Page 36 of Convergence

“No, what’s not fair is listening to you moan his name,” Everett said in a hoarse, straining voice. His shoulders curled in and his hands clenched in front of him.

“Everett, I-” I started to speak but didn’t know what I was going to say.

“Kiss her,” came Nate’s voice from behind me. I spun around to see him approach us. I hadn’t heard him come out of the lab. He stood a few feet behind me, his hands in his pockets.

“What?” Everett and I said simultaneously.

Nate smiled at us. “She came running out here after you. I know how she feels about me, and she feels the same for you.”

“But-” I blurted but said nothing else. I stared at Nate, looking for any sign of negative feelings.

Nothing about his relaxed posture and smiling face showed any signs of anger or jealousy. He stood with slightly open arms and gestured with a shrug and opened palms. “I don’t know about you two, but I think this isolation shit has me all fucked up. Sometimes I can barely think straight and other times it’s so clear to me. I have a feeling that what me and Eva have is rock solid and I think adding you to the mix would only strengthen it. It’s so weird because I’ve never been so chill and sure about something like this before.”

Nate’s speech struck home. Maybe it was the isolation of our experiment. Maybe itwasgetting to our heads and messing us up. But, as long as they were feeling the same, maybe we could give it a shot. I felt the same about me and Nate. While we had only been romantic together for a short time, I knew we were great as friends and coworkers and roommates first. I felt connected to Nate and when I allowed myself to consider Everett; I knew I also felt connected to him in those same ways.

I turned around to Everett to see him looking at Nate with a look of care and understanding. When he looked down at me, his expression changed to one of longing. I smiled shyly and shrugged as if to sayokay, let’s try this. And before my shoulder dropped from its shrug, Everett was barreling the three steps towards me. I didn’t have time to gasp before his lips crashed down to mine, so I gasped as his lips pressed against me and his arms wrapped around my chest. I dropped my coat, and it fell into the salty, slushy snow below us. With my mouth open in my gasp, Everett slid his tongue into my mouth.

My heart was leaping and pounding in my chest as I reached up and wrapped my arms around his neck, standing on tiptoe to reach him. His beard brushed against my chin. He sighed into our kiss when he realized I was holding him as tightly as he was holding me. I was breathless and wanting more when he pulled away from me. I grasped his hands as he stepped back, not ready for our physical contact to end. He smirked down at me, his signature smirk but with swollen lips.

“See? Feelings. Any who, what did you bring for lunch today?” Nate asked, as if he hadn’t watched his girlfriend make out with his friend.

“Uh, I brought hot ham and cheese sandwiches,” Everett said, his voice a quiet rumble as he looked at me still. “It’s all in the office.”

I pulled my bottom lip into my mouth shyly, not sure what to do now. Everett tucked a lock of my hair behind my ear and then bent to pick up my dirty coat. He tried to brush off the slush from it but was unsuccessful.

“Excuse me, but I have grown used to having my lunch set out for me,” Nate said from the door to the lab. There was humor in his voice, so I knew he was trying to break the awkward tension between us. I gave a small smile as Everett rolled his eyes, and we both followed Nate into the building.

Ev had made ham and cheese sandwiches and a small fruit salad for us and brought coffee in a thermos. Instead of eating at our desks like we typically did, Everett set everything out on the previously unused coffee table in front of the couch. I sat on the floor facing the couch where the guys sat. They both had offered me their seat on the couch, but I wanted to look at them both. It felt like there was going to be some serious conversations about our relationship. Relationships? And I wanted to see them both when the discussion began.

I sat cross-legged on the tasseled throw rug and picked at my sandwich. The butterflies of both excitement and anxiety took up too much space in my stomach to eat anything. I kept looking from Everett to Nate and back as they ate their lunches happily and like nothing abnormal had happened. Nate talked to us about the video game he had been playing recently, and Everett took part, as usual, whenever Nate stopped talking long enough for someone else to get a word in.

Could I date both of them? Would one relationship eventually fracture under the strain of the other? What if I felt more for only one of them? It made me sick to my stomach to think about losing either one of the guys, and especially sick to think of it being my doing. It wasn’t normal to care for two men at once. And I surely was no vixen. I could barely speak to another human, let alone flirt with one. I wasn’t a blushing virgin, but I may as well have been with my level of understanding in this situation. While there were a few people who thought kindly about me in this world, nobody cared for me deeply. Maybe I was so confused when given care and friendship that I immediately labeled it as romance. Though, the way I felt when I kissed them both would suggest otherwise.

“Eva? Where’d you go off to?” Nate asked, snapping me back to the conversation.

“Hm?” I asked, sitting up straighter.

He smiled. “What were you thinking about?”

“Oh, uh, just- you know, like how this is going to work and all,” I said and started picking at my sandwich again, not making eye contact. I felt the ever present blush burn hotter on my cheeks and chest.

“You mean the three of us?” Everett asked as he leaned back on the couch, his lunch finished. He draped his arm along the back of the couch behind Nate and crossed one boot clad ankle over his thigh.

I nodded once, nervously, and swallowed.

“We share you,” Nate said with a shrug. “I think it’s pretty simple.”

“It’s not,” Everett amended.

Nate leaned back with a sigh on the couch. Everett’s fingertips incidentally brushed the nape of Nate’s neck below where his hair was tied back in a bun. Neither of them moved away from the contact.

“How is it not simple?” Nate asked. “We both kiss her, and we both sleep with her. We continue our normal lives in this project, but add in orgasms.”

I bit my lip and looked down at my crossed legs.

“Is that what you want, baby girl?” Everett asked me in his quiet, calm voice.

I thought for a moment, looking at both of them and gauging my reaction to the idea. They were both looking at me with hooded eyes and smirks. My mouth salivated and my lower abdomen clenched. I nodded.

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