My girl.
There was a time when I wouldn’t have thought anything about waking up next to this woman. It was just a part of my life, like eating and breathing and showering—a routine.
Now it feels like the greatest gift I’ve ever been given.
She stayed.
After I barked at Andrew and Greg to leave me the fuck alone, I waited with my head in my hands. I contemplated staying on my makeshift bed, but I couldn’t just leave things with Sandy in a mess. I had to make sure she was okay. When she didn’t tell me to leave, I took a chance. There were no words I could find to tell her how I feel, and she didn’t ask for any explanation.
She gave me peace in the way she always used to.
And what have I given her?
My face flushes with shame. I used her body knowing that she’s conflicted, knowing she’s wounded, and knowing there is too much unsaid between us to go that far. But she wanted it. My shoulders still hurt from the way her nails dug into me. She kissed me hard and deeply, in a way that matched me completely.
But what do I do now?
If I lie here and she wakes, there will be so much awkwardness between us. We will need to have conversations about what happened, now and in our past, but I’m not ready yet. We both need some time and space.
It takes a lot of control to slide myself out of the bed without waking her. I pad to the door as quietly as possible. My jeans are downstairs, and I’m sure I’ll have some underwear and a fresh shirt in the drier. If not, I’ll borrow someone else’s. We’re not precious about our belongings in this house. If it fits, we wear it. Sharing has become second nature to me.
Sharing.
The wedding yesterday has planted a seed in my mind that feels fucking alien but also strangely right. Sandy’s friends are all freaky as shit, marrying multiple men like they’re buying multipacks of candy. I don’t know if Sandy was telling the truth about getting introduced to the cowboy cousins or whether she was saying it to rile me up, but the fact that polyamory is something ordinary to her has gotten me thinking things that would have seemed crazy to me yesterday.
Greg is already in the kitchen. When he sees me, he nods, still chewing a mouthful of cereal. “You’re playing a dangerous game, my friend,” he says, lowering his spoon. Without a shirt on, his prison tats are dark and distracting. Greg is the kind of guy who looks like a murderer but would never hurt a soul unless they threatened someone he loves. Then, well, I wouldn’t want to be the man in his path.
“Nothing happened after…I just…I couldn’t leave it.”
“You should have left it. That poor girl up there. I don’t think she knows if she’s coming or going.”
“Neither do I.”
Grabbing my jeans from the end of the couch, I tug them on. I need a shower, but it can wait, and I’m not about to have a deep-and-meaningful with Greg in my spunk-encrusted boxers.
“And that, my friend, is the problem.”
“What do you think of Sandy?”
Greg lifts another monster spoonful of cereal into his mouth and chews. The crunching hurts my frazzled brain, but I flop onto the chair across from him, holding down my frustration at his stalling tactics. I get why he’s thinking about how to answer. Commenting on another man’s woman can be a dangerous path to tread. He doesn’t know what I want to hear, and if he gets it wrong, he could offend me or piss me off. I know he wants to do neither. “She seems like a great girl,” he says.
“She is.” I fiddle with a pen that someone left on the table. Probably Andrew. He’s always filling out forms or paying bills. Taking care of us the way he always has.
“Why do you care what I think?” It’s a good question. Of all of us, Greg is the most astute at reading other people. I guess when you’re banged up with a load of violent assholes, you learn to take your time and be observant.
“You guys are my brothers.” He nods, knowing full well the weight of what I’ve just said. “It matters what you think.”
“But she’s just passing through, isn’t she?”
Leaning back on the chair, I place my hands behind my neck, trying to release the tension that has my whole body knotted. “Maybe.”
Greg’s eyebrows respond, but the rest of his face remains impassive. “You got something on your mind, T? If you do, just spit it out.”
A deep breath settles the buzzing in my temples, but my gut is still twisted. It hasn’t been this bad for at least six months, and I know it won’t get better unless I do something. Something that’s gonna seem crazy to the rock of a man sitting in front of me.
“I want her to stay.”
Greg’s jaw goes tight, but I don’t miss the flicker of interest that passes through his hell-dark eyes. “Stay?”
“Yeah.” I slump forward, taking the pen into my jittery hands again. “Four years ago, I didn’t…I couldn’t…but I can’t let Sandy go again.”
“Can’t or don’t want to? Those are two very different things.” Greg rubs the corner of his mouth, looking as thoughtful as he ever does.
“Both,” I admit.
“But she has a life, T. She has a home. And so do you. You might have fit together easily in the past, but it won’t be so easy now. You’re both older, and a lot has happened to change you.”
I click the pen over and over as Greg remains watchful and quiet. “You ever loved a woman deep in your bones? Like, you can feel them there. Like when you’re inside their body, there’s nothing between you…no separation. You ever fucked a woman and shed a tear when you came?”
Greg’s eyelids lower slowly, his hands dropping to his thighs beneath the table. He exhales, long and slow. “No, T. I haven’t ever felt like that about a woman.”
“But if you did. If you found that other part of you…would you fight for it?”
I’m expecting him to shrug because we don’t do serious and heartfelt conversations in this house. We talk shop and football, and about girls we fuck but have no feelings for. Sometimes, when we’re drunk, we talk deeper.
That’s how the boys know how I feel about Sandy. It’s how I know how devastated Damien is that his brother enlisted, and when I’ve heard Greg confess terrible things he saw in the slammer. Drunken-night conversations are where Arden admitted that he can’t read, and where Able spoke about finding their momma after she took an overdose. They’re where Andrew cried about finding a fucking child molester standing over him in the night, and the beating he took when he resisted.
None of those things ever gets mentioned again when we’re sober.
The sound of the refrigerator whirs in the background as Greg juts his chin forward. I’ve forced his hand. Put him in a spot where he can’t answer a question with a question easily. His hands brace around the edge of the table, and he leans closer, his eyes searching mine. “I’d kill for it,” he says in a voice so low and menacing that I believe every word.
“So you understand.”
He nods firmly once, and I allow a flicker of relief to tip the corners of my mouth. I’ve gotten him onto a path now, but I need to push on. This next question will reveal to my friend the alien seed that has now grown into a fully grown tree in my mind. It’s dangerous, and if there’s one thing I don’t want to do, it’s piss him off. The rest of the men in this house could laugh about something like this, but not Greg. For an ex-con, Greg is as straight down the line as any man I’ve ever met. No nonsense. Hard as a rock.