April's Troubles

April tutted softly, gnawing on the inside of her lip. Zara had barely been gone a couple of days and she already missed her salty, sassy friend. April had other friends. She had industry friends from across the country and overseas. She had friends that were still living in the city, too. None of them were…

Other than Zara, her friends from high school were settled. Two of them were married already, which until now she’d kind of thought was insane except she hadn’t ever felt like she did about Ollie before. Another one was in a long-term relationship and had two kids but no ring, which had kind of made her jaded and not very fun to talk to. And then there was Jane.

Jane was… usually not the best person to talk to about relationship stuff.

But Zara was maybe a little too close to things that were on April’s mind, and April didn’t want to talk to the others about this stuff, and she definitely couldn’t talk to her parents about it.

Sighing, she slipped out of the house and into her car, needing some privacy. Up until dating Ollie, she’d never had a problem with living at home in between flying out to do recording sessions in LA or Houston or Montreal. Now she felt like she couldn’t do anything she wanted when she wanted. Like having her boyfriend over…

The phone rang a couple of times before Jane picked it up.

“Autism hotline, this is your local Autist. What can I overexplain for you today?”

April snorted, smirking a little. “Hey, Jane,” she said. Her friend had leaned into comedy to compensate for what she had thought of as crippling social issues. April hadn’t ever thought of her that way, and as soon as Zara had been made aware of what Jane was going through, she’d backed off and become her biggest defender. The issue at the time had been that Jane was a very high-functioning person with autism, but it impacted her affect pretty badly, so ‘learning comedy’ had been a pretty excruciating few years of bad puns and jokes delivered so flat that you had to have her repeat herself to figure out she was making a joke.

Then she’d discovered self-deprecating humour in the eleventh grade, and she’d actually gotten funny, though April had always worried Jane would go too far putting herself down.

“Oh no,” Jane said, likely hearing the tone in April’s voice. “What happened?”

“I need a sounding board on something,” April said. “Someone who isn’t going to judge me for… choices. And stuff.”

“Then you called the right person,” Jane said. “Hold on, let me close my office door.”

The fact that Jane had graduated Magna Cum Laude from Colombia and been headhunted out of her Master’s program to work for a think tank dealing with political stuff still sort of blew April’s mind.

“OK, what’s going on that you couldn’t talk to Zara about?” Jane said, the sound of her desk chair squeaking in the background as she sat back down.

“That’s not-” April started to object but then remembered she was talking to Jane. “It involves Zara. Partially.”

“And what are you worried about being judged over that Sarah, Tina T. and Tina K. haven’t already judged you for?”

“They aren’t judgey, Jane. They’ve just moved on to a different part of their lives compared to us,” April defended their old group.

“Which doesn’t give them the right to think it’s weird to be single or look down on our careers,” Jane said. “And yet, they do.”

“You’re not wrong,” April sighed. “But this isn’t about my career.”

“So it’s about sex,” Jane guessed. “Did you and Zara finally start having sex?”

“What?” April asked.

“Did you two-”

“I heard you. I meant what do you mean by ‘finally?’”

“Oh,” Jane said. “I figured if it happened, Zara- Wait. I’m oversharing. Have you two had sex?”

April grunted in frustration. Younger, slightly less self-observant Jane would have just blurted whatever it was out. “Yes,” April sighed. “We’ve had sex, but it was part of a threesome with my new boyfriend. Well, two different threesomes. What did you think Zara would have done if we’d had sex now?”

“That’s… not for me to say,” Jane said, clearly becoming uncomfortable.

“Jane,” April groaned.

“April, please don’t make me invoke the Treaty of the Grand Canyon,” Jane requested.

April let out another sigh. “Sorry. You're right.” The ‘Treaty of the Grand Canyon’ had been agreed to by the whole group during a school trip that had included a stop at the Grand Canyon. Around the same time, Tina T. and Tina K. had both liked the same boy on the trip, and each of them had been a little abusive of the rest of the group in trying to ‘one up’ the other Tina in gathering information to use. Jane in particular had been a target for the Tina’s to manipulate, and that had led to the poor girl having a meltdown in their hotel room the night before they were supposed to take a hiking tour down the national wonder - something Jane had been looking forward a lot, and in her mind the clash of the Tina’s was about to ruin everything.

The boy was forgotten, and the Treaty was agreed to by all parties that no one was allowed to ask for gossip about anyone else in the group from Jane. And then they had the hike the next day, and it was awesome, and Jane had an amazing time. One of April’s favourite pictures ever was of the six of them together on that hike, the Canyon in the background, and Jane’s smile was huge.

Sarah ended up dating the boy two months later and reported to the Tina’s that he was all abds, no brain, and an awful kisser.

“Thank you,” Jane said, and April knew she meant it even though it came out a little terse and perfunctory. That was just Jane. “So you ended up having sex with Zara with your new boyfriend?”

“Right,” April said. “And it was- well, I’ll spare you details, but it was really good.”

“Thank you,” Jane said. She wasn’t asexual or aromantic, but she had once described the idea of sex as ‘two sacks of meat flapping wetly at each other’ and meant it.

“So what I’m grappling with is that I’m worried we might have done that way too early? But also it felt right, and it definitely helped Zara not only accept him but also with some of her own stuff that was going on, I think,” April continued. “And I’m going on a date with him tonight, and we haven’t, like, talked about it yet. Not in depth like I know he can, because he’s in tune with his feelings and stuff. And I’m worried that maybe it was too much for him because he’s a big, sweet, gentle giant kinda guy. But also, I need to talk to him about me and Zara because whatever it was that you were going to say, she kind of made it clear to me after the first time that she wanted to be able to fool around with me without Ollie too. And I kind of would want that for us too now that the door is open and all, but how the hell do I ask Ollie if he’s OK with me doing that when we're just figuring out our own dynamic? Not to mention that Zara got super horny for him and kind of said she wasn’t going to really be open to meeting someone moving forward because she’d just be looking forward to coming back on her next visit and seeing us.”

The line was silent for a long moment.

“Jane?”

“Sorry, are you done?”

“Yes,” April said.

“You told me before that your new boyfriend is a little shy, but is very good at communicating, right?”

“Right,” April said. “I mean, he doesn’t really get ‘flirting’ so much unless it’s super obvious, and that’s probably some sort of a self-worth thing. But yes, he’s good at communicating.”

“So talk to him,” Jane said. “Maybe a little less frenetic and like you’re ranting. But just tell him all of that, and your worries about it.”

“But that’s hard,” April whined, and started giggling a little bit at the end because she knew she was being a little ridiculous.

“Did you really call to interrupt my work day with something so obvious?” Jane asked. “And then complain about the obvious answer?”

“Ugh, OK. You’re right,” April said. “I’m being silly. It’s not a big deal, right? It’s just… sex. With a guy I’m falling for hard and my best friend.”

“You are being silly, but it is a big deal,” Jane said. “Sex is an economic, ethical and moral driver even on a civilisation scale, let alone individual one. And the collapse of the framework surrounding the nuclear family as a cultural foundation for the American dream, whether or not it was ever as common a thing as people thought, is a large part of several political shifts over the last quarter century.”

April closed her eyes, trying to parse what Jane was saying. “Wait, so if I have threesomes, it could lead to…?”

“Either the collapse of our foundational cultural infrastructure and belief systems, for good or ill, or to an uptick in reprisal against those forces, potentially leading to a new wave of fundamentalism or puritanism that would arguably reinforce many of the worst facets of our culture.”

“So when I have sex with Oliver and Zara, I’m-”

“Those are the **** ends of the potential results,” Jane interrupted her. “Most likely you’ll either end up in a messy situation that will lead to at least two of you feeling poorly about the situation, you’ll have Zara will betray you and steal your new boyfriend somehow, or you’ll stick the landing on the sweet spot and end up in a relationship with both of them.”

“That’s- What- I’m not trying to date Zara,” April stuttered. “And neither is Ollie.”

“Look, I can only give you my thoughts based on what you’ve told me,” Jane said. “There’s room in the theoretical sweet spot for more variations than you three in a polyamorous throuple situation; it’s just going to be a very difficult process to end up there. So, like I said before, you probably just need to talk with him. Bluntly. Like you’re autistic. I can’t really see another way for you to make the complicated issues around sex and emotions work otherwise.”

April let out a long sigh. “You’re right,” she said.

“I know I am,” Jane replied.

“Thanks, Jane.”

“You’re welcome, April.”

And then she hung up.

Classic Jane.

April groaned again. This date was going to be… something. But Jane was right, even if her predictions were either dramatically apocalyptic or a little too much to be believable.

Sharing Ollie with Zara? Long-term? Like… sister-wives or something? That was kind of ridiculous.

Right?

She leaned forward, sucking in a deep breath, and then yelped as her forehead hit the center of her steering wheel and her horn honked.

“Fuck,” she laughed, breathing deeply and shaking her head as she tried to pull herself together.

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