Theirs to Keep

“So what now?” I asked. “Obviously we can’t put the genie back in the bottle.” I sighed and leaned back against the railing. “Not that I’d want to, personally.”

“Well we talked about it,” said Bryce, “and we came up with three different possibilities.”

I nodded, my lips curling into a smile. “Ah, choices. Now you’re talking.”

“First and foremost, we could go back to the way things were,” said Camden. “We keep things professional, all four of us. The whole thing lives on as a happy memory, and we chalk it up to letting off some pent-up sexual steam.”

The idea was practical, but also a letdown. It made me a little sad.

“Or?”

“Or we could keep having fun, if that’s what you wanted,” said Bryce. “Go about what we’ve been doing, pretty much. Only without the secrecy and without the guilt.”

My stomach erupted with butterflies.

Holy shit.

“Without the secrecy and guilt sounds nice,” I admitted.

“In that case we’d keep everything out in the open,” Camden added. “Nothing hidden. No hard feelings. We’d just be… well…”

“Fuckbuddies,” I blurted.

He shrugged, almost apologetically. “Yeah.”

I rubbed at my chin, thoughtfully. Fuckbuddies. With three individual guys — all living under the same room. Could I really do that?

Aren’t you doing it already?

“Or?” I asked.

They looked at me and blinked. Like they were trying to figure out what I was thinking.

“Or what?”

“Well you said there were three choices,” I replied. “So what’s the third?”

This time it was Roderick who stepped up. He stood before me, his expression placid. His eyes soft, yet serious.

“Or you could be our girlfriend.”

Twenty-Nine

KARISSA

If my stomach had butterflies before, now they’d had babies. Somewhere deep in my belly, I felt an eruption of warmth and heat.

“Girlfriend,” I repeated flatly.

“Yes.”

“To all three of you.”

My mouth was suddenly dry. I tried to swallow, and found that I couldn’t.

“And h—how would that work?”

Roderick took another step, until we were toe to toe. His face looked different. Like he was about to say something of extreme importance, for once without a hint of sarcasm.