“And after the second time, the concert weekend?” He shook his head and a grin spread across his face. “When I saw her on the Saturday, for Solana’s launch, she was absolutely wired. I have never seen her like that. Whatever y’all did to her that night, she brought the energy to the launch and let’s just say we had ourselves quite an evening.” The grin turned slightly sheepish. “I probably shouldn’t say more than that.”
“You probably shouldn’t,” Ellie agreed, laughing. “But I’m glad.”
“Point is, she came home both times and she was more connected to me, not less. That’s the thing that people don’t understand about this. They think it takes something away. It doesn’t. It adds.”
They sat with that for a moment, the morning quiet around them, and Ellie felt the strange recognition of being understood by someone she never would have expected to understand her.
“Can I ask you something?” she said.
“Go ahead.”
“You and Kelly… how does it work for you two? If you don’t mind me asking.”
Colt took a slow drink of his coffee. “We’ve been doing this a couple of years. Started with threesomes, sometimes a woman, sometimes a guy. Sometimes I just watch.” He paused. “Watching her with a guy is my favourite, if I’m honest. But the jealousy is insane. Seeing her completely open to another man, giving herself to him, the sounds she makes…” He shook hishead slowly. “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever sat through and also the hottest thing I’ve ever seen. The two feelings just tear you apart and put you back together at the same time. You know?”
Ellie nodded, because she did know, she really did. What he’d said was it, exactly it. Different details, different bodies. Different genders even. But the same impossible braiding of jealousy and arousal that she’d been trying to articulate for weeks and wasn’t sure that Becca had still fully understood.
“Women are easier,” Colt continued. “Purer, maybe. I’m not comparing myself, I’m just watching her be with someone who understands her body in a way I physically can’t.”
“And when it’s just Kelly on her own? Without you?”
“With a woman, she’s always been free to do that. Always has been, since we first met. That’s just who she is, and I’m not going to be the guy who tries to put a fence around it.” He smiled. “With a man on his own, different story… I’d have to be there. But women…” He nodded toward Ellie. “Like with you and Becca. That’s her space. I trust it.”
“Any advice?” Ellie asked. “For someone who’s still figuring all this out?”
Colt was quiet for a while, long enough that Ellie thought he might not answer. Then he said, simply, “Come back to each other. Every time. Whatever happens, however far it goes, however good or bad or complicated it gets, even if the jealousy feels like it’s overwhelming, you come back to each other afterwards and you don’t skip that step. Don’t fall asleep without talking. Don’t let the sun come up on something unresolved. Kelly and I have a rule: before either of us sleeps after a night likethat, we hold each other and, if we’re not there together, we still make sure we talk and say what we need to say. Even if it’s just ‘that was good’ or ‘I need to ask about this’. The coming back is the whole thing. You short-cut that and it’ll eat you alive.”
He said it plainly, without drama, like he was telling her the best way to fix a fence post. But for Ellie his words articulated something she already knew but had never heard someone else say.
“That makes sense,” Ellie said quietly. “Without the watching, what Becca and whoever she’s with would just be sex. Me being involved is what makes it something else. But you’re saying without the coming back, the watching is just watching.”
“Exactly.” He looked at her directly. “Kelly told me you two do the necklace thing.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s your coming back. That’s your ritual. Don’t ever let it become routine. The day it stops meaning something is the day you’ve got a problem.”
They looked at each other, and Ellie felt an affinity with Colt that ran deep. Not just the start of a friendship, though it certainly felt like that, it was the understanding of two people who were wired the same unlikely way, who’d each found someone they loved enough to let go of, and who’d discovered that letting go was what brought them closest.
“I don’t own her,” Colt said, looking out at the hills where his horses were grazing in the morning sun. “I just get to be her favourite.”
He said it simply, but she’d rarely heard such a tender expression of one person’s love for another.
“That might be the wisest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” she said.
“Best not tell my daddy. He thinks I’m an idiot.”
They sat there for another few minutes, the morning light warming the porch, the coffee cooling in their mugs. Two very different people with a lot in common.
Then Becca appeared in the doorway, squinting against the light, hair a disaster, wearing one of Ellie's t-shirts and her own pyjama trousers. "Coffee," she said, in a tone that suggested civilisation might collapse if the request wasn't met immediately.
"On the counter," said Colt. "Good morning."
"It will be when I have coffee."
Kelly appeared behind her, looking similarly destroyed, and the two of them shuffled past like zombies. The next few minutes were consumed by the elaborate production of getting two non-morning people caffeinated. Colt caught Ellie's eye and they shared a look: fondness, amusement, and beneath it the understanding from their conversation.
***
