Cool With Her (7 page)

Amber and Beth were the same size, so Beth’s wardrobe was open to Amber. Paul was a little bigger than me, but still squeezed into my baggier clothes. And Casey had traveled down from Philly, intending to stay the weekend, so had clothes through the next couple days. Coffee in hand and breakfast in our bellies, I started getting excited about the prospect of being snowed in with my closest friends.

After breakfast, we went back outside and continued our impromptu snowball fight. This time, however, we pulled down our ski clothes and properly outfitted our guests.

Things between me and Paul still felt a little tense. I caught him looking at Beth a couple times, which didn’t sit too well with me after his fantasy confession last night. He told Beth about Amber and I felt like he’d broken some kind of code, whether she was upset or not. He received more than his fair share of snowballs, and being the kind of guy he was, he didn’t back down.

At one point, I looked up just in time to see what could only be described as a snow boulder headed right for my face. I fell flat on my ass, leveled, cold, and angry. I heard Paul’s laughter, and even before I’d fully recovered, I was on my feet, shooting for his knees. I was back in college, in the wrestling circle. I tackled him into a snowbank formed by our cars. His guard was up quicker than I’d anticipated, and before we knew it, we were rolling for dominance in the snow.

The women had to pull us off one another, although not before he’d torn my jacket open and shoved a handful of snow down my shirt.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!” he shouted as Amber and Casey yanked him away.

The blood rage left me as quickly as it had come and I didn’t have an answer for him. “You’re an asshole,” I muttered and headed for the house.

I decided to brood and withdraw, which was my usual coping method when I was upset. Paul receded into his childish
ignore
mode, pulling out his laptop (that I had retrieved!) and planting himself on the sectional next to the fire.

“Let this one blow over, right?” Beth asked Casey, who’d known me and Paul the longest.

Casey shrugged. “Usually works.”

My wife agreed and announced that she was going to do a little house-keeping—an obsession she’d developed and I encouraged. “Want to play some Halo?” I asked Amber.

“Do you have to ask?”

Amber lived one floor up in my dorm Freshman year, and my first impression of her was that of a princess. She was exactly the kind of chick that I would have been intimidated to talk to in high school. So naturally, I forced myself to become her friend. I still remember how surprised I was to learn that—while she
was
a princess—she also loved video games. First-person shooters in particular. It was like one of those rare epiphanies in life that, in an instant, can change everything. I stopped making assumptions about people, and I stopped getting intimidated by anyone, no matter how attractive.

It marked the advent of my confidence. The New Me was born.

I let Amber lead the way through the living room and into the den. I could feel Paul’s gaze on us and made an exaggerated show of checking his girlfriend out. Or maybe I used him as an excuse to run my eyes over her slim curves. She’d borrowed a pair of Beth’s red cheerleader shorts that barely covered her buttocks, and I highly suspected that she wasn’t wearing much under the yoga sweater that kept falling off her bare shoulder.

She looked over her shoulder at me, her long, golden ponytail whipping about. I drew my eyes off her ass just a little too slowly. She noticed, but didn’t say anything.

“I get player one.”

“Sure.”

Here was the problem with Amber: she played video games like she played her relationships. She always needed to be the one in control, calling the shots. I could only take so much bossing around—like most guys, which is one reason she went through so many of them—and she quickly grew bored of the submissive men who did. It took a rare man like Paul to both challenge and put up with her, and as much as I thought he was an ass right now, he was a saint for that.

“Jace, cover the right, I’ll—no, higher! That hill!” Even playing in a cooperative campaign as allies, it never felt like much cooperation was going on when playing with Amber. “Jason, listen to me!” she barked once we’d died for the third time. We were playing it on hardcore mode and I was beginning to regret that. “In order for this to work, I need to draw them out, and you need to snipe them off when they’re in the open.”

We tried again, and begrudgingly, her tactic worked. I almost messed it up on purpose, just so I wouldn’t have to face that smug smile, but it felt like that was something Paul would do, and I wasn’t about to sink to his levels.

When she excused herself for a bathroom and drink break, I quickly set the difficulty to an easier mode that we’d be able to trounce. We were supposed to be relaxing, not getting all worked up.

She picked up on it right away, but didn’t say anything about it. Instead, she used the slower pace to talk about other things.

“So did you enjoy watching us yesterday?”

I colored, thankful to have the game to focus on rather than the blonde sitting next to me. “I...shouldn’t have watched. I didn’t see much.”

I caught her frown out of the corner of my eye. “Don’t be embarrassed, Jason. How long have we known each other? Seven years?”

“Something like that,” I mumbled.

“And I know you heard what Paul and I were talking about.”

“Amber...”

“How does it feel to be the object of our fantasy?”

“Amber—”

“Take it from me, as someone who’s had a lot of experience with that—being someone’s fantasy, I mean. Enjoy it.”

“That’s what I love about you, Amb—your modesty.”

“I thought you loved my ass. Or was it my legs? Or am I remembering that wrong?”

“Hey you two.” Beth’s voice snuck up behind us. I jumped. Amber seemed unfazed. “I don’t need to be worried about this, do I?”

Turning, I caught her regarding us with her hands on her hips and a smirk on her face.

“Nope,” Amber said. “Want to join us?”

Beth sank onto the couch on the other side of me and made a face. “I don’t do video games.”

Amber and I plunged on into our virtual world. Beth pulled out her knitting set and busied herself as we played. For a little while, I thought she wasn’t going to say anything. Then, without looking up, she said, “So Amber, your fantasy’s not just about having a one-night-stand, but having one with my husband?”

Amber laughed. “Nah. That’s a totally different fantasy.”

“Good to know,” Beth said. “Remember when I just asked if I should be worried about this?”

“Beth, I’m not sure that I’ve ever even seen you worried. About anything. You’re like the most easy-going person I’ve ever met.”

“Fine, fine. Just make sure I’m there if something does go down,” Beth said.

“Hey, you realize I’m sitting right here, don’t you?” I said.

Amber ignored me. “Oh, you know how much I like being watched.”

“I do. I know
very
well.”

The blonde laughed, glancing across me at my wife. “I seem to recall that you have a little exhibitionist streak in you, as well.”

“Okay, ladies, want to fill me in on what the hell you’re talking about?”

The sofa creaked. Beth set her knitting down and turned to me, steadying herself on my thigh. “What do you think, Amb? Should we tell him?”

I noticed Amber’s shots were a little inaccurate in the game, her focus a little bit off. “I’d rather
show
him...later...”

Beth giggled. “Could be a fantasy come true for Casey.”

She returned to her knitting. I got up. “I’m taking a shower. You two can keep talking in your little code.”

****

On the way up, I wondered what was in store for this bunch. Clearly we were all sexually charged. Beyond the obvious history that Amber and I shared, Beth and I had been pretty flirty with the other couple since we’d all gotten together, and Casey didn’t seem fazed by it. We’d always toed the line, however, and I didn’t think that would change tonight because of Casey. She had a guy back home. She’d keep us on the straight and narrow.

Or so I thought.

“Yeah, they’re all good looking,” I heard Casey say from her room. “Yeah, it’s
those
two guys. And Jason’s still totally hot... Mmm hmm. That make you jealous?”

Casey laughed at whatever was said on the other line, sharp and clear. “Well, I’m not sure I can get any pics, but I may have stories…” Another laugh. “You’re so silly. I’m not the one stuck in a hotel with the boss. She working you hard…? Yeah, I’m sure you’re really broken up about that...”

I crept by the door, leaving Casey to catch up with her boyfriend. Just as I was about to leave her earshot, though, I heard something to give me pause.

“Have fun, Adam. Give Linn a nice, hard fucking for me. Bye.”

In the shower, I didn’t know what the fuck to focus on. Casey’s open relationship? Paul’s desire to be cuckolded by me? Whatever the hell Beth and Amber were talking about?

So I focused on washing away the remaining cobwebs of last night. We were all adults here, and we all cared for one another. Things had a way of working themselves out—especially when those things involved my wife.

I took my time getting dressed. Beth had given me a new selection of boxer-briefs and I pulled on the red ones that she seemed to like so much. I regarded myself in the mirror. For a moment, I saw the old me in that mirror—flabby and shy.

“No, man. Stop doing that,” I said aloud. Blinking it away, I saw who I was now. Cut. Hard-muscled and broad shouldered. I worked hard for this body, but it had always been a personal goal. I lost the weight for me. I toned up to live a more active life, to do things that I’d always wanted to do but was too out of shape to do.

To be at the center of another couple’s sexual fantasy? I hadn’t signed up for that, but I had to admit it stroked my ego. To hear one of my closest female friends tell her boyfriend that I was
totally hot
? To hear my own wife express that she’d like to watch me satisfy her best friend? These were all new things to me, and while it had been seven years since I’d transformed myself physically, that skeptical highschooler had a way of coming out.

I pulled on a tight black t-shirt to go with my jeans. Even considered going down there like this, short sleeves straining around my biceps, just to remind myself who I was. In the end, though, I grabbed a zip-up sweater for warmth and headed downstairs.

Beth and Amber were still in the den, doing what they were doing when I’d left them—although now they were talking about how to sell crafts on Etsy. I left them alone and went looking for Paul. It was time to clear the air between us.

I heard him in the kitchen and was about to push in when I heard him say, “You can’t tell Jason.”

I was tired of eavesdropping on everyone, but with a line like that, how was I going to resist?

“Oh, come on, Paul.” Casey speaking. “He’s been your best friend forever. He’ll understand.”

“It’s pretty fucked up though, isn’t it? Ever since I learned that he and Amber hooked up, I can’t get it out of my head. What does that make me? A wimp? A cuckold?”

“Please,” Casey said. “I know one of those guys. Trust me, you’re not him.”

Paul barked a laugh. “Your new boyfriend likes seeing you get taken care of by real men?”

“Jesus, Paul, you just can’t help yourself, can you?” Only Casey would have been able to shrug it off. “No, I’m not talking about my new boyfriend, but Adam and I do have an understanding about that stuff. Point is, you just want to see Amber in action, right? She’s a hottie, I don’t blame you. You’re more like me—it’s fun to watch a partner just go for it. For a...
cuckold
, I guess, it’s more about him. He gets off on being marginalized. There’s a humiliation aspect to it, you know?”

“Right,” Paul said.

I thought about what I’d overheard yesterday in the bedroom. Amber saying:
I’m thinking about him now. I’m thinking about the birthday boy’s thick cock fucking my pussy… Filling me like my husband’s can’t...

Huh.

I backed away, going back to the women. At least arts and crafts was a relatively normal topic of conversation.

****

Halo was off. The weather channel was on. And every channel was running some story about the blizzard. There’s been a giant snowball fight downtown—hundreds of participants over several hours. Power was out in large portions of Maryland. Targets were open; most other stores were not.

Most of all, though, were the updates that the cold spell was lingering, and so was the snow.

“Good thing we’ve got enough beer to last us through the week,” I said. “See, Beth, I told you it was a good idea to buy that much.”

Beth looked at Amber. “He seems to be under the impression that we can sustain ourselves on beer.”

“And maybe chips and salsa,” I added. “Sounds amazing.”

“That’s my husband: nutritional genius.”

“Should I send you an invoice for my time?” I said.

It felt good getting these two beautiful women to laugh. Beth set her needles down, growing serious. “Hey, Jace, can I talk to you for a sec?”

“Sure.” I waited, thinking that she meant here. Instead, she rose and started for the stairs.

“You coming?”

We went upstairs. I shut the door as Beth floated over to the windows, looking outside into the snowy landscape. The bright light from outside bathed her body like a glamor shot filter. For a second, I could imagine Beth posing for some soft-focus perfume ad, wearing the same skin-tight jeans and chic designer sweater she wore now. Her hair was loose, spilling in dark, textured waves around her shoulders. The light cast shadows across her high cheeks and full lips.

“Think we’ll ever get out of here?” she asked, breaking the spell.

“Eventually. You know how the news is.
Snowpocolypse
? Really? Don’t worry, Beth. We’ve got enough food to feed the five of us.”

Beth smiled, turning away from the window. Silhouetted like that—hair lit up like a halo—I couldn’t see her face. “This isn’t about that.”