Three's a Charm (2 page)

Katie
starts to tell him that she’s fine, until she stops and realizes that she’s a woman sitting by herself on a curb in the most dangerous hours before dawn, and that even Billy has gone home. She’s drunk, but
she’s not stupid. “Not even a little bit,” she says.

Blue Eyes
looks at
Ryan
, even though
Katie
can tell from where she’s sitting that
Ryan
’s ability to make any decision more complicated than untying his shoes is at least six hours away from returning.
Ryan
looks back.
This is how
Katie
winds up in the backseat of a car that Mystery Guy is just barely sober enough to drive.
 
She watches
the sun come up through the back window, catches Blue Eyes watching her through the rearview.

“My name is
Adrian
,” he
tells her
.  His eyes might be a different color than Ryan's, but Katie still finds herself shivering all the same
.

*

Adrian
is staying in the kind of rundown motel that you only tolerate if you’re broke, and even then only by telling yourself that yo
u’ll have a hell of a st
ory from it later. He glances over
his shoulder at them apologetically as he pulls into the lot and cuts the engine. “Road trip,” he says in a tone that sounds like apology. “The less money spent on where we
sleep
, the more there is for beer and gas.”

When he says it like that,
Katie
kind of expects to see his three buddies already piled onto a single bed when they enter the room, but
all that greets her is an empty room and a lot of tension
.
A bed, an end table, a low and ratty couch that might have seen Eisenhower.  For a few seconds, Katie, Adrian, and R
yan look everywhere but at each
other.  It's like being fifteen again.

If being fifteen had included
unspoken and very possibly imaginary invitations into threesomes, anyw
ay.  Katie considers for a moment and then raises
onto the balls of her feet in order to kis
s Ryan on the mouth.  It starts
soft for
approximately as long as it takes
Katie to dr
aw a breath, and then he grabs
her ass in both hands and yanks
her up hard
against him as the kiss turns
into something someone
should probably be filming
.  So
says the low and hungry sound Adrian makes from the back of his throat
, anyway.

Damn, Katie
hopes that situations like this aren't a normal part of being fifteen
.  She
so missed out if that's the case
.

"That's my apology, for thinking you
didn't know my name," Katie tells
Ryan.  On
e corner of his mouth crooks up.  It falls again as Katie goes
on, "But I am way too drunk for this, sorry, bye." 
She tumbles
onto the couch and closed her e
yes,
thinks she hears Adrian laughing behind her as she drifts off
.

*

Katie
doesn’t know how many hours have passed by the time that she wakes
.  Enough that she has to pee
, anyway
. She scramb
les up from the couch and dashes for the bathroom
.
As soon a
s her bladder is satisfied, Katie washes her hands and then ducks her head and drinks what feels like at least half a gallon of water straight from the tap before she raises her head to look into the mirror
.
Her face is pale and her makeup is smudged about her eyes, making her look ethereal and almost fragile.  Katie frowns at her reflection, sure she's forgetting something.
She really hopes she didn't drunk-dial anyone.

Well.  She did go
to a strange motel with the singer that she had spoken
less than a dozen
words to before tonight and a tourist who didn’t even bother to tell her his name until they were in the parking lot
.  In terms of incredibly stupid things
worthy of the next edition of
The Gift of Fear
, that probably makes the Top Ten, but she's alive and unharmed, so it's not that.

Katie
purses her lips at herself and orders her brain to think.
  An unmistakable sound comes from back in the room.
  Katie widens her eyes and watches a blush crawl from her neck up to her hairline
. Oh, now
Katie
remembers
.
She was thoroughly eye-fucked by tw
o guys, made out with one of them, and then passed out on the couch upon realizing that she needed to sober up a little more before committing to more than that
.
They, uh, must have found a way to pass the time in the intervening hours
.
Katie
hangs her head down between her shoulder blades
and bites her lip hard to avoid giving in to a peal of laughter.  Not the most ridiculous situation she's ever been in, especially not if she takes the Los Angeles years into consideration, but close
.

Katie
keeps her eyes averted as she creeps back into the main room and starts trying to locate her things by touch around the
couch, pretty sure that the moment of invitation has passed. 
She’s a big girl who works in bars for a living, it’s not like s
ex shocks her, and she’s sober now.
Perfectly capable of finding her way home.  She didn't call Paul.  The night's still a victory.

But
Katie
’s gaze strays on her, and she catches a glimpse of someone’s smooth, flexing back when she glances up without meaning to.
Katie
’s breath freezes in her throat. She thinks it’s
Adrian
; he’s shorter than
Ryan
but broader. He has a line of moles clustered low on his spine, and he’s so pale that he glows in the room’s scant light.
Katie
makes note of all of these things i
n order to distract herself from the fact that it’s pretty obvious that he’s fucking
Ryan
, and that it’s making her wet between her thighs. She’s a horny drunk. It
’s her life's curse.

Could have been you, sweetie. 
Maybe if the world hadn't been spinning.

Katie
turns away
, cursing under her breath. 
Lust makes her fingers clumsy and numb; she drops her bag with a heavy thump that sends her cell phone and cosmetics rolling everywhere.
Katie
curses again as the activities from the bed come t
o a sudden
halt.

“Sorry,” she calls over her shoulder, determinedly not looking again. “Sorry, sorry. I’m going to get out of here, since I’m not in danger of being gang-raped on the sidewalk any longer. Uh, carry on.” Of
course
her favorite lipstick would have rolled
right under the couch, and far enough back so that the only way that
Katie
can reach it is to lie flat on her stomach and stretch.
Her cheeks are flaming so hard that she gives
serious consideration to just leaving it there and buying another one already, never mind that
it was department store and expensive
and she’s fairly certain the color has been discontinued. Lipstick-procuring strategies are much, much safer than any other
direction for her mind's eye
.

“
Kat
,”
Ryan
calls to her. His voice sounds ragged.
Katie
wonders what else she managed to
sleep
through. She also wonders what makes him get off (
stop that
), thinking that he can call her by a nickname when they’ve managed to exchange maybe two dozen words in the entire time that he’s been playing at
Billy's
.
 
She also wonders if she’s going to make it home, because his voice is doing things to her that...his voice is doing things to her.
Katie
sinks her teeth into her lower lip hard and rises to her feet.

“Don’t worry about it,” she says over her shoulder. “I didn’t see anything.”
A patent lie, but Katie has a vibrator and a reasonable amount of pornography at home
. She’ll deal with it.

“Yo
u’re blushing.”
Ryan
sounds amused.
Katie
thinks, and not for the first time, that maybe he’s a bit of a shit.

She turns around, finally, and gives them both a long look. They’ve...um, they’ve disentangled from one another and are now both beneath the co
vers of the bed, watching her.
Ryan
looks amused.
Adrian
watches
like he’s not entirely sure what
Ryan
is going to do next
, though his gaze skitters sideways and lingers on Katie for more than a moment. The blankets cover Adrian's
lap.
Unable to stop herself, Katie wonders if he's still hard
.

She’s a bad person.
A bad, bad person
.

“Because you were fucking,”
Katie
answers
Ryan
crisply. His response is a slow grin. Oh, she’s a
very
bad person.
A challenge lies gleaming in that smile
, and what the hell.
Katie
’s never had all that much of a
competitive spirit; she just wanted to sing, and maybe that lack of bite was part of...everything, but now
he's gone and made her mad
. So she walks over to the bed and stares down at them both, but
Ryan
especially, one of her eyebrows slightly raised.

“
R
yan
--”
Adrian starts, laughing a little.  He sounds a touch nervous. 
Katie
is just a little nervous, too, not quite su
re of where she sees this ending, equally sure she doesn't want it to end.  She feels closer to Adrian already
.

Katie kisses Ryan hard
, just to shock that look off of his face.
He makes a sound against her mouth saying that maybe she succeeds
.
Katie
didn’t really put a whole lot of strategy into her action beyond that, so she doesn’t really know what to do with herself as she deepens the kiss rather than pulling away and strutting out with her point made, as she puts her hands against
Ryan
’s shoulders to keep herself steady.
Their joined lips turn into a boudoir kiss
, a horizontal kiss, and accordingly
Katie finds it difficult to keep herself upright
.
Ryan
obliges her
just fine, taking her about the waist
(
bi
g hands, oh,
no one ever told me the sin wagon rode so smooth
) and lowering her down to the bed and across both
his and Adrian's laps
. Some
thing pokes her in the shoulder. 
Katie
’s a big
girl. She knows exactly what that is.

“
Foster
,”
Katie
starts in a tone so eerily reminiscent of
Adrian
’s from a few moments before that the two of them probably ought to be bonding over it. If there’s any time at all to stop this, it’s right now. If ther
e were any time at all to be sure that she wanted to stop this, that would probably be right now, too.
Katie
takes a deep breath.

A line appears between
Ryan
’s eyes. “Don’t call me that,” he says.

“Your name?”
  She half-remembers Billy calling him th
at once, probably while Ryan was being deliberately irritating.

“It’s my last name. I don’t like it. Call me
Ryan
.”
 

Katie expects a permanent storm to stop the moment, but it doesn't. 
Ryan
keeps looking at her, and
Adrian
starts stroking her hair.  Ka
tie pictures
a snapping noise as any hope of her leaving his bed officially exits the room. She lifts herself up onto her elbow, careful of where she places it, and pulls
Adrian
’s head down to hers so that she can kiss him.
Katie
thinks that it’s mostly surprise that draws him down to her without more of a fight; he doesn’t carry himself like a man who thinks that he’s attractive. He’s wrong,
Katie
feels like telling him, if she weren’t already so busy showing him. He’s got those eyes, for one thing, and that cute little curling smile, and his shoulders, back, and arms are all broad and strong.
Katie presses north and thumbs
one of his nipples until it’s a hard and e
ager point against her hand,
keeps kissing him.
Adrian
takes over at some point and sweeps his tongue through
her mouth until they melt soft and pliant against one another
.