Chapter 32
32
Zach
When it came time, it was almost easy. Maybe it was because he’d finally made the decision that it was time, maybe it was because Brian was by his side, maybe it was because he was too emotionally exhausted to be scared anymore. Whatever it was, when he showed up at his parents’ house and told his mom that he needed to talk to both of them, he felt oddly calm.
They sat in the living room he’d grown up in, and though the couch wasn’t the same as when he was a kid, all the décor was. He felt safe here. So, maybe that was why it was easier, too.
“So, what are you in such a hurry to tell us?” his mom asked, her gaze flicking to Brian, who was sitting beside Zach on the couch. They’d met before, just like she’d met Mitch and Kincaid, but Zach hadn’t explained why Brian was with him. She was obviously confused, and he didn’t blame her.
Zach cleared his throat.
“Earlier today when you met Amy and asked if she was my girlfriend, and I said yes, that was a lie. Amy is not my girlfriend. I don’t have a girlfriend. I have a boyfriend.”
“But…” His mom looked at Brian today. “Oh… well, we’ve always liked you, Brian, but I thought you had a girlfriend, too.”
“Not me,” Brian said, barely suppressing laughter as Zach jumped in at the same time.
“Not him, Mom. He does have a girlfriend. A real one.” Zach took a deep breath. “Kincaid is my boyfriend.”
“The… the man you’ve been living with?” his mom asked. On the other side of her, his dad was sitting with a fairly blank expression, thinking rather than asking questions, which was very much like his parents. It also made him worry because he wasn’t sure what his dad was thinking.
“Yes.”
“Did you become boyfriends after you started living together?”
Zach hesitated, but he was done with the lies. Even if his parents got mad at him. Having Brian’s support at his side helped a lot.
“No. We moved in together after we started seeing each other romantically. I lied to you about that. I’m sorry.”
“I… I’m confused. Why did you lie? Why not just tell us that you’re gay?”
“I’m bisexual, not gay, and I wasn’t ready to tell you yet because I wasn’t sure how you’d react. I wasn’t… I guess, honestly, at first, I wasn’t sure if Kincaid and I would last, so I didn’t want to tell you in case it didn’t work out. Then, the longer it went on, the harder it was to tell you that I’d lied in the first place.”
“You have a boyfriend, but you’re not gay?”
Trust his mom to fixate on that point.
“No, I’m still attracted to both men and women, so I’m bisexual.”
“But you have a boyfriend, so isn’t that basically the same as being gay?”
Zach took a deep breath.
“Okay, so I should bring up this is another part of the reason I didn’t want to tell you. Some of these questions you’re asking are kind of invasive and… well, to be perfectly honest, they’re a little ignorant. I didn’t want you asking them while Kincaid was here. I didn’t want you asking him any kind of questions like this. I was afraid he’d be scared off or insulted enough to walk away.” Damn, he really was insecure. Not just about how his parents would react, but about how Kincaid might react. “Kincaid and I are both bisexual, so we are both still attracted to women and men, though we’ve chosen to be with each other.”
“But you were flirting with Amy today. I saw you… you had her over your shoulder, and you touched her… her rear end. Were you cheating on Kincaid?” His mom looked indignant at the thought, which kind of amused Zach, considering she’d just found out that he was with Kincaid. “I didn’t raise you to be a cheater, Zach.”
“Mine and Kincaid and Amy’s relationship is complicated. She is not my girlfriend, but we do have…” Fuck. Zach looked at Brian, wondering if he had a better way to explain it without having to get into all the kinky shit. He did not want to get into the kinky shit with his parents.
Especially his dad, who was still sitting there with that blank expression on his face, giving nothing away.
“They’re both dating Amy, though they won’t call it that yet because they’re both afraid that the other one won’t be interested, but really, all three of them are basically in love and just too stupid to look at what’s right in front of their faces,” Brian said casually, as if he’d just announced that Zach liked food rather than dropping an emotional bomb.
“Wait, so, if you’re both dating Amy, is that because you’re bisexual, because you need a man and a woman?”
Zach groaned.
This was going to be a long fucking conversation.
Amy
The afternoon descended into an impromptu chick flick movie afternoon, complete with junk food. Exactly what Amy needed. Was eating her feelings healthy? Probably not, but sometimes a girl needed to do what a girl needed to do. The most amusing part of the afternoon was everyone watching Morgan eat her salad, all of them with an expression on their faces that said they were wondering if they should have ordered something with vegetables on it.
“I should go back,” Amy said finally, after the movie ended.
“Back… to Zach and Kincaid’s house? You mean like to live or to talk to them?” Sam asked. “No judgment either way, just wondering.”
“Mostly to talk to them. I have no idea how they ended things after I left, and it’s bothering me.”
“Me, too,” Rae chimed in, shrugging when Domi smacked her with a pillow. “What? I’m nosy, and neither Brian nor Mitch have been sending updates.”
“You didn’t really expect them to, did you?” Domi asked.
“Brian, no, Mitch…” Rae left her voice hanging.
Amy sat up. “Wait, what?”
Domi and Rae exchanged a glance.
“We weren’t sure if we should tell you, especially since you seem to be blaming yourself for everything,” Domi said. “Zach texted Brian that he needed to see him, and Brian sent Mitch to Kincaid.”
“Wait… so… Kincaid and Zach have been separate this whole afternoon?” Amy felt her emotions slipping back toward turmoil. “I left so they would have the privacy to talk to each other while I was gone!”
“Maybe they didn’t want privacy. Or maybe there just wasn’t much to say.” Rae gave her a sympathetic look. “Or maybe they just need some time apart to think things over. Zach needs a lot of thinking time.”
Zach did, but Kincaid didn’t. Which meant that she’d left him alone. Sure, Mitch had gone over, but…
She shouldn’t have left them totally alone. She should have stayed and tried to referee. What if Zach didn’t come back tonight? What if they broke up again? And she wasn’t there for them, either of them. She didn’t like that thought at all.
“I need to go back.”
“Mitch has it handled, I promise,” Domi said, looking at her curiously. “He won’t let Kincaid do anything stupid.” She paused. “Well… I mean, not anything too stupid. He won’t let Kincaid wreck his life or anything.”
“This better not be some kind of martyr thing,” Sam said suspiciously. “You don’t need to go over there because you think Kincaid needs to yell at someone or anything.”
“No, I need to be there because… because…” Amy took a deep breath. “Because I love them. Both of them. And even if they don’t feel the same way about me, I want to be there for them.”
Terrible timing on her part, really. She waited for everyone to tell her that she was being stupid or that she was just rebounding, but that didn’t happen.
“Finally!” Sam clapped her hands together. “I thought it was going to take way longer for you to realize that.”
“It took longer than I thought it would,” Morgan said, picking one of the olives out of her salad and handing it to Avery, who immediately popped it into her mouth, smiling approvingly at Amy.
“You three really do seem perfect together from what we’ve seen,” Domi said, gesturing to herself and Rae. “We didn’t want to intervene, though I bet Brian and Mitch finally say something to the boys about it.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what Brian planned to do because he assumed that’s why Zach was texting him,” Rae said.
Amy looked at Iris, who was the only one not jumping in with some kind of opinion. Iris shrugged, raising her hands palms up.
“Don’t look at me. I don’t know any of y’all well enough to think anything.” She paused. “Though you would make a very cute throuple. And if you ever want to talk to another throuple, I know Jessica, Justin, and Chris would be happy to talk to you.”
Well, that was good to know.
Amy looked around the room. Apparently, no one was going to stop her. Fine, then.
“I’m going back,” she announced. Then she looked at Morgan. “But I can still come sleep on the couch if I need to, right?”
“Of course.” Morgan smiled at her. “Any time.”
That was the backup plan; Kincaid and Zach might not feel the same about her.
But maybe the reason she felt compelled to ‘fix’ them wasn’t because she wanted to fix everyone… maybe she felt compelled to fix them because they belonged together, and they belonged to her.
Kincaid
The doorbell rang, causing him and Mitch to pause the videogame they’d started playing and look at each other.
“Were you expecting someone?” Mitch asked.
“No.”
Putting down the controller, Kincaid got up to go see who it was, so they didn’t start shouting through the door the way Mitch had. He peeked through the eye hole, but all he saw was the back of someone’s head, as though they’d turned around after they’d rung the doorbell.
Opening it, he saw that he was correct—and she spun back around to face him as the door opened.
“Amy.” Sheer relief poured through him at seeing her back at the door before a thought occurred to him, and he frowned. “Why are you knocking?”
She bit her lip, shrugging and looking incredibly uncomfortable.
“It felt a little weird just walking back in after… after this morning. I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about me coming back.”
Glad. That was how he felt. Glad and more settled, like she was supposed to be here, and now that she was back, at least one piece of the puzzle had been slotted back into its space. She belonged here, as much as he and Zach did, even if it had taken everything falling apart for him to realize that.
“Come on in,” he said, opening the door wider and stepping back. “I’m glad you came back.”
She walked in but came to a halt when she saw Mitch getting up from the couch. “Oh… I thought…”
“You thought…” Kincaid put his hand on her back to keep her from turning and running out the door, subtly pressuring her to keep moving inside.
“I thought Mitch was Zach for a moment.” She sighed. “I’d hoped he’d come back, too.”
“Not yet.” Kincaid still had no idea where Zach was. Not much he could do about that, though. Would he be back? Would things change? He didn’t know.
“I’m going to get out of here,” Mitch said grinning, moving quickly enough that Amy couldn’t protest.
Kincaid wasn’t going to try to. As glad as he was that Mitch had been there to help him through the day, what he needed to talk to Amy about was better done alone.
“Take care of him, Amy. He needs it, even though he won’t admit it.”
Kincaid scowled at his friend’s back as he practically ran out the door.
“Ignore him, I’m fine.”
“Are you? Because I’m not. And I wouldn’t be fine if I was in your shoes.” Amy sagged a little, avoiding his gaze.
“Fine might be the wrong word, but I’ll live. Your coming back helps. I’m sorry Zach and I basically chased you away.” He sighed as he escorted her into the living room so she could take Mitch’s seat on the couch, and he sat down beside her. They weren’t cuddling exactly, just sitting very close together.
Amy’s hands came together in her lap, her fingers fiddling with each other.
“You didn’t chase me away. I left because I figured I’d already done enough damage, and I wanted to give you guys the privacy to talk to each other. I didn’t realize Zach was going to leave, too, or I might have tried to stay.”
“Hey.” Kincaid reached over, putting his hand over her fidgeting ones. “Amy, look at me. You did not do any damage. Zach shouldn’t have put you in the position of pretending to be his girlfriend to his parents.”
“No, but I also didn’t have to scream at him in the street afterward. You shouldn’t have found out about it the way you did.”
“I don’t think there was a good way to find out about it,” Kincaid said ruefully, giving her hands a squeeze. With another sigh, she leaned to the side, resting her head against his shoulder like she needed something to lean on. Being the thing she was leaning on helped him feel a little better. A little more like himself. “Even if he’d told me calmly, I would have been righteously pissed. But I know I’m being hard on him. He’s caught in the middle, and while I have a right to my feelings, it’s been a struggle to understand his, and that doesn’t make things easier for any of us.”
“I think he does want to tell his parents; he’s just scared.”
“I know.” He didn’t really understand why Zach was willing to go to the lengths that he was to avoid telling them for so long; it seemed like it just made everything harder. But, as Mitch had said, he and Zach were different people. They were going to act differently. Feel things differently. He either needed to accept that or get out of the situation.
And he wasn’t ready to lose Zach.
As much as he needed to talk to Zach about that, he needed to talk to Amy, too. He needed her to know that it wasn’t her fault. It didn’t surprise him that she’d blamed herself. That was who she was.
“I think one of the hardest parts for me was realizing that I wanted to talk to you and Zach about us bringing our relationship out of the club and seeing if it would work at home, too, but then becoming scared that he would use that as a reason not to tell his parents about me.” He couldn’t tell what Amy’s reaction was to all of this since she was still leaning against his shoulder, but he kept going. “That he would only tell them about you, and I would just always be… there. The housemate. An unacknowledged third wheel.”
Amy sat up and looked at him, their hands still clasped on her lap. She looked utterly bewildered.
“You want me? With you and Zach?” Not just incredulous; there was hopefulness there, too. Some of the incredibility seemed as though it was coming from the idea that her hope was being realized.
He’d been pretty sure that both she and Zach would be interested in moving their relationship to the next level unless he’d been reading them both completely wrong, but it was still nice to get the confirmation that he was right.
“Yes.” He’d meant to have this conversation with Zach here, too, but he might as well be honest. “You feel like you belong. Like you fit with us. I think I’ve been falling for you from the moment you moved in with us, even though I didn’t know it at the time.”
Amy stared at him for a long, long moment.
Then she suddenly leaned forward, reaching for him, and he reached for her, pulling her onto his lap as their lips came together in a heated kiss.