“Wow. I’m super impressed right now.” I laughed.
“Ian drinks a lot.” She wrinkled her nose. “No, that sounds so not right.”
I laughed with her, but a slightly uncomfortable silence followed. Was she making a joke? Did Ian have a real problem? Was I just being too sensitive because of what I knew about Neil’s addiction issues?
He’d been back to Dr. Harris since we’d returned from London, but for all the time Neil spent in therapy or on the phone about therapy, he was still drinking.
I was the first to break the weird pause, but I didn’t know how to effectively change the subject. I decided to jump headfirst into something more awkward. “We both know why you’re here. We’re all thinking of having sex with each other. Or, swapping partners. Or something. I’m not really sure how it works.”
I don’t know if I expected her to be shocked by my bluntness, but I was a little put back by the way she airily waved her hand and said, “Oh, you know. Whatever we decide on, the four of us together. Ian and I have done group, we’ve done swapping, really, the only thing we don’t do is sex with someone else alone. It has to be in the same room.”
“Ah.” Neil and I sort-of had that arrangement. While I’d been totally cool with him hooking up with Emir on a different continent, when he’d been with us over the summer we’d made it a point to have sex all together, or not at all, for the duration of his stay.
“That’s not a problem, is it?” Gena asked gently. “If it is, please don’t feel pressured—”
“No, I don’t. I just…” I shook my head. I couldn’t meet her eyes. “Isn’t it weird, watching some other woman fucking your husband? Or man, I mean, if Ian is into guys, too.”
“No, he’s just into women.” She shrugged. “I like girls, though. For future reference, if you’re…”
“Oh, no.” I laughed and held up my hands. “No offense. You’re really hot. I just don’t see myself ever, you know.”
“That’s fine, too.” She leaned on the island and watched as I plated the delicate roast quail Julia had left in the warmer. “But no, I don’t find it weird to watch Ian with other women. It’s sexy, seeing someone you’ve been intimate with being intimate with someone else. It’s a whole different level of knowing someone.”
“I guess I understand that.” I placed each quail on the bed of greens as Julia had instructed me. “Neil really liked watching me with another guy.”
Gena’s eyes flared and sparkled with naughty excitement. “Ooh, do tell. I mean, if you want to.”
The only people I’d told about our threesome arrangement with Emir had been Holli and Deja. Deja wasn’t into sharing relationships, and though Holli had thought it was an amazing story, she didn’t have experience to compare. She’d never been the person in a relationship inviting a third in, she’d always been the third.
Maybe Gena would get it in a way they hadn’t; it certainly sounded like she might. Still, I couldn’t meet her eyes, and my face was as hot as the pan I carried to the sink. “It was this…thing. Neil and I went to a sex club in Paris, and we met this guy, Emir. Neil invited him to finger me in a back room. It was insanely hot.”
“It sounds like it!” Gena said with a laugh. “What about Neil? Did he like it?”
“He fucked me against the wall after. It was super rough.” I quickly added, “That’s kind of how we like it when we’re together. So, I would say, yeah. He dug it.”
“Sophie, when I met you, you seemed like a sweet, innocent little thing,” Gena said with a sigh.
“Well, now you know the truth,” I said, dusting my hands off. Don’t forget the mustard sauce! Julia would never let you hear the end of it! I turned to the refrigerator.
“Actually, I knew the truth that night,” Gena said, catching the side of her bottom lip with her teeth. “When I saw you coming out of the men’s room wobbling like a newborn foal.”
Knowing I’d been caught gave me a naughty little thrill. “Yeah, well. It was his birthday.”
“I think it’s great. It’s sweet.” Gena’s voice took on a wistful tone. “That spontaneity and passion.”
I got the uncomfortable impression that she had mistakenly revealed something to me that she may not have wished to. “Shall we take all of this to the dining room?” I asked, changing the subject. I pulled the little steel trolley from its place beneath the counter and started placing the plates on them.
“Oh, wow.” Gena’s expression froze for a blink. “That’s handy. Ian and I have an apartment. It’s, like, twenty steps from the kitchen to the dining room.”
“Oh, the dining room isn’t far.” I nodded toward the second door. “It’s right through there. I’m just lazy, and I don’t like making more than one trip. It’s like when you go to the grocery store and you’ll put a bag on every finger if you can to avoid going back out to the car.”
Gena frowned. “Wait, you do your own grocery shopping?”
“Mhm. Sometimes.” I hadn’t thought of it before, but despite how friendly we were toward each other, Gena didn’t really know anything about my life beyond my relationship with Neil. “I haven’t always been rich.”
“Then, how did you guys meet?”
Usually, I went with “through work” when talking to strangers on the subject. I hadn’t even put the whole story in my book. But Ian probably knew it, anyway. “We met in an airport. We were on the same flight, and it got delayed. We got a room, and he snuck out in the night.” The memory used to hurt, but now that we were so happy together, the sting was fading. “Fast forward to six years later, and he’s my boss.”