Michael’s eyes begin to bulge, and his face goes from pink to red to purple. It’s as if he has a pressure cooker inside before he finally pounds a fist onto the table and bellows.
“What the FUCK! How can you be in a relationship with them? Both of them? Are you fucking kidding me?”
Trying to calm her dad, Amelia hurries to explain.
“Dad, it’s not like that. We actually really enjoy being together. It’s better with three of us, instead of two. It adds dimension to the relationship.”
Mike pounds the table with his fist again.
“Dimension? Relationship? Are you fucking kidding me? These two men are twice your age! You fucking dirty cocksuckers!” he screams. “You’ve decided to use my daughter so you can have a dirty threesome? What the fuck?!?! Is this what twenty years of friendship means to you?”
Shoving back from the table, Michael turns to Ryan and lunges towards him. Ryan, looking grim, backs away just in time, his fists up.
“Don’t make me clock you,” Ryan warns, but Mike is behaving like an enraged bull. He keeps trying to attack Ryan, even though he’s about forty pounds overweight and five inches shorter.
“Dad STOP!” Amelia screams. “This isn’t funny!”
Ryan stands as I rush over to restrain Michael. It’s not hard. Our friend doesn’t work out and resembles a mushy bag of pudding. I pin his arms behind his back, even as he sweats and threatens us.
“Cocksuckers!” he screams again, his face red with rage. “Fuck you! I’m going to fuck you up!”
Even as I hold him back, Ryan tries to explain.
“Michael, listen to me. You know us. We’ve been friends for over twenty years. You know the kinds of men we are and you know we would never harm a hair on Amelia’s head. I know this is sudden and unexpected, but I promise we have nothing but the best intentions when it comes to your daughter.”
Struggling to escape, Michael screams, “Know you? Clearly I don’t know anything about you. You say we’ve been friends for over twenty years, right? Then why are you doing this to my daughter? You’ve fucking brainwashed her!”
Amelia steps in then, her face pale. But her voice is strong.
“No Daddy, they haven’t brainwashed me. This is what I want. I want to be with Ryan and Reese, and they’re ten times better than any boy I’ve ever dated. That’s the thing. All the men in my past weren’t men; they were boys. Reese and Ryan are the first to show me how life is really lived.”
Michael seems to become even more enraged at that. Spittle flies from his mouth as he screams again.
“You don’t know anything, Amelia. You don’t know anything about boys or men. You don’t know jack shit! Sit down and shut up!”
The rude tone of his words makes me angry, and I yank his arms behind his back hard. He winces, but I don’t feel sorry at all.
“Don’t talk to your daughter like that, otherwise you’ll regret it,” I growl.
Meanwhile, Ryan tries to talk sense into Mike once more.
“Michael, none of us want to hurt you. We just want to talk to you about this. I know that it might not make sense to you, but all three of us want to be with each other. It’s not strange because threesomes are more common than you think, even if most people keep them private. Plus, Amelia wants this as much as we do, and we would never think to take advantage of her. We respect you both too much to do that.”
Unfortunately, his words seem to have the opposite effect, and Michael seems to try even harder to escape. I watch as Amelia fearfully approaches her dad, tears streaming down her cheeks. Holding a trembling hand out, she says, “Dad, what they’re saying is the truth. I want this relationship as much as they do. They make me happy and I want to see where our relationship can go. Isn’t that the point of dating? To see if you’re compatible with the other person? Or two men in this case?”
Seeing Michael recoil seems to make Amelia cry that much harder. Retracting her hand, she asks, “Aren’t you the one who always told me to follow my heart? Well, here I am telling you how much I want this, so why won’t you accept that I know what I want? Why won’t you accept that this could be exactly what I’m looking for?”
Michael goes still for a moment, panting heavily. He seems to hear our words for the first time, and carefully, I let go of his arms. He winces a bit, rubbing one shoulder, refusing to meet our eyes.
Then, Michael takes a deep breath and turns to stare at Amelia. He seems to look at her with great sorrow before shaking his head.