“Why? Because a ‘party boy’ can’t ever be interested in mushy things like love? Maybe I just want to find out if I have a reason to be jealous. So I can kill him.”
I rolled my eyes but my chest warmed, as if the fire was also heating me from the inside.
He nuzzled into my neck. “I’m serious. About some of it, anyway. Tell me. I want to know.”
“No. I haven’t.” There was a time I’d thought it was another of my flaws. Thought that I was incapable of falling in love with a person or of having another person love me.
But there was someone I had loved. Someone who loved me. Someone who proved contrary to the illustration I’d drawn of myself. “I did love someone once though,” I said, wanting to answer his question honestly. “A girlfriend.”
Reeve moved my hips so that he could face me. “Emily. Are you saying you go both ways? Because I think I just got hard.”
I chuckled. “No. I don’t. Definitely all man for me. I mean, I’ve had threesomes. With her.”
He adjusted himself underneath me. “Yep. Definitely got hard.”
I could feel his bulge – he wasn’t hard. Semi maybe. I ignored it, more interested in explaining my relationship with Amber at the moment. “It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t sexual even when there was sex involved. We were just really good friends. We went through a lot together and she always understood me like no one else ever has.”
Or, like no one else ever had. Because Reeve seemed really good at getting me.
“Plus you had threesomes. We should call her up.” He tipped his beer to his lips.
From his wink, I knew he was kidding, but I said anyway, “No, we shouldn’t. First of all, I can’t call her. We parted ways and then I lost track of her.”
I took the bottle from him and finished the end of it in a long swallow before adding, “Besides, I don’t think I could share you with her. With anyone.”
Reeve put the empty bottle on the ground and cupped my cheek. “Then I’d never expect you to.”
“Thank you.”
He kissed me, or I kissed him, lips molding by the firelight. Heat spreading from the inside and the outside.
He broke away first. With his mouth still inches from mine, he asked, “How is it that you’ve never fallen in love besides with her? You can’t say there hasn’t been opportunity.”
I turned away, leaning my head back on his shoulder. “There have been lovers, yes. But I never found anyone I trusted.”
“Why did you split up with her, then? With your girlfriend. If you were so close.”
It was weird to talk about Amber with him yet wasn’t all at once. But the answer to his question was hard to talk about with anyone. Was hard for me to even think about.
So I just shrugged. “People move apart sometimes, I guess.” I sat forward and looked back at him. “What about you? Ever been in love?”
He surprised me when he didn’t hesitate. “Twice. The last one – you remind me of her sometimes.”
Amber. He had loved Amber.
A ball formed in the back of my throat, and I felt truly conflicted. I was jealous, of course. But also, it was just another thing that connected he and I. Another thing that brought us together.
And I reminded him of her. “How?”
“I’m not sure. It’s hard to put a finger on because you’re really quite different. Like, she didn’t care for, well, for a lot of the things that happened in the bedroom. And elsewhere. She didn’t always like my approach. She was kinky, but not… submissive. Eventually that came between us.”
“How?” I asked again.
“It doesn’t matter.”
I needed these answers. For me. For us. “Is she the person you didn’t let leave?”
“Are you saying that trust is a factor for love?”
I glared, letting him know that I hadn’t missed that he’d dodged me entirely.
But then I answered him, because this topic was important to me, too. “It’s the factor. What else is it? Fondness? What about when he gets mad and beats you senseless? Or fucks your friend? Trust. All that matters.”
I pulled away from him, standing to stretch my legs or to try to relieve the sudden constriction in my chest or to escape the one thing it felt like I was endlessly trying to escape.
But it followed me, as it always did, wanting to come out, wanting to be exposed.
For once, I gave into it. “And that’s why she and I split ways. Because I lost her trust.”
“How did you lose her trust?”
“It’s complicated.” I already regretted saying what I had, yet I also feared I’d opened up a floodgate and was now being drenched in words that needed to be said, words that were going to leak out one way or another.
“Try me.” Reeve was like the riverbed, coaxing the deluge to flow in a natural direction. “You obviously want to talk about it.”
So, because I was drowning and tipsy, because I did want to talk about her, because I’d wanted to tell someone this story for a long time, because I’d been wanting to tell Reeve everything that I’d been hiding, I took a deep breath and said, “Okay.”
I sat down on the rock next to Reeve, uncertain where to begin. “Like I said, she and I had shared men before, but we hadn’t for some time at this point.” We’d been back from Mexico for almost two years and had resumed our long-term live-in relationships with men, just separately now. “She had a boyfriend. Bridge was his name.”