Authors: Jessa Hawke
I pen him a little note and leave it on his desk.
“Promise to always be straight with me?” I ask, then go about my duties.
“Yes!” I receive back, with a slew of smiley faces that would be corny if they were from anybody else, but I know Eric well enough to realize he’s actually sending me smiles.
What follows is a relief. I realize that for a whole two years, I’ve been hanging on to my dislike of the situation so strongly, it’s almost crushed my poor little nurses’ heart. I drowned myself in work, and ran away, but I never like, dealt with the situation. It starts off slow. Eric and I sit together at lunch, swinging our legs off the edge of the broad fence that surrounds the flowers outside of the urgent care center. He tells me about all the counseling he went to after the whole mess between us and before he even announced his feelings to Eric. I’m gratified to learn that it didn’t happen overnight, that he waited about eight months after he had left me to make his move. He deserves to be happy.
Then we become the known team at the urgent care center. Whenever there is a real emergency, somebody comes in bleeding or has a gunshot wound or something, we’re the pair to call. We are almost like that pair on television you see where the doctor goes:
“Scalpel.”
The nurse repeats to him, “Scalpel,” as she hands him the necessary equipment.
Eric and I are heavily amused by this, and by the fact that everyone we work with calls us husband and wife. It stings a little at first, but because we told nobody about our previous relationship, I slowly come to laugh with them. Because nobody means anything bad by it. Besides, it’s not like Eric keeps Steve a secret, though nobody thinks twice about his orientation, and nobody really asks. Only I know the truth, and this is what keeps me cocooned with Eric, just the two of us in a world only we know something about.
And then Eric asks me if I want to meet Steve. It seems like the logical progression, doesn’t it? That’s what I try to convince myself of when I say yes, that it’s the most natural thing in the world for my best friend to want to introduce me to his partner because I matter. It bothers me that I seem to hinge on the “I matter” part more than anything else.
I dress to kill to meet Eric and Steve for reasons I cannot put into words. We meet at this fancy little hibachi place and I’m not too happy to find that I like Steve. He’s sweet, polite, and tells the most interesting stories. He was in the Peace Corps. He’s seen the world. He works for a non-profit. He’s six two with the body of a Nordic god. If I was into my ex’s partners, Steve would so be the guy I took to bed.
Except for the fact that every time he touches Eric in some little way, I want to lop his hands off. Every time he puts a hand to his back or touches his wrist, or makes some comment about some trip they took, there’s this weird feeling inside of me like someone’s squeezing my insides into a fist, and that fist wants to reach out and make a mess of Steve’s face.
It’s only when Steve offers Eric a sip from his drink and I make a gagging noise, intending to sound funny, but judging from the men’s faces, not coming off that way, do I realize that I’m jealous. That when I look at Eric’s skinny little body, I want it for myself. That I want to grab his face and suck his lips off, Steve or no Steve. And all those times that Eric and I have checked out guys together have served, perversely, to make me feel as if we are closer together than ever. I hurriedly excuse myself and run from the restaurant, catching myself gasping and bending over, the fist in my stomach having punched up to my chest. Minutes later, Eric joins me outside, and his hands on me as he tries to comfort me—because he knows, he knows, he knows, he’s seen the look on my face—are almost too much to bear.
The conversation Eric and I have outside of the restaurant haunts me for the next two weeks. It’s like some terrible dream where the anxiety just grows and grows and you can no longer remember the exact words used, the right phrases, but you do remember how the whole mess made you feel.
I ask him what he’s felt about us in the past few months and he says he doesn’t know. He says he feels closer to me than ever, like him telling me about Steve was the last thing that stood in the way of us being completely honest with each other. And that honesty is sexy. And that he’s confused.
And that’s the worst part. The knowledge that he feels something back, too, but can’t make head or tail of it, either. Because what the hell are we both supposed to do about this? How can I TRUST HIM AFTER HE LEFT ME FOR Steve, and now he seems like he’s this great big pendulum, swinging back to me, but taking his sweet time about it? And who knows that in another year or two, he won’t go swinging back to another gym buddy of his?
Damn you, Eric. Damn you to hell. I walk into my house, furiously sorting through the mail, barely seeing whatever I’m tossing into the trash. And that’s when I notice this huge packet from South Africa on the floor. And I know that my life has, once again, flipped its odd self upside down.
* * *
Around the same time I applied for the job at the urgent care center, I also happened to take this certification course offered at the hospital. Most of the nurses who took it thought it sounded all too good to be true, but I wanted a few more letters tacked on to my nursing degree, so I took it.
The lecturer was this nursing manager from South Africa who told us all about these deplorable conditions over there, and how about ninety percent of the population lacks the proper medical care necessary to make it through another farming season. He reviewed techniques with us so basic that it made me bite my lip to keep from crying out. So instead, I offered opinion after opinion on how they could improve the program until the professor suggested that I come join them. I thought it was in jest until he approached me after the course with an application that he helped me fill out and wrote me a recommendation on the spot.
It looks like now, after waiting for who knows how long, they’ve accepted me as lead nurse in their organization. The pay isn’t as good as at the hospital, but neither is what they’re paying me at the urgent care center, and the upshot of South Africa—besides helping the needy, all those poor children with kwashiorkor—is that there is no Eric and no Steve there.
On the other hand, the upside of being in the urgent care center is that Eric is there.
I let out a groan of frustration and sink down to my backside against the wall in the dark apartment. I am not looking forward to tonight.
I’ve always been a very sensitive sleeper, and whenever I’m stressed out about something, it affects my sleep cycle. Tonight, even though I try to relax in a hot bath, the decision I have to make weighs heavily on my mind and I toss and turn like a madwoman in bed, my body and rain begging out for release until I settle into an uneasy, hazy kind of sleep.
It’s the damndest thing, but the first thing I think of is Steve. I think about him and what he would look like stripped bare to the waist, his muscles gleaming in the light. I see him on a bed, rolling over and frolicking as if he’s this great big puppy, and I like the way the embossed duvet looks against his skin. But then someone else enters the dream and I fidget, trying to right my body in alignment with my thoughts.
Eric comes in, and the whole scene is downright homey. He makes a meal, serves it, and the two men feed it to each other with their fingers, Eric pausing to suck strawberry juice off of Steve’s fingers. Steve watches his mouth, and I now the look of it and the feel of it, every nerve ending in the distal fingertips tingling with the sucking motion, Eric’s full lips closed around it as if it’s some larger organ, suggestively. When he leans back, there is strawberry juice on his lips and Steve leans forward to kiss it off. Eric reaches up and pulls Steve closer, his hands making slight raking motions on his back, raising goose bumps on the naked skin. Their heads tilt opposite from each other, until all there is is a mess of sandy and dark hair, and two men grasping each other, touching each other’s bodies and faces, until Eric straddles Steve.
It suddenly occurs to me that I am in the room, on the same duvet covers that Steve was on, watching my ex-boyfriend and his lover make out.
“Hey!” I shout, inexplicably, “What about me?”
And there’s this moment where I’m terrified I’ve just made a fool of myself, that they’re about to laugh at me, but then Steve takes Eric by the hand and they join me on the mattress. Steve strokes my hair gently while Eric takes his time unbuttoning the buttons on my shirt. Steve tilts my head back and I experience what it must be like to kiss him for the first time, and I like the feel of it, his lips warm on my lips, my nipples tightening in response as Eric strokes around them lightly with his fingertips.
“A girl can get used to this,” I hear myself saying as they push me back on this wealth of pillows, take off my pants and spread my legs.
I’m reminded of this weird little hentai thing I saw when I was a teenager, about how this girl gets taken to hell and two little devils, no more than the size of dolls, settle at the mouth of her pussy and begin to eat her out until she squirts. Now, Eric and Steve may be the size of full-grown men, but it doesn’t stop them from settling in between my legs as if that is their own residence. Right before he disappears there, Eric looks at my face, directly into my eyes, kisses me and says that he loves me. That they both do, and that they will do whatever it takes to make me happy, even work as a team if I like.
I like. So I nod.
The first feel of his lips on me is electrifying. He sweeps up and down the length of me from mons to anus until I am slick with his tongue. Steve lavishes my breasts with kisses and sucking until I am no longer sure which sensation to focus on, it’s all so good. And then Eric hits a spot where it feels like all my nerves have bundled together and I tell him that if he dares to move from that spot, I’ll kill him. And so Steve leans back, pinching my nipple in between his fingers, to encourage Eric, and then comes back to me and whispers dirty things in my ear, about how he knows how good it feels, he knows that I am just building up, ready to burst, and when it’s all mixed in with Eric’s thrashing in one focused spot, I feel a slick naughtiness spread through me like an uncontained wildfire. I feel lush and womanly all over, and I close my thighs around Eric’s head, not caring if I suffocate him with my pussy or not.
The feeling is building and I whimper, bucking my hips to meet his mouth in a frenzy of delight. My anus tingles as if it’s empty, and Eric builds me up to the brink only to stop. He lets me cool down and then applies his mouth again, and this time, when I reach what is so close to the peak, its sharper, more painful, and I like it. I am moaning, and the things I am saying are staining the air.
“Do me, do me, I want you to fill up all my holes until I have nothing to fill anymore, do it do it.”
Eric picks his head up, mouth wet with me and his own saliva, and grins wickedly. He knows what he is doing, damn the man, he’s reduced me to this giant whimpering, pleading little slut, and the thing is is that I don’t care. Not one bit. I want one, two cocks inside of me, and I want them as soon as possible, and it is only as the two men lift me up that I realize I have been saying all of these things out loud.
We’re back on that couch, the one where I caught Steve and Eric groping each other for all they were worth, and there’s something about it all that reminds me of the casting call for a porno, except that I love Eric and Steve is hot as hell, so it could never be so depersonalized. As Eric strips off his pants and his big, hairy cock swings free, I realize that they are taking their time with me, settling me down on the length of him so gently and easily that I feel unbelievably cared for.
Even though I’m now displayed to the room with my asscheeks spread open. Eric starts jackhammering into me, and I like it, I like the slap of his balls against me, how wet it all is, the fact that my big, soft breasts are squashed against his chest, the hair on it roughing them, leaving me with angry marks that I somehow can’t wait to display to the world.
And then the best part is when I feel Steve’s tongue on my behind, roaming the opening of my ass for all its worth. Oh God, this is better than I could have ever expected. My muscles are tightening and releasing, and Eric has slowed his thrusts enough to allow Steve to do this thing. The double ministrations are taunting me, and I am on fire everywhere, feeling wanton and dirty. I mean, a man has his mouth on my ASS, for God’s sake. The fact that they are doing it slowly, easily, and drinking in my cries as if they are some kind of elixir are driving me crazy, driving me to take long, shuddering breaths as sheaths of flesh slide in and out of me.
Steve’s mouth has made my behind drip, and now he’s probing me a little with his tongue. I gasp at the sensation, and instinctively know I want more. Somehow, I manage to reach behind me and grab his hand. I place the finger inside my own mouth, wetting it as best I can, considering I am still being bounced up and down on Eric’s dick, and then slide it, slowly into my ass.
It is incredible. It is as if finally, finally, for the first time in my life, I am full. Steven plunges his finger in and out of my ass in tandem to Eric doing it to my pussy, and I lock mouths with Eric. It is all how it was meant to be, me atop Eric, and Steve ministering to my dirty starfish somewhere in the periphery.
I am sliding on the edge of consciousness and my orgasm builds, faster and faster, but there is still something missing. I tell this to Eric in between short gasps, and he frowns, and then tilts my head back, exposing the tender part of my neck, and starts to suck. I feel the pressure all the way down to my groin, and then I feel, finally, my pussy begin to convulse around him, and it’s there, that squirting wetness I’ve heard about only in pornos or in romance novels, a wetness that submerges everything, and all you can hear are my screams of “Yes, yes, YES!” before the entire room fills with my release and we drown.