Good instincts

You hadn't even realized it was raining outside.

Scott kicks his muddy shoes off while he's still on the deck, just leaving them out there, and slides the glass door shut again behind him. "Hey," he says. "So... I guess that talk can't have gone too badly."

You feel the embarrassed flush starting to creep clear up into your hairline as you try to recall exactly how long you and Dex sat here in the kitchen clumsily making out, and don't come up with any good answer other than: a while. Whatever he saw he probably got a good eyeful since it's dark outside and the door that leads out to the deck is glass.

Dex stands up and goes into the bedroom, which at first you think is just him fleeing without explanation or excuse, but he returns a second later with a towel for Scott, which he hands over. There's a second where their hands brush, and they share a glance you don't quite understand, and then the moment is past and you're left wondering if maybe you imagined it.

Scott peels off his t-shirt and tosses it on the floor by the door, then drops his shorts and steps out of them before methodically beginning to dry himself off with the towel. He asks Dex something, in a voice too low for you to make out all the way in the kitchen, and Dex shakes his head no. Scott's expression in response reads like a confusing mix of mingled relief and disappointment. "That explains—" You miss the rest of it and that's bothersome enough that you get to your feet too and decide it's time to join them in the living room.

"That explains what?" you prompt a few seconds later. They exchange another look.

"Your lack of incoherent rage?" Scott offers after a second.

You stare at him, puzzled.

"Were you going to tell her?" he asks Dex, bluntly.

The question flusters Dex more than you expected, considering he already told you his giant secret revelation!

"He already told me," you put in. "Not that we've, uh, talked it out all the way." You feel your cheeks warm again, since the main reason you haven't talked it out further is that you kissed Dex and then told him to shut up when he protested.

Scott gives you a dubious look.

"I was going to," Dex protests, now looking quite worried. "I just hadn't gotten there yet."

"What the fuck, there's more?" you demand, throwing Dex a sharp look to show how bewildered you are.

“Look, I’m wiped out, and sick to **** of all this so I'm just going to fall on this sword myself. Have a seat, Bridge,” Scott says, ignoring Dex’s horrified sputter of alarm and dropping into the armchair next to the couch. Something crinkles under him, and when he reaches down to see what, it turns out to be one of your dinosaur oatmeal packets.

You can’t help letting out a little bark of laughter at this, which neither of them echo. Dex is still staring at Scott with a sort of half disbelief that seems to annoy its recipient. “Relax,” Scott says. “I’m not going to make you sound like a total asshole. Or myself. Because we aren't. Okay? Sit,” he says to you, so you perch yourself on the edge of the couch.

Dex nods unhappily, glances at you, then quickly averts his gaze again.

Oh, cool. More of this.

Dex sits down at the other end of the couch.

“Great,” Scott says, carelessly tossing the paper oatmeal packet onto the end table. “Okay, Bridge. You’re probably going to wonder, why didn’t we tell you this sooner, what’s so wrong with you we couldn’t be open, that kinda thing. The answer to that stuff is, nothing to do with you. It had to do with us not being brave enough. Don’t get all carried away being upset about that, okay? We love you, babe, but you take shit personally when it isn't, and it’s exhausting sometimes. Just do your best.”

By the end of that surprisingly officious speech, your cheeks are flaming. “I know,” Scott says, when all you do is fold your hands awkwardly together in your lap and nod in acknowledgment. “We don’t like feeling pathological either.”

Scott clears his throat. “Okay. Right. First. The big one, that’s mine, I’m gay for at least one guy, which is him.” He inclines his head toward Dex, who seems to be avoiding your stunned gaze. “Still like girls. Haven’t found any other guys I’m interested in yet. I still feel pretty weird about it and I’m kinda worried my dad is going to flip the absolute fuck out if he finds out, since most older Asian dudes aren't exactly lining up to march with the rainbow brigade for pride week. So we kept it a secret, even from you. Against his better judgment,” he adds, with another nod at Dex.

There’s a pause, but neither you nor Dex moves to fill it. Your concentration is too eaten up by the effort of doing like Scott asked and trying not to take this announcement personally or feel too hurt about it. And by the small piece of your brain currently running some interesting calculations on your conversation and subsequent makeout session with Dex, in light of this new information.

“And my thing,” Dex puts in after a few seconds, grimly resolute.

“Yeah, in a minute. That’s not as bad as mine,” Scott says, which makes Dex snort a little. “Things hadn’t been very good with us for a while before that New Year’s party from hell, but they came to a head right before that and we split up not long after things got started. I was feeling cut loose and reckless and pissed off and hurt and it was my flirting with you that kind of sent him spiraling.” You recall back to that party, from before things went so badly to shit. All you remember was Dex being impatient, or upset, about something. He wanted you to leave with him, but you wanted to stay… because it was only ten o’clock, and you sort of wanted to see where the thing with Scott might go. It was the first time your friend ever acted like that with you, and you’d had a couple beers, and god, was it fun to feel pretty and desirable. Unlike you and Dex, Scott is a natural charmer with an effortless, devastatingly irresistible charisma that wins over everyone from balding sixty year old high school principals to, oh, the entire student body.

“You remember he left early,” Scott says. You nod. “Well, he was pretty **** to save you from being seduced by me, but he couldn’t exactly explain all of it to you since I’d kept everything under such a strict gag order for the last, oh, three years? So he made a small mistake that turned out to have bigger consequences. He tried to get your dad to come pick you up at the party, but instead your Mom got wind of it. And I mean, probably you know the rest. But it was just shitty luck. It was a moment of stress and he’d never screw you over like that on purpose.”

You stare, blinking, at your clasped hands in your lap, aware of Dex’s slumped posture at the other end of the couch. “I’m trying to do like you said,” you explain after the lump in your throat goes down enough to speak, since they must be waiting on you to react. “Um. It does hurt my feelings some. But I’m trying to listen and not get upset, like you said.”

“I’m so sorry, honey,” Scott says. “I walked along the lake for must have been three hours in the rain just thinking how badly I treated you and how I lost you because of it and how… I deserved to lose you.”

You look up, but the words die on your lips when you realize he’s not even looking at you. Dex’s puffy face is wet with tears again. “It’s not like I haven’t missed you,” he says in a tight voice, looking at Scott like—well, like he looked at you earlier. You’re such an obvious redundancy to this interaction that it halfway feel like you ought to leave and give them some privacy.

But you’re also surprised enough by all of it that you don’t want to miss anything if there’s more.

“Me too,” Scott says. “I’m pretty worried I might have fucked everything up with the great love of my life just because I was too scared to come out as queer when I only like one man. I think I probably just need to tell my dad, when I get home, and let him disown me if that’s what he does. I don’t actually know he will. Maybe he’ll surprise me.”

Dex’s head jerks upright so quick. “Don’t do that,” he says. “You don’t have to do that.”

“It’s not for you,” Scott says. “What, I’m going to just keep pretending we never happened? I’m sick of walking around knowing with total factual certainty what a pathetic coward I am.”

The expression on Dex’s face as he looks at Scott is so tender and full of raw sentiment of some variety that you’ve never seen in him before, that it makes you want to burst into tears. Not even sad tears. Just the intensity of the feeling lodged in your throat makes you feel like something needs to give, somewhere inside you. But you’re trying to be quiet about it, because you’re still stinging a bit from the stuff Scott said, and because you can tell it won’t be possible to sneak away silently.

“Anyway,” Scott says briskly. “I walked around a long fucking time in the mud and rain and somehow didn’t get struck by lightning or drowned walking along an unfamiliar lake. And I decided I don’t even know anymore why I gave a fuck anymore about all this shit I cared about for so long. Bridge is right to be fed up with how much we suck. Or, not us, maybe. Our dynamic sucks. Kinda all of us, right now.”

Scott looks at Dex, really looks at him, like he’s seeing through to every little corner of his soul. You can tell from the sound of Dex’s breathing, a little slower and more audible than usual, that it’s making him squirm a little, but he doesn’t flinch away either. “I don’t know if it’s possible to win you back,” Scott says, “but if it’s even a maybe, I want to try. If I fuck it up at least I tried to be with the person I love.”

Now you really are kind of snuffling quietly to yourself about it, because it’s all kind of a lot and it’s also really kind of sweet. And you’re maybe a little jealous, too. Even when Dex made his big confession earlier in the kitchen, he didn’t look quite like Scott does now.

When they both flick their eyes over to you, you sit up a little straighter and clear your throat, trying to look like you’re not getting all wound up in their tender romantic drama.

“Should I pitch you guys this idea that’s probably batshit fucking crazy because I came up with it while I was busy tramping around in the dark, but I kinda want to do it anyway?” Scott asks abruptly. “It’s either stupid and reckless as hell, or it’ll solve all our problems, or neither. How’s that for options?” He snorts a little, at himself.

Scott must be so absolutely dead on his feet right now.

But you nod, wiping at your eyes with the inside of your wrists, and Dex does too.

“Okay, great. Um.” Scott draws in a big long breath through his nose, and lets it out, puffing his cheeks out as he exhales. “This isn’t a criticism, Bridge,” he says. “But you are so desperately horny that it’s becoming honestly kind of a ludicrous distraction for all of us. And you’re miserable about it.”

Your face is too red to reply right away.

“Originally I was going to pack my shit tomorrow—today—” he corrects himself, glancing at the clock, “—and go home and just come back to pick you guys up when you were ready to go back, but instead I think we should take the next nine-odd days and get as much of it out of your system as possible. You don’t want to go college still a virgin? Then don’t. Let’s do a what happens at the lake house stays at the lake house deal.”

Your mouth actually falls open a little somewhere in there.

“Uh… what did you have in mind?” Dex asks, looking a bit wary.

Scott shrugs. “I dunno. Whatever feels right?”

“Like… you mean, all three of us at the same time?” you squeak in surprise, without meaning to, then clear your throat and press your hands against your cheeks to cool them off a little. “Together?”

He shrugs again. “Whatever you want. Either of us. Both of us. Why shouldn’t you get to have that experience?”

You look at him, mind racing, and for some reason the thing that comes to you is how astonished your mom would be to know that Scott and Dex were ever a couple. “Um. I’m not on the pill or anything,” you volunteer after a second, and now your heart is pounding hard because that wasn’t a no, you’re definitely supposed to say no to this unprecedented penis buffet, and that comment was at best a half-hearted, easily overridden, feeble protest.

Scott nods. “I have some condoms left over in my bag from spring break. And we can go into town and get, uh, supplies if we need any. Or other stuff.”

You look at Dex, who has spent most of this exchange staring at Scott. “Teddy?” you ask.

“Your choice,” he says, then hesitates. “I’ve never been with a girl before,” he adds, with a glance at Scott. “You’ll probably have more fun with him.”

“You’re selling yourself short,” Scott says. “No girl has ever gone down on me like you. I kind of think nobody who doesn’t have a penis of their own even can. You’re a true magician. Some of it must translate.”

To your surprise, Dex laughs instead of being still more awkward about that. “Thanks,” he says. “Though, you’re no slouch yourself.”

The revelation of all the exciting shit they must have done together over the last few years is swimming around in your head along with everything else. And…wouldn’t it be so, so nice to have a little scrap for yourself, of how good that must feel? Not even just physically. Even if neither of them ever once looks at you like how they’re currently taking each other in. If the best you can do is their third wheel who gets a small piece of the action, you decide, that’s good enough. “Um. Okay,” you say. “I’m in if Teddy is.”

Oh. Except then Dex does look at you kind of like that. And there’s a little smile on Scott’s lips that’s just, glad. “I’m in,” Dex says. “Even if I’m desperately hoping I won’t embarrass myself.”

“I don’t think you will,” Scott says, in a gentle, sincere voice you haven’t heard him use before. “You have really good instincts.”