“Oh, no! Laura, we weren’t laughing at you!” Mike picked up on her distress first, rushing to cradle her. How did he know what she was thinking? It was uncanny, but words escaped her again, the pain of what she thought they were doing so great that even if they weren’t, its echo remained.
Dylan’s hot hands caressed the back of her neck. “We, uh, well.” Dylan hesitated, then blurted out, “we kinda planned all this.”
“Yeah, I know. When’s the YouPorn video going up?” she asked, now just pissed but also hoping Mike’s arms weren’t part of the joke, that his soothing was real.
“What? No, no. We planned it because we wanted a threesome with you. We were together, watching for someone like you to appear on that dating site for a long time.” Dylan’s voice seemed so earnest. Here she was, naked and covered in their juices, Dylan and Mike and their luxurious flesh before her, and all she could do was cry.
“Someone like me?” Hope bloomed. Maybe she had been right all along. The two men exchanged a glance and Mike spoke first.
“Just like you. Blonde. Perky. Funny as hell. Centered. And with a smoking bod. We’re tired of women who aren’t real, and who don’t have the ability to see beyond convention, outside of judgment, and to just follow their hearts.”
“So you decided to put me to some sort of test and see if I’d rise to the occasion?” Laura searched frantically for her clothes, her vulnerability like a giant shark bite where her heart should be. Exposed, she felt shame pour out of her like an open vein right here, right now, because how could she go from the exhilaration and attachment of what the three of them had created just moments ago to this all-consuming pit of despair?
Four eyes watched her, countless pounds of muscle twitching and trembling as she spoke, both men gawking at her like she held their balls in a pair of pliers. Why were they doing this? The mixed signals stymied her. A sick joke? A bet? Some kind of weird competition that ended in threesomes?
Those same comfortable, flowing clothes that she had loved wearing here tonight when all she had expected was a date with Mike were the bane of her existence as she struggled to throw them on as fast as possible, her foot getting caught in the yards of ample fabric. “God damn it!” she shrieked, nearly falling over.
“Laura.” Mike climbed out of bed, his naked form stretched out in front of her, her face inches from his crotch as she bent over to untangle herself. Under any other circumstance she would have welcomed the view, but right now his golden flesh just prolonged her agony.
Kneeling with more grace than she could ever possess in three lifetimes, he grasped her foot tenderly, peeling the stretchy cotton cloth off the toes where it had twisted. Her leg free, she could pull her skirt around her waist and shove her arms through her blouse, then fling her oversized jacket over it, all with Mike staring balefully up from the ground. Those giant blue eyes communicated so many emotions Laura just couldn’t receive right now.
Run.
Run away. They’re making fun of you, Laura. The voice sounded like Josie’s. Like her mother’s. Like every person who had pretended to like her but had just been playing a joke on the fat girl.
Joke was over. She heard Dylan call out her name as she slammed the front door and marched through the dark to her car, the tears spilling over her lashes before she’d made it down the porch steps. She reached into a non-existent pocket for her keys. Keys. Thank God she’d driven here in her own car and could leave, but she couldn’t get out of here if she didn’t have keys.
Damn! Her purse. It was back in the—
Creak. The front door opened and Mike’s long, taut arm came through it, her purse dangling from the end, the porch light making the entire production seem like some rejected scene from one of the later Friday the 13th movies. Horror was apt; it’s what she felt right now. Gently, the arm knelt down, resting the purse on the welcome mat. Without a word, he withdrew his limb and the door creaked shut, the glow on her purse like a spotlight of failure.
Was that some sort of message? Don’t bother coming back in? Like a pilot light pluming as it is first lit, Laura felt a fireball of rage explode in her. She wanted to ram the front door and —
No. The fury snuffed out fast, leaving a deadly calm inside. Mike did that because it was Mike’s way—quiet, silent. Deliberate. He knew she wanted to leave and he helped. No judgments, no words, no complications.
What she needed most right now, as she sneaked up the steps and snatched her purse strap, was no complications. No thoughts, no feelings, no regrets, no nothing.
Laura stormed back to her car, yanked the door open, piled in and cranked the engine. To her relief, it started fine and off she went, the aroma of sex and Dylan and Mike perfuming the air. Their hands were still imprinted on her, the ache of them inside her stretching and throbbing inside, as if she hadn’t quite readjusted to the lack of their stroking, their kisses, their—