Chapter 17
17
February
“Big day for the Tomboys,” Snowy announced, scrolling through her phone. She gave Rose a significant look.
Puff and Snowy were helping Rose hem the new curtains she’d bought on remainder. Rose had thought she could teach them how to use a sewing machine, since she’d been the only one in her group of college friends who’d ever learned. But this particular group of kids not only knew how to sew well enough to make their own elaborate convention costumes, they could hand-bind books, scrub and decipher metadata on ten different social media platforms, and paint the human form like they’d trained at the knee of the old masters. Rose got the feeling that if she expressed interest in setting up a small nuclear reactor in the backyard to provide auxiliary power, Snowy would flip through her mental Rolodex of die-hard Boyd stans and muse, “I guess we could get MeteorManWhore at the Department of Energy. Or would it be better to see if AngelKisses96 can get a visa once she’s done at ITER?”
So the sewing machine wasn’t new and exciting to them, but they’d still been keeping Rose company all morning. Which was…really nice, actually.
“Are people excited for dinner?” Rose asked, taking the next fabric panel from Puff. She was making king ranch chicken casserole tonight. It was really a shame none of her family had been able to make it out so far—that one always went over well when Max made it.
Snowy paused as though struggling for diplomacy. “Yes. Absolutely. Dinner. But I’m actually talking about the big post this morning about whether we should let multishippers use the Tomboy hashtag.”
None of those words were in the Bible.
“Hmm,” Rose said, trying to be supportive, though she found it much easier to relate to the girls when they were talking about window treatments than their fandom drama.
Puff made a troubled expression. “Are you doing okay?”
“Why would I not be okay?” Rose asked. It had turned out to be a wonderful month. They’d made so much progress on the inn, and everyone had been very considerate of her, personally, even though she’d just met everyone but Tom.
Snowy and Puff exchanged guarded looks.
“Well, you’re sort of the main character of the day,” Puff said.
“Me?” Rose said, startled. “What did I do?”
“Okay, so, you know about all the Vogue pictures with the pool, right? And someone else dug up your divorce decree,” Snowy confessed. “Not me! And then someone posted a clip of Tom grabbing your ass last week. Also not me. Sooo…can you see where this is going?”
Rose did not see. She understood the interest in the thirst trap photos of Boyd and Tom carrying heavy things around the inn that Snowy had been posting, but Rose tried to stay out of the frame. Why would anyone care what she was doing?
“You and Tom. Tom and Boyd. Boyd and You. All here. So, a lot of people are having all the feelings about you,” Snowy said. Puff nodded.
“ All the feelings? Are some of them angry at me?”
Snowy bit her lip, then passed her the phone. The Tomboy Updates account—that was Snowy—had posted a poll on whether OT3 content, whatever that was, ought to be allowed in the Tomboy hashtag. There were 158 comments.
“Wow,” Rose said faintly.
Some people on the Internet hated her.
“You know, it takes a lot of slut shaming and biphobia to shock a Groton School alum,” Puff said, tapping her chest, “but I think some of these are real bad takes.”
“I don’t think you’re a home-wrecker,” Snowy said earnestly. “Like, you were with Tom first. Saying otherwise denies Boyd’s agency.”
Rose looked again through the comments.
“People are making death threats ?” she squeaked.
Snowy snatched the phone away from her. “Okay, don’t worry about those. I get, like, three a week, just from antis. That’s just fandom.”
“No, adding you is just, like, a big adjustment for everyone,” Puff hastened to reassure her. “But I get it! I was a Boyd/Reader person for two years—”
“You are so brave to admit that.” Snowy interjected.
“Shut up, Snowy. But anyway, Tomboy was my OTP for the last year. Still. I think I could come around on you.”
Puff and Snowy gazed anxiously at Rose. “If you wanted us to,” Puff added. “You guys are cute together. It does make sense. Order and chaos. Balance.”
Rose finished with a curtain panel and took another from the pile. The inn was really reclaiming its feminine energy these days, even if everyone here was revolving in Tom and Boyd’s orbit. The curtains were lace. The wallpaper was birds. This would be a wonderful place for weddings when she was done with it.
“Guys, you know I wasn’t serious when I said I’m the dom in a tragically under-negotiated kink relationship with Tom and Boyd,” Rose said, trying to keep it breezy. “I did not actually crate train Boyd Kellagher. Tom does not actually tongue-wash my kitchen at home.”
“I mean, yes,” said Puff.
“But also no,” said Snowy. “I know you weren’t serious. But we could be serious. You should see some of the videos we have. Puff could make some new art. We want to support you.”
“I don’t think anyone needs to stop having fun with the idea of Tom and Boyd together just because Tom and I—well, things are still up in the air,” Rose said slowly, not sure what she ought to be sharing with these two and, by extension, the Internet.
The girls paused.
“Oh,” Snowy said with faint disappointment. “You and Tom?”
“I mean, maybe me and Tom,” Rose said. “We’ve got a lot to work out.”
Or, really, Rose had a lot to work out. She’d spent her whole life imagining one kind of future for herself, and she could admit that that future wasn’t going to happen. She was instead trying to take stock of what she did have: the inn, which her family would hopefully love when it was done; this unexpectedly fun experience realizing her pink, bird-accented renovation dreams with Boyd Kellagher and Ximena Tejeda-Souza and all these teenage weirdos; and also, maybe—maybe—something unconventional with Tom.
Puff bit her lip. “So, people aren’t really imagining you with Tom .”
Snowy passed her the phone again, filling the screen with a piece of fan art.
It wasn’t Puff’s work—it was gestural and monochrome rather than color block—but the unknown artist had clear drafting ability. Which they had used to depict three very happy, very naked people having an Eiffel Tower–shaped sexual encounter. The artist had a fantastic grasp of the human form and anatomical detail, and backs were arched, stomachs were taut, lips were slack—
“Oh God,” said Rose. That was her. And Tom. And Boyd .
Somewhere in the back of Rose’s mind, two soundtracks began playing. A reproachful “Ave Maria” warred with a low, suggestive seventies funk beat.
“That’s…that’s…uh,” Rose said, struggling to identify the socially appropriate response to reviewing art of herself sexually pleasing two men at the same time. Puff and Snowy seemed to be waiting for a reaction akin to receiving an early birthday gift. Oh, for me? Pornography? You shouldn’t have!
“I know!” Snowy said, fanning herself. “Isn’t it amazing? The artist cross-posted a safe-for-work version too, and it’s doing huge numbers. This really feels like a tipping point.”
Puff leaned in, raptly interested. “So?” she asked Rose.
“So?” Rose replied, confused.
“So what are you going to do?”
Rose thought she was going to have a large glass of wine with dinner and avoid eye contact with Boyd for a while. Was there anything else she could possibly do about this?
“You know this isn’t real either, right?” Rose said, tapping the screen. “Like the story Snowy wrote about Tom and Boyd playing hockey.”
“Of course it’s not real. It’s a picture,” Snowy said. “But it’s also a vibe?”
“This is not even the vibe. You’ve been here three weeks. You know there’s nothing going on involving me, Tom, and Boyd,” Rose protested.
The girls gave her twin unimpressed stares.
“Once again,” said Snowy. “It could be. Do you want it to be?”
Set aside that if Rose had ever wanted to have a threesome, she should have had one when she, her cute bisexual boyfriend, and everyone else in the world had been in their sexual exploration era—college. Set aside that she was a now a respectable thirty-four-year-old endowment manager. Set aside that she wasn’t even sure Boyd was into women. How was she supposed to raise the topic?
Thank you for coming to this meeting! First on the agenda is reviewing bids for the gutter repair. Excellent work, Tom. Second on the agenda is this picture of the three of us doing it. Can everyone be ready to operationalize that before dinner?
“First off, you must have noticed that Tom barely tolerates Boyd now,” Rose said.
“Which is an absolute tragedy, because we all know they’re perfect for each other,” Puff said. “But, you know, it’s not like he really likes calling contractors on the phone, and he’s doing that all day for you. I’m sure he’d have a threesome if you asked him to.”
“I cannot have a threesome with my ex-husband and Boyd Kellagher,” Rose said.
“What, just because you’re short? I think it’s totally doable if you and Tom get on the bed and Boyd—”
“ Please stop telling me about it. No, I mean, that’s not me. Under no circumstances is that me.” She tapped the phone for emphasis.
“In the picture?” Puff asked, confused.
“I mean, sure, I’m guessing it’s supposed to be me, but it doesn’t even look like me.”
Puff paused, considering. “They got your hair and your boobs right.”
“Yes, but where’s the rest of me?” Rose asked skeptically. The woman in the picture had the proportions of the porn actress who’d surely served as a reference image for the picture, wasp-waisted and underfed. Which only supported the larger point that nobody, including Rose, could ever imagine her doing anything like that.
Puff took another look at the artwork. “Okay, yes, I can see that BakugoLuvs has some important lessons on body diversity to learn. I’ll talk to them. But also, like, why are you up here sewing curtains when you’ve got Tom Wilczewski and Boyd Kellagher wandering around and basically willing to do anything you ask? This is, like, totally wasted on you.”
Snowy snorted. “Put me in, Coach,” she said, mocking Puff, who elbowed her in the ribs.
Puff had a point, Rose supposed. Stated objectively, who wouldn’t want to sleep with Tom, Boyd, or both of them at the same time? Rose was just unable to imagine herself in that scenario, not least because sex with Boyd would be like a liaison between a Great Dane and a Lhasa apso: theoretically possible on account of them being members of the same species but uncomfortable and undignified for everyone involved.
“It’s just not me,” Rose repeated. It was a core fact she knew about herself. She didn’t have any desire to be intimate with someone she wasn’t in a relationship with. If there was any part of her that was able to imagine herself down on her knees, hands braced over Tom’s bare thighs, it was the same part of herself that had once believed they’d live happily ever after.
Snowy made another grunt of dismay.
“Rose. Can I call you Rosie? We’re calling you Rosie online. So don’t get offended,” she began. This was a thing people said before they said something offensive. “But have you thought about being someone else for a little while? Who cares who you are most days? Today you’re making curtains. Tomorrow you could be Tomboy’s third.”
The isolation out here in Tisbury in winter was getting to Rose if the fangirls were starting to make sense. Somehow these were presented as equally valid choices for how she should spend the afternoon. Curtains. Spit-roasting with Meteor Man.
“I’m not sure this is what I bring to the table,” she mumbled. If this was what Tom was interested in, he was probably going to be disappointed. While he’d been out having interesting sex with famous people, Rose had been practicing serial monogamy and building a 401(k). If Tom missed clean sheets and food in the fridge, Rose understood what she had to offer. If he expected her to be the sex goddess in the picture, she wasn’t sure she could keep up. “What if I look ridiculous?”
“Tom and Boyd get to take ridiculous roles,” Snowy said. “I’m his biggest stan, but I think we can all agree Boyd shouldn’t have been cast as young Henry Kissinger if J. J. Abrams really wanted that Oscar. But he still tried!”
This struck Rose as an unexpectedly convincing argument. Tom did get to be other people on a regular basis. He got to be a different person now, while Rose still felt like she was the same person she’d been since she was eight years old, searching anxiously for the thing she could do that would make people love her.
Rose took another look at the picture. Maybe it’s a metaphor for the female gaze , she thought, almost deliriously. Some anonymous artist who was taken with the idea that a famous movie star had fallen in love with the unknown stage actor who saved his life had decided to bestow their fantasy on Rose. Some fantasy version of her was getting exactly what she wanted: a big hand curving over her hip, or one cupping her cheek—okay, good—but there was also the rapt expression on Tom’s face. Someone had imagined him looking at her instead of Boyd, his face suffused with desire. Rose could almost imagine it too.
“You don’t have to stop anyone from posting about it,” Rose told Snowy. Sure, why not let people imagine that Rose, Tom, and Boyd were living in polyamorous bliss. Flattering, really. “It’s just as likely as Tom and the hockey stick.”