Chapter 18
On Wednesday evening Ellie and Becca went for a run together along Lady Bird Lake, the trail busy with other runners and cyclists in the evening light, the water flat and blue, the skyline reflected in it like a postcard of the city they'd made home.
They ran in comfortable silence for a couple of miles, matching each other's pace the way they always did, then slowed to a walk as they reached one of their favourite stretches of the path, pausing for a moment looking out at the water.
"I've been thinking," Becca said, slightly breathless from the run, untying then retying her hair.
"About?"
"About where we are. What this means. What comes next."
Ellie leaned against the railing and looked at her wife, sweat-sheened and flushed from the run, wearing an old Stanford t-shirt and running shorts, her necklace catching the evening light. She looked so ordinarily beautiful that Ellie's chest felt like it might burst.
"Tell me,” Ellie said.
"I think we need to acknowledge what's happened.
Not just to each other, we've done that, but to ourselves as a couple.
Because I don't think either we’ve fully sat, as a couple I mean, with the fact that in the space of not a lot of weeks we've gone from a completely conventional marriage to...
" She searched for the right word and smiled when she couldn’t think of it. “Whatever this is."
"Hotwife life," Ellie offered, completely deadpan.
Becca laughed. "God, don't call it that. Not unless you want me to call you cu…”
“No. Please no,” Ellie interrupted, grinning back.
Becca’s laugh turned to a smile. “But yes, essentially, even if we’re absolutely not going to call it that ever. And I think we should talk about what it means going forward. Not rules exactly, but... guiding principles. What we want this to be."
Ellie nodded. She'd been thinking about the same thing, turning it over during quiet moments at work, running the analysis in the background the way her brain always did. "I've got some thoughts."
"Of course you do. You've probably got a spreadsheet."
Ellie looked at the ground. “I don't have a spreadsheet."
Becca raised an eyebrow.
"I have a list in my Notes app," Ellie admitted sheepishly. "Which is entirely different."
Becca grinned and took her hand. "Let's walk and talk."
They walked along the trail as the sun dropped towards the horizon, the sky filling with yellows and oranges. Runners jogged past them in both directions, and while they all went about their normal days Ellie and Becca talked honestly about whatever this had become.
"First principle," Ellie said. "This is ours. Not mine, not yours, ours. The moment it becomes something one of us is doing to please the other, it stops working. We learned that a little bit with Cass."
"Agreed. It's a shared experience or it's nothing. We’re doing this together. Always. It’s never something for only one of us.”
"Second. Kelly seems to be special. What we seem to be building with her isn't easily replaceable, and we shouldn't treat it as interchangeable with anyone else. If she's willing to keep being part of this, I want her to be. Not exclusively, I think we should stay open to you being with other partners, but I’d like to think she could be our go-to gal for this. She gets it. We’d be mad not to try to keep that going.”
Becca squeezed her hand. "I agree. And I think we should tell her that. Not in a way that puts pressure on her, but just... letting her know that we’d like something to develop beyond the sex. Something that respects her and Colt, not to mention her friends and whatever else she’s got going on.”
"Third, and this is more for me than for you, I need to stay honest with myself about what I'm feeling.
The jealousy, the arousal, the complicated stuff.
The moment I start suppressing any of it or performing ok-ness when I'm not ok, we're in trouble. I have way more time to think when you’re… you know. I need to be honest about it.”
“You need to promise me you’ll always be honest with me too. If you ever want to call it, and I mean ever, I’ll stop right away and come straight back to you. I promise you that.
"But also, honesty goes both ways," Becca added.
"I need to be honest too. About what I feel with Kelly or whoever else, about the moments when I forget you're there.
" She glanced at Ellie. "That's going to keep happening.
With Kelly especially if she wants to keep meeting, but with whoever.
The better it gets between them and me, the more I'm going to lose myself in it. Are you prepared for that?"
"I'm counting on it," Ellie replied. "That's the whole point. The more into it you are, the more the jealousy-arousal loop ratchets up for me, the better it is. I just need you to come back."
"I'll always come back. That's my absolute, fundamental principle. Whatever happens in that room, whatever I do, whoever I do it with… I come back to you, completely and fully. Every time. Non-negotiable."
They walked in silence for a while, letting their minds turn it over. As she walked, it seemed to Ellie like something was clicking into place inside, like they’d finally constructed what they’d been working on and she could take a step back and look at it. She liked what she saw.
"Can I say something?" Becca asked after a while.
"Always."
"This thing we've found, you watching me, the necklaces, reclaiming me after…
it's the most intimate thing we've ever done.
More intimate than sex, more intimate than getting married, more intimate than anything.
And I know that sounds insane, because on the surface it's about me having some pretty hot sex with someone else, which should be the opposite of intimate for us.
But it's not. Because the trust it requires, the honesty, the vulnerability of you watching me be at my most exposed with someone who isn't you...
I've never felt closer to another human being in my life than I feel to you right now. "
Ellie stopped walking and turned to look at her. They were on a quiet stretch of the trail, the lake on one side, trees lining both sides of the path.
"I feel the same," she said. "Exactly the same."
They stood there looking at each other, and then Becca stepped forward and kissed her, slowly, tenderly, the sort of kiss that said I love you and thank you for this a thousand times over.
***
When they got back home Ellie picked up her phone and opened the group chat.
"I'm going to message Kelly," she said. "Tell her what we talked about. That we’d like to develop something beyond just you and her… you know.”
"Good." Becca stood behind Ellie and rested her chin on her shoulder, watching the screen. "What are you going to say?"
Ellie thought for a moment, then typed:
Hey Kelly. We've been talking about everything and we wanted you to know, what we have with you isn't just fun (although it's definitely fun).
You get this dynamic in a way that nobody else has, and we'd love for you to keep being part of it.
No pressure, no obligations, just an open door whenever you want to walk through it. Ellie & Becca x
She showed Becca, who read it and nodded. "Perfect. Send it."
Ellie hit send, and the reply came twenty minutes later while Ellie was getting out of the shower and Becca was about to go in:
Y'all are going to make me cry and I am NOT a crier.
Yes. A thousand times yes. I told Colt and he says to tell you that you're stuck with me now.
Also Solana says she's never seen me this excited about something that doesn't involve horses or tacos so that should tell you everything.
Open door both ways. Any time, any place. Your girl Kelly x
Becca laughed and took Ellie’s phone from her, tapping out a reply:
Tell Colt we said hi. And tell Solana that your therapist says that horses and tacos are both valid sources of happiness. See you soon. Becca x
Then Becca put the phone face down on the side and kissed Ellie on the cheek. “Right. Shower for me then dinner. I’m starving and I’m pretty sure you promised me pasta earlier.”
***
Ellie cooked while Becca sat at the kitchen counter and talked about her week so far.
The pasta was good, the wine they had with it was better, and they ended up on the couch with the TV on and neither of them watching it.
Becca had her legs across Ellie’s lap and was scrolling through her phone, while Ellie was half-reading an article in a tech magazine about something she’d forget by tomorrow.
A normal weekday evening… no personal trainers or native born Texans or God knew who else, just them.
After a while Ellie noticed that Becca’s scrolling had become more purposeful. Not the aimless thumb-drift of someone killing time on social media… this was someone looking at something specific, going back and forth between tabs, occasionally zooming in on photos.
“What are you looking at?” Ellie asked.
“Oh.” Becca glanced up as if she’d been caught, which Ellie figured was usually a good sign. “So, you know we’ve got that time off booked in a few weeks?”
“The week we’ve been far too busy finding women for you to hookup with to do any planning for? Yeah, it’s on my guilt pile.”
“I found somewhere.” Becca moved so that she could show Ellie her screen. “Look at this.”
It was a holiday rental listing for a beach house on a stretch of the Florida panhandle called 30A.
Ellie scrolled through the photos: white clapboard exterior, a wraparound upstairs deck with sea views, a private pool fenced off from the public beach, interiors that were tasteful in a seaside holiday way, all pale wood and linen.
It looked expensive, particularly when Ellie scrolled through and saw the white sand beach it was next to and the water beyond, a startling shade of emerald green.
“Becca, that’s stunning.”