“Nice night,” Mars said. “Don’t you think?”
I shook my head, forcing down a smile while I approached. Dusk had made the park gray, and rain that afternoon had weighed down all the trees, shrubs, and grasses that grew there. “If you ignore the weather,” I joked.
Mars hopped off the back of the truck and took a few slow struts my way. “Don’t you think there’s something nice about a night like this? Fog rolling under the streetlights and that kind of shit?” He took another step, then positioned himself in front of me. As I swallowed, he reached out, then smoothed down the front of my jacket. “Romantic, you know?”
Mars’s flirtations sent a thrill up my spine, and a hot blush spread across my cheeks as he stood there with his hands still on my chest. I turned to Rip, and he shot me a half-smile, then shrugged.
I guess even you can’t control Mars.
“Maybe it’s romantic,” I said carefully. “If you squint your eyes a little.”
Mars squinted his eyes at me, scrunching them shut as he pressed his hands against my chest. “You’re right,” he said. “Now I practically feel like I’m in a movie.”
I laughed, then swatted at his hand. “Okay, okay,” I said. “It’s kind of a romantic night in the park, you win.” I turned back to Rip, and Mars let his hands slide off my chest. “Is that why you asked me out here?”
Rip jumped to his feet, then shoved his hands in his jean pockets. With his jacket zipped and buttoned up for once, he looked more compact than usual, but his square jaw and broad chest still cut a sharp silhouette in the dusk light. “No, we asked you out here to tell you a few things,” he said.
I raised my eyebrow, then leaned back on my heels. My heart was thumping in my chest, but I didn’t want them to know it. I was going to hold my cool, no matter what.
“Go ahead, then,” I said. “What do you want to tell me?”
“You’re cute,” Mars said, spinning on his heel. He stepped back over to Rip and wrapped his arm around his shoulder. “We both think so.”
I swallowed and focused on suppressing the giddy feeling that was tingling around in my gut and threatening to fry my brain. “Old news,” I said.
Although I don’t mind hearing you repeat it.
“And,” Rip said, “thanks to you, we realized that we’re in love.”
The giddy feeling tingled across my whole body, and the world tilted at an odd angle. I turned to Mars and watched as he nudged Rip with his hip, then shot him a cocky grin.
“Okay,” I said quietly. “I’m happy for you.”
Which I was, honestly. I just felt a lot of other feelings mixed in with that happiness.
Feelings that were teleporting and spinning and combining and splitting in my gut, making me smile at them with a strange, pained look across my eyes.
Mars cocked an eyebrow at me, then took a step forward. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a single red rose, only slightly bent at the stem from being shoved against his chest. “And lastly,” he said, “we want to ask you out, Clark.”
I tilted my head to the side, then adjusted my glasses. “You want to ask me out?” I repeated.
“On a date,” Rip said, shrugging. “That’s why Mars insisted on the flower.”
“Romantic,” I said, smiling back at them. “I get it.”
Mars stepped in front of Rip, and Rip threw his arms over Mars’s chest to pull him closer. “Didn’t want you thinking we’re just in it for the hot threesomes,” Mars teased.
I crossed my arms over my chest, but immediately, I had a desire for Mars and Rip to reach out and pull me open again, releasing all the butterflies and fireworks I was holding in. “Well maybe I am doing it for the threesomes,” I said.
Mars chuckled, assuming I was joking, but Rip furrowed his brow.
I took a deep breath. I had finally figured out what I wanted to say to those two, and there was no way I was going to stop myself from saying it, even if they were somehow more ridiculously charming together than they were apart.
“Yes,” I said. “You can take me on a date. But I need the two of you to know something. I’m not going to come crawling back every time you have a fight, and I’m not going to play backup dancer or special guest star, either.” I turned to Mars, catching the surprised look in his eye, and then to Rip, whose lips were turned up in a slight smile. “I have been waiting for years to date someone and to have a real relationship. So yes, you can ask me out, but you better get it right.”
“Get what right?” Mars asked.
I spun the flower in my hand, then grinned. “If I’m going to go and date two guys,” I said, “I better get treated twice as nice.”
