I raised my glass, my smile more of a grimace as my three brothers and I clinked our drinks together and spent the rest of the night pretending everything between us was okay.
CHAPTER 7
DANIEL
Sophie crowded behind me at the sink while I finished washing up the dishes from dinner. I’d cooked steak and roasted potatoes, and Sophie made a salad. We’d chased the meal down with half a bottle of wine between us, her cell phone sitting on the table next to the bottle the whole time.
Sophie had invited a man over.
She hadn’t told me much about him at all. She wanted me to be surprised, she’d said. And I thought a part of her wanted that as well. Almost a decade into our relationship and we’d both long ago stopped counting the other partners we took. Sophie had been with more, I’d guess, and that didn’t bother me. With the distance between us, most of our openness included individual partners in the cities we lived in. Sometimes, a few dates, sometimes it was just sex. Mostly it was just sex. Sometimes on a trip or an extended visit, we’d find a third for fun, but something about Sophie’s nervous anticipation had me feeling like she wanted this to be something more than fun.
That was one of the things we’d talked about at the beginning and again very recently. If we were open, did that mean we were open romantically or physically? We’d both agreed to not put a name or a limit on it, and that had been the way of it. Being inLos Angeles together with the rest of our lives laid out in front of us meant there were new possibilities. I wasn’t sure I had enough room in my heart to love someone else the way I loved Sophie, but I wasn’t against the idea of exploring that. If the right person came along.
“I can feel you vibrating with excitement,” I murmured, turning my head to the side and kissing Sophie’s forehead.
“I am excited.” She gave me a squeeze, then she gave me space. “I’ve never seen you with a man before.”
That, of course, was the other part of it.
I had absolutely been with men before, but all of our experience as a couple was the two of us plus another woman. I’d been honest with Sophie from the start about my bisexuality. There were plenty of women who’d been turned off by the idea in the past, but at my confession, Sophie had just smiled and kissed me like she’d never kissed me before.
“I don’t think you’re going to see me with a man tonight either.” I turned off the water and dried my hands. I was excited to meet this man she’d apparently cherry-picked for us. He’d been hovering in the back of my mind all week like a nameless specter. I’d thought about him intimately, a faceless body with a generic head buried between Sophie’s legs while she sucked me off on the couch, but those kinds of fantasies often fell flat.
Sophie’s elation over dinner when he’d answered her text had been contagious, if not a little nerve-wracking, though.
“Why do you say that?”
I chuckled and folded my arms in front of my chest. “Because I have six ounces of steak and at least a whole potato churning around in my stomach. Plus the anxiety.”
Sophie gave me a sympathetic smile and slid her arms around my waist, notching herself between my legs until I opened myself up to her and sighed happily when she pressed her cheek against my chest.
“You’re being too practical.”
“Someone has to be.”
I had always been a planner. I liked to know where things were and how they would turn out. Sophie had been the biggest wildcard in my life, so it made sense she would be the one to introduce the next unpredictable factor into my life.
Into our life.
“How do you see this playing out?” I asked, kissing the top of her head. “Is this a for now thing or…”
“He’s cute,” she said in answer. “And I think he’s a good man. I mean, I don’t know a single thing about him besides what his brothers do for work and what color he’s painted his office, but I know he tried to walk away when I told him I was engaged and that has to count for something.”
She was right about that. It took a special kind of person to get involved with the dynamic Sophie and I had. There was no single right way to do an open or polyamorous relationship, and I didn’t know if ours was wrong. What I knew was it worked.
“That’s good, but not an answer.”
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
“Maybe he turns out to be a me thing or an us thing. Maybe it’s a next weekend thing or maybe it’s an every Tuesday night thing. I don’t know.” Sophie tapped her fingernails against my chin, a sign she wanted a kiss, so I gave her one. “What I do know is we’ll find out together.”
“Besides. He could end up being amething.” I flicked my thumb across the tip of her nose, laughing when her eyes went wide with shock.
She untangled herself from my arms and slid down the counter. Sophie raised up onto her toes to get a clean wine glass out of the cabinet, and she passed it to me. The instruction clear, I brought it to the table, set it in front of one of the empty chairs,then sat down in my still warm seat and filled all three of the wine glasses.
She sank down into her chair and took the wine with a smile.
“Would you be jealous?” I asked.