It's Complicated by Julia Kent (13)

“And what’s that?” Mike asked.

“She just had her first threesome with two guys.”

Dylan sat up. “Really?”

He leaned forward, as did Mike and Laura, though Dylan was hampered by the baby in his lap. He carefully shifted Jillian, who made a little snoring sound that was so adorable that Josie wanted to hold her again.

Mike leaned forward and put his elbows on the table then pulled back, reached for the carafe of coffee, and filled his cup again. “Do tell.”

“Well, Darla’s twenty-two and there were these two guys in her favorite indie-rock band who somehow ended up in our dinky little town in Ohio, and it turns out all three of them discovered for the first time that this was what they wanted.”

Mike and Dylan exchanged a look that seemed like ten years of history flowed between the two of them in an emotional exchange that left Josie breathless to watch—little tells in the way that their eyes moved, how their mouths smiled at each other, a telepathic transfer of information and experience. Laura seemed to notice it, too, as she studied them.

“How did you guys figure this out?” Josie asked, venturing into territory she might otherwise have never wanted to know but had now become more crucial. It dawned on her that if she actually started this company, if this really went through, this was the kind of information that people would share with her over time or that she would need to elicit from them to provide the service—this very unique service—that the threesome sitting across the booth from her was proposing.

The look of affection that Mike gave Dylan was absolutely adorable in a masculine and seductive kind of way. “Before I answer that question,” he said, eyes on Dylan, “I think we need to ask Laura if it’s all right to talk about this.” He broke his gaze and looked around Dylan, a small shrug, eyes lifted, eyebrows up in an expression that asked the questions again.

“Of course,” she said, nodding her head. “I can’t imagine why it wouldn’t be okay to talk about it in front of me or to tell Josie whatever you want,” Laura said, finishing her coffee and reaching around Dylan who was besotted with his daughter, staring deeply into Jillian’s face as if drunk on her pure existence. “I’m not threatened by the fact that you have a past. In fact, it’s your past that makes everything that we have now as good as it is.”

In that sentence, Josie realized why she felt like sitting at the big kids table seemed so mature and so adult-like—because it was. She was sitting with three very aware, very evolved adults—people who had more than a nanosecond filter between information and reaction, between emotional trigger and reaction. People who didn’t judge automatically but instead evaluated experience and information and then made decisions about what to do next. People who valued love at the core of everything and yet respected folks who were different.

Watching Laura say “yes” to something that would threaten an awful lot of people in a similar situation, whether it was a monogamous male and female relationship, or a non-monogamous male/male relationship, or insert-the-pairing-or-the-multiple-relationship-of-your-choice, the unfettered desire to be respectful, to be loving and to apply compassion in all interactions was what she admired most about Dylan and Mike and Laura.

And, she grudgingly admitted to herself, Alex.

“Okay then, spill it,” Josie said, looking at Mike then Dylan. “How did it work? What made you guys realize that”—she looked at Mike but gestured with her right hand to Dylan—“he completes you?”

Laura made a sour face, but Dylan laughed. He and Mike exchanged a look that Josie couldn’t even hope to try to decipher, and then they both looked at her, brows furrowed as they tried to figure out what to say.

“You go first,” Dylan said, looking at Mike with narrowed, laughing eyes.

“By all means, I defer to you,” Mike said, pouring himself yet another cup of coffee.

The t-shirt Mike wore was a ragged mess at the neck, a faded band logo that she couldn’t quite catch on the light blue fabric. His hands worried the mug handle, not in a nervous way, but in that distracted, tired way that one gets when too many nights of exhaustion kick in and the body just functions on autopilot. He looked at her with those crystal-clear blue eyes and tilted his head.

“You really should know this.” He smiled, a small grin that showed no teeth. “I mean really should, shouldn’t you? With this kind of business you’ll get people like us.” He nudged his elbow at Dylan. “You’ll get people like Laura.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Laura piped up.

“Nothing. Nothing,” he protested. “I don’t mean that offensively. I mean people like Laura, women and men—I suppose—who don’t realize that this is what they’re looking for but find themselves drawn to it. Dylan and me, I think…” He fumbled for words, and Dylan picked up where Mike left off.

“We didn’t plan it; it wasn’t some overt thing. I knew I liked women and I knew I liked Mike. It wasn’t like I went to college thinking oh, I’m going to go and find some guy who I’ll partner with and then we’ll go out and build this.” He and Mike shared a chuckle, looking at each other. “God, we still don’t have a vocabulary for it, do we?”

They shook their heads and Laura stretched, something in her neck popping as her muscles relaxed, the burden of the baby now carried by Dylan.

“You guys have been doing this for ten years and you still don’t have words for it?” Josie asked.

All three of them shook their heads “no” like a set of three trained monkeys, and it made Josie laugh.

“But when you were younger,” she ventured, “what was the turning point? When did you realize ‘Oh okay, this is the way my sexuality works’?”

“You sound like a therapist,” Dylan said flatly.

She held up her hands in protest. “I didn’t mean to. I really don’t. It’s just, like you said, there’s no vocabulary for this and there’s no real concept for it, and yet you guys make it work so beautifully. I’m going to have people coming to me basically saying how do I make that happen?” She pointed at the three of them. “And then they’re going to ask me how do I make that happen?” Her finger extended at Jillian’s head.

Dylan pulled his head back in surprise and then reached up and rubbed one eyebrow and then one eye, washing his face with his hands—it was both tension and tiredness that drove the movement.

Mike answered for him. “Nothing was deliberate. We were roommates in college and we got along really well and we realized that we got along so well, we liked to spend most of our time together, but there wasn’t an attraction, it wasn’t ‘Oh, I’m gay and this guy is who I want.’”

“No, I firmly want women,” Dylan said.

“Yeah, I get that. You’ve said it about nine thousand times.”

“I’ve said it twice.”

“Whatever.”

Mike interrupted Josie and Dylan’s sparring. “I think it was as much about being comfortable with each other in our friendship as it was about finding the right woman in Jill,” Mike said, his voice contemplative and calm, a tingle of nostalgia coming through.

“She was so mellow.” Dylan finished for him.

“Yeah,” Mike said, nodding. “And it was so…”

“Easy,” Dylan interjected.

Mike just nodded.

“How?” Laura asked, leaning back, running one hand through her hair to push it away from her face.

Just then, Madge arrived and delivered everyone’s food with perfunctory efficiency. Laura and Mike dug in immediately, while Dylan did the one-handed parent eating thing, nearly dropping part of his salad, a giant cherry tomato falling off his fork and narrowly missing the baby’s head.

No matter how hard he tried crumbs sprinkled down on her and Laura cocked one eyebrow, leaned down, and said, “Are you seasoning the baby again?”

“She’ll taste better that way. Haven’t you read Jonathan Swift?”

The whole table groaned. It was a really bad joke, but Josie had to hand it to them—anybody who could be this sleep deprived and still make jokes was doing all right.

“So, Dylan, you’re the one who can’t eat yet. You answer how, exactly, was it easy?”

“It was easy because Jill made it easy, just like Laura made it easy. We were these young pups. How old were we, Mike? I was nineteen, you were twenty?”

Mike nodded, his mouth full of food.

Dylan shifted the baby, just so, lifting her up onto his shoulder. She made a snurgly sound, and then nestled her little cheek deeper against the bare skin at the collar of Dylan’s shirt. He closed his eyes and breathed in the scent of her little, perfect baby head. “We didn’t have words for what we were going through, and when we met Jill, and we all got a little tipsy one night; the sex part just made sense. It was something that we didn’t have a bunch of angst about…”

Mike swallowed and interrupted. “Actually, it was more that we had—we were worried”—he stumbled over his words—“we were worried about the fact that we weren’t more upset at our own actions.” Mike tapped his hand against the table as he said each word, as if thinking it through for the first time. He shoved an enormous coconut shrimp into his mouth, and gestured for Dylan to continue.

“There were all of these feelings that we were supposed to feel. I guess,” Dylan added, “I was supposed to be jealous that Mike and Jill got along, and Mike was supposed to be jealous that Jill and I got along, and Jill was supposed to feel like she was perverted, or an aberration, or that she should be ashamed for wanting us both at the same time. We talked a lot…a lot, in our dorm room that first year about all of the things that people would assume about us if we were open, so we stayed closed off; we didn’t tell anyone. People just thought that we were a group of three friends, and that Jill was just someone who liked to hang out with two guys.”

Josie finished her last piece of fried green tomato, took a sip of ice cold water, and asked, “You never told anyone?

Mike snorted. “That’s not quite true.” He looked hard at Dylan.

“My parents know,” Dylan said. His demeanor changed to one of discomfort, and Josie regretted the question.

“If I’m stepping over any boundaries here, just say so,” she said, palms up in a gesture of supplication.

“No, it’s not a problem,” Laura interjected. “Dylan’s mom and dad know, and they’re mostly okay.”

Mike snorted again.

Josie looked at him. “You don’t think so.”

He sighed, grabbed his glass of water, chugged it down, and then looked around for Madge, who, as if reading his mind, zipped by with a completely full extra pitcher, and then grabbed the coffee carafe, shook it a bit, and ran off, muttering to herself. Josie gave her two minutes to return with a full coffee pot.

“My parents are Catholic,” Dylan said.

“Oh, boy,” Josie answered, shaking her head.

“This…yeah, it was not well received, but back in college I felt like it needed to…be open. That it was the world that was screwed up, that I was fine and I had my own standards, and that judgment be damned, I was going to be open about it—at least after that first year.”

“How did your parents handle it?” she asked.

“About as well as you can imagine two cradle to—well, they’re not dead yet, but when they die—grave, Catholics could be expected to hear that their son was in a relationship that was so odd, there wasn’t even a coalition of people against it.”

“Your parents did a good job of trying to create one at first,” Mike muttered.

Dylan closed his eyes and shifted the baby to his other shoulder, stretching his sore arm out, and then yawning deeply. “Yeah, at first they did. It only took three years to wear them down, and the fact that they wouldn’t let Mike come to any family events once they knew.”

“Ouch,” Josie commiserated.

Laura looked at her and nodded. “That’s one reason why we didn’t have a baby shower…” Her voice tapered off with a choked sound at the end, and Dylan took his free arm and wrapped it around her shoulders.

Josie did a facepalm. “You’re right, we never did a baby shower. Was that my job? Was I supposed to do that and I just totally flaked on you?”

“No, no, no, no, no,” Laura reassured her. “No, it wasn’t something that was on our ‘wanted’ radar screen anyhow. It would have been very complicated.”

“We should do something, though,” Josie pointed out. “Maybe just a small party that celebrates her life. What you’ve done is just so amazing, and little Jill…little Jill,” Josie repeated. She looked at Dylan and then at Mike. “In the rush of the birth and everything that happened, I never thought to ask, how do you feel about the name?”

Both men turned and looked at Laura, the deep love that was like a small fiber of energy that wafted out and connected the men with Laura.

“It shocked me,” Dylan said.

“It thrilled me,” Mike answered. “It’s a fitting tribute to a really wonderful woman.” Mike swallowed hard and Dylan seemed to be fighting back tears.

Laura smiled back. “It really was the only choice once I realized that if you could both love her that much, then I could honor her memory, and love her, too.”

“Getting back to business.” Josie poured herself a cup of coffee now, and began drinking it. It made her think of Alex, made her think about all of the ways that she was closing herself off, when what she should have been doing is opening herself up. Look at the three of them, across from her, happy, centered, relaxed and joyful. The confidence that all three of them had—that no matter what problems they faced from within or without, they would talk it through, and be reasonable, and use love as their guide—was what Josie wanted more than anything in the world.

Alex had seemed to offer the first steps in that journey for her, and yet she couldn’t let herself sink deep enough within to be vulnerable enough to see what that looked like on a day-to-day basis. And now that chance was gone. What that did look like from the outside was the three very tired, very happy people across the table from her, with tangible proof of how much they loved each other. That eight-pound ball of proof, now nestled on Mike’s shoulder, curled into a ball as she had lived inside Laura’s womb, legs tucked up under, head turned to the side, lips resting against Mike’s collarbone.

The business was about helping people to achieve what those three had. Was she deluding herself thinking that she could run such a business, when she couldn’t even find one man that she could open up enough for? Not quite, a voice in her head chided her, it’s not that you can’t find him, it’s that you won’t let him in. Don’t pretend that that person or persons aren’t out there for you. Alex is there, and you’re pushing him away.

“Yeah, the business,” Laura said. She glanced over to see Jillian’s state, and grinned a loving look at Mike, his arm wrapped up and around the baby’s entire body. Curled up like a fiddlestick that was starting to unfurl. It was a beautiful picture, almost artistic, in the way his muscles rested in his self-assurance and confidence in holding his daughter. Laura turned her attention back to Josie. “What do you need?”

What do I need, she thought. That’s an open-ended question. “I need the basics, the way that we talked about this before. An office, equipment, a couple people to help me run it, maybe only one—Darla might be enough.”

“If she’s going through what you’re talking about,” Mike said, using his left hand to awkwardly drink coffee while holding the baby with his right, “then she sounds resourceful. I’d start with one person and see where you can go.”

“So basically you want me to create a dating service for people who want threesomes, and I’m trying to envision how on earth you advertise this thing. We’ll have those Westboro Baptist Church fundies protesting outside our window in about three seconds flat.”

“That’d be great publicity,” Dylan said.

Josie glowered at him. “That is definitely not the way I want to start a new career.”

“We can be subtle,” Laura added. “I mean, I thought Ménage Match, Incorporated was a great name.”

“Really subtle.” Josie laughed. “I don’t think that’s quite right; we need something that’s a little more sophisticated, something more…romantic, and not sexual.” Josie went pensive, thinking it through. Here they were right in front of her, proof positive that this could work. How could she take Laura, Dylan, and Mike, and without revealing their identities, use them somehow, channel the goodness that they had found in each other. And then it hit her. She leaned across the table, and said quietly, “Good Things Come in Threes.”

“Hell yeah they do!” Dylan said.

Mike’s face went from interested to on fire, a giant grin spreading across his face, making those ice-blue eyes sparkle. “You just nailed it,” he said. “Good Things Come in Threes. That’s the company name.”

“Now, we need to get down to brass tacks.”

“Well, for funding, Laura can fund it however she likes,” Mike said, looking uncomfortable suddenly.

“We consider this her thing,” Dylan said, “we’re just here to…”

“To disrupt the process,” Josie choked.

“To give our input,” he countered.

“Potato, potahto.”

Dylan gave her a “fair enough” gesture, waving his hand and reaching, in the process, for the coffee carafe to fill his cup again.

“Do we advertise at all?” Mike wondered aloud. “What about word of mouth?”

“Do you know any other people in a situation like yours?” Josie asked, skeptically.

The three of them paused and thought about it. They all shook their heads. “No,” they said in unison.

“Me neither,” said Josie, “so how do we get started on this?”

“We could take out ads, you know, in the Phoenix or some of the other local newspapers that having dating site ads.”

Josie mulled that one over. “Yeah, we could. It’s kind of a unique service.”

“Well, we need to make it clear, too,” Laura added, “that this isn’t just some…sexual hookup system.”

“We’ll get the creeps, though,” Josie said.

“You’ll have no problem dealing with them,” Dylan ventured.

Josie smiled— that felt good, that he thought that of her. “Thank you,” she said. “I appreciate that, Dylan.”

He looked like he was about to say something else with a snarky tone, and then pulled himself back. His eyes expressed surprise that she would give him that much credit.

Jillian woke up with a scream that made the fillings in the back of Josie’s mouth shake. How could a baby go from sound asleep, curled up on Mike’s neck, to screeching like a howling monkey? It startled Mike, who unwrapped his arm and began soothing her, patting her back carefully.

“Poor baby, give her to me,” said Laura, reaching around Dylan to try to grab her.

Mike turned away just a little. “It’s fine, I have to learn to be able to soothe her,” he said, a tone of irritation in his voice.

Josie had a feeling that this was an argument they’d had on and off for the past few weeks. Dylan just sat between them, trying to relax and drink a cup of coffee at the same time. Nothing Mike did calmed the baby down, though. He stood and began pacing, four steps away, four steps back, four steps away, four steps back. The rhythm seemed to soothe Jillian, and then, BUUUUUURP. The biggest, juiciest, nastiest burp that Josie had ever heard came out of the baby, and then the inevitable spitup, all over Mike’s clean collar.

“You forgot a burp rag, dude,” Dylan said, reaching in the diaper bag to pull one out. He handed it to Mike. The baby whined a little bit at being wet, the front of her little onesie now soaked a couple of inches down. Mike traded the sour-milk-smelling infant to Dylan for the burp rag. “Thanks,” they said in unison.

Laura just laughed, concern turning to relief.

“You’re really living the life, aren’t you?” Josie said.

“I am, I just wish that I could appreciate it a little more from the stance of having a little more sleep. Otherwise…” Laura leaned back and watched as Dylan took Jillian into the men’s room to change her, and Mike patted at his shirt, uselessly, with the burp rag to clean himself up. “I am very, very grateful for what I have,” Laura said softly. “How ’bout you?” Her eyes narrowed, and there was a look of real perception.

Josie knew she was being studied by the one person who knew her the best. Her niece Darla was a close second, and now that she knew she was coming here to live with her, Josie felt like a lot of her carefully constructed walls were starting to fall away, brick by brick. Alex, one of the many masonry workers, chipping away. “I’m well…no, I’m not okay. I was about to say ‘I’m fine,’ but we all know what bullshit that is.”

“You and Alex still fighting?”

“Me and Alex aren’t anything. He made a series of assumptions in the middle of a conversation that went from mild irritation to stalking off in…in anger.” Josie deflated. She could feel the air pushing out of her as the memory took over. It had been two weeks, two weeks since they’d fought, and she hadn’t heard a word from him.

“I’m sorry,” Laura said, sliding one hand across the table, grabbing Josie’s. It was the first time she’d had compassionate touch in more than two weeks, and it startled her how much her inner core needed that.

“Thank you,” she said softly. “I’m sorry, too. I don’t know what I did to break this and I don’t know how to fix it.”

“You could text him.”

“I’m not texting him.” Josie pulled her hand back. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I know that, and you know that…” Laura said.

Mike sat next to Laura and watched the conversation in rapt attention. Josie realized he was there suddenly, dipped her chin down, and gave him a death stare. Laura joined her, and with four angry woman eyes on him, Mike did the smart thing without a word passing between the three of them, and got up and went to help Dylan with the baby.

Josie leaned forward and whispered, “The results came in.”

Laura went pale. “And?”

“We don’t need to change the name.”

Laura squinted at Josie. “You guessed right?”

Josie nodded.

“You have a hunch, don’t you?”

“I did. And I was right.”

Laura bit her lips, closed her eyes, and sighed. “Thank you.”

“Any time. I know you’d help me if I need it.”

“Alex is too nice to let get away.”

“And here we go,” Josie said dryly.

“I’m right! Sometimes I get to be right, you know.”

“Well, if he’s so nice,” Josie hissed, “then why would he accuse me of making these gigantic ethics violations? I would never do that, ever.”

“I don’t know,” Laura said, “but look at what being stubborn got me. The guys missed out on the entire second trimester—hell, almost two thirds of my pregnancy—because I was a stupid, stupid idiot. I don’t want to see you do that.”

“I’m not pregnant.”

Laura sighed, shook her head, and rubbed her eyes. “No, you’re not pregnant, and no, it’s not the same. You didn’t sit there and watch yourself be humiliated on national tel—well, on local television, and find out the two guys that you’re sleeping with were both billionaires. I was stubborn because they kept a secret from me, and it was wrong of both of…of all three of us. Ugh, I still don’t have a vocabulary for the fact that there are three of us,” she muttered, laughing to herself. “But the bottom line is that I let my pride get in the way. I let my insecurity, too, get in the way of the greatest love that I could ever hope to find, and I want you to learn from my mistake. I do not want to see you do this to yourself, Josie.”

Leave it to Laura to say the one thing that could crack her fucking wall. “You know, I hate you,” Josie said.

“I know. It’s because I make sense.”

“Now I hate you more, for saying that, because you’re right,” she said, slamming her hand against the tabletop, just as Mike and Dylan returned with a freshly changed baby.

“There’s something I still don’t understand,” she said, her mind spinning, trying to find the right formula of words to make the equation balance as the guys settled down, the baby half asleep already. “How is it that you—what exactly…” She stumbled through her own thought process, trying to say it aloud.

Just then, Madge interrupted them. “Dessert?”

Laura groaned. “Oh, God.”

“What?”

“I’m not pregnant anymore so I don’t have an excuse.” She patted her belly. She still looked pregnant—at least, Josie thought so, though she’d never say a word. Then again, it took a while for organs to shift and move, and some women held on to weight when it came to breastfeeding. It didn’t detract from Laura’s natural glow and she was slowly regaining that gait that she had, a self-possession and femininity that Josie could never emulate.

“How about we get two desserts and split them?” Dylan suggested, wolfing down the rest of his food.

“Oh, I like that idea! A gradual transition down.” Laura perked up. “What should we get?”

“We have a nice caramel pistachio cheesecake today,” Madge said. “And then there’s the rhubarb maple cheesecake.”

“It’s cheesecake day?”

“No, we just happen to have some of these.”

“Anything else?” Mike asked.

“Well there’s a turmeric-infused candied pecan—”

“Stop there.” Dylan held his hand up. “Is it cheesecake?”

“Yup.”

“I vote for that as one of them. All in favor say ‘aye.’”

Three “ayes” rang out into the air.

“How about two of those?”

Everyone nodded.

“Two slices of that.”

“So, Josie, get back to what you were asking. I like watching you be awkward.”

“Ha ha,” she snapped back. The distraction had rattled her, so she just blurted it out. “How did you two guys know that it was okay to just be together without being together sexually?”

Mike choked on his coffee, Dylan reaching over to whack him in the back hard, repeatedly, as the guy coughed and rumbled.

“That’s awfully direct.”

“And having Alex walk in on your—”

“Okay, okay, I gotcha. I gotcha,” Dylan said, holding his hand up. “I’ll answer.”

“Thanks,” Mike croaked out, trying to recover.

“The problem with answering that question…” Dylan said, leaning back against the torn vinyl booth. “Most people don’t have a framework for why I’m about to say what I’m about to say.” His face changed and he became more serious, more introspective than Josie had ever seen in him.

He looked nervously at Mike and then even more nervously at Laura, and said in one long rush of breath, “I realized that what I wanted more than anything.” He stopped. “No, not more, but as much, as much as I wanted Jill…I wanted to share her with Mike.”

Mike blinked and cleared his throat, running a hand through overgrown blonde waves of hair that tickled the top of his collar. “That’s probably what those two guys are going through, Josie—the ones with your niece. That dawning that comes when you realize that there’s this ache inside you that nothing, nothing has stopped so you learn to live with it—it’s just there, like a mole or a scar or an overbite and you try all sorts of things to make it go away. You date different women, some people try dating other men—”

“Not me,” Dylan said.

“It doesn’t matter, Dylan,” Mike said. “Everyone has that ache in them. It’s not just that Dylan and me and Laura or people like us do—everyone does. But for me the moment that Jill and Dylan and I came together, I realized that I was missing something for the first time in my life. Not that I had something.”

Mike’s cool Zen demeanor shifted to a layer of excitement that made Josie lean forward in anticipation, his joie de vivre contagious. “I realized that I was missing that ache for the first time in my life. Do you know what it’s like to go through most of your adolescence and early adulthood in pain and just dealing with it? And then, one day, it’s gone. Just gone. Gone.” Slamming his palm against the tabletop just as Madge delivered the two pieces of cheesecake.

“This cheesecake’s going to be gone in about five seconds. I suggest”—she pointed straight at Laura—“you not put a plate in front of her.”

“Hey!” Laura couldn’t finish her protest because Madge had left already.

“What about you, Dylan?” Josie asked as they each grabbed a fork and dug in.

The cheesecake was perfection, carafes of a turmeric maple sauce on the side and little cruets filled with candied pecans. The first bite of cheesecake and a candied pecan in her mouth at the same time made her want to stop the conversation instantly and do nothing but have a mouth orgasm.

“Ditto,” Dylan said. “Whatever Mike said, that all applies to me.”

“Ditto? You’re talking about the most significant moment in your emotional journey through life and your answer is ‘ditto’?”

“Yup.”

“You have the depth of Justin Bieber.”

“Ouch,” Dylan said, holding his hand over his heart. “That hurt my feeling.”

“You mean it hurt my feelings.”

“No, my feeling. Remember, I’m shallow.”

Everyone at the table groaned.

Josie snatched the piece of cheesecake out of his reach. “For that, you get less.”

“That’s fine. I’ll just share with Laura.”

“No you won’t.” Laura grabbed hers.

Mike looked around with a what about me expression on his face. “What happened to sharing?”

Josie shoveled a piece of mouth-watering goodness into her mouth and answered, “You guys might be into sharing but I’m not.”

*

“You’ve raised an incompetent asshole with a God complex. Aren’t you proud?” Alex declared. Sipping jasmine tea, his stomach felt sour. The last time he’d eaten Thai food hadn’t gone well.

Not well at all.

Sitting with his mother in a different restaurant across town didn’t help dull the pain of the memory of his last moment with Josie in his apartment.

“I’ve done no such thing, Alex. I’ve raised a human being.”

“All too human.”

“Then I’ve done well.” She smiled,, the kind of grin that made her dimples appear. His mother’s face was unreadable, kind brown eyes so much like his trying to read him. This was the look she gave him when she was humoring him. He deserved it.

“I just…how could I have screwed everything up like this?” He’d been a complete ass. In retrospect, he could see it clearly. Affected by stress at work, he’d let it spill over into his love life, biting Josie’s head off when all she’d tried to do was to help his family. To be fair, she had made it sound like she might be skirting ethical lines—no one in a double-blind study should know who was in the control group and who wasn’t. Alex wouldn’t know any more details, though, because he hadn’t even tried to reach out. No calls. No texts. Other than going for an occasional run around the park across the street from her apartment, he hadn’t gone near her.

“Alex, this isn’t you. You don’t have these sorts of neurotic insecurities. Where is this coming from?”

Josie, he thought.

“Hell if I know,” he shrugged. “Between the tough case at work and screwing everything up with Josie, I feel like the person I’ve been all these years just got a personality transplant. I don’t like questioning myself. It feels uncertain and chaotic.”

“That’s called growth.”

“Then growing sucks.”

Meribeth pulled back, brow creased with worry. “This is about Josie, isn’t it?”

“And work. And Grandpa.”

She waved her hand dismissively. “Everyone has missteps at work.”

“But I—”

“Alex!” A harsh tone came through in his hissed name. “You’re doing the grown-up equivalent of pouting when things don’t go your way. It’s really unappealing, especially on a twenty-eight-year-old professional.”

Ouch.

Right or wrong, the comment hurt. Mostly because she was right.

“A baby landed in the NICU and my professional judgment was called into question, Mom. It’s not like I’m moping because Josie wouldn’t go to the homecoming dance with me.”

“Separate the two. Which one hurts more?”

Zing!

“I don’t know.”

She reached across the table and felt his forehead. “Are you ill? Because my Alex doesn’t say ‘I don’t know’ when the answer is in front of his face. Heck, the answer could be doing a lap dance for as obvious as it is.”

“Mom!”

“You’re in love with Josie and you made a mistake.” She took a long sip of tea.

“I’m not—”

“Oh, look at the pasties!”

“The metaphor is overdone. Point taken,” he said through gritted teeth.

“I am going to guess you didn’t share what’s going on at work with her.”

He set his tea cup down with a resigned sigh. “You know, in the 1500s that ability of yours led to dunkings. Who is my real dad? A warlock?”

Meribeth howled with laughter, turning heads. “That’s the old Alex.” His comment about his “real dad” shook her, though—her certainty in dealing with him as if he were a petulant schoolboy had drained out of her. Good.

“Josie grew up without a dad, too. At least, from the age of eleven on.”

Meribeth frowned. “He took off?”

“Died. Car accident.”

“Oh, how awful.” In her trademark gesture, his mother put her splayed palm over her heart. “And her mother?”

He shook his head, picking up the tepid tea absentmindedly, forcing himself to drink it. “She didn’t talk much about her. I get the impression it’s not a good relationship.”

“Two fatherless adults trying to navigate your first real relationship.”

“Great, Mom. How high concept of you. You should pitch screenplays to Hollywood.”

She laughed, putting her hands up like a director setting a scene. “Hot ambitious doctor meets fatherless, ambitious nurse—”

“Hot, Mom?” He cocked an eyebrow and tried to suppress an embarrassed grimace.

“Where did you meet again?” Meribeth asked.

“At her friend’s birth.”

“As her friend crosses over into motherhood.” Meribeth scowled. “At her birth? Why didn’t I know this?”

“You never asked.”

“You picked someone up at a birth?”

“I’m not proud of it.”

“Her best friend’s birth?”

“Yes.”

“Your timing is…interesting. Most women would be in the room, supporting their friend.”

“The dads were there to handle that.”

“Did you just say ‘dads’? As in plural?”

“Yes.” Oh, shit. This was headed into territory he didn’t want to have to explain. Then again, it took the heat off him, so maybe he should go with it. Too bad the restaurant didn’t have a liquor license. He could use a beer or ten right now.

“Her best friend slept with two different men and they don’t know who the biological father is?”

“It’s…complicated, Mom.”

“Sounds intriguing.” She leaned forward and propped her chin in her hand. “And Josie’s friends with this woman and the dads?”

“Yes.”

“Anyone that open-minded is someone I should meet.”

“It’s a little late for that,” he said, blowing a puff of air out, trying to relax his granite shoulders. “She’s done with me. I made a horrible comment and questioned her professional ethics when she told me Grandpa needed a second opinion.”

“She was right.”

“I know.” His aunt had received a call this week—the trial was broken due to overwhelming evidence in favor of the drug. Josie had been right.

“We took Dad back in, but Josie’s gone,” Meribeth said.

“Gone?”

“They said she’s no longer employed there.”

Ice water ran through his body. Did that mean she quit? Was she fired? Had she crossed some ethical or legal lines?

“That’s all they said?”

“Yes.” Her turn to start with the one-word answers.

Rubbing his chin, he felt two days of stubble scratch against his palm. “And the new medication?”

“Dad will go on it soon. We just don’t know.” She shrugged.

“So Josie was right and I screwed everything up.”

“Everything we do can be undone.”

“Not this, Mom.”

“Everything. If you want it bad enough.” The look on her face was a blend of compassion and amusement, as if the eighteen years between them conferred some deep wisdom on her that he couldn’t access. He wanted to believe it was true, but in recent years he’d come to see that she was just as human as he was, and that it was her compassion and deep devotion to him that mattered more than any perceived wisdom. Right now he just needed someone to listen. And he knew he could always turn to her because she was, after all, Mom.

When would he let another woman in like that?

“I do.”

“That’s what you say at a wedding.”

He groaned.

“You left yourself wide open.” She chuckled.

No. I didn’t. And that’s the problem.

*

Darla’s number appeared on her phone as it rang. “Hello?”

“Hey there, gettin’ ready to move.”

Darla’s voice never failed to amuse Josie. After years of living in Boston, she was accused of having a Boston accent whenever she went home. Once in a while she would slip and call “Ant” Cathy “Ont” Cathy, which led to a ripple of giggles and laughs among the family. God forbid she say “rahther” and not “rather.” A host of little things, including the word “wicked” being used as an adjective, had separated her from her beginnings. Good.

“So, I’m gettin’ ready to come,” Darla said, “and I have a few questions.”

“What’s that?” Josie said.

“How big is the bedroom that I’m gonna have?”

“I don’t know…about ten by ten?” Josie was terrible with space and guesstimates.

“Wow, that’s downright luxurious,” Darla cracked.

“It’s what you get in Cambridge, and it’s probably bigger than your room back home.”

“Fair enough. That’s another question—I keep saying I’m moving to Boston, but I’m not…”

“No, you’re moving to Cambridge.”

“Cambridge is where Harvard is?”

“Yes.”

“All the snotty people live there?” Darla asked.

“Not all of them, but plenty of them.”

“And what do I need to bring with me?”

“We can get you a bed when you move here, Darla,” Josie said. “I can buy it, it’s not a problem.”

“No, I’ve got some money saved up,” Darla replied.

“You do?” Darla was notorious for spending whatever was in her pocket about as fast as she made it.

“Yes, I do.”

The defensive tone set Josie’s stomach on edge. This was the last thing she needed on a day like this, and it made her need an outlet. Darla could be the unwitting target. Laura couldn’t anymore—she was off living house, not playing it, with Mike and Dylan and the baby.

“I got some money.”

“You didn’t do anything illegal…”

“I don’t do anything illegal, Josie, you know that.”

Josie thought for a moment. “It’s the two guys, isn’t it?”

Darla could never lie to her. Finally with a big sigh, she said, “Yeeeees.”

“They left you money?” Josie was a bit incredulous.

“It’s a long story.”

“You have a lot of long stories, Darla.”

“Well, you’re gonna get to hear ’em all now that I’ll be be your roommate.”

Josie laughed. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m in a bad mood.”

“Why?”

“Oh…stuff.”

“Work stuff? Or dick stuff?”

“Dick stuff.”

“You have a new man?”

Have. Have? Do I have a new man? she wondered. She had. Why did verb tense suddenly mean so much? “I have been dating someone.”

“Is he a doctor?”

Not this again, she thought. “Yes, he happens to be a doctor.”

“Same guy as before?”

“Yes.”

“Hot damn! It’s about time. You keep telling us that you’ll never date a doctor because they suck.”

“I’ve never said that doctors suck.”

“Yes you have,” Darla argued. “You’ve said it a million times—they all have God complexes, and they all have egos bigger than the state of Ohio. Josie, you’ve been saying that for years.”

Darla was right. She had been saying that for years and now she was caught in her own snare. “Yes, he’s a doctor. No, he’s not an ass. If anybody’s the ass, it’s me.”

“Why are you the ass, Josie?”

“Because I’m stupid.”

Darla laughed. “Anybody can be an ass when they’re stupid. The question is are you being stupid and turning somebody away you really like?”

Josie had to think about that for a few minutes; it filled her brain with too much chaos and she realized that she didn’t have to think about it, she could just defer and deflect. “Darla, I am not gonna talk about this right now,” she said with a weary sigh, “so let’s talk about you moving here. When are you coming?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow!” Josie shouted. “Tomorrow?” She walked into the spare bedroom and looked around. All of her extra junk was crammed in there. About half the floor was covered with boxes and a stray guitar from years ago, and some UMass-logoed stadium blanket a guy she had dated a few times had left. “Tomorrow?”

“It turns out Uncle Mike has a run and can get me as far as some city in Massachusetts called…Stur…bridge.”

“Sturbridge, yeah.”

“Yeah, well, Mike can get me there and I was hoping maybe you could come and get me? It looks pretty close on a map.”

“Darla, Sturbridge is about…an hour and a half outside of Cambridge.”

“Aw, damn it! Everything in New England on a map looks like it’s close together.”

Josie shook her head and wisely kept her mouth shut.

“Is there a bus I can take?”

“You could always hitchhike.”

A loud snort came through the phone. “I’ve had enough of hitchhiking, trust me,” she said.

Then Josie remembered, “Oh, that’s right, the naked guy.”

“And the other naked guy.”

“They’re both naked hitchhikers?”

“It’s a long story,” Darla rasped.

“Look, I’ll find a way to get somebody to come to Sturbridge to pick you up. Won’t you have a bunch of stuff that you need to put in a car? I mean, my car is pretty tiny.”

“No,” Darla said, “I decided to leave it all behind. All I need are some clothes, a couple of favorite books, my junky old computer, my phone. If I’m gonna start a whole new life and a whole new relationship, then why not start it clean? Why carry my baggage from my past around?” she said quietly.

If Darla had kicked her in the gut, she couldn’t have knocked the wind out of Josie any harder. “That makes sense,” she choked out. “So, tomorrow…”

“Yeah, tomorrow!”

Darla’s excitement was just a little bit contagious, and it picked Josie’s spirits up. “All right then, we’ll see you tomorrow, and I’m so glad you made this leap.”

“Me too,” Darla said. “The only way to know whether something’s gonna work out is to trust yourself, close your eyes, and just jump. Right?”

“Sure,” Josie said, “if you say so.”

They said their goodbyes and Josie hung up, elated and exhausted at the same time. Josie surveyed her place, this time looking at it through the eyes of a potential roommate.

Her apartment didn’t really have a plan; it sort of reflected Josie in that sense. She had the first floor of a triple decker, right across the street from a giant park, but aside from her bedroom and her bathroom, the openness that had once been so appealing to her now became an issue. Darla would need privacy, and the only room that really made sense was this tiny—she wandered over to it...ten by ten would be a stretch—room that didn’t even have a closet. Technically her apartment was allowed to be called a “one bedroom” because the little room lacked the basic functions of a bedroom. On the other hand, she wasn’t planning to charge Darla any rent for it.

Darla wouldn’t complain, she knew that. The poor girl was used to living in a trailer in the middle of nowhere. Josie had grown up in a house. That had seemed to separate kids in their town—if you lived in a house you were somehow better than the kids who lived in the trailer park. Even though Josie didn’t believe that, and had never treated Darla or any of her friends who lived in the trailer park any differently, there was a sense of pervasive shame about growing up in any kind of home that was falling apart.

Both of them had lived in dwellings that seemed to reflect their mothers’ inner cores. For Aunt Cathy, the porch was perpetually falling apart, as if the entrance to her was so unnavigable that in order to reach her you had to get through the impossible and probably cut yourself and get hurt in the process. With Marlene’s house, it was the other way around. The house was never in great shape when her dad had been alive, but he’d cut the lawn, they’d gardened a bit, and even if the house had peeling paint on the outside, on the inside her mom had worked really hard to make it homey and loving.

The first year after the accident, though, absolutely nothing had been done. Literally. Josie had turned eleven just before the accident, and on her twelfth birthday she wanted to invite some friends over and so had surveyed the place. Finding newspapers from the week after her dad had died shoved in a corner had given her a profound sense of just how neglected everything was, as if time had stood still. And as time, in fact, marched on, nothing got done ever again.

Marlene didn’t have the gutters cleaned, didn’t mow the lawn, didn’t buy food, didn’t even talk to Josie some days. She just lived in her own dysfunctional and sometimes florid world. Aunt Cathy had tried to explain to Josie that it wasn’t that Marlene didn’t love her, it was that the accident had changed her brain, made her selfish, made her focused on everything but love. The words had seemed harsh but she had known that they were true.

She began pulling her boxes of old books out of the room. Why was she keeping textbooks from ten years ago? It was easy now to get rid of them, something she couldn’t have imagined doing six months ago. Back then they had represented her intelligence, as if the book were a physical manifestation of what her brain could do. That seemed so silly. Cleaning out the room made her face years of crap that she had been lugging around with her, and as she spent the next couple of hours sorting and decluttering, she found herself violently throwing object after object into the Goodwill boxes. A broken chess set...gone, an old phone that she’d intended to give to a domestic violence shelter...in the box, clothes that she hadn’t worn in years and never would, but that represented some memory...gone.

Carrying the first box to her car that afternoon, the fresh air, the sun shining in a way that New England didn’t get very often, caught her off guard. A handful of clouds hung in the air like little cotton balls, evenly distributed across a vast sky.

The sun shone down, not harsh, but gentle. It reminded her of the day that she and Alex had gone to the river. Her body began to hum as she lifted the box and dumped it into her trunk, not bothering to close it as she marched back into the house. Five boxes later, her mind was still retracing the memory of Alex’s hands on her ass, the power of his thighs lifting her up, how her back had scraped against that stone wall, the leaves pressing into her hair, the scent of him etched into her lungs, the hoarse cry that came from her throat as she came and came in his arms.

The room was nearly empty when she found it. An old box with a slightly chewed corner from a creature that had nibbled at it back in the closet of her old house in Ohio. The box fell apart when she picked it up to move it and various items tumbled out. An old diary that she recognized from seventh grade, a corsage from an awards banquet that she’d been to in high school, a trophy and…oh, God…her copy of A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L’Engle. That was her last gift from her father for her eleventh birthday.

He’d gotten it for her and taken her all the way up to Cleveland to go to the art museum, showing her the Cleveland Public Library and marveling at all of the newfangled computer systems that Peters just didn’t have.

Her dad spent plenty of time with her talking about books, but this was different—it was like spending a day being a person with him, and not just a kid. When he had given her the Wrinkle in Time and talked excitedly about tesseracts and folding time and IT, the one mind that took everyone over until Meg and Calvin fought against it, she decided that she would read it the second she could. She’d been too tired that night, and had gone to sleep, the book set on her dresser. Three days later she’d been consumed with homework and hadn’t gotten to it yet, and that night he’d died.

She cradled the book in her hands, turning it over, and then the tears came, mixing with a diffuse fury so great that her arms began to shake. She had never read the book. It represented everything that she hated about her life. It represented the death of her father, the metaphorical death of her mother, the complete 180 shift in her life, and her own self-abuse at the fact that she had not made reading the book and talking about it with her dad a priority, instead letting silly, childish things get in the way.

She’d been watching Darla that night, babysitting. They were at her house playing. Their parents were supposed to come home that night around eleven. When they didn’t, Josie just thought that they were late. Morning had come, and still no parents. She’d walked next door to ask Mr. Topper, the neighbor, what to do. He was an old, retired man, a bit grumpy, but completely shocked and surprisingly compassionate when she explained that her parents hadn’t come home.

Darla was happy munching Cap’n Crunch cereal and watching Saturday morning cartoons as Josie sat in Mr. Topper’s kitchen, drinking an offered glass of orange juice in one of those tiny juice glasses that old people seemed to always have. He’d called the police station, and then very grimly set the phone down, a tortured look in his eyes that had disappeared rather quickly when he cleared his throat, and wouldn’t make eye contact again.

“Someone’s coming, Josephine. They’ll be here soon to…figure all this out.”

The rasp in his voice on his last word had made a hot ball of lead form in her stomach. She was smart enough to know that what Mr. Topper wasn’t saying told her everything she needed to know. She didn’t say anything, because what could she say?

“I have to get back to my little cousin,” she had finally said, and now as an adult looking back, it was quite remarkable that he had let her, standing in the doorway and watching her make the trek back to her house, where she had walked past Darla, who was now openly fishing handfuls of cereal out of the box, picking out the red berries and eating them while throwing back the rest.

The years flashed past as she remembered how her room smelled, like the fabric softener her mother had used. The bed wasn’t made, but the rest of the room was tidy, dusted even, back when Marlene did that sort of thing. She had picked up the Wrinkle in Time book and sat down on her bed, turning to the first page. She had started reading it, and made it to page eleven when the doorbell had rung. The appearance of the police hadn’t surprised her, but she hadn’t expected the woman in the dress who told her that they were there to take her and Darla to go somewhere while they figured out what to do about their parents.

Darla had stood there, her mop of curls pouring down her shoulders. Wild and crazy, those giant green eyes like saucers. Her hand was all the way in the box, down to the elbow, and she was wearing Toy Story pajamas. “What’s goin’ on?” she’d asked, and the lady had nearly fallen apart.

“I need you to come with me, honey.”

“Why do we need to go with you?” Josie had snapped, her finger marking the place where she had stopped reading in the book.

“We’re trying to figure out what happened to your parents, and children can’t be left alone when their parents are…”

The cop had cut her off with a hard look. Josie recognized him. Sometimes he came to the library where her dad worked. His last name was escaping her, but she knew that he had a daughter two years older than her in the school. Jane…Jane…something. And then, like an angel, the assistant librarian in town, Mrs. Humboldt, had swooped in. To this day, Josie didn’t know whether Mr. Topper had called her, or whether she had heard the news, or whether, as Josie liked to imagine it in her eleven-year-old mind, by starting to read the book that her daddy had given her, she had somehow sent a cosmic message to the world.

That a fellow librarian needed to come to another librarian’s child’s rescue, and rescue she had.

Emphatic and officious, in a way that only a small-town librarian can be, she’d beaten the cops and the woman, who turned out to be a social worker, into submission. She had insisted with the ramrod-straight back of a woman quite accustomed to being listened to and obeyed that the girls were now in her custody, and that had been that.

As she sat in the room she was clearing for Darla, all of those memories flooded her, as if the book were transmitting them by pulped paper osmosis. She hated this book. She hated herself. She hated her mother, and her uncle, who had made a terrible, terrible mistake and paid for it with his own life, and her father’s life, and her mother’s sanity. But most of all, she hated that she was such a coward, that she could not bring herself to read that fucking book, yet she carried it around with her, and always would.

Not being with Alex was the right thing. She was too damaged to be worthy of anyone, to be of any good to anyone other than Darla.

The phone rang, shaking her out of her angry reverie. Of all of the times for Marlene to choose to call, she picked this one. Ignoring it, she let her voicemail click in. She took the book and put it in the farthest corner of the back closet in her bedroom, where it needed to rest, hidden but omnipresent. And then, folding her heart in half like a tesseract, she finished the job with a coldness that filled her with a sense of relief.

*

Somehow, Darla had convinced one of the two guys she was with to come all the way out to Sturbridge, pick her up at some truck stop, and bring her into Cambridge. She’d accomplished all of this at one in the morning, though, and had failed to call Josie, so the quiet knock at the door in the middle of the night had made her grab a baseball bat and tiptoe to her own front door. The problem was that she was wearing a cami and underpants, and nothing else. So as she stood there, holding a baseball bat, half naked, when she pulled the curtain aside on the window of her front door, she nearly shoved the baseball bat into Darla’s face.

“What the hell are you doing here at 1 a.m.?” she hissed. The taillights of a car moved back down to the main road.

“I got a ride.”

“You got a ride at one in the morning?”

“It was the best time I could get here.”

Josie undid the deadbolt, and the regular lock, and the chain lock, and let her in. “Jesus Christ, Darla, you scared the shit out of me.”

“Apparently I scared the clothes off of you, too. Josie, what are you doing? Isn’t this an entryway where other people could see you?”

“Yeah, well, no one’s looking at 1 a.m.” She tiptoed back to her door, shivering. It may have been warm when she went to bed, but now it was cold. She welcomed Darla into her apartment, and then her little cousin gave her a giant hug. It was almost enough to warm her up. Where Josie was a stick, Darla was all curves and lushness. You would never guess that the two came from sisters. Marlene had been the skinny one, and Cathy had been the pinup girl—at least, that was what their moms always said. Although “pinup girl” wasn’t quite right; she thought that came from her grandma. Darla wore a baby blue v-neck t-shirt, old jeans, and flip-flops, and carried just two suitcases.

Josie looked back. “That’s it? That’s all you brought?”

Darla shrugged. “That’s all I need. Where’s my room?”

“Come here. I don’t even have a bed for you, so you’re gonna have to crash on the couch.”

“That’s okay, I’ve slept on worse.”

“Of course you have.”

“Hey,” Darla said indignantly.

Josie stared her down. “Is what I just said untrue?”

“No.”

“Come here.” Josie went in for a second hug, really giving her the time and the embrace that she needed. Darla was shivering just a bit, and Josie held on until both of them had stopped shaking. When she pulled back, Darla was noticeably more relaxed.

“This is a big city,” she said. “Nothing like Cleveland or Pittsburgh.”

“No, it’s actually pretty small.”

“Then it seems bigger,” Darla added.

“That’s what she said,” Josie joked. The groan that came out of Darla made Josie realize that there was no hope that she was going back to bed. It was time to make some tea, sit down, and chat like sisters.

“Let’s go have some tea and talk.” Josie showed her into the kitchen. It seemed completely surreal to have Darla here, in her escapee life. When she went back to Ohio, it bothered her how easily she fell back into speech patterns and habits of thought that were more from her childhood. Including little things, like craving a cigarette whenever they went to Jerry’s. She’d always had a cigarette with her beer until she moved to Boston, and decided that it wasn’t worth the fight to try to find a bar that let you smoke. And it also was unsophisticated, if not a bit trashy, at least in Boston, to be a smoker. Everyone where she came from smoked—though Darla, she’d noticed, had never picked up the habit.

As she set the electric kettle going and pulled out about twenty boxes of teas, she heard Darla wandering through the rooms, and then…

“Oh my god!”

“What?” Josie said, trying not to shout and wake up the folks who lived above her.

“This is my room?”

“Yeah,” Josie winced, “it’s a bit small.”

“It’s huge!” Darla came tearing back into the room, her flip-flops making a smacking noise that Josie knew was going to bug her after two days of listening to that.

“It’s bigger than my shed.”

“Barely.” Josie gestured to the boxes of tea and said, “Pick your poison.” Josie had known Darla would go straight for the lemon, and she did. “Your shed?”

“I took that old shed out next to the trailer and turned it into my little place.”

“You did?” Josie was intrigued. That thing had been there since they were kids, and was probably home to more muskrats and raccoons than anything else.

“I cleaned it up real nice,” Darla said, looking up at the tall ceilings. “Man, it’s like something out of a movie in here.”

Josie looked up. They were nine-foot ceilings with crown molding around the edges and large cracks through the plaster. It was an older building and she’d loved the charm, how it had been so different from anything she had grown up with in Ohio, and certainly a million miles away from her own home.

“This looks like something out of one of those old-fashioned ice cream shops you see on TV—like in a movie from the 1920s.” Darla smiled, her eyes wild and her cheeks quite pink.

How she could be this alert at one in the morning blew Josie away. The kettle whistled, and Josie poured the cups of tea, joining Darla in her Lemon Enjoyment. As they sat at the table, Darla craned her neck around the corner of a wall and looked in the living room again.

“Cool. It looks like something you’d find at an apartment at Kent State.”

“It’s just thrift-shop finds. You know how well we have that drilled into us.” The two shared a look that Josie could not exchange with any other human being on the planet.

Darla nodded and took a sip. “That’s what my shed’s all about.”

“So, tell me about your guys.”

“My guys.” Peals of laughter poured out of Darla, and her chest shook as she giggled. “My guys. Yeah, I guess I have to think of them as my guys.”

“My friend Laura thinks of hers as her guys.”

Darla stopped cold, half dropping her mug of tea onto the table. “You know someone else who has guys?”

“I know someone else who has guys.”

“Holy shit!” Darla’s eyes widened, and she looked like she was about to choke on something. “I’m not the only one?”

“You didn’t invent threesomes, Darla.”

“It sure as hell feels like we did, me and Joe and Trevor. I haven’t said that aloud to anyone, Josie.”

She could see the tension in Darla’s chest relax, her body going from that excited, wired sense that you get when you travel long distances by car to a relaxed, easygoing countenance. “You can talk about it here,” Josie said. “In fact, you’d better get pretty damn comfortable with it.”

“With what?”

“With talking about threesomes.”

Darla’s face froze, brow furrowed in an expression of incredulity. The tip of her nose was pink and her ears turned red, as a flush crept up her neck and into her jaw. “Why?”

“Remember I told you that the job’s with a dating service that my friend’s starting?”

“Yeah.” Darla’s face went slack as she got the implication. She was never a dull girl. “Your friend with the guys is the one starting this?”

“Yes.”

“And I’m perfect for the job because…” She left the sentence unfinished, forcing Josie to give her the closure she needed.

“Darla, I tried to talk about this with you on the phone, two different times, so don’t give me that look.”

“Well…I…but…” Darla stammered. “I would have let you tell me that little detail, Josie…if you had told me that little detail!”

“That makes no sense. You’re being tautological.”

“I’m being what?”

“You’re talking in circles.”

“Wait, out here they have a word for that?”

“Yeah, it’s called ‘Harvard.’”

“Hold on, hold on,” Darla said, waving her hands in the air. “I’m getting paid $40,000 a year to be an office worker in a dating service that caters to, and hooks up, and makes people have—”

“Threesomes.”

“You are kidding me.”

“Well, you were squealing on the phone, Darla. ‘$40,000! $40,000! Holy fucking shit, $40,000!’ over and over again, and when I tried to give you the details it was like you were walking on coals and dancing after a touchdown all at once on the phone. It was as if I could feel that.”

“Well, forty thousand fuckin’ dollars a year is unbelievable, Josie.”

“Not here.”

“In Ohio it sure as hell is. I’m making federal minimum wage. Do you know the difference between $7.25 and $20?”

“Yeah, the difference is Ohio and Eastern Massachusetts.” Josie took a sip of her tea. “But look, that’s details.”

“‘Threesome dating service’ is a pretty big fuckin’ detail. I thought you were saying ‘tree-hugger dating service.’”

“What?” Josie snapped, incredulous. “Why would I open one of those?”

“Like it’s any weirder than the truth?”

Okay. Darla had her there. “Does it change your attitude about moving out here and working in the job?”

Darla stopped cold. “Oh, hell no!” she said, swinging her blonde bush of hair around over one shoulder. “It’s just…man, I’m kinda glad I didn’t know that detail.”

“Why?”

“It would have been awfully hard to lie to Mama.”

They both went silent at that one. Josie didn’t have an answer.

“Anything else I don’t know about?” Darla’s eyebrows were raised so high they almost disappeared into her hairline. Figuring it was best to quit while she was ahead, Josie just shook her head.

“Good.”

“Tree-hugger dating service?” Josie snickered.

“What? Trevor and Joe told me all about Boston and how crazy people are out here. How you walk cats on leashes and have doggy daycare. I mean—daycare centers for dogs, Josie.”

“Lots of people have that.”

“Then they’re crazy. Babies and toddlers—sure. But what’s next? Music classes and massages? French lessons for the puppies?”

“You joke, Darla, but…I think you’re going to find Cambridge is like living on another planet.”

“That’s fine. As long as I can breathe the air, I’ll find a way to fit in. For $40,000 a year I can do anything. Even a threesome dating service, apparently.”

“And you think doggie daycare is weird?”

Darla laughed, a booming sound that filled the high ceilings. Josie had missed it. “Fair enough.”

*

The first package for Darla arrived about three weeks after she moved in, and Josie just made sure to set it on the table right inside the apartment where she normally stashed the mail and assorted things, like her sunglasses.

Later that day Darla opened it and said, “Oh, huh…interesting.” She pulled out a bright green mug, the same Kelly green you saw all over Boston around St. Patrick’s Day or when the Celtics did well. It had the logo for a well-known fertilizer company on it. Darla fished around in the box and said, “That’s odd.”

“How random,” Josie said.

Darla shrugged. “Free mug.” She went into the kitchen.

Josie heard the water turn on and guessed she was washing it. Sure enough she was right, as she walked past she saw it sitting in the dish rack, already drying. It would stick out like a green thumb in the cabinet, next to Josie’s white dishes. Being roommates meant having company, and it also meant questioning the omnipresent rules she’d developed in her head for her daily life, rules about things like matching dishes. She had to learn to unclench a little.

Later that week another package came addressed to Darla, so Josie left it in the same place and didn’t think much of it.

The curious part about these seemingly-random packages, which began to appear with increasing frequency, was that there was no rhyme or reason to what arrived. Soon Darla was on a first-name basis with Luis, the formerly anonymous UPS guy. Josie had seen him before, maybe once a month. Darla’s room, and then the kitchen were increasingly cluttered with key chains and mugs and anything else a brand name could be printed on. One box arrived with fifty romance novels, all of them historical romance of the type that Josie remembered Aunt Cathy reading voraciously when they were younger.

As Darla opened them, she burst out laughing. “This is one of Mama’s favorite authors,” she said, scrunching up her face.

They were in jammies, hanging out, watching Downton Abbey, which Josie had introduced Darla to. Both had become Edwardian fans in an instant, scandalized by the wealthy family’s aristocratic pursuits.

“Your mom sent you fifty romance novels that you’ll probably never read?”

Darla pursed her lips and thought about that for a minute. “Hold on,” she said, walking over to the small table at the entrance of the apartment and grabbing her flip phone. She auto dialed, and then from a distance Josie could hear her Aunt Cathy’s raspy voice. Listening only to Darla’s side of the conversation, Josie was fascinated.

“Hey, Mama…Yeah, I’m good…Yep, still visiting my friends when I’m not working…Yep, yep, Trevor’s still playin’…and Joe, too…I’m not gonna talk about that. Not gonna talk about that either.” The shine in Darla’s eyes faded with each comment. “Nope, not that either.” She frowned. “How’s Uncle Mike? I can change the subject if I want to. Yeah, speaking of changing subjects, Mama, what is this shit you’re sending me?”

Josie heard Aunt Cathy shout, “SHIT? That ain’t shit!”

Darla held the phone away from her ear about a foot and just shook her head. When the yelling stopped, she replaced the phone on her ear. “Okay, Mama, why do I have fifty romance novels from your favorite author?”

A squeal of delight came through the phone, and again, Darla stretched her arm out to avoid being deafened. The sounds made Josie’s cat sprint from the room and hide under her bed.

“I won! I won!” Josie could hear Aunt Cathy crowing.

“You won what?” Darla barked towards the phone.

“I won the fifty romance novel contest!” The elated voice came tinnily through the speaker.

Josie froze, her eyes locking with Darla’s. They simultaneously put their hands on their hips, cocked their heads, and said quietly, “Contest?”

“Contest, Mama?” Darla repeated, holding the phone close again.

Josie couldn’t hear the answer anymore, but Darla’s face ran through nineteen different emotions in two minutes of just listening to her mother. Her brow furrowed, one eyebrow cocked up, her eyes got wide, she did a facepalm to the forehead, then she began pacing the length of the living room, her foot brushing against an old, braided rug that Josie had gotten for free when an upstairs neighbor had moving out.

Finally, Darla said, “You’re using our address?” and Josie got it. She just shook her head and padded her way into the kitchen, Dame Maggie Smith on pause for quite a while, she imagined, before she and Darla would get back to the Abbey. As she made herself a cup of decaf, she waited, hearing intermittent bits of the conversation.

“No, he’s not naked all the time. Yes, things are working out with Josie. My job? It’s going good. I don’t know, she’s got this doctor she might be…”

Josie slammed the green fertilizer company mug on the counter, and poured herself a vicious cup of decaf, sprinkling a little cinnamon in for the hell of it and then adding a heavy dose of milk. She heard the snap of a phone shutting, and then the slam of it against a table.

“You won’t believe this one!” Darla shouted.

“Let me guess—she’s using this address and your name for sweeping.”

The look of genuine shock on Darla’s face, as if she couldn’t put together a paint-by-numbers scenario that all added up to one color, made Josie laugh.

“That’s exactly what she’s been doing. How’d you guess?”

“It’s the most logical explanation for why we’re getting all this crap.”

“Don’t tell me that a foam toilet paperweight from a pharmaceutical company is crap now, Josephine. It is perfectly good winnings, with a manufacturer’s retail value of $13, which Mama will use to calculate out her hourly rate of $3.22 for all her hard work.” Darla had taken on the supercilious tone of Cathy at her best, and it made Josie shrug and smile.

“You know, I don’t care if she does this if it makes her happy,” Josie said.

Darla sighed with relief, her shoulders dropping. She folded herself into a chair, her breasts reminding Josie of Laura’s swell. They seemed to have gotten, in triplicate, everything that Josie had not received from the Endowment Fairy, and she wondered what it would be like to be that lush.

“I think we can expect a steady supply of this stuff. I’m glad you say that you don’t mind ’cuz Mama seemed so happy to be able to now have two addresses where she could sweep from, and she said that if we get anything good that she can use to please send it back to her, otherwise it’s ours to keep, and it’s her way of thinking about us in the big city.”

Josie held up the green mug with gusto. “To Cathy,” she said. Darla scrambled to get a glass of water and the two toasted to Darla’s mom and Josie’s stalwart aunt.

“What kinds of contests does she enter, Darla?”

“Cash, trips, kitchen makeovers, new houses, gift cards to restaurants, jewelry, books, magazine subscriptions, although she stopped doing that when we got about two hundred of ’em. That kind of stuff.”

“So, you could win any of those things?”

“I could win a year’s supply of LSAT tutoring, for all I know,” Darla said. “It’s never anything good, it’s always this crazy stuff that companies are giving away ’cuz they’re tryin’ to boost morale or—spread the word about their product. At one point Mama found a glitch in the software for one of these websites, and we won three hundred stuffed hot dogs.”

“Three hundred what?”

“Stuffed hot dog plush toys,” Darla said. “Mama took a bunch of ’em and shoved ’em in a pillowcase and said it was a pillow. The rest she gave to some humane society shelter for the dogs. It’s what she does and it makes her happy.”

“At least now we know where all this is coming from.” Josie wandered back and started fishing through the box of books. “Her Highlander’s Heinie?” She looked at Darla. “Seriously?”

Darla shrugged. “I’ve heard worse.”

“I guess it can’t be any worse than Downton Abbey, right?” Josie said. “Shouldn’t we get back to find out what James will do next and with which nobleman?”

Darla threw her arms around Josie suddenly. The hug caught her off guard, but she liked it. No one had touched her in days. “Thank you, Josie.”

“Thank you,” she said, pulling back. “You’re helping me make some sense of this crazy business we’re both working in.”

“Once we get this figured out, let’s move on to your crazy love life.”

“My love life isn’t crazy, it’s nonexistent.”

“Why aren’t you with him?” Darla said, her face suddenly serious. Those big green eyes went all innocent and sad, reminding Josie of how Darla had looked that day. How she had questioned Mrs. Humboldt about being dragged home to pack a bag, how her face had been so cherubic, and sweet, and needy.

“Because he thinks I did something unethical, and was a jerk before I had the chance to explain.”

“Ooooooh. Ouch.”

“Yeah, ouch.” Tears filled Josie’s eyes as the reality of what she said really sank in.

“You really love him, don’t you?” Darla said softly. The empathy in her tone made Josie’s tears spill over her lower lids and pour down her cheeks.

“I don’t know what I feel for him.”

“I do. It’s called love. You never cry over guys.”

“I cried over Davey Rockland.”

“That’s because he drove over your foot when he was learning how to drive his go-kart.”

They laughed, Josie wiping the tears away. “Alex did the equivalent with my heart. His grandfather is one of the Alzheimer’s patients in the trial I work on. Worked on.” She faltered. Tendering her resignation hadn’t been easy. Gian had taken it gracefully.

“And?”

“And I tried to tell him I thought his grandfather might not be receiving the drug that was helping other patients, and to get a second opinion, and he freaked on me. Went on about professional ethics and putting the research trial in jeopardy.”

“Is he that kind of guy?”

“What kind?”

“The freak-out kind?”

The question stumped her. “No, actually. He’s not.”

“So maybe there’s more going on with him than you know about.”

“He made fun of me for not being a doctor.”

“Ouch.” Darla drank her tea. “But is that enough to give up?”

“It appears to be for him. He hasn’t contacted me at all. It’s been weeks.”

A long sigh from Darla made the tears spring back. It was the sound of resignation, of defeat, and it echoed inside Josie’s heart.

“If it’s over, you need to move on.”

“I know.”

“If not…then you need to try one more time.”

“I don’t think my heart can handle being crushed again.”

“You handled being run over twice by Davey.” Darla’s chest shook with giggles.

“That was my foot. My heart isn’t quite as resilient.”

“And Alex isn’t Davey.”

“Dear God, no. What an ass he was. How any grown woman would consider dating him...” Josie shivered. Darla’s face went a strange shade of green.

Both yawned simultaneously.

Josie said, “I’m taking a nap.” Sleep would give her a break from her never-ending questioning.

Her only break.

*

She straddled a harp, her fingers teasing the strings, her arm playing expertly as her nude body bent into the instrument, legs wrapped around the edges of the veneered wood, her skin melding into the stringed wonder as if she were making love to it. Hair wild and untamed, her breasts pressed into the harp, she felt the music well up from her fingers, her elbow, her arm, her mind as if emanating from her core.

Wet and ready for something greater than herself, her nipples slid with a friction of climax against the grain of the wood, body heated by a thick wall of muscle behind her, peppered with a sprinkling of ticklish hair. Thick thighs cupped her hips and ass, a hard, throbbing erection urgent against her cleft, his heartbeat the metronome by which she timed her skillful playing.

Hands stroked her waist, sliding up her ribcage, fingers pinching her nipples as she struggled to maintain composure, her body working from muscle memory to play the song, her core clenching and flushing in aroused agony as his hot breath tickled her shoulder, his mouth ravaged her earlobe, his hard shaft nudged her ass.

Play she did, in fury and unabashed glory, his hands settling in the valley of her heat, wetness slicking fingers that began to stroke her in time to the macrobeat, sweet love coming through each caress until the final crescendo ended the song, the harp flung across the room by rippling forearms that splintered it as it slammed into the wall, her body next, his enormity filling her, piercing her, impaling her with a sliding immediacy. Hands filled with her flesh as her legs gripped his hips, mouths finding each other, the hot pink nub now thrusting against his pelvis as he hammered his own beat into her.

Alex Alex Alex she hummed in three-four time, his cock the bow that played her strings, his hips the wood grain veneer, his neck the instrument’s neck, his mouth her score. He was the conductor, the composer, the creator and her god...

And then she woke up, pelvis thrusting up into empty air, her walls twitching against flesh that wasn’t there, palms aching for a hot man who was only in her dream, the sinister mistress of memory spinning with her slumber to conjure a man she had no right to touch now.

Tortured and gasping, her limbs arched and then curved inward, Josie panted into the twilight, throat tight and fingers wet with her scent. Whatever she said in broad daylight did not matter; her body betrayed her, seeking what she really needed.

Alex.

The tears came then, slamming into her as hard as her unsought orgasm, choking and loud, as much a release as her dreamed climax, yet not so sweet.

*

The cat was the first clue. Josie had joined him in a ray of sunshine that poured in between the front window’s curtains, and as she sat there, eyes closed, face tipped up to the sun, she took a sip of coffee and nearly choked on it. Pulling up with its front paw pads, the cat practically scaled the window until it was stretched out, lean and graceful, its nose pressed against the glass.

What is he looking at, she wondered, and then saw the runner rounding the park across the street. The cat’s eyes tracked it, and Josie joined in. The runner’s long legs, strong and muscled, wearing shorts and a tank in the cool early morning. She knew before she even set eyes on his face that it was Alex, and when he glanced over at her window, that confirmed it. She looked away quickly so their eyes wouldn’t meet, not wanting him to know she was watching him, and certainly not wanting him to realize that she knew he was watching her.

She reached over and pulled the animal into her lap, stroking its fur, both of them tilting their heads to the right as Alex raced by. She craned her neck around, and at that point the cat sauntered away, its need for petting sated. Oh, how jealous Josie was. If only her needs were that simple.

Across the baseball field she saw him. He must have rounded the corner, and now he flew past at a greater distance. He ran behind the dugout fence across the large field, and then a series of multicolored metal pipes that made up parts of the children’s playground; her eyes assembled the fleeting glimpses into a coherent whole. Breaking away from her trance, she padded back into the kitchen, made herself another cup of coffee, and very intentionally rooted herself at the kitchen table. She would not, absolutely would not, go back and gawk, trying to capture more pieces of him, as if she could hold them together and turn them into something she could touch.

Her ears perked up before she even realized that someone was near. As the realization set in, slowly she turned her head to find a strange man standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the hallway, as if a blonde surfer model had appeared out of thin air. In the seconds that her mind registered his presence, she took him in. Tall, at least as tall as Alex, with blonde, shaggy hair and eyes so bright blue they rivaled Mike’s. His shoulders were broad and his chest was sculpted, the skin a little goosefleshed around his pecs, as it narrowed impossibly into curves of a six-pack that went down to a thicker thatch of hair at the waistband of impossibly painted-on boxer briefs, made of a darker, smoky blue.

Perhaps she took too long to assess the perfection of this body in front of her because it was the man, and not Josie, who cleared his throat. He dipped his head and slid his arms into a shirt, ending her reflexively lascivious appraisal before it even occurred to her that strange shirtless men surprising her in her own kitchen should maybe make her feel threatened, not intrigued. Less than a second into that thought, she figured out who he was. Another sip of coffee bought her manners, and her racing heart, a second to compose themselves.

“You must be Trevor,” she said quietly, pinching her lips together to hide the smile that tried to creep out, involuntarily sultry and flirtatious. She couldn’t believe this was coming out of her. Dear God, no wonder Darla had fallen for him. Josie would have had sex with him in a rest area, too, even an Ohio rest area. He was too young for her, she told herself. Old enough, of course, but still, she felt a little dirty thinking about him this way.

He crossed the kitchen with two steps and sat down next to her, the movement so fluid and confident that it made all sorts of parts of her perk up, not just her ears. Suddenly she didn’t need the coffee to be fully awake. Long athlete’s legs stretched out, nearly brushing against her calf, as he crossed his feet at the ankles and didn’t seem to care that he sat before her in his underwear and a tight cotton t-shirt.

“I’m Trevor, yeah,” he said, leaning forward and shaking her hand. That same hand then went and raked the top of his hair. “Man, Darla didn’t tell you we were staying over?”

We? Josie thought. “No, uh, but it’s fine, you know, hey.” She held her palm up and leaned back, unconsciously shifting her shoulders back and pushing out whatever she had that passed for breasts. The guy was hypnotic; he had an instant effect on her that she found a bit dizzying. She wanted to reach out and just stroke one index finger down the ski slope of his perfect ab muscles, but held back, knowing that it would be rude.

It would be rude, right? she thought, the temptation so great that she cursed herself on the inside. Down girl, down, she almost muttered aloud.

“Oh, it’s fine…uh, hey, help yourself to some coffee,” she said, gesturing to the Keurig, holding herself back from jumping up.

Trevor stood, opened the cupboard above the coffee machine, and emitted a low whistle. “Have enough coffee mugs?” The cabinet looked like a Gay Pride Parade banner, every color of the rainbow represented in Darla’s coffee mugs. In fact, she’d organized them in ROY G BIV color order. Darla had teased Josie about her OCD nature, but it had been more of a challenge to see whether Cathy’s “winnings” really were enough to make a rainbow.

Turned out they were.

“I think we could use a few more,” Josie mused.

Trevor plucked an orange mug emblazoned with a logo for some information archive service, made himself a cup of coffee, and then, when he came back to sit down, said, “You okay?” The words were clipped, no empathy in them, just a politeness that she had found ingrained in a lot of the students she had met at work.

“I’m fine,” she said, giving back the qualified, neatly controlled, upper-middle-class answer. Giggling poured down the hall from the other room, and then the very sharp, unmistakable sound of a hand smacking against flesh. Trevor had the decency to blush slightly and stop making eye contact with Josie. “You don’t have to be embarrassed,” she said, “it’s not you in there.”

He frowned. “You’re right, it’s not me in there. It should be.” He stood and wandered back down the hallway to Darla’s bedroom, coffee mug in hand.

A long whoosh of held breath poured out of her, her body tingling, her core on fire. You have got to be fucking kidding me, she thought. Pinned between Alex on the outside, and Trevor Connor of all people, and probably Joe Ross, on the other side, she found herself in a vice of arousal, completely unable to touch anyone right now, except herself. Thank god for battery-operated boyfriends. She had a drawer full of them, and would probably use them later to try to exorcise this raging case of frustration. Better living through plastics. Another slap, and then Darla screamed, “Put it on a different setting, that one’s too fast!”

Note to self, Josie thought, add earplugs to shopping list. Click. Someone, probably Trevor, had the decency to close the bedroom door. All Josie heard now was muffled sounds of pleasure. A level of pleasure, she assumed, that she herself would only be able to mimic with a rabbit and a few Sylvia Day novels. Even at that, it would be a poor, pathetic second to what Darla was having right now.

With a shaking hand, she made another cup of coffee, and sat down to listen to it gurgle. It sounded like the death rattle of her own sex life. A door opened, feet padded down the hall, and then a door closed. She heard the unmistakable sound of a shower starting. Her next shower would be a cold shower, dammit.

And then…chest. Blonde hair, perfect, smooth tan skin, and in strolled Trevor to open the refrigerator door, bend down, and give her a glorious view of a muscled ass hard as a marble countertop. She could think of plenty of other tasty things that could be done with that…

“Hey, Josie, whatcha doin’?” Darla walked up behind her and placed a friendly hand on her shoulder.

“Nothin’,” Josie said, reaching up to wipe an imaginary bit of drool off the corner of her mouth. It turned out it wasn’t so imaginary. What the hell was she doing? These were Darla’s guys, it wasn’t like they were in competition—she wasn’t interested in them, not beyond the surface level of ogling them. The guy she really wanted was outside, running past her house. Or maybe he’d gone home by now. She wasn’t sure.

Darla wore an overstretched Spongebob Squarepants shirt, and that was it. It barely came to the top of her thighs. Josie turned away when Darla did exactly what Trevor did, bending into the fridge to pick up a plate of fruit. Not quickly enough, though, to miss the bright red slap mark on Darla’s thigh, and Josie just closed her eyes and shook her head. They’re adults, they’re adults, they’re adults, she said over and over in her head, trying to will away the pictures popping through her mind. Maybe this was what Laura meant when she kept saying “TMI,” but maybe it was just Josie.

The three of them sat together, plowing through the cheese and fruit that Darla and Trevor had pulled out. No one seemed to need to make small talk, which Josie didn’t mind. When the coffeemaker gasped its last steamy, full-throated sound, she grabbed her cup, and walked over to the side window, staring out into the alley, simply to have something to do with herself that didn’t involved eating Trevor with her eyes.

Footsteps in the hallway again, and then she turned, as if in slow motion, to find herself staring at the equivalent of a Men’s Vogue cover model. This must be Joe Ross, and my my, was he everything that Darla had described—and more—damp and 3D right in front of her. He held a towel around his hips. A rather small towel, Josie noted, for you could see the indent of his muscle bending into his hip, that kind of carved look, tapering down to a bulge that made her marvel at his body as a form of art.

If it had just been the muscled dimpling of his skin against flesh, she would have been impressed. But what took the breath out of her lungs and made the air dance a little in front of her eyes, was the teasing taunting sensual combination of body, and face, and skin, and damp scent, and everything. Her eyes met his and he was startled, stepping back and clinging to the towel in his left hand, holding his only semblance of privacy.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know anyone else was here,” he said, again with that cultivated politeness that no man from her hometown was capable of.

“That’s okay, I’m…uh, Josie,” she said, holding one hand up in a wave.

“I’m Joe,” he said. He started to reach out to shake her hand with his right, open hand, and as he walked forward the towel slipped just enough for her to know that Joe dressed to the right.

“Oh…uh…sorry,” he said, pulling back. “I think it would be better to introduce myself when I’m a little more presentable.”

Drop the towel and you’ll be more than presentable, she thought, and then froze, hoping that this was not one of those times where the words had actually come out of her mouth. No one was looking at her with an expression of horror, so it seemed safe to assume that the lascivious thought had stayed firmly in place in her mind.

Goddammit, she had expected to have her house invaded by Darla, and had known, in theory, that the two guys would at least sometimes come with the package. Darla had warned her that they didn’t have their own place lined up yet for starting law school in late August, and Josie had figured that the occasional overnight would be no big deal. Now, she realized, she needed to have a giant bowl of buttered popcorn, a side of Skittles, and a big old Diet Coke for breakfast every morning, so she could properly enjoy the show. Was that bad of her, to think that way? Who cared; it was her apartment. This was better than Netflix.

And waaaay better than Downton Abbey.

“Why don’t we go out on the porch and have our breakfast?” Darla said, walking out of the kitchen, her ass filling out her shirt in a way that Josie could never fill anything. Within what felt like seconds Darla was back, wearing a pair of shorts and a tank top, fluffing her hair and making herself a quick cup of coffee. She chose a lovely gray mug with a chimney sweep’s logo on it. “C’mon, let’s go out on the porch and sit and enjoy the weather.”

“It’s late July in Boston. There is no enjoyable weather unless you like to drink the air,” Josie said.

Trevor snorted, but stood and followed Darla. As they made their way through the living room, the cat backed up into the windowsill and forced Josie’s eyes to follow. Alex ran past. Dammit!

“Nice form,” Trevor muttered.

“Thanks,” Darla chirped.

“I meant that guy,” he said, pointing to Alex. “He’s got good form for a runner. I used to run cross country.”

They settled into cheap plastic chairs Darla had trash-picked in the weeks she’d been living here. The streets of Cambridge on trash night had swiftly become Darla’s version of Target. There was nothing she couldn’t find when determined. Josie had to admit that the chairs were a nice touch. The neighbors used them, too, with Darla’s hearty blessing. Neighbors who had ignored Josie for years were suddenly friendlier. Everyone seemed to know Darla.

Of course they did.

“Hey there!” Darla shouted, waving wildly at Alex as Josie shrank. A hand went up and waved backwards, as Alex had already passed.

“Stop it!” she hissed at Darla.

“Why? You know him?”

Joe saved her from answering that question, taking a seat between her and Darla. Dressed in loose basketball shorts, a shiny green color with white piping, the edge of his boxer briefs peeked out over the waistband, right under his navel. As he slouched, the tanned skin of his belly didn’t roll or pucker. It clung to the little sculpted peaks of muscle in his six pack.

Make that eight pack.

She forced herself to break her gaze, knowing she’d look like a fool if caught staring at Joe. Turning her head, she saw Alex’s form turn the corner to the left and pass out of sight, his powerful legs propelling him away from her.

This was killing her.

Something had to give.

*

Who was that on Josie’s porch? he wondered. The blonde was tall and built like a muscular swimmer, with overgrown, sun-bleached hair and the cocky confidence of a guy in his early twenties. Three or four times a week he ran on this path, knocking off four miles easily, hoping he might catch a glimpse of Josie. This was the first time it had actually happened, though, her little face peeking out from the curtains. Dotty or Crackhead had joined her—probably Dotty. Knowing their names made him grin.

And then a young blonde woman, curvy and loud, her hair long and wild, her face animated. She touched the guy possessively. Hers.

Holding his breath and running were mutually exclusive, the air coming out in a great whoosh of relief. Whew. The guy wasn’t with Josie. He didn’t think he could handle that. Pushing his form as he ran past, he pumped his arms, legs eating the earth, running far faster than his six-to-seven-minute-mile pace. Not that he was competing with the blonde.

Of course not.

His heart raced and his calves began to ache as he made his way right past them, but he wouldn’t break his new pace until he was out of sight. Whatever was going on, he wouldn’t let himself look weak.

The blonde woman shouted something at him and he waved absentmindedly, then, mercifully, he hit the left turn, giving him a chance to slow way down and catch his breath. Fucking ego. Why did he care what some strange guy thought?

He didn’t.

He cared what Josie thought.

Rounding the next corner, he knew that the bushes and playground would hide him from them until he came back up this loop. This was his third loop, which meant pushing harder than he’d expected, as each loop was two miles. Six miles wasn’t that hard.

How about eight?

Eight would give him one more go-around to see what, exactly, was going on. Lungs screaming in protest, hamstrings so tight he could string a guitar with them, he continued.

Because now, he saw, there was another guy.

Sitting right next to Josie.

*

“You’re staring at his scar, aren’t you?” Darla asked Josie, who was still trying to figure out where it was safe to look.

“Uh…what?” Josie felt dazed by Joe’s presence. He looked like something out of Greek mythology, sipping from a black and gold mug that said Lipovac HVAC on it.

“Joe’s scar.”

“His what?” And then she saw it, the thinnest of scars on his chest, but deep and long.

“Can you guess what that’s from? Josie’s a nurse,” Darla explained to Joe, who nodded.

“Open-heart surgery? Infant?”

Darla’s eye widened. “Good.”

“Yeah,” Joe said, nervous. He seemed uptight, suddenly, as if he didn’t enjoy being the center of attention. Suddenly sympathetic, she imagined he was uncomfortable precisely because he was so gorgeous. Being the center of attention must be his default. Who wants to be under the microscope like that?

“Touch it!” Darla chirped.

“Touch it?” Josie wanted to touch Alex. Not this very … nice ... young boyfriend. One of Darla’s boyfriends. Darla had two and Josie had none.

“It feels so neat,” Darla said, demonstrating by running her index and middle fingers down the long, bumpy line. “Can you imagine? He was just a bitty baby when it was done. Three months.”

Maybe Josie did want to touch. Just a little. She reached out tentatively, her approach slow and her fingers slightly curled, like she was approaching a friendly-seeming, but unfamiliar, dog.

“Hey, here comes that runner again. Damn, he’s fast,” Trevor added, staring down the street. They all turned to watch Alex, whose body was slick with sweat, hair soaked, face intense and determined. His calves tightened and his tendons stood out, his body in perfect form as he ran, nearly parallel to them now. Flooded with desire and an overwhelming urge to fling herself across the street and into his arms, Josie sighed as her eyes took him in, her gaze sliding from his glutes to his sweaty chest to his face, how his calves tightened. Her breath caught and she put an arm out to steady herself; her fingers made contact with Joe’s forgotten scar.

Her eyes locked with Alex’s. The look lingered, his intensity riveted on her by an order of magnitude so high she couldn’t imagine that mathematicians and physicists had discovered it. In Alex’s eyes she saw pain, confusion, frustration, apology—and her future.

And then he slammed face-first into a No Parking sign.