Trading with the Boys

The guys went uncharacteristically and embarrassingly silent. I laughed.

“It’s adorable, by the way,” I told them. “I love that part. Being the last one awake? Curling and cuddling up against the three of you, while you snore and drool all over your pillows?”

“You don’t know what it’s like to be a guy,” said Jacob in their defense. “Our recovery time is different than yours.”

“And thank God it is,” I laughed, sitting up to accept the glass of wine Cole handed me. “Otherwise I’d never get any sleep at all!”

We toasted and drank, not to us but to David and Mariana. It felt so good seeing him again. Especially so happy.

“I can see why he loves it down here,” said Cole. “The air’s fresher. Everything tastes better.”

“Even the wine,” agreed Tate. “I mean, I’m more of a beer guy, but this stuff right here…” He trailed off, looking approvingly at his glass. “It’s like drinking candy.”

My eyes wandered down his rippled arm, past his shoulder to where his freshly-shaven face was made even more handsome by his end-of-the-day smile. Tate had uprooted everything he’d known to come with us. I knew one day he’d open his own place rather than rent a garage from someone else, but for now he’d made sacrifices that we all appreciated.

We drank together as we got undressed, a ritual I knew so well by now because I’d seen it a few hundred times. Tate took the empty glass from my hand, while the others took the hem of my dress. They lifted it over my head and unhooked my bra, stripping me down to nothing but my G-string with movements so practiced they looked rehearsed.

“You boys see anything you like?” I teased.

Cole stepped into me, kissing me on the neck until I sighed. Before I could kiss him back he shoved me backwards, onto the bed.

“Roll over.”

God, I loved when they told me what to do. I spun happily onto my belly, stretching across the comforter and spreading my arms and legs. Cole took my wrists and pulled me forward, until my chin hung off the edge of the bed. The others settled down next to me, lying parallel to me on either side.

“This is a new one,” I chuckled.

“Sure is.”

“What exactly are we—”

From behind his back, Cole produced a long brown tube. He pulled something from it — something that looked like a big scroll — and began unrolling it in front of me.

What on earth…

“These are preliminary, of course,” he began, “and we can of course change anything we need to. But after sitting down together, this is what the three of us came up with.”

It took me a moment to figure out what I was looking at. After setting a pair of phones on either side of the scroll as paperweights to keep it open, I realized I was staring at…

“Blueprints?”

The scroll was a large floor plan, complete with 3D renderings of side and frontal views. Side and frontal views of a house.

“You know that lot we were looking at?” murmured Tate, from over my shoulder.

“The four acres?” I asked excitedly. “On the cul-de-sac?”

“Four and a half, but yes. We own it now.”

My eyes lit up. Two hands were gliding over my naked back, one from each side.

“Really?”

“Uh huh,” said Cole. “And we have estimates from three builders based on these plans, or something close to them. But you have to like them first.”

“And to do that,” said Jacob, kissing my shoulder. “You have to actually look at them.”

He nodded downward, and together all three of them began pointing out the features of the house. It was a beautiful, craftsman-style floor plan with a wrap-around deck and a huge central living room. The kitchen looked cavernous. When I mentioned the size of it, the others laughed.