39. Serena
Serena
We’re on the jet, headed back to the States, and all I can think about is that conversation we had before we left Italy. I didn’t mean to say “love.” It just slipped out.
But the guys didn’t seem to notice the L word tumbling out onto the table, sitting there like a Molotov cocktail, so I didn’t make a big deal of it. They were probably just giving me grace.
So, I didn’t mean to say love, but I know, with a panicky certainty, that it’s happening to me, more and more, with every day I spend in their presence. It’s the only reason I hesitated at their offer to take this thing seriously. To be official.
What are we? A quad-ship? A strange, two-legged triangle with me in the middle?
Uncertainty and low-grade terror rushing through me, I slip off to the bathroom, phone like a grenade in my hands.
“Serena!” Lillie calls, singing into the phone. I wince. I called Georgia, but those two have been together so often I should have assumed Lillie would answer. “Girl, are you like, sun-tanning on the beach? Enjoying a limoncello? Wining and dining with a?—”
There’s a muffled give me that, then Georgia comes on, “Serena? Is everything okay?”
Like always happens to me, I open my mouth, and the words come rushing out. I tell them about the guys, about their proposition, about going with them to Travis’s house outside the city.
Then, haltingly, I tell them about the proposal. The offer to be in a… relationship. With all three of the guys.
“I don’t know, Serena.” Georgia is hesitant. “I mean, yeah, it sounds like a good idea on the surface. But those guys could be with anyone—no offense. It just feels like there has to be a catch. And they want you to come out there with them? To some secluded house in the country?”
I do not point out that I’ve been here, alone with them, for a week, in a secluded Tuscan house.
“Yeah,” Lillie says, sounding like she’s chewing bubblegum. There’s a dull pop. “I mean, it sounds like a psycho thriller or something.”
“My auntie used to say, When something seems too good to be true, it probably is. ‘ Georgia does an accent I assume must belong to her auntie, then returns to her normal voice. “This seems like one of those situations, Serena.”
Slowly, my stomach rotates, sending a queasy shiver up my throat.
It makes sense that they’re skeptical—I would be, too, if I hadn’t met them. If I didn’t feel Graham’s protectiveness, Ryan’s easy breeziness, and Travis’s organized, effective consideration.
“You should meet them.” The words pop out of my mouth.
“MEET RYAN HUDSON?” Lillie’s high-pitched squealing completely drowns out anything Georgia might have been about to say.
“Fucking yesterday, Ser! When! And where! Get me the address to that creepy sex dungeon in the woods, or wherever they’re taking you.
Is Ryan going to cook? Oh, sweet baby Jesus, tell me he’s going to make something?—”
There’s a muffled oomph and the sound of a soft thud.
“Ow, what was that for?” Lillie whines, distantly, while Georgia says, “I think it would be a good idea to get a read on the situation. But if it’s creepy at all, we’re getting you the hell out of there, Ser.”
When I emerge into the main cabin of the jet, the guys are all absorbed in their own things. Ryan is tweaking a few seasonal menus, Travis is reviewing information for the quarterly earnings call, and Graham angrily punches at his keyboard, editing a speech he’ll give at the banquet for Congress.
They all stop and look at me when I step out of the bathroom. It’s like being caught in three separate headlights.
“I invited my friends to come over for dinner,” I say, glancing at each of them, landing on Travis. “At your house. This week.”
Each of them looks a bit shell-shocked for a moment, and I feel myself holding my breath.
Then, after a beat, Ryan cracks a smile, “That’s great! Shit, what should I make? I need to think this through…”
Travis presses his lips together and nods, going back to his computer. “It will be nice to meet your friends. We can have the west wing opened up for guests to stay over—it’s a long drive from the city.”
“Looking forward to meeting all of them,” Graham says, rubbing his hands together slowly.
Just like that, with little to no fanfare at all, it’s happening.
I drop into a seat and pull my seatbelt on at Travis’s instruction. They’re all absorbed in their work. I should edit some of my photos and check my freelancing email, but I can’t bring myself to do it.
Instead of doing anything productive with my time, I sit in the seat and let my mind sift through the reality of this situation.
The guys like me.
They want me enough to share me. To be in a strange, oblong relationship when any one of them could be with any woman they wanted. It’s like Georgia said—if it’s too good to be true, it probably is.
But the worst part is not their interest in me.
The worst part is how accustomed I’ve grown to Travis’s capable silence. Ryan’s playful, charming banter. Graham’s deadpan sense of humor.
It’s a problem.
I like them. Too much. Enough that I’m teetering on the edge of feeling something for them that I’ve never really felt for anyone.
Or, at least, something I haven’t felt since I was a kid, and I learned that wanting another person—falling in love with a home and a set of foster parents—just leads to getting hurt.
If I’m honest with myself, the truth is that I never even felt that way about Alex. That, in our relationship, I always kept a set of walls up around myself. All that therapy, and the work—it applied to the girl outside the walls. Not the one within them.
But these guys easily scaled the barriers. Got to the soft center of me without much effort at all. And that’s fucking terrifying.
Sitting in the posh leather seat, I allow myself to look at each of them in turn. And I think that, for the first time in a very, very long time, I’ve found something that I’m too afraid to lose.