Sundress Season Pt. 03 - Final

Content warning: this part delivers the happy ending you've been waiting for, but it gets emotionally heavier than Parts 1 and 2 on the way there. It deals with emotional manipulation, unwanted touching, sexual coercion, and assault. The assault is described by a character after the fact and never shown on the page. There's also alcohol misuse and drunk driving. None of it is glamorized.

Story so far: Ariel and Bryan, both 29, share a private kink: Ariel goes out in a sundress with Bryan's cum still inside her. At the dog park she met Stacy, 21, a shy college student who noticed right away.

Ariel and Bryan planned to ease Stacy toward a threesome, but Ariel fell for her instead, and they dropped the plan without ever telling her it existed. Stacy's biggest secret, a fuck machine she uses every day, ended up changing Ariel's sex life with Bryan too. Stacy had always been wary of men, but she slowly warmed up to Bryan, and one weekend the three of them finally ended up together, with Bryan and Stacy touching only through Ariel.

Then Stacy went quiet.

*****

Saturday went by without a word from Stacy, and by Sunday morning Ariel had checked twice whether her texts were even delivering, like the phone might be the problem.

Bryan was awake next to her, pretending not to watch her.

"Anything?"

"No." She put the phone face down on the nightstand. "You'd tell me if I messed up, right?"

"You didn't mess up." He rolled toward her and pushed her hair off her face. "She's probably just buried in a paper or something." He said it the same way he'd said the bathroom shelf would be fine, and the bathroom shelf had been hanging on by one screw for six weeks, hardware store trip and all.

"I miss her too," he said, quieter, and then looked a little surprised at himself, like he hadn't been sure he was allowed to say it out loud.

Ariel kissed him. They were both missing the same person and neither of them could do anything about it, and his mouth was right there.

He kissed her back harder than she expected, and she felt it, how wound up he was under all the supportiveness. She turned around and reached behind her to guide him in, and he groaned against her neck and pushed deep on the first stroke, nothing careful about it. She was wet before he was inside her, had been since he'd said I miss her too.

For a while they didn't talk. He found his rhythm and she matched it, and the room was just breathing and the wet sound of him moving inside her. But she kept thinking about that Sunday on the couch, the three of them together for the first time. Bryan inside Ariel, Ariel's mouth on Stacy, everything going through her so Stacy never had to touch a man she wasn't ready for. Stacy's thighs shaking around Ariel's face. Bryan's breath catching every time Ariel clenched around him because of something Stacy did. Every time one of them moved the other two felt it.

"I keep thinking about the couch," she said.

"Yeah." His hips stuttered. "Me too."

"The way she grabbed my hair when she came. And you felt it through me, didn't you. When she went off."

"I felt you clench so hard I almost lost it." He pulled her tighter against him. "And then she looked at me. While she was coming. I've never seen her look at me like that."

"She wanted you to see her."

"I know." His voice was strained. "That's all I can think about."

"What do you think would've happened," Ariel said, "if we asked her to stay another night?"

Bryan's grip on her hip tightened. "We said no pressure. We had that whole talk."

"I know we did." She pushed back into him and he sank deeper and they both made a sound. "But what if she hadn't left. What if she'd just stayed for dinner, and it got late, and she ended up in our bed instead of the guest room."

"Yeah." His voice had gone rough. He pulled almost all the way out and slid back in slow, and she felt him get even harder. "I've thought about that."

"She'd have been between us. All night. She'd have woken up with her back against you." She squeezed him deliberately and felt him throb. "You'd have been hard against her and she'd have felt it."

"Ariel." He was grinding deep now, the lazy rhythm gone, and she could feel him swelling inside her, already getting close too fast.

"What? You still think about it too, don't you?"

"Yes... I still think about it all the time." His hand slid from her hip to her stomach and pulled her back into him, and the new angle made her gasp.

He groaned and drove into her harder, and she heard his breathing change, letting himself want what he shouldn't. She was soaking, her body way ahead of her mouth.

"Tell me," she said. "What you think about."

He was quiet long enough that she thought he wouldn't tell her. His hips kept moving, deep slow strokes that she felt all the way to her spine.

"That look," he said. "After. I can't stop thinking about what comes next. If she'd let me touch her without you in the middle. If I could make her make that sound on my own." He thrust deeper, holding nothing back, and she groaned and pushed back to meet him. "Whether she'd want me to."

"She would. You saw how she looked at you." Ariel was having trouble keeping her voice even. She was squeezing him on every stroke now, not on purpose, her body doing it by itself.

"I know." His hand came around her hip and his fingers found her clit, already swollen, and the first touch made her whole body jolt against him. "I want to hear the sound she makes when it's me, not through you. Directly. I want to know if it's different."

"It would be different," Ariel managed, but the words were coming apart because his fingers were circling her clit and he was buried deep and she couldn't hold a thought together. "You should've heard her with the machine the first time, she was..."

She stopped. They were doing it again. They'd stood in the hallway a week ago and told each other no pressure, Stacy's pace, Stacy's idea, and meant every word of it. And here they were running the play again while using Stacy's kink as dirty talk. She was wetter than she'd been in weeks and Bryan was throbbing inside her and the no-pressure talk made the fantasy hit even harder.

But the version of Stacy who stayed another night and said yes to everything was just in their heads.

"We said we weren't going to do this," she said.

"I know." He didn't slow down. His fingers pressed harder on her clit and she shuddered. "You want to stop?"

"No."

"Me neither."

So they didn't. She pushed back into him and let the picture fill her head, Stacy in their bed, Stacy saying yes, Stacy's face when she came, and her orgasm hit the second she let herself have it. She clenched hard around him, long waves of it rolling through her, and Bryan held still for the first one and then couldn't, and he drove deep and came with his mouth against the back of her neck, and she could feel him pulsing inside her, filling her up, and the heat of it set off another smaller one that left her shaking.

They lay there tangled together afterward, his cum already starting to leak where they were still joined. She'd come picturing that Stacy, the one who didn't exist, and the fantasy had been better than anything they'd done in weeks, and she didn't know what to do with that.

"Nightstand," she said.

Bryan breathed against her skin. "You want it today?"

"I want something to feel normal."

He reached over and handed her the plug, and she worked it in while he was still softening inside her, same as always, and when he eased out it took his place and sealed everything. The familiar weight settled low in her.

"Go make a mess," Bryan said. Then, softer: "Or don't. Just go feel better."

Bryan finally fixed the bathroom shelf that morning, after all that teasing. She didn't comment on it. Stealing the last joke about it from Stacy didn't feel right. Bella lay by the front door for an hour with her chin on her paws, facing out, and the third time Ariel walked past her she couldn't take it anymore.

She grabbed the leash off the hook. "Come on, walk time." Bella lifted her head, looked at her, and put it back down. "Seriously?" Ariel rattled the leash. Nothing. "Fine. I'll go by myself."

She went to the closet and pulled out the white sundress, the one from the first day they met Stacy at the dog park, and put it on over nothing at all. Bryan looked at the dress and didn't ask where she was going, which was good, because she didn't know. She just wanted to walk around somewhere full of him with nobody having any idea, plugging up the hole where Stacy had been.

Halfway down the block her phone buzzed. Sorry, just been feeling sick. That's all. Ariel read it twice and felt her shoulders come down for the first time in days. She walked by the park. No Stacy, which made sense now. She kept walking and ended up at a nearby cafe. Every step there the plug shifted and she felt him warm inside her, and the familiar rush was right there. She remembered that afternoon at the park, how Stacy had flushed pink staring at the plug, then flinched when Bryan's cum leaked down Ariel's thigh, then made herself look back anyway. Ariel had never asked about her aversion to men, and Stacy had never volunteered.

She was at the counter waiting on her order, wondering if Stacy would want soup, when she saw her. Sitting with some guy Ariel had never seen before. Early twenties, athletic, good-looking in the obvious way, with an easy smile you only get from never having to work for anything. They were leaning in toward each other and Stacy was laughing at something he'd said, and Ariel felt her stomach twist. Stacy had done her makeup, and she was wearing a sundress, the pale blue one she'd worn the first time she showed up at Ariel's door. She was sitting across from a man and looking more relaxed than Ariel had ever seen her around one.

Then he leaned across the table and kissed her.

It wasn't a peck. His hand went to the back of her neck and pulled her in and the kiss kept going, and Ariel stood there with her coffee forgotten, watching her girlfriend's mouth on somebody else's.

The longer she watched, though, the less right it looked. Stacy's hands stayed in her lap the whole time. Her eyes were closed, but not the way you close them when a kiss is good. More like she was somewhere else, waiting it out. Her shoulders were up a little, like she was letting it happen to her instead of doing it, and when he finally pulled back her smile showed up late, after the kiss was over instead of during it.

The barista called Ariel's name. She grabbed the cup, and when she turned around Stacy was looking right at her. Stacy's face changed, and it didn't look like guilt, or not only guilt. It looked a lot more like fear.

Ariel walked over.

"Ariel!" Stacy stood up so fast she almost knocked her glass over. "Hey! I didn't know you come here."

"Sometimes." Ariel kept her voice flat and looked at her. The makeup was careful, but there were shadows under her eyes it wasn't hiding and a tightness around her mouth no concealer was going to fix.

"This is Matthew." Stacy waved at the guy, who'd stood up too and was still smiling. "We've... he's..." She looked at him and back at Ariel and whatever she'd meant to call him just didn't come out. "We've known each other a long time."

He didn't help her. He stood there and watched her twist with a little smile that wasn't cruel exactly, more amused, and he didn't offer old friend or just visiting or anything else that would have let her off the hook. He let it sit until it got uncomfortable and then laughed, soft.

"She only calls me Matthew when she's mad at me." He held out his hand. "Matt."

His handshake was firm and his smile was warm and practiced. "The famous Ariel. Stacy talks a lot about you."

Something about that bothered her. He hadn't asked who she was. He hadn't needed Stacy's introduction at all; he'd known exactly who she was before she ever got to the table.

How much did Stacy tell him about me?

"Does she," Ariel said.

"Said Apollo's obsessed with your golden." He was easy and friendly about it. "I keep telling her to bring that dog around more, but she's been busy lately." It came out like he figured he had a say in how Stacy spent her time.

Ariel sat down. Nobody had invited her and she did it anyway. The plug shifted when she sat, and for the first time in years it felt like something to be ashamed of.

"What are you having?" Matt was already half out of his chair. "Let me grab you something. My treat."

It was warm and easy and generous, and she almost said yes.

"I'm good," she said, and held up her coffee.

"So how do you two know each other?" Ariel asked, and she asked Stacy, not him.

Stacy picked up her wine. "We grew up together." She took a drink, and the glass was almost empty, and it wasn't even two o'clock.

Under the table Matt's hand went to Stacy's knee. Ariel watched it happen, casual and possessive, and watched Stacy's smile get a little tighter. Then his arm went around her shoulders and he kissed her temple and his hand moved up from her knee to her thigh, and every time he touched her a little more, Stacy held a little more still.

"We were just catching up," Matt said, squeezing her shoulder. "Haven't seen each other in a while. Missed this one." He pressed his lips into her hair, and when he looked up his eyes found Ariel's over the top of Stacy's head, and he didn't look amused anymore. He looked like he was daring her to do something about it.

Stacy finished her wine and kept holding the empty glass, running her thumb around the rim, and her eyes went to the bar.

"So is this why you went quiet on me?" Ariel asked. She kept it light. It didn't land light.

All the color went out of Stacy's face. She shot Matt one quick panicked look, and that told Ariel more than an answer would have, because whatever the truth was, Stacy couldn't say it with him sitting there.

"I should... excuse me. Bathroom." Stacy was already up and weaving through the tables toward the back hall.

Ariel looked at Matt. He'd leaned back in his chair with that same little smile, totally comfortable, like he'd seen this show before and knew how it ended.

"She gets flustered easily," he said. "So cute."

Ariel got up without answering him and followed her.

*****

Stacy was alone in the bathroom at the far sink, holding onto the counter with her head down. She looked up when the door opened, and the whole act from the table was gone. She just looked tired.

"Ariel."

"You told me you were sick. I thought we were girlfriends, Stacy."

It came out loud in there and Stacy flinched.

"We are."

"Then who is he? And why was he kissing you?"

"Matt is... he's from before. It's complicated."

"Complicated how? Because from where I was standing, watching him put his tongue in your mouth, it looked pretty simple."

"It's not what you think."

"What do I think?"

"That I'm cheating on you."

"Are you?"

"It's not... we have history, okay? A lot of it. And sometimes he comes back and I don't know how to stop it."

"You could start by not kissing him."

"He kissed me. I didn't."

"You didn't stop him either."

Stacy looked at the floor. The fluorescent light was brutal on her, the shadows and the red around her eyes.

"I know," she whispered. "I know I should have."

"Should have what? Stopped him, or told me he existed?"

She hesitated. "Both."

The door swung open and a woman came in, glanced at the two of them, and went into a stall. Ariel dropped her voice.

"You went quiet on me for days with no explanation, and now I find you here with him." Her voice was shaking and she let it. "Was that why? Is he why you disappeared?"

"It's not that simple."

"Then make it simple, because right now all I know is my girlfriend stopped talking to me and I just watched her kiss somebody else."

"You have Bryan," Stacy said, still looking away.

"What?"

"You go home and sleep with your husband every single night. You're married, and I have never once made you feel bad about it. But I have one drink with somebody and I'm supposed to explain myself?"

"We talked about this. I asked you early on if Bryan was a problem and you said you were okay with it."

Stacy stepped closer. Her nostrils flared, just barely, and her eyes dropped to Ariel's sundress, the white one from the park, and came back up. Ariel had seen that flinch before. At the park Stacy had looked back at her anyway, deliberately, like she'd picked which feeling won. This time the flinch won.

"You came from him," Stacy said. "Right now. You're standing here full of your husband and telling me I owe you an explanation."

Ariel's mouth opened and nothing came out, because it was true. The plug was still inside her. Bryan was still inside her. She'd walked into this bathroom carrying him, like she always did, without once thinking what it would mean to Stacy, and now Stacy could smell it on her.

"That's what I've been fine with," Stacy said, and her voice had gone flat and awful. "Every time. That's what okay looks like." She laughed, short and bitter. "Maybe I lied. Maybe I said I was fine because that's what you wanted to hear. What was I supposed to say? Pick me over your husband?"

"You could've said it bothered you."

"And then what, you'd leave him?" She shook her head. "You get two people and I can't get a drink with a friend? That's the deal?"

"That's not what this is about," Ariel said. "This isn't about Bryan, it's about you going silent for days and me finding you here with somebody you won't even explain."

"Maybe it's about both." Stacy's voice cracked. "Maybe I've been swallowing Bryan for months because I care about you, and now you're in here judging me and I just..." She shook her head and didn't finish.

"I'm not judging you, I'm trying to under-"

"I need some time." Stacy pushed past her to the door and said over her shoulder, "Matt's waiting."

Ariel stood there with that. Matt's waiting.

Stacy walked out. Ariel stayed under the light another minute until her hands mostly stopped shaking, then pulled herself together and left.

The way out went right past the corner table. She didn't look straight at it, but she saw Stacy slide back into her chair and Matt's arm go around her shoulders right away, and she saw him lean in and say something that put Stacy's smile back on, the pinned-up one.

Ariel pushed out into the sunlight and walked to her car. The plug sat cold and heavy inside her the whole way across the parking lot, and for once there wasn't anything good about it.

*****

Bryan let her get through the whole thing without interrupting.

"What'd he look like?" Bryan said finally.

"Does it matter?"

"No." He thought about it. "Kind of."

"Athletic. Nice smile. Ball cap energy, without the ball cap."

"So he peaked in high school." He was turning his keys over in his hand, and Ariel didn't remember him picking them up. "Which cafe?"

"Bry."

"I'm just asking."

"You're holding your keys."

He looked down at them like they'd gotten there on their own, then set them on the counter and pushed them a few inches away.

"Okay," he said. "Okay. That was stupid." He rubbed the back of his neck, and when he spoke again it was quieter. "He knew who you were right away."

"Yes."

"So all of it, the hands, kissing her head, he was doing that for you." Bryan's mouth went tight. "He wanted to claim her in front of her girlfriend."

"Yes, but she held still every time he touched her, Bry. Like she was waiting for it to be over."

"And then she went back and sat with him anyway." He said it slowly, turning it over. "They grew up together, she won't say what he is to her now, and he watched her fall apart trying to introduce him and thought it was funny. Something's really wrong here."

"I know. But then she threw you at me, and..." Ariel stopped. "I asked her, back at the beginning. Whether you'd be a problem. She told me she was fine with it."

"And now she's saying she lied?"

"She's saying maybe she swallowed it so she wouldn't lose me. Told me what I wanted to hear." Ariel rubbed her temples. "I honestly don't know if that's true or if it was just angry talk. Could be either."

"Either way we can't just brush it off," Bryan said quietly. "If she's been sitting on that for months and didn't think she could say it, that's on us too."

Ariel looked down at the counter. "She could smell you on me, Bry."

He didn't say anything. He looked at the keys he'd pushed away, and then at her, and there wasn't anything to say, so he didn't try.

They went to bed without figuring any of it out.

*****

Ariel sent one text on Monday, timed for when Stacy's afternoon class let out. I miss you. No pressure. Just wanted you to know.

Hours later: I miss you too. I'm sorry. I'll explain soon.

She didn't.

On Tuesday evening they were on the couch pretending to watch TV and both thinking about the same person when somebody knocked, and they both jumped.

Ariel opened the door and stopped.

Stacy looked awful. Sweatpants, a huge hoodie, hair tangled like she hadn't washed it in days and no makeup at all. Her face was pale except where it was blotchy and red around her eyes and nose, and it wasn't fresh crying, it was the swollen leftover look you get after hours of it. She smelled like wine, too, not a glass of it but the stale sweet smell of somebody who'd been drinking for a while. Bella came to the door, looked past Stacy's legs for Apollo, and went back to her bed.

"Hi," Stacy said, hoarse.

"Jesus, Stacy." Ariel grabbed the doorframe. Stacy's car was parked crooked in the driveway with one tire up on the grass. "You drove here like this?"

"Can I come in?"

"Stacy."

"Can I come in. Please."

"Where's Apollo?"

"Home." Stacy didn't look at her when she said it.

Home was the apartment, and the apartment was where Matt probably was, alone with her dog.

She stepped aside, and Stacy walked into the middle of the living room and stood there, wound tight and jittery, looking back and forth between them. Bryan had gotten up off the couch and was watching her carefully.

"I owe you an explanation," Stacy said. "About Matt. About all of it."

Ariel's chest loosened a little. "Okay."

Stacy opened her mouth and shut it again. She couldn't.

"But first I need..." Her breath shook. "I need to fuck. Both of you. All three of us, right now. I'm ready."

Stacy doesn't sound like herself.

Ariel felt Bryan go completely still behind her.

"I've been thinking about it for over a week," Stacy went on, too fast and too bright. "Since I watched him watch me while he fucked you. I want the real thing, not through you. Directly."

Directly. Bryan's word, Sunday morning.

Stacy crossed the room and kissed her, hungry and frantic, grabbing at her waist. She tasted like wine and something sour underneath it, and Ariel's body answered before her head caught up and she kissed back. Then she felt how hard Stacy was trembling and how fast she was breathing, and when she opened her eyes Stacy's were squeezed shut like she was trying to be somewhere else.

Ariel pulled back gently. "Stacy. Wait."

"Please." Stacy kissed her again, harder, pulling at her shirt. "I need this."

Her hands were all wrong. That Sunday on the couch she'd known exactly where to hold on and what she was doing with her grip. These hands were just grabbing at whatever they found, trying to start something without any of the coordination it took.

"Stacy." Ariel caught her wrists and held them.

Stacy pulled back and her eyes came open, wild, and went straight to Bryan. He was standing a few feet away with his hands at his sides and he hadn't moved since she'd said fuck. Then she changed tactics.

"Okay," Stacy said, and her voice dropped into something soft and low Ariel had never heard her use. "Okay. Let's do this."

She stepped away from Ariel and pulled the hoodie off over her head in one motion, and she had nothing on under it.

That Sunday on the couch she was embarrassed about her body. Today she stood with her shoulders back and her chin up, everything placed just so, and it didn't look like that day at all. It looked like someone who'd practiced.

Bryan looked. He didn't do the careful half-second glance he'd been rationing for months, either; he looked and kept looking, well past the point where he usually found the window or the floor.

"Stacy..." It came out low and rough, with too much want in it, and he heard it himself and shut his mouth.

She was trying so hard. That was the thing that got Ariel, how hard she was working at it. The pose held, but she couldn't quite keep her breathing steady, and the whole performance kept cutting in and out like a bad signal.

And half of what she was aiming at Bryan, Ariel had put there herself. Every story she'd told him in the dark, every video. Somebody had taught Stacy how to perform, but Ariel had built the target.

Stacy lifted her hair off her neck and tilted her chin and looked at Bryan through her lashes. It would have worked if her hand hadn't been trembling against her own neck.

"I want you to look," she said, only to him. "You haven't really looked. Last time you couldn't, she was in the way. Look now."

"Stacy," Ariel said quietly. She wasn't trying to stop her. She just wanted Stacy to hear her name.

Stacy didn't turn around. She hadn't taken her eyes off Bryan since the hoodie came off.

"I know what you like," she told him. "She told me. She tells me everything about you." She took a step closer. "She told me you like to watch. She told me what your face looks like when she comes home from me. You've been waiting for this for months. We all have."

That step put her close enough that Ariel could see the goosebumps on her arms and the tremor going through her thighs.

Bryan glanced at Ariel just long enough to ask if she was seeing this too, and then looked back.

"Stacy." His voice was rough. "You're shaking."

"I'm excited."

"No you're not."

Stacy's eyes dropped to the front of his jeans, where there was no hiding how much he wanted her, and for a second she looked like she'd won. "Your body's not saying no."

Bryan didn't turn away or cross his arms over it. "It doesn't get a vote," he said. "No."

Her chin went up higher, and Ariel thought she might go for him anyway and just push through.

Then she flinched. Her eyes squeezed shut, and when they opened she looked completely lost, like she had forgotten halfway through what she was doing.

Bryan saw it too.

"Stacy. Hey. Look at me."

She did, and for a second she was just Stacy again, scared and tired and looking right at him. Then she caught herself and put the act back on.

"Come here," Bryan said.

She took another step toward him, getting it wrong, sliding right back into the act.

"No. Not like that." He bent down and picked the hoodie up off the floor and held it out to her. "Put this back on. Please."

Stacy stopped and stared at the hoodie in his hand.

"I don't..."

"Please."

She didn't move, and Ariel watched her go through pride and then confusion and then whatever came after confusion. Her arms came up and crossed over her chest all on their own, like they hadn't in months. Then she took the hoodie and pulled it on, and when it settled around her hips her shoulders came down an inch and she looked very small.

"Something happened," Bryan said softly. "Between the coffee shop and now."

"What happened is I'm done waiting," Stacy said, but there wasn't any fire left in it and the words came out thin. "I'm done with the careful steps. I want this. Why can't we just..."

"Because that wasn't..." Ariel stopped and started over. "That wasn't you, Stacy. I saw what he was doing at that table, his hand on your knee and then your thigh, and you holding still every time he touched you. You weren't kissing him back, you were waiting for him to be done. And just now wasn't you either. I know what you look like when you want somebody, I know what your hands do, and that wasn't it."

Stacy took half a step back like Ariel had shoved her. "Don't."

"I watched you reach for your wine every time he put a hand on you. And now you show up here smelling like a bottle and putting on an act. I know what I'm looking at."

"You don't know anything."

"Then tell us," Bryan said. "Tell us what's actually going on."

"Nothing's going on."

"Stacy." Ariel kept her voice soft and didn't let up. "You promised you'd explain. You texted me that you would. So explain."

Stacy stood there with her teeth set and her whole body rigid, and then she just gave, slowly, a little at a time.

"He's been at my apartment since that Wednesday," she said, and her voice had gone flat and empty. "Matt. The day before I went quiet. He showed up, said he was in town, said he missed me."

Wednesday was the last warm text. Thursday was when everything went quiet. Ariel felt it click into place.

"I didn't tell you he was here. I thought it was nothing worth mentioning. And the longer I didn't tell you, the harder it got to text you at all." Stacy's voice kept getting smaller. "But I should have known. I always know where it's going. And I always..." She stopped.

"How you what," Ariel said quietly.

Stacy shut her eyes, and when she started talking again she wasn't talking about this week.

"That's how it's always gone with him. For years. He shows up and I drink, and then I can be in the room for what he wants, and in the morning he makes breakfast like nothing happened and I tell myself it was fine because I said yes." Like she'd said it to herself a hundred times. "He goes away and I think it's over. Then he comes back and it starts again."

"You drink so you can say yes," Bryan said. He'd gone quiet, and Ariel knew what that particular quiet meant.

Stacy finally gave one small nod.

"How long," Ariel asked, and her voice didn't sound like hers.

"Since I was eighteen." Stacy wrapped her arms around herself. "I can't say no to him. I've tried. Nobody's ever believed me that I've tried."

"He keeps you drunk so you can't," Bryan said.

"He's not-"

"Then what is it."

She didn't answer that.

Ariel sat down on the arm of the couch because her legs weren't working right. "So what happened this week? Walk me through it."

"Nothing happened." Stacy's breath shook. "That's what you don't get, nothing's happened yet." The word broke in half on the way out. "The first couple of days he was perfect. Cooked for me, listened, didn't push anything. The version of him I always fall for." She swallowed. "Then Friday he started giving me hugs and shoulder rubs that went on too long. Saturday he surprised me with a kiss on the mouth, and after that I didn't know how to text you back, so I told you I was sick. Sunday at the cafe... I can't believe he touched me like that in front of you. After that I kept it to one glass. Last night he opened a bottle and I had my one glass and stopped, and he laughed and poured me another and I poured it out when he wasn't looking." Her voice was shaking. "Every day a little more. Every day harder to hold."

Nobody said anything.

"This afternoon I was so tired I let him pour me a second glass. And then a third." She was talking faster now, and thinner. "And he laughed and said it was nice to see me relax, and I could feel it happening, the same thing that always happens, where the no gets quieter and quieter until it's not really a no anymore." She wrapped her hands in the hoodie sleeves. "He started touching me before I realized it. And then I just got up and left."

Ariel wanted to say that's not nothing, but she didn't.

Stacy wiped her face with the heel of her hand. "Drove around. Drank some more, which, I know. And then I came here because I didn't know where else to go, and I thought if Bryan..." She stopped.

Ariel finished it for her because she couldn't. "You thought if you came here and slept with Bryan you wouldn't have to go home to that. You wanted us to be what happened tonight instead of him."

Stacy's face crumpled. "Is that so wrong? Wanting something that feels good instead of something that makes me want to crawl out of my skin?"

"It's not wrong to want that," Bryan said. "But if I fuck you while you're trying to erase somebody else, I'm just one more guy using your body while you're not really there. And I won't do that."

She actually stumbled back a step, and for once there was nothing left on her face but hurt.

"I'm broken right now," she said, small and pleading. "I know I'm broken. I know it's not supposed to happen like this. But you could fix it. You could make it better. Bryan could."

She looked at him with her eyes red and desperate.

"You told me. On this couch. You said you could finally let go, you said it was the best sex of your life. I can take your big dick. The machine made sure of that. So why can't you just..."

Ariel felt it land twice, once for Stacy and once for Bryan. The machine was the thing Stacy had shown her once standing naked with her arms crossed over her stomach, sure she was about to get called disgusting, the thing she'd never said out loud to her own therapist. And she'd just pulled it out and used it like a sales pitch.

Bryan went pale and didn't say anything at first.

"Stop," he said finally, and it came out rough, like he'd had the wind knocked out of him. "Please stop."

"Why? It's what you told me. I'm giving you what you want."

"You're taking the most private thing I've ever told anybody and using it to sell me on fucking you while you're drunk." He could barely get it out. "That's not what I want. That's not what any of this was."

Stacy stared at him, and for a second she looked ashamed before she buried it.

"You can't keep letting him do this to you," Ariel said. "You have to stop seeing him."

"You don't get to tell me-"

"I'm not telling you, I'm asking. As your girlfriend. As somebody who loves you." Her voice cracked on it. "Please stop letting him hurt you."

Stacy stood in the middle of the room swaying a little, out of everything she'd brought with her. The sex hadn't worked and neither had the pitch, and the attitude was going nowhere. She wiped her face with the back of her hand, rough and quick, and when she looked up again she wasn't any clearer. She was harder.

"You want to talk about hurting me?" Her voice went low and hard. "Matt asked me a question his second night there. I was telling him about you, I was defending you, and he just..." Her hand made a small helpless motion. "He asked me... Is she grooming you? After that I didn't know who I'd even been texting."

Ariel went cold.

"And I couldn't answer him." Stacy's voice was climbing and starting to fray. "I've been going back over it for days. The park. You kept coming back. The plug, the... you said you wore it for me. The videos right there on your phone. Every step, every careful little... somebody built that." She looked from one of them to the other. "You were working me toward him from the start. Weren't you."

Bryan flinched like she'd hit him.

Ariel couldn't deny it. She couldn't say that's ridiculous and mean it, and Stacy could see that on both of them. She looked away.

"Oh my god," Stacy whispered. "He's right."

No more secrets. She'd said that in their guest room and meant it. Ariel hesitated, then looked at Stacy. "Not the way he means it." She made herself say the rest. "But yes."

Bryan dipped his head. Ariel wasn't going to pretend, not now of all times.

"In the beginning," she said, and her voice barely held. "That was the plan."

"Every step. Every... and I defended you to him. I told him he didn't know you." Stacy's laugh broke in the middle. "I was so grateful. For how patient you were. I thought you were being kind."

"But I stopped," Ariel said. "Before you were my girlfriend, before I ever said I was falling for you. I came home one night and told Bryan I couldn't do it anymore."

"I told her you're not a project," Bryan said quietly. "I said if anything ever happened with us it had to be because you wanted it, not because we made it happen."

"How am I supposed to believe that?" Stacy's voice went flat. "You just admitted to working me toward Bryan. Even though you knew I..."

"Everything after I fell for you was real," Ariel said. "All of it. None of it was strategy."

"But it started as one."

Ariel tried to find the words.

"It started wrong and then it turned into everything," she finally said, and she was crying now. "I don't know how to pull those apart. I just know what we have now is real."

"You're right that we started wrong," Bryan said. "I'm not going to lie to you about that."

"Great. Really helpful right now."

Stacy turned toward the door and stopped with her hand resting on the frame, not gripping it, like she needed something to keep her up. She didn't turn around.

"I don't know what I think," she said, quieter than she'd been since she walked in. "I don't know what any of this was, what was real and what wasn't. I can't..." Ariel held her breath. "I can't be here right now."

"Stacy-"

"Don't." She still didn't turn around. "Just don't call me. Give me time."

It wasn't don't ever call me, it was give me time, and Ariel heard the difference and had no idea what to do with it.

Stacy pulled the door open.

"Your keys," Ariel said, because it was the only thing she could get out. "You can't drive."

Stacy stopped in the doorway, and her shoulders jerked once, hard, like something pulled too tight had finally snapped. Then she straightened her back.

"Fine," she said, without turning around. "Call me a car."

She walked out onto the porch.

*****

The door banged shut behind her. Bella picked her head up, confused, and put it back down.

Ariel got out her phone and ordered a ride, and her hands were shaking so bad she had to type the address twice. When she opened the front door again Stacy was sitting on the top step with her head in her hands and her keys on the concrete next to her. She hadn't made it past the porch.

"It'll be here in a few minutes," Ariel said.

Stacy didn't look up or say anything.

Ariel stood in the doorway looking at the back of her head and her hunched shoulders, and she wanted so badly to sit down next to her and put an arm around her and tell her to forget everything and come inside and let them take care of her. But that was exactly what Stacy had asked for, and they'd said no, and the reasons were still right even though being right felt awful.

"Your car can stay here," Ariel said quietly. "Come get it whenever you're ready."

Stacy's shoulders tightened and that was all.

The car pulled up four minutes later. Stacy stood and walked down to it. Ariel picked the keys up off the step and followed, and at the curb she held them out. Stacy looked at them for a second before she took them, and Ariel caught her face, wrecked and wet. Stacy looked like she wanted to say something, but instead she got in the car and shut the door.

Ariel watched the taillights until they were gone. When she came back inside Bryan was standing in the hallway with his forehead against the wall and his eyes closed.

"She's going back there," Ariel said. "To that apartment. To him."

Bryan opened his eyes and they were red. He pulled her in, and she could feel him shaking.

Stacy's car was still sitting empty in their driveway. That was the one thing Ariel knew for sure: whatever shape Stacy was in, she'd have to come back for it.

It was getting dark out. Ariel closed her eyes against Bryan's chest and held on.

*****

Ariel texted Wednesday morning. I know you asked for time. I'm texting anyway. Whatever's going on with Matt, we're here whenever you're ready.

Nothing came back.

She tried again Thursday. Your car's still in the driveway. Come get it whenever. You don't have to talk.

That night around eleven Bella started barking at the front window, the deep serious bark she saved for the mailman and raccoons, and wouldn't quit. Bryan went to the window and said there was a car idling down past the mailbox with its lights off. By the time he'd grabbed a shoe it had pulled away. He checked the back door, then checked it again.

"It's probably the neighbor's kid sneaking out," Ariel said.

"The neighbor's kid is nine."

"Kids grow up fast nowadays."

A little after midnight Stacy finally answered. Tomorrow. Thank you.

Friday morning the driveway was empty. Stacy had come in the dark and driven off without knocking. That blank square of asphalt was one less reason for her to come back. The rest of the day, nothing.

Saturday, four days after the door shut, the text came while Ariel was standing in the kitchen not drinking her coffee.

Can I come over tonight? I need to talk to you both. In person. Sober, I promise.

She showed Bryan. He took his time reading it.

"What do you want to do?"

"Say yes. Don't push."

Of course. Whenever you're ready.

Around seven?

We'll be here.

Neither of them brought it up all day. Bryan cleaned the kitchen twice, and the second time Ariel caught him alphabetizing the spice rack. Then he started a pot of Stacy's sauce, her grandmother's, and Ariel watched him dice an onion with the ceramic knife Stacy had bought her, frown at the pile, and do it over smaller.

In the afternoon he went to the store for "a few things" and came back with three kinds of crackers, a block of cheddar, the peanut butter dog treats, and a bottle of sparkling cider he set on the counter and stared at like it had embarrassed him.

"Sparkling cider," Ariel said.

"In case she wants something that feels like a drink but isn't one."

"You're the sweetest."

"I know. I hate it. It looks like we're throwing a baby shower." He put it in the back of the fridge behind the orange juice.

Ariel changed her shirt twice. At one point she had the white sundress off the hanger, the one from the dog park and the cafe, and stood there holding it until she decided it would look like a costume tonight, and put it back.

*****

At seven exactly Stacy's car pulled into the driveway, back into the same square of asphalt it had left empty. Ariel had been at the front window for twenty minutes, and she had the door open before Stacy could knock.

Stacy was on the porch with Apollo, her bag over her shoulder, and the dog was the first thing Ariel let herself feel anything about, because last time Stacy had come alone. This time she'd brought him.

She looked exhausted, but she was there. No makeup, hair pulled back, jeans and a hoodie that swallowed her, and it took Ariel a second to recognize it as the one from Tuesday. The red around her eyes was old, days of it stacked up, but she looked right at Ariel when she said hi, and her eyes were clear.

"Hi," Ariel said, and stepped aside. "Come in."

Apollo shoved past both of them and found Bella, and the two dogs fell straight back into their routine, circling and play-bowing and thundering off toward the back door like they'd never been apart. Ariel wished it worked like that for people.

Stacy stood in the hall with her arms wrapped around her middle and breathed in. Ariel watched her recognize what was on the stove, and say nothing about it. Bryan came out of the kitchen drying his hands on a towel he didn't need. His eyes went to the hoodie for a second before looking up.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey." She looked at him looking at her. "I'm sober. You can stop looking at my pupils."

Bryan's ears went red. "I wasn't..."

"You were. It's fine. I'd look too."

He laughed, mostly out of relief, and Ariel felt the first knot in the room let go.

They sat in the living room, Ariel and Bryan on the couch and Stacy in the armchair across from them. She'd picked the separate seat. Apollo and Bella collapsed in a heap on the rug between them. Bryan fanned out the crackers on a plate, and Stacy looked at it for a long second.

"Why do you have three kinds of crackers? The last time I had these wheat ones was at a baby shower."

Bryan glanced at the fridge. "I didn't know which kind you liked."

Stacy took one of the baby shower ones and held it without eating it, but the corner of her mouth had moved, and that was something.

"I need to get through the whole thing," she said. "If I stop I might not start again. So just let me talk, and then you can say whatever you want. Or tell me to leave. I'll get it if you tell me to leave."

"We're not going to tell you to leave," Ariel said.

She looked at the cracker in her hand.

"His name's Matt. Not Matthew." She let that sit. "At the cafe you heard me call him Matthew, and that was on purpose. It was the only thing I could do with you standing there. Use the whole name to put distance between him and me." Her mouth twisted. "And he knew exactly what I was doing, which is why he joked about it. She only calls me Matthew when she's mad at me. One sentence and he'd turned it into a pet name. He always does that."

"I've known him since we were kids. We got together the summer after I graduated. I was eighteen, and he was home from his first year away." Stacy's voice had gone level and careful, like she was reading off a card she'd written so she wouldn't have to feel it. "He was my first everything. And when it was good it was really good. He taught me to cook. He was patient with me when nobody else had time to be, and he made me feel like I mattered more than anybody ever had." She turned the cracker over. "I want to be fair about it. That part was real. That's why the other part..."

"The other part?" Ariel asked.

"He never heard a no he treated like a no. From the very start. If I said not tonight, that was just where the conversation started. He'd wait me out or talk me around or make me feel like I was being cold, and by the end I'd said yes and I couldn't have told you how." She swallowed. "There was one time, near the end of that summer, that was worse than the others. I'm not going to go into it. But it's why I can't stand the smell, the sight, any of it. And it's why I made the condom rule after. The one thing I never let him past, no matter how drunk I got. He could talk me into everything else. Not that."

"The stupid part," Stacy said, quieter, looking at Ariel, "is that the only time it ever didn't make me want to crawl out of my skin was with you. In your bed. When it was already in you. At the cafe, with him all over me, it just smelled like Matt." She glanced at Bryan and away fast. "That's a weird sentence to say in front of you, sorry."

"I've heard weirder," Bryan said. "Mostly from her."

Ariel kicked his ankle without looking at him, and Stacy almost laughed.

Everything she knew about Stacy rearranged itself. The white cotton at the park, the flinch the first time Bryan leaked down Ariel's thigh in front of her, how the flinch had won in the cafe bathroom when she smelled him on Ariel, the Sunday in their bed when Stacy had tasted him for the first time, slow and nervous. First time ever, and I'm glad it was Bryan. She hadn't been trying something new. She'd been making it about somebody other than Matt.

"Then he went back to school and it stopped, and I told myself it was over and maybe hadn't even been that bad." Her voice went flat again. "Then he'd come back. Visit. Take me somewhere and be sweet and be Matt, and after a few drinks I'd start missing the version of him from the beginning, and he'd be right there being that version, and it would happen again. And in the morning, breakfast. Like nothing." She set the cracker down on the arm of the chair. "That's the pattern. He visits, I drink, it happens, we pretend it was fine, he leaves, I hate myself for a while. Then he comes back."

She looked up, and the next part was clearly costing her.

"Remember in your guest room, when I said I'd only ever told two people about the machine? One of them ghosted me and the other one was you." She picked at her sleeve. "Matt was the one who ghosted. I told him. Years ago. Braced for him to be disgusted, and he wasn't disgusted at all, he was..." She searched for it. "Pleased. Like it proved something. Like it meant I'd always need him, because who else could ever..." She stopped. "And then he disappeared for a year. So no, the machine isn't about him. I need you to hear that. He didn't put it in that closet. It's the one thing in my life that was ever only mine. It's the thing I did instead of calling him."

"Okay," Ariel said, because the room needed somebody to say something.

"The last time he came through was over a year ago. Before the dog park, before you." Stacy looked at Ariel when she said it, and kept looking. "I need you to know that. I haven't slept with him since you. Not once, not this week either. Here's what did happen."

"Okay," Ariel said again, softer.

"That call I ignored at your breakfast, the morning after the videos? That was him, saying he'd be in town Wednesday. And when he showed up I didn't think anything of it. I'd told him about you two, weeks ago, on the phone. Not all of it, just the good parts. I was happy and he's easy to talk to and I was proud of it, and he sounded happy for me." Her chin was shaking. "So I figured that was settled. I was with somebody. He wasn't going to show up expecting anything." She laughed once, not happily. "But he'd had weeks with everything I told him. And his second night there he asked me one question, real gentle, like he was worried about me. Is she grooming you? And I opened my mouth to defend you and nothing came out."

Ariel felt the cold go through her again. Next to her, Bryan let out a slow breath through his nose and looked at the floor.

"He used us," he said quietly. "To get to you."

"He didn't even have to push, not at first. He just cooked for me and listened and agreed I deserved better than people who'd use me. Started driving me to class so I wouldn't have to find parking, and picking me up after. And once I was leaning on him, the rest started." Stacy pressed her palms into her knees. "He ran the same play he's always run on me. And I almost missed it again, because it was working."

"But you didn't miss it," Bryan said.

"I did miss it at first. I went back Tuesday night for Apollo and Matt was already asleep on the couch. In the morning he made breakfast and said sorry about yesterday, he'd gotten a little carried away, no big deal. Like nothing happened." She wiped her nose on her sleeve. "Then that same morning you texted. After everything I said to you, you still said you were here. And I started missing you. Both of you. And that scared me, because missing people after they hurt me is what I do. But with him I always missed who he was at the beginning. With you two I missed Tuesday. Bryan standing there telling me no. I spent two months waiting for him to corner me in your kitchen like it was owed. It was never going to be Bryan. And the more I missed you the easier it was to see what he was doing, feeding me the anger and keeping me close, the whole I'm the only one who really knows you thing. Same thing he's always done. Once I'd seen what a plan looked like, I couldn't stop seeing his." She looked at the front window. "Thursday night I paid a rideshare driver to sit at the end of your street with the lights off for twenty minutes while I tried to make myself knock. Bella figured it out before you did."

Bryan turned and looked at Ariel. "The neighbor's kid."

"All grown up," Ariel said.

"I saw you come to the window," Stacy told Bryan. "You were holding a shoe. Like you were going to throw it at me."

"I didn't have time to find a better weapon."

"It was a flip-flop, Bryan."

"It was the closest shoe."

Stacy laughed, really laughed, short and surprised, and covered her mouth like it had gotten out without permission. Then it faded and she looked at her hands.

"So I had the driver take me home, and I came back at two in the morning in another one and took the car without knocking, after everything I'd said to you. Friday morning I drove myself to my nine o'clock and didn't hear a word of it, and by the time it let out I'd decided I was going to end it with him for good." Her hands had gone still in her lap, which was worse than when they'd been shaking. "And I have to tell you about Friday night, and then I'll stop."

Ariel nodded. Next to her, Bryan had gone very quiet.

"I sat him down that night. Told him it was over, that I'd met people who mattered and I couldn't do this anymore, that I wanted to be different." The card-reading voice was back, holding her together. "And he was perfect about it. Calm. Said he respected it. Said he was proud of me." Her mouth did something. "And then he opened a bottle to celebrate my big decision and poured me a glass. And I drank it. I'd already walked out on him once, and I drank it anyway, because he was being so nice about it, and saying no felt mean when he was being that nice..."

Her voice started to come apart, and it was the only place in the whole telling where it did.

"And he poured another one. And I don't have all of it after that, there's just gaps." She was breathing fast and shallow. "I came back to myself on the couch and his hand was already... and my body was already doing the thing it does, going along, and I was barely even there for it."

Bryan came up off the couch. He didn't go anywhere. He just stood there with his hands opening and closing at his sides, like his body had decided to do something before it had anything to do it to. Ariel's hand had found the arm of the couch and was holding on hard enough to hurt.

"Stacy," she said. It barely made it out.

Stacy put a hand up without looking at either of them. "Let me finish. Please."

Bryan sat back down slowly, and didn't take his eyes off her.

She pressed her fist against her mouth and made herself keep going. "I've been in that exact spot many times, and every time I just went under and let it happen. This time I didn't. And at first I didn't know why. But I heard your voice in my head."

She looked at Bryan.

"You. Standing right there, holding my hoodie out. Put this back on. Please." Her eyes were streaming but her voice held. "Nobody in my life ever wanted me and told me no in the same breath. I didn't even get it when it happened. But Friday night it was the thing I grabbed."

Bryan didn't say anything. He looked at the floor, and his hand came up and rubbed the back of his neck and stayed there. Ariel had watched him take compliments for ten years and he'd never once known what to do with a real one.

"He pushed," Stacy said. "Said I was being dramatic, said my body was obviously into it." She shook her head. "So I told him what you told me. It doesn't get a vote. And then I said it. No. Out loud, and I meant it all the way down for the first time I can remember." She let out a breath. "His hand was still moving. And all of a sudden I was stone sober, and I could see exactly how it worked. The bottle was the plan. Being nice was the plan. Every gentle thing for years, aimed right at that." She set her teeth. "And when the no held, the nice came off him like a coat. He said something I'm not going to repeat. It wasn't even creative. And that was the last thing I ever needed to know about him."

On the rug, Apollo had lifted his head and was watching her, ears forward.

"I went in my bedroom and locked the door and got Apollo up on the bed and sat against the headboard until it got light." She let out a shaky breath. "A hundred and sixty pounds of dog snoring on my legs all night. He'd have been a great bodyguard if Matt had been a sandwich."

Bryan made a sound that was half a laugh and half something else.

Apollo got up off the rug, came over, and leaned his whole weight against Stacy's legs. She sank her fingers into the fur behind his ears. "He's always had my back, though," she said, quieter, and kept her hand there.

"In the morning I told him to get out. He argued. Said I was overreacting, said I'd been into it, said I'd shut out my 'new friends' eventually and come crawling back like always." Her voice had gone sharp. "And I didn't back down. First time in my life. I told him if he ever came near me again I'd tell everybody exactly what he is, because the only thing that ever kept this going was nobody knowing, and I'm done keeping it in the dark." It cracked on the end. "I blocked him on everything. He left this morning. He's gone."

Apollo whined, low in his chest, and shoved his head up under her hand until she was holding onto his collar.

She wiped her face with her free hand and looked at them, wrecked and swollen and braced for whatever she was about to see on their faces.

"I spent today reading about guys like him, and it was like reading my own diary. That's what I've been carrying since before I met you. I get it if it's too much."

"Come here," Ariel said.

Stacy blinked. "What?"

"Come here."

Stacy got up on shaky legs and crossed to the couch, and Ariel pulled her down into her arms. She went stiff for half a second, braced even now for it to be a trick, and then she folded, all her weight dropping into Ariel's chest.

"Nothing you said changes anything," Ariel said into her hair. "Not one thing. You hear me?"

There was something she had to say too, and she said it while Stacy could feel her heartbeat and know she meant it.

"In the bathroom at the cafe, I blamed you for not stopping him from kissing you." She pressed her cheek to the top of Stacy's head. "That's the exact thing he spent years teaching you, that it was on you to stop it. I didn't know what I was saying and it was still cruel, and I'm sorry. It was never yours to stop. It was his to not do. And I walked in there carrying Bryan and never once thought what that did to you."

Stacy whimpered.

Then she started to say something into Ariel's shirt, got as far as "But even after I had you two, I kept..." and stopped.

"And I know what you're about to say, because I can feel you getting ready to say it." Ariel pulled back far enough to see her face. "That you poured the wine yourself sometimes. That you kept going back. That you said yes every time, so how much of it is really his." She shook her head. "He got there first, Stacy. You were eighteen and he taught you a no was just where the conversation started. You didn't fail to stop him. He built you so you couldn't, and then he called it your choice."

Stacy's face broke wide open.

"I don't want you alone inside this anymore," Ariel said, quieter.

"I want to believe that," Stacy whispered.

"You will. Maybe not tonight. But you will."

The crying that came then was ugly, heaving and loud and soaking through Ariel's shirt.

Bryan got off the couch and knelt on the floor next to them, close, not touching.

"You got through the whole thing," he said, and his voice cracked. "You are so brave."

At some point Stacy's hand came off Ariel and reached out blind until it found Bryan's forearm, and held on. Only then did his hand come to rest on her back. Apollo followed her over and shoved his big head into her lap, and she grabbed a fistful of his fur without stopping, and she held onto all three of them at once.

They stayed like that a long time. The light outside went gold and then gray. They just held her until the worst passed and her breathing went ragged and spent.

After a while Stacy got up to wash her face. Ariel heard the water run in the bathroom, and then it stopped, and nothing happened for long enough that she almost went to check.

Stacy came back drying her face on her sleeve and looked straight at Bryan. "You fixed the shelf!"

"Sure did!" He smiled a bit too bright.

"All that crap I gave you about that shelf." She dropped back onto the couch between them. "What am I supposed to make fun of you for now?"

"There's more baby shower stuff in the fridge," Bryan said. "You'll think of something."

She laughed, worn out but real, and leaned her head on Ariel's shoulder. Ariel was glad she'd saved it for her.

*****

"Come on," Ariel said eventually. "Let's get you lying down."

Stacy didn't argue. Ariel walked her down the hall to their bedroom, Stacy's bag over her own shoulder, and pulled back the covers, and Stacy crawled in still wearing her jeans and the hoodie and curled up small on Ariel's side of the bed. Ariel got in behind her and pulled the blankets over both of them with an arm around her middle.

"I'm sorry for how I threw the plan thing at you," Stacy mumbled, already thick with sleep. "I was trying to hurt you because you'd seen me at my worst."

"I know. Later."

"That thing Bryan said on Tuesday. That he wouldn't be one more guy..."

"He meant it."

"I know he did." It was barely a voice. "You two are why I came back."

Her breathing went deep and even. Apollo hauled himself up onto the bed and collapsed across her feet with a groan, and she didn't even stir.

Ariel eased out from behind her and stood in the doorway a minute, and then went to find her husband.

*****

Bryan was on the couch in the dark with his laptop open, and he shut it fast when she came in. Too fast.

"What was that?"

"Nothing."

"Bry."

He looked at the closed laptop for a while. Then he opened it and turned it toward her. It was an Instagram profile, a guy in a ball cap grinning on a boat, the same easy smile from the cafe.

"She's tagged in his old posts," Bryan said. "Took me about four minutes." He wasn't looking at her. "I don't know what I was going to do. I wasn't going to do anything. I just wanted to look at his face."

"Close it."

He closed it. Then he set it on the coffee table and pushed it a few inches away, like that helped, and pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.

"I want to find him," he said. "I've been sitting here twenty minutes and that's all I've got."

"I know."

"And I keep thinking, if we'd just said yes that Tuesday. If I'd taken her to the bedroom like she was begging me to, she's not in that apartment Friday. She's here. And instead we said no and she went back to him."

"If we'd done that, we'd have taught her the exact same thing he taught her," Ariel said. "That a drunk yes counts. That when she's not really there, that's fine, go ahead." She turned toward him. "She told you herself, Bry. Friday night she was going under, and what she grabbed was you saying no."

He didn't say anything for a while.

"Can I tell you the part I'm ashamed of?"

She waited.

"She sat in that chair and told us the worst thing that ever happened to her, and the whole time some part of my brain was going, she grabbed my arm. She reached for me." He laughed at himself, not kindly. "Like I was keeping score. While she was crying. I'm not some saint, Ari. Everybody keeps saying what a good guy I am, and I've spent two months on that couch wanting her so bad I couldn't think straight, and the only thing that makes me good is I didn't do anything about it. That's a pretty low bar."

Ariel opened her mouth to tell him he was being too hard on himself, and then didn't.

"I know," she said instead. "And I've been doing a thing too."

"What thing?"

"Every time I tell this story, even just in my own head, you're the good guy. Patient Bryan. Bryan who dog-sits and fixes the shelf and always says the right thing." She didn't let herself stop there. "Because if you're that good, then picking you was smart, and the whole thing with Stacy was okay, and I come out looking fine. I've been making you a saint because it makes me look better. Week one you told me not to mess her up. I heard you. I did it anyway."

He stared at her.

"So you don't have to be one," she said. "You're allowed to want her and be jealous and look up some asshole's boat pictures at eleven at night. You're allowed to be pissed that you sat home with two dogs while we..." She stopped. "Were you? Pissed?"

He actually thought about it, which she loved him for.

"Some days," he said. "Mostly no. Mostly I liked it. Knowing you were happy, and her texting me about recipes. And knowing exactly what you two were doing over there, if I'm being honest. But there were a couple Tuesdays I sat here with Apollo watching some cooking show and felt like the help." He shrugged. "Then you'd come home and tell me about it and I'd stop feeling like the help pretty fast."

"I'd noticed that part."

"I bet." The corner of his mouth went up, then back down. "So what do I do with all of it? The wanting and the score-keeping and the boat guy."

"Nothing. Be the same guy tomorrow." She put her hand flat on his chest and left it there.

"Yeah." He breathed out. "Okay."

He glanced down the hall.

"Does she want to report it? Friday night. Should we..."

"That's hers. Only hers. We don't bring it up and we don't have an opinion unless she asks for one. If she ever wants to do something, we help however she says, and if she never does, that's allowed too." Ariel held his eyes. "It's the one thing we don't get to have a plan about."

"No plan," he said. "Got it."

Bryan pulled her into his side.

"I'm keeping the flip-flop by the door," he said.

"You are not."

"It's a proven deterrent."

They went back down the hall together. Stacy hadn't moved. Bryan had brought the throw from the couch, and he spread it over her feet and the dog both, then crouched and kissed Ariel's forehead and, very lightly, the top of Stacy's head. She didn't wake up.

"I'll take the guest room," he whispered.

"No. Stay. She reached for you tonight. Let her wake up and find out she was right to."

He looked at her a long moment. Then he went around to the far side and eased in carefully, leaving a whole person's width of space between him and Stacy, close enough to be there and not an inch closer than she'd asked for.

Ariel got in behind Stacy and pulled the blanket up over all three of them. At the foot of the bed Apollo was breathing slow. Outside a car went by and was gone, and this time it didn't mean anything.

Stacy slept between them. Neither of them slept for a long time, and neither of them minded.

*****

Ariel woke up first, and for a minute she just lay there and listened to Stacy breathe. It was slow and deep, real sleep this time, nothing like the wrung-out crying sleep from the night before. Stacy was still in her jeans and the hoodie, curled on her side with her face mashed into Ariel's pillow, and the swelling around her eyes had mostly gone down.

Around three Stacy had jerked awake with a sound like she was falling, and Ariel had said her name into her hair over and over until she went loose again. She hadn't really woken up. She'd just needed to hear it.

Sometime after that she'd moved. Bryan was still on the far edge of the bed exactly where he'd put himself, flat on his back with one arm over his face and that same careful person-sized gap beside him. But Stacy had closed most of it. Her back was against Ariel's chest and one of her feet had found its way over to Bryan's shin and was resting there, and Ariel was pretty sure Bryan had been awake for a while and hadn't moved a muscle because of it.

Apollo was across the bottom of the bed like a rug. Bella had given up on all of them and gone back to her bed in the living room.

Stacy stirred. Ariel felt her go tight for a second before she remembered where she was, and then she pushed back into Ariel and pulled Ariel's arm tighter around her.

"Morning, girlfriend," Ariel said.

"Morning." Stacy's voice was wrecked. She looked down the bed at her own foot on Bryan's leg and didn't move it. "I'm still here."

"You're still here."

"Hi," Bryan said from under his arm.

Stacy laughed, a little croaky. "How long have you been awake?"

"A while."

"You could've moved."

"Didn't want to," he said, and got up to make coffee before she could say anything to that.

Stacy sat up and looked herself over, slept-in jeans and a wrinkled hoodie and her hair flat on one side. "I look like I got hit by a truck."

"You look like somebody who had a really hard night."

"Same thing." She almost smiled.

Ariel opened the dresser and asked if she wanted something to change into. Stacy came over and looked at both drawers, then pulled out one of Bryan's t-shirts, the same worn-out kind she'd slept in the first time she stayed over, and a pair of his shorts. She put them on without any of the pink-cheeked fuss from that first night, rolled the waistband twice, and that was it. Ariel's clothes had been right there and she'd picked his, and it wasn't because his fit better.

*****

Bryan had breakfast going when they came out, coffee and eggs and toast and the hot sauce. He poured Stacy's coffee without asking, black with one sugar, like he'd watched her take it every time she'd been over.

"Apollo took the flip-flop," he said. "Right off the rack by the door. I found it under the coffee table this morning, soaked."

Stacy looked at him over her mug. "You actually kept it by the door."

"I said I would."

"Apollo's disarming you," Ariel said.

"He's a very loyal dog," Stacy said. "He doesn't want anybody throwing shoes at me."

They ate. Bryan had put cheese in the eggs. Ariel opened her mouth, and Stacy said "Outvoted" without looking up, and for a while nobody brought up last night. Then Stacy put her fork down.

"Can I say one last thing about Tuesday?"

Ariel nodded.

"I already said sorry for what I threw at you, and I meant it. The stuff about you grooming me, that was me swinging at anything I could reach. What he did to me isn't what you did." She turned her mug a little. "But you did have a plan for me. That part was true. And I'm not done being mad about it. I just want you to know, so you're not sitting around wondering."

It stung, and it was fair, and Ariel found she was glad Stacy had said it out loud instead of swallowing it like she'd swallowed the Bryan thing for months.

"Okay," Ariel said. "Be mad. I'll still be here."

"I will." Stacy picked her fork back up. "I'm also going to finish these eggs, because somebody in this house finally put cheese in them."

"Finally," Bryan said, to the ceiling.

*****

After breakfast Apollo took over Bella's bed and Bella took the couch in protest, so Bryan ended up on the floor with his coffee, and Stacy laughed at him.

"My dog stole your dog's bed and now you're on the floor."

"This is my life now. I've made peace with it."

Around one Bryan got up and put the sauce he made yesterday back on the stove. At the end he took the tarragon down off the spice rack, held the jar for a second, and put it back where he'd alphabetized it.

Stacy took one bite and stopped. "You left out the tarragon."

"That part was his, wasn't it?"

Stacy looked at the bowl for a long second. "It was." She took another bite. "It's better without it."

They talked for a long time about nothing, Stacy's classes and Bryan's nightmare client and a movie Ariel hated and Bryan loved, and Stacy refereed the movie argument with rulings that were very obviously biased toward Bryan. At some point she moved from the armchair to the couch without seeming to notice. A while after that she leaned over to make a point and put her hand on Bryan's shoulder, and left it there. Bryan went very still and kept arguing about the movie without missing a beat, and Ariel watched Stacy notice that he'd noticed. Somewhere in there Stacy mentioned she'd already booked her therapist for Tuesday. "All of it this time," she said. "Even the machine." Then she went back to ruling on the movie.

The talking wound down on its own. Stacy looked at Ariel, then at Bryan.

"I've been thinking about what I want," she said.

Ariel's stomach dropped. She knew how that sentence usually ended: space, time, maybe it's better if. Next to her Bryan sat up like he'd been called on in class.

"Before you say anything," he said, "I just want to say whatever you need is fine. If you need to go slow, we go slow. If you need to not do anything for a while, or ever, honestly, we'd still want you around. For the dogs. And the eggs. And..." His hand was on the back of his neck. "I had this whole thing worked out. It was a lot better at four in the morning."

Stacy stared at him. "Bryan."

"Yeah."

"I was going to say I want to be with you. Both of you."

Bryan's mouth stayed open. "Oh." Then, quieter: "You said next time."

"I meant it," Stacy said.

"You rehearsed that," Ariel said.

"Since about four."

"In bed? With her foot on your leg?"

"Quietly."

"Still better than 'thank you,'" Ariel said, and Bryan threw a couch cushion at her.

Stacy was laughing, her hand over her face, and when she took it away her voice was steady. "Not to erase anything. Not to cover anything up. Because I want to. Sober and everything."

"It's been two days," Ariel said. She wasn't doubting her. She just needed to hear her say it.

"I know exactly how long it's been." Stacy's voice didn't move. "He doesn't get this weekend too."

Ariel kissed her first, like she had a hundred times, and Stacy kissed her back like she'd missed it. Then she pulled back, turned to Bryan, and waited.

He looked at Ariel and she nodded, and he put his hand on Stacy's face, his thumb along her cheekbone, and came in slowly enough that she could have changed her mind at any point. She didn't, and she kept her eyes open the whole way. When his mouth touched hers she went still for a couple of breaths, and Ariel thought of the cafe, Stacy's hands in her lap and her eyes shut, waiting it out. Then she pushed into it herself and slid her hand around the back of his neck and pulled him in, and it stopped being careful.

When they pulled apart they were both breathing harder. Stacy touched her lips with her fingertips like she was checking something.

"I felt that," she said. "All of it." Then, to Bryan: "You were shaking."

"I was not."

"A little," Ariel said.

*****

They went down the hall without hurrying, Stacy in the middle holding Ariel's hand on one side and Bryan's on the other. The bed was still a mess from last night, the dent where she'd slept in her jeans and hoodie, and Stacy stood looking at it. She'd been held in this bed all night, and now she'd walked back into it on her own.

"Today's about you," Ariel said, sliding her hands under the hem of Bryan's shirt where it hung on Stacy. "Whatever you want, however you want it. Okay?"

"Okay." Stacy bit her lip. "Should I do the thing with my hair? I've got a whole routine."

"Please don't," Ariel said.

"Bryan loves it, right?" She grinned at the front of his shorts.

"It doesn't get a vote," Bryan said, and Stacy laughed, and the last of the nerves went out of her.

Ariel pulled Bryan's shirt over Stacy's head, then the shorts. On Tuesday Stacy had stripped herself in one practiced motion and stood there with everything arranged. On the couch before that, she'd asked to keep his shirt on. This time she let Ariel take it, and her arms stayed at her sides. She stood naked in the daylight with nothing to hide behind, soft and pale and real.

Bryan undressed himself, then Ariel.

Stacy looked down at herself, then at Ariel beside her, tanned and freckled and lean. Her skin looked even paler next to it, all softness, heavy breasts and full hips and the give of her stomach. Her hands started to come up to cross over her belly, like they always did, and Ariel opened her mouth for their line. Then Stacy put her hands back down at her sides. "You always say Bryan would lose his mind," she said, and looked at him.

Bryan opened his mouth. Nothing came out. His eyes had gone straight to her breasts and stayed there, big and soft and pale, nipples already tight in the cool air, and he stared at them like a man who'd spent two months looking at windows and floors and the backs of cereal boxes to keep from doing exactly this. He shut his mouth, looked up at the ceiling like it might have notes for him, and lasted about a second before his eyes went right back. The rest of him had already answered for him.

"She undersold it," he said finally, a little hoarse. "Those are... I mean. Christ." He gave up on the sentence entirely.

Ariel laughed out loud, and Stacy stood there in the middle of it and let him look.

"You're both beautiful," Bryan said. "But today I'm looking at you."

The flush started on Stacy's chest and climbed. "Then look."

Ariel guided Stacy onto the bed, settling beside her. She kissed Stacy's neck, her collarbone, her breast, going over the map of a body they both knew.

Bryan knelt on the bed on Stacy's other side, and Ariel watched Stacy register him, a man, close, naked, hard. The old wariness showed up for a second and then it was gone, and she looked at his body with a want so open that Ariel felt it low in her own stomach.

"Can I touch you?" Bryan asked.

"Yes," Stacy said, and she sounded a little surprised to be asked.

His hand found her hip and just rested there, letting her feel the weight of it. His thumb traced a small circle on her skin and Stacy shivered.

"That's good," she whispered. "That's really good."

Ariel kissed her way down Stacy's stomach while Bryan's mouth found her neck. Ariel's mouth reached Stacy's inner thigh and she heard Stacy gasp above her, from Bryan's mouth on her throat or Ariel's breath on her skin or both at once.

"Oh," Stacy said. "Oh, this is..."

"Too much?" Ariel asked.

"Not enough." Stacy's hand found Ariel's hair. "Please."

Ariel lowered her mouth and Stacy's hips lifted. Stacy liked it slow at first, building gradually, and her thighs tensed when she was getting close. Ariel worked with practiced ease, tongue circling, reading every shift.

Bryan was kissing Stacy's mouth, her jaw, her breasts, his thumb brushing her nipple, and Stacy arched into both of them, Ariel's tongue below and Bryan's mouth above, caught between two kinds of good.

She was close, Ariel could tell, and then Stacy's hand tightened in her hair and pulled her gently back up.

"I want Bryan," Stacy said. "I want him inside me when I come."

She looked at him, all of him, and didn't flinch. This was the thing he'd told them on that couch he'd been ashamed of his whole life, and she looked at it like she wanted it.

"I'm ready," she said.

Bryan held her eyes. "Do you want me to wear a condom?"

For a second her face went somewhere old. Then it came back. "Yes. Please." She hesitated. "Is that okay?"

"Of course," Bryan said, right away, and leaned over to the nightstand. Then he stopped with the drawer open. "Ari. Do we even have any?"

Ariel thought about it. "We've been together ten years, Bry. We have lube and sex toys."

He dug through the drawer anyway, like one might have grown in there, which was a lot less dignified naked and hard.

Stacy had already gone red. She leaned over the edge of the bed, fished her bag off the floor where Ariel had set it down last night, and came back up with a pharmacy bag.

Nobody said anything. Bryan looked at the bag, then at her.

"Got it on my way here," Stacy said, looking away, before they could ask. "I wasn't assuming anything. I just wanted it to be my call, if it ever came up."

Bryan took the box out and turned it over, and his eyebrows went up. "You got the right size."

"I saw it last time," Stacy said into her hands, and Ariel had to bury her face in the pillow to hold in a laugh.

"This is like riding a bike," Bryan said, tearing one off. "A really weird bike I haven't touched in ten years." He got it on with the air of a man doing a favor he was glad to be asked for. "Okay. Done. I'm a responsible adult."

Stacy's shoulders had come all the way down. It had been her call, and nobody had made it anything else.

Ariel lay down next to her and laced their fingers together.

"Go slow," Stacy told him. "I want to feel it. I need to be here for every part of this."

"Tell me if anything's wrong," Bryan said. "We stop whenever you say."

"I know." She squeezed Ariel's hand. "That's why I can do this."

Bryan pressed against her entrance, just the tip, just the pressure, and Stacy's eyes went wide.

"Breathe," Ariel murmured, squeezing her hand.

Stacy breathed. Bryan pushed forward another inch. Her lips parted on a sound that was half gasp, half wonder.

"You okay?" Bryan asked, strained with the effort of holding still.

"More than okay. More." Her free hand found his arm and gripped. "Keep going."

Inch by inch. Stacy's eyes stayed open on Bryan's face the whole time, refusing to close.

"I'm choosing this," Stacy whispered. "This is mine."

Bryan pushed as deep as he dared and held there. Stacy cried out, back arching, hand tightening on Ariel's.

"Oh god," she gasped. "I can feel you everywhere."

"How does it feel?" Ariel asked, brushing hair off Stacy's face.

"Full." Stacy's voice was thick. "Like I fit. Like he fits." She looked up at Bryan and then down where they were connected. An inch of gap still between them. "You don't have to hold back. I can take your big dick."

Bryan went still, and not the careful kind. But Stacy was grinning, and Ariel could see she'd said it on purpose.

Stacy saw it land on him. She put her hand on his face.

"I know," she said. "Last time I said that it was a sales pitch. This time it's just true."

He let out a breath that was half a laugh. "You're sure?"

"I'm sure. Move. Please."

He started slowly, careful, measured strokes, and each one went a little deeper than the last. Stacy's breath caught every time that last inch got smaller. Then his hips met hers and there was no gap left at all.

Bryan stopped there and stared down at where they were joined like he didn't quite believe it. "All of me," he said, and it came out wrecked. "Nobody but Ari's ever..." He couldn't finish it.

"Told you," Stacy said, breathless and smug about it.

Ariel kissed Stacy's temple and her mouth, then leaned across to kiss Bryan before coming back to Stacy.

"How's that?" Bryan asked.

"So good." Stacy was panting now. "You can go harder. I want to feel it."

Bryan's pace picked up. Ariel's free hand slid down her own body and between her legs, slow at first, matching his rhythm, her other hand still laced with Stacy's. She'd pictured this for months, Bryan's careful hands and Stacy's open face, and the real thing was better than anything she'd ever come up with alone.

Every thrust came through Stacy's grip into Ariel's hand. On the couch it had all gone through Ariel. Now it went straight between the two of them, and Ariel was the one feeling it secondhand, and she didn't mind at all.

"Look at you," Ariel murmured against Stacy's ear. "Taking him. Choosing this."

"I am," Stacy breathed.

"You okay?" Bryan asked again.

"Bryan," Stacy and Ariel said at the same time.

"Okay. Okay."

Ariel leaned across to kiss Bryan's shoulder, tasting the salt of his effort, then went back to Stacy's mouth, moving between them and kissing both, her own hand never stopping, watching Bryan's restraint finally break into something more urgent and Stacy's hips rising to meet him.

"Harder," Stacy said, and the command in her voice was new. "I want more."

"Yeah?" Bryan's voice had dropped. "You want to feel it?"

"I want to feel everything."

Bryan groaned and gave her more, deeper strokes that made Stacy cry out and arch off the bed. On one thrust he drove into her cervix hard, and Stacy made a sharp, involuntary sound, her whole body jolting.

Bryan stopped dead and started to pull back. "Shit, sorry, that was too deep, are you..."

"Why are you apologizing?" Stacy looked honestly confused. "That felt good."

"I hit your..." He stopped. It caught up with him.

"You know about the machine," Stacy said. She wasn't upset; she sounded almost gentle about it. "You know what it hits."

"Yeah," Bryan said. "It's just, before Ari, every time I got that deep it hurt somebody. Knowing and feeling it are different things."

"It doesn't hurt me." She rolled her hips up into him and made a small, pleased sound. "Ariel's hand found it first. The machine finds it. But you're the first man who's ever reached it." She couldn't quite look at him. "It feels exactly like that. Do it again."

"You're sure," he said, barely holding his voice together.

"Bryan." She took his face in both hands. "If you check in one more time, I'm getting the flip-flop."

He laughed, surprised into it, and stopped holding back.

Ariel let go of Stacy's hand long enough to reach down, and her fingers circled Stacy's clit in time with Bryan's thrusts while her other hand kept working between her own legs, and the two of them together made Stacy's whole body shake.

"Oh god," Stacy gasped. "Right there. Don't you dare stop."

Bryan found the angle and held it, driving deep with every stroke, and Ariel could see the moment Stacy stopped thinking entirely. Her eyes went wide and her mouth fell open.

"I'm going to..." Stacy's voice climbed. "Oh god, I'm going to come. I can feel it building and I'm not..." Her breath hitched. "I'm not disappearing. I'm right here."

"Let go," Ariel said against her skin. "We've got you."

Stacy came with her eyes open, from the inside out, rolling through her in waves that were deeper and slower than anything Ariel had seen from her before. Her whole body locked, trembling, and the sound she made was as much surprise as pleasure, like she'd never known it could feel like this with a man.

Ariel caught Bryan's face as the sound came out of her. It was different. He'd been right to wonder.

Bryan's rhythm stuttered. "Stacy, I'm..."

Ariel had been close for a while. Her hand had gone slick and frantic between her own legs, and she wasn't letting this one pass.

"Bryan," she said. "Me. Now."

"Do it," Stacy breathed, already shoving at his hip with shaking hands. "I want to watch you come inside her."

He pulled out of Stacy carefully, and Ariel was on him before he'd finished, peeling the condom off in one rough tug and flinging it over the side of the bed. She shoved him flat on his back and swung a leg over him.

"Jesus, Ari," he managed.

Stacy rolled onto her side to watch, flushed and boneless and grinning.

Ariel sank down onto him in one long stroke, all the way, and Bryan's head went back against the pillow. She didn't bother with slow. She rode him hard and fast with his hands gripping her hips, and it only took a minute. She came first, shaking over him, and dragged him over the edge with her, and he buried himself deep with a groan, his whole body going rigid under her.

Stacy watched both of their faces the whole time.

*****

Nobody said anything for a while. The light was warm through the blinds and the three of them were breathing hard and then less hard. Stacy was in the middle, and she'd put herself there.

"I was here," Stacy said, sounding amazed. "The whole time. I didn't go anywhere once."

Ariel kissed her shoulder. Bryan found Stacy's hand and laced his fingers through hers.

"My therapist's going to have notes," Stacy said after a while. "I haven't said 'normal' once."

Then Stacy propped herself up on an elbow and looked down Ariel's body, at Bryan slick on the inside of her thigh, then back up at her face, and Ariel could see she'd already decided.

"Stace, you don't have to..."

"I know I don't have to." Her eyes were steady. "I told you last night. The only time it ever didn't make me want to crawl out of my skin was with you. I want it to be like that again. On purpose this time. My idea."

Bryan opened his mouth. "Are you sure, because..."

Stacy just looked at him. "Bryan."

Stacy kissed her way down Ariel's stomach and stopped at the top of her thigh, where Bryan was slipping out of her, slow and white. She didn't flinch, and she didn't dive in either. She looked up at Ariel like she wanted her to watch, then leaned in close and took a slow, deliberate breath through her nose. Stacy held it a second, let it out, and considered.

"Hotel pool," she said. "The nice kind, with the little towels."

Ariel laughed so hard the bed shook.

Then she put her mouth on her. Not hungry like she'd been on the couch that first fresh time, all tongue and no patience. Slower. Deliberate. Taking him out of Ariel like it was something she'd picked out for herself.

Partway through she reached back without looking, found Bryan's hand flat on the sheets, and pulled it onto her back. On the couch he hadn't so much as leaned. Now his hand stayed where she'd put it.

That's us, Ariel thought.

When Stacy was done she pressed one last kiss to the inside of Ariel's knee like she was signing it.

Stacy came back up the bed and lay down with her head on Ariel's shoulder, and licked her lip, thoughtful.

"Still saltier than I expected," she said.

Bryan put his arm over his eyes. "Are there going to be tasting notes every time?"

"Probably."

Ariel was laughing too hard to say anything. Stacy waited for her to finish, and then said, quieter, just to her: "That one was mine. Nobody talked me into it."

"I know," Ariel said. "I was there."

Stacy lay back between them with one hand in Bryan's and the other on Ariel's hip.

"I love you," she said. It came out plain, no lead-up, just something she was done not saying. "Both of you. I love you both."

Ariel had known for weeks, probably longer. But hearing it out loud, in that steady voice, after everything it had taken to get here, she started crying anyway.

"I love you too," she said, and meant every bit of it.

Bryan brought Stacy's hand up to his mouth and kissed her knuckles. "I love you. I've been falling for you for months. I just didn't want to say it before you were ready to hear it."

Stacy's eyes filled up too.

"You waited," she said.

"We waited," Ariel said.

Apollo wandered in from the hall, climbed onto the foot of the bed, turned around twice, and dropped with a huge sigh. Bella came in after him and lay down on the floor with her chin on her paws, and nobody got up for a long time.

*****

The next Saturday was the end of summer, and it felt like the last hot day they'd get all year.

Ariel wore the white sundress from the first day at the park. Stacy wore the pale blue one, from the day they'd made it official. Bryan wore the flip-flops. Bella had helpfully dug the other one out from under the couch, and nobody had been able to talk him out of it.

They walked across the parking lot together, Bryan with both leashes, and inside the gate he unclipped the dogs and they took off for the water station together.

They found the bench by the gate, the same one, and Stacy sat down in the middle.

For years the park had been where Ariel went to be alone with it. She felt the plug shift as she settled in, and Bryan from that morning warm behind it, same as always. The difference was everybody else on the bench.

"Was the bench part of the plan?" Stacy asked.

"No, and no more plans," Ariel said. "I retired."

"Mm." Stacy reached into the pocket of her dress. "I have one."

She put something small and black in Bryan's palm and folded his fingers over it. He opened his hand and looked at it, then at her.

"Guess what I'm wearing," Stacy said to both of them.

Ariel looked at her. Stacy had gone pink all the way to her collarbone, but she was grinning.

"Getting in on my secret?"

"Ours now."

"It's the big one," Stacy told Bryan, and dropped her voice. "It sits right up against my cervix. I like it rough, like you do it. I haven't tried it on high, though."

Bryan swallowed. Then he did it again.

"One click is low. Each click after that goes up. Hold it down for high. I squeeze your knee, you stop." She looked at him until he nodded. "I'll probably complain. Only the squeeze counts. Low, to start."

He pressed it once, so carefully you'd have thought it might go off. Stacy's breath caught, barely. He pressed it again and she crossed her legs.

"Back in July you asked me if I wanted to know what your vibrator did on high," Stacy said, watching the dogs. "I told you you'd kill me."

"And I said maybe later."

"It's later. Let's see what mine does." Stacy grinned and put her hand on his knee and left it there, loose. "Go ahead."

He held the button down.

Ariel felt it through the bench before she saw it. Stacy went rigid against her side, her other hand white-knuckled on the slat, her toes curling hard in her sandals. A woman with a corgi walked past and smiled at the three of them, and Stacy smiled back and said "Morning!" bright as anything.

Over by the water station, Apollo's ears perked up. He came trotting back across the grass with his head cocked, sat down square in front of her, and tried to peek under her hem.

"Apollo, heel!" Stacy shrieked, laughing, shoving at his big head.

Bryan let go of the button.

"He's got a hell of a nose on him," Ariel said.

"And ears," Bryan said.

When the dog finally wandered off, Stacy let her breath out. "Huh."

"You're alive," Ariel said.

"I have a fuck machine, Ariel."

Bryan choked on nothing.

Then, without a word, he held the button down again.

"Anyway," Stacy said to Ariel, way too brightly, "I was thinking we should take the dogs to the lake next weekend, if it stays..." Her voice cracked in half. "... warm." The pink was climbing her throat in blotches. She crossed her legs, uncrossed them, crossed them the other way. "Bryan. Maybe ease up a..."

"Hm?" Bryan was looking out at the dogs, the picture of innocence. "You didn't squeeze."

Stacy looked down at her own hand, still lying loose on his knee, like it had betrayed her. "I'm aware I didn't squeeze."

"Rules are rules."

"I made the rules!"

"Good rules," Bryan said.

"I hate you," Stacy told him, an octave higher, her sandals coming up off the ground. "I hate you so much. Oh my god. Don't you dare let go."

He didn't. Ariel watched her come on a park bench with a polite dog-park smile glued to her face and her whole body shaking against Ariel's side, and her hand never once squeezed his knee.

Bryan let go. Stacy slumped back against the bench and breathed out through her nose, very carefully.

Ariel looked down. A wet streak was running down the inside of Stacy's calf into her sandal, and the slat under her had gone dark.

"Superpower," Ariel said.

"Shut up." Stacy crossed her ankles, pink to the hairline, and didn't stop smiling.

Stacy leaned her head on Ariel's shoulder. "Leave it on," she told him. "Not high. Just on."

He put the remote in his pocket and kept his hand there, careful, but not afraid of it anymore.

Now there were three people on a bench who knew exactly what was under those dresses, and every so often a faint buzz came through Stacy's side into hers, and it was the best secret she'd ever been part of.

She wasn't by herself anymore. None of them were.

The end.