Stitches

Alarm trickles through me. “About what?”

“When he stayed the night… the night I went to pick him up. I know he was drunk and lonely, so I didn’t take anything seriously.” She pauses, licking her lips and swallowing, as if buying time.

I don’t like where this is going.

I almost want to ask her to stop, not to say anymore, but I can’t.

The last thing I need is for my wife, the person I love the most, to tell me the person I love most after her tried some shit I’m going to have to punch him for while he was drunk.

“Sebastian, I think he might have… feelings for me. Or he thinks he does,” she adds, quickly. “I just chalked it up to him being drunk—you know how I get when I’m drunk, but he kept saying things. He said we made him feel left out. We made him feel lonelier. I thought maybe he just meant more aware that he was single, that he didn’t have what we have, but… I’m not sure if it was just that, or maybe a little more.” She watches for a wary moment before continuing. “He… he said some other things that night, but I know he would never hurt you, and you know I would never hurt you, so I told myself it didn’t matter. But…”

“He wants you,” I say slowly.

She looks so tense she might explode. “I can’t be sure, but… I got that impression. It may have just been the alcohol,” she says, quickly, like she hopes that’s the case. “I’m sure he didn’t mean it. It’s not like he wished you any harm, he didn’t want to steal me. I think he feels left out because all those years it was just you two, and then suddenly I was there, but I was only yours. I think maybe it feels unfair to him, and he feels…”

She trails off, not quite sure how to finish that sentence.

To be honest, I’m not sure either.

How the fuck did this sneak up on me?

Griff and I have always shared the things that mattered to us—we shared our shelter, pooled our funds, built businesses; we built an entire future with one another. Nothing was his or mine, everything was ours.

Until Moira.

I kept Moira for myself, of course. That’s what people do.

But keeping our businesses and our finances separate is another thing people do—it isn’t what we did. We trusted each other in a way other people didn’t trust one another—in a way we didn’t trust anyone else.

Until Moira. I trusted Moira, and even though they had a friendship, I still kept the most fun parts of her to myself.

It all makes sense. Suddenly I feel like an idiot for not seeing it sooner.

He’s not the one reneging on our partnership; I did, when I formed one with someone else and left him out.

So, how the fuck do I fix that?

Well, I suppose there’s one glaringly obvious way; I could let him fuck her. I could tell my gentle, loving wife to spread her legs for Griff.

My little wife enjoys a certain level of subservience, in the bedroom and in our lifestyle, but I’m not sure it extends that far. I’m not sure what that would do to us. I’m not stingy with the people I love—they’re the only ones I’m openly generous with. The rest of the world, they can all go fuck themselves. They never gave a rat’s ass about me.

Griff did, though.

Moira does, always.

But that would be a big fucking risk. Moira is the most important person in the world to me. If we tried something crazy and it fucked up our relationship, I don’t even know how I would get past that. I don’t know what I would do if something broke us.

If I don’t try, though, I will lose Griff. We will lose Griff. He’s important to Moira, too. She loves both of us, but I don’t think she loves Griff in that way. She doesn’t think she’s allowed to, though. Moira is faithful, so she would never open that door at the cost of hurting me.

What if I let her? What if I opened it for her?

Could we share her?

Griff and I have never struggled with sharing any of our resources, but could we share a woman? I’m not sure how I feel about it. I’m not sure what it would be like to know another man—even Griff—had his hands on my wife.

She wouldn’t just be mine anymore; she would be ours.

I keep one arm around Moira, but reach into my pocket with the other and draw out my phone. I open the last chain of texts that exists between me and Griff. I try to envision it first—Moira naked on our bed, but Griff is the one between her legs instead of me. He’d need to have her body to himself sometimes.