“Sure. We’re not exclusive or anything,” Ryan said. “Does that idea bother you?”
“I know it shouldn’t,” said Jennifer, “I know that. But yeah, sometimes when I think of them with other people, I get a little…”
“Jealous?”
“Shut up!” she swatted at his shoulder.
“I’m not saying it like a bad thing!” He held his hands up, rolling on his back in a submissive I give up pose. “But that’s what it is, isn’t it?”
Jennifer frowned, regretting the swat. He was right, but it made her grumpy. She hadn’t been jealous any of the times she’d watched Ryan and Paige together, so what right did she have to be jealous that their awesome friends the Shepards were playing with other people? “Yeah,” she admitted, “maybe a little.”
“Tangential change of subject,” suggested Ryan, “have you given any thought to us being with other people?”
“Beyond Bruce and Paige.”
“Yeah.”
She had, a few times, in fact. The most notable time was the night they’d gone to a swing club with Bruce and Paige. The club was a large old house, way out in the deep suburbs so far from the city of Chicago that they may well be in their own orbit. Very mid-nineties decorations and mostly an older crowd.
The other guests hadn’t much mattered, they’d come as a foursome with intent to sit in the hot tub in the snow, swim in the indoor pool, and utilize the sex swing on the third floor. The evening had been a lovely one for all, and included hot tub soaking both before and after some very hot sex.
The post coital soak found the club mostly empty, as the hour had grown late, and the foursome had talked through the steam radiating from the glowing blue hot tub water.
“Mind if we join you?” a woman had asked, from the darkness.
“Please do!” said Bruce. “The more the merrier!”
A couple had climbed into the hot tub, which was starting to feel full for the first time. The woman, perhaps forty, sat next to Jennifer, apologizing when she put her hand down on Jennifer’s knee.
Jennifer had observed as this new couple introduced themselves. Rob and Sarah didn’t look like they were old pros at this, and their introductions were filled with awkward laughter and stumbling. But Jennifer didn’t care. She’d just smiled and stared, taking them in. When she and Ryan had returned home that night and climbed into bed, she rode him for a while, eyes closed, picturing Rob with his short blond hair and smooth chest below her. She’d imagined Sarah’s arms around her from behind, small nipples running light lines around her back, kissing her neck. In her fantasy, she’d reached back to slide her fingers inside that beautiful bald mound.
“Sometimes I think it might be fun,” Jennifer told Ryan, “Meeting other people, fucking other people.” The other people in her mind beyond Rob and Sarah were mostly vague shapes and scenarios. She laughed. “Hard to have an orgy with only four, right?”
“It is.” Ryan took her hand and kissed it. “I called to ask him about it. He said this party is a pretty good environment for newbies. Safe. I told him we’d think about it.”
“Safe for newbies,” she repeated. “I don’t know, though, a party could be a lot of pressure. Especially if a lot of their friends are there.”
“We don’t have to decide tonight.” Ryan smiled at her. “Want to see what they’re doing tomorrow?”
“Dinner at the Watkins’.”
“Damned vanillas.”
“We have to see regular folk occasionally, hon,” said Jennifer with a laugh.
“Yeah, I suppose,” said Ryan. “But put another way, do we?”
“Yes.” Jennifer grabbed her phone off the night table. She took one last glimpse at their seven weeks of high sexual frequency and smiled again.
Paige had compared it to a fuse being lit, on their only date without the boys. “And now energy you’re drawing from elsewhere is manifesting in your relationship.”
“It’s made a difference,” said Jennifer.
“That’s great! That manifestation is one of the best parts of being open. We can draw energy from those around us, and then funnel it directly into making our lives extra awesome.”
“You’re extra awesome,” Jennifer told her, then immediately felt bashful about it.
Paige had winked, stood, and planted a kiss on Jennifer’s lips across the table. Holding it just long enough for the teenager behind the counter to notice and do a miniature double-take. “Thank you, darling.”
They’d finished their bowl of salted caramel brownie ice cream in the mall before going home to try out the new double-ended dildo Paige had flashed from her trunk when they met for dinner.
Back in bed with her husband, Jennifer drifted off to sleep, her dreams filled with warm combinations of bodies and positions, sexual partners and playmates cycling through. Ryan, Paige, Bruce, Rob and Sarah, even briefly Ice Cream Clerk Boy, who in her dream world was blessed with a cock that reached just shy of eleven inches. She knew because she helped Paige measure.
The two of them were about to decide who got first mount by flipping an over-sized novelty coin that Jennifer was sure contained chocolate, when the alarm notified her that another day had arrived.
26
“Glendronach.” Noah poured Ryan a tiny amount of the Scotch, as though rationing it. “Fifteen-year revival.”
“I don’t know what that means,” said Ryan.
“It means it’ll taste like it’s been buried for fifteen years,” said Sam.
Noah waved his hand at Sam and set the glass in front of Ryan. “Neat, of course.”
“I don’t know why you insist on—”
“Just try it,” said Noah.
Ryan stared at the glass. He held it up in front of him, the caramel-colored liquid in the bottom catching the light. He truly didn’t understand why Noah insisted on sharing his expensive Scotches with him and Sam. Neither of them particularly liked Scotch, and the price of the bottle seemed inversely proportionate to the amount they enjoyed it. But if Noah continued handing him expensive tastes of alcohol, he’d keep trying them.
He smelled it. “It’s got that good… campfire scent.”
“Oh, c’mon,” griped Noah.
Ryan tasted and scowled. “Sam, you’re right.”
“Like it’s been buried,” said Sam.
“No,” said Ryan, “I think it actually just tastes like the dirt it was buried in.”
“No taste, the both of you.” Noah snatched the glass back off the bar and upended it into his own. “Shall I make you an appletini?”
Sam perked up. “Actually, I’d have—”
“I don’t have Apple Pucker,” Noah groused.
“Nothing like the companionship of friends,” said Ryan, a smile on his lips.
“I’m surprised we’re seeing you at all,” returned Noah. “It’s been damned difficult to reach you lately.”
“We missed you,” said Sam. He patted Ryan’s back.
For a moment, Ryan felt ashamed. He had abandoned these two, hadn’t he? Up until the end of December he’d spent every other Friday night here at Noah’s, playing pool, or poker, or just watching whatever new 4K video content Noah had managed to acquire in his vain quest to convince them that UltraHD represented the future, Ryan insisting he didn’t need to see Kevin Spacey in such high resolution. Over the several weeks since that singular day in December, though, he’d been absent.
“Thanks, Sam,” said Ryan. “Sorry about that. We’ve been pretty busy. The good news is, we’re actually connecting now.”
“You and Jennifer,” said Noah, flat.
“Yeah.”
“That’s good, man,” said Sam, “I know it was touch and go there for a while. I’m happy that things—”