Dell had always been into all of it.
“Hey.” Luca stepped back. “Want a beer?”
“Yeah.” Dell closed the door behind him. “A beer sounds great.”
Luca cracked open a can, a bit of foam running over his thumb. He sucked it off after he handed it over, before he opened his own. Dell felt hyper aware of every move Luca made. Hyper aware of every hop running down his throat. Hyper aware that Luca hadn’t made eye contact since he’d opened the door.
“So.” Luca leaned his forearms on the counter, looked over at the view of the surf from the kitchen window. “I feel like you should just get to it. Whatever you wanted to come here to say.”
He was right. There wasn’t need for small talk. Dell had to use his words; Luca deserved that.
Dell stuck his hands in his back pockets after taking another sip for bravery.
“The person who’s opening the bookshop. Mae. Who I told you about last time. We’ve gotten a little…closer. I told them more about you.”
Luca remained still, eyes still focused on the outside world.
“And they…” Dell swallowed. “They suggested…if we wanted to…that you and I could keep up our deal. While I start seeing Mae, too. Sort of an…” He waved a hand. “Open relationship deal. So we wouldn’t have to stop this. If you didn’t want to. Because I don’t want to stop, Luca.”
The truth was, while Dell had been skeptical when Mae first suggested it, he’d been doing a shit ton of reading over the last few days. And a shit ton of wondering if his initial discomfort had only been due to the societal pressures that prioritized monogamy, a culture he’d been immersed in his whole life. Maybe hedidn’thave to feel shame about harboring feelings for two people at once. Maybe it was okay to want to hold onto all of this.
Finally, Luca looked up at him, an eyebrow arched.
“So you came here to ask me if you can keep fucking me, while you start fucking them?”
Dell blushed, looking down at the counter.
“It, uh, does make me sound like selfish, when you put it that way. But…yes.” It sounded cruder, the way Luca had just put it, than everything Dell had been reading about openness and communication and boundaries and trust. But—“That’s about it.”
Luca made a noise Dell couldn’t interpret before grabbing his beer and walking to a chair in the living room. After a moment, Dell sat in the opposite chair, joining him in his stare out a different window.
“So you’re into open relationships,” Luca summarized after a silence, tapping his fingers against the side of his can. “This wasn’t exactly what I was expecting.”
“I know,” Dell rushed to say. “It wasn’t what I was expecting either. But I’ve thought about it a lot, been reading about non-monogamy. I’ve never actually tried it before, but caring for Mae doesn’t mean I suddenly don’t care about you. I think…we work well together, you know? Or else we wouldn’t have kept this up so long.”
Luca nodded slowly. “You don’t want things to change.”
“Not really, no.” And then, unable to help himself, he blurted, “Do you?”
Luca only stared straight ahead before he said, “I have a feeling that what I want isn’t the most important factor here.”
“No, it is.” Dell pushed to the edge of his seat, turned his knees toward Luca’s. “That’s why I’m here, talking this out with you. I want to know what you’re thinking. What you want. It should be about what all of us are comfortable with.”
Luca closed his eyes.
Dell had known this might be an awkward conversation to have, but his gut told him, even by his low expectation standards, it wasn’t going well.
“I haven’t kissed them or…anything,” Dell stuttered out, face flushing as Luca’s silence stretched, as the shame he’d been training himself not to feel came creeping back. Wondering, after the words came out of his mouth, if that statement was even true. If the looks, the nearness he and Mae had shared in that karaoke bar, if spending a night in the other’s bed counted asanything.“We promised we wouldn’t, until I talked to you.”
Luca continued to be quiet for a long time. At least, it seemed like a long time. It might have only been an awkwardly prolonged pause before he spoke again, but maybe it was also an eternity.
“You could’ve kissed them if you wanted to,” he said, rubbing a hand over his face, like the conversation was making him tired. “You’re not…obligated to me, Dell. I thought we were clear about that.”
“Yeah.” Dell cleared his throat. “I guess I just…want to be obligated, a little. To you.”
Luca leaned forward in his seat, resting his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands.
“Did you really think I was seeing other people, while we’ve been…doing this?” Dell asked after a moment, genuinely curious.
