You, Me & Her

by Tanya Chris

  “Who am I to judge what’s weird? What people do in their bedroom—”

  “—and sometimes the living room a little.”

  “—and living room is their own business. As long as it doesn’t involve me.”

  “Of course not.” I gestured for Joshua to precede me through the door and up the stairs to my apartment, brushing back the thought that Amanda might just involve him one of these days and that it would be totally hot when she did.

  ~~~

  After Derek’s deliciously healthy dinner, he served us some thoroughly non-healthy éclairs in the living room.

  “You made these?” Joshua asked after the first mouthful.

  “No, those I bought. I’ve never learned to do desserts.”

  “Me either. Maybe just as well neither of us did. I like Nate’s body the way it is.” He winked at me. I wasn’t bothering with my fork. The éclair went down faster if you ate it like a hot dog.

  “You certainly don’t have to worry about him making his own food,” Derek joked.

  “Don’t listen to him, Nate,” Amanda drawled. “Some of us were born to be spoiled.”

  “And some of us don’t mind doing a little spoiling.” Joshua put his empty plate down on top of mine and pulled me gently into his side. I let my head fall into the hollow of his curving arm and smiled up at him..

  “Is that what’s next, Nate? Throw a little BDSM into the mix?” Lissie added her empty plate to the pile.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Polyamorous, bisexual. You can be anything you label yourself as, right?”

  “You’re putting people in boxes again, Lissie. You didn’t like being in the box, remember?”

  “I guess I have a hard time understanding. What happened that made you like this?”

  “Like this?” I wrapped one hand through Joshua’s and used the other to point at him. “That happened.”

  “So it’s only Joshua?” Amanda asked. “No other guys for you.”

  “We’ll see. For now, it’s Joshua.”

  “That doesn’t bother you?” she asked, moving her focus to Joshua’s face. “When I thought Derek was only submissive because I was, like, making him submissive, I didn’t like it.”

  “Why not? If I’m the only guy in the world Nate has the hots for, then too bad for the rest of them.”

  “Well, for one thing, I got grief for it. Some people had the idea that I was taking advantage of him.” Amanda looked crossly at Lissie.

  “Because you wanted to hit him!” Lissie protested. “When you hit someone who doesn’t like to be hit, that’s abuse.”

  “That’s submission,” Derek corrected. “Liking to be hit is masochism. Sometimes I wish I didn’t like it. It would mean more that I let her do it anyway.”

  Amanda didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she said “puppy” very quietly, just for Derek, and leaned down and kissed him.

  Joshua cleared his throat. “Well,” he said, turning his eyes away from the two of them, “I’m not hitting Nate, only giving him blowjobs, so I guess I’m taking advantage of the fact that he’s nonstop horny.”

  I pulled his head down to mine, because it was more than horniness and I wanted to say so, but for right now with this audience, the joke carried.

  “OK,” Lissie said with an air of finality, “you-all are very adorable together—I guess I should have brought Alex with me—but that wasn’t what I was asking.”

  “Why didn’t you bring Alex? I told you he was invited.” Derek stood up and collected some of our empties.

  Lissie shrugged. “He’s still not crazy about the fact that I hang out with you two, plus all this sexual ... weirdness. He thinks you’re a bad influence.”

  “Alex is trying to put you back in the box,” I warned her. Alex worried me more than any toy Amanda might take to Derek’s back. Amanda made Derek bigger, not smaller.

  “He doesn’t mean it that way, and I don’t let him. I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “What happens after you have the baby though? Are you going to imprison yourself in the motherhood box?” I could easily envision her doing that. The Lissie—Melissa—who’d yearned for a baby might overwhelm the Lissie I’d watched be born.

  “I won’t let that happen. I get it now. If I’m not self-fulfilled, I get boring and then Alex gets bored, and then Emma ends up with divorced parents, so no matter how much I love Alex and Emma, I have to think of Lissie too.”

  “Emma?” Derek asked, coming back into the living room with a fresh round. “She has a name?”

  “Yeah, I think so. Trying it out.”

  “It’s perfect.” He dropped off a bottle of water in front of Lissie and leaned in for a hug. She hugged him back, then pushed him away.

  “Stop distracting me. What I was trying to ask Nate about wasn’t homosexuality. I get that’s not a choice. I was trying to ask why he doesn’t want to find his soulmate—male, female, whatever. Did some girl cheat on you in high school and break your heart? Or ... or ... I don’t know what.

  “Sure,” Amanda said. “It’s like do I want to hit Derek because I hate men?”

  “Or do I want her to hit me because I secretly hate myself?”

  “Or because you have an unresolved trauma in your past and it’s the only way to scourge yourself of the memory so you can sleep at night,” Amanda suggested with deeply melodramatic intonation.

  “And you want to hit me because you have Daddy issues.”

  “I do have Daddy issues,” Amanda admitted, “but that’s not why I want to hit you.”

  “Then why?” Lissie persisted.

  “We were born this way,” Joshua said. “Homosexuality, bisexuality, BDSM, polyamory. None of it is chosen.”

  “Oh, come on. Polyamory isn’t born into people. Little children aren’t thinking ‘I want to grow up and have two wives.’”

  “You could say the same thing about being homosexual or heterosexual,” Joshua said. “Little children aren’t thinking about anyone in a sexual way. But you get older and it’s there—the knowledge—long before the act.”

  “And even when it’s not,” Derek said, “it’s not like a train accidentally switching onto the wrong track and being forced to travel in the wrong direction. It’s more like seeing yourself in a mirror for the first time and knowing—yeah, that’s me.”

  “I didn’t have anything like that.”

  “Sure you did,” Joshua said. “Do you remember noticing boys for the first time as something other than unkempt nuisances? Maybe some particular boy who aroused some particular thoughts?”

  “That, sure, but—”

  “But it was easy for you, that’s all. You had the same moments we did. You just didn’t have to fight them or hide them. When I noticed boys for the first time, I didn’t whisper about it with my best friend in front of our lockers.”

  “And when I noticed boys for the first time,” Amanda said, “I thought I was a psychopath. Who has thoughts like that about someone she likes?”

  “And what happened with you, Nate?” Lissie was obviously feeling the strain of a roomful of her friends arguing against her. “I just want to understand how you figured out that monogamy couldn’t work for you. Like, were you having trouble staying faithful and you decided it would be easier not to try?”

  “No, it wasn’t like that. I’ve never tried to be faithful. I’ve told you that before.”

  “Then how do you know, if you’ve never even tried?”

  I wanted to tell her that she wasn’t listening, that I knew the same way she knew she was monogamous and heterosexual, but I took pity on her because I loved her.

  “When I was a teenager, I noticed everything female: the girls in my class, the teachers, my friend’s mothers, random women on the streets. And I don’t just mean the ones everyone noticed, the hot ones. My French teacher wasn’t hot at all, but she had this voice that crawled under my skin. Everything in French was automatically dirty because I’d hear her voice sa
ying it. I’d jerk off to my homework tapes, then after I’d be embarrassed, like imagine if anyone knew I was jerking off to Madame Strickley, and I’d think: I’m so desperate I’ll take anything, anyone. I was, too. Desperate.”

  “Who isn’t in high school?” Joshua joked.

  “Exactly. I didn’t think it meant anything except that I was horny and couldn’t get laid. Then, finally I got laid.” I hesitated, then remembered that Irene had never tried to hide anything between us. “An older woman, someone my sister worked with. Her name’s Irene.”

  “She was your first? That woman you still—” Lissie broke off, her eyes shifting to Joshua uncertainly.

  “Yes, we do still.” I’d never mentioned Irene to Joshua specifically but I had no worries that he’d mind her.

  “You were eighteen when you lost your virginity,” Derek said. “That means you’ve been with her nine years.”

  I nodded. There was a moment of quiet while everyone processed that piece of information.

  “I sort of feel bad for some of the things I’ve said about you,” Derek admitted. “Like that you’re not loyal.”

  “I can be loyal. I’m not ... faithful.”

  “If faithful means exclusive,” Joshua said, “which I don’t think it has to.”

  And that was why I loved him, not just because we shared an understanding of how love worked, but because he’d have defended me even if he didn’t share that understanding.

  “So you were having sex with Irene …” Lissie prompted.

  “Right. Sex with Irene. Very exciting. Like finally.”

  Joshua laughed. “I was a bit younger than eighteen but I had the same feeling. Finally.”

  “Guy or girl?”

  “Oh, girl. Guys were dangerous. That didn’t happen until college, so it was sort of the same feeling all over again: finally.”

  “Could Nate just tell the story,” Lissie interrupted.

  “OK, OK. Sex with Irene was great, but it didn’t stop me thinking about other women and the funny thing was it gave me some confidence, like if I could talk one woman into bed—OK, she pretty much talked me into bed, not that I needed to be persuaded, but I did need to have it explained to me, like really plainly, that that was what she wanted because that’s how lacking in confidence I was—but anyway, if I could have sex with one woman, however it came about, I could do it again.

  “I’d started hanging around Central Playhouse by then and acting gave me confidence, too. There was a woman, Angela. She’s not around anymore,” I clarified, catching the calculating look flit across Lissie’s face. “She was older, too, and the way she acted around me reminded me of Irene, so I figured it out myself.

  “One night after a show, after a drink or two I shouldn’t have had because I wasn’t of age, I kissed her. The next night I confessed it to Irene, very nervously. We’d never taken any vows, but I wasn’t sure what I’d do if she pitched a fit, because a bird in the hand is good, and I didn’t want to lose the bird in the hand, but I wanted the bird in the bush too, and the bird in the bush seemed willing.”

  “And the bird in the hand said it was OK, I take it,” Amanda said.

  “She laughed and said I was young and she didn’t expect anything from me except to show up and fuck her when I had the time. So I did. Irene and Angela both. I was getting all the sex a nineteen year old needs—”

  “Which is a lot of sex,” Joshua put in.

  “Which is a lot of sex,” I agreed, “but it never stopped me from noticing other women, the potential in them. It doesn’t ever have to come to anything—sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t—but I like that the possibility is there, that it could.”

  “But Irene and Angela were just flings,” Lissie said, “older women you were screwing around with, like me. Maybe with someone your own age you’d really fall in love. With Joshua, if you prefer men now. Or Sherry.”

  “Or Joshua and Sherry. Even so, I’d need the option of more.” I didn’t bother to explain that I loved Joshua and Sherry already, so no additional experiments needed to be run. “It’s got nothing to do with age anyhow. I loved you.”

  “No, you didn’t.”

  “I did. Stop ducking it.” I waited until she looked at me, something like fear shining in her eyes. “I wouldn’t have left you, Lissie. I never wanted to.”

  “I’m sorry.” She dropped her eyes back to the carpet.

  “It’s OK. You were right for me, but I wasn’t right for you. It happens.” I tried to keep my tone light. “It happens to me a lot, you know. People leave me. I’m just a waystation to them. Only Irene—” I stopped, the words choking in my throat. Even Irene came and went.

  “Because you don’t commit to them,” Lissie said, amping up the roar of self-pity in my head so that it nearly drowned her out.

  I’d always be alone because who I was wasn’t good enough to keep. But I couldn’t be anyone else. And Joshua and Sherry had each other and one day they’d—

  But right now Joshua was nuzzling into me, whispering “not going anywhere, sweet pea,” into my ear. I curled my body into his, letting myself be soothed by this man who seemed always to be defending me or soothing me or both.

  “Lay off him now, Lissie,” Amanda said in her commanding voice, the one that worked on more than just Derek.

  “I’m not trying to hurt him,” Lissie mumbled. “I just didn’t want him to shortchange himself. I want him to have everything I have.”

  “Want for him to have what he wants.”

  “And how is that going to work?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted from the safety of Joshua’s chest, “but I know how it doesn’t.” I reached a hand over to her. “Listen, it may be hard to believe this, but I didn’t realize how much I was hurting Deb. I was too caught up in how much she was hurting me. It felt like a game she was playing, like she was toying with me, taking what she wanted when she wanted it and enjoying the power of having me in her back pocket. It sounds ridiculous now, I know.”

  “No, I can see it.” Lissie squeezed my hand. “She has such confidence. It’s hard to believe everything isn’t going exactly the way she planned for it to go.”

  “Strong women,” I said, referring back to our earlier conversation. “Strong men, too.”

  Chapter 28

  Derek came back down the hallway, a backpack in his hand. “We’re going to go to Amanda’s and try to be very, very quiet so you guys can have some privacy. But just this once.”

  I knew they kept a tight lid on their kink around Hannah. She had a way of knowing things, and of letting people know she knew them.

  Even after they’d left, Lissie lingered while I cleared the pie plates into the kitchen, still standing there when I got back to the living room, not saying goodbye, not saying much of anything. Finally she sucked in a hard breath and spoke to Joshua.

  “Thanks for being there for Deb.”

  “That’s how it works. She’ll be there for me someday, her or someone like her.”

  Lissie nodded sharply, her eyes avoiding mine.

  “We’re good, right?” I couldn’t keep up with her moods.

  She threw herself into my arms. “I thought you were mad at me again. I’m sorry I keep opening my mouth.”

  “You’re a busybody and a hopeless square, but I love you anyway, OK?”

  “I love you, too.”

  When I shut the door behind her and Joshua and I were finally alone, shyness struck me, because he was right—we hadn’t had much time like this, only that first time when it had been a sudden, desperate leap forward. Since then, there’d always been Sherry acting as a buffer. Now I looked at him and saw him looking at me and couldn’t figure out how to close that two foot gap between us.

  “You didn’t give me the tour yet,” he said.

  There wasn’t much to tour. Aside from the living room, dining room, kitchen, and bathroom—all of which he’d had seen already—there was only my room and Derek’s. Since I doubted he was asking
to see Derek’s room, I led the way to my own, only a few steps down the hallway.

  Despite the fifteen minutes I’d spent scooping up laundry and pushing miscellaneous overflow into closets and drawers, my room telegraphed how little effort I put into keeping it clean or making it look nice. I’d bought the cheapest queen-sized mattress set I could find and brought my old dresser from home. The room featured a standard-issue overhead lighting fixture and industrial beige low-pile carpet. The only things that made the room mine, aside from the layer of dirty laundry that usually carpeted the floor, were the souvenirs from shows past.

  “Was this a costume?” Joshua fingered the sequined jockstrap hanging from a corner of the mirror over my dresser. “Or have you been really deep in the closet all these years?”

  “I played Gaz in Full Monty.”

  “Doesn’t that role require dancing?”

  “They worked around it. It’s not like he’s a professional stripper.”

  Joshua toed off his shoes and dropped onto the bed, bouncing onto his back, his arms tucked behind his head in an attitude of interested nonchalance. “Why don’t you show me your routine?”

  “Only if you sing me a song I can dance to.”

  He laughed. “The way I sing and the way you dance, we’re going to be a long way from sexy.” He worked his phone out of his jeans and poked at it until music spilled from it. Sherry’s voice, low and sultry.

  “Get naked for me. However you do it is good enough for me.”

  I took him at his word, unbuttoning my shirt without seductive intent, but Sherry’s voice and Joshua’s eyes worked on me and I started embellishing as I shrugged it off, adding a wink and a shoulder roll, playing the part of a man stripping for his lover and then becoming a man stripping for his lover. The jeans required a wriggle for removal and my cock bounced within my boxers.

  Joshua’s eyes went where I led them, enflaming everywhere they landed, prompting me to more blatantly seductive displays. When I was naked—the full monty—I crawled over him, a hand and knee on each side, and straddled him, grinding down on the hardness I found in his jeans.