship and fucking other people aren’t two things that mix well. A relationship, love, romance, and fucking a stranger don’t really go together, or do they? And because I trusted him, because I completely and utterly trusted him, I replied, “Great, let’s have a threesome.” I looked at him, still lying on his back with his armpits showing.
“Want to go again? One for the road?” He winked, and I noticed he was rising to the occasion already.
So I hopped on, and we had another one for the road. Because I knew it would all be fine, because I trusted him.
Chapter 23
The evening was set, the candles lit, and the incense burning. My stomach was churning like before another job interview. Only this time all I had to contend with was allowing a stranger into our flat and having sex with him, with my boyfriend.
If Bobby thinks this will work, perhaps it is a good idea and I’m just being a stick-in-the-mud. I don’t want the relationship to get boring for him.
I wasn’t fazed about the concept of a threesome. I knew all about the etiquette, not leaving anyone out, taking it in turns to give and to receive, being safe. I’d done it loads of times before—loads of times with people I wouldn’t have recognised in the street the next day. I just hadn’t done it with my boyfriend, because I’d only just landed on planet Boyfriend quite recently. Very recently, in relation to my overall sexual history and since coming out at fifteen. My first time was in an alley with some guy I met in a club, pressed against the wall as he pushed himself up into me, my body filling with a stabbing pain I first got used to, then started to like with every one of his thrusts, my hands resting on the wall in front of me as he banged behind me. That’s that over and done with. Now what? I’d thought as he finished.
Now I made myself a strong cocktail to steady my shaking hands. Bobby was in the bedroom, making sure we had all we were likely to need during the course of the evening.
He walked into the kitchen and kissed me. I smelt his soapy skin and the lime scent from his favourite eau de toilette. “You all right?”
I nodded, then took a sip of the cocktail. It burned my throat as I swallowed. I allowed my body to feel slightly limp, to relax into the mood of the evening rather than fight against it. “So who’s this guy you’ve found?” I’d left it all down to Bobby to sort out. I just wanted to flow through the evening as if I was on autopilot. I didn’t want anything to do with the selection of who would be our playmate for the night. Bobby knew what my type was, and I’d given him a list of noes and left him to it.
“Alex Clements, he’s called. Or that’s what his profile says anyway. He knows we’re together, and I told him the rules we discussed. He said he’s done couples before, and he likes it. Makes him feel like the meat in the sandwich.” Bobby smiled, finishing his drink and pouring himself another.
The doorbell rang and I jumped, spilling a bit of my drink on my sleeve.
“Calm down, will you.” He walked past me to the door. “Trust me, it’ll be fine.” He opened the door to a man in his mid to late twenties, similar age to us. He had short black hair cut into a little peak at the front. His eyes were very dark brown, looking almost black from a distance.
Alex walked in and removed his jacket, handing it to Bobby as they kissed cheeks. Alex’s right hand rested on Bobby’s bum and squeezed it slightly.
Part of me was turned on, and part of me was livid. I wasn’t sure which part to go with. I took a large glug of my cocktail, then started to busy myself with making another one.
Bobby introduced Alex and me to each other. I shook his hand, but he leant in and kissed my cheek, his stubble grazing mine as his hand squeezed my bum. So I hadn’t imagined it.
Bobby offered Alex a drink and started to make his choice of a Long Island Iced Tea. “Lots of ice, not much Coke,” Alex said. His accent was not northern, but not Home Counties either.
We all stood holding our drinks, the ice jingling in the glasses. The only noise was our occasional sipping and the traffic outside the flat.
Alex put his glass on the work surface, then walked to Bobby and started kissing him. I stood as they angrily chewed at one another’s faces. I was starting to feel turned on. I felt myself swelling. I stood, waiting for an invite to join them. Bobby came up for air and gestured for me to join them. I wanted to kiss Bobby first, so I did.
Alex laughed. “Don’t mind me. I’ll just sit here.” A tinge of Birmingham came through his accent. Very sexy—not. He sipped his drink and squeezed himself in his trousers. That was sexier, though….
I stopped kissing Bobby and looked at Alex’s face. I felt a hand on my bum, squeezing in a now familiar way. It was Alex’s hand. I watched as Alex and Bobby started kissing each other again, the hand still squeezing my bum. We stayed like that for what felt like an hour but was probably only a few minutes.
“Shall we jump in the shower?” asked Alex. “I’ve been on the Tube for ages, and I’m a bit whiffy, unless you like that?”
I shook my head and scrunched my nose up, both at his suggestion and his more obvious Birmingham accent on the like.
“Didn’t think so. Bobby, you coming?” Alex said.
Bobby nodded. “Good idea.” He turned to me. “Coming?” He took my hand and led us both into the bathroom.
We stood in the bathroom with the shower running in the background. Alex took Bobby’s T-shirt off, and then Bobby reciprocated. Alex was like a repeat of Bobby’s body: big, broad, with muscles and little bits of dark hair. It was like having a buy one, get one free for lovers. I took my own top off, feeling like a spare cook at a wedding. I watched as Bobby and Alex kissed each other more gently than before, their hands reaching down to undo each other’s flies so they could step out of their trousers together. Bobby gestured to me, and I walked forward. He undid my fly, and I stepped out of my trousers. He squeezed me through my underwear and smiled at me.
“Come on,” Alex said, pulling me towards the two of them. He turned to kiss me.
He felt very different from Bobby, and he tasted different. His tongue didn’t move the same way as Bobby’s did. It was sexy and strange at the same time. I felt hands on my underwear, reaching inside, grabbing hold of me. I knew they weren’t my boyfriend’s hands—they felt strange. They grabbed me in an unfamiliar way. A sexy, but unusual way.
I stepped out of my underwear as Alex stopped kissing me. I looked, and we all stood naked in the bathroom. I glanced quickly to their groins, the hairiness, their girth and length, the angle they pointed upwards. I compared Alex’s to Bobby’s and was surprised to notice that Alex’s cock appeared a bit larger, certainly more curved. I looked down at myself, pointing upwards. We all laughed at the same time, a shared nervous, ridiculous laugh as the steam filled the bathroom.
I remembered seeing Sky in the mirror, then blocked that thought. I’ll concentrate on now, on the here and now, and it’ll be fine. Trust me, Bobby had said, hadn’t he?
Alex got in the shower first, then reached out of the cubicle and pulled my boyfriend in—not by his arm. I stared at the two of them in the shower, covering each other’s bodies with shower gel as it lathered in the hot water dripping over their bodies. Standing next to each other, they were a pretty impressive pair. Their bodies weren’t too dissimilar, though the hair on their chests lay differently in the water. But one of them hadn’t lived with me for the past few months, one of them hadn’t cheered me up when I hadn’t got the job, one of them hadn’t…. I shook the comparison from my head and instead enjoyed the view in front of me. Two well-proportioned men soaping each other up in my shower. It had been a while since that was the case, and I intended to make the most of it.
I jumped in between them, rubbing myself against them, enjoying the different feeling of their two bodies against my skin. We kissed and nibbled at one another in the shower for a while. I started to enjoy myself as I felt Bobby’s cock pressing against my bum as I had Alex’s cock i
n my mouth—yes, he was bigger—while they kissed one another above my head. This I could get used to. This was what fun I remembered from the threesomes I had before. I wanted Bobby to fill me—to feel him filling me at this moment. Then I would be complete. From what I could remember, this was the nirvana of threesomes. This was what everyone raved about after a good threesome, and I was feeling it.
The water stopped above my head. “Come on,” Bobby said. “Let’s go somewhere more comfortable.”
Alex pulled away, and I watched as they ran to the bedroom together, flicking each other’s bums with short slaps until they were out of sight and I could only hear them laughing and the bed creaking with their weight.
Hearing them laughing in the room without me, seeing them playing with each other on the way to the bedroom, I suddenly felt surplus to the threesome. Spare cook at a wedding. Spare cock at a threesome, more like. No, that’s not the case. I’m part of the fun too.
I stood, stretching my back, then walked to the bedroom, to our bedroom, and saw they’d already got stuck into the action: they lay head to toe, sucking on each other in time, Alex was on top of Bobby, his bum thrusting gently with Bobby’s head.
I sat on the bed and started to play with myself, enjoying the sensation of seeing a real life sex show in front of my eyes. I propped myself against the headboard and enjoyed the show.
After a while, the novelty of the live sex show had worn off, and now I felt pretty left out of proceedings. I nuzzled my way between them and pushed Alex over, so they were lying on their sides, still joined. I started to kiss Bobby’s body; I knew every inch of it like my own. I moved down from his chest, across his nipples, down to his belly button, where I met Alex, busying himself giving my boyfriend pleasure. “My turn,” I said, easing Alex off and taking my position.
There I felt secure, safe, familiar, doing what I knew I could do well. We carried on like this for a while, alternative positions, keeping the etiquette and remembering the rules Bobby had told Alex. Coming up for air from seeing to Alex’s cock—different from Bobby’s, but enjoyable all the same—I said, “Anyone want some water? I’m thirsty.”
