Really Good, Actually(68)

I looked up from my phone. He was barely a foot away, making an absurd face he must have thought looked cheeky and seductive. I grinned, though it felt a bit stupid. People didn’t really have sex in bathrooms, I knew. That was just something TV writers made up. Still, it was nice to be desired by his beautiful girlfriend, to know their relationship had a hole in it too, that tonight they wanted to fill that hole with me.



11:30pm LATE-NIGHT EATS—Hungry after all that dancing? The courtyard will be visited by a pizza fairy just before midnight!



The bathrooms at the venue were fancy but not spacious. The couple (or, more accurately, the couple’s parents) had sprung for secondary toilets outside on the sprawling grounds, and it was one of these we snuck off to, with a bottle of amaretto filched from the bar.

I took a swig as Darragh closed and locked the door and Jesse cut up neat little lines. I did not ask what they were or bring up fentanyl and its prevalence in Ontario’s powdered drugs. Instead I leaned over the counter, inhaled deeply, and tried to seem like I did this all the time.

“So,” said Jesse, “do you think you’d ever get married again?”

Darragh hit his arm. “Babe. She doesn’t want to talk about that at a wedding.”

“Ding ding ding,” I said. I took a risk and put a hand on Darragh’s thigh, to emphasize how right she was. I told her being divorced at weddings made me feel like a shriveled old crone.

“You’re not shriveled,” said Darragh, fully taking my boob out of my dress.

Jesse, who was kneeling in a corner doing more credit card stuff, stood and came over.

“Look at that, baby,” she crooned. Darragh was suddenly using a totally different voice. Her face looked like someone had approached a caricaturist and said, “do horny.”

The two of them were staring at each other intensely. Jesse didn’t even look at my breast, just swiped it with his paw and lunged at Darragh’s face, muttering the word “smooth” under his breath. I hoped I didn’t look or sound as drunk as Jesse, though we’d all been drinking the same amount. I reached toward them in an unfocused effort to become more involved, lost my nerve, and withdrew my fingers before they made contact.

Jesse pushed Darragh up on the counter, and they started licking each other’s faces, each reaching out occasionally to grope at whatever part of my body was to hand. They were moaning a lot, though neither was stimulating any part of the other that would normally produce that type of reaction. I started playing with Darragh’s hair and realized I was dividing it into sections like I was about to start french braids.

I took my hands off Darragh; she didn’t seem to notice. I felt that thing where the porn you’re watching turns abruptly horrible, and you know that even after you close your laptop, you’re going to feel unsettled about it for the next hour at least. Maybe I was just dizzy. I looked over and realized that Darragh had moved to the floor. Unsure what else to do, I crouched down next to her and tried to muster a sexy expression.

Six minutes later, Jesse came in Darragh’s mouth while I sat on the floor nearby. He pushed my head toward his girlfriend’s, and the idea that he expected me to interact with his secondhand ejaculate when I still had most of my clothes on and had otherwise barely been involved in our alleged “threesome” was . . . not it, for me. I started to make my way to my feet and realized I was swaying in my heels.

“I should probably get back,” I said, steadying myself on the back of the toilet.

“Eugcht!” said Darragh, putting her arm around me. She held up a finger and swallowed. “Sorry. Want some weed?”

Jesse fished out his vape pen and passed it to me. He seemed completely unhurried and content. He hadn’t even buttoned his pants; I could see his flaccid dick through the break in his boxers. I felt . . . not stressed, exactly, just very aware of my teeth in my mouth, the bones in my jaw, my temples. At least they were using their normal voices again. I puffed out smoke that smelled like cotton candy and tried to think how I would spin this experience to make it sound fun. I felt certain that whatever I decided, I would do a great job.

It had been fun, I thought. In a way. Even if it had not been a threesome proper, surely the fact that it had happened at all meant that I was very modern and wild. I leaned back against the bathroom door, savoring the vape aroma like one of my candles and experimenting with holding my eyes open very wide. Jesse started telling me how polyamory was historically a more natural way for animals to live, and Darragh explained that was why they had gotten their tattoos. Everything they were saying was terrible, but I felt very, very good.

I heard the sound of the door opening before I realized I was horizontal on the ground, looking up at Amy as she stood over me.

“What are you doing?” she hissed, as Jesse scrambled to cover himself and Darragh yelled, “Occupied!”

I grinned up at her.

“Self-care.”



1am CALL IT A NIGHT ;)—You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here!! Friends and family with rooms at the hotel are invited to get on the complimentary shuttle. All other guests, please make sure to arrange safe, sober transportation home!



Amy lectured me through the entire pizza reveal and well beyond. We stood under the dumbass rotunda as I asked her over and over to keep her voice down, and she assured me she was basically whispering, and I’d ask her to repeat herself, and she’d say, “I’M BASICALLY WHISPERING,” and I’d say, “Be quiet, please, you’re embarrassing me.”