Laura shuddered, the taste of Mike still sharp in her mouth. She needed to get off the phone, fast. “What’s up? You never call this time of day unless you have a business question.”
Half the time Laura forgot that the dating service even existed. Then she felt tremendous guilt, because the venture was backed by money Mike and Dylan readily gave her, expecting nothing in return and not really caring whether it generated a profit. The unspoken secret between the three was that the two billion plus change that the men had in trust, and the millions they earned every year in income payout, was more than enough money for Laura to spend as she pleased on whatever she wanted, for Dylan to fund his foundation, and to support Mike’s work at the ski resort.
In other words—and this was where she cringed, but gritted her teeth and faced the truth—Good Things Come in Threes was just a pet project. It never had to turn a profit. In truth, it could bleed money forever and all would be well.
“Just calling to say ‘hi’,” Josie said in a voice so friendly Laura almost started crying. She missed her friend.
“I need to meet for coffee.” Laura said the words before she realized it was exactly what she wanted and needed.
“Fake meeting?”
“Yep. But make sure it doesn’t seem like a fake meeting.”
“Gotcha. I can’t today, though. How about tomorrow?”
Laura did a mental scan. Shit. Tomorrow she had a doctor’s appointment for Jillian and a playgroup. “Can’t tomorrow.”
“Day after? I’m free,” Josie said.
Mental scan again. “Yes! I’m free.”
“See you at Jeddy’s. One o’clock.” Click. That was easy. A little too easy.
Laura needed easy right now.
The fact that the company existed at all was its own reward in such a scenario. When you took away the standard economic trappings that the bottom 99.9999999999999 percent of the world assumed to be a permanent, fixed, and universal part of the structure of society, what Laura and Josie were doing with the dating service made zero sense.
Who starts a new business in a down economy, with an extremely limited niche clientele, with no simple way to advertise, and with people like the Westboro Baptists as likely to generate negative publicity as the local start-up incubator in Cambridge?
There wasn’t a huge support network for threesomes, after all. That wasn’t conjecture. They’d learned the very hard way since news about the company had spread as it had become the butt of bad jokes on Reddit and BuzzFeed, at one point going viral—but never getting the attention dinosaur porn or Duck Dynasty had captured, thank goodness. What she, Dylan, and Mike viewed as a simple attempt to help people earnestly searching for something hard to attain had become corrupted by the views of a small minority that viewed the very existence of a desire for love out of step with society as an abomination.
Dylan weathered it best, somehow able to compartmentalize and view the negative press as “their fucking problem, not mine. Assholes.” Mike had gone quiet, angry, and disappointed, though Laura shouldn’t have been surprised. His own family rejected him for the same reason; why should he expect strangers to hold him in any higher esteem?
But Laura had needed to put herself on a strict media diet. A news fast. Josie read everything because she seemed to be made of Teflon (“Plus, it’s my job now, Laura,” she’d explained in a kind, though troubled, voice).
Why all of that mess invaded her thoughts now, as Mike surprised her in the bathroom wearing jeans and nothing else, sliding his hands over her shoulders and sinking one into her hair, bringing his mouth to hers, was a mystery. All she knew was that he needed and wanted her to help heal a rift between them (among them?) and she was here.
“I love you,” he sighed against her mouth. He winced and pulled back.
“I love you, too.” She saw the funny look on his face. “You okay?”
“That’s quite a…taste.” He reached for a glass of water and turned on the tap, filling it. After chugging a glass, he refilled it and handed it to Laura, who just chuckled.
“What about you?” he asked in a slow, lazy voice. She knew he didn’t mean love. Lust, on the other hand…
“You can take care of me later,” she said, laughing in a manner she’d only recently been able to reach, a tone of playful understanding that everything in this household would balance out in time. No niggling need to get what she wanted while she could. It would come to her eventually. As if the universe were somehow conspiring to make her happy.
In a way, it was. Good karma was flying her way, and if she slowed down enough to grab on to a piece, the ride was amazing. So was the view.
“We can take care of you later,” he said, making her eyebrows arch. Men. First he spent two days pouting…sulking…stewing…eh—pick a word—because she was sexual with Dylan on Mike’s “day,” and now he acted as if that was all over and of course she’d sleep with both of them.
Of course.
And then there was Dylan, who had confessed he knew it was Mike’s day, and further knew that Mike would be upset, but had jumped her bones—in his words—“because your tits looked so fucking scrumptious when you walked past me wearing no bra.” So evolved. She’d strained an optic nerve rolling her eyes.
What was she? A piece of meat?
The anger that would have rushed to the top in a wave of pure, primal fury wasn’t there. In its place uncoiled a slow, deep breath, one of experience and a carefully developed pause button on her tempter. Reactions would get her nowhere.
“What if I don’t want we?”
Blinking hard, Mike seemed taken aback. “You don’t?” The lush moment in the bedroom just now faded. Fast.
“Maybe I just want you.” On firmer ground now, she was balancing on the razor’s edge of being an adult and focusing on forging alliances and connections with mindfucking him. She didn’t always choose the mature path, no matter how hard she tried.
Right now, maturity was barely winning out.
Barely.
With intent, she held back from touching him or sitting within physical proximity. Sometimes she wanted to nurture her anger. Defensive? Yes. Unfair? To everyone. But when she was outnumbered two to one and there was no blueprint for how to navigate living with two men in a balanced (supposedly), permanent, loving threesome, she had so few options that gave her any sense of equilibrium, no matter how misguided at times.