Eve Mooney and Milo McNamara trudged to her car with hot coffee in their cold hands. One week had passed since the ill-fated ménage-a-trois, and, while Eve held out hope that Cliff might see reason and talk to them about what had happened, Milo just tried not to think about it too much. He had been helping Cliff wrestle with his sexuality for over two years now, and he was done with it. Cliff was a grown man and he could decide for himself.

Eve packed two full-sized suitcases for the four-day trip and Milo packed one small duffel bag. They were on their way to the airport. Cliff Bauer, despite his doubts, was also up and packed and ready to go.

* * *

“Do you think we’ll see Cliff?” Eve asked with a levity that she didn’t feel.

Milo shook his head. The last thing he wanted to talk about was Cliff.

“I’m sure we will see him. I just don’t know if it’ll do any good. After the other night…” He trailed off, shook his head, and shrugged. “I don’t know if there’s any coming back from something like that.”

Milo got it, and he still loved Cliff, but he knew that the man was in a mental cage. Milo didn’t know if that would ever change, if it’d ever get better. He’d been waiting almost since the day Cliff Bauer walked into Results with a hopeful expression and a stapled job application still warm from the printer.

Milo looked at Eve with appreciation. He clapped one hand possessively onto her thigh, letting it slide up and park just beneath the warm corner of her crotch.

“It’ll be all right,” he assured her.

“I know it’ll be all right.” Eve sighed heavily and nipped at her lip, glancing out the plane window. “I mean, just three months ago, I was kind of sleepwalking through my daily life. I had this boyfriend who didn’t give a shit about me. I had this job where I was writing whatever my editor told me to write. For some reason, I really wanted to settle down on that spot. I wanted to be promoted. I wanted Trent to look at me and see wife material!” Eve shook her head slightly, as if she wasn’t sure how she’d ended up reminiscing about this. “My point is that I know things change, and everything happens for a reason, and blah, blah, blah.”

Milo grinned at her. She wanted so badly to be optimistic, but he could see that this was getting to her. It was hard to not let daily life get to you and it was much easier to see it as acceptable when it was in the past. He got that. Despite how Zen Cliff was, and how generally agreeable Eve was, he couldn’t help but feel that he was the most easy-going of the three of them. He looked at things and saw them as they were, nothing more and nothing less. He’d somehow avoided all the baggage, and he was at peace for it.

“Relax,” Milo advised her, his voice husky and affectionate now. He rubbed the inside of her thigh with his thumb and noticed how she responded to it, shifting anxiously in her seat. “We’re on our way to Colorado. You’re going to get to see your family again. Your little brother is getting married, and you’re going to be a big, gorgeous bridesmaid.”

Eve groaned and let her head fall back on the headrest. “Don’t remind me,” she grumbled. “I have to make a speech.”

Just then, a flight attendant interrupted their back-and-forth to ask if they were buckled. “Yes ma’am,” Milo answered, “and I’ll buckle in all over again if you would grab us a blanket.”

The stewardess examined them suspiciously from over the frames of her glasses, but then pushed them back up her nose and nodded. She had probably decided it wasn’t worth fighting with this couple and eventually being written up by her boss. You couldn’t just deny people their blanket like that. “After takeoff, sir,” she allowed.

Then you’ll just force me to massage the inside of her leg in front of everyone, Milo thought.

After takeoff, and after the stewardess brought them a blanket Eve pulled out a bestselling thriller that she’d bought at a kiosk. Milo cozied up to Eve and let himself unwind. Something about her affected him like lavender and warm cotton and sleeping in an extra twenty minutes. She was the embodiment of comfort. He couldn’t fathom the fact that Trent was so up himself that he’d managed to let her slip away from him. The sky peeled away beyond the windows, and another flight attendant came to give them snacks and beverages. Milo let his hand wander beneath the blanket, eventually abandoning all pretense and sliding his palm directly into Eve’s panties. His middle finger dipped between her pussy lips.

He let his finger scrape idly over her clitoris, again and again. He was barely moving a single muscle in his arm but Milo could tell by the discreet shifting of Evelyn’s hips that he was bringing her closer to orgasm. He thought of pretty little Eve, in her bridesmaid dress, with her little speech prepared for her brother’s wedding, all a bundle of nerves and insecurities but still so sweet and good. Eve whimpered softly and clamped her lips together, shoving the open book closer to her face to hide her ecstasy. Her skin almost burned against his now. He toggled his finger harder, a light, swift flick inside her, and although Eve didn’t make a single sound, her book began to shake and Milo’s hand got absolutely coated in a gossamer layer of her juices.

That ought to help get her mind off Cliff and all the baggage that came with him, for a while at least.

“Excuse me, ma’am?” Milo called to the same flight attendance who had brought them the blanket. “Could I have some napkins?”

* * *

Back in New York City, Cliff had finished his morning yoga, and was now at a different airport, boarding a more expensive flight with his two Business Class tickets. He had bought them as a surprise for Eve. They were non-refundable, and that was a bit of a pisser.

Cliff decided to make the best of things and at least attempt to enjoy the luxury on offer. There was champagne, warm towels, real food, and plenty of leg room. He made it a point to stretch.

The woman in the seat alongside his—Becka? Bella? Bertha? It was something like that—kept wanting to strike up a conversation. “So, how about you, then?” B-girl asked him with theatrical warmth. He’d told her about the stupid wedding. He wasn’t sure why. He didn’t feel like himself today. He felt mean and exhausted.

B-girl was about his age. She reeked strong sexual motivation, and it was obvious that she found him attractive. He supposed it was possible that she wanted to make someone jealous or that she was just trying to bring a guy home for Thanksgiving or something but ruled those options unlikely. She had brownish-reddish hair and a nice smile, but he wasn’t in the mood to bolster her hopes.

“So, you said you’re going to a wedding,” she reminded him, eyes sparkling. Was this how women were always talking to him? Was he only just noticing now? That couldn’t be it. “Well, how about you?” she wondered again. “Are you married?”

Cliff winced. Ah, that. He had been trying almost as hard to not think about Allison and Galen as he was Eve and Milo—maybe even more.

“I was,” he forced himself to answer. “It’s not something I like to talk about.”

He’d already been thinking about little else all week. It was still smoldering in his brain right now. The night—the night at Eve’s place, with the stupid rose and the stupid fire. He’d been overloaded, fried, haggard, and had broken down. He couldn’t believe he’d actually been in a threesome last week. He hadn’t been prepared. That hadn’t been the plan. He had needed to talk and that was all.

The memory of Milo pumping into him and of Eve’s pussy right at the tip of his lips was still too much to bear. He couldn’t even recall the session without getting an erection.

“Oh, god,” B-girl groaned, rolling her head against the headrest and settling further away from him. “I’m so sorry. I always do this.” A few seconds of blissful quiet rolled by, and Cliff plucked his champagne from his in-flight tray, sipping it and savoring it. “I’m divorced too. He was a complete piece of garbage prick. What happened with you and your old lady?”

Cliff forced his expression to relax and leaned his head back on his headrest. He drained his glass with one full-throated swig. “Downsizing hit my company, and we had a kid—” He winced. The words left his mouth without even conscious thought. “I thought we had a kid, anyway. She said that I was gay, and she filed for divorce, and now, after three years, I’m finding out that our son was never mine. It was hers and this guy from her office. Fucking Pierce. Pierce.”

“Like Pierce Brosnan?” B-girl breathed.

Cliff decided that B-girl wasn’t that bad after all. “Like Pierce Brosnan,” he agreed. “Now she’s back together with Mr. Brosnan and I’m not sure if I even have any rights here.” Cliff pursed his lips and exhaled heavily. “I’m trying not to let it get to me.”

“You poor thing,” B-girl soothed, reaching across the aisle to rub his hand. Cliff nodded, forgetting that B-girl probably thought he was a sexual possibility.

“So, she told me all this, and I was upset,” Cliff went on, hankering for a champagne refill. “So I went to my ex’s house. I don’t know. I needed something.”

“Compassion!” B-girl supplied.

“Exactly,” Cliff agreed. “I lit some candles and…”

“Oh no.” B-girl could sense, perhaps by the way he let his sentence hang in the air, that the tale not going to end well.

“Oh yes. She came home with her date and he yelled, and I jumped, and I knocked some candles onto her bed.”

“Oh nooo,” B-girl moaned. “You can’t be serious. I’m on some kind of hidden camera show, aren’t I?”

“I wish,” Cliff muttered. “But it’s a true story. I set her bedding on fire.” He left out the part about his attempt at novelty dick decoration and how he had been the bridge between Eve and Milo’s bodies for an hour or so. “And now I’m on my way to her brother’s wedding.”

“Oh, my god,” B-girl said. “Really? Is she going to be there?”

Cliff nodded. “Of course she is.”

B-girl shook her head, gazed at Cliff adoringly, and patted his hand.