First Love: A Superbundle Boxed Set of Seven New Adult Romances (8 page)

Share? Sam and Joe and Trevor
shared
Darla?

What?

Sam never struck me as the kind of guy who did
that
. Polyamory was big at my college among a small clique of gamers and the cosplay people. Not musicians.

Then again, four years is a long time for someone to change. I certainly wasn’t the same girl at that debate. But whatever they were saying was intense, their words hushed then loud. Dammit! If only I could get closer.

Turning my head slowly, I saw that they were behind a bush. There was no way that they could see me. My shoulders dropped and I stretched my arms out, not realizing how tense I’d been. My heart slammed in my chest as I caught a glimpse of Sam, his arms akimbo, his body loose, an old, well-worn pair of jeans hugging his hips, those long legs relaxed. They were twenty feet away from me at most, and there were enough holes in the hedge that I could catch as much of an eyeful as I wanted. His red hair was grown out in that slightly long look that so many guys had now. His eyes were narrowed and focused on Joe, who stood a few feet away, gesturing with his hands. Sam just nodded slowly and then said a few words, Joe interrupting him repeatedly.

Suddenly, Sam crossed his arms over his chest, the biceps bulging. Long tendons popped out in his forearms, those arms leading to hands that tapped out so many rhythms.
 

I was a goner, wasn’t I? I stood and picked up my thermos and walked closer, still hidden by the shrubbery. Phrases like ‘can you take over for me?’ and ‘Darla’ made my blood run cold. Were they really talking about
swapping
this woman? What exactly
was
his relationship with her? What were
all
of their relationships with her? Some sort of kinky three-men-one-woman thing? Was that even possible? This was making my head hurt.

A plume of jealousy poured up inside me from my knees, up through my pelvis, and into my throat. What kind of woman gets three men interested in her at the same time? The thought made me blush with rage. And arousal.

Anger drained out as my eyes remained riveted on the two of them and I let myself explore that idea—just for a moment—because, why not? Ideas aren’t inherently bad. There’s nothing wrong with letting yourself
imagine
something new that you could do, even if you never, in a million years, thought that you’d actually
act
on it.

What would it be like to have Liam, and Joe,
and
Sam, all at once, touching me? Hands on my lips, other hands on my breasts, and other hands going lower, finding a very eager red nub. Six hands.

And one
me
.

Sam

Joe’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He reached in, took a look, and said, “Oh, shit. I have to go—it’s my mom.”

“Dance, monkey boy, dance.”

“Shut. Up.” He looked me square in the eye and shook his head slowly. “Sam, you know for years I really felt sorry for you.”

I pulled my head back. “What?”

“You and all the shit that went down with your dad our senior year.”

A cold flush poured over me and I frowned. “Yeah, so?” Where was this coming from? I didn’t need pity.

“It’s just with this,” he held up the phone, “and my mom practically pulling on the diaper strings, sometimes I wish I had the guts that you have, man.”

“Guts?” I asked. Guts?
It didn’t take guts to tell my dad off and walk away and figure all this out on my own
, I thought. I didn’t really have a choice. It was that, or watch my soul die. Joe was looking at me like he expected me to say something.

“Joe, at least you have a mom who gives a shit.”

“Your mom gives a shit.”

“I know. She’s just...she’s just too weak to leave him.” Guys don’t talk like this, so there was something really awkward and weird about the fact that Joe was having this
after school special
moment with me.

“I’m too much of a pussy, aren’t I?” he said. Back to Guy Talk. “You’re a total pussy, Ross.”

“Hey, I owned up to it. You don’t need to dig it in.” He rolled his tongue inside his cheek and punched me in the shoulder.

“You weren’t a pussy, though, to go out to Ohio and rescue Trevor.”

“I didn’t rescue Trevor—Darla rescued us both.”

“And now you’re leaving her?”

He blew out a
looooong
puff of air. “I’m leaving everything, aren’t I?” he said, starting to walk slowly toward the apartment.

“Yeah, you are. But that takes guts.”

He laughed. “It doesn’t take guts to pick the seventh best law school in the country over BC. In fact, it’s kind of the easy way out.”

“What do you mean ‘the easy way’?”

“It’s programmed in me, man. This is what I have to do. Climb, climb, climb. Scrape, scrape, scrape. Get to the top. Ditch Trevor and Darla.” His voice took on a hard tone.

“You’re not ditching them, though. You’re moving seven hours away.” He started to walk a little faster, his head down. I found myself following, even though I was heading the other way. “You’re not really breaking up with them, are you?”

“Breaking up?” He came to a dead halt, his voice cracking. “Breaking up? You make it sound like we’re in some kind of a....”

“You
are
in some kind of a...” I stumbled. “What the hell do you call that
thing
that the three of you are doing?”

He leered at me. “Really incredible sex.”

“OK, you can call it that.”

“No,” he stopped and put a hand on my shoulder, and dipped his head down, his eyes boring into mine. “It’s
really
incredible sex.”

“Yeah, I know, Joe. I hear it. I’m on the couch, remember? And, by the way, you guys are out of whipped cream.”

“We’re out of condoms, too,” he said, absentmindedly, starting to walk at a faster pace toward the apartment.

“You’re going to give all this up for Penn,” I said dryly.

“I’m going give all this up for Penn,” he confirmed. “But I’m not breaking up with them. Ah, geez,” he cringed. “Breaking up with Trevor...that just sounds so...fucked up.”

“The whole situation is kind of bizarre,.”

“Yeah, I know,” he admitted. “But it’s the first thing that’s felt
real
, too,” he confessed. “What feels real to you Sam?”

Amy.
Her name flashed through my head.

Joe stopped and said, “I gotta run, man. See you later.” He took off like a shot, abruptly ending whatever conversation we just started to actually have. Shit got real when you talked about what was deep inside you. Another person could help you find things, beliefs that were buried so far inside you didn’t even know they were there, things that you could never discover on your own, like trying to tie your shoes with just one hand—you could do it, but it was a hell of a lot easier with two.

Amy

The all too familiar sound of Darth Vader’s marching music floated through my ears and I panicked, realizing my phone was ringing. Dammit! Mom’s ringtone. I grabbed the phone and quickly pressed Accept.

“Hello?” I whispered.

“Amy? Are you OK?”

“Mom.” Of course it was Mom. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Why are you whispering?” she said. There was urgency in her voice, a tone of weariness combined with worry that she always had—I couldn’t remember a time when my mother didn’t sound like that.

“Nothing. I’m just...I’m out in public and I’m just trying to be respectful of other people,” I lied.

“Oh, OK. Well, that’s good. So, honey, I’m calling with
great
news!” Oh boy, here it came. Evan. This was going to be about my brother Evan. Evanfest. Evanpalooza. Evan-o-rama. I steeled myself for a twenty minute conversation where Mom would talk about nothing but my brother—not that it was anything new.

I walked as fast as I could back to the park bench and sat down, curling into myself, covering one ear, my phone pressed hard against the other. “Yeah, mom, what’s going on?”

“Evan is coming home.”

Surprise!
I thought. “That’s great!” Mustering as much enthusiasm as I could, I slipped into the very familiar role that I was expected to play: dutiful sister, supportive daughter.

What I wanted to say was, “That’s great, Mom! And by now he’s probably as high as a kite.” Or, “Wow, they let him out even though there’s no way he’s actually clean!” Or, “So, who did he bribe
this
time to get a few hits while he was in rehab?”

When you live with a brother like Evan, you develop a radar—a bullshit radar—and it was one that was so finely honed in me that it made me want to reach through the phone and slap my mother silly for her enthusiasm and optimism.

The rush of words that came out of her mouth was like Old Faithful—a geyser of completely trite, stereotyped statements. “Oh, honey, he’s on his way home
right
now. He just had to stop for a few minutes to get something to eat and then he’ll be here, and he is going to move back into his old room, and we’re going to get him enrolled in classes at Bedford Community College, and he’s decided that he’s just going to completely turn his life around, and he’s going to apply for a bunch of jobs. And...”

My throat tightened. I could feel the bile rising in it. My body began to rock slightly forward and back, as if I could pick out some kind of tempo that would keep the truth at bay, that would allow the split in my head between the brain that needed to play along and the brain that was
screaming
in abject horror at being trapped in this position. My shoulders tightened up around my ears, and the all too familiar hot, burning stomach began.

But none of that mattered, right? What mattered was that I was being supportive to my mom, that I was the good little girl. “That’s really wonderful, Mom,” I choked out. “I’m sure Evan is going to do whatever Evan puts his mind to.” Carefully chosen words designed to tell the truth, and yet, to someone whose entire emotional landscape depended on systemic denial, they
seemed
supportive.

“Oh, Amy, I’m so glad to hear you say that,” she said, her voice cracking, “because that’s exactly how I feel. He’s so strong and he’s so smart, and if he just put his mind to it he could do anything. My goodness, he could—”

My brain, the half that was screaming, increased the volume by a factor of ten, which meant that the other half of my brain had to keep itself occupied to drown out the sound. I started tapping, absentmindedly, on the bench and found myself dulled, just slightly, by picking a tempo and sticking to it. Was the fact that Sam did the same thing part of why I chose this as a haven?

Sam
. My shoulders loosened, Mom prattled on. I’d reached a point where, even though I didn’t listen to the words, I knew from the tone and from her pauses, exactly when to pretend to respond. I could fake it. Faking it, in fact, was what I was expected to do. If I told her the truth—and trust me, I had tried—she would explode on me. Not go cold and shut me out, though she was good at that too. I mean, she would just flat out
explode.

The handful of times I’d tried it, I’d gotten a rage-filled mother that I never really expected was under the surface. Mom was a guidance counselor with a Master’s in Psychology and Counseling. So, to watch her turn into a fury—a red faced, screaming monster who accused me of not loving her or Evan when I had simply said, “Mom, he’s an addict, and he doesn’t want to get better yet”—well, that shuts you down. That shuts you down
damn
fast.

I’d tried once after that. Once. She’d cut me off, turning away, marching out of the room, and then stopping in the threshold and looking back with eyes that were a strange combination of red and black, and a face so cold you would think that she was an executioner. “I don’t ever want to hear you say another word about what your brother can’t do.”

And that was it.

The lesson? The truth matters less to some people than the veneer. Sitting here on the park bench, I nodded like an idiot, tapping my fingers and shining her on.

Sam

As Joe ran off I thought about what he’d just said. For the past four and a half years my entire life had been like walking along the blade of a razor; one slip and the results were deadly. That’s how this worked. When I stood up to my father I took complete control of my life. Except, what no one tells you, is that when you take complete control of yourself you assume complete
responsibility
, too.

Responsibility I don’t mind. What I didn’t really get was that, at barely eighteen, suddenly everything that I didn’t realize was going on behind the scenes when it came to the right stuff was all on
me
.

Dad might have been an asshole, but he gave me a place to live. Dad might have been a self-righteous prick, but I had a car to drive. And my father might have been a selfish alcoholic with a megalomaniacal streak in him as wide as the path of the Boston Marathon, but when you discover that you don’t even have a car to sleep in after a screaming match where you stand up for yourself, and you come to see that your friends’ parents are the only thing keeping you from living on the streets—that sense of freedom and responsibility loses its expansiveness and takes on the feeling of a stone around your neck.

Don’t get me wrong—I wouldn’t trade it,
ever.
I’d rather slip on the edge of that razor blade than go back. But it was times like this, where I was indebted to Trevor and Joe for all these years of help and support, either from them or their parents, where some part of me wavered and wished for more.

I couldn’t ask for two better friends, and now Joe was asking something of me; to take over his half of the rent, to give Trevor some stability. Offering to front the first six weeks was really kind. For a guy who been a supercilious jerk most of high school, Joe had turned out OK.

More than OK.

I turned away after his form was gone and I heard a familiar voice.

“Sure, Mom.” The lilt floated on the air and caught in my ear, echoing like a measure you play over and over again for the sake of something meditative.

Amy
.

I turned my head to follow the sound, her words less distinct, the voice muffled. My body was frozen and on fire at the same time. Some part of me hardened—the obvious part—and then, others. What was she doing here? After last night at the bar where she disappeared, I didn’t know what to think. Now, I took strong strides in the direction of her voice, as if she were a homing signal.