So men better be on their toes.
“Alex is really pretty simple. As a body, I mean. But that brain of his gets in the way,” Josie said in a tone that made Laura wonder if she was just a microchip implanted in a human body.
“What about his heart?”
“Even worse! He expects me to be all touchy-feely new-agey and all that shit.” Eye roll.
“And you are too cool for that,” Laura said in her best neutral voice.
“I thought we were past it. Hello? We watched your daughter overnight. I gave him a few inches for his toothbrush and he took a mile.”
“He keeps one spare pair of underwear in your nightstand.”
“Squatter.”
“Now you’re just being argumentative.”
Josie gave her a blank look. “What does that even mean?”
“You’re arguing for the sake of arguing.”
“You’ve been my friend for nearly a decade and you’re only now realizing that? Gatorade. It’s what plants crave.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Let’s just rename you Princess Obvious. Of course I argue for the sake of arguing. It’s in my DNA.”
Laura’s turn to fling a sugar packet at Josie’s head. “You are the worst person to talk to when I’m having a man crisis.”
“Men. Plural. You don’t have a man crisis. You have men crises.”
“Yeah.” Laura sighed, pushing the last shrimp away. Her appetite really had diminished. “Plural.”
Josie looked a bit sheepish, leaning forward and giving Laura that tilted-head kind of look that made Laura feel as if her exterior matched her interior when it came to the level of confusion she felt. Was she exuding it? Did her eyes shine with some kind of needy bat signal?
“You need to talk to someone,” Josie declared.
“Like a psychologist?”
Josie frowned, considering that one. “No. More like a friend. A buddy who’s been there. Done that. Has the sore body from two at once.”
“Hey!”
“What? It’s true.”
“Like you’d know.”
“Only that one time.”
“Just…don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Make fun of me.” Burying her face in her hands, Laura almost cried. Almost. Raw and one big twinging nerve, she wanted to have the freedom to talk about her problems like a normal person. Just because she had unconventional relationships didn’t mean she wasn’t normal.
“I’m not making fun of you. Really.” Josie’s brow furrowed and she almost looked like she really cared.
“Yes, you are.”
“But not in here,” Josie said, pointing to her heart. “I’m just teasing. I’ll stop.”
“Thank you. And good attempt at actually looking sincere. Your fake sincerity has improved by leaps and bounds.”
Josie stuck her tongue out at Laura in response. “You need to find another woman who’s in your position.” Josie poured a cup of coffee and shook the pot, listening for the telltale slosh. Nope. She set it on the edge of the table, and Laura knew Madge or Caleb would come by soon for a refill.
“No pun intended.”
“No pun…? Oh. Ha.”
“It’s not like the city is swimming with women in my spot.”
“If the dating service takes off, though, it will be…”
“I can’t turn Good Things Come in Threes into my own personal pity party.”
Josie seemed to mull that over as she fixed her coffee and took a sip. The light was fading outside and Laura wasn’t hungry. Too much coffee earlier in the day made these extra cups just fuel a jitteriness she didn’t welcome. She needed to get home soon and beat rush hour. Plus, who knew what life was like at home? Hopefully, Mike was satisfied with the extra attention she’d bestowed on him earlier, but that just meant Dylan would want more.
And then Jillian would need a nursing fest.
So many people. So many demands. So little time for Laura to just sit and think and breathe and figure out who Laura was. How did she ever hold down a full-time job before, and date guys, and have a life?
Oh. That’s right.
She didn’t. Have a life, that is. Or date many guys…
“What about Darla?” Josie whispered, making a skeptical face, as if weighing the quality of her own words and finding them wanting.
“Darla? Darla Darla?”
“You know another Darla currently in a threesome relationship like yours?”
That made Laura nearly spit out her mouthful of coffee. “Like mine? You can’t compare some kids barely out of college who met on the side of the road with me and Dylan and Mike.”
“Yes, I can. I was there, Laura. You typed some words on the internet and rubbed a genie’s lamp. Poof! Insta-billionaires fawning all over you.”
“It didn’t exactly go like that.”
“Yes, it did. It went exactly like that. So don’t judge Darla’s own threesome weirdness. You have more in common than you might imagine.” Laura realized Josie was defending Darla, as if Laura had said something condescending. Had she? If so, she didn’t mean it. It was just that comparing her relationship, where the three were committed and raising a child together, seemed so…wrong.
“I have nothing against Darla!” Laura protested, raising her palms. “Don’t bite my head off. The comparison caught me by surprise.”
“You two really should talk,” Josie said. “Alone. Of all the people in the world right now who could empathize and help you, I think Darla’s pretty much it.”
“Really?”
Josie nodded. “And I’ll bet she could use someone to bounce ideas off, too.”
“I just…we’re in such different places.” Laura nearly gagged on her next words. “Darla, Trevor, and Joe are more like I imagine Jill, Mike, and Dylan were. You know. Early twenties, figuring it all out one day at a time. I met Mike and Dylan a decade later, after they’d figured out all the basic rules and…” What would life be like if the three of them had met ten years ago? What if she’d been their third instead of Jill? Would it have been difficult to be with them as they figured out their relationship with each other, and then their joint connection to a woman? Jill did her a favor, in some ways.
For the first time in her relationship with the guys, Laura felt a sense of kinship—and not competition—with the late Jill. She’d paved the way for the most important experience of Laura’s life. To be fair, Laura’s daughter was named after Mike and Dylan’s dead partner, so it was not as if Laura didn’t honor her. And yet she never felt a closeness to her memory.