One Voice 02 - Here Without You by Mia Kerick Read Free Book Online Page A

Casey’s gotta say, dude. It comes from both of us.”
    Those dark, distant eyes shifted again to focus on me. “’Kay.”
    And so I just let the babbler—who lived not too deep inside of me—out of his cage. I started flapping my gums like I was trying to fly away. “Well, you see, it’s like this. The three of us, or ‘us three’ like you always say, well, we’ve been together for almost two years now, right?”
    Nate nodded. I could feel the weight of Zander’s stare pressing on the side of my face.
    “And we are totally committed to each other. And dedicated too.”
    I got another nod from him, accompanied by an unspeakably confused look, but I pressed on. “We are in love, and like Zander said at the One Voice meeting last Sunday, we’re a family .”
    Zander repeated my last words slowly and in a monotone, as if fascinated by them. “A family.”
    “And we wouldn’t have discussed this whole thing without you, but it came up sort of suddenly. So we went ahead and talked about it and….”
    I couldn’t miss the stricken expression that passed across Nate’s face. Evidently he was afraid of whatever we’d discussed when he was not in our presence.
    “It’s nothing bad, um… sweetheart .” I threw that endearment in again for good measure, seeing as it seemed to capture his attention the first time I used it. “In fact, I think it’s good .”
    “Just spill it.” Nate’s face, as well as his voice, were suddenly unreadable.
    “Yes. Yes, okay. I can spill it.” Zander squeezed my hand again, effectively letting me know he’d soon be taking the pressure off me, and I took a deep, relieved breath. “We want to move forward in our relationship. Like… um… like, sexually.”
    Those dark eyes popped open. “You wha—huh?”
    “We wanna have sex, buddy. Us three. Together. You, me, and Casey. Next time you come down here.” Zander finally contributed to the awkward discussion, spelling out what I was trying to gently introduce.
    “You guys wanna g-get… uh… c-closer. As in—in the sack?” he asked.
    Zander and I both nodded and then intentionally stayed quiet to give Nate a chance to absorb our declaration. Again Nate looked away, but this time he looked toward the floor and covered his face with his hands.
    “So, are you into it?” Zander hadn’t contributed much, but what he had said had been quite direct.
    Nate, his hands still covering his face, spoke softly. “I ain’t no virgin, ya know.”
    “What does that have to do with anything?” Zander was on a roll.
    “Maybe you two should do each other the first time, ya get me? And I’ll just watch. That’d be stellar.”
    “Fuck that,” Zander replied in an even tone.
    “But Zander, I been there. I done that. You two oughtta go for it first, and then none of us’ll be virgins. It’ll be equal ’tween us, you know? And maybe then we can do it, all three together. See?”
    “Fuck that shit.” Zander wasn’t open to Nate’s suggestion, and neither was I. “It’ll be all of us in the bed or fucking none of us, dude. There’s no reason why we can’t do this. You’ve been tested, and you came out clean. And Casey and I haven’t been with anybody else. We are all on ‘equal ground’ in that way, if that’s what you’re worrying about. Shit, man. We wanna make love together— with you .”
    Zander still held my hand, and his grip was so tight now that it hurt. I knew it was my turn to speak. I was the one who all of us expected to say the words—the one who expressed aloud what all three of us felt. “We love you. So much. We can hardly live without you here, and we want to be closer to you in every way. We want to share our bodies with you, Nate, and….” I had to take another deep breath to help me get through the sentence. “We want you to share your body with us. All of it.” I couldn’t help it. Instead of crying, I broke into a grin. The mental image was that good.
    “Shit.” Both of my partners