Chapter 37 Mat #2
I told Trouble that I don’t feel like I fit into my family.
They’re so quiet and so serious. If I didn’t look so much like my sister, I’d swear I was adopted.
I’ve always had a suspicion they find me a nuisance.
Too loud. Too much. When I’m home, I feel like I have to rein myself in.
Talk quietly. Walk quietly. I don’t feel like me.
I feel stressed all the time when I’m home because of it.
Sometimes I wonder if that’s why I’m like this.
Happy and outgoing one second and stressed out of my mind the next.
“I feel more at home here with Will than I’ve ever felt with my own family,” I confessed.
Trouble listened to all that and said, “I like taking my shoes and socks off as soon as I get home.”
When he left, I looked at Will in desperation, and he said, “The things Trouble doesn’t tell us tells us more about him than the things he does.”
Maybe he’s right. We do know things about him.
We might not know his name or where he lives, but we know that if one of us kisses his neck while the other one fucks him, he makes a soft, helpless sound.
It’s not a moan. It’s really just an outpouring of breath that seems to rush out of him whether or not he wants it to.
We know that when he sees us making out, he starts chewing his bottom lip and looks like he’s having a hard time swallowing.
We know that every week when he comes to our place, he arrives a little earlier and the fight leaves him faster when we insist he sleeps over.
We know that after we’ve fucked, he takes a long shower, and when he gets into bed and chooses a side, it isn’t random.
Every week he takes turns sleeping next to Will or me.
He can’t sleep in the middle of us because he gets too hot, and when he gets hot, he has nightmares.
Guess that’s something we know about him too.
We know that in the mornings, when Will and I are playful together, his cock goes so hard he has to slide his hand into his jeans and adjust it.
It happened the last time he was here. I was making breakfast and Will flicked my ass with a kitchen towel.
It made me hop, and when I spun around to swat him, Trouble was blinking slowly, watching us with eyes that were glazed over.
He smiled quickly when he saw I was watching.
It was a bright, well-practiced smile, but it didn’t match his eyes.
The smile was hard and forced. The eyes were soft and misty.
By the time Wednesday rolls by, the waiting feels like it might have the power to kill me or, at the very least, seriously maim me.
I can’t concentrate at work. My cubicle feels like a sterile prison.
The white walls, gray carpets, and fluorescent lighting seem too dim and too bright at the same time.
I can’t get a goddamn thing done. I just sit looking at my screen, aimlessly reading the same emails over and over.
I fight it and fight it, but at least every ninety seconds, I let my eyes wander to the clock.
It’s been going on for weeks. Ever since the night we ran into Trouble, I’ve been a huge waste of space at work.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if they fired me.
Kind of judge them for not doing it already.
Will seems in a good mood when I get home.
He seems relaxed and content. He’s in the kitchen, and his movements are slow and sure.
He seems to be taking up even more space than usual, grounding everything he comes into contact with.
He’s self-assured and seems completely certain that Trouble will be back.
I move close to him and stay there because when I’m close to him, I believe it too.
The wait this week has been worse than ever.
It’s almost killed me, and that’s putting it mildly.
I haven’t been able to think of anything other than what Trouble said when he was here.
It’s been playing in my mind on repeat. On a loop.
A record that’s stuck, stuttering, needle rising and falling, jerking back and playing the same part of the song over again.
He had his fingers inside me, and when he said it, his other hand was on his cock.
His hair was pulled back off his face and tiny tendrils had escaped, framing his face like a dark halo.
He was stroking his dick slowly, leisurely, as Will fucked him.
He looked like he was close. The muscle on his jaw was bunching, and he was making a low, lost sound.
Just before he came, he crooked his finger, hitting my spot hard.
“Next time,” he said softly. “Next time is my time.”
I pace from the window to my bed. Five mid-length paces.
I walk back to the window. Four long, no-nonsense strides.
I’m crawling out of my skin. It’s nighttime.
Trouble should be here tomorrow. I’ve texted him twice to make sure.
The first time he didn’t answer, and the next time, he sent the upside-down smile emoji. That’s all.
What the fuck does that even mean?
I eye the wall between my room and Will’s.
Frustration bubbles inside me, boiling so hard and hot that I feel sure it’s going to consume me.
For a crazy second, I consider running into the wall at full speed just to see what would happen.
I immediately turn on my heel and do the same thing I always do when I hit this level of crazy. I go and find Will.
He’s in bed, shirtless, with the sheet pooled at his waist. The bedside light beside him glows dimly. His room feels like it’s on a different planet from mine. It’s calm and hospitable here. Inhabitable. Fit for human survival. He sets his Kindle down when he sees me.
“What’s up, Mattie? You okay?”
It’s Will, so there’s no point in pretending. I gently shove his shoulder and quickly lie in the space he makes for me. We lie side by side, both looking up.
“Freaking out, huh?” he murmurs.
“Pretty much.”
“Is it about tomorrow? Are you scared?” When I don’t answer immediately, he continues, “‘Cause you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. You know that, right? I’d never let anything happen to you that you’re not comfortable with.”
“It’s not that.” I stretch my jaw, testing how it might feel to say what I’m going to say. “I want it. A lot.” My voice is loud, then it isn’t. “So much it scares me.”
“I want it too.” His voice is light and neutral. Natural and unaffected. The relief I feel when he says it is hard to describe. “You don’t have to worry. Trouble knows what he’s doing. He’ll make it good. I don’t think it’s his first time being with guys like us.”
“What do you mean? A three-way thing?” Something closely related to fury rises in me. I battle it down.
“No, I mean guys like us. Guys who’ve never been with a guy before. I think he has a thing for it. I think he likes seeing us together too. Really, really likes it. I think he gets off on it in a big way.”
I turn my face toward him and rest my head in the space between his neck and shoulder. I throw my arm over him, and for a split second, his chest tenses. It’s quick. A little tremor one moment and gone the next. He curls his arm around my neck like always, so maybe I imagined the tension.
“Guess we’ll have to give him what he wants then, huh? Give him a show he won’t forget.”
“Hmph,” says Will, and I feel a smile in his voice.
“D’you think he’s going to fuck both of us or just one?”
“Dunno. We’ll find out tomorrow, I guess.”
We’re both quiet for a while. I’m so aroused from the thought of being fucked, I have to make a conscious effort to lie still and not let my hips squirm.
Eventually, Will reaches over me and turns off the light.
I feel so much better here than I felt in my room.
I don’t want to leave. I keep quiet and don’t move as I wait for him to crack a joke or ask me to go.
I wait for a long time. When he doesn’t, I pull the sheet over myself and close my eyes, smiling into the dark, idiotically happy and grateful that I’ve somehow managed to worm my way into a sleepover.
“I love you, Will.”
My voice catches as I say it. It sounds different. It feels different too. The words turn in my throat. For the first time, they exist in a void that sucks the oxygen from my lungs.
His arm tightens around me. The fingers in my hair clench into a fist, there’s a hesitant puff of breath on the side of my face, a long pause, then warm lips press gently against my temple.