Chapter 27
JULIA
He’s trying to be quiet.
I can hear the effort to quiet each movement as Tripp walks into the house and up the stairs. The lone squeaking step lets out a loud, long whine as he carefully steps onto it, and I stifle a laugh as I close my ebook and rest my e-reader next to me on the bed.
Drumstick shouts his annoyance that his dad is taking so long to get where he’s going, likely circling Tripp’s legs in a figure eight in demand for attention, like he tends to do.
The door to our bedroom, like that one lone step, lets out its own long squeal as my husband pushes it open.
“Jules,” he whispers as he pokes his head into the door. “Baby, I need to talk to you.”
“I’m awake,” I chuckle.
My hand pats the empty space next to me, and Tripp accepts my invitation to sit.
His fingertips anxiously tap against his knee as he pulls it onto the mattress.
The longer that he takes to say anything or to look at me, the more I find myself scanning his body for any signs of damage.
A scrape on his exposed knee, another area of road rash he may be trying to hide from me – anything, but I don’t see it.
“I kissed Connor,” he finally tells me. “I don’t want to downplay it. It was— there was a second that I thought we might have sex.”
Pushing myself to a sitting position, I reach for the lamp on my bedside table to turn on the light.
Tripp’s features are torn; his eyebrows stitch together with guilt, but the color in the irises just beneath them shines a bit brighter than it normally does.
He doesn’t handle guilt well. He never has. He handles it even less well when whatever it is that he’s feeling guilty about also happens to be something that’s made him feel good.
Reaching for his hand, I clasp it between mine. “I told you it was okay,” I remind him. “That wasn’t just talk.”
Pulling our joined hands to his lips, he presses a soft kiss to my skin.
“I think I get it,” he tells me. “It never had anything to do with me, did it?”
My teeth tug at my lower lip as it begs to pull into a smile, my brows stitching together with a shake of my head.
Moving my phone and e-reader to the table next to me, I pull off the blankets covering my legs. My fingers trail across the tattoos covering Tripp’s skin, slowly tracing up the length of his arm until I reach the line of his jaw.
“I love you, and I know you love me, too,” I tell him. “We made a thrift store wedding and romantic fast food dinners on the hood of the car work. If you want to, and if Connor does, we can make this work, too. I think it’s okay if we give ourselves room for more.”
His arms – toned, and stronger than one would expect them to be, just by looking at them – snake around my neck as he pulls me close to him.
The warmth of his skin melts against mine, letting me breathe in the smell of his cologne and the night air clinging to him as I let myself melt into his embrace.
“Get into bed with me,” I tell him quietly. “I put my book down for you.”
He chuckles at that, reaching behind himself to pull his t-shirt over his head. Discarding it on the floor at the side of our bed, his arms envelop me again, wrapping me in his warmth to pull me onto the mattress with him.
As I pull the blankets over our bodies, Tripp’s arm tightens around me, pulling my body closer to his.
He talked to me tonight.
He thought something might upset me, he came home to me, and we talked to each other.
A loud ceramic clang pulls me from my sleep and the dreams that came with it, most of which vanish from memory as soon as I open my eyes.
Neither Tripp nor Drumstick are on the bed, the blankets of which have been tucked tightly around my body. My husband’s pillow is propped up and smoothed as if it hasn’t been used. The curtains are pulled back at our window to let the soft glow of balmy sunlight stream inside.
Swinging my legs over the edge of the bed, my feet land on a perfectly-placed pair of slippers.
My favorites; soft and plush pink slippers with a set of matching bows at the tops of them.
A blush creeps across my cheeks as I slide into them, quickly running my fingers through my hair to free any knots that may have formed while I slept.
It isn’t our anniversary, and my birthday isn’t for another several months from now.
What is he up to?
As I make my way down the stairs and into the kitchen with a heavy yawn, I stop in awe at the scene ahead of me.
Plates stacked with all of our favorite breakfast foods are laid out on the table like a buffet. Tripp and Connor stand at the stove with their backs to me while they work together to make more food.
It’s not the first time that I’ve woken up to find the two of them making breakfast together – or a late lunch, if Connor had stayed and slept on our couch after a long night out.
Those mornings, the two of them are usually leaning on each other or barely holding themselves up, because they don’t know how to behave – or pace themselves - when they’re out together.
Pulling my usual chair from the table, I settle into it, smiling at the glass of orange juice already waiting next to my place mat.
“This is unexpected,” I say as I reach for the glass.
Both of them look over their shoulders to me, smiles tugging at their lips before they look to each other. A conversation passes between them, spoken only with their eyes and a soft nod from my husband, before Tripp reaches forward to turn the heat off on the stove.
“I asked Connor to come by so we could all talk together.” Setting a selection of utensils onto the table as the two of them take their seats, he says, “I figure, if we’re gonna try this, we need to set some rules. Or boundaries, or whatever.”
My eyes snap to him, then to Connor, who offers me a smile.
I had some idea that we might have this conversation when Tripp came home and told me that he’d kissed Connor, but to actually be having it, butterflies are filling my stomach so much that it feels like I might explode.
“Rule number one,” Connor says as he pulls a small stack of pancakes onto his plate, “I’m not a booty call. Whatever kind of label we decide to put on this thing, I’m here for more than just sex.”
“Of course,” I nod, blinking.
We aren’t the first couple that Connor’s been involved with. With the first, the boundaries were unclear and lines got blurred. When he fell too hard too fast for them, it was made clear that he was only in their lives and in their bed as a tool, not as an equal.
Our couch was his home for nearly a month while he searched for another place, and it was the first time that I think I’d ever seen him really, truly heartbroken over another person.
I think he knows that he doesn’t have to tell us; but I also think it gives him peace of mind to say it out loud. He’s afraid of being used again, and this is higher stakes than anything we’ve ever done as a group.
“Two,” Tripp adds, “If we can’t make it work, we don’t force it. There’s been enough shit between all of us that we need to know when to walk away.”
I signal my agreement, poking my fork into a piece of sausage while I consider everything that they’re saying.
“So…” My eyes move between them, scanning, until they land on Connor’s. “Are you…what does this make you to us?”
He looks to my husband, another wordless conversation happening between them before both of their eyes settle on me to pin me in place in my seat.
“I’m a person that you’re seeing,” he answers.
“And we’ll just take it from there,” Tripp adds.
“Wait,” I say, setting my fork down at the side of my plate. “Rule three, we talk to each other. Secrets and lies made a mess of things. So…we talk.”
Their chins bob in agreement, each of them wearing warm smiles as they look at me.
If I were to visit my past self, that insecure girl in a Catholic high school surrounded by people that she felt so inferior to, she’d never believe me when I told her that she’d be sitting across the table from two beautiful men who love to please her.
That girl looked at all of her peers, and she would go home and cry while she looked in the mirror.
All she could do was compare herself to them.
She was certain she’d wind up alone, with no one to love her.
She never wore a bathing suit in the pool, only a large t-shirt and a pair of shorts that covered her thighs.
She didn’t appreciate the things that would come to be something that her husband adored about her.
If I told her where she would be today, if I told her that she’d wear that crop top or that new bikini, that she would be kissed and held and told often that she was beautiful, she’d call me crazy.
If I told her that she’d grow up to love the reflection in the mirror, she’d think I was lying.
She just wanted to be loved – really, truly loved for who she is and not for who someone hoped she might be one day, how they hoped she might look one day. And now, she is.
My gaze moves to Tripp as he reaches for another serving of bacon strips to stuff into his mouth, and all I can do is stare at him.
We’ve both lost pieces of ourselves; from the moment that we were born to now, every mistake, every judgment, every loss. Piece after piece has been stolen. I think that, for him, there was a quiet piece hidden away that he’d never gotten the chance to nurture or explore.
There are still pieces that he may never get back, but that one piece has a place to land, now. It has a home. Because of that, he looks so much brighter this morning.
And Connor; he’s been hurt time and time again, denied opinions and feelings in a place where he should have been able to feel freely. Now able to nurture a once-platonic love into something quickly becoming something so much more than that.
We’ve been family since the first night Connor spent at our house with conversation had over one of Tripp’s homemade dinners. We’re still family; the way that family looks is just shifting.
It’s scary, but I also think that it also has the potential to be the best thing that’s ever happened to any of us.