Three For All Read online

  Three For All

  Elia Winters

  Copyright © 2019 by Elia Winters

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Edited by Tera Cuskaden

  Cover design by Zoe York

  Cover photography by Taria Reed/The Reed Files

  ISBN: 978-1-951589-00-4

  First Edition November 2019

  For the A-Team

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Elia Winters

  1

  Lori looked up from her nearly empty glass of champagne as her best friend, Hannah, held a full bottle aloft, announcing to the party room, “Another toast! Who needs a refill?”

  She spotted Lori first, and Lori held out her glass in tacit acceptance of the refill. She was, after all, the guest of honor at this party. She was going to have to drink a metric fuck-ton of water to avoid a headache tomorrow, and she should probably have called it a night an hour ago. Hannah filled glasses of all those who gathered around, emptying one champagne bottle and then accepting another from her boyfriend Mitchell, who was somehow pulling out an endless supply from the fridge behind the bar. Hannah’s other boyfriend Ben was accepting the refills as fast as Hannah could pour them. Things were going to be fun in that house tonight, with all of them plastered. Lori smiled into her champagne flute and tipped back more of the tart bubbles.

  “Attention!” Having refilled all the glasses, Hannah was now holding hers up and calling for quiet. Her eyes sparkled, probably half booze and half happiness. “A toast! To this beautiful woman over here, my best friend, and the newest Doctor of Psychology in Mapleton! Doctor Lori Clark!”

  It wasn’t her first toast, and they had all been basically the same speech, but Lori couldn’t even be annoyed. She’d been in school forever, and this degree had taken nearly her entire adult life, and so she was going to get buzzed on champagne and celebrate. When the cheers and drinking returned to normal party conversation, though, she pulled Hannah over. “No more toasts, okay?”

  “I’m happy for you, that’s all.” Hannah squeezed Lori’s hand. “Why aren’t you wearing the hat?”

  Lori’s tam hung on the coatrack. She reflexively touched her spiral curls. “And crush all these? Hell no. This”—she gestured around her face, to indicate the whole hair-and-makeup combo—“does not happen by accident.” The academic tam was indeed one of the most ridiculous items of clothing ever devised, but damn, she did love it. She was probably going to hang it on her wall at home so she could look at it every day.

  A gentle nudge from Hannah alerted Lori that yes, she was grinning across the room at a velvet hat. She let herself keep the grin, allowing tiny filaments of relief to thread through her body. “I did that. I finally finished.” She raised her glass and clinked it with Hannah’s. “I can’t believe it’s over.” The phrase made her pause. “Or, I guess, just starting.”

  “Commencement.” Hannah fumbled the word, adding a few too many m sounds. “It means beginning.” She was definitely drunker than Lori, but Lori was well on her way, giddiness starting to bubble up like the champagne.

  “I know it means beginning.” Lori straightened to her full, slightly above-average height and put her shoulders back. “I have a PhD.” She rolled the word around on her tongue. “PhD.” It sounded fake still. “Doctor Lori Clark.”

  “Doctor Lori Clark!” Hannah fairly crowed, raised her own glass in a salute, and then caught the eye of someone across the room and went to see them.

  Doctor Lori Clark. Lori hadn’t let herself say it aloud before her dissertation defense, not even as practice. Uttering the words had felt too much like a jinx. Not that she was superstitious, but as her mom liked to say, she was a little-stitious. But now she had the doctorate, was sitting here on the other side of graduation with all the right signatures and that silly velvet academic tam hanging on the coat hook of the Mapleton Pub of all places, and she could say it out loud.

  A wave of dizziness sent her to sit on one of the chairs at the side of the room. Head swimming, she put the champagne glass on a nearby table and pressed a palm to her forehead. Immediately, Mitchell was there, the consummate serious host. “Water?”

  “Please.” It was the champagne, or maybe just overheating—surely, the room was hot for everyone and not just her. Or maybe it was the sudden paralyzing, overwhelming image of her future stretched out before her like an uncharted road in the fog, the future she’d put off facing for the past eight years of school.

  Mitchell reemerged from somewhere with a glass of ice water, and Lori chugged it, the coolness a balm against this damn heat. “Is it hot in here?”

  “We’ve got the air on full blast.” Mitchell looked around. “Maybe it’s the champagne?”

  “Must be. I’m okay. Don’t let me keep you.” She waved him away.

  Hannah came over wearing a concerned expression and pulled up the chair next to Lori. “You all right? You look a little gray.”

  For Lori’s amber-brown skin to look gray, she must have blanched quite a bit. “I guess it’s all hitting me now. The champagne, for one. And the next steps.”

  “You’re a planner. You plan stuff. Surely you’ve got everything lined up and ready to go.” Hannah swept a pale arm out in front of her, indicating a whole untapped future. “You still hoping to move away?”

  “I quit the newspaper last week.” Lori drank some more of her water, little drops of condensation running icy cold down the side of her hand. “So, that’s something.”

  “Shit, really? You didn’t tell me.” Hannah had swapped her champagne for water along the way as well and looked a bit more serious than she had a few moments earlier. “What are you doing for work? Are you still with the Relationship Therapy place?”

  “I’m still there,” Lori confirmed, “but now they’ve got me in a paid position. It’s part-time, giving me a bit of money until I find something permanent.” It had been so satisfying to give her notice after all those years working at the Valley Voice newspaper, taking on more and more hours with little increase in pay. She finally got to walk away and have some time to herself.

  Time to myself.

  Hannah was looking at her funny; had she said the last bit out loud? “I want some time to myself,” she repeated. “Everything’s been ‘wait until graduation, wait until graduation,’ and now it’s here. It’s over. It’s beginning. Whatever. I need…time to think.”

  Lori sat back in her chair and scanned the room. Everyone was milling around in normal-conversation party mode, the quiet undertone of upbeat music adding to the vibe of the place. Hannah had done a great job throwing this party, blending all the different social circles of Lori’s life. Her most intimate circle was mostly Hannah, but had now expanded to include Hannah’s boyfriends, Mitchell and Ben. She had some casual friends from the university, where she worked both as an instructor and—until recently—as a doct
oral student. Hannah had ferreted out all her university friends to invite but hadn’t stopped there. She’d also invited Lori’s friends from the Valley Voice, her colleagues from Relationship Therapy Associates, and most of the long-time members of the polyamory discussion group Lori had started last year in the final steps of her dissertation research. What an eclectic group had gathered here to celebrate—of all things—her. This weird network was the found family Lori had created here in the absence of her biological family.

  “I wish your family had been able to stay for the party.” Hannah’s comment came as if she’d been reading Lori’s mind.

  “I was just thinking about them.” Lori’s mother and brother had made the trip up from DC for her graduation, but neither could get off work long enough to stay the extra week until the party. It was good to see them, to touch base with the family she’d moved away from in pursuit of her dreams, these dreams that now loomed in front of her and demanded her attention. Mapleton was never supposed to be her forever home; she’d moved here for college and kept returning, even after time away, landing back in her too-small apartment every time she tried something new. Now, though, she had a terminal degree, no more school to attend, and every possibility in front of her.

  Hannah took her hand and squeezed, a silent bit of reassurance. “You feeling okay? Want me to kick all these people out? I can do it. Mitchell and Ben own the place.”

  Lori smiled. It was great to have this event space upstairs at the Mapleton Pub, greater still that she was friends with the owners. “Nah. But I do think I’m going to use the bathroom downstairs.” She got to her feet, only a little wobbly.

  “Don’t run away for good,” Hannah called after her. Smiling, Lori headed to the elevator. She probably couldn’t handle stairs right now.

  Maybe the Mapleton Pub wasn’t the fanciest restaurant in town, and maybe it was a little bit routine that he and Patrick were here again for date night, but Geoff could not turn down these fries. Patrick was looking at him with that adorable half smile he sometimes gave when Geoff was being cute, and Geoff paused, fry held in midair. “What?”

  “You’re making happy noises.”

  Geoff blushed, his cheeks getting warm even if his brown skin tone hid most of the coloring, and Patrick’s widening grin implied he knew. “So? I like these fries.”

  “I know you like the fries. It’s why we come here.” Patrick drank some of his beer, his Adam’s apple bobbing. That beautiful, peach column of Patrick’s neck could draw Geoff’s gaze any day, let alone when his husband was dressed impeccably, as he was tonight. Geoff was usually content to throw on his sport coat and go, the one with the tweed patches that Patrick had bought him after Geoff earned his associate professorship. Patrick, though, had this whole “hipster chic” look, with his coiffed dark auburn hair and perfect Viking-red beard. Geoff could eat that up. Probably would, later, when they got home, stumbling over the threshold of their condo, hands all over each other…

  Geoff cleared his throat. He couldn’t forget to keep eating.

  “What?” Patrick put his beer down. “You’re giving me a look.”

  “Am I?” Geoff could play coy. It worked now and then, putting on the “scattered professor” persona when he was thinking dirty thoughts. Patrick fell for it about 30 percent of the time.

  Patrick coughed into his hand, and it came out suspiciously like he was hiding a laugh. “Whatever you’re thinking, you can’t keep giving me that look. We have a whole dinner to make it through.”

  Caught. Geoff laughed in return. “I can’t help it. Those suspenders, that shirt, I just want to…” He paused. No one was around, and he leaned closer. “Rip them all off you.”

  “When we get home.” Patrick was more reserved than Geoff, at least in public, generally preferring to keep an air of decorum. It never failed to surprise Geoff. With Patrick’s past, Geoff would expect him to be more sexually daring. Not that Geoff had any standard of comparison, though. Patrick had been his first real relationship, a guy he started dating in college after years of postponing his love life entirely to concentrate on his schooling. Now and then, he had moments like this, when his own desires brought him up short with uncertainty.

  Geoff turned back to his fries, a bunch of which had somehow vanished from his plate. He furrowed his brow at the empty space where they had once been. Had he really eaten so many of them while they were talking?

  “Yes, you already ate a bunch.” Patrick’s voice had an amused air. “I see you looking at them like you don’t know what happened.”

  “Sometimes, I swear it’s like you’re reading my mind.” Geoff drank his beer. The Mapleton Pub had good food, sure, and amazing fries, but their seasonal beers would bring him in no matter what. Whatever was in this summer ale, it inspired his longing for the warm days of July, when he’d be on summer break instead of slogging through the end of this rainy May.

  Patrick cocked his head to the side and studied Geoff, really studied him, giving him one of his deep, penetrating gazes. Maybe it was Patrick’s eyes—piercing, icy blue—that made Geoff feel like he was under an X-ray. Even after Geoff had grown used to it, back in their earliest days of dating, Patrick could hit him with one of these stares and evoke all kinds of “being watched” feelings that combined his self-consciousness and his kinks at the same time.

  “What?” Geoff wasn’t used to chafing under that gaze.

  Patrick relaxed his stare. “Sometimes I wish I could read your mind.”

  “It’s all sex right now.” Geoff winked.

  Of course, the server chose that moment to appear at the table, and Geoff tried not to choke on the last of his summer ale with his laughter. He was too old to get shy over talking about sex with his husband, even if his impure thoughts did make him blush.

  “How is everything? You all doing well?” The server, John or something, looked between the two of them with his friendly smile, so maybe he hadn’t heard Geoff. “You want a couple more beers?”

  John disappeared to replace their empty drinks, and Patrick leaned forward to rest his chin on his hand. “I have to say, you’re definitely in a mood tonight.” He gave Geoff one of the smoky, sultry gazes he usually reserved for the bedroom, or for some seriously deliberate flirting. The thought flashed in Geoff’s mind of Patrick giving that look to someone else, a past girlfriend or boyfriend, or maybe both. An unsettled prickle dug under his skin. He’d been having thoughts like that a lot lately. It didn’t make any sense. Things with Patrick were great, hotter than ever in some ways, but the “time is running out” undercurrent permeated more and more of his days. It was probably anxiety; his anxiety spiked during periods of transition like this, with the school year yielding soon to summer.

  “It’s the end of the school year. I always have some weird feelings this time of year.”

  “So, wanting to fuck my brains out is a weird feeling?” Patrick teased.

  Geoff tapped his lips in thought, affecting confusion. “You know, it’s totally foreign to anything I’ve ever experienced before. I’m so new at this.”

  “Mm-hmm. Just a babe in the woods. I would have thought you’d learned a few things in the last six years, but it looks like you’re going to need some reteaching.” His blue eyes sparkled.

  This playful flirting eased some of the prickly discomfort in Geoff’s thoughts. “You’ll find I’m a very good student.”

  “Most professors are.” Patrick drew his tongue across his lower lip. “Filthy, all of you.”

  “Oh?” Geoff leaned in. “I don’t remember hearing any stories about professors in your past.”

  Patrick gave a low chuckle. “I don’t like telling stories about my past.”

  That wasn’t the whole truth; Geoff didn’t like hearing stories about Patrick’s past, and they both knew it. It wasn’t like he thought Patrick was going to leave him…well, not really. But Patrick had given up a lot to be with him—an active dating life, with people of all genders—and chosen monogamy with
one nerdy, inexperienced guy instead of the polyamorous life he’d been living until that point.

  Wasn’t it normal to wonder if Patrick had given up too much? And if he’d realize it himself someday?

  A cloud of gorgeous black curly hair caught his eye, and Geoff looked up as a familiar woman passed by his table on her way to the bar at the other end of the restaurant. Patrick caught his eye and followed his gaze. “Someone you know?”

  “A friend from work, I think.” Geoff looked after her, struggling to reconcile his knowledge of Lori from school to this version of Lori wearing a slinky black dress.

  “Go say hi.” Patrick gestured. “I’ll be here.”

  Geoff was already sliding out of the booth. He never saw Lori outside of the university, even though he knew she lived here in Mapleton. He really should get out more. She was leaning on the bar, her gorgeous golden-brown skin radiant, looking off to the side as if waiting for someone.

  “Lori?”

  She looked at him like she was coming out of a trance, and her face lit up in a warm grin. “Geoff! Hi!” She held out her arms to him, and he went willingly into the hug, surprised. She’d never hugged him at work, but it wasn’t like work was a place you often hugged people. She squeezed him close, then held him at arm’s length. “Fancy running into you here.” She pointed up at the ceiling. “My best friend threw me a graduation party. I needed to get some air, away from all the people.” Her words came out a tiny bit slurred. “You should come up. I can introduce you to some people.”

  “Oh. Thank you, but I’m here with my husband. For dinner.” A twinge of regret caught in his throat. Patrick would like Lori. Geoff didn’t talk to Lori too often at work; history and psychology were several buildings apart from each other. But they both taught at Bridge—a program for high school upperclassmen who wanted to develop college skills. They served on overlapping committees, and they frequently took lunch at the same time. The university might be a big place, but Lori circled in most of his orbits. Seeing her at the bar, radiant in this snug black dress, with his mind already mixed up in the hormones and anxiety of wanting to fuck his husband and survive the end of the year, he was a tumble of attraction and confusion.