Chapter 36
REID
Life is good.
That's not something I let myself think very often. Feels like tempting fate, like the universe is just sitting there with a fly swatter going oh yeah, buddy? Watch this. But right now, sitting in the rig with Tony, sun coming through the windshield, coffee still warm in my hand—
I'm doubling down on that shit.
Life is good.
Laine's been basically living with us for three weeks now.
Morning breakfasts and tangled sheets and Blake actually smiling like he means it.
Not the tight-lipped, I'm-fine-don't-ask-me smile.
The real one. The one that makes his whole face go soft and a little dumb and I will never tell him that because he'd murder me.
We've fallen into this rhythm that shouldn't work but does.
Laine sleeping in my bed some nights, Blake's others.
The three of us on the couch watching terrible reality TV while she critiques the contestants' life choices with surgical precision and Blake pretends he's not invested even though he absolutely called Jenny a liability last Thursday.
Out loud. With conviction. I have witnesses.
Normal. Or whatever passes for normal when you're in a relationship with your best friend and the same woman.
"You're doing it again."
I glance over at Tony. He's got that look on his face—the one that says he's about to bust my balls about something.
"Doing what?"
"The smile thing." He gestures at my face. "You've been grinning like an idiot for the past hour."
"Maybe I'm just happy to be working with you, partner."
"Bullshit." But he's smiling too. Sort of. There's something off about it, though. Something that's been off all shift.
Six hours in. Fender bender, diabetic emergency, a guy convinced his heart was exploding but who turned out to have really bad gas. Standard Tuesday stuff.
But Tony's been quiet. Not his usual running commentary about everything from sports to his kid to whatever's pissing him off about station politics. Just... quiet. And Tony being quiet is like a dog not eating. Something's wrong.
"You good?" I ask.
"Fine."
"That's convincing."
He doesn't respond. Just stares out the window at passing strip malls.
I let it sit. Tony'll talk when he's ready. Push too hard and he clams up tighter than a drum. Give him space and eventually it all comes out.
We pull into the Quik Stop for a bathroom break and more coffee. Tony stays in the rig while I run in. When I come back, he's still got that weird expression—like he's working up to a root canal.
"Okay." I hand him his coffee. "What's going on?"
"Nothing."
"Tony."
He takes a long sip. Sets the cup in the holder. Doesn't look at me.
"I saw Laine this weekend."
My hand freezes on my own cup. "Yeah? Where?"
"Grocery store. Saturday morning." A pause. "She wasn't alone."
Oh.
Fuck.
I know what's coming. I can feel it building like the ten seconds before a really bad call—that window where dispatch is still talking but your body's already moving, already bracing. But I don't say anything. Just wait.
"She was with Blake." Tony's voice is careful. Too careful. Like he's delivering a notification. "They were holding hands in the produce section. And then she—" He stops. Rubs the back of his neck. "Look, maybe it's none of my business."
"She what?"
"She kissed him. Right there by the apples. Not a peck, either. I'm talking full-on, hands-in-his-hair kissing."
Silence. Outside, a car alarm goes off in the parking lot. Someone yells at someone else about a shopping cart. I watch a seagull land on a trash can and immediately knock a wrapper onto the ground.
Shitty weekend for everybody, huh, bird.
And the stupid thing—the really stupid thing—is that my first thought isn't panic.
It's of course it was the apples. Blake's been on this kick about buying Honeycrisps because Laine likes them, and he gets this look on his face when he's picking them out, this intense concentration like he's defusing a bomb instead of choosing fruit, and Laine thinks it's hilarious and also—apparently—kissable.
I could see it. I can see it right now. Blake's hand on the apple, Laine laughing, reaching up—
And Tony saw it too.
Great.
"Reid." Tony finally looks at me. "What the hell is going on?"
I've thought about this moment. How I'd handle it when someone found out. I had a whole speech ready. Mature, reasonable, very TED Talk. So, Tony, relationships come in many forms, and what works for one person—
All of it vanishes like it was never there. Leaving me in a Quik Stop parking lot that smells like gas fumes and burnt coffee with my partner staring at me like I just grew a second head.
"It's complicated."
His eyes bug out. "No shit it's complicated. Your girlfriend is making out with your best friend in the grocery store." His voice rises. He's gripping the steering wheel even though we're parked. "Are you—is she cheating on you? With Blake?"
"It's not cheating."
"Then what is it?"
I take a breath. The TED Talk is gone. The careful explanation is gone. There's just the truth sitting in my throat, and it's either going to come out or I'm going to choke on it.
"We're... the three of us... we're together."
The words hang there. In the rig, between us.
And I'm hearing them from the outside for the first time—not the way they sound in the house, where it's just us, where it's breakfast and bad TV and whose turn it is to shower first. But the way they sound in this world.
The real one. The one with parking lots and partners and people who are going to have opinions.
Tony stares at me. "Together."
"Yeah."
"All three of you."
"Yeah."
"Like..." He makes a vague gesture with his hands that could mean literally anything. "Together together?"
"Yes, Tony. Together together."
He sits back in his seat. Rubs his face with both hands. "Holy shit."
"Yeah."
I wait for something. Disgust? Anger? For him to call me an idiot? Instead he just sits there, processing, and I'm sitting here with my heart pounding faster than it should be, which is ridiculous because I've walked into houses with people actively dying and been calmer than this.
But those people were strangers. Tony's not a stranger. Tony's the guy who's had my back for years, who held pressure on a femoral bleed with me while we both got screamed at by a meth head
Tony matters. What Tony thinks matters.
Fuck.
"How long?" he asks.
"Almost two months. Officially. Before that it was..." I wave my hand. "A mess."
"I'll bet." He's quiet for a minute. I can practically see the gears turning behind his eyes—clicking, jamming, clicking again. "So when you were all messed up over her—when she broke up with you—"
"Blake was part of the reason. But not the way you're thinking."
"I don't even know what I'm thinking right now." He picks up his coffee, puts it down without drinking. Picks it up again. "So wait—whose bed does she sleep in?"
"We alternate."
"Like a schedule?"
"No, not like a—it's not a custody arrangement, Tony."
"Okay but is there a calendar? Like Monday-Wednesday-Friday, you, Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday, him?"
"There's no calendar."
He winces, shaking his head. "There should be a calendar. That seems like something where you need a calendar."
"Noted."
He shakes his head slowly. "Reid. Man. I've known you a long time. You're the most straightforward guy I know. Black and white. Right and wrong. And now you're telling me you're in some kind of... three-way relationship?"
"It's called polyamory. Technically."
"I don't care what it's called." He's not angry. Not exactly. More like someone just told him the earth is flat and then showed him pretty convincing evidence. "I'm trying to understand how you ended up here."
That's the question, isn't it? How did solid, dependable, black-and-white Reid Garrison end up in a relationship that doesn't fit on any form he's ever filled out?
Number of partners: ___
Check one, asshole. Just one.
"I almost lost her," I say. My voice comes out quieter than I mean it to.
"Back when everything fell apart. Blake took off to Afghanistan.
Laine was done with me. And I realized I'd rather have this—whatever this is, the complicated, doesn't-fit-in-a-box version—than lose them.
Either of them." I peel at the seam on my coffee cup.
The paper's coming apart under my thumbnail. "I tried the alternative. It sucked."
"But sharing her with Blake—"
"It's not sharing." The word is wrong. Makes my skin itch. Even though I used it back at the beginning, I get it now. "She's not a pizza, Tony. She chose us. Both of us. We chose her. I don't know how to explain it better than that."
And I don't. That's the thing. Inside the house, it doesn't need explaining.
Inside the house, it's Laine stealing Blake's flannel and my coffee in the same morning.
It's Blake building her a shelf she didn't ask for and me catching her watching him work with this look on her face that makes my whole day better instead of worse.
It's the three of us on the couch and her feet in my lap and her head on his shoulder and nobody keeping score.
Out here, in a rig, in a parking lot, in words — it sounds like something that needs defending. And I don't want to defend it. I want to go home.
Tony's quiet for a long moment. He's staring at the dashboard like it personally offended him.
"So you just... watch him kiss her and you're fine with it? No jealousy? Nothing?"
There it is.
I could lie. Give him the easy answer, the one that makes this sound like some evolved, enlightened arrangement where nobody ever feels anything inconvenient.
"I'm not a saint."
"That's not what I asked."