Also by Megan Hart

ALL FALL DOWN

PRECIOUS AND FRAGILE THINGS

COLLIDE

NAKED

SWITCH

DEEPER

STRANGER

TEMPTED

BROKEN

DIRTY

The Space Between us
Megan Hart

www.mirabooks.co.uk

This book is dedicated first to Superman, who can’t dance worth a damn but who’s always willing to give it a shot.

To my family and friends, of course and as always, because without you I would never have any stories to tell.

To the BootSquad, for reading this and helping me make it better.

To my bestie, Lauren Dane, who sometimes sends me links to horrific porn.

Acknowledgments

Special acknowledgment to Vicki Vantoch, author of The Threesome Handbook: A Practical Guide to SLEEPING WITH THREE, which I found as an invaluable resource while writing The Space Between Us.

As always, I could write without listening to music, but I’m so glad I don’t have to. Below is a partial playlist of what I listened to while writing this book. Please support the artists through legal means.

Can’t Get it Right Today—Joe Purdy

Closer—Joshua Radin

Come Here Boy—Imogene Heap

Early Winter—Gwen Stefani

Ghosts—Christopher Dallman

Glory Box—Portishead

I Think She Knows—Kaki King

Is Your Love Strong Enough—Bryan Ferry

Journey—Jason Manns

Look After You—The Fray

Nicest Thing—Kate Nash

No Ordinary Love—Sade

Reach You—Justin King

She’s Got A Way—Billy Joel

Stiff Kittens—Blaqk Audio

Use Somebody—Kings of Leon

Your Song—Jason Manns

Everyone has a story. Here’s how this one ends.

Charlie’s mouth.

That’s what I want on my body now. His hands and mouth. Tongue, teeth, fingers. I want the crush of him on top of me, the silken brush of his hair against my flesh, the whisper of his lashes as he closes his eyes when he kisses me.

I want Charlie’s mouth, and yet something makes me turn my face when he moves in close. Charlie sighs and presses his forehead to mine. His eyes shut, but I can’t seem to close mine. I have to see him, even this close. Every hair and pore, every scar. Every blemish and flaw that make Charlie so perfect.

“If I’d known,” Charlie says. His hands are heavy, one on my shoulder, the other on my hip. His breath smells of whiskey and smoke. He looks like Charlie, but he doesn’t smell like him.

I don’t want Charlie to wish he’d made a different choice.

Please, Charlie, I think. Please don’t tell me you wish you’d missed all of this.

Charlie sighs. “It’s just … there’s this space between us. This big wide space. And I don’t know what to do with it.”

We fill it, I want to tell him, but say nothing. The words won’t come. If I can’t kiss him, how on earth could I possibly tell him that I love him? That it doesn’t matter where Meredith’s gone or if she’s coming back. All we need is right here. The two of us will find a way to make things work. That it will all be okay.

I could tell him that, I think, as Charlie pulls away. His back is toward me. His shoulders slump. The jutting lines of his shoulder blades urge me to reach and touch, but my fingers curl in on themselves instead. I touch myself because I won’t touch him. I could tell Charlie it will all be okay. It will all work out. But though I can’t say I’ve never told a lie in my life, none of them have been to Charlie. I’m not about to start now.

“I’m sorry,” Charlie says again in a low hoarse voice. He doesn’t sound like Charlie now, either.

“I’m not,” I say finally. “I’m not sorry about any of it, Charlie.”

And that, at least, is the truth.

Chapter 1

Everyone has a story. That was Meredith’s schtick. How she got us talking. Sometimes she asked about our favorite childhood candy, our biggest fears. What we’d dreamed about the night before. She asked, we answered. I never thought to question her about why she wanted to know, just like it never occurred to me to wonder why we all wanted to tell her.

Today it was about crazy.

“So, Tesla, tell me. What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever done?” Meredith said this with gleaming eyes and lips wet from where she’d licked them.

Unlike some of the other times, I didn’t have a ready answer for her. “Haven’t I told you enough stories?”

She shook her head, her sleek honey-blond hair falling just so on the shoulders of her soft, pale blue cardigan. “Never enough. Carlos here already told me about how once he got caught jerking off to old people porn.”

I paused, jug of coffee in my hand, and looked at them both. “Whaaaat?”

Carlos is a writer. We get a lot of them in Morningstar Mocha because we offer a bottomless refill for under two bucks, and free Wi-Fi. Carlos was in there every day, tapping away at his keyboard with his earbuds in before he headed off to his day job. Today he’d succumbed to the seduction of Meredith’s charm and actually closed the lid of his laptop. That was pretty crazy.

Meredith came to the Mocha to use the free internet and drink coffee like the writers did, but she wasn’t a writer. Meredith sold things—candles and cookware and jewelry, all from those home-party companies. She wasn’t annoying about it the way Lisa, who sold Spicefully Tasty products, was. Meredith would be happy to sell you a pair of earrings or a fancy-smelling jar of wax if you asked her to, but she never pushed her stuff on anyone. She knew how to be subtle.

Well, mostly.

“Porn of old people fucking,” she said. “You know. Like lemon party.”

I didn’t even know what that was, but Carlos made a face, so I guess he did.

“I was young. It was all I could find.” He shrugged, barely embarrassed.

I laughed, put the full jug on the counter and lifted the empty one. “No offense, but that doesn’t sound too crazy to me. I mean, who hasn’t looked at gross porn at least once or twice.”

I paused, just to give him a little bit of a hard time. “Can’t say I’ve ever buffed my muffin over it or anything.”

Carlos laughed and rolled his eyes. “Like I said, I was young.”

“I told you.” Meredith reached across their tables to poke him. “Our girl Tesla’s a wild child.”

I got that a lot. Maybe it was the Doc Martens, which I refuse to believe will ever go out of style, or my short-cropped hair. It was platinum-blond at the time, and that day I’d tied a cute Strawberry Shortcake bandanna around it, very 1940s Rosie the Riveter. Well, except that I was frothing milk and filling coffee jugs instead of fixing airplanes. If crazy was retro clothes and lots of eyeliner I might qualify, but not because of my day-to-day life.

I made a little wiggling gesture with my fingertips. “Yeah, o-o-oh. I’m s-o-o-o wild. And cra-a-azy! Watch out, I might just do something really nutty like wipe up the crumbs on your table.”

“I meant it in the best way,” Meredith said.

“Thanks.” I started to say more, but my boss came out from the back room and shot me with the death-ray lasers of her gaze. “Talk to you later, when Joy’s not breathing down my neck.”

“Did you refill the self-serves?” Joy asked, and continued without waiting for me to answer. “I need you to pull all the baked goods today at four instead of five. Someone’s coming from the women’s shelter to pick them up. And listen, that panini on the menu? We’re taking it off at the end of the week, so push it hard so I can get rid of that avocado.”

We had half a dozen panini sandwiches on the menu, but at least the bit about the avocado tipped me off. I gave Joy my best and brightest, if dumbest, smile. Made sure to add the blank doll eyes, too, just because I knew how much she loved feeling superior. Hey, everyone’s got a hobby, right? Hers was being a bitch. Mine was letting her think she was getting away with it.

“Sure thing. No problem.” I settled the empty jug near the coffee machine.

“Don’t fill that now—it’ll be off temp when it’s time to replace it.” She said that as if I hadn’t worked here for almost two years already.

I didn’t bother arguing. There are just some people in the world you can’t please except by not pleasing them. And life’s too short for making drama, you know? Sometimes you just gotta play nice, even when someone else is trying to grind your Play-Doh into the rug.

But then she floored me.

“I’m leaving at twelve-thirty, and I’m taking the rest of the day off.”

“Are you okay?” It was the first question that rose to my tongue.

Joy took most weekends off, her privilege as manager, but that meant she never took days off during the week. And leaving early? No way. Privately, I thought this place was the only thing she had in her life.

Her sour expression showed me I’d stepped out of line. “What? Of course! Please don’t tell me I need to stay, Tesla. I mean, you can handle this, right? Do I need to call Darek to come in earlier?”

Her tone made it clear she had about as much faith in me handling the shop as she would if the mop in the corner came to life and started grilling up paninis. “Yes. Of course. Have fun.”

“It’s an appointment,” she said. “Not fun.”

I shut up after that and got to the business of serving coffee and pastries and pushing panini sandwiches on poor, unsuspecting squares who didn’t know the reason I raved about the turkey avocado club was because we were trying to get rid of it before the end of the week. By the time Joy was about ready to leave, the line of customers stretched all the way to the front door. That happened every day, though. I wasn’t worried.

“I called Darek,” Joy said. “He’ll be here in twenty minutes. I can’t really wait for him….”

I liked working with Darek. Still, the fact she’d needed to call him in early twisted my nipples a little. “It’s fine, Joy. You go. I can handle this.”

“With one hand behind her back,” said the next customer in line, Johnny D., without being prompted. I love that guy.

You can’t work in any sort of job dealing with the public and not get to know the people who come in day after day. Regulars. Well, I have regulars and then I have favorites.

Johnny Dellasandro was definitely a favorite. He’s older than my dad, but has the most adorable little boy I’ve ever seen. He’s made of fabulous, that guy, always with the smile and the wink. A dollar in the tip jar. A girl notices those things. He likes flavored coffee and sweet things, and he likes to sit with his newspaper in the booth closest to the counter. Sometimes he comes in with his girlfriend, Emm, sometimes with his little boy, sometimes with his much older daughter and his grandson.

Joy never gave him a sour look. She shot me another one, though, as if it was my fault she had to leave. Then she shrugged into her coat and left.

“Where’s your little dumpling?” I asked Johnny when she’d gone.

“With his mama today.”

“Must be nice to be a man of leisure,” I teased. “Swanning around coffee shops and whatnot, being all pretty and stuff.”

Johnny laughed. “You caught me.”

“What can I get you?”

“Chocolate croissant. When you getting in those peppermint mocha lattes again?”

“Not until closer to Christmas,” I told him as I pulled out the biggest croissant from the case and settled it on a plate for him. “We have the pumpkin spice, though. I can get you one of those.”

With Johnny served, I moved on to the next customer. One at a time, that was how to do it, making sure to listen carefully to the orders so I didn’t make mistakes—it was no good being fast if you were sloppy.

Eric was an emergency room doc who liked a pot of tea while he sat at a table in the front window and wrote list after list on yellow legal pads. Lisa the law student always had a jalapeño-cheese-stuffed pretzel and an iced tea while she studied. Jen was a regular I hadn’t seen in a while, and we chatted about her new job for a minute. I spotted Sadie the psychologist at the back of the line and gave her a wave. Sometimes Sadie came in with her husband, another tasty bit of eye candy, only Joe was the kind of man who never even looked sideways at another woman. Today she was alone. Sadie waved back with the hand not on her hugely pregnant belly.

“Hot chocolate, extra whipped cream, and …” I tilted my head, looking Sadie up and down when she got to the counter. “Bagel with lox spread. Am I right?”

She laughed. “Oh … I was going to be good, but you’ve convinced me.”

“If you can’t indulge when you’re pregnant, when the heck can you?” I tipped my chin toward the front of the shop, where Meredith had snared some other regulars into telling stories. Laughter rose and fell. “I think there’s something exciting going on up there. Grab a seat. I’ll bring it over.”

Sadie huffed a sigh. “Thanks. I swear, I used to be fit. Now just the walk from home to here has me winded. And my feet hurt.”

“No worries.” While she waddled to a table in the sunshine coming through the large front windows, I set to work toasting the bagel, steaming the milk, adding the chocolate syrup.

“The queen’s holding court,” Darek said as he moved behind me to hang up his coat and put on his apron.

I looked up at the sound of Meredith’s laughter floating toward the back of the shop. “Doesn’t she always?”

I’d known her only a few months, uncertain of when she’d gone from a regular to a favorite and then to a friend. It might’ve been the day Joy went into one of her raging shit-fits and Meredith had calmly but coolly put her in her place by reminding her “the customer is always right, or this customer goes someplace else to spend four-fifty on a mocha latte.”

Since then Meredith had weaseled out most of my life history over coffee and sandwiches. I guess I’d had a crush on her from the moment she’d walked through the front doors of the Mocha with her oversize handbag and complementary dark glasses, her shoes that matched her belt, her perfectly styled blond hair. Meredith was the sort of woman I thought about trying to be sometimes, before ultimately accepting it took a lot of money, effort and desire I mostly didn’t have. She’d become a part of our little coffee shop community even though she didn’t live anywhere close to the neighborhood. More than that, she’d become a part of my life. She thought I was crazy. Wild. And she meant it in the best way, whatever that meant.

She really didn’t know me at all.

The crowd waiting for food and coffee dwindled, though most of the tables remained occupied. The Mocha’s a popular place all day long. Sadie left. So did Johnny and Carlos, my regulars. A few of Darek’s came in, but he took care of them. With Joy gone for the rest of the day I had time for a break, and I took my oversize mug of chai to Meredith’s table.

She looked up from her computer when I sat. “You missed some good stories today. You still haven’t told me yours, though.”

“Haven’t I told you enough crazy stories?” I’d told her plenty, most about my summers as a kid in the commune. “What, The Compound wasn’t wacky enough for you?”

“Those were about a place you were, not things you did. There’s a difference.”

I sipped chai and looked her over. “Do I look like someone who does crazy things?”

“Aren’t you?”

I shrugged. “I don’t even have any tattoos.”

Meredith waved a dismissive hand. “Every sorority girl has a tattoo these days. Piercings all over the place. They wear nipple rings like it’s something special.” She eyed me. “When I said you were our wild child, I didn’t mean because of the way you dress or wear your makeup.”

“What, then?” The mug warmed my hands better than the sunshine slanting through the glass. Early October in Pennsylvania can be glorious, warm and fragrant with the scent of changing leaves. This year, it was getting cold early.

Meredith shrugged, so graceful and artless that jealousy slivered through me. I could practice for a million years and never look that elegant. “Let’s just say there’s something about you.”

“There’s something about anyone, isn’t there?” I lifted a fingertip to point discreetly toward Eric, sitting alone with legal pads and lists. “Check out Dr. McSexypants over there. What’s he doing with all that stuff? Every time he comes in here, he’s writing on those legal pads. Why don’t you ask him about a story?”

Meredith laughed, low and throaty, not the same laughter that had earlier filled the shop. This was just for me. “Because he won’t tell anyone about them. Still waters run deep and all that shit.”

“Maybe I have still waters, too.”

She shook her head, playful. Charming. “No, honey, you’re more like a waterfall.”

“Because I rush a lot?” I asked with a wink.

“Nope. A thing of natural beauty with some treasure hidden behind it. C’mon, Tesla. Tell me. The craziest thing you’ve ever done.”

There was no trying to deny her. What Meredith wanted, she’d have, and she made me want to give it to her. “I don’t think anything I’ve done is crazy. Crazy’s like … I dunno. Putting a dead bird in your locker at school so you can bury it later. Lighting stuff on fire.”

“Okay, not crazy. Wild, then. Free? Unique?” She paused, thinking. “Unencumbered.”

“Ah. You mean sexual.”

Meredith wore a huge diamond and a gold band on her left hand. She talked sometimes about her husband, but only in the vaguest of ways. I knew his name was Charlie and that he was a teacher at some fancy private school. They had no kids.

“Yes-s-s,” Meredith hissed with glee. “Sexual. Tell me, Tesla. What’s the wildest sex thing you ever did?”

I wasn’t surprised she wanted to know my wild sex secrets. She liked to talk about sex a lot. Well. Who doesn’t?

“Hmmm.” I turned my mug round and round in my palms, the ceramic sliding on the tabletop. “The craziest thing, huh? I’m not sure I can beat old people porn.”

“Did you know Sadie was married to someone else before Joe?” Meredith said quietly.

“No. She was? Huh.” I shrugged. “Was that the craziest thing she’d done? Got divorced?”

Meredith shook her head. “Oh. No. Her first husband died.”

I frowned, thinking of pretty Sadie with her big belly and gorgeous husband. “Gee, that’s too bad.” Meredith shrugged. “It happens.”

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard her sound a little bored by the pain of others. She liked hearing stories, but mostly only the funny or exciting ones. Sad stories didn’t melt her butter.

I looked up to the counter, but Darek was busy flirting with one of his favorites. Nobody else was waiting. I still had time—and half a mug of chai. “Fine. Crazy things. You go first.”

She shook her head and licked her mouth again. I couldn’t help watching her tongue move over her lips. Meredith has a mouth like Angelina Jolie. Full, soft lips. Pillowy, I think some people call them. She has a smile full of teeth, the kind you can’t help but smile back at. Meredith’s mouth is the sort that would break your heart if you saw it frowning.

“I haven’t done anything crazy. I’m married.”

I laughed at that. “So? Were you a virgin when you got married? Don’t married people get up to crazy shit?”

Her eyelids lowered for a moment, as if she was remembering something. “No. Not really.”

“You must have something crazy to tell me.” I sat back when Eric got up to help himself to a refill from the jugs on the counter next to us.

“Tesla,” he said, and nodded at Meredith. “Hi.”

“Hi, Eric.” She didn’t flutter her lashes or anything contrived like that. Meredith didn’t have to. “How’s tricks?”

“Putting Houdini to shame,” Eric said, though he didn’t have quite the same easy flirting tone with Meredith that he had with me. He looked at her sort of warily, keeping his distance.

She made sure to ogle his ass as he walked away, then turned back to me. “I would bang that man like a screen door in a hurricane.”

“If you weren’t married.”

“And if he didn’t look at me like he was afraid I might bite him instead of kiss him,” Meredith said with a touch of scorn.

I looked away from where Eric was again looking at his lists. “Oh, c’mon. He didn’t.”

Her smile lifted a bit. “He never looks at you like that.”

“Because I’m not a moron and because I give him sugar and caffeine,” I said with a laugh. “Eric’s a good guy.”

She shot him another glance, then dismissed him with a wave. She lifted her mug and drank, her eyes never leaving mine. She licked her mouth again.

“I kissed a girl,” Meredith said.

“And let me guess. You liked it?” I swallowed hot tea.

She shrugged. “It was okay. It wasn’t much of anything, really. It was in college. We were just fooling around.”

“To see what it was like,” I offered. I’d heard that story before, too many times.

“Sure. Lots of people do it. You do it,” she added.

“Sometimes.” It wasn’t something I considered crazy or wild, and obviously she didn’t, either, since she already knew about it and was still teasing me into telling something else.

“And you like it.”

“Well … of course.” I laughed. “I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t like it.”

“See? That’s what I mean. You do what you want to do, what you like to do, whatever turns you on.” Meredith paused. “I admire that about you. I envy it, I guess.”

As if she could really envy anything about me, a chick who worked in a coffee shop, drove a piece-of-shit car, didn’t even live on her own. Besides, it had been ages since I’d kissed anyone, girl or guy.

“You don’t answer to anyone,” Meredith said.

“Tell that to Joy.”

“C’mon, Tesla. I see it in your eyes. You have some good stories.”

I laughed. There was really no resisting her. I’d seen her work her wiles on everyone from other customers in the Mocha to the cop she’d talked out of giving her a ticket. Even Joy warmed to Meredith, though she always reacted afterward as if her friendliness unnerved her, and was even more impossibly horrible for hours, as if she were trying to scrub herself free of any taint of kindness.

“I fucked brothers once. Twins.” I didn’t say this smugly or with any sense of pride, though by the way Meredith’s eyes widened, I saw she was impressed.

“At the same time?”

I hesitated for just the barest second. She had asked for the craziest thing, and though I personally didn’t think anything I’d ever done could qualify as crazy, clearly Meredith had her own set of standards. Well, most people do. “Yes.”

She breathed out, long and slow. “Wow.”

“It wasn’t—” I began, but she held up a hand. I went silent.

“Tell me about it.”

I hadn’t told anyone about it, ever. So why tell her, now? For no other reason than, just like the Billy Joel song, she had a way.

“Tell me,” Meredith urged me.

So I did.

Chapter 2

Chase and Chance Murphy had never been separated. I was new to the district, but everyone else had gone to school together since middle school, some even since kindergarten. The boys’ mother, the formidable Mrs. Eugene Murphy—if she had her own first name, and she must’ve, nobody ever used it—was something like a force of nature in the school, where her sons were both first-string on the basketball and soccer teams. “The twins,” she called them. She made a unit of them, not recognizing them as individuals.

Maybe that was why it was so easy for me to fuck them both, or rather for them both to fuck me, at the same time. They were really good at sharing. I’d bet it wasn’t what their mother had ever intended for them, but then I’m pretty sure Mama Murphy hadn’t thought ahead to the years when the twins would get hair on their chins—and on their balls.

We were all seniors, me the new kid still finding my way, Chase and Chance popular boys despite their mother being such a legendary pain in the ass. They were tall, lanky, athletic. They were completely identical, though they’d stopped dressing alike by then. Later I discovered I could tell them apart by the slight curves of their cocks. One to the left, the other right. Mirror images. They were popular, good students. They’d been altar boys. They were going off to college.

Me? I was small and wore thrift-store clothes, but unlike Molly Ringwald in Pretty in Pink, this only made me poor, not quirky. I had no Duckie to adore me, but at least I wasn’t all hung up on the rich boy from the other side of the tracks. No Andrew what’s-his-face for me, thank God. Unfortunately, no James Spader, either. I’d have hit Spader like the fist of an angry God back then. Hell, probably even now.

I was smarter than the Murphy boys and just about everyone else in my class when it came to math, and their mother, determined they’d maintain their eligibility for sports teams—because sports apparently built character, something you’d never have guessed she believed, given her own unathletic state, or that of their dad, a dentist who wore thick glasses and had buckteeth that could’ve benefited from some of his own expertise—hired me to be their tutor.

That’s right. Mama Murphy paid me to divest her darling twins of their virginity. It didn’t start out that way, of course. I mean, I had every intention of teaching them calculus. I needed the money and wasn’t afraid to insist that Mrs. Eugene Murphy pay me twice the normal rate because I’d be teaching two instead of one, even though she tried to convince me that it wasn’t the cost per individual that should count, but the total amount of time spent.

“And since you’re teaching them both at the same time,” she had reasoned, “I should pay you the regular rate.”

“They’re not the same person,” I’d pointed out to her, standing my ground.

“But they’re twins!”

I’d only raised an eyebrow, as I recall. She’d taken in my long denim skirt, the black, knee-high Doc Martens, my dyed-black hair. I guess to her I was sort of scary looking.

“You did come highly recommended by the school guidance counselor.” She’d sounded doubtful.

“I’ll make sure Chase and Chance pass their finals with A’s, or your money back.”

It was done. She paid me every week. I made good on my promise.

It didn’t start out as a fuckfest. If anything, the brothers were pains in the ass to teach. They didn’t like calculus. Worse, they didn’t care about it. They were both doing poorly enough that it was threatening their place on the school team. They still didn’t care. Calculus was for douche bags, according to the brothers Murphy.

But like I said, I needed the money. There was no way I was going to let them get away with anything less than what I’d promised their mother. I could never have paid her back—I’d already spent everything she’d given me on clothes and books and music, the necessities of life.

“If you learn this—” it was the first offer I made them “—I’ll blow you.”

This stopped their stupid scribbling and wiggling around in their seats like puppies that couldn’t be made to sit. Both of them had looked up at me, eerily simultaneous. They weren’t the same person, but they did have a way of moving or saying the same thing at the same time. They were connected, no doubt about it.

“Get the fuck out,” Chase said.

“No fucking way,” Chance said.

“I will blow you both,” I told them, putting my hands flat on the table and leaning over it to look them in the eye, one at a time. I can’t remember which one I looked at first. I didn’t think it mattered then, but it would. “I will make you both come so hard you see stars.”

I would never be a teacher, had never even dreamed of it as a career, but one thing I’d learned about teaching was the effectiveness of positive reinforcement.

That was how it started. They finished their work in record time, and, aside from a few simple mistakes, correctly. As with most things in life, getting the Murphy boys to learn calc was a matter of simple motivation. I wanted them to get A’s, and they wanted my mouth on their dicks.

It wasn’t until they both dropped trou that I started thinking I might actually be getting the better end of the deal. I’d never thought much of Chase and Chance as boyfriend material. For one, they seemed sort of a package deal, despite my insistence to their mother they were two separate people. Two, they were a real pair of Weasleys, my very own Fred and George. Dark auburn hair with the pale skin to match, dark brown eyes. The freckles on their noses might’ve seemed a little Howdy Doody, but when Chase and Chance both pushed their jeans and briefs around their ankles, the only wooden puppet I thought about was the stiff, thick branches of their not-quite-identical cocks. I didn’t know at the time they’d never been with a girl before. All I saw was beauty.

And I was greedy for it.

I made them stand shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. I got on my knees in front of them. The carpet in their parents’ finished basement was thick and soft, a perfect cushion. I took them each in a hand. I slicked them with my spit. I took the first one in my mouth, and then the other. I do remember who was first, because I was looking up at him when I did it. He was looking down.

It was Chase, though it should’ve been his brother, since I picked him totally by chance. Later it would make a difference, but at the time I don’t think any of us cared. I slid his thick, pretty cock as far as I could into my mouth, and sucked, while I used my hand to stroke up and down his brother’s prick.

Both of them groaned at the same time. They sounded the same. They looked the same. In another second I discovered they tasted the same, too.

If I could’ve taken them both in my mouth at the same time, I’d have done it. As it was, they had to be satisfied with my equal but back-and-forth attention. And at the end of it, wanting to watch them both when they came, I left off the use of my lips and teeth and tongue to lean back and finish them with my hands. They shot within seconds of each other, spurting onto their flat, rippled bellies. Both of them had closed their eyes, heads bent. Mouths I would later learn were talented with kissing and licking and sucking were lax and open with their moans.

Chase was the one who looked at me first. His hand, which had been gripping the table behind him, the one on which we’d spent hours scribbling equations, loosened its grasp and stroked along my hair. His thumb passed over my lower lip, which felt swollen and wet. He blinked slowly, as if waking from some dream he didn’t want to leave.

“Fucking hell,” Chance had said, breaking the moment. “That was awesome.”

That was just the first time.

Chapter 3

“Wow,” Meredith said when I’d finished. “That is …”

I didn’t really want her to say crazy. It couldn’t dilute what had happened, couldn’t make it something it wasn’t, but still. I didn’t want her to say it like that.

“Fucking supernova hot,” Meredith said.

I flushed, heat creeping up my throat and down lower. I hadn’t told her the rest of it, but I thought I might, if she asked me. All about that long fall with the brothers Murphy, the three of us graduating from simultaneous blow jobs to cunnilingus and every combination of fucking that two cocks and a pussy can get into. It was over by Christmas.

“It’s absolutely not what I thought you’d say,” she told me with a shake of her head. “Wow. Not at all.”

“What did you think I’d say?” I’d finished my chai and break time was over, but I was curious exactly what she’d thought she knew about me.

“I told you. Hidden treasures.”

I blinked slowly under the heat of her gaze. She’d kissed a girl, sure, but what did that mean? Nothing.

There’s never any point in flirting with straight girls, you understand. Not even the “curious” ones. Straight girls have come to the conclusion that it’s perfectly okay to make out with their bestie on the dance floor as a way to get guys’ attention, or because they’re drunk, or because it’s trendy. Straight girls know that unless you eat pussy you’re just experimenting, and even if you do go down on another girl it doesn’t mean you’re a dyke.

I’m not a straight girl.

I’m not a queer girl, either. I guess you could say I’m sexually fluid. Love comes in all shapes and flavors, and I just want to be able to taste them all. But if there’s anything I learned from working at Morningstar Mocha, where the coffee flowed like Niagara Falls and waistbands expanded just by coming within a few feet of the dessert case, it’s that wanting and having are two different things.

“It was a long time ago.” I sounded lame.

“Can’t have been that long ago,” she pointed out, sounding wry. “You’re barely out of high school.”

I laughed. “Hardly. I’m twenty-six.”

“A baby,” she said, but fondly. “An experienced baby.”

Age didn’t mean much to me. “I have to get back to work. Darek’s giving me that desperate look that means someone’s ordered a drink he doesn’t know how to make.”

“Tesla to the rescue. You’d better go help him then. Anyway, I need to get going. I have some things to do.” Meredith gave another of her low, sultry laughs that made the hairs on the back of my neck rise.

We both stood at the same time. She’d been coming in here for months, but today was the first day she’d ever hugged me. For the first few seconds, standing startled in her embrace, I didn’t know what to do. She’d moved closer, and the smell of her was exotic and expensive and subtle. Her arms went around me, pulling me closer. Her sweater was soft on my skin, her hands warm on my back between my shoulder blades. We stood chest to chest and crotch to crotch for the span of half a heartbeat.

By the time I’d relaxed into her touch, closed my eyes and breathed in the deliciousness of her, it was over, except for the lingering heat in my ear from her breath where she’d whispered a goodbye, and the tingle in my cheek where I might’ve only imagined she brushed her lips.

“Tesla?” Eric said this from his place in front of the self-serve station, shaking me out of what must’ve been quite a show of shock. Meredith had already left the shop, the bell on the door jingling behind her. Eric cocked his head to give me the once-over. “You okay?”

“Oh, sure. Fine. Of course.” I held out my hand for his empty mug. “You finished? I’ll take it up for you.”

He looked amused. “Nah. Gonna have another, if that’s okay with you.”

I laughed, embarrassed that I was so out of sorts by something so simple as a hug that had lasted less than a couple of seconds. “Of course. Drink away. If you don’t, someone else will.”

“Isn’t that always how it goes?” He lifted the mug at me.

Then he turned to fill it with another round of coffee, Darek meeped out a cry for help up at the counter, and I got back to work.

Chapter 4

When I got home from work, the house was unusually silent, with no sign of anyone else. Normally I’d have sent out a not-so-quiet little hoot of bliss—I loved the people I lived with, but also craved having, and hardly ever got, the house to myself. Tonight, though, I was totally bummed to come home with not even the porch light left on to welcome me. No dinner, either, and that was worse. I made myself a tuna sandwich with a side of mac-n-cheese, because there really is nothing better than that. Unless it’s hot dogs with mac-n-cheese, and sadly, we were out of hot dogs.

I couldn’t help wondering what they’d gotten up to, those Murphy boys. The memory of them was a small, sore spot in my brain I worried once in a while the way I’d have done with a slice in my gum from flossing too hard. But my thoughts of Chase and Chance hadn’t been close to the surface in a long time. Time has that funny way of smoothing out the rough edges of things, even ones that hurt a little bit. Or a lot.

“You’re a user, Tesla,” Chance had said to me the last time we’d been together. “Nothing but a user.”

It wasn’t true—I was more than a user. I was a lot of things we were too young and dumb to understand. And when he’d said it to me, I’d turned my back and walked away, burning with the self-righteous fury of being maligned. Now, with time and distance and experience between us, I understood why Chance had felt that way.

I hadn’t heard anything about them in years, though it would’ve been easy enough to find out what they’d been up to. My brother, Cap, three years younger, would probably know. I’d had friends; Cap had been popular. Football player, stage crew, homecoming king, voted Funniest in the yearbook. He’d had a good enough time in high school that he kept in touch with buddies from back then. Not that he’d been friends with the Murphys, but he could find out.

Calling my brother to get intel on a pair of guys I’d had sex with was right up there with walking in on your parents fucking. I mean, that had happened to me, but it wasn’t something I either wanted to think about or dwell on. Cap was probably the only other person who knew about me and the Murphys, but just because he’d known about it back in the day didn’t mean he’d be down for discussing it now.

So, because even monkeys have been known to use tools, I turned to what I had on hand. The internet. My laptop had crapped out on me a few months ago, and I hadn’t seen the way to buying a new one. Not until I’d saved up enough to get the biggest, fastest, sweetest Mac I could afford, which was going to take me a long time unless I could get over my addiction to cute retro clothes and glittery eyeliner. That didn’t seem likely. Until then, I checked email and stuff from my phone and used the ancient desktop upstairs.

I’d set up my own user account on the desktop not so much because I wanted to look at things little kids shouldn’t see, but to prevent them from messing up anything I’d saved. At four, Simone could expertly wend her way through the labyrinth of online kiddie games, but she also had a quick-draw delete finger. I’d lost documents and important emails more than once. Her brother, Max, at two and a half, was more likely to simply pound a bunch of keys, making the computer perform any number of wacky functions we had no idea it could do, and that it probably wasn’t meant to.

Since nobody had come home yet, I didn’t have to worry a lot about being pestered to look at videos of cute pets or play an educational game with colors so bright they made my eyes bleed. I didn’t have to be careful about little eyes watching over my shoulder as I glanced through the pictures posted to my Connex friend feed. Meredith had been wrong when she said I didn’t have to answer to anyone. I lived with four other people, one of whom would hand my ass to me on a plate if I exposed his kids to junk they shouldn’t see.

Stalking people on Connex is supereasy if they’re not concerned enough to make sure they tick off all the appropriate privacy controls. I don’t have my account on lockdown because I never upload any pictures or anything too private that I don’t want the world to see. Besides, I want people to be able to find me. That’s what it’s for, right?

I found the brothers Murphy with only a few keystrokes. They both belonged to a fan group for our graduating class. I hadn’t joined. In their profile pictures they looked less alike than they ever had. Still tall and lanky, but time had put weight on them both, and it suited them.

Chance was married. Two small kids. I surfed his photos, feeling only vaguely creepy about it. He was living in Ohio, working for some accounting firm. He had a beautiful family and appeared happy. My cursor hovered over the Add Friend button, but I didn’t click it. I was happy to see Chance looked like he had a good life, but I didn’t feel any need to be even a peripheral part of it.

Chase wasn’t married.

And he looked damned fucking fine, I won’t even lie. He had lots of pictures uploaded. Albums of him hiking, biking, boating. Lots of shots with his shirt off, belly all ridged, arms buff. Lip-smacking good. He also had a lot of pictures of him with the same guy. Over and over, arms slung casually over shoulders. Laughing. I scanned Chase’s profile information, which just said single, but it was clear to me there was a reason for this other man being in all his photo albums. Maybe Chase hadn’t chosen to announce it to the whole world on Connex, but there was no hiding it.

I didn’t friend him, either. I wanted to. I wanted to send him a message, ask him if he was happy. If the reason he hadn’t wanted to be with me was because he was into guys, not because he didn’t love me the way I’d loved him. I wanted to ask him a lot of things, but in the end I didn’t. There’d be no point in picking at that old scar.

I distracted myself surfing the Apple website, yearning for what I wanted and couldn’t have. It seemed to be the theme of the day. I imagined I smelled Meredith’s perfume clinging to me, felt the softness of her sweater against me. With a low, muttered groan I twirled around in the desk chair with my head tipped back and only my feet moving. Round and around, the ceiling twirling above me until I dug a toe into the carpet.

I stopped. The room kept moving. If I stood, I’d stumble, probably fall. It was not quite enough to make my stomach sick, though in retrospect the tuna hadn’t been the best idea. As I turned back to the computer, my eyes still trying hard to focus on one unspinning thing, I heard the front door open and the sound of little shoes on the tile entryway. Then voices. Simone, shrieking at her brother, who was giggling like a lunatic. Their mom, Elaine, admonishing them without much force. Then the diversion of the noise from the den, up the stairs and presumably toward the bathroom, where the kids would be bathed, toothbrushed and pottied before being put into their beds.

I closed down my windows and cleared my history before logging out, and was just turning in the desk chair to face the doorway when he came in. “Hey, Vic,” I said.

“Hey.” He looked tired. Kids could do that to you. Vic pressed the heel of his hand against his eye, then focused briefly on the computer. “Didn’t think you’d be home.”

“Not everyone has a blooming social calendar like you,” I teased.

His smile quirked faintly on one side. Just the one. “We took the kids over to Elaine’s mom’s house for Nancy’s birthday. If I’d known you were going to be home I’d’ve told you.”

“It’s okay. I had stuff to do.” Elaine’s mom and sister had never been mean to me, but they’d never gone out of their way to be nice, either. We had a policy of neutral ground when it came to family events. If they came here or we met someplace else, we treated each other distantly but politely, never really delving too much into my place in their son-in-law’s life. I simply never went to their house.

He nodded. “I’m going to help Elaine with the kids. You up for some Resident Evil 4 in a bit?”

It was our favorite video game, especially played on Vic’s Wii with the special guns that attached to the controllers. “Hell, yeah. You guys need some help?”

“Nah.” He shrugged and yawned. “We got it covered.”

“How’s she feeling?” Elaine was pregnant with their third and didn’t have morning sickness. She had all-day sickness.

“Like shit.” He shrugged again, a man bewildered by the complications of women’s bodies, though not unsympathetic.

It was enough to make me determined never to get pregnant. Like, ever. Well … maybe if Christian Bale was donating, I could be persuaded. But other than that, probably not. “I’ll set up the game for when you’re ready.”

There was no reason for me to have told Vic I’d been thinking about looking up Chase and Chance Murphy. It still felt like a lie, one that weighed heavily enough on me that I couldn’t quite keep my concentration on the game. Since it was single-player, Vic and I took turns at it, switching when one of us died. I died a lot.

“What’s up with you, Tesla?” Vic took the gun controller from me as the red ooze dripped across the screen, showing I’d kicked it again.

“Long day at work, I guess.” I got up. “I should go to bed. Early morning tomorrow.”

“Yeah. Me, too.” But Vic didn’t get up. He leveled the gun at the screen again, starting the next level. “‘Night.”

The rest of the house had gone quiet hours ago, Elaine and the kids in bed. It was just Vic and me, sitting in the dark, killing zombies. The flickering light from the TV made shadows move on his face, giving him expressions I knew he wasn’t making.

He caught me looking and paused the game. “What?”

“You should go to bed. You have to get up early, too.”

“Thanks, Mom,” Vic said.

I shrugged. “I’m just saying.”

“Yeah, I know what you’re saying. I just want to finish this level, that’s all. You go to bed. I’m fine.”

Since Vic often got up even earlier than I had to for the morning shift, I knew he wouldn’t be fine. “You look tired—”

“I’m a grown-up, Tesla,” he interrupted through tight jaws, his eyes steady on the waves of zombies coming to kill Leon S. Kennedy, until he flicked a gaze at me. “I can decide for myself when to go to bed.”

I stepped back, tossing up my hands. “Fine. You’re right. Good night.”

“ ‘Night,” I heard him repeat as I left the den and headed for my bedroom.

He was right, of course. I wasn’t his mom, perish the thought, and I wasn’t his wife. But that didn’t mean I didn’t have the right to worry about him, did it? Vic worked hard, long hours at the garage and used-car lot he owned. He had two kids and a pregnant wife. He had me living in his basement.

Showered and in bed, I heard the faint sounds of zombie deaths through the door. Then, as I was drifting to sleep, silence. Then the comforting creak of the floor in the kitchen, the living and dining rooms. Vic was making his rounds. Checking the doors and windows, making sure everything was locked and we were all safe.

His footsteps on the basement stairs sent me staring, wide-eyed, into the darkness. I heard him moving around the perimeter of the basement, doing what? Checking the windows down here, too? They were too small and awkward for anyone to get through. I heard the rattle of a toy being kicked, the mutter of a curse. Then the metallic squeak of my doorknob being turned slowly.

A square of lighter darkness appeared as my door opened. I couldn’t make out his silhouette, but I could hear him breathing. I heard the soft scuff of his feet on the carpeting, and I closed my eyes tight. Stifled and slowed my breathing so there’d be no way he could think I was awake.

I tensed when Vic leaned over me. But instead of touching me, all he did was press the lock on the high, narrow window above my bed. Then, assured all was well, he left the room, closing the door with a soft click behind him.

I let out my breath in a whoosh and burrowed deeper into my pillows. Chill sweat had broken out all over me, and I was breathing hard. Warmth filled the cave I’d made, but it took me a long time to stop shivering.

And when I did, when I slept, I dreamed.

I don’t know what Vic does when he’s not at The Compound, but when he is here, he works on cars. Some people here, like my parents, for example, drive Volvos or BMWs the rest of the year, but during the summer they ride around in beater cars. Old Jeeps, dinged up and rusted muscle cars, stuff like that. Because The Compound’s not about money or status, it’s about getting along with people and raising vegetables and flowers or some shit like that, I don’t know. I’ve been coming here my whole life, and all I know is that this summer I’ve been bored out of my mind.

There’s not much to do for me here. I could hang out in what they call the crèche, helping with the little kids, but the stench of cloth diapers gets to me after a while. I could help in the gardens, weeding and stuff, but it’s the hottest summer on record for like, twenty years, and it’s just brutal out in the fields. And for what? I don’t even like tomatoes.

I’m like that girl in the song in that movie, the one about the family that sings while they escape from the Nazis. I’m sixteen, going on seventeen, and I don’t have a TV, a computer or a phone, and there are tons of younger kids here and lots of adults, but there’s only one other girl my age and we don’t get along. Her parents live here full-time, and she acts like that makes her better than me, when really I think it should be the other way around. She thinks Adam Ant was in Culture Club, and I know that’s a little old school for some kids, but still.

So I spend my time hanging around the garage. It’s loud in there with the clanking of tools, but Vic’s got a radio he tunes to classic rock. My little brother, Cap, hangs out here, too. He’s better with cars than I am. Well, fact is, Cap’s kinda fucking brilliant. I can replace a windshield wiper, that’s my accomplishment of the summer, but Cap can practically rebuild an engine.

Vic never acts like I’m in the way, though. He’s patient, showing me what parts go where and how they all fit together. He’s got grease in his knuckles and under his nails, even when he wipes them with the scraps of T-shirts he keeps in a big box on the workbench. Sometimes, when he uses the back of his hand to wipe his face clear of the sweat, he streaks his face with grease, too.

Today Cap’s gone swimming with some younger kids over at the gross pond that’s full of algae. They took a picnic. Healthy foods like hummus and pita and cucumbers grown in the gardens here. I’m dying for a cheeseburger, milk shake, fries. I’m wasting away here this summer, frying in the heat, mind numbed from all the smiles everyone has. I want to scream.

So I do. Really loud and hard, my fists clenched, eyes closed. I stomp my feet, one-two, in the dirt outside the garage. And I kick it. I stub my toes inside my old black Chuck Taylors against the barn siding. And then I lean forward to rest my head against the splintery wood and think about how there’s only a few more weeks left. How usually I’m sad to leave The Compound, but this year I can’t wait.

“C’mon. Can’t be that bad.” Vic’s leaning in the doorway, a wrench in one hand and some grease along his forehead.

“I’m fucking bored.”

Vic shrugs. “I’ll put you to work, Tesla. You know I will.”

That’s the reason why I came here. Because he’ll put me to work. And because maybe he’ll take his shirt off when he gets too hot, and I can watch the sweat run down his back, between the dimples just above his ass. Vic wears his jeans low on his hips and cuffed above his big black motorcycle boots.

Vic makes me lie awake in my bed at night, shifting restlessly in the sticky summer air.

I know all about sex. Everyone here does it with everyone else. Nobody talks about it, but it’s no secret. And if you think it’s gross to think about your parents doing it with each other, try thinking about them doing it with other people. Sometimes more than one at a time. Along with peace and love and organic veggies, there’s a whole lot of fucking going on at The Compound.

I know all about it, but I’ve never done it. Boys in my school don’t appeal to me. Too young, too immature, and besides, I go away for the whole summer. That’s prime boyfriend-girlfriend time. The one time last year I tried going out with a guy, I came back to school in the fall to find out he’d spent the summer dating his way through the entire cheerleading squad. First of all, I’m so not a cheerleader. Second, I guess I couldn’t blame him. A girlfriend who disappears for three months isn’t much fun.

I work next to Vic all that long, hot summer afternoon. We’re fixing an old Impala that doesn’t look like it’ll ever run. He does take his shirt off, and I pretend I’m not staring, but we both know I am.

“Fuck.” He growls the word when the wrench he’s holding slips and clangs against the metal.

I use that word all the time, but something about it freezes me now. I’m standing too close to him, at his side, our hips touching as we lean over to watch him twist something with the wrench. He says it again, lower.

“Let’s take a break,” Vic says.

In the small back room there’s an ice chest full of cold beers and a couple of Cokes. Vic takes the beer and hands me the soda. I think for about half a second of asking him for a beer, since even though I’m underage, stuff like that mostly goes unnoticed at The Compound. But I hate the taste of beer and wouldn’t be able to drink it, anyway.

“We’ll get it working. We’re a good team, you and me.” Vic tips the beer in my direction.

I care about a thousand things more than I give a damn about that car. One of them is the way Vic looks at me. Or doesn’t look at me, which is closer to the truth. I don’t want to be on a team with him. I want him to notice me.

From outside in the garage, the Rolling Stones start singing about painting a door black. Vic’s fingers thrum against his thigh as he lifts the bottle to his lips and tips back his head to swallow. The bottle sweats, wetting his fingertips. His throat works.

I want to lick the hollow of his throat. I want to run my tongue along the curve of his collarbone. His shoulders.

Suddenly, I want.

This time, I don’t glance away when he looks up to see me staring.

Vic licks his lips.

He could easily push me back when I cross the short distance and stand between his legs. It would’ve crushed me. Probably made me unable to make the first move again for the rest of my life. But he doesn’t push me away when I stand, my calves pressed against his, then my knees on the inside of his thighs.

It’s hot in this room. Stifling. Sweat sheens Vic’s upper lip, and I don’t think about anything but leaning forward and tasting it. My tongue slides over his salty flesh, and my lips brush his.

It’s too much, I know. I’ve made a mistake, gone too far. Vic’s older than me. Has never even flirted with me. And I’ve kissed only a couple boys, nothing like this. Bold and free and wild.

Vic doesn’t stop me. His mouth opens under mine. His hands go to my hips, just above the waistband of my jean shorts and below the hem of my T-shirt. At the touch of his fingers on my bare skin, a soft sigh slips out. I’m sure then he’ll push me away. Maybe laugh.

I end up on his lap. We kiss for a long, long time. His tongue strokes mine. It’s better than I thought it would be. Under my butt, I feel him getting hard. My heart pounds faster than it ever did while I watched him work with his shirt off.

I’d do anything for Vic right now. His zipper’s undone, my hands inside his jeans, before I even know what I’m doing. Then he stops me with a hand on my wrist. Not pushing me away, just holding me still.

“Tesla.” His voice is low and growling, the way it was earlier when he cursed at the wrench.

I don’t want him to tell me we should stop. I shift against him, my fingers curling around the unfamiliar thickness of his dick. I ache to stroke him, even though at the same time, I’m afraid I won’t know how.

He groans when I move my hand.

That’s the first time I understand the power of giving someone else pleasure.

I move again, exploring his length as best I can with his jeans in the way. The couch creaks and complains beneath us as we shift, until somehow we’re stretched out side by side, Vic’s hand at the small of my back the only thing keeping me from falling onto the dirty concrete floor.

We kiss harder. Our teeth clash. Somehow, I manage to get his prick out from his jeans. I’d put it in my mouth if I were brave enough, if I could figure out how, but for now I’m satisfied just with moving my fingers up and down. When I touch him, Vic shudders. He tastes like sweat and beer, and somehow I don’t mind the taste when it’s on his tongue.

I’m so caught up in figuring out how to jerk him off, I don’t notice at first that Vic’s got his hand down the front of my shorts. But when his fingers stroke over the front of my panties I discover exactly why he shuddered. His hand moves. One fingertip circles slowly, slowly, pressing against me through the cotton. Then faster, until I gasp into his mouth.

I know about sex, but I don’t know about this. All I know now is that the hot, thick feeling I get when I watch Vic work with his shirt off is building up between my legs, in my nipples. Crazily, in the soles of my feet.

We’re not even naked. We don’t even get that far. Vic and I kiss and kiss and kiss. My grip stutters on his dick, but his doesn’t falter against me. When he slips his fingers inside my panties, directly on my skin, I think I might die. A couple minutes later, when he pushes one finger down inside me, then up again, when it moves in slippery circles on my clit, I do.

Or at least I explode, which I imagine might feel the same. It feels so good I shake and push my hips against him, needing something but not sure exactly what. Vic knows. His fingers move a little faster. Then faster still.

And I … I am surging along on this wave of pleasure that’s so strong I can’t decide if I never want it to end or if I can’t stand another second of it.

When it’s over and I can focus again, when I can breathe, I blink up at him. My hand is sticky, lying flat on his hard belly. His fingers have stilled between my legs, though my clit is thumping with the beat of my heart. I’m not exactly sure what happened, but I know that whatever it was, I can’t wait to do it again. Looking down at me, Vic licks his lips and smiles. Despite my earlier fears, he doesn’t laugh.

But I do.

Chapter 5

I woke up laughing and coming at the same time. I hiccupped, my eyes flying open, my fingers clutching the tangled mess of my sheets that told me I’d had a rough night. I cut off the laughter by sealing my lips together, but nothing stopped the surge of pleasure that ripped through me, not entirely unwelcome.

A wave of guilt followed it.

I hadn’t thought of Vic in that way for a long time. Now everything was turning upside down and sideways. My body ached from being twisted in the sheets, and it was still a few hours before I had to get up and take care of some things before it was time for work.

I’d only just closed my eyes and started to drift when the two small bodies pounced on me. It wasn’t unexpected, but it was alarming. I shouted before I could hold it back, then fell onto my pillow with a groan and a hand clapped over my eyes.

“Guys, please,” I begged. “Go away.”

“Turn on ‘toons? Peeze,” said Max, who had good manners only when it suited him.

His sister, who fancied herself far more mature at four than any baby two-year-old could ever be, poked him. “Please and thankyouverymuch!”

“Thankyouverymuch,” her brother said. He smelled of wet diaper, a stench that reminded me too much of crèche duty at The Compound. “‘Toons?”

I shifted, bunching the cushions and pillows so I could sit up. “How is it that the two of you can operate every electronic device in this house, but not the television set?”

“The memote,” Max explained patiently. “Mama says don’t touch the memote.”

Of course their mother didn’t want them messing around with the remote—it was a complicated and expensive thing that operated all their dad’s complicated and expensive audiovisual equipment, including the television, the TiVo, the sound system and the Wii. It was supposed to make everything easier because you needed only one piece of equipment to operate everything in the rec room, but it was for adult use only. And since I was the closest adult, I was the one the kids came to.

“What’s Mama and Daddy doing?” I was afraid to look at the clock, but the light shining through my window meant it was at least past six. “Getting ready for work?”

“Mama’s in bed,” Simone said, self-important with this knowledge. “Daddy said to leave her alone so she can sleep.”

Max had something to say about this, too, accompanied by a sour look that said exactly what he thought of the situation. “Baby.”

“Just give me a few minutes, okay?” I begged as they bounced on me. “I’ll turn on the cartoons in a minute. Can’t you play with your toys or something?”

They had plenty of them, spread all over the floor in the very places I usually wanted to walk in my bare feet when the lights were off. I’d been lamed by Legos so often I’d taken to shuffling along the floor with each step, much the way they tell you to walk along the sand where there are stingrays so you can push them out of the way rather than step on them. That was what my life had become—shuffling to avoid the sting.

They could play with their toys, but it turned out the screeching that went along with the game was worse than the mindless blather of cartoons. No more sleep for me, then. I scrubbed at my face and turned everything on for them, settled the remote high on the shelf where they couldn’t be tempted to reach for it, and made my careful, shuffling way up the steep and uncarpeted stairs to the kitchen.

Which was bright. Too bright. I flung a hand up against the glare and blinked fast, but tears still burned in my eyes, so I had to rub them again. My vision blurred and cleared.

“Rough night?” Vic asked from his place at the stove, where he was cooking what I assumed to be eggs, since that was what he had every morning. “You look like shit.”

“Feel like it.” I slumped in one of the hard wooden kitchen chairs and put my head in my hands. The ends of my hair tickled my nose until I pushed them back, and I looked up to see him laughing at me. “Fuck you, Vic.”

He turned back to the skillet. “Want some eggs? I’m making toast for Elaine. You can have some.”

He shoveled scrambled eggs onto a couple plates and added toast as it sprang up from the toaster, then put both on the table and took a seat across from me. He’d forgotten forks, which was typical Vic, so I got up to grab them. It was my turn not to look at him.

He didn’t ask me any questions, and I offered no answers. We ate in companionable silence broken only by the ticking of the wall clock and an occasional burst of excited laughter from the rec room downstairs. Vic finished and took his plate to the dishwasher, then spread the extra toast with a thin layer of butter. He added a can of ginger ale and a straw to the plate, but I stopped him before he could leave the kitchen.

“You go ahead. I’ll take it to her.”

He looked again at the clock. Though he has a couple of good guys working for him, he still does a lot of the mechanic work himself. He likes to be open for people who need to get in before work, and he likes to leave early to spend time with his wife and kids before bedtime. Vic is an awesome husband and dad.

“Thanks.” He grabbed his jacket and shouted a goodbye down to the rec room, waited the few minutes while his kids pounded up the stairs to grab him around the knees and burrow against him. He tousled their hair, squeezed and kissed them, then pried loose their clinging fingers and sent them back down to rot their brains with animated mayhem.

For me, Vic had no kiss, no hug. We got over all that a long time ago. It didn’t affect how we were now, didn’t make it awkward or anything like that. It wasn’t a secret from Elaine. But we never spoke of it, and anyone who didn’t know would never have guessed that Vic and I had once sort of been lovers.

In their bedroom the shades were drawn, but Elaine had turned on the nightstand lamp. The base of it was shaped like a ballerina, her head obscured by the shade, which was patterned with toe shoes. It was a really ugly lamp, but I guess Elaine loved it.

“Brought you some toast.”

She let out a sigh. “Thanks, hon.”

I sat on the side of the bed and gingerly handed her the plate, which she balanced on her belly, just beginning to mound. She looked pale, her eyes shadowed and her hair lank. I was pretty sure I looked the same, if not worse, and I didn’t have a sea monkey in my belly to blame.

She nibbled a bite of toast. “Kids watching TV?”

“Yes.”

“Vic off to work?”

I nodded. Elaine grimaced, and I handed her the ginger ale with the straw. She sipped at it and sighed again.

“Pregnancy,” she said, “sucks.”

“I believe it. I’ve seen you through it two and a quarter times, remember?”

She sipped again, her throat working, and looked at the toast but didn’t take another bite. “I know it’ll pass in a few weeks. Or a month. And then I’ll have a few months of being able to eat whatever I want.”

“And then you have that labor to look forward to,” I said without even cracking a grin. “Bet you can’t wait for that.”

Elaine managed a small smile. “At this point, maybe the kid’ll just slide out.”

“I think that doesn’t happen at least until kid number four, if not five or six.” I smoothed the comforter between my thigh and the edge of hers.

“Bite your tongue.” She looked aghast, but since I knew she’d already said if they were going for three they’d have to commit to trying for four, the look had to mostly be fake.

Elaine was planning to have this kid the way she’d had Max and Simone, at home. Here in this bed, as a matter of fact. Without drugs. She was going to have a doula and a midwife, the same ones who’d delivered the other kids, and she’d already started putting together all the supplies she needed for her birth plan.

Personally, I thought she was nuts. Give me the sterile green walls of a hospital room, a masked doctor with a needle, and a full-on epidural the moment the first contraction hit.

“So, why do you look like shit?” Elaine said around a bite of toast. Some color was coming back into her cheeks. She might actually keep it down.

“Someone’s kids woke me up too fucking early.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Have a headache. Want more sleep. You need more reasons?”

“I guess that’s enough. Sorry about the kids. I’m sure Vic sent them down. I’d have told them to play in their rooms.”

I laughed at that and we shared a look. “Ri-i-i-ight.”

She laughed, too, but as if it pained her. “What time do you have to go in to work?”

“Not until three.”

“You can nap before then. I’m taking them to playgroup around lunchtime. You’ll have the house to yourself.”

“Ahh, sweet freedom.” I tapped my chin with a finger. “Should I run around naked first? Or drink milk right from the carton? Or both?”

I was glad to make Elaine laugh, especially if it kept her from feeling sick to her stomach. If my feelings for Vic had always been and would always be complicated, I had no issues about my love for Elaine. She was the older sister I’d never had—the sort I tried to be, though I figured I’d never get the hang of it the way she did.

“Did you put your list by the phone?” she asked with another sip of ginger ale, another bite of toast. The first piece was almost gone and she was looking even better. “I’m going to the store later.”

“I can go if you want. Run out before work.”

“Could you?” She appeared relieved. “I hate to drag the kids with me.”

“I know you do.” She always came home with junk cereal and sugary snacks when she took Max and Simone with her, and though I was a fan of Marshmallow Mateys myself, I liked it much better when my financial contributions to the household budget came home in the form of food that didn’t add to the bulges I worked hard to get rid of. “I’ll go. No problem.”

Elaine reached for my hand, surprising me. “I’m so grateful you’re with us, Tesla. You know that, right?”

There are a lot of women who wouldn’t have opened their homes to some girl their husband had finger-banged on a grimy couch, much less treated her the way Elaine has always treated me. If anyone was grateful, it was I. Without Vic and Elaine, I might’ve been on the street. No, not might’ve. Definitely would have.

Still, I shrugged off her compliment because I recognized the sheen of tears in her eyes. Elaine was superemotional, more so when she was pregnant. I didn’t want to start the day with tears. I was feeling a little too fragile myself.

“Slave labor,” I told her. “Live-in babysitter. Toilet scrubber. What’s not to love?”

She squeezed my fingers, knowing me too well to be offended. “Well. We do love you, Tesla Martin. Don’t forget it.”

I couldn’t forget it and wouldn’t have wanted to. I untangled my fingers from her grip and held out my hand for the plate. “Done?”

She sighed heavily and nodded. “Can you check on the kids for me? I’m going to get up and get in the shower.”

“No problem.”

My phone was beeping with a missed text message by the time I got back downstairs and made sure the bratlings hadn’t destroyed anything too badly. It was simple, two words: Call me.

I thumbed in the number as I kicked dirty laundry into a pile. “Cap. What’s up?”

“Vic leave yet?”

“Yeah. Maybe half an hour ago. Why?”

“Some lady’s here, says her appointment was for seven, but—” My brother broke off. “Shit. Oh, well, never mind, Vic’s here. She’s going to chew him a new one.”

“Vic can handle it. Hey, do you think you can take a look at the Contour sometime this week? It’s still making that weird noise.”

“Which one?”

My car was so old, held together with dreams and diarrhea, as our dad would’ve said, that it made any number of weird noises on a regular basis. But this one was really strange. I imitated it. “It’s like a wah-h-hm wham-m-m. Like the Tardis. Fuck you, Cap.”

My brother had burst into laughter. “What’s it sound like again?”

“You heard me the first time.” I was laughing, too. I love and hate that about him, how he always makes me laugh. “Can you? I forgot to ask Vic.”

“Duh, of course. Bring it in whenever.”

“Sure, I can do that,” I said, “but I don’t have time to wait around all day for it.”

“Jesus, Tesla, you’re a pain.”

“If I have to leave it, I’ll need something to drive.”

Cap made a strangled noise. “Of course you will.”

I grinned into the phone. “So?”

“You can borrow my car. If you have to,” he added quickly, “which I’ll make sure you don’t.”

Cap has a sweet ride, a restored 1978 Mustang that growls when you hit the gas. He’s spent more time and money on that car than he’s ever spent on a woman, which is probably one reason he’s single. Or maybe it’s the fact he’s in love with his roommate—who’s a woman, by the way, but who seems totally oblivious to the fact that my brother thinks she walks on water. Which is his own fault, since he won’t tell her.

But then, who am I to give anyone advice about relationships?

“I’ll bring it in,” I told him. “And later I’ll bring you some chocolate cake from the coffee shop. How’s that?”

“Not a great trade. But okay.”

“Later,” I told him, and hung up.

Chapter 6

I fucked the Murphy brothers for about a month and a half before I discovered something important. I loved having two cocks to suck and stroke, one in my pussy and one in my mouth—though never up the ass. They didn’t ask, and I surely didn’t offer. I’m not certain any of us thought such a thing existed outside of porn movies, anyway, and we were so gorged full on everything else we were doing that adding that forbidden thing didn’t even seem necessary.

More than just the physical aspects, the bonus of two sets of hands and tongues, I discovered I enjoyed the attention of two. If one boyfriend was good, two would be better, right? Except it wasn’t like the three of us could go sashaying down the halls in school, all of us holding hands or making out at our lockers the way everyone else did.

“Pick one,” Chase said. He was in an old recliner in their parents’ basement, feet flat on the floor, his hands on either side of my head, his dick in my mouth.

I gave his cock another long suck before taking it in my hand and sitting back on my heels to look up at him. His brother was sprawled on the sofa next to us, idly stroking his own boner. “What do you mean, pick one?”

Chase, typical boy, put his hand over mine to rub his dick across my mouth, but I pulled away just enough that it couldn’t reach my lips. “Pick one of us, Tesla,” he repeated.

I laughed, thinking he was joking. “For what?”

“You know,” Chance said.

I looked back and forth at them. I’d never be able to see the twins as anything but two separate people ever again, and yet I couldn’t imagine them as anything but part of a unit. “I don’t want to pick just one.”

“She wants us both. I told you,” Chance said.

His brother shifted, his young, thick cock not wilting even the slightest bit. “You have to, Tesla.”

“Why?”

Chase was the firstborn brother. Nobody had told me; I could just tell. If there were decisions to be made, he was generally the first to make them. Chance was more likely to wait and see what happened. Now Chase tangled his fingers in my hair, and I tensed, thinking he meant to pull my face forward again.

“You don’t have to stop fucking us both,” he said. “Just pick one of us for public.”

“Oh.” I stroked his dick, twisting my palm around the head in the way that made him shudder. “That.”

The truth was, I didn’t really feel the need to go public. I already had the advantage of being a little exotic. I wasn’t the only girl who wore Docs or dyed her hair colors that were deemed “distracting” by the school. I wasn’t the only one with piercings or what seemed like a permanent weekly appointment with the guidance counselor. I was just different because none of them had known me their whole lives. Or because I didn’t seem to need their approval.

“Who says I want to go public?” I leaned forward to lick him, then took him in my mouth again. I closed my eyes to concentrate on the sensation of all that hot, hard flesh on my tongue.

Chance made a low noise, though it was his brother’s knob in my mouth. I slitted open my eyes to look at him, smiling around Chase’s dick as I sucked and stroked. I didn’t want to make him come like this. I wanted to fuck him first. I wanted to fuck both of them. I wanted them both sweating and groaning, working inside and against me. I wanted the spiraling crescendo of orgasm to rip through me. Basically, I wanted to get in, get on, get off, get up, get dressed and get out.

Even at the time, I was pretty sure that wasn’t the way the rest of my schoolmates operated. They were concerned about being seen together, all the accoutrements of “going out,” like class rings or hickeys. Things that marked them as belonging to someone. The thought of belonging to any one person was not only foreign to me, but more than slightly distasteful. When I thought about picking one of those Murphy boys to parade around with in front of everyone to somehow legitimize this, what we did here in the basement in secret … well, my lip curled as if I’d put my hand in something rotten.

Whatever conversation those brothers had intended to have with me, and I had no doubt they’d discussed it at length beforehand, I was able to get them to forget about it. Especially when I reached to take Chance’s dick in my fist while I sucked his brother, and when I dipped my head down low to mouth Chase’s balls.

When I lifted up the pleated plaid skirt I’d bought from the Catholic thrift store, someone’s leftover school uniform, to reveal I’d already slipped off my panties and wore only a pair of knee-high socks, it was a good guarantee both those boys would lose their powers of speech. And I didn’t need them to talk. I urged Chance to move behind me. I was on the pill, but I made them use rubbers anyway, not because I thought either of them were screwing around with anyone else, but because there was less mess to clean up after if they shot into a condom.

They hadn’t known a lot about female anatomy when we first started, but now Chance knew just where to slide his fingers, right along my already rigid clit. He filled me a little too fast, bumping me forward against his brother’s lap. Chase’s cock went down my throat too far and would’ve choked me if I hadn’t held him so firmly by the base—but by now I’d learned to anticipate Chance’s clumsiness. I liked it, actually, how eager he was to get inside me. How his hands gripped my hips hard enough to bruise, sometimes, those faint blue marks on my skin a better reminder to me of what we’d been doing than any suck mark on my neck or collarbone could’ve been.

Chance fucked into me from behind. I sucked Chase’s dick and rubbed his balls. It was all good and getting better. Faster, harder, in and out, my pussy slick and tight. Full.

I came before both of them. I think they never understood how easy it was for me; how it wasn’t their skill that got me off. Chance came next, and that was also usually the way it happened. With his brother still inside me, I peered up at Chase. He was looking down. I pressed my finger against his asshole and he exploded into my mouth with a hoarse shout that made me smile because it sounded … just a little … like my name.

“If you had to pick one,” Chance said after I’d used the tiny bathroom and come out with my face washed, mouth rinsed, hair brushed, panties replaced, “which one of us would you choose?”

Chase had already gone upstairs. Chance was the one who would wait and walk me to my car, the beat-up piece of junk that I still drove now, nine years later. Chance was the one who put his hand on the driver’s side door so I couldn’t open it, who peered down at me with a solemn look. Chance was the one who really wanted to know.

“I can’t choose,” I told him, even though I knew it was a lie. “I’m into both of you.”

“Yeah, but …”

I stood on my tiptoes to kiss him, thinking, as he probably wasn’t, that his brother’s taste still lingered on my tongue despite the rinsing. “Not into the boyfriend scene, okay? It’s all cool. Right?”

He nodded. What else could he do? He was getting regular, slightly freaky sex. Was he going to turn that down just so we could hold hands and go to football games together? Maybe homecoming, and later, the prom?

“Not my thing,” I told him, and meant it.

He didn’t move his hand even when I gave it a pointed glance. “Why not?”

I didn’t have an answer for that. I couldn’t explain to that nice boy whose mother was still way too attached to him all my reasons for not wanting what every other girl I knew seemed to want. So I didn’t give him an answer. I kissed him again, and when I pulled away he put his hands on my hips to hold me closer to him.

Later, I would break that boy’s heart and not care, because my own would have already been shattered. But we didn’t know that then. At that moment, we were sneaking kisses in the turning-cold fall air.

I thought about them now as I pulled into the parking lot of Capriotti’s Auto Sales and found a space for my car. I got out, still thinking about it. I was looking for Cap, but found Vic instead.

“Hey. What’re you still doing here? Where’s Cap?”

Vic looked tired again. The garage closed at seven, but the car lot stayed open until nine. I didn’t see Dennis, the sales guy who usually had the later shift.

Vic shrugged and yawned. “Had to send him out on a run for some parts that didn’t come in on time.”

“And Dennis?”

“Went home sick. Upchucked all over the men’s room.”

I grimaced. “Yuck.”

Vic smiled. “Yeah, well, that’s what happens when you eat someone else’s lunch and don’t bother to check how long it’s been in the fridge. Maybe next time he’ll learn.”

“Still, gross.” I tossed him my keys. “It’s the clunking again, left front end.”

Vic nodded and pocketed my keys. “Can’t do anything about it until tomorrow. You got a ride to work?”

“Cap said I could use his car. He’ll get a ride from Lyndsay or walk.”

“Cap’s letting you use his car?”

I laughed wickedly. “Bwahaha! Of course he is. He loves me.”

Vic snorted. “He’s easily manipulated.”

“Is that what you think of me?” I said with a frown. The words came out sounding catty. Snide, even. “Nice.”

Vic gave me a surprised blink before frowning himself. “Huh?”

“Never mind.” The dream had unsettled me. It wasn’t Vic’s fault, though maybe he’d prompted it by his unexpected little drive-by through my room. “Listen. What’s going on with you?”

“What? Me? Nothing. Why?” He sounded genuinely confused.

“You’re not sleeping,” I pointed out, adding, before he could jump in, “and yeah, I know. I’m not your mother. Or your wife. Old news. Your mother doesn’t live with you, and poor Elaine’s so exhausted she’d have no idea if you were in bed next to her or not. So I’m the only one who knows you’re up at all hours of the night.”

“It’s not all hours.”

“I hear you walking back and forth. I hear the floor creaking.” I paused, thinking about whether or not to mention him being in my room. “What’s going on?”

“Insomnia.”

“Uh-huh.” I gave him a narrow-eyed glance. “That doesn’t sound like you.”

Before he could defend himself or agree, my brother came into the office on a cloud of cold air and the faint smell of oil and gasoline. He stopped short at the sight of us. Then he sighed.

“Damn, he already gave you the keys, huh?”

I gave Vic another look, but the moment had passed. “Yep. No wrestling them away from me now.”

“Can’t you just hang out here and wait while I take a look at your car?” Cap asked.

“With Dennis gone I could use an extra set of hands,” Vic interjected.

He couldn’t have known, of course, about the dream I’d had. Or how it had made me feel. “Nah. Errands to run before I get to work. I promised Elaine I’d go to the store for her. Apparently we’re out of a lot of stuff.”

“Can you pick me up some stuff, too?” Cap asked.

I raised a brow. “Like what?”

“Toaster pastries. Half-and-half.”

The other brow went up. “Really? What the hell for, Captain?”

My brother winced at the use of his full first name. “Lyndsay likes it in her coffee, and I like them for snacks.”

I laughed, trying to get at him to poke his side, but he was so much bigger he fended me off without a problem. “You want me to pick up stuff for your—”

“Don’t say it,” Cap warned in a fierce enough tone to keep me from continuing. “She’s just my roommate.”

I was pretty sure that despite their every action designed to prove otherwise, Cap and Lyndsay were fucking like bunnies. No, not like bunnies. Like ninjas, all secretlike and only in the dark. I tempered my laughter. “Sure. I’ll drop it off here. Without Dennis around, it should be safe in the fridge. Hey, Cap … listen, you want to check out that new zombie flick sometime next week? The Risen, or whatever it’s called?”

“How come he gets to go and I don’t?” Vic asked, only half listening as he texted something.

“Because he’s single and you’re an old married fella with a pregnant wife at home, duh.” I turned to my brother. “You up for it?”

“Yeah, sure.” Cap shrugged his broad shoulders. I paused, deciding how deep to stick the shiv. “You don’t have to ask Lynds first?”

Too far. Cap scowled. I backed off, hands up, an apology on my face and tongue, but not really in my heart. He’d have to own up to it sometime—that he was crazy in love with his roommate and she wasn’t so far from looney for him, too, even if neither would admit it.

“I’ll pick you up tomorrow, then.”

“In my car,” Cap said, with a resigned sigh that made Vic laugh.

“Unless you fix mine sooner.” I managed to get in a poking pinch my brother could’ve easily batted away, but allowed because I was older than him.

“It’ll be fixed,” he promised.

I punched his shoulder and waved at Vic, but he was too engrossed in his phone call to pay attention. In the parking lot, I revved the Mustang’s engine a few times just to get Cap all worked up. I refrained from spinning the tires or doing a doughnut, though, just to prove I didn’t have to be a total dweeb. By the way he flipped me off as I left the lot, I figured he wasn’t that impressed.

At the grocery store I pushed my cart through the aisles and tried to remember what was on the list I’d left on the kitchen table at home. I wasn’t paying close attention to where I was going, which was why I nearly ran over a little kid who was spinning out of control in the candy section.

I recognized a tantrum in progress and meant to steer my cart past him, but stopped when I saw his mother. “Mandy?”

She turned. “Oh, my God! Tesla? Wow. Long time, huh?”

Mandy had been one of my best friends in Lancaster before my parents dropped their mutual basket and my life had spun into something else. I hadn’t seen or heard from her in years. To find her here now, with a child, was surprising—but good, I discovered, when she clung to me in a hug that left her kid staring with goggle eyes.

“You look fantastic!” She beamed, taking me in. “You haven’t changed at all. Wow.”

“You have.” I grinned, pointing at the boy now clinging to her leg. “Yours?”

She lifted him, pride all over her face. “Yep. This is Tyler. Say hi.”

Tyler buried his face in his mom’s neck. I wasn’t offended. “So … you live around here?”

“Yep. My husband and I moved here a few months ago. He’s working for the state. And I stay home with the kiddo here. How about you?”

“I work at Morningstar Mocha. You probably don’t know it.”

“Sure I do! Sure. I’ll have to stop in sometime. Are you still living with…?” She let the question trail off.

“Vic? Yeah. And his wife, Elaine. Their two kids. Cap moved out, though.”

“Oh, Cap.” Mandy laughed. “How’s Cappy doing?”

“He’s doing great. Really great.” It was hard to believe that once we’d spent almost every day blabbering each others’ ears off, and now we were reduced to chitchat in front of a display of candy bars. “Listen, stop in to the Mocha. Really. It would be great to catch up with you.”

“I’ll do that,” she said, even as I think we both knew she probably wouldn’t.

Time had passed. Life had changed. She had a husband and a kid, and I was still single. Stuff like that gets between people, even if the years hadn’t.

“I have to run. This one’s about to melt down. You take care, Tesla. So good to see you.”

“You, too.” I watched her go.

I’d never wanted what Cap and I had always called “the front door,” from that old Adam Ant song “A Place in the Country.” The front door was marriage, kids, a mortgage, a dog. But there was envy again, that funny thing. It can creep up on you without warning, hit you over the head with a snow shovel. Envy can taste like the candy you buy because you suddenly crave something sweet.

Chapter 7

Here’s a story I never told Meredith.

At the end of my junior year of high school and Cap’s eighth grade, our father walked in on our mother fucking one of her colleagues from the college where they both worked. Apparently, even in an open marriage you can still be cheating if your partner doesn’t know what you’ve been up to, because my dad promptly packed up his stuff and left without telling any of us where he’d gone. With no more Compound to retreat to in the summer, my mom decided to take a cross-country camping trip with her new lover in an ancient Volkswagen Rabbit.

While Cap and I had no problems with her new boyfriend, there was no way we were going to subject ourselves to traveling across the United States in the back of a Rabbit. My mom, who could certainly have been called a free spirit or even flighty, was nevertheless the more responsible of our parents and wasn’t about to leave us living alone even though at seventeen and fourteen we were capable of taking care of ourselves. She insisted we go with them. We insisted we didn’t want to. So I did what any red-blooded teenage kid would do when faced with what promised to be a certain kind of hell.

I ran away.

I didn’t have to go very far, and I took my brother with me. I knew how to find Vic. I hoped I could count on him. We showed up on his doorstep with little more than the clothes on our backs and a couple hundred bucks I’d pinched from my mom’s dresser.

As it turned out, I could. Cap and I moved in with Vic, who might’ve been surprised to see us but didn’t let that stop him. My mother ended up staying in California when her lover’s car broke down. She still lived there. My dad turned up in Brazil, of all places. He’d found another community like The Compound where he could live full-time while teaching English in a nearby town.

Vic had been there for me when I needed him. It had nothing to do with sex—not unless he’d fooled around with Cappy, too, and I was one hundred percent positive that had never happened. It had everything to do with the sort of guy Vic had always been.

And I envied him.

Meredith had told me I went for what I wanted. That I had to answer to nobody and could do whatever I liked. In a way, she was right. I mean, I had my job, and my responsibilities as part of Vic and Elaine’s household. I had bills and debts. But I didn’t have convictions, not really. Nobody would ever come to me when they were in trouble. Hell, I was twenty-six and still living in a basement, not because I couldn’t get out and live on my own but because staying there was easier than moving out.

Not exactly a picture of someone wild.

When I got to work, Meredith was convincing people to tell stories again. I knew it the second I walked in the front door and saw her sitting at her favorite table with her head tipped back in laughter. I knew most of the others by face, not necessarily by name, but everyone looked as if they were having a grand old time.

She waved at me. “There’s our Tesla!”

I lifted a mittened hand in response to the raised coffee cups. Meredith’s smile made the cold outside seem faraway, but I didn’t stop at her table. She was busy talking; I had to get busy working.

“What is it about her, anyway?” Darek said when I rounded the counter.

I pretended not to know what he meant. “Who? Meredith?”

“Yeah. Queen Meredith, sitting over there with her … what do you call them?”

“Subjects?” I offered, shrugging out of my coat and hanging it on the rack in the hall leading to the storage room.

Darek shook his head. “Minions.”

“That makes her sound like some sort of evil overlord.”

“Yeah. What is it about her?”

I paused, thinking. “I don’t know. She’s just … I don’t know. Sometimes you don’t, Darek.”

He made a noise instead of an answer. I looked across the room at Meredith, whose laughter had trilled to catch my attention. She ran perfectly manicured fingers through her honey-blond hair and it settled just right.

Again, envy.

With the late afternoon sun slanting through the glass, she was so beautiful it made my heart hurt. Not just pretty. Not just sexy, though she was surely that with that mouth, those eyes, that laugh. She was like something set up high on a shelf, made to be admired and adored. Coveted, but never gained.

I must’ve sighed, because Darek gave me a sympathetic look. “You’re into her.”

I slanted a glance his way but wouldn’t gaze at him full-on. “Look at her.”

“Oh, I am.” He put his hands on his hips. “She wants people to look at her.”

“Who doesn’t?” I tied the strings of my green apron tight around my waist and took a few minutes to run my fingers through my hair to stand it on end after it had been flattened by my knit cap. “I mean, don’t we all want people to notice us?”

“I guess so.”

I stared at her, then at him. “Don’t you like her?”

“I like her just fine.” He grinned. “Married ladies are my specialty. But you saw her first.”

I laughed. Darek was a lot of talk. In all the time we’d worked together I hadn’t known him to have a single fling with a married lady. “We’re just friends. She’s not … you know.”

“And you are?”

I shrugged and checked over the desserts in the case, noting which would need to be pulled later if they didn’t sell. “Sometimes. Once in a while. Discriminately.”

“How many?”

I turned. “What?”

Darek appeared way too intrigued. “How many girls?”

“This place,” I told him with just the barest sourness in my tone, “has really become, like, this hotbed of prurience.”

“Whose fault is that?” Darek asked, with a lift of his chin toward Meredith’s table.

“Pffft. You can’t blame her for everything. You’re the one grilling me on my sex life! I already told Meredith—”

“Yeah?” Again, he seemed too interested, all lolling tongue and wide eyes.

I put one fist to my mouth, the other at my cheek, and made a cranking motion. “Roll up your tongue. It wasn’t about girl-girl action.”

Darek appeared only faintly disappointed before perking up again. “Then what was it about?”

I wasn’t going to tell him about the Murphys. Dredging up that past stuff had already wreaked a bit of havoc on my brain. “None of your business. God, do I grill you about your sex life?”

“You could,” he said. “So … I’m just curious, Tesla, that’s all.”

“About my lesbian history?” I had to laugh at him, so typical male. “I had one serious girlfriend. We dated for about four months before she dumped me for a guitar player in a folk rock band who wore wife-beaters all year round and had a tattoo of the feminine symbol on her twat.”

His look said it all.

“Yeah,” I said. “That’s what I thought, too.”

Darek made a face. “That’s it? That’s all you got?”

“Look,” I said, suddenly disgruntled. “What did you think I had? Some long and lurid inventory of lesbian dalliances I’d trot out for you like a laundry list, complete with descriptions? A ‘Desperate But Not Serious’ sort of thing going on? Who with and how many times?”

He totally failed on the Adam Ant reference. “Huh?”

I sighed. “Never mind.”

“Sorry.” Darek frowned. “I just, you know. Thought maybe it was more exciting than that.”

I sighed again, this time in exasperation. “Why?”

“Because you just seem like you’ve had an exciting life, Tesla, that’s all. Jesus. I’m sorry!”

Wild child. I touched my throat, felt the pendant in the shape of a rainbow with a star on the end. Today I wore a black shirt with a picture of the cover of the Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers on the front—some dude’s crotch. Black leggings with rainbow leg warmers. Black ballet flats. I had glitter in my hair, but so what? Unconventional, maybe, but not that exciting.

“Well,” I said, “I’m really not.”

Darek looked over the front counter to the group of laughing customers. “Maybe you should tell her that.”

“Tell her what?” I frowned and wished for someone to come and order something, or for Joy to pop out of the back to yell at us. Anything to keep this conversation from continuing. “Oh, that. Well. It’s just a crush. It’s not like I haven’t had them before. They go away, Darek.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“You’ve never had a crush?” I rolled my eyes. “Please. I see how you look at that girl who comes in here, the one with the red hair.”

“Yeah, she’s hot. But it’s not a crush.”

“Whatever.” I waved a hand. “You gonna tell her you like her? Ask her out, maybe?”

“She has a boyfriend.”

“So you get it,” I told him. “It’s better just to crush in silence.”

He didn’t look happy about that, but he didn’t argue with me, either. Then finally one of Meredith’s admirers broke off from the group long enough to come up and order a slice of pie and another latte, so both of us had something to do and we didn’t have to talk anymore.

The rush helped, too, leaving both of us so busy we didn’t have time for deep and soul-searching conversations about the sad state of our love lives. By the time we’d gone through that, I figured Meredith would’ve left, but when I took a break to make the rounds of the shop, clearing away crumpled napkins and left-behind mugs, she was still sitting in her spot.

The sun had moved, and she was alone. She was still beautiful. Something pensive in her face as she tapped away at her keyboard made me pause. She’d pushed her hair behind her ears, in which she wore simple and elegant pearls I knew had to be real despite the size. Not Jangle Bangles, either. She might sell that stuff, but she didn’t wear it. She had faint lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth, but they didn’t take anything away from her beauty.

She caught me staring. “Hey.”

“Oh. Hey. You’re still here. Can’t get enough of the caramel crunch, huh?” I gestured toward the row of self-serve carafes.

“I’m fully caffeinated.” She showed me her empty mug. “But I got my money’s worth today, I’ll tell you that.”

“Joy’s going to charge you rent,” I said with a glance over my shoulder to the counter. Joy was serving Eric, actually giving him a bit of a flirtatious smile. “Jeez, that guy can make even Joy tingly.”

Meredith closed her laptop. “It’s all in the smile. I think he makes everyone a little tingly.”

“Yeah,” I said fondly, watching Eric take his plate and mug to his favorite table and lay out his paper.

“You missed some good stories today.” Meredith leaned back in her seat. “The things people get up to, you’d never believe it.”

“I’m sure I would. Want me to take that for you?” I pointed to her empty mug and the plate beside it. “How was the apple crumb?”

“Tesla,” she murmured.

I stopped with my hand halfway to the table, caught like the Tin Man with his ax up. “Hmm?”

“We should do something.”

I forced myself to take the dishes, though they rattled when I lifted them. “Like what?”

“Something fun. Out of this place.” She twitched her fingers in Joy’s direction. “Without your boss hovering over us.”

“Sure. That sounds great.” I picked up her napkin, too, faintly imprinted with her lipstick. It crumpled in my fingers. I didn’t want to throw it away.

“What time do you get off tomorrow?”

“I work early, so three.”

“How about we grab some dinner or something? Maybe hit a club?” She paused. “It’s a Friday night. You don’t have a date or anything, do you?”

“Me? Oh. No.” I laughed.

“Good,” Meredith said, as though everything had been settled. “You do now.”

Chapter 8

“You look pretty.” Simone watched me carefully as I applied eyeliner and shadow. “Can I have some?”

“You want some pretty?” I turned from the mirror to look at the kid. With her blond hair and big blue eyes, there was no question who she belonged to: Elaine all the way. But she had something of her dad in the set of her mouth when she wanted something. I held up the square box of eye shadows in one hand, my angled brush in the other. “Green or blue?”

“I like the sparkly.”

I eyed the tube of liquid glitter eyeliner. “That might be a little too much for you, kiddo. It’s messy and …”

Her baby brother could really put on the waterworks, but Simone wasn’t much of a tantrum thrower. She could throw a mean pout, though, and now that rosebud mouth turned down with such skill there was no way I could deny her. I sighed. “Your mama might be mad at me.”

More likely it would be her daddy who gave me the lecture about tarting up his four-year-old, but Vic wasn’t any better at denying Simone when she wanted something. She sighed, tiny shoulders shrugging. The pout stayed put.

“Fine. C’mere.” I put down the shadows and pulled out the glitter liner. “But you have to promise, promise, promise me you’ll take a shower later and without complaining, you hear me? Because it’s really important you wash off all your makeup before you go to sleep, anyway.”

“So you don’t get zits,” Simone said, with the sort of happy grin a kid gets when she’s having her way.

“Yep. No zits.” At twenty-six I thought I should’ve grown out of zits, but I usually had a sweet monthly reminder that that wasn’t the case. “Sit up here.”

She hopped up on the edge of my sink, her little feet banging against the cabinet beneath until I gave her a stern look and she stopped. I told her to close her eyes, then outlined the upper lids with the glitter liner. It was just cheap stuff, marketed to tweens, using the face of some ditzy pop idol, but as with all things glittery and sparkly, I loved it. So did Simone. She hummed happily as I painted a design on her cheek using a different color of liquid liner—surely her dad couldn’t complain about that, right? It was like face-painting at a carnival.

“There. What do you think?”

She twisted to peer in the mirror, brow furrowed. She looked more like her dad when she did that. Critical. Then she grinned. “I like the flower!”

“Good. Now,” I said, lifting her down and patting her on the rear, “scram, kid, I gotta get ready.”

“You’re going on a date,” Simone crooned in a sing-song voice. “Right? That’s what Daddy told Mama.”

“Oh, did he?” It was my turn to frown then. Just a little. I glanced at myself in the mirror.

“Yep.” In the glass, Simone’s reflection shrugged, barely interested.

“Well … sure, I’m going on a date.”

“Are you gonna kiss him?”

I turned to look at her. “Where do you get this stuff?”

“TV,” Simone said blithely.

“You should read more,” I muttered, which was ridiculous, since the kid wasn’t even in preschool. “Now go on. Get out of here. I’m busy, kid.”

She did reluctantly, my date preparations apparently more interesting even than the television. From upstairs I heard the pounding of small feet and the cries of welcome—Vic was home. I’d probably have to face him, too, before I went out.

Sure enough, I found them all in the kitchen when I emerged from the basement. Elaine, her belly leading the way as she moved from the pot of mac-n-cheese on the stove to the table, gave me a once-over, but said nothing. Vic, on the other hand, snorted softly and shook his head. But he didn’t say anything, which told me a lot—there were times in the past when he’d have been unable to keep his mouth shut. Marriage had mellowed him.

“Have a good time,” Elaine said as she plopped a spoonful of yellow noodles on Max’s plate. “Be careful.”

I laughed. Just going on this “date” felt like the opposite of careful. “I’ll be home late. Don’t wait up.”

“We’ll leave the light on for you,” Vic said.

“Oooh, you and Tom what’s-his-face from Motel 6.” I paused to squeeze Vic’s shoulder. “Thanks.”

“Cap said your car will be ready tomorrow.” Vic held up his plate for his own portion of macaroni and gave me a long, steady look. “I can give you a ride to the shop in the morning, if you want.”

It was his way of asking if I planned on coming home. Number one, it wasn’t really his business. Number two, I doubted I’d have a different offer. Three, I had my brother’s car anyway, so I just smiled and winked at him, a response guaranteed to drive Vic batty. Elaine laughed, though. For someone who loved him enough to marry him and have his babies, she surely did like to tease.

It was good for him, to be teased like that. And to be loved.

“Later, gators,” I said, and was out the door before any grubby hands could streak my clothes.

Meredith had called it a date, and I assumed she’d meant it whimsically. Still, I’d dressed accordingly. My heart beat faster, my palms a little sweaty, and I felt as much anticipation as if it were a date. Maybe more.

We’d agreed to meet at The Slaughtered Lamb because, according to Meredith, they had a shepherd’s pie to die for, and live music. Some Irish band I didn’t know. It was tucked neatly off a side street and not part of the Second Street strip of bars and clubs, so while I’d been there once or twice, it wasn’t a place I hung out in regularly.

Meredith did, apparently, based on the way the guy at the door greeted her and the waitress smiled when she showed us to our table. Meredith settled into her seat and pulled off her leather gloves with the sigh of a woman grateful to be out of the cold, while I thought seriously about leaving my mittens on to disguise the sudden trembling of my fingers.

“Hello, gorgeous,” Meredith said when the waitress had handed us our menus and left. “I love the scarf.”

It wasn’t anything fancy, just a strip of teal silk I’d tied to one side of my throat above the boat neckline of my peasant blouse. I touched it, though, when she admired it.

“Very fifties French sailor,” she said. “Very Audrey Hepburn.”

That had been the sort of look I was going for, with makeup to match. “Thanks.”

And after that, it was fine.

Most of it was her way. How easy she made it to be with her. She was different here than she was in the Mocha. A little less bright, a little softer, her voice more a murmur, so that I had to lean across the table to catch what she was saying, though I never had any trouble hearing her laughter.

I liked making her laugh.

“See,” she said, when I’d finished describing to her the situation with my brother and his roommate. “You have a great talent for telling stories. I don’t know why you’re so hesitant to join in at the Mocha.”

“I don’t want to share my secrets with strangers. Then they wouldn’t be secrets anymore.”

“Why’s it have to be a secret?” She smiled.

I drew my fork through the mashed potatoes left on my plate. She’d been right about the shepherd’s pie. “I have to face those people every day at work. I don’t want them knowing about my sex life.”

“We don’t only talk about sex. We talk about lots of things.” Meredith had eaten only half her food, and now she pushed her plate away with her fingertips.

I wiped my mouth with a paper napkin and thought of how she’d left the imprint of her lips behind on the one I’d eventually tossed in the trash. “What is it about secrets and stories you like so much, anyway?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve always liked knowing things about people. I guess you could say … I’m a collector.”

“Of what?”

“People,” Meredith said. “Interesting people.”

“How do you do that?” I asked, meaning to sound light, but realizing I was leaning closer again.

“I watch them for a while, see if they look interesting. You can’t always tell at first.”

I nodded. “Of course not.”

“So I talk to them. See if they don’t seem stuck-up. If they’re cool, I get them to tell me about themselves. People like talking about themselves, Tesla.” She paused. Smiled a bit reproachfully. “Most people do, anyway.”

I thought of the group she gathered around her at the Mocha. I was probably my least interesting at work, where Joy managed to suck the life out of any attempts at creativity. “Did you collect me?”

“Doing my best,” Meredith said, with another of those smiles that turned me inside out. She cocked her head. “I’m not a stranger, am I?”

I wasn’t quite sure what she was, but it wasn’t that. “No.”

She looked around the bar, which had become steadily more crowded as the evening went on, but still offered us a lot of privacy. “And you’re not at work.”

“Thank God.”

Meredith was the one who leaned, this time. “So, Tesla. Tell me something.”

“What do you want to know?”

She pretended to think, in such an exaggerated way I was sure she’d already thought of what she wanted to hear before she’d even asked. “What’s the best sex you’ve ever had?”

“You go first.” I made the same offer I’d made the last time I told her a story, but again, she put me off.

“The best sex I’ve ever had is always the last sex I had,” Meredith told me. “Otherwise, what’s the point?”

“Lucky you,” I murmured.

She leaned closer. The table was just large enough for our two plates and glasses, and since I’d already leaned in a bit myself, she got pretty close. Her pupils had gone wide in the dim light, giving her a look of innocence completely at odds with the tilt of her mouth.

“So. Tell me,” she said, and again, I did.

Chapter 9

Her name was Melissa. She was two years older than me, and unlike the other partners I’d had, she came on to me first. We were camping, of all the crazy things to be doing in the late fall, but the leaves were turning colors, the rates at the state park campgrounds had gone down, and I was friends with a bunch of people who liked to go out into the woods and get liquored up and rowdy.

She had dark, dark hair that fell to her ass in long, straight lines. Her hair was heavy. Even now I can remember the weight of it against me, how when she slept next to me her hair would cover me, warm as a blanket. She had dark eyes, too, tilted at the corners, and she wore eyeliner to emphasize them.

We had mutual friends and had met a bunch of times before, but we weren’t quite friends ourselves. When we got to the set of matching cabins we’d rented for the weekend, people started pairing off—some of them couples, some friends who’d already decided they were going to bunk together. I didn’t mind sharing with a guy, but I didn’t want to share a room with Shawn, who had some personal hygiene problems. Kent had a nervous laugh and bad acne, which wouldn’t have been an issue except that rumor also had it that he had the hots for me—and I didn’t feel like fending off his advances and ruining the weekend for all of us by turning him down. I hadn’t met the other three girls, Cindy, Dee and Tina, before, so when Melissa asked me casually if I wanted to room with her, I said sure.

“We got the room with only one bed,” she said, as if she was surprised, and I like to think she was. “Hope you don’t mind sharing.”

I didn’t care. We dumped our things and headed out to the campfire, where there was plenty of beer and marshmallows. And if she sat a little closer to me on the downed log that served as a bench, well … there were a lot of people and not many places to sit.

I didn’t realize Melissa liked me romantically until we were taking a hike along one of the trails toward what was supposed to be a “pretty bitchin’ waterfall,” according to Scott, one of the guys who’d organized the trip. When she took my hand, linking her fingers casually through mine, I must’ve looked startled.

“Is this okay?” Her palm was warm on mine, her fingers strong.

“Sure.” And it was, actually. Before that moment I couldn’t have told you if, my crush on Marilyn Monroe aside, I liked girls. Not definitively, anyway.

I’d put the Murphy boys years into my past, Vic even further back than that. I’d had a few boyfriends in between, nobody serious. Nobody who’d made me feel as thrilled as Melissa did when she took my hand.

We slept together in the same bed that entire weekend, and though I lay awake listening to the sound of her breathing as she fell asleep, and waiting for her to touch me, Melissa never did. She didn’t move fast like that, she said seriously on our last morning there, when we’d both rolled over to stare into each other’s eyes.

“I’m not in this for giggles,” she said. “I want you to be sure this is what you want.”

By that point, I wanted it. I wanted her. It had grown from a kind of giggly curiosity into full-blown desire, hot and aching in my blood. But I didn’t know how to make the first move on a girl. I wasn’t afraid she’d turn me down, but it was like I was a virgin all over again. I had no idea where to put my hands, which way to tilt my head to go in for a kiss.

We saw each other for two more weeks before she kissed me. It seemed longer than forever. And then when she did, her mouth was so soft, so different from a guy’s, that I could only sit there with my eyes closed and let her do it.

“You can kiss me back.” She was amused.

So I did.

I closed my eyes again and opened my mouth, and kissed Melissa with everything I had. I lost myself in the taste of her. Strawberry lip gloss. In the perfume of her shampoo and the weight of her hair against the backs of my hands when I buried them in it. And most of all, her softness.

Her belly, smooth and curving, firm but not muscled. Her arms, the skin like satin. The column of her throat without the lump of an Adam’s apple to distract me. Her smooth cheeks, no beard stubble. Everything about her was smooth and soft and sweet, and I soaked it all in as we made out for hours. She took her time with me, and I didn’t quite know how to handle it.

“Relax,” Melissa breathed against my mouth. “We have all night.”

We used all of it, too. I’d been happy to demand multiple orgasms from the guys I’d slept with in the past, but since they only ever got that singleton climax, when they were done, so was the fucking. It wasn’t like that with Melissa. With her mouth and her hands she built me up until I was close to the edge of coming, then eased me off.

Melissa was the first person to make me come just with her tongue. I went up, up and over into bliss. Then again, until I broke with it. I wasn’t in the habit of crying during sex, but I wept a little at how good it felt.

That amused her, too. So did my clumsy attempt at going down on her—I was willing enough, and I had a good idea of what would work on women, since I could imagine what worked on me. But I was too hard, too fast.

“Too focused,” she told me, holding my face in her hands as I looked up at her from between her legs. “Think butterfly, not bee.”

Eventually, I figured out how to make her clit pulse under my tongue, her pussy to clench my fingers. I learned to make her come, then come again with barely a pause, come so hard the bed shook and she cried out.

“And that,” I said to Meredith, “was the best sex I’ve ever had.”

Chapter 10

I’d embellished the story—not lying, but deliberately putting in details I might otherwise have left out because, I’ll admit it, I wanted to see what she’d do. I’d felt a little pressured by Meredith in her quest for stories. And I’d felt a little put out by her bragging that she’d kissed a girl.

But mostly, I wanted her to know that I was a woman who knew how to make another woman come. I went all the way.

“What happened?” she asked.

I laughed, rueful but not without humor. “Oh. Well. Four months into it, she dumped me.”

“For another woman?”

“Oh, hell yeah. Melissa didn’t go for guys. Not ever.”

Meredith looked sympathetic. “Why’d she dump you? What a bitch.”

I’d thought as much at the time.

Melissa had been blunt, I could give her that. “Seriously, Tesla, do you think you can imagine spending the rest of your life with me? Having kids, all that? Because when I’m in it, I want it to be for the long haul. With someone like me.”

Since she said this just after I’d finished giving her three orgasms in a row, using tricks she’d taught me, I’d been appropriately affronted. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know what it means,” was all Melissa had said, and that was that. The end of it. She took up with someone more like her, whatever that meant.

“The last I heard they were still together. Two kids,” I added. “I guess she found what she was looking for.”

“So … what did she mean?” Meredith asked. “Someone like her? Someone more … gay?”

I shrugged and lifted my glass to drink. It left a wet circle on the napkin, and when I put the glass down, I fitted it exactly to the outline, then looked up at Meredith. “I guess so.”

“Eating pussy didn’t make you gay enough?” she mused, sounding as if she didn’t really expect an answer.

“I’m not gay. I’m not straight.” I pointed this out because it was important. “And I’m not wild, either.”

“You’ve done so much,” Meredith said, as if I hadn’t even spoken. “And I’ve done … nothing.”

I laughed. “You kissed a girl. And you liked it.”

Her eyes gleamed. Did I imagine she looked at my mouth as she licked her lips? Maybe not.

“That was nothing,” she said.

“You wanted a story,” I told her with another shrug. “It’s not a secret. But it was the truth.”

“That story was worth the price of dinner.”

I hadn’t known my words could have such value.

Meredith reached across the table to cover my hand with hers, fingers squeezing. “Tesla, baby, don’t worry about it. Besides, the person who asks for the date is supposed to pay, right?”

She gave me a twinkly-eyed grin to show she wasn’t serious. Not about the date part, anyway.

She didn’t have to try too hard to convince me to go dancing. I worked the evening shift the next day, which usually sucked on Saturdays but for which I’d be thankful when I didn’t have to work Sunday morning. By the time we got to the Pharmacy, the line was already spilling out onto the sidewalk. With dollar drinks and a band downstairs, and two floors of dance music above, it was a popular spot. We showed our IDs and pushed our way inside.

Meredith wasn’t interested in the lower level. She glanced over at the bar, where a college-age guy who already looked wasted had been settled into a barber chair, a scantily clad server hovering over him, with a bottle ready to pour into his mouth, and a belt to spank him with—if he was sober enough, after, to stand up and bend over for it.

Meredith rolled her eyes and pointed to the stairs. Conversation was worthless here. I made to follow her through the crowd, but a pair of giggly bachelorette party girls in tiaras got between us. I knew where Meredith was headed; it was no big deal. But she looked back to see if I was there, and frowned at the intrusion. She reached around them, pushing them subtly to the side, and grabbed my hand. Our fingers linked, twisting as she turned toward the stairs again.

This time, I had no trouble keeping up with her.

It didn’t mean anything, that hand-holding. Nor did the way she let the contact linger when we got upstairs, where the dance floor was less crowded, when she could have easily let me go. I knew better than to expect any interest from her. Not like that, anyway, whether she’d once kissed a girl or not.

“Want a drink?” She said this directly into my ear, her breath hot, the whisper of her lips against my skin enough to make me shiver.

She smelled expensive and delicious. I shook my head. She pulled away enough to look into my eyes, her head tilted, the red and blue and green and gold lights of the dance floor dancing across her face like sunshine through stained glass. She hadn’t let go of my hand. Her fingers squeezed. She leaned in closer as someone passed behind her.

“Sure? A beer?”

“No, thanks.” I gently took my hand from hers and feigned an interest in the crowd. “You go ahead.”

Shit. I should’ve offered to buy her drink, since she’d paid for my dinner. But Meredith was already scouting the bar, and nodded toward an older guy leaning against it, a beer in his hand. He was scouting, too.

“He’ll buy it for you,” she told me. “I can get him to.”

I had to laugh at that. I had no doubts Meredith could get that stranger to buy us both whatever she wanted him to. “I’m good.”

She was gone in the next second. I watched her make magic with the guy at the bar. She was so good at it. She tipped back her head, laughing, shaking her long hair. She even held up her wedding rings and flashed them, giving the guy a playful “no-no” wag of her finger, though the look she shot me said she had him right where she wanted him. She’d be making him think the drinks were his idea.

Sure enough, she came back across the room with a mojito in one hand and a beer for me in the other. He watched her the whole way, not quite with the lolling tongue of a cartoon dog … but close. Meredith didn’t glance back, not once. She pressed the cold bottle into my palm, and her eyes gleamed when she grinned at me.

“Drink up,” she said. “And then let’s dance.”

Tonight it seemed as though all the men were interested in observing the cultural phenomenon of the bachelorette party. True, those women were making quite a scene. At least three different groups, with matching T-shirts or tiaras or penis necklaces, had sort of taken over the place. There wasn’t much room for men on the dance floor with all the cavorting and circle dancing going on.

Somehow, though, Meredith made her way in. Not into the circle. That she looked at with great disdain, rolling her eyes at me in a way that would’ve made me laugh even without that last beer. She imitated one bride-to-be’s sorority girl shuffle with a straight face. Not even the woman’s friends noticed their home-girl was being mocked.

Meredith cast another glance as the second group surged closer. This was the penis-necklace group, and they were slightly more obnoxious than the other two parties. They were playing the “buck-a-suck” game, in which they offered up candy necklaces to men who’d bite off one of the pieces for a dollar. It seemed like an easy, if sloppy, way to make a few bucks.

Meredith was clearly not amused.

“Sluts,” she said into my ear, drawing me away from them and toward one of the cages on the outer edges of the dance floor.

Her derision made me laugh again. “They’re just having a good time. Didn’t you have a bachelorette party?”

“Oh, sure, with a male stripper and everything. But that was private.” Her lip curled as she peered over her shoulder. “Christ, look at them. Now they’re fake grinding.”

I looked. Two of them were writhing to some song that was supposed to be sexy, and might’ve been, had they been dancing to the beat instead of off it. I laughed. “They’re having fun.”

“They’re being ridiculous.” Meredith scowled.

I thought her real problem was that they were taking all the attention, with none left for her. I bet that didn’t happen often in her life, at least not that I’d ever seen. Meredith turned heads wherever she went.

At the rising sound of catcalls, we both turned. The girls who’d been grinding together were now ass-to-crotch, the one in front bent over as her friend behind slapped at her butt with one hand and made cowboy lasso motions with the other. They were both nearly falling over from laughter or too much drink.

“They’re not even trying to be sexy,” Meredith said. “Bunch of dumb cunts.”

“They’re a couple of twat-whistles,” I agreed, “but so what? If you don’t want to dance, Meredith, we can go someplace else.”

Or go home, I thought, stifling a yawn with the back of my hand. Unlike Meredith, who could sleep in as long as she pleased, I was guaranteed to be woken earlier than I wanted.

“Buck a suck!” shouted out one of the obnoxious girls as she yanked the bride forward by the wrist. “Hey, everyone! A buck a suck!”

“I’d give them ten to get their fat asses off this dance floor,” Meredith said, and before I could reply, she’d turned. True to her word, she held up a ten-dollar bill. “What do I get for a ten-spot?”

Those girls were giggling like crazy, some still gyrating as if someone had unhinged their hips. The one tugging at the bride’s hand snatched the ten from Meredith and waved it in the air. The crowd whooped in approval.

“Buck a suck? You’d better get ready,” I thought Meredith said, but the music was so loud I could’ve been mistaken.

That poor girl had no idea what hit her. Meredith put her hands on the bride’s hips, pulling them belly to belly as she slid a thigh between her legs. The idea of the game was to lip at the candy necklace the bride-to-be wore, and bite or suck off the individual candies, but Meredith, who’d paid for ten, was making sure she got her money’s worth.

That girl-on-girl action that had been going on earlier? Nothing compared to what was happening now. Those other girls, those straight girls who thought a little dirty dancing or some fake kissing was the way to get guys to notice them, couldn’t begin to compete with Meredith when she turned it on. Meredith skimmed her lips over the necklace, not bothering with the candy, and found the bride’s throat beneath. Her hands gripped tighter as she pressed her thigh against the other woman’s pussy. Their bodies moved and melded.

I thought the future Mrs. Whoever-the-fuck-she-was would push Meredith away. I think all of us watching did. But she must have been too drunk, too horny or simply too surprised, for all she did was tip her head back and let Meredith mouth her neck.

And then Meredith kissed her.

Full-on, openmouthed, tongues twisting together like snakes. Meredith’s hands slid up the other woman’s front to cup her breasts through her pink and sparkly T-shirt. They weren’t dancing, really, just grinding and tongue-fucking each other’s mouths. Her girlfriends looked on, agape.

The men surrounding us exploded into a frenzy of catcalls, whistles and whoops.

Meredith looked at me, and though her lips were still fused to that hapless bachelorette, I saw the curve of a smile. She broke the kiss abruptly, her lips still wet from it. The future bride stumbled back, looking stunned, her mouth slack, eyes glazed. Her nipples were hard, too, poking at the front of her shirt. Her friends surrounded her in the next minute, closing her in, reaching to support her because it looked as if she might just keel over.

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