3. Lily
LILY
In retrospect, perhaps I should have said something in the heat of the moment. I was certainly tempted. The words were on the tip of my tongue.
I want a threesome.
The thing was, I’d lost someone I loved before. Not because I’d confessed fantasies of double penetration. Please.
But even so, the pain of loss was not new to me, and I didn’t want to scare away the man I loved madly by confessing something that didn’t need to be confessed.
“Sometimes you can say too much. Sometimes a fantasy is just a fantasy,” I explained to Kate as I sank down in a leather chair in the coffee shop near the office. I gripped my latte, having given her the SparkNotes version of last night. “And in the end, I said nothing. I don’t want to overstep.”
“Right, but are you comparing apples to orangutans?” Kate asked before taking a drink of her tea.
I laughed. “I don’t think that’s a thing.”
She leaned forward and tapped my knee emphatically.
“Nor is it a thing that just because you lost someone you loved in a car accident—which admittedly is a horrible thing to go through— you’ll lose your fiancé because you tell him you want to .
. .” She stopped, perhaps casting about for just the right words. “ Expand your horizons .”
Heaving a sigh, I answered, “I get it. And yet, when it comes down to it, it’s not a chance I want to take. Because I don’t want to lose him.”
Losing my childhood best friend the night before our college graduation eight years ago was hard enough.
I could still recall with cruel crystal clarity the phone call.
The police had found my roommate’s car wrapped around a tree.
The girl I’d been best friends with since I was ten had been struck in a hit-and-run. Dead on impact.
Here one minute, gone the next.
Losing her was devastating, but in time, I’d healed. I’d learned, too, that the key was talking about it with people who’d been through something similar.
That was why I’d connected with Finn right away.
He was completely different from the other guys I’d met in my twenties—guys who believed being in touch with your emotions meant punching a wall when the Dodgers lost the World Series or cheering when you scored a coveted free-parking spot here in Vegas.
I loved a great parking spot at the Wynn, too, but when it came to a relationship, I needed a little more.
I found that in Finn Nichols.
I met him at a bar, of all places, but I knew . Knew he was different.
I saw it in his eyes, midnight blue and full of passion, and I felt it in his honesty.
Those were the traits he’d led with, and he was still that way with me. I hoped he’d always be that way—open and vulnerable, not to mention sexy as sin.
I could recall the night I met him with crystal clarity.
He didn’t use a line on me. He didn’t break out any eye-rolling bar pickups like I seem to have lost my phone number.
Can I have yours? Or I’m no mathematician, but I’m pretty good with numbers.
Tell you what, give me yours and watch what I can do with it.
No, the way we met was simple.
He was with a friend at a local bar we both loved, and I was with Kate, who asked if I wanted more nachos. A big college football game played on the flat screen. The wide receiver lunged for the ball, going horizontal, hitting the ground. The ball hit at the same time, then landed in his arms.
It was ruled a catch.
Ridiculous.
“Are you kidding me?” I’d shouted at the screen, flapping my arms, offended by the wrongness of the ref.
Kate flinched. “I never kid about more nachos.”
I waved my hand at the screen, pointing like a madwoman. “That was not a catch. Not in any way, shape, or form.”
“I’m with you. That was one hundred percent pure the worst call ever,” a voice had chimed in.
I turned in the direction of the smoky, sexy tone. And my skin heated up. The man was gorgeous, and he knew football since the next thing he said was, “That’s almost as bad as the Browns’ not fumble.”
I knew exactly what play he’d meant. I smiled. “Or the Jets’ non-touchdown touchdown,” I’d said, and then we rattled off some of the worst plays in history.
It was a simple conversation, but sometimes that’s how the best talks start. Soon, we were chatting about the nuances of the game, why we loved it, why we hated it. And Kate was saying goodnight, as Finn and I shifted to other topics.
To work and politics. To the state of the country and the state of Vegas.
To hopes and dreams. Beliefs and wishes.
We didn’t stop talking.
We clicked, even when we disagreed about what sport was better—football or baseball.
He chose wrong, picking baseball.
But I found it in me to forgive him.
Especially since he didn’t even try to take me home that night. He simply asked if he could see me again. When I gave him my number, he texted me right then and there, saying, go out with me tomorrow. Dinner at the new restaurant in the Cosmopolitan ?
I’d say yes, and that meal was more wonderful than the first night.
We took our time, getting to know each other, opening up, sharing.
We didn’t sleep together until our fifth date.
I’m convinced that made a huge difference. By then, we’d had so many deep conversations, so many meaningful chats about our backgrounds, our losses, our hopes, that we were already in synch before we shed our clothes, and once we did, our bond only strengthened.
We were two peas in a pod.
Now, as I thought about our connection, I took a drink of my latte then set down the mug and looked at Kate.
“He’s the first guy who’s actually . . .
in touch with his emotions. It comes from having gone through the same thing.
” Kate knew the details of how I’d connected with him.
Finn had struggled with loss, too, then spiraled into work, more work, and only work after his younger brother took his own life after returning from Afghanistan.
Finn was finally able to grieve, accept, and move on, thanks to the help of his best man.
Jake had “dragged his ass to group therapy,” as Finn put it that night at the Cosmopolitan when he’d told me the story.
Finally talking through the pain and letting go of it had turned Finn into a new man.
The man for me.
The man I was sure was my present and my future. We were each other’s safe landing on the other side of grief, and I didn’t want to risk my forever with him. I didn’t want to take a chance simply because I harbored particular naughty daydreams.
What would be the point?
Better to focus on wedding plans.
Kate squeezed my shoulder. “I know he’s the most important person to you.
But he also values openness and honesty because of it.
Don’t you think one of the reasons you have such a hot love life is because the two of you are so open and honest?
You were up-front from the start about your wounds and your baggage.
You talked about them on the second date.
My God, you two were birds of a feather from the start, and he shared with you like you did with him.
He was the same about his baggage, his pain.
That honesty about your emotions had to have carried over to the bedroom. ”
I considered her point. She wasn’t wrong. Finn and I had connected deeply on an emotional level, opening up in a real and vulnerable way about our pasts. Our hurts and our hurdles. Our losses and our new chances.
Perhaps one of the benefits of pain was a path to more pleasure?
“You may be right,” I conceded, but even if she was correct on that count, I couldn’t be sure that brutal honesty was necessary when it came to bedroom experiments.
“But I don’t know if a full confession of my fantasies is the same.
” I adopted a singsong voice. “Oh hey, sweetie, did you know I watch a ton of MFM vids? Yeah, well, I do. I happen to love when two guys service a woman at the same time. Also, could you and another guy maybe both take me at the same time? Yes, at the same time . ’Kay, thanks, love ya, babe.
I’m going to go work on our Target registry now.
I hope my boss gets us the napkin rings. ”
Laughing, Kate answered, “First, you don’t use napkin rings. No one under the age of seventy does. Second, you don’t even have a gift registry. Third, why don’t we apply logic to the ask for a threesome scenario?”
“Oh, believe you me, I’ve already worked out all the scenarios,” I said, tapping my temple. “I have the whole night mapped out from the moment they both strip naked for me.”
Kate cooed approvingly. “Excellent. Then let’s analyze this rationally.”
“Wait. Are you going to make a spreadsheet of my fantasies?” Kate was obsessed with spreadsheets. She used them to track her workout progress, her audiobook consumption, and her professional goals.
“I have one for mine,” she said coyly. Her hazel eyes darkened with frustration. “Trouble is, nothing is getting checked off these days. So, let’s check off yours.”
“Ah, so you are going to spreadsheet my love life,” I teased.
“Hell, yeah. The sum of column A with your threesome fantasy plus column B with asking for it equals column C: extreme pleasure.”
“Right . . . because there are no variables to account for, like, ahem, emotions such as jealousy and so on.”
She held up a finger to make a point. “Ah, but let me remind you—when you told him a year ago that you had role-playing fantasies, what exactly did your fabulous man do?”
My skin tingled from the memory. “He gave them to me,” I said, a grin tugging at my lips as I remembered the night I’d divulged all those naughty fantasies to him.
We’d gone dancing at Edge, our favorite club.
We loved going to clubs. Loved the sultry vibe, the techno beat, the low lights, the way the bodies grinding together unlocked secret desires.