Chapter 28
CONNOR
This day feels like any other: wake up, walk Koda, stop for a cup of coffee on the way to the shop - though today, I go a little wild and opt for an energy drink, instead of grounds. Nearly every day, it’s the same thing.
To anyone on the outside looking in, today and every other day for the past week would look the same, too.
My mouth quirks into a half smile at the sight of Tripp’s bike, sandwiched between the cars of two other guys in the lot. I offer a gentle tap to the pendant hanging off of his side mirror, like I have every time I’ve seen it since he told me what’s held inside of it.
After walking into the shop and saying my hellos, Tripp greets me with the same clasped-hand gesture we’ve shared since the early days of our friendship; only now, it’s met with a spark that lights up behind his eyes as the corner of his mouth pulls up.
We’re not telling anyone about this thing that we have between the three of us; not until we know what it is, and maybe not even for a while after that.
Tripp hasn’t kissed me since the night that he pushed me so hard against a tree that I could feel the bark digging into my back through my riding jacket.
Part of me thinks that he wants to right now; another part thinks he may never do it again.
It’s too soon to tell.
I don’t think I’ve set foot inside of this bar since I was twenty – never carded, but always served. Julia says it’s a favorite, which gives me a chuckle, because it’s rare that she ever goes to a bar.
Tripp’s focus is trained ahead of him, honed in on a metal sign hung on a wall which reads ‘it’s five o’clock somewhere.’ A flickering light hangs above it, the neon outline of a pair of flip flops; one in a vibrant shade of green, the other a bright pink.
“You’re uncomfortable,” I comment.
Tripp shakes his head, tapping a thoughtful finger against the neck of his beer bottle.
“It’s just new territory.” He looks toward his wife, taking a sip from the beer before resting it back into its place on the small table. “You’ve dated around for a long time – and I don’t mean that as a negative, I just mean, we haven’t.”
Sipping from my rum and coke, I lean against the cushion behind me.
“And we live in Miami,” I add, “and you’ve never been out with a man in public.”
He turns to me with his brow furrowed, his lips pressed together.
“I don’t give a shit about that. You both think this is some weird new thing for me, but it’s not,” he says, pulling a sip from his beer with a shake of his head.
“I never understood it; how Brody only ever dated girls or Edie only ever talked about crushes she had on boys. I just knew I couldn’t ask my parents about it or let them overhear me asking my siblings, because I’d get in trouble for it. ”
Moving a few inches closer to him, I twist my body to drop my elbow onto the back of the booth behind him. My knee rests against his as I pull my leg up onto the cushion, and I reach for my own drink again.
“Well,” I say, “now you don’t have to worry about them.” My eyes move to him as he pulls another swig from his bottle, watching his adam’s apple bob as he swallows down the liquid. “Unless you do?”
“Nah,” he answers with a shake of his head, curling his lips. “Fuck ‘em.”
I offer my fingertips the freedom of brushing against his shoulder, keeping my eyes trained on the rest of the patrons inside the bar.
Some are watching a game on the small and outdated TVs mounted above the bar.
Others are sitting in booths like we are, sipping and talking to each other.
It’s slow and quiet, in spite of the lively music playing around us.
Julia bounds toward our table with a fresh, brightly-colored drink in her hand, her platinum hair bouncing in wide curls as she drops quietly into the opposite side of the booth wearing a tight smile on her face.
Maybe it’s not just Tripp. Maybe all of us are a little bit uncomfortable – or at least, we all need to adjust.
I’ve only ever tried this once before, and it took me far too long to realize that, on the rare occasion that the three of us would go out in public together, I was more of a third wheel than I was a date.
I watched who I thought were my partners flirt and fawn over each other while I sat and waited for my turn to come.
To feel like I meant something to them.
I answered every call to their bed without question, and I never stayed to sleep in their bedroom with them, just like they’d asked of me.
My body was a service for them, but the rest of me was never seen as an equal.
It’s hard not to find myself lost in my own head while the three of us sit quietly, trying to navigate this thing between us and the ugly road we started on; and it’s hard not to worry that the same thing will happen to me again.
Warmth hits my skin as Tripp’s hand settles at the base of my neck, his fingertips pushing up into my hair. I let my own run over his shoulder again, each of us making a quiet gesture for the reassurance of the other.
Slapping her palms against her thighs, Julia stands, extending her hands to us.
“Come dance with me,” she demands.
Behind her, the small open space of the bar is empty; I’m not even sure that it’s meant to be used as any kind of dance floor.
All of the patrons here are either leaned against the bar or seated comfortably at their tables.
The most ‘dancing’ anyone is doing is a shimmy of their shoulders or a gentle sway in their seat when a familiar or particularly catchy song starts up.
Julia’s fingers flex, beckoning us toward her, and Tripp laughs as he reaches for his beer.
“I don’t dance,” he says with a shake of his head. Moving his gaze toward me, he offers a soft gesture with his chin. “Go ahead.”
‘Do you wanna break something?’
That was the first thing he said to me when I’d told him about Brian and Toni. I expected a lecture or an ‘I told you so,’ because he’d warned me that I was going to wind up hurt, getting involved with them the way that I was.
Instead, he grabbed a handful of cheap breakables, took me out to the shop’s back lot, and let me chuck them at the asphalt until I felt better. From there, he offered me a couch to crash on until I could find another place, away from theirs.
I never did tell him how grateful I was for that.
His fingers tighten against my neck before he moves to rest his hand on the table, gesturing toward his wife.
I take her hand with a squeeze to Tripp’s thigh - a test. A question.
“Make her happy,” he tells me. “She’ll pout all night long if you don’t.”
“He’s right.” Julia offers an impish grin as she pulls me out of my seat with a hard tug to my arm. “I’ll totally make it your problem.”
A selection of Latin music pulled straight from the early two thousands plays through a pair of old speakers propped up on tripods as we take the ‘dance floor.’ Our movements remind me a lot of that first middle school dance – awkward, with bodies too far apart from one another, God forbid a parent or chaperone catch the two of us holding hands.
Like a pair of shy thirteen-year-olds seeking approval from the adults, we each cast a glance in Tripp’s direction. He watches us for a beat, tapping his finger against the neck of his nearly-empty bottle, and he lowers his chin in approval.
Julia smiles up at me with petal pink lips as my hand rests at her waist, and while we move to the music, my forehead rests against hers.
“You really think we can pull this off?” I ask as Jules’s legs sandwich mine. “Because I don’t want to invest myself if this is ultimately just a setup to fix your marriage.”
“Tripp and I have already found our way back to each other,” she assures me. “You’re not an extra, you’re part of the package. I think you probably have been for a while; we just didn’t know it.”
Something is shifted between us. I feel it while we dance together, and as I shoot the occasional glance in Tripp’s direction. His foot, draped over his knee, taps in time with the movement of our hips as if he’s part of the dance, even from his place ten feet away from us.
Jules’s hips move in sync with mine, our steps perfectly aligned as we fall into the smooth steps of a well-practiced bachata.
“When did you learn to dance like this?” She asks just before I spin her beneath my arm.
“After I ‘came out,’” I tell her. “After my boyfriend left, my mom told me that she didn’t care who I ended up with, as long as I’d give her a big wedding so she could dance with her son. So I took classes.”
Julia’s eyes soften as her mouth pulls into a smile, her hold on my hand tightening by an infinitesimal amount.
“I’m sorry you didn’t get to dance with her,” she says almost too quietly to hear.
“So am I.”
Her arms snake around my neck as she lifts herself onto her toes to press a soft, pink-tinted kiss to my cheek. My heart jolts in my chest as I risk a glance in Tripp’s direction, but his brow furrows in question.
Planting a kiss to Julia’s cheek in return, I part from her and stride toward the table to extend a hand to him.
“I don’t dance,” he says – again – with a shake of his head.
“Yes you do, Britney,” I argue before taking hold of his wrist.
He puts up a weak fight as I drag him back toward Julia, who playfully shimmies her shoulders at us with a smile as we approach.
It takes nearly half of a song and the rest of his beer before Tripp finally joins us with loose, lazy steps. His feet shuffle, but his eyes move around the room as if to see who else thinks that all of us look like a group of idiots, dancing alone in the middle of the bar.
“We look so fucking stupid right now,” he says through an embarrassed chuckle.
“You always look stupid, Riptide,” I tease. “That’s never stopped you before.”
Reaching for his hands, Julia takes hold of them and pulls him into a dance with her, not unlike the one that we shared with each other.
There’s a part of me that would love to get into place behind him and help to push him, but I’m not sure if he’s comfortable with that yet.
Our being out in public together is too new, and I don’t want to risk destroying it before we get to really enjoy it by pushing too far or too fast.
It feels too good to risk breaking it.
With one last beer, Tripp’s walls finally start to come down, letting loose the same dancing machine that lives on the seat of his R7.
The three of us move together through a handful of songs, laughing and swaying, before we finally call it a night and start the trek back to my house.
It’s late, but my roommates will still be out until four or five in the morning, which gives the three of us plenty of time to debrief and spend some quiet alone time together.
As we let ourselves into the house, Julia trots back toward my bedroom to change into my clothes, as if it’s the most normal thing in the world.
As if she’s done it a thousand times before.
I’ve wanted her to; I’ve imagined her in nothing but one of my old, baggy t-shirts, but I’ve never seen her in one of them.
Tripp and I find ourselves in the living room, perched together on the plush cushions of the couch as Koda toddles toward us in search of the attention he’d been missing while we were out.
I watch as Tripp pets him, almost seeming to purposely avoid my gaze. Leaning against the back of the couch, I drape an arm behind him.
“Are you okay?”
“I thought it would be weird, or that I’d get jealous, you know? I mean, it’s one thing to say that we’re gonna do this; it’s another to actually go out in public and do it. But…” He shrugs. “I don’t know, it’s the first thing that’s felt normal to me in a really long time.”
He reaches to scratch an impatient Koda behind the ear, earning a tilt of the head and a loud, satisfied groan in response. As his eyes move to the lamp that sits in the alley behind my house, they shine.
From what he tells me, he’s the only one of his siblings with brown eyes – the same deep brown that his father has. They suit him, even though I know that he hates them.
Reaching for his jaw, I pull him toward me, and he hums as I meet his lips with mine.
I’ve dated a handful of people, but no one that I was ever close with before I started seeing them. I’d always met them through an app or a mutual friend on an outing, or they’d been my roommates – nothing more than mere acquaintances at the start.
It made it easier to run if I got overwhelmed – or If I got hurt.
This scares me in a different way. Not just because I’m worried that I’m putting myself at risk, but because we’re calling this a casual thing when it feels anything but. I already know them, and in more ways than one, I already love them.
We’ve buried friends together, we’ve celebrated wins together, we’ve cheered each other on and consoled each other when things haven’t gone the way that we’d hoped they would.
All of our skeletons fit too well in each other’s closets.
“It feels normal to me, too,” I admit. “Maybe a little too normal too fast.”
“Look at our lives,” he laughs. “‘Too fast’ is pretty fucking on brand for us.”
Stepping out of the hallway in one of my old t-shirts and a pair of bike shorts, Julia drops into Tripp’s lap, his arm snaking around her waist as she throws her feet across my thighs.
His hand trails up and down the length of her arm as her head rests against his shoulder, and when she smiles at me, my chest warms.
Spending this time together feels both exactly the same as it did before our worlds upended, and entirely different. It’s comfortable. It’s something that I find a large part of myself afraid of getting used to. But there’s another, larger part that is terrified of losing it.
Of losing them.
There is nothing casual about this – and I don’t think I’m the only one of us who feels that way.