Neighbors With Benefits

58 - Jazz

58

Jazz

We changed out of our Pickleball clothes and then the four of us walked across the street to Howard’s house. I had to knock three times before a shadow passed across the peephole.

“Go away,” Howard said through the door.

“We want to talk to you,” I said.

“We already talked a bunch.”

“They want to talk to you,” I tried. “Dante, Bash, and Aiden.”

There was a long pause.

“No, thank you,” Howard said.

I turned to my three lovers. “You’re going to have to tell him through the door.”

“Or we can go home and forget about this,” Dante grumbled.

I gave him a pointed look.

He sighed, then raised his voice. “Sorry for calling you Voldemort, Howard.”

“It was a shitty thing to do,” Aiden added. “I regret it.”

“Voldemort is actually a really powerful wizard,” Bash explained through the door. “Like, literally the most powerful one in history. Does that make you feel better?”

“A little,” Howard said. “Thank you.”

“Apology over,” Dante said. “Let’s go home.”

“There’s one more person we owe an apology,” I said, leading them out of Howard’s yard and to the house next door.

“I spent the entire day on two planes and in three airports,” Dante said. “All I want to do is change out of these clothes and relax.”

“In a minute,” I said, marching up to the front door. I reached for the doorbell, but the door opened before I could touch it.

“Hmm. You four,” Karen said with moderate disapproval. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“We’re sorry for calling you Karen,” Dante said. “There. Now can we go home?”

“Why would you apologize for calling me by my name?” Karen asked.

We spent the next five minutes explaining to her that Karen had become a negative term for someone who doesn’t mind their own business. She couldn’t quite understand why the name Karen had been chosen for that, and seemed to think she was the origination of the term.

“It became famous on the internet,” I said. “The point is, we’re sorry for being bad neighbors.”

“I will graciously accept your apologies,” she announced. “Just like I have graciously accepted your choice of mailbox paint, even though it is not one of the approved colors from the Homeowners’ Association booklet.”

“And we’re done here,” Dante said, turning and walking away.

*

The four of us settled into a nice groove over the next month. The days became shorter and the temperature dropped as fall descended on Philadelphia. The trees lining our quaint little street turned gorgeous shades of orange and red.

We moved more plants into the greenhouse, some permanently and some just for the winter months. Everything was flourishing now that the greenhouse was finished. In fact, the work Dante—and Bash—had done on the structure made it hard for me to remember how dilapidated it had been when I moved in.

I was working in the greenhouse one Sunday when the door opened and Dante strode inside. I gave him a little wave and paused the podcast I was listening to.

“You’re not watching the game?” I asked.

“Fuck the game,” Dante growled, pulling on a pair of gardening gloves. “The birds are getting their asses kicked. If I don’t come out here and calm down, I might destroy the TV.”

“Good choice, then,” I said. “I’m fond of my TV.”

He grunted something and gave his attention to a Monstera Deliciosa in the corner.

I removed my headphones and walked up behind Dante. “I could help you relax.”

“I’m not in the mood,” he grumbled.

I slid my hands around his hips and hugged him from behind. “That’s too bad.”

“I just want to tend to my plants,” he said.

“You can tend to your plants,” I said, unzipping his pants and pulling them down. “Just ignore me.”

“Jazz…”

While pressing my body up against him from behind, I reached around and began stroking him. Within seconds, he was as hard as steel in my fingers.

He tried to ignore me while I stroked him off, but I was determined now. Soon he was breathing more heavily while kneading the soil with his fingers.

And when I dropped to my knees and squeezed between him and the planter, swallowing as much of his cock as I could into my mouth and sucking him off, he started making deeper noises in his chest.

Without warning, he pulled me into a standing position and spun me around. He yanked down my gardening shorts, bent me over the planter, and slammed into me from behind in one long, rough stroke.

“What happened to not being in the mood?” I managed to grit out.

I could hear the smirk in his voice. “ You happened.”

Dante gripped my ass with both hands and fucked me so hard that my agonized cries echoed through the greenhouse.

He forgot all about the Eagles game.

Since that hilarious weekend when they tried rescuing me from Howard’s house, the three of them were rarely home at the same time. One of them was always gone, and the overlap usually lasted half a day at most. One of them would return on a Sunday morning, and then another would leave that afternoon.

This kept things fresh with my three neighbor lovers. Aiden and I spent nine wonderful days just the two of us, playing Bananagrams and Scrabble in between sweaty bouts of lovemaking. One time he even stopped in the middle of a game of Scrabble to fuck me right there on the table, scattering the pieces to the floor as we both clenched and shuddered with sweet release.

“You did that on purpose,” I said. “You knew you were going to lose so you destroyed the board.”

“Yeah,” he said, “but do you mind?”

I kissed him. “Not even a little bit.”

Dante came home the next day, and we split our time a little more evenly. Two nights with him, then another evening with Aiden. Then, once our individual relationships had been strengthened with some time alone, we got drunk on Saturday night and had a threesome. Aiden flew out of town the next morning, and two days later Bash came home. Then we repeated the same kind of schedule with him.

Over the next two months, we were together in every combination. Each of them individually, and two of them together. That helped extend the honeymoon phase of our relationships; everything still felt new and exciting.

It was tough for things to become stale when I had three different men to choose from.

But the beautiful thing about it was I didn’t need to choose. I had them individually, and I had them together. The routine always changed, but it just kind of worked. And not only did it work, but I could feel my relationship with them strengthening. Not just individually, but as a four-person unit as well.

We weren’t just a partnership. We were a team .

“That’s all great,” Cat said to me at our neighborhood Halloween party. “But surely you have a favorite.”

“Honestly? I don’t.”

Cat, who was appropriately dressed in a tight-fitting cat outfit with whiskers, scoffed. “I don’t believe you.”

“I’m being one hundred percent honest with you! I love different things about each of them. Aiden is calm, unmovable like a rock. Bash will do anything to make me laugh, even at his own expense. And I love Dante’s brutal honesty. I never have to wonder what he’s thinking. I love each of them equally, and in completely different ways. I’m just so happy , Cat! Why are you grinning at me like that?”

“You just said love. That’s the first time you’ve used that word.”

“No, I said…” I trailed off. I had said that I love them. I hadn’t meant to do it, but now that the word was out there, it felt right.

I looked across the room. Almost all of our neighbors were here, drinking and laughing, but my three favorite neighbors stuck out to me. Dante was dressed in red, the devil to pair with my angel costume. Aiden and Bash were dressed as Elphaba and Glinda from Wicked , and were hamming it up for our neighbors Kevin and Linda.

“See!” she pointed at me with a black fingernail. “You love them!”

“I do,” I admitted, grinning like an idiot. “I do love them!”

“Who do you love?” asked someone next to me.

I turned and frowned. The person who had spoken was wearing a simple ghost costume, a white sheet with two eye holes cut out. He was short, and I could see them fidgeting with their toes beneath the sheet.

Only when Karen Dermatt came up and put a hand on their back did I realize who it was. “Howard?”

“Do you like my costume?” he asked. “I’m a ghost.”

“It’s a classic,” I said, glancing at Karen. “You’re outside your house!”

“Dante invited us,” Karen explained. “And he gave Howard a nice little green gummy candy to calm him down.”

“It tasted weird,” Howard said, “but I feel calmer, now. Especially now that I’m inside. Crossing the street was the tough part. Everything outside is so open .”

I glanced at Dante, who was watching us from across the room. He smiled evilly and raised his pitchfork in my direction.

“I’m so happy you’re here,” I said, giving Howard a little pat on the arm. He recoiled slightly, so I put my hand back down. “We have plenty of food and drinks, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic. Aiden is running the bar.”

“Let’s go get some strong drinks,” Karen said, guiding Howard away. “We aren’t driving!”

One of our other neighbors, Jamie the mechanic, sidled up to me. “Did I just hear Karen make a joke?”

“I think so,” I replied. “I’m just as surprised.”

“She’s lightened up since you moved onto the street,” he said. “Thanks for that.”

“I wasn’t trying, but you’re welcome,” I said.

Jamie cleared his throat. “And. Uh. If I’m not overstepping… you and the boys seem real nice together.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, we’ve all kind of heard about… your relationship,” he said. He was staring intently at his drink. “I just wanted to say you guys don’t need to hide it. Or tiptoe around or whatever. Everyone knows, and thinks it’s fine.” He shook his head. “No, not fine. It’s better than that. It seems really great. You make a good couple. I mean. You make a good couple with each of them. You make a good foursome. Shit. I didn’t mean it like that…”

I stared at Jamie with surprise. He and I had only had a handful of conversations; we didn’t know each other well at all. And here he was, complimenting my weird polyamorous relationship and saying that everyone approved.

I looked around the room at my neighbors. All of them knew? And they were still here?

We weren’t pariahs. We were accepted for who we were.

Without thinking, I hugged Jamie.

“Uh,” he grunted. “What’s that for?”

“I’m just really happy. I needed to hear what you just said.”

“Okay. Yeah. Great,” he said awkwardly. “But, um, I don’t want to join you… whatever it is. I’m a happily married man. Just the two of us.”

I laughed to myself. I guess they would sometimes be weird about it.

But they accepted us with the best of intentions, and that made all the difference in the world to me.