They paddled and swam around for the next twenty minutes, playing like children who had been given access to a motel’s pool during a family road trip. Jake and Celia both did some handstands on the bottom. Laura did a few backflips into the deep end from the edge. They all splashed each other and laughed and smiled. And Jake and Laura both made a conscious effort to make physical contact with Celia’s body as much as they could get away with, bumping into her, grabbing her legs underwater, even picking her up and throwing her once. It seemed that Celia was enjoying the attention on some level. Whenever her chest broached the surface of the water, it was plain to see that her nipples were standing at attention.
Finally, a bit fatigued, they paddled over to the shallow end and sat on the pool steps, Laura between Celia and Jake.
“It’s too bad you can’t skinny dip in here,” Jake observed. “At least not during the day.”
“Yeah,” Celia said with a sigh. “That is the one drawback of this house. The neighbors are awfully close.”
This was true. Celia’s house was separated by less than six feet on both sides from her neighbors’ houses. Both neighbors had decks that protruded out and both had windows that could look down upon anything that transpired on Celia’s deck. Jake could, in fact, see the silhouette of a female walking back and forth on occasion behind some of those windows on the house to the right.
“Do your neighbors know who you are?” asked Laura.
“I have no doubt that they do,” Celia said. “Remember, the Watcher printed my address when I entered escrow. The LA Times picked up on it the next day and published it again. There were more articles when I actually closed escrow and moved in, including a picture of the house that someone took with a zoom lens from a helicopter out over the water.”
“Have you met any of them?” Jake asked.
She shook her head. “No, not officially anyway.” She pointed to the right. “The couple in that house are older, in their sixties or so. They seem like fussbudgets when I see them walking out on the beach, which they do every evening at precisely 6:15. They have one of those little yap-dogs and they don’t clean up its poop.” She pointed to the left. “Over there are two men in their forties. They are always impeccably dressed and they have a little yap-dog as well. They, at least, carry baggies with them when they walk their rodent. I waved at them once and they just looked at me, turned up their noses, and then went on their way.”
“I bet their house is very well decorated though,” Jake opined.
“I bet you’re right,” Celia said with a laugh.
They sat in silence for a few minutes, Celia staring out along the infinity border at the ocean while Jake and Laura passed looks back and forth and communicated nonverbally in the way of married couples.
Ask her, Laura implored with one look.
You ask her, Jake replied with a look of his own. This was your idea.
But you’re better at this sort of thing, Laura’s look insisted.
We’ve been over this, Jake replied. I’ve never done this either.
It did not take long for Celia to realize that something was going on. She could see them furiously trading marital communication looks with each other, but could not quite interpret what they were communicating about—other than it had something to do with her. “All right, you two,” she said. “What’s going on here?”
Jake shot one more intense look at his wife. Shit or get off the pot, that look said.
Laura sighed nervously. “Okay,” she said softly. “There is a bit of a nefarious plot underway here.”
“Oh?” Celia asked, raising her eyes a bit.
“Yeah,” Laura said. “You see ... we were thinking ... Jake and I, you know ... that maybe ... uh ... how to put this?”
“I don’t know,” Celia said. “How can you put it?”
She looked over at Jake again and found no help there. She looked back at Celia and blurted, “What would you think about having sex with us?”
Celia blinked slowly. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Please repeat that.”
“We would like to have sex with you—both of us—if you are willing,” Laura said.
Celia simply stared at her for a moment. “You ... you are serious about this?” she finally asked.
“Yes,” Laura said. “I ... we ... are completely serious about this. Aren’t we, sweetie?”
“Absolutely,” Jake said, fascinated by this turn of events. He could not tell if Celia was disgusted, intrigued, or simply amused by the question. Her face remained completely expressionless. “Dead serious.”
“I see,” Celia said. “And what made you two decide to proposition me in this manner?”
“Well ... it’s like this,” Laura said. “I am bisexual and I have not been with a woman since the last time you and I ... you know ... played around a little in that hotel room out on tour. I really want to be with a woman again, Celia. And I know that you haven’t been with a man since that night in El Paso with Greg. I’m guessing that you are probably craving some ... you know ... male attention by this point. And I know that you are unwilling to just jump into bed with a guy that you don’t have some sort of relationship with. And so, it seems that maybe we can both help each other out a little bit. You are attracted to Jake, right?”
“Uh ... right,” she said carefully, casting a glance at him. “But ... Jake is your husband. If I were to have sex with him ... that would be cheating.”
Laura shook her head strenuously. “No, it wouldn’t,” she insisted. “If I’m there and participating, and I’m the one who arranged for it in the first place, it’s not cheating. It’s consenting adults openly enjoying each other and helping each other through a drought. I already know that you and I have a sexual attraction toward each other—unless you’re turned off by the fact that I’m starting to show. That doesn’t gross you out, does it?”
“No,” Celia said. “It doesn’t gross me out at all. In fact, I think you look extraordinarily sexy with your bigger boobs and your baby bump and I would love to put my hands and mouth on you, truth be told. You are not the issue, Teach.”
“I’m the issue,” Jake said.
“That is correct,” Celia said. She shook her head a little. “I cannot believe I am actually having this conversation. This is not a dream, right?”
“It can be,” Laura said in her impish voice.
Celia giggled a little and then returned to looking serious. “I have always been sexually attracted to Jake,” she said carefully. “I will freely admit that. And I know that Jake has always been sexually attracted to me. Am I correct?”
“Yes,” Jake said softly. “Ever since the first time I met you at the Grammy party.”
“And I understand that,” Laura said. “There’s nothing wrong with it. I’m giving you a chance to act on that attraction, C. The only ground rule is that I be there, watching and participating.”
“And you won’t be jealous?” Celia asked, clearly having a hard time accepting this. “You won’t be worried that Jake and I will fall in love with each other.”
Laura looked at her pointedly. “You two are already in love with each other,” she said. “I’ve known that for years, ever since I saw you two working together in the studio back when I first hired on as the sax player. And I’m in love with both of you as well. And I strongly suspect that you, C, kind of love me in that way too. That’s what will make this thing work. We wouldn’t just be slaking each other’s lust. We would be expressing our love for each other.”