“Which is totally unfair,” said Colin. “To you… or to us.”
“Not to mention the pact failed anyway,” Brandon said, a little reluctantly.
I looked down at the hand I was using to hold my beer. It was shaking. Tipping it back to my lips, I drained half the bottle out of sheer nervousness.
“So let me get this straight,” I said, finally finding my voice. “None of you can date me, because the others will be jealous.”
“Right.”
“And you don’t want me dating anyone else, because then you’d all be jealous.”
“Exactly.”
“And you don’t want me to move out…” I continued hesitantly, “because you care about me too much. Right?”
“Correct.”
I let out a short, barking laugh that might’ve come off a little maniacal. “So what the hell do you guys want?”
Hunter looked me straight in the eye, and his next words set a whole flock of butterflies fluttering through my stomach.
“We want to share you.”
Share me…
My head felt suddenly heavy, and there was a rising heat in the pit of my stomach. Now I did want to sit down.
“Share me?”
“Yes,” Hunter confirmed, as I took a chair. “We want to date you, all three of us.” He shrugged, as if he were explaining the simplest thing in the world. “In short, you’d be our girlfriend.”
“Share me…” I said the words again. This time it was a little easier to wrap my tongue around them. “You mean like polyamory?”
“Polyandry actually,” said Colin. “A closed relationship, rather than open. Which is—”
“Look, I don’t know exactly what to call it,” Hunter cut him off. “I hate labels. But yeah, whatever the term is. You’d
be with all of us, and we’d be with you.”
I tried to keep on breathing. With my lungs collapsing in on themselves, it was hard.
“You want me to have a relationship with all of you…”
Brandon smiled and leaned back in his chair. He crossed his arms. “Why not?”
Why not… why not…
I could think of a thousand reasons why not. Or at least, that’s what I told myself. Oddly enough, none of them came to immediately to mind. Until—
“Well for one, I’d be too selfish,” I said. “Because I wouldn’t want any of you to be with anyone else.”
“Wow,” Brandon whistled. “That is selfish.” Hunter jabbed him in the arm, and he almost fell over. “Just kidding,” he said, rubbing his bicep.
“Really?” I asked.
“Yeah, we kinda get it,” said Hunter. “None of us would want you being with another guy either, right?”
The other two guys shook their heads. They all staring at me now. The three of them.