Less Than Ten Years Earlier
Hannah Michaels
THE IDEA HADN’T exactly come out of left field.
Jace and I had spent New Year’s Day together discussing it, and how each of us felt about it.
In the end, we decided it was the best course of action, and the wheels were put in motion.
While I went home for two days, Jace hopped on a bus to Kalamazoo to stay with Ethan, and then he would hitch a ride back to school with Ethan’s parents.
It was during those two days he planted the seed. Neither of us knew if Ethan would be into it, but both of us thought he might.
Back at school, five days passed and nothing on the Ethan front, but Jace and I were spending more and more time together.
Much to my delight, he had officially changed his major to computer engineering, and we had three classes together. And even more to my delight, he usually picked me up at my dorm room and walked me to class. Afterwards we’d eat lunch together or grab a coffee. And then he’d come back to my dorm room to hang out or study.
I still slept at their house, and I still met Jace in the kitchen at night, but he was no longer bringing random girls home to fuck. The issue then was he knew I was fucking Ethan, and this often got him all riled up. In the late hours of the night, I would breathe in and breathe out with him, and that would calm him down.
On the first Friday night back, Ethan and I were laying in his bed watching a new porn movie he’d bought over break when he paused it.
“Hannah,” he whispered, running his fingers over the strap of my camisole.
“Yes,” I said.
“I have an idea I want to run by you. You don’t have to say yes. It’s just a thought.”
I sat up on my elbows and pulled the plaid comforter up a little more. “What is it?”
Sheepishly he shook his head. “Never mind.”
“Ethan, tell me,” I insisted.
Reaching in his nightstand drawer, he pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a clean ashtray. He only ever smoked one a night, and it was usually after sex.
Not tonight.
Smoking wasn’t the only hidden vice he had, but he was a clean-cut boy with a clean-cut image that he liked to keep intact. From the outside you had no idea he had dirty magazines under his bed and porno movies in his cabinets.
Being the gentleman that he was, he offered me the pack first, and I took one. I didn’t usually, but this time I did.
I let him light it for me, but didn’t bring it to my lips.
Ethan lit his own cigarette and inhaled the smoke deep in his lungs before letting it out in a series of rings. “Jace thinks you’re hot.”
The cigarette in my hand was bothering me, so I reached over Ethan and set it on the ashtray next to the picture of him with his parents outside their little brick house. “Does he?”
More smoke rings. “Definitely.”
I gave him a thoughtful look. “Does that bother you?”
He took another long drag, and only after he blew the smoke out did he answer. “Nope.”
There was nothing for me to say, so I averted my eyes to the television screen where the picture was frozen on a girl lying on her back with two men eating her out. Usually Ethan liked the two girls, one guy setup. This was a deviation from the norm, but I had not commented on it. I knew why.
After he stubbed his cigarette out, he asked me, “What do you think of him?”
The room was dark except for the glow from the television, and I focused on the neat stack of books on the other side of the room. “I like him, you know that. I think he’s a great guy.”
It was not a lie.
Not at all.
But if anyone asked me if that was the whole truth, I would have had to say no. I more than liked him.
Ethan lit another cigarette. “If you weren’t with me, would you be with him?”
This took me by surprise, and still not looking at him, I shifted my gaze to the basket of clean clothes near his closet. “I don’t know.”
It was the truth. Chances were good we would have never reconnected if it weren’t for Ethan.
“Do you think we should break up so you can find out?”
If shock was what he was going for, he’d succeeded, and I swung my gaze to look at him. “Do you want to break up with me?”
He leaned back on the bed and took a sip of the beer he had beside him. “No, not at all. In fact, I want to watch you with him.”
Grabbing for his beer bottle, I took a long pull, and then handed it back to him. “Do you?”
The tent in Ethan’s boxer shorts happened almost immediately. “Yeah,” he breathed, completely turned on by the thought.
The reaction I allowed to be seen on the outside was cool and collected, but on the inside my body swirled with heat. “You want to watch me fuck someone else?” I clarified.
Taking one last drag of his second cigarette, he quickly blew it out. “Sure, unless you want to fuck us both? That would be really hot.”
This was college. Everyone did what they wanted. Being with two guys wasn’t that unusual anymore, just like a guy being with two girls wasn’t either. Still, I had to swallow against my then dry throat before I could answer. Was I going to do this? It so wasn’t me, but then . . . I let the unfinished thought sit there. “If you want me to, I will.”
It came out like it might be a hardship, and I hadn’t meant for that to happen.
Ethan stubbed out his cigarette and came close to nuzzle my nose. “I think you might really like it. I mean the things two guys could do to you at once.”
The nod I gave him was more definitive. “You never know. I might.”
There was a long silence as Ethan shoved his cigarettes back into the drawer. “I’ll talk to Jace, and if he’s game I’ll set it up for tomorrow night.”
The plan had worked.
Ethan thought it was all his idea.
“Okay,” I said, and gave him a chaste kiss. “Now how about we finish the movie?”
Something was off about him, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. What I had agreed to was what I knew he wanted.
I’m not sure if he wanted to have to convince me of it a little more, or maybe he knew what he had asked was exactly what I had hoped for. “There’s a Law and Order marathon on, mind if we watch that?” he asked.
I sank back into my pillow. “No, not at all,” I said with a smile.
We both fell asleep before the first episode ended, and when I woke in the middle of the night, I made my way down to the kitchen.
Jace was there just like I knew he would be.
As I told him about the conversation I had with Ethan, I knew what he and I had done was wrong.
The rush of guilt I felt would follow me for a long time . . .
Yet in the end, it wouldn’t be what crushed us.