Authors: Jessa Hawke
“Hey, I'm Sam,” she had said. “Who are you two?”
“We know who you are,” one of them replied. “Everyone in school does. You’re that cheerleader with all the curves that everyone drools over.”
Sam didn't know what to say so she took a drag of her smoke.
“My name’s Dave and this is Bob,” the one named Dave said. “We get called the Bradley brothers a lot because both of our last names are the same and we kind of look alike. And we are best friends so we spend a lot of time together. So maybe it makes sense.”
Bob let out a big cloud of blue smoke.
“Yeah,” he said. “Maybe it makes sense but it's still fucking obnoxious. I don't make up pet names for everyone and then expect them to answer to them like I'm some kind of fucking king or something.”
Sam laughed at this.
“When I was at my old school, before I was a cheerleader, I had a bunch of nick names,” she said. “None of them nice though. Funny how people never think up empowering nicknames for people. You never hear of anyone being nicknamed 'Good Looking Kid' or 'Really Smart and Destined for Greatness.”
Neither of the boys laughed but they both regarded her with intelligent eyes that sensed intelligence in Sam. The three were drawn together from that moment on, and Sam started hanging out with the Bradley brothers on a regular basis.
“Why do you hang out with those two so much,” her cheer mates would ask. “What do you see in them? They’re just weirdos.”
Sam would always laugh and explain that she and the brothers like the same kind of horror films, had the same sense of humor, and all three of them snuck smoke breaks behind the bleachers on a regular basis. As time went on the brothers and Sam became closer and closer. Sam started to notice little things about the brothers that made her think that maybe they were really related somehow, even after she met both of their separate families. The first thing that made her think this was the light fuzz of hair that covered their entire bodies. The hair was fine and at times appeared to be almost a film of dark gray. Both of the boys were very muscular, although you couldn't tell it from the baggy clothes that they regularly wore. It wasn't until Sam was hanging out with them in Bob's room and he walked out of the bathroom from showering in just a towel that she first became aware of it.
“Oh . . . oh my,” had been Sam's reaction.
Both of the boys had both laughed and thrown each other knowing looks. Girls frequently reacted that way when they were seen together out at the pool or horsing around on the football field, with their shirts off as they played a pick-up game.
Another thing Sam noticed about the boys is that they were both very smart. And not just the kind of smart people become from staring at books all day and all night. The boys were very good at puzzles and such things. They were also excellent at picking up different languages. It was as if they really had an ear for figuring out different tones and syllables words contained. Both of the boys listened to music in languages she could not even hope to begin to identify, although it seemed to be Slavic or something of that nature. They were also very interested in politics, paying close attention to distant wars and civil rights battles of which their peers at the university had no understanding. It was as if the two boys really were brothers, maybe not in the sense of coming from the same mother, but in the sense of having some kind of bond that went beyond blood relation.
As time went on, Sam realized that she found the two boys to be much more attractive than she first realized. They were dark and brooding, where most of the other boys at the university ran around talking about how drunk they got the night before, or trying to find someone to get them high over lunch break. Neither of the brothers seemed particularly interested in any of the girls at the university and this appealed to Sam as well. The girls at the university, although well-meaning and possessing that hard to find mid-western puritanism, were vapid and didn't seem to care about anything but getting drunk and following the boys around. Even the girls on the cheer squad seemed vacuous and devoid of any and all interests save cheer and their boyfriends. Only a few of the girls kept boys at an arms-length, allowing them closer only when their sexual appetite drove them to seek satiation in the arms of another.
For a long time Sam didn't think that she had any libido left after she exhausted herself keeping up on her school work and doing cheer leading—except when she sat in class and day dreamed about sexual encounters that she doubted that she would ever have the courage to take part in if they happened to her in real life. Often times the fantasies were pretty run of the mill, with a burly, blonde hair manned who took her by the hand and led her around a wonderful outdoor landscape with trees, birds and waterfalls, until they eventually made their way behind the waterfall to explore each other with their finger tips and mouths. In her mind’s eye Sam watched the man of her daydreams kiss her on the lips, then start pecking her way down to her belly button. Usually when the fantasies got too rich she would try to shut them off, but often times this wasn't possible.
Not all of the men of her fantasies were clean cut blonde guys with burly muscles and a Swedish accent. Some of the men of her daydreams were very dark and brooding. They would take her to rooms barely lit and pace around, muttering about things she did not understand and wasn't sure if the mutterings had to do with real life events or constructs of her mind. Sometimes the dark men would rant and rave about far off wars and distant political races. Often times they would lament some great civil rights violation that happened at home in America. Sam found these fantasies to be a kind of wonder to her since they were so different from the others, but all of the daydreams always ended the same. The man with her would kiss her on the lips, then slowly work his way down to her belly button where he might swirl his tongue around for a moment, and then she would snap out of it and be back in class, rubbing her thighs together, wondering if when she got up the glance she cast over her shoulder would find a wet spot on her seat.
Over time the blonde man of her daydreams was slowly replaced by the dark, brooding men that she had come to think of as lovers that would treat her the way she wanted to be treated. For some reason the clean cut blonde man seemed too much like the boys that ran around school talking about how much they had drunk the night before, and it really turned her off. The dark, brooding men offered an escape from the everyday grind of the people that surrounded her in the college towns. One day everything changed though, when the dark brooding men started to look a lot like the Bradley brothers.
“Oh my,” Sam thought. “I wonder what they would think if I told them about my little daydreams in class? Would they laugh at me? Would they tell me that I'm a freak and I need to fuck off? No, certainly not; they would never say anything like that to me. We've become too close over the last few months to be dismissive of each other like that. That is something the other boys would do, but not the Bradleys with their quiet strength and sophistication that no one else understands but me.”
The new development in her mind did give Sam pause though, but not the kind she first thought it would. Instead of blushing Sam became keenly aware of the boys when all three of them lounged around together watching movies or reading books. The boys didn't seem to notice at first, but soon enough began to wink at her and laugh among themselves.
“What?” Sam asked. “Is it weird that I think you two are cute because we are such good friends?”
“Not at all,” Bob answered. “We think you are cute too!”
And so things went on as they had, just flirtier than they had been before. Sam didn't want to push things with either of the boys and it seemed like the boys were content to let Sam come to them. Then midterms happened and all parties were so involved with studying that everyone forgot about the momentary introduction of sexual tension, as weakly flickering as it had been it was easy to let it fall by the wayside.
Along with midterms Sam had to train extra hard with her squad as a regional tournament approached. The competition would be girls from another school much larger that shared the same state initials as the university Sam attended. Her cheer squad knew that they would have to sharpen their skills and practice everything down to the last move; to the last small detail or they would have absolutely no chance of beating their arch enemies.
“Come on now girls!” the coach would yell during practice when they started to slack off. “We don't have an unlimited period of time to learn this stuff, and you all know that. Your time here at the university is short and precious. Not only do you need to learn valuable life skills while getting good grades, but you also need to know how to do the God damn routine we've been doing for the last few months! How many times do we have to go through this? Now, once again!”
Often times when Sam would hear the voice of her coach urging the team on she would think that after the tournament she would invest more time in the “brothers” and maybe one of them would take a serious liking to her. Sam felt puzzled when she thought about the prospect that one of the brothers might, in the future, have some kind of serious romantic attraction to her. When the idea that both brothers might take a liking to her at the same time and that it wouldn't necessarily change anything between the three of them she became so discombobulated that some of her throws were a little off, but not so off that anything bad happened or that her coach was tipped off to her mental dilemma.
Was it really a dilemma, though, she wondered. Was it really so wrong that three people might be attracted to each other, all at the same time? Well, she figured that the brothers probably weren't attracted to each other or they would have done something to give it away to her by now, but they were both most certainly attracted to her. It was one of those unsettling but somehow still warm and fuzzy things she had come to deal with after Bob had said both of them thought she was cute as well. To think that they both thought she was cute! It was as embarrassing as it was titillating to her. As the squad drilled more and more Sam thought about the three of them having some kind of romantic relationship more and more. She could never come up with the exact details of how it all would work, but she knew that there was a possibility simply because she'd imagined it and, if there was one thing cheer leading had taught her it was that anything was possible. But was truly anything possible? Could she forge a complex relationship with both of the “brothers” or would she have to pick one and have the other as friend only?
The tournament came and went, and the squad did excellently. They came in first over all the other schools, to include their arch enemy in the region. The coach gave the entire team a break from drilling so hard and everyone relaxed. Sam thought it was nice to have a break from working so hard at cheer and studying all the time for midterms. It had been what seemed like a long time since she had seen either Bob or Dave Bradley and she wondered if they had forgotten her, or maybe even found another girl to replace her, one that was skinny and perfect like the rest of the girls on the team. Just when she thought she would have to be the first one to text to set up some kind of hang out her phone chirped. It was a text from Dave.
Meet us at Bob's place. Movie night!
Was all the text read.
Sam took special care in getting all dolled up before heading over, but was sure to make it seem like she hadn't spent any time at all on her makeup. Instead of using garish reds she used muted peaches and didn't put very much mascara on. All in all it took her about twice as long as it normally would have to get done up if she would have done what she usually did, but she looked just like she wanted to and just like she thought she needed to in order to catch the boys eyes.
When she pulled into Bob's driveway she realized that neither of his parent’s cars was there. Wondering if they would have the house all to themselves that night she walked in the front door boldly and her questions was immediately answered. Bob and Dave sat on opposites ends of the couch passing a joint back and forth between each other.
“What are you two doing?” Sam gasped.
“Oh, come on,” Dave said. “Don't be such a goody-goody. We're smoking weed, what does it look like we are doing?”
Sam sat between them and watched with big eyes as they passed a joint over her. Finally, after just observing for a few minutes, she took her first toke of marijuana. She wasn't sure exactly what to do, but Bob told her to smoke it like it was a cigarette and she figured that advice was simple enough. She timidly held the trembling joint to her lips and inhaled. At first she didn't feel anything and looked at the joint as if it might be broken, and then at the two boys beside her like maybe they were playing some kind of trick. Sam took a few more pulls of the joint and everything started to feel good, and her inhibitions faded away.
Bob grabbed the remote and pressed play. On the screen in front of them a pulp detective movie played, low budget, the actors with haircuts from the eighties. Or at least that's what seemed to be playing out. Sam lost track of what was happening for a few minutes and when she looked back the detective had found the main suspect in a murder and was interrogating her by tying her up and fucking her. For a moment Sam was confused and afraid for the suspect, but when the young woman started to enjoy it with a gusto that was obviously pornographic she realized what they were watching together.