Page 30 of The Photograph

“Three guys?” Lorna queries. “Did it include this new one?”

Mom has now stopped singing and is no longer covering her ears.

“Oh my God, Marla,” I shout over to her room, “I’m going to murder you later.”

“You’re welcome!” she shouts back.

“No, it did not include the new guy. Yes, three guys.” How can I explain this to them without looking like a giant slut?

My mom’s eyes are round.

I laugh. “You guys! Stop looking at me like I laid an egg, okay? Threesomes are not unusual on the gay scene.”

Lorna puts her head in her hands. “God, I wish I was gay. Nobody does threesomes when they’re straight.”

“That’s because a guy’s ego would be too fragile to put up with another man,” Mom pitches in. Look who’s talking about this now? I point at her. “Who said it would be two men and not two women in this imaginary straight threesome scenario?”

“Then they’d just be worried about having to do the business twice,” Mom adds.

Lorna is grinning. “There speaks the voice of experience.”

“Lorna!” Mom pretends to make an outraged face. “I have no such thing, and anyway, what about Brad?”

And Lorna, to her credit, lets Mom off the hook. “Sometimes I would just like my life to be exciting,” she says mournfully.

Fuck, is that how it is with Brad? This taking it slow thing is going to be as dull as dishwater. Then I think about the quiet joy of puttering around my apartment last Sunday on my own.

“Believe me,” I say, “excitement is overrated. It always comes with a side dish of backlash and betrayal.”

At this point, Marla decides she’s had enough of listening to this conversation from the bedroom and saunters out to join us.

“Ooooo,” Mom says, “tell us all about the backlash and betrayal.”

I skewer her with a glance. “I thought you didn’t want to hear about your children’s sex lives?”

She gestures at Lorna to open another bottle of wine. “When did I say that?” she says.

And when Lorna and Mom get up to leave, I pull Lorna into a hug as Mom goes to the bathroom. Stepping back, I study her face.

“You and Brad took a long time getting together,” I say.

Lorna snorts as she bends down to pick up her bag. “We were both too busy with our careers to put time and effort into anything else.”

That sounds familiar. “Too busy for sex?” I say.

She straightens and purses her lips at me. “Are you asking me how quickly we did the business?”

“Gah! No.”

Her eyes sweep over my face as she chews her lip. “If you’re asking about long-term relationships and your new guy, you’reasking the wrong person. I think not being out is a very different thing from what Brad and I did.”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“What’s up, Dessy?” She circles my face. “I’m getting major reluctance vibes. You’re usually very easy about guys.”

“Not reluctance exactly. I like him. But he wants to take the whole thing slow.”

“Ohhhhh.” She studies my face for a minute, then a sly smile curls over her lips. “Not having sex every five minutes—you should try it some time.” She bats her eyelashes at me, and I make a rude gesture at her.

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