Misadventures in a Threesome

by Elizabeth Hayley

  Sighing, Wild made his way back toward the front of the gym, silently chastising himself for losing his cool. Something he’d been doing a lot lately. But he hadn’t punched anything yet, so it could be worse. Because that was what Wild wanted to do. He wanted to hit something. Smash it to bits with his bare hands until it lay crumbled at his feet—a jumbled mass that used to be whole but now couldn’t be repaired.

  The image was almost poetic in its symbolism.

  As Wild approached the front desk, he noticed Jaz was sitting there talking with Yohanna, so he veered off and made his way to the office. It didn’t escape his notice that he was being a fucking coward, but he didn’t particularly care either. This was why Wild hated doing long-term relationships. The fallout was always messy as fuck—confrontational and depressing. And while Wild would go toe-to-toe with anyone if the need arose, emotional confrontations were a whole other animal. An animal Wild avoided as if it were a rabid raccoon.

  He hurried into the office, stopping short when he saw Mad inside. He took a deep breath and made his way to his desk and sat down. It wasn’t that he and Mad were avoiding one another exactly—they lived together, for Christ’s sake—but they’d definitely been giving each other space. And it was weird and awkward, and Wild hated it but didn’t know how to bridge the Jaz-sized gap between them. He began shuffling papers around on his desk in an attempt to look like he had a purpose for being there, when a knock on the door sounded behind him.

  Slightly startled, Wild spun his chair around quickly and caught sight of Jaz standing in the doorway. He glanced over at Mad, seeing that he was likewise looking at Jaz, papers hanging in his hands as he stared.

  “Can I come in?” she asked, and the two of them nodded like morons. Jaz stepped farther into the room but didn’t move to close the door.

  It was the first time the three of them had been alone, and the air was thick with tension. Wild felt as if his skin was vibrating, like a wild bird that lived in his veins was trying to escape this awkward-as-fuck situation by pecking holes in his skin.

  “What’s up?” Mad asked, his voice gravelly. He coughed to clear his throat but didn’t say anything more.

  Wild saw Jaz’s chest rise and fall with a deep breath before she spoke. “I was going to head home a few days earlier than initially planned. Thought my mom might appreciate the help.”

  Thoughts raged through Wild’s head. Thoughts about all of the unspoken things she could be saying. She’d called it home. Wasn’t this her home? Was she going back early to look for a new job? Would she decide not to come back? Could this really be it? The last time he saw her? Words like stay, please, fix, chance, try, better, please, stay whirled through his brain so quickly he was dizzy with them. They wanted to shoot out of his mouth, each one needing only a voice to become a truth that would settle him. But each one died in his throat before they could ever be uttered.

  Instead, “You’ll let us know, right? If you’re not planning on returning?” were the words he went with, and as soon as they were out, Wild knew every one of them was wrong. Each of them only served to further crack what was already broken. He saw it in the tic in her jaw, the narrowing if her eyes, the set of her shoulders.

  “Why wouldn’t I return?” she asked, her voice cold and so un-Jaz-like, Wild felt the loss of her dig deeper into his marrow.

  Wild shrugged. Shrugged like he had no stake in this game. Was he becoming a pod person? It was as if the connection between the physical and metaphysical had frayed, leaving him appearing callous and aloof when inside he felt like a fucking Nicholas Sparks movie.

  “Just in case an opportunity presented itself when you were back home,” Maddox supplied, saving Wild from becoming an even bigger dick. “We’d just like to know. We wouldn’t blame you or anything.”

  Jaz snorted. “How kind of you.”

  “I didn’t mean… I just… We… We’d understand—”

  Mad was faltering, and it was Wild’s turn to play hero. “We’d understand if being here has lost its appeal,” he said softly.

  Jaz crossed her arms over her chest. “Is this a roundabout way of telling me it would be best if I found a new job?”

  She tried her best to mask it, but Wild, who’d spent months memorizing everything about her, saw the vulnerability in the question. It made him want to rip the cause of it apart—even though he was the cause.

  “No. We are definitely not telling you that,” Mad said, his voice firm.

  She looked over at Wild then, clearly waiting for him to speak as well.

  The words echoed through his mind again. Stay, please, fix, chance, try, better, please, stay. But again, he didn’t speak them. “If you think I want to teach yoga, you’re nuts.”

  She let her arms drop back to her sides, her posture slackening. Wild allowed himself the spark of pleasure he felt at putting her at ease.

  “Then I’ll be back. Tuesday morning, like we discussed.”

  “Sounds good,” Mad said with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes.

  “Have a good time,” Wild added.

  Jaz gave them a nod and a small smile that looked more sad than anything else. Then she turned and left the room, leaving the office feeling emptier than Wild had ever experienced.

  Both men stared after her a second before turning their gazes on each other. There was so much to be said, so much to confess, so much to share. The moment was heavy with opportunity, the words still there. Stay, please, fix, chance, try, better, please, stay.

  But instead of voicing anything, both men let the moment pass and turned back to their desks.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “You almost done?” Wild asked, appearing a few feet from where Maddox was lifting.

  “Don’t know. Why?” Mad jerked the barbell above his head before letting it drop to his feet. The sound of it hitting the rubber mats gave him a sort of satisfaction he couldn’t describe.

  “I was gonna head out and figured maybe you’d wanna grab a beer or something.”

  “What’s the occasion?” Mad asked, sliding some more weight onto one side of the barbell. Wild grabbed a weight and took care of the other side. “Thanks.”

  “Since when does there need to be an occasion for us to grab a beer?”

  Mad shrugged before approaching the bar and setting up for his next lift. He brought it up to his chest easily, but getting it over his head proved to be more of a problem. Dropping under the weight didn’t help, and he let the bar fall to the ground again, though this time, it was out of frustration. He brought an arm up to his head to wipe away some sweat. “That would’ve been a PR,” he said, aware that he hadn’t answered Wilder’s question. Though really, Wild should know the answer. Things had been even weirder since Jaz left. Like her absence in the gym caused her absence in their lives to become even more noticeable.

  “Try it again,” Wild said, leaning down to tighten the weights that had moved a bit with the fall.

  “I will,” Mad said, sounding more defensive than he meant to. But he wasn’t one to give up after trying one time. Wild knew that better than anyone. It was how they were able to keep a successful business going, why their bodies looked like they were flesh on top of granite, how they lived their lives. But there was a time when that hadn’t been true for Maddox—a time when he’d been ready to give up without a fight. He couldn’t stop the memory from pushing itself to the front of his brain, where it manifested with such vivid clarity he felt like he was reliving it.

  “What’d you lose?”

  Maddox jerked his head up, startled by a voice when he thought for sure his only company was a bird that had settled on part of a nearby truss. “What?” He turned toward the voice and saw a shaggy-haired blond kid staring back at him. He was skinnier than Maddox but looked to be in pretty good shape. Turning his head farther, Mad saw an old gray sedan parked on the small shoulder of the bridge.

  “You drop your phone or something?” the kid asked. And before Maddox could answer, he
continued. “I lost my phone a couple months ago on this bridge, actually. Was walking home at like two in the morning, and I took it out to text this girl I’d met earlier that night, and I dropped it.” He pointed at the ground and then laughed. “Hit the concrete and was totally fine because I got this badass case for it when I got it. I totally didn’t expect it to bounce, though.” He looked over the railing to the water below. “Anyway, there’s some fish down there that has a new iPhone now, and I’m stuck with this refurbished piece of shit because I can’t afford anything else.” Pulling the phone out of his pocket, he took a few steps closer to Maddox so he could show it to him.

  The fact that this kid had pulled over on his way to wherever he’d been headed, combined with him telling Mad about his lost phone, had Maddox unsure of what to do next. He couldn’t tell a stranger why he was on the bridge, and he didn’t want to be rude by telling him to go away. It occurred to him that he shouldn’t care if he sounded rude, because as soon as the kid left, Maddox would cease to exist. To anyone.

  The kid was still holding the phone out for Mad to look at, and because Mad couldn’t think of anything else to do, he focused his attention on the phone. “Damn. That really is a piece of shit. I thought refurbished ones still came in good condition.”

  “They do. I fucked this one up too.”

  The last thing Mad expected himself to do on this bridge was start laughing, but that was exactly what he found himself doing.

  The kid joined in before saying, “I was scared to put a case on this one because I didn’t want it bouncing away from me again. A cracked phone is better than no phone, I guess. But I don’t plan on drinking straight bourbon again anytime soon.”

  Maddox raised an eyebrow. “Straight bourbon, huh? Seems a little strong for a sixteen-year-old.”

  “Fuck you,” the kid joked. “I’m twenty.”

  Mad laughed again. “You shouldn’t even be drinking yet.”

  “Well, my parents didn’t name me Wilder for nothin’. What are you? One of those dudes who follows all the rules?”

  “Guess you could say that. They drilled that mentality into me pretty hard in the army.”

  “Oh wow. Army? That’s awesome.” Then Wilder extended a hand and his expression became more serious. “Thank you for your service. I have so much respect for people who join the military or become firefighters or police officers. There’s not a hero’s bone in my body.”

  Mad took his hand and shook it hard. “Thanks. Means a lot,” he said. “I’m Maddox, by the way.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Wild said before letting go of Mad’s hand. “So, Maddox, you gonna tell me what you lost so I can help you find it?”

  Mad thought for a few moments, looking into the eyes of a stranger who’d stopped to talk to him when Maddox thought he was completely alone in the world. “Nah. Doesn’t matter,” he said.

  It was the one and only time Maddox had almost quit on something, and that something had been life. Mad picked up the weight two more times before he was able to lock it over his head. When he brought his feet back up to a full standing position, he stood there for a few seconds, wanting to enjoy the feeling of beating his personal best. Then he dropped the bar and began taking the weights off it. Wild went to the other side and did the same.

  Maddox had wanted to ask Wild about that night for years, but he hadn’t ever brought it up, and neither had Wild. Mad wondered if there was a reason he’d never come clean about why he’d been on the bridge that night, since the men knew everything else about each other. But after what they shared with Jasmine—what they’d both lost—now seemed like as good a time as any. “Can I ask you something?” he said.

  Wild looked up from the barbell. “Of course. Anything,” he said, clearly sensing Mad’s earnestness.

  “Did you really lose your phone?”

  Wilder looked confused. “What?”

  “When you saw me on that bridge,” he clarified. “You said you’d dropped your phone over it when you were walking home one night. Did that really happen?”

  Wild’s expression seemed to sadden at the memory, and he took a few seconds to answer. “Nah. That phone I showed you was the same shitty one I’d had since I graduated high school.” A sound that was almost a laugh escaped from him, but he seemed to stifle it.

  Mad couldn’t help but give him a small smile too.

  “You didn’t lose anything that night, did you?” Wild asked.

  Maddox knew his voice would sound raspy, so he cleared his throat before speaking. He wanted to tell Wild that he’d been wrong when he said he didn’t have a hero’s bone in his body—that Wilder was more of a hero than he knew—but something told him that he didn’t need to speak the words for Wild to know what Mad thought of him. “No,” he said. “I almost did, though.”

  The two men put the rest of the equipment away before locking up the gym and heading over to the bar down the street. Wild wanted to know what had prompted Mad to ask about the night they’d met eight years ago, but Mad had seemingly let the conversation go, and Wild didn’t want to bring up old hurts. Not when they had fresh ones to deal with. So instead, Wild turned the conversation to himself. “So I’ve been thinking about what I said to Jaz.”

  “What’s that?” Mad asked.

  “About not being a guy you bring home to your parents and all that.”

  Mad nodded but said nothing.

  “I think it might be something I could ease into.”

  “I don’t know if you can ease into it. You either meet the parents or you don’t. There’s no middle ground.”

  “I don’t know,” Wild said, taking a seat at the bar. “It’s only her mom I’d have to meet, so that’s only like…half.”

  Maddox laughed and then ordered them beers when the bartender came over. “When did you get so good at math?”

  “Shut up,” Wild said, but he laughed too. “I’m serious, though. I think I could try to make this something serious. Ish,” he added. “I’ve been giving it a lot of thought.” Though Wilder knew “a lot of thought” for him didn’t necessarily equal a normal person’s cognitive efforts.

  Mad looked interested. “Oh yeah? What made you come to this conclusion?”

  Wild spun his beer and traced his finger over the condensation before answering. When he did, he fixed his stare on Maddox, hoping his friend would pick up on the gravity of his words, even though they were simple ones. “I miss her,” he said with a shrug. “She’s the first woman I’ve ever felt this way about.”

  Maddox held Wild’s eyes with his own until they both felt the need to look away. “I miss her too.”

  Both men were quiet for a while before Mad spoke again. “I’m just scared I can’t be what she needs. Like I can’t give the amount or the part of myself that she deserves.” He shook his head, his eyes directed down at the bar, and Wild suspected by the shakiness in Mad’s voice that he was holding back tears. “How can someone so fragile be someone’s rock?”

  “Not sure the ‘how’ matters. I just know it’s possible,” Wild said, placing his hand on Mad’s shoulder and applying pressure until Mad looked up at him. They’d been best friends for so long, they could both say so much with a look. But Wild knew the words were important too. Maybe the most important, because they spoke of a truth Mad should’ve already known but clearly didn’t. “And I know it’s possible because a rock is what you’ve always been for me.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Jaz stared out of the second-floor window of Jethro’s house, watching the hustle and bustle below as the event crew and caterers hustled around to finish setting up before guests arrived. Jaz had to admit, her mom had outdone herself this time, managing to land a rancher who seemed content to spend his obviously vast wealth on whatever would make her mother happy. And the odd thing was, it seemed as if her mom actually was happy. Her mom had always put on a good show during her other weddings, but watching her look at Jethro like he hung the moon simply by existing let Jaz see wha
t true happiness looked like on her mother. It was a decidedly good look on her.

  “Jasmine, can you help us zip this? I swear it’s going to take the jaws of life to get her into this dress,” Isabella grumbled as she gathered as much lace material as she could in her fists and pulled tightly while Ariel inched the zipper up.

  “Jesus, Mom, did you lather yourself in Crisco when you tried this thing on?” Ariel asked through gritted teeth as she struggled with the zipper.

  Her mom released a put-upon sigh. “The seamstress didn’t have nearly this much trouble. You two must be doing something wrong.”

  “You can’t zip a dress wrong,” Ariel snapped as she gave up and backed away.

  “Goddamnit, Ariel, we almost had it,” Isabella growled.

  “In your dreams,” Ariel muttered.

  Despite the fact that the three of them were ready to murder one another, Jaz couldn’t help but smile. These women drove her completely insane, but God did she love them. It wasn’t until she’d seen them all bickering in Jethro’s kitchen the night she’d arrived home that she’d realized how much she’d missed them. Though within twenty-four hours, she’d also realized that missing them was preferable to living anywhere near them ever again.

  Jaz stood up, smoothing her pink satin bridesmaid’s dress, which was shockingly not shaped like a princess ball gown but rather A-line and simple. “Mom,” she said softly. “Raise your arms up and close your eyes.”

  Her mother hesitated but ultimately did what Jaz asked. Keeping her voice low, Jaz took her mom through some breathing exercises, telling her to imagine herself shedding her stress like a second skin, letting all of the worry exit her body with her next breath and centering herself in the moment. As Jaz spoke, she slowly made her way around her mother and gently took hold of the zipper. “I’m going to count, and when I reach three, I want you to inhale deeply. One. Two.” As Jaz said, “Three,” her mother took a deep breath, and Jaz eased the zipper halfway up. “Okay, one more time.” With the next inhale, Jaz was able to work the zipper all the way to the top and fasten the clasp.