Page 48 of Triple Play

I could kiss her. You could kiss me. “Nothing. Just a bad joke.”

For a second, I think he’s going to tell me to go fuck myself, or at least the polite Georgia boy version of that. That I should get myself out of the pool and stop leering at his girl.

Instead Blake gets a daring gleam in his eyes. “Does my stubble bother you?” he asks Shira.

“Hmmm.” Shira taps her finger to her chin consideringly. “I’d need a reminder.”

“Well, you did ask nicely,” Blake says. “But, uh, you don’t have to.”

“Afraid Felix is gonna criticize your technique?” she asks.

Blake shakes his head. “Nah, I know when I’m good at something.”

She laughs. “Me too.” At that she wraps herself around him, legs at his waist the way I’ve seen her wrap them around a pole. The way she used to wrap them around me sometimes, when she was dancing, when my universe began and ended with her.

“Don’t worry, I can hold myself up.” She tugs Blake down, hand at the back of his neck, dipping lower and lower until she’s bent halfway back, her hair a dark spread in the water.

He moans and kisses her, rolling his hips, fingers tense along her back until it’s clear she doesn’t need his support. So he traces them over her shoulders, down her sides, past the swell of her tits, to the low curve of her belly and back up again. They move together, hot, seamless, like they’ve forgotten I’m here—except for how Shira winks an eye open. For how she smiles at me, familiar and playful.

A kiss that goes on a long time—or maybe doesn’t, but time has a funny way of stretching when you’re watching something good.

Too soon, Blake pulls himself upright and Shira follows, the only sign of her exertion—or arousal—the rise and fall of her breath. He traces his hand down the curve of her cheek adoringly.

She giggles, then turns to me, eyebrow arched. “You gonna hold up one of those score cards?”

More like I’m trying not to be too obviously into you. To both of you. “I can see why the Monsters signed him.” It comes out too honest, a question I can’t expel from my brain: If he’s here, what does anyone need me for?

At least Blake laughs. He eases himself back to the hot tub bench—not next to me but not that far either.

For a second, Shira doesn’t move. She studies me, mouth drawn like she’s worried.

I don’t want to be that guy, someone who tries to make up for my own inadequacies by having her carry them. I shrug, one-shouldered, as if I didn’t really mean that.

With that reassurance, she sits between us, close enough that her thigh brushes mine. Until Blake pulls her into his lap. Show’s over. Point taken.

Only Shira’s facing me. Her hair falls in a tangle like it did when I interrupted her in the shower. Her lip gloss is smudged. She looks imperfect and beautiful, lit up. She likes calla lilies and irises, I want to tell Blake. She used to like me or at least pretended to.

I could pack it in—pull myself over the edge of the hot tub, slosh back to our room and jerk off guiltily over the vanity sink then put myself to bed or, rather, couch.

But something about the night air doesn’t let me move. Meteors burn out hot and bright—and they’re still worth watching. This trip feels just the same. So I could stay, see what happens. “You want something to drink?” I ask.

“Sure.” Shira smirks. “I’m pretty thirsty.”

I lever myself up and grab the beverages I left on the deck, now sweaty with condensation. I hand a beer to Blake and a soda to Shira, then hop back into the water.

“We could get you something a little stronger than that Sprite,” Blake says to her.

“She doesn’t—” I cut myself off. I’d been about to say drink while she’s working. But of course she’s not working. I also didn’t crack the can. She doesn’t like to drink anything she doesn’t open herself. Things I shouldn’t know about her; things I hold onto now. They might be together, but I get parts of her he doesn’t have access to—the Melody parts, the tough, smart, sharp parts she’s filing off to be with him.

“I can grab something else,” I offer.

“Sprite’s fine”—Shira opens the can—“at least to start.” She takes a long swallow, extending the column of her throat.

Blake kisses her when she’s done drinking, a quick kiss to her cheekbone, a relationship kind of kiss. What he gets with her is real so long as he doesn’t know anything real about her. She used to grind on me in a club for money, some mean part of me could say. But that wouldn’t do anything more than hurt her, and fuck, I couldn’t live with myself if I did that.

Watching them together hurts enough as it is. I’m done pretending it doesn’t, so I stare up at the night sky.

Blake catches me at it. “More stargazing?” he asks. At Shira’s questioning look, he adds, “Felix keeps an astronomy diary.”

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