Fuck, I hated Smith sometimes.
“You know I don’t do well with those keypad locks.”
“Do you want me to just come let you in and then go?”
“I want to drink a gallon of water, brush my teeth, and go to bed,” I told him.
Smith swallowed hard and turned off the car, throwing us both into a deafening silence when whatever music he’d had playing in the background cut out completely.
“Do you know where I keep the spare toothbrushes?”
“Is that even a thing people really do?” I shot back.
“I use an electric one,” he admitted. “There’s spare heads under the sink in the primary bathroom. You can just…trade it out if you want.”
I think, in that moment, I loved Smith more than the other two.
“Maybe you can show me,” I muttered under my breath.
The sigh he let out was audible, and I was too tired to stop myself from rolling my eyes at it. I put the seat back upright and shouldered open the door. I stood on the curb and waited for him, trudging across the sidewalk to the front door at his heels.
“The code for the door is nineteen-nineteen,” he told me. “You’re welcome whenever you want to come over.”
“I won’t use it.”
“Just in case.”
Smith keyed in the digits and the door lock disengaged, trilling an annoying little song at us both. He stepped over the threshold, not bothering to take off his shoes once inside. I took mine off, though, because his floors were too pretty to scuff. Smith was like Marshall in most of the best ways, his eye for design detail being one of them. I wish he’d been the one to come over when I was painting my office. Maybe he would have had enough sense to talk me out of it.
I made a mental note to call off work the next day and prioritized a trip to the paint store to the top of my to-do list. I’d get rid of that color—and that couple—once and for all.
Fucking Neil and Annette.
Jesus Christ, the two of them had been a horrible idea. What had I been thinking getting myself involved with a married couple? The two of them had already been on the brink of divorce—a fact they’d willingly withheld from me through the whole relationship—and bringing a third in as a last-ditch attempt to save something irreparably broken was cruel for all of us.
Me especially.
But Annette had smiled at me so sweetly that first night, perched on her husband’s lap, his hands curled around her thighs to hold her open for my enjoyment. I hadn’t stood a chance against the two of them. Even though it was only supposed to be sex, even though it was never meant to be a forever thing, I knew from the first taste I was a goner. So, it was my own fault really. I should have walked out of their house and never looked back.
Instead I’d done more than look back.
I’d circled back, I’d driven back, I’d crawled back. And even as their four year-long marriage disintegrated in real time, I held on for all of our lives. In the end, it hadn’t been enough. Neil and Annette split, which was jarring for me. I nursed my wounds over a bottle of scotch and tried to remind myself it was good while it lasted. But then Neil had called me, wanted to get together one on one, and he sounded so sad I knew I couldn’t tell him no.
Three days later, Annette called.
She wanted the same thing, and I was as gone for her as I’d been for her husband, so I gave her the same answer I gave him. Being with them separately was like having my heart torn in two directions, and it wasn’t that long ago I asked her if she felt the same. Her hair was fanned out across my stomach, her breath ghosting over the sticky and limp remnants of my erection, and she gave me a truth I wasn’t expecting.
She didn’t feel pulled in any direction because she and Neil had reconciled. Decided to fix things and try again.
Just the two of them.
I swallowed all of my pride and pretended it was okay. I watched her get dressed afterward and go home to him, my cum still inside of her. The thought of her taking that part of me back to him…
Where it had once thrilled me, now it made me sick.
Two weeks after that, another phone call, another separation, though the messaging was much harsher than before. It was my fault, she told me.
I caused it, Neil said to me six hours later when it was his turn to pick up the phone. I didn’t know what to say to either of them, so I did the only thing that made sense. I took the blame for it all. I let them put their jealousy and their wrongs and their misgivings onto my shoulders, and I hoped in the end both of them felt lighter for it.
