Jerilyn never liked me. She didn’t like that someone besides her could make Nolan laugh or earn his attention. That we had a history between us she wasn’t privy to or part of. That he could have fun with me without her around.
I was one of his few friends she didn’t manage to run off. She even confessed to Zoey once it was like I was Nolan’s boyfriend, and that it irritated her how close I was to him. Zoey suspects Jerilyn was trying to rile her up to help her put a wedge between the two of us.
I think the only reason Jerilyn tolerated Zoey is because she had no clue how much Zoey was in love with Nolan, too. All due credit to Zoey. She forced herself to be nice to Jerilyn so we wouldn’t end up permanently shouldered out of his life.
And one Friday night when Katie was only two, while I was out of town for two weeks at a training workshop, Nolan showed up at our house late that night, in tears and miserable after having left Jerilyn following yet another fight. Lucas was at Bill’s, fortunately.
Zoey called me, took Nolan to bed, and I was on the phone talking to them the whole time she made love to him, making him promise us he wasfinallygoing to divorce Jerilyn.
He was too scared to move in permanently with us, though. Although he did stay with us for four weeks, until he could afford to get his own place.
Understandably, we didn’t want Jerilyn to have anything she could use against him in the custody proceedings. And wegotit. But those four weeks cemented in both my mind and in Zoey’s that Nolan belong to and withus.
Just like we belonged to and with him.
I think he finally realized it, too. All those stolen, sometimes drunken moments we had between us back in college, those frantic, frenzied afternoon encounters in high school, had built a shadowy but solid foundation for us to complete, now that we were adults.
We hated it when Nolan moved into his own apartment. As he worked to free himself from Jerilyn, we finally sawourNolan return, though. His personality, his sense of humor.
His sweetly pushy way of getting what he wanted with us in all the ways both of us loved.
And he promised he was done trying to fight himself—and us—and deny whatever this was we had together. That as long as we didn’t mind he had to be Katie’s dad first, and we understood that he needed his own apartment because of Katie, he’d be faithful to us.
That means for the past four years, we’ve taken as much of Nolan’s time as he has to spare, when he’s not working or being a dad.
Sometimes, that meant only one or the other of us got the chance to spend a few hours with him over at his place. Those rare and precious times when all three of us had uninterrupted time together at our place?
Magic.
This morning, no rudely blaring alarm will disturb us. Before we all said good-night last night, I declared today a sleeping-in day. Later, we’ll go finish what needs taken care of at Nolan’s apartment.
No excuses now. He might not get the last month’s rent back, but he’ll get his security deposit, and the deposits for utilities, and it’ll save him those payments. Tomorrow, he’ll file a change of address form with the post office.
We’ll open our bank accounts.
You know you’ve hit a certain expert adulting level whenbankingthrills you.
He’s not going to say anything to Katie until Friday, when he picks her up from school.
I truly understand what utter contentment feels like now.
Like all is right with the world.
Finally.
If I’d been able to convince him to do this before I met Zoey, I would have missed out on loving her. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll kill or die for my wife if I have to. She’s my world. But being an adult means sometimes getting to have your damn cake and eat it, too.
We can finally wrap Nolan full-time in our love so he realizesthisis the way life was meant to be.
I close my eyes, knowing there’s a smile on my face, and listen to the sounds of them breathing next to me.
* * * *
The first time Nolan and I fell together wasn’t intentional. We were best friends already, and had been for at least six months.
We were also two horny teenaged boys. One of his older brothers had stayed logged into a porn site on their family computer, and we were at his house with at least two hours of time alone ahead of us.
Of course we looked around.
