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  Kyoko headed in Jesse’s direction.

  “But chill on the schlong shot,” Kensuke said. “I’m over eighteen. It’s not felonious.”

  “Just stupid, insensitive, and not something I’m interested in. Can you get that?”

  “Alright, man.”

  “Do it again and I’ll block you.” Tom Alan turned his back.

  “You’re eighteen? For real?” Erika offered a hand.

  “Hundred percent.” Kensuke glanced at the ice, then back up with a look that might have been contrition. “I wouldn’t get no one in trouble like that, especially Tom Alan.” When he fished out his I.D., the bravado returned. “See? Dude’s getting all attitudinal over nothing.”

  “Speaking of attitude, lose yours.” Erika took the license once Kensuke was steady on his feet. If it wasn’t fake, he was of legal age, close to nineteen, in fact, even if he would be heading back to high school in a week or so.

  “I flunked a couple times.” He stared ahead, to the door Jesse had gone through. “I coulda gone to summer school or really just taken the final until I passed it, but I want to…I don’t want to…”

  “Leave Jesse?”

  “Maybe. And I lied to coach Gingerlicious because I was scared I’d age out of hockey. What’s the big? ‘Cept for my c—?”

  “Shut it!” Tom Alan hadn’t gone far.

  “Don’t tell her.” Kensuke suddenly seemed almost scared.

  “If you care so much about Jesse, why’d you break up with her?”

  “I didn’t. She dumped me.”

  “Because you cheated on her?”

  “You don’t know shit,” Kensuke told Tom Alan.

  “Hey! You don’t come onto our ice and talk to me like that!”

  “Sorry,” Kensuke replied, first with petulance and then more sincerely. “Really. I am. Man, it’s so messed up.”

  “What is?” Erika asked.

  “It’s not really cheating—what we did.”

  “We didn’t do anything!” Tom Alan insisted.

  “Right. We didn’t,” Kensuke said to Erika. Then he smacked himself in the head with both hands. “Fuck!”

  “No cursing either,” Erika told him.

  “Sorry.” There were things about him reminiscent of Tom Alan as well, who also once apologized for everything. “I love her, ya know? But there’s some really complicated sh—stuff going on.”

  “Because you’re gay?”

  “I don’t have to be,” Kensuke said softly.

  Tom Alan disagreed. “If you are,” he said, showing his usual gentle side “I think you kind of do.”

  “Yeah. I guess. But I can still love Jesse. Everything ain’t about sex.”

  “Plus, you figure you can get that somewhere else. That about right?”

  Kensuke sighed loudly, while Erika awaited a response to Tom Alan’s question. “Jess is down with that, actually.” Erika challenged the statement with a look. “She is. I swear. And don’t all gay dudes, like, step out on the side?”

  “Not all of them,” Tom Alan said. “If that’s the information you’re getting, you need to do better research.”

  “Jess proposed this sort of a deal, yo, where me and her are a couple, but we both can, like, do whatever we want. Like an open relationship kinda thing. Not with a bunch of people, maybe, but like a third one. That could work, don’t ya think?”

  “Not really,” Erika and Tom Alan answered in unison.

  “Well, it doesn’t even matter anymore,” Kensuke said. “‘Cause whatever her problem is now, she all of a sudden said we’re done and won’t say nothing else about why.”

  “We may as well call it a day,” Kyoko announced, coming down the steps from the balcony above the ice. It was a welcome distraction, because Erika had no idea what else to say to the kid, and Tom Alan was about to chew his bottom lip off. “Jesse will join us. Young man, I’m afraid you’ll have to go.”

  Kensuke looked about to argue, but then thought better of it. “Yes, ma’am. But the train doesn’t head back for an hour, so…”

  “You can sit outside.”

  And that was where they left him.

  Once home, Tom Alan and Erika chatted in the modern Japanese-style living room, all cream, dark brown, and gray. Billy stood with Etsuko, there to drop her off. He wouldn’t sit, nor would he commit to staying for dinner, but he hadn’t yet left either. Milo offered Tom Alan a half-hearted kiss as he entered, obviously worn out from his day downstate. Then he plopped down on the floor with him, while Kyoko was in the kitchen with her sous-chef, Jesse. Dinner was held up for Milo, so Billy filled everyone in on Etsuko’s day. “We saw a giraffe, and a monkey, and a penguin, and a flamingo…” Afterward, Tom Alan filled Milo in on his and Erika’s, as the house started to fill up with the smell of beef stew.

  “Big day for monkeys,” Milo said, “zoo monkeys and butt monkeys. Glad the kid came out, but that ‘All gay guys mess around’ stuff…? It sounds like a philosophy I once lived by, doesn’t it?” He blew Etsuko kisses as she reached out for his untamed coppery mane.

  “‘Out of sight out of mind, out of his pants, Booger,’” Tom Alan said.

  “I still can’t believe you ever called me that!” Milo took Etsuko, who insisted on joining him down on the floor.

  “Someone else did.” Tom Alan gave them each a nuzzle. “I just agreed with them.”

  “And it was accurate.” Billy tapped Milo’s knee playfully with the toe of his sneaker. “Once upon a time, you were quite the man whore.”

  “Shh. Little ears are listening,” Erika said.

  “Peanut’s first word was f-u-c-k.” Peanut was Billy’s baby brother, Burgess. “I taught it to him.” He seemed so proud. “Dad thought it was hilarious. Mom, not so much.”

  “That’s a different story,” Erika said. “People might giggle if a toddler curses. No one’s going to laugh if she calls someone…” Erika lowered her voice. “A butt monkey or a man whore.”

  “Got it. No naughty words in front of the princess.” Milo loudly smooched Etsuko on both cheeks and her forehead then took Tom Alan’s hand.

  “Get a room.”

  “Got one,” Tom Alan said.

  “And speaking of…”

  Kyoko and Jesse’s entrance meant Erika’s confession and warning would have to wait. “Jesse’s staying the night. I’m going to put her in the guest room. Dinner’s in fifteen minutes.” They breezed through the room with barely a pause.

  “Um…What now?” Milo asked. “How’d we end up with a boarder?”

  “You’re a boarder.” Erika offered another jab.

  “Tell your mommy if it wasn’t for me, you’d have been born on the front portico instead of in a hospital.”

  “And I woulda still been the last one called.” Billy was holding a grudge.

  “We are sorry about that, Hockey Puck, but you made it on time.”

  “Thanks to you. No one else even bothered to think of me.”

  “I never stopped thinking of you, Billy. I was also a little bit busy,” Erika said.

  “Don’t look at me.” Tom Alan put up both hands. “I was at an airport.”

  The tension broke over dinner. Billy stayed, and though he didn’t say much while chowing down on Kyoko’s meal, he did goof off with Milo and Tom Alan while helping with the dishes. They formed a little assembly line. Tom Alan washed, Billy dried, and Milo put the dishes away.

  “Top shelf, Hockey Puck.” Slightly lacking in the height department, whenever Milo needed a boost, he’d give a shout, then hold out his arms, like Etsuko when she wanted out of her crib in the morning.

  “Going up.” Billy would hoist him into the air so he could put the glasses up high, “Going down,” and then set him back on his feet, like Tom Alan did with Erika when they skated.

  “I’ll have to ask Skater Boy’s permission on that one,” Milo said.

  “Eh. Some people don’t even consider it sex.”

  “Things are backing up here, Bill.”
Tom Alan got three plates ahead while Milo was in the air. “You’re slacking off.”

  “Now there’s something we could all do together.”

  “No more of that. Tom’s getting mad. On it, Tom!” A hard snap of the dishtowel against Tom Alan’s ass rang out. Retaliation was a white foam facial flung off his fingertips aimed at both Billy and Milo. Sitting there watching it all, Erika was also getting wet.

  Billy departed for the night offering two kisses at the door, one to Etsuko and one to Milo—right on the lips. Perhaps it was a not-so-subtle hint concerning an upcoming announcement. Perhaps it was a dig at Erika, who’d been tempted to ask him to stay over, but hadn’t. An hour later, Tom Alan and Milo were at it again. Erika had needed the AC, so she’d moved the chair from in front of the vent. Then it went off. She should have set the thermostat lower. “Can’t they skip a couple of nights until they get back to their own apartment?” she asked Flip—maybe Twizzle? “Are they ever going back to their own apartment?” Erika would miss them, but maybe out of sight out of mind would work for her, too.

  “I love you,” she heard, and her heart filled with emotion.

  “Probably not. Fine.” She got up. “If you gotta, you gotta.” Back to the bed in the nursery it was.

  “Milo…?” Tom Alan spoke as she reached for her robe.

  “Yes, love?”

  “I’m not listening,” Erika whispered.

  “When you…when you flirt with Billy…”

  Uh oh. Now she was.

  “Flirt? Is that what I’m doing?” Milo asked. “I wouldn’t call it that.”

  When Erika heard a ribald slap against bare flesh, she got a pang somewhere else and figured everything was fine.

  “Does it bother you?” Milo asked in the other room.

  Did it?

  “A little,” Tom Alan said.

  “Aww, Skater Boy. You’re my one and only.”

  “I know.”

  “And I’m yours, now, aren’t I?”

  “Of course.”

  “There we go, then.”

  Was that it? Erika waited for more talking. All she heard was heavy breathing. “Guess so.” She picked up her phone off the dresser.

  “I’ve been horny all day…especially since washing dishes,” Tom Alan said.

  Every line can’t be poetry, Erika figured. She swiped for Billy’s photos from the other night. They brought a smile and a twinge.

  Erika: Hey you.

  Billy: Hey.

  Erika: Tonight was nice…all of us together.

  Billy: Yeah?

  Erika: I hate for it to end. Feel like some company?

  Billy: Seriously?

  A groan and a grunt said things were moving quickly upstairs. Creaking box springs and a tap against the wall came next—the headboard or maybe an elbow.

  Erika: Yeah. We start late tomorrow and Mother will watch Etsuko.

  Billy: Then cum on over.

  Erika smiled.

  Billy: I mean come.

  Erika: Put your wet Rangers t-shirt back on. The one you wore doing dishes.

  Billy: It’s not wet anymore.

  Erika: I am.

  Billy: Damn!

  Erika: :) We should talk first.

  She had the whole speech worked out in her head. “I care about you too much just to be exes with benefits, but my infatuation…” She’d agonized over the one word. “My infatuation with Tom Alan doesn’t seem to want to go away. If you can handle that, maybe we can agree to be exclusive and see where things go?”

  Billy: “Talk” Uh oh. “First” I like the sound of.

  Erika stood at the dresser, trying to decide what to put on—something quick and comfortable, or something sexy.

  Erika: Not talking was a problem in the past. You said that. Remember?

  Billy: I do. We’ll talk.

  Erika: I’ll be there within the hour.

  On her way to the door, she listened for additional sex noises at the foot of the stairs, more because of the houseguest than to fulfill her fantasies. “He’s taken,” she whispered, “and you love Billy…too.” With her hand on the handle, Erika thought of something else. “Crap!” The roll of self-adhesive frosted window covering she’d bought was still jammed under the guest bathroom sink, because Erika had been far too busy to remember to stick it up.

  Back in her bedroom, practically hanging out the one there, she tried to look up toward Tom Alan’s atrium door. Maybe they pulled the drapes, she thought. The flexibility she’d developed from skating came in handy, except she still couldn’t see a thing, except the bottom of the room, which made a roof over the herringbone brick patio below it. Turning slightly, she could make out a light in Jesse’s window, though, and a shadow heading toward the bathroom.

  “Come on! Don’t go in there.” What to do? Erika was back in the living room. Should she head upstairs to Jesse, or tell Bangers and Mash to close the drapes? Opting for the first, “Jesse,” she quietly knocked. “You awake?” The door was slightly open. When Erika touched it, it swung in even further. The light in the bedroom was on, but Jesse wasn’t in there. Her silhouette was clear in the bathroom, however, perched up upon the vanity, stretching to see out the window.

  Erika tiptoed down toward the living room. She grabbed her phone and dialed Jesse’s number, hoping to tear her away. The voyeuristic teen didn’t answer. “Shoot.” A text to Tom Alan was her next best alternative.

  Erika: Close the curtain on the door to the deck. You have an audience.

  Tom Alan: Huh?

  She knew he would answer—always. They had that kind of relationship. Even in the middle of sex, if he heard her ringtone, “Bells of Moscow”, he’d stop and check his phone.

  Erika: You can see right into your sexatorium from the guest room bath.

  Erika: Jesse is probably peeping as you read this.

  Milo: And you know this how?

  Tom Alan, meanwhile, sent the angriest emoticon Erika had ever seen.

  Erika: I ACCIDENTALLY caught the show last night.

  It was the coward’s way to do it, but at least it was done.

  Milo: And watched for forty minutes?

  Erika: You wish.

  Milo: Open invite. :p

  Tom Alan found an even angrier face to send.

  Erika: I repeat. Close the curtains!

  Erika: I’m off to Billy’s.

  Erika: C ya in the morning. Bye-e.

  Her phone buzzed one last time as she listened to Jesse cross back to her room. It was a jpeg Erika studied closely, a selfie of Milo sticking his tongue against a part of Tom Alan’s anatomy. She rubbed the seam down the front of her yoga pants, all the way from where it started below the waist to where it curved to start up the split of her rear end. Billy’s early interjection came to mind. “Damn!”

  “Erika?”

  She jumped at the sound of her name.

  “Can we talk a few minutes?”

  “I was just…” She couldn’t ignore the sadness in Jesse’s eyes when she turned around. “Sure. Let’s sit at the kitchen island. I know where my mother hides the cookies.”

  Jesse was on her third, snuggling up to one of the cats when she finally spoke again. “What’s his name?”

  “Flip or Twizzle…I can never tell them apart.” Whichever one Jesse wasn’t holding amused herself circling the rungs of the stool like a stripper pole. “Tom Alan gave them to Milo for their second year of Christmas. They’re tortoiseshell kittens, like two turtle doves, from the song. ‘What the heck would we do with birds?’ he’d said.” Erika was hoping for a smile. “He’s planned out the next twelve years’ gifts already.” She suddenly remembered many of them were sexual. Six geese a-laying and drummers drumming were going to be awfully loud through the heat vent. Wait. Would they all still be living together in ten more years? “Tom Alan gave Milo a perpetual digital clock and calendar. The battery is supposed to last forever—just like their relationship. Sweet, huh?”

  Jesse just stroked
the cat. A girl going through a breakup probably didn’t want to hear about the great love story of Tom Alan and Milo. Erika stopped rambling then, and just waited her out.

  “Your mother’s tight.”

  “She is. Yes.”

  “And Milo is really hot.”

  “Yeah.” Jesus! Not another crush!

  “I know you know I was just watching them.”

  Erika nearly did a spit-take with her sparkling water. “That’s really not something you should do.”

  “I didn’t mean to at first. I just looked out the window…and then I saw.”

  Erika could believe that.

  “I swear.”

  Some of Jesse’s words had an extra syllable, an ah on the end, like “swear-ah”.

  “Just for a second,” Jesse said. “How did you know I was doing it?”

  “Woman’s intuition.” Erika smiled.

  “I don’t have that.” Jesse finished her milk. “Did you know, like, as recent as the eighties, if a guy had a crush on another guy, people would try to convince him it meant he wanted to be like him, not be with him.”

  “That was a thing?”

  “I read about it online,” Jesse said.

  “Is this about Kensuke?” Erika cautiously asked.

  “Sort of.”

  “You think he’s maybe not gay, but just admires guys like Tom Alan or Milo.”

  “Oh, no. Kensuke is definitely gay. He wants to fuck Tom Alan.” She scrunched up her face. “Sorry.”

  “But you love him anyway, even if he is?”

  “Sometimes I love him. Sometimes he’s an assho—a jerk.”

  “Sounds like every man I’ve ever met.” Erika smiled again. It was hard to see in the dim light of the room, lowered so as not to wake anyone sleeping, but Jesse frowned.

  “Kensuke and me have sex, but only one way. I figured the only way to keep him was to let him cheat, because I don’t have a dick he can suck.”

  Erika had no idea how to respond to that.

  “That doesn’t mean our feelings aren’t real.”

  “I know.”

  “Some kids in school call me a dyke.” Jesse stared into her empty glass. “Because I dress like I do and I’m not into supposedly girly things like cheerleading and homecoming queen.”

  “I heard that a few times, too, because I’m an athlete. There were a lot of mean girls in my school.”