KAYLEEN
I’d say it was a delicate balance, but it was more like a whirlwind. A chaotic maelstrom of work and play, of being away and coming home, of sleeping in my own bed from time to time… but usually in one of three others.
Chase had taken to helping me on his day off, and I’d been showing him his way around the kitchen. I’d even brought him with me on a few meal preps, just to break the monotony and to spend more time with him.
Twice a week, Nathan and I woke up before the crack of dawn. We drove out to the coast together, surfing until the morning sun had climbed nearly all the way into the sky. Very quickly, it had become our thing — an almost religious experience at times. To be out there floating in the vast emptiness, just as the first orange light of the day flared brightly on the horizon.
It didn’t matter that the ocean was far, or that it took nearly two hours to get there each way.
There wasn’t a time we went that wasn’t worth the trip.
Burke’s day had become a day of rest and relaxation for me. We stayed in because he stayed in, and renting old movies became our routine. He introduced me to all new actors, directors, and genres. Expanded my horizons so to speak, with films I wouldn’t normally watch but fell in love with just the same.
We ordered in, rather than cooked. Stayed in his bedroom, rather than wandered around. Maybe it was because of that, but our lovemaking was always the most intense. We rutted like animals in his bed, fucking each other to frenzied, sometimes violent orgasms. Grinding and hammering away at each other, screaming our lungs out like there was no one else in the house.
Only there were others in the house. Others who were lying in bed, hands folded behind their heads, waiting patiently until midnight.
Waiting to get me next.
It was a warm Sunday morning when I woke up alone, the house uncharacteristically quiet. Beast and I wandered out into the kitchen, where there was a plate already prepared on the counter. Eggs, sausage, hash browns. The coffee pot, steaming and full. Even a glass of orange juice.
For once, the guys had made me breakfast.
“Adorable,” I said, flipping one of the sausages Beast’s way. He caught it in his teeth and began the process of wolfing it down.
There was also a note from all three of them. It consisted of a few simple lines, telling me they were going into town. And that they wouldn’t be back until after dark.
“Damn.”
I was utterly and completely alone. The first day I would enjoy in total solitude, in I couldn’t remember how long.
And I had absolutely no clue what to do with myself.
“Breakfast first,” I told Beast. “Then we’ll figure it out.”
I considered eating at the kitchen table, but the table looked lonely. Instead I fixed my coffee and took the plate back down the hallway, to where I’d find something on my bedroom television.
I stopped at the end, right in front of the house computer.
Their book is on that thing.
The realization wasn’t a new one; I’d seen each of them using the computer on multiple occasions. They used it to read chapters the other two had written, to keep up with their shared story. It was also a way to motivate them. To make each of them accountable, and to keep them on schedule. Only finished, polished chapters went on the machine.
Go on. Check it out.
I hadn’t read any of their story so far. And I had to say, by this point I was dying to.
They won’t even know.
I stood there holding my plate, looking down. The machine seemed to stare back at me, daring me to turn it on.
“In time,” I told myself. “When they’re ready, they’ll show me.”
Proud of my resolve, I spun on my heel and walked back to my bedroom. From a chair in corner of the room, I flipped restlessly through the channels.
But I couldn’t think about the television — or even my breakfast — at all.
They’ll be away all day, you know.