Diva
Twelve
“WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?” Lissa asked. We were cuddled in the bed, hot and sticky from hours of making love, but unwilling to break the contact among us for even as long as it took to go to the shower. The two-hour time change for Lissa and Melody had worked in their favor as midnight didn’t seem late and one a.m. was still prime time.
“We could just stay like this and order room service again,” Melody suggested. She was completely relaxed and still enjoying having me attend to her right nipple with my tongue as we talked.
“We can do that,” Lissa responded, “but you know what I mean. I was crazy without you two while I was in quarantine. Now you’re headed to Boston and Tony is going to Nebraska. I have to go back home to my big empty bed. I don’t know how to deal with that. You’ve got me hooked and I want to be with you.”
“I felt so incomplete when I was alone,” Melody added. “Even with Kate for company, I felt like part of my heart was missing.”
“I think that’s part of what happened when I was with Allie,” I agreed. “It was exciting, but I didn’t feel like I was all there.”
I’d been thinking about this a lot over the past week. Being in Chicago while Melody was in Lissa’s house and Lissa was sick at Jack’s had been hard on all of us.
“I don’t know how I’m going to face a month in Nebraska without you. Long-distance relationships suck,” I continued.
“I suck!” Melody said brightly. We laughed and Lissa and I demonstrated our ability as well as Melody squealed in delight.
We were all panting and laughing, catching our breath. There was a cloud of darkness hanging near my mind and I kept it pushed back by immersing myself again in the touch of my lovers.
“Can you meet me in the middle?” I asked.
“I think I just did,” Lissa laughed.
“You know what I mean,” I insisted. “Come and spend a week in the cornfields of Nebraska?”
“I don’t think my parents are going to spring for a plane ticket to visit my boyfriend,” Melody sighed. “I can already see the chains being put on my bedroom door when I get back.”
“How are your mom and dad doing?” I asked.
“We’ll find out tomorrow, I suppose,” she said. “It might actually make it easier on me when I’m back in Boston. If they’re living separately, they can’t watch me all the time.”
“I could get a week away,” Lissa said. “Jack feels like he really owes us, even though none of the sickness was his fault. My job is flexible and with a phone and laptop the store doesn’t really care where I am. But with one of you in Boston and one in Omaha, where would I spend my week?”
“We’re going to have to tough it out and get back home as soon as possible,” I said. We kissed in pairs and together, reveling in being held and comforted by our lovers.
“Home,” Lissa whispered. “Do you really think of it as home, Tony?”
“It’s where the heart is, as they say,” I answered. “When Mom and Dad talk about us going home for the summer, it seems more like going away for a visit.”
“My mom has started packing up our house,” Melody said. “I expect it’s the last time I’ll ever go back to the place I grew up. She wants to put it on the market before the fall buying season.”
“Loves,” Lissa whispered. “We’ve talked around this before, but never put the real question in words. I think it’s my part to make it explicit.” We looked at Lissa and she kissed us both again. “Will you live with me, share my house, and move in with the boys and me? Both of you?”
I glanced at Melody and she had the biggest grin on her face I’d ever seen. I was pretty sure it was reflected on mine. She beat me to Lissa’s lips so I settled for nibbling on our lover’s neck until she squirmed from the tickling.
“Yes!” both Melody and I told her.
“But we have to share more than your house, Lissa,” I said. “It means really being a family. I know Melody and I won’t be able to hold down great jobs while we’re trying to get degrees, but I have housing and food allowances in my scholarship. I want to contribute to the cost of the household and rent.”
“I do, too,” Melody said. “We have to pay for housing regardless. I don’t want to move in and just mooch off of you.”
“Oh, sweethearts,” Lissa said. “You know I’d just say don’t worry about it, but even from my side, I know how important it is to be partners in this. We’ll work it out. I just want you with me.”
Eventually we slept, woke, made love again, showered, and met my parents for breakfast—on time.
Mom was great! She walked right past me and swept Lissa and Melody together into a hug that had ‘family’ written all over it. She didn’t hesitate trying to figure out protocol over whether to give the oldest, prettiest, closest, or friendliest girl first greeting. She captured them both and pretty much dragged them away from me toward their booth. Dad grinned and gave me a hug before turning to look at the women.
“We’ll be lucky to see any of the three of them for the rest of the day,” he said.
“But Dad, you haven’t met Melody yet.” I dragged Melody out of Mom’s grip for a minute and said, “Sweetheart, I have two parents and you have to meet Dad, too. Dad, this is Melody; Melody, Saul.”
“I’m so happy to meet you both in person!” Melody squealed, hugging my father.
“Hi, Saul,” Lissa said, coming back to him. “It’s good to see you again.” Dad gave as good as he got when Lissa and Melody hugged him and we finally got settled.
“Well, I guess I don’t have to introduce anybody to Mom,” I said. She’d positioned the girls on either side of her, leaving Dad and me to share the bench on the other side of the booth.
“Oh, we’re old friends now,” Mom said. “I talk to these girls more often than I do my own son.” My eyebrows shot up. I had no idea they were talking to Mom that often. “Now, how are the boys?” she asked.
After the Intercollegiate and our experience with Melody’s parents, we decided that we had to tell my folks about the boys right away. We’d sent them the same picture that we sent to Mr. Anderson and they were just as excited about having two little boys to dote over as at my having two beautiful girlfriends.
“I hope you don’t mind us coming for a little visit this fall,” Mom said. “I so want to meet everyone!”
“Why don’t you come for Thanksgiving?” Lissa asked. “That will give time for Tony and Melody to get settled back in school, and I’ll be done with The Open. It’s in October and things will be pretty crazy before that.”
Just that quickly it was agreed that my folks would visit us for Thanksgiving. I thought that was pretty cool. My parents were coming to visit my girlfriends and me in our home for a holiday! Wow!
Mom and Dad were pretty amazing. I’d never doubted how much they loved me and supported me, but my first year in college had left me in such a deep depression that there were times I couldn’t force myself to pick up the phone to call them. I got so caught up in feeling like I had to be independent and that calling home was a sign of my failure. With Melody and Lissa’s help, I realized that part of my depression was feeling cut off from the incredible support I’d always had from my family. I loved them like crazy and I was sure my being away at school had been as hard on them as on me.
After we’d caught up with how the boys were doing now that the illness had passed, we ordered breakfast and caught up on everything else, including my parents having to deliver a blow-by-blow description of my four matches.
“I really want to go back over for the finals tonight,” I said. I hadn’t felt compelled to sit through every match up to this time, but the Division B finals would be at 3:00 and 4:30, the women’s Division A final at six-thirty, and the men’s at eight o’clock. I definitely wanted to be there for the last two.
“How many tickets will we need, then,” Dad asked. “I’ll call over and reserve them.”
“Allison left Lissa her credentials, and Coach Jacobson left his for you, Dad. So we’ll need tickets for Mom, Melody, and the Andersons.”
“Oh, yes. And when will your parents be in, dear?” Mom asked Melody.
“About noon,” Melody said and then hesitated before going on. “I don’t know if they’ll go to the game tonight or not. My parents are… um… not as… accepting as you are, I’m afraid.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll work on them,” Mom said firmly.
“Well, Mom has really come around, but my father is a different matter. Mom doesn’t really stand up to him and I just don’t trust what will happen when they’re together. With the divorce and everything, I don’t know…” Melody shrank down in her seat and looked longingly across the table at me. I reached for her hand, but Mom was there before me and pulled Melody to her like a daughter.
“Don’t you worry, dear,” she said. “It will be all right.” She held the embrace for a moment and Melody sighed. Then Mom excused herself and Lissa moved to let her out.
“I see I made a foolish mistake when I forced you both to sit with me. Tony, go sit with your girlfriends so I can have my husband,” Mom said, shooing me out of my seat. I don’t know if she expected me to get between them, but she just smiled when Lissa slid to the middle and hugged Melody, then turned to me and did the same.
“It really is,” Mom said quietly as she gripped Dad’s hand. I looked at her curiously. Dad took over the conversation.
“That wasn’t a set-up,” he started. “But Deborah and I don’t have a lot of experience with… shall we say… arrangements like yours. So we’ve done quite a lot of reading in the past few weeks. Do you know that literature is full of threesomes, but most are of the sort where two women share a man or two men share a woman? They are almost without exception two-on-one arrangements. We weren’t sure what to expect. We thought you would automatically both move to opposite sides of Tony. But you are truly all three in love with each other. It’s beautiful.”
We looked at each other and none of us could imagine any other way it could possibly be. At the same time, there was a palpable new level of acceptance on my parents’ part. We decided that it was time to tell them about our plans for the fall.
“It’s going to be a hard summer on all of you,” Mom said when we’d told them of our plans to move in with Lissa. “We want Tony to be with us this summer, too, but we promise not to keep him away too long. Now that I actually see the three of you together, I can’t imagine what it must be like for you to be apart.”
As much as I wanted to spend all my time in the presence of my girlfriends, and as much as I wanted to share them with my parents, I had another task in mind and I suggested that we spend the couple of hours until Melody’s parents arrived doing a little shopping on the Loop. I held a quick whispered conversation with my mom on the walk over to State Street.
“Oh, look!” Mom shouted as we approached Washington and State Street. “Macy’s is having a sale! Surely you boys can give us a little bit of girl-time, can’t you?” Dad and I laughed and sent them on their way, promising to meet back at the corner in two hours.
“So, shall we just stand here and see how many people we know?” Dad asked. He’d told me a long time ago that if you just stood at State and Washington in Chicago for an hour at any time of day or night, you would meet someone you knew. I didn’t have any idea if it was true, but I had a different mission in mind.
“I need your help picking out a couple of little gifts,” I said. “That’s why Mom shanghaied the girls.”
“I had a feeling there was a plot under way,” he laughed. “Lead on!”
I’d had some time before Allison left to do a little Internet shopping and found a store just off Michigan on Washington that had what I thought I wanted. When we entered, it was like going into another world. The Loop, especially when you are right under the El on Washington, is noisy. The trains are loud and everyone on the street is shouting to be heard above them. Add the traffic noise and homeless people trying to get your attention and you really can’t hear yourself think. But when we walked into this jewelry store, all the noise was left outside.
Thick carpet muffled our footsteps as we approached the counter and a very pleasant middle-aged woman approached after we’d had a chance to survey our surroundings. She was friendly and spoke in an equally muffled tone so as not to disturb anyone else around.
“Good morning. I’m Miss Hayes. May I help you gentlemen find something in particular, or would you prefer to browse?” she asked pleasantly. Under other circumstances, I’d have bolted right then and there. Everything about this store screamed more money than I’d ever see in my lifetime, but I did have a savings account and was sure I had funds enough to cover the purchase. The problem was that I didn’t have cash or a credit card.
“May we have just a minute to consult and then ask for your assistance?” I asked. She acquiesced and moved a respectful distance away while I turned to Dad. He raised an eyebrow at me, waiting.
“Dad, I need to make a purchase, but a place like this isn’t going to take my check and I don’t have cash. Can I borrow your credit card and pay you when we get back home?”
“Ahh. So that is why you wanted me along. Front the bill. How much are we talking about?”
“About a thousand dollars.” Both his eyebrows shot up.
“Are you really ready for this, Tony?” he asked. I swallowed hard and nodded my head. He looked me straight in the eye for a few seconds and I knew not to waver. Then he nodded and said, “Okay.” I approached the saleslady.
“Excuse me,” I said. I pulled out my phone and called up the picture I had downloaded from the Internet. “I’m interested in this.” She looked at the picture and then back at me in surprise.
“You are aware that piece of jewelry is often for groups… of… uh… three?” I nodded my head. She made a slight gesture to my dad and me and looked the question at me.
“No,” I said. “This is my dad. He’s helping me with the purchase.”
She moved back behind a display case and opened a drawer beneath a display of necklaces.
“What configuration would you like?” she asked. I’d only seen one picture, so I wasn’t sure what she meant. She went on, “We have it with two gold and one diamond, with two diamond and one gold, and with three of either.”
“Oh! I’d like the ones with two diamond settings and one gold. And I’ll need…”
“Two of them,” she finished for me. “We don’t sell many of these, but we never sell just one.” She produced two velvet boxes and opened them. The contents were identical. Two diamond studded hearts were interlocked with one in gold. I snorted a little when I saw them up close. It was the first time I realized that they looked a little like a daisy chain. “Not right?” she asked, noting my reaction.
“Oh no!” I hastened to correct her. “They’re perfect. I’ll need two 16-inch simple gold chains, as well.”
“Not going to let them hide it,” she laughed. “I think we can fix up exactly what you need. Monique?” she summoned another saleslady. Monique was both younger and more slightly built than Miss Hayes. The older woman quickly threaded one of the pendants on a chain and lifted it to fasten around Monique’s neck. I could see right away that it wasn’t quite right.
“May I suggest,” Miss Hayes said as she demonstrated by holding the ends of the chain at different positions on Monique’s neck, “that you either go with an eighteen-inch chain so the pendant clears the collar bone, or try a fifteen-inch chain so that it nestles in the hollow of her throat. If you find that it’s not quite right after you’ve presented it, I’ll be happy to trade it for the correct size or cut it if necessary.”
We agreed on the shorter chain. I thanked Monique for modeling it for me. Miss Hayes wrote up the sale and changed the necklaces from a pendant box to a long narrow box for bracelets and necklaces. The presentation looked divine. I declined gift-wrapping.
“This is a lovely gift for two special women,” Miss Hayes chatted as she ran Dad’s credit card.
“Oh believe me,” Dad said, “the young ladies are every bit as lovely as the jewelry.” She raised her eyes to me.
“You are a very lucky young man on several counts,” she smiled. “I wish you… shall we say… triple happiness.”
I slid the bag into Dad’s jacket pocket before we went to meet the girls and told him I’d get them later. I described what I wanted to do and Dad got that kind of crooked smile on his face that parents get when they can’t believe what their kids want, but do it anyway.
Comments
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
