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  “Does that mean I get two dudes buying me dinner first?” he asked. “Because that’s what’s up.”

  Charles fell on the floor laughing, and I couldn’t help joining him.

  Evil Jace was definitely going to get his way.

  The Threesome

  August

  Christopher Mendez

  * * *

  For as much shit as I’d given Raymond over his office job at Lexus Language Services, my job was phenomenally shittier.

  When I’d gone to school for computer programming, my primary goal had been to get a job in app development. The plan had not been to become the IT guy in an office for a bunch of assholes who didn’t know their DVD drive from a coffee cup holder.

  That had actually happened once. The little old lady who worked in the front office had been using her ejected DVD drive to rest her mug, and had broken it off. This is what I did for a living. That and plugging in people’s power cords after they put in a ticket to say their computer “wasn’t working” before checking to see whether or not maintenance had accidentally unplugged their machine overnight.

  The only redeeming quality of this entire outfit was that they’d made me the IT supervisor. Now, I got to dole out those bullshit tickets to other people and worry about the bigger problems. I also got to spend downtime on Facebook chatting with my friends.

  Stephanie: What are you doing later? I’m going over to Ray and David’s for dinner.

  Chris: how come

  Stephanie: Because I want to eat?? What do you mean how come?

  Chris: cuz your man be acting mad jealous whenever you go near ray

  Stephanie: . . . . .

  Chris: lmaoooo

  Stephanie: Okay, first off—Angel isn’t my man.

  Chris: yea aiight lolzzzzz

  Stephanie: I hate you.

  Chris: so does that mean I am no longer invited for dinner? Good thing I already have plans ;)

  Stephanie: With who? You have no plans.

  Chris: I for real have plans. Big plans

  Stephanie: Bigly plans?

  Chris: SO BIGLY. Sort of like a date

  Stephanie: Stop lying Christopher

  Chris: I am so serious right now. It’s a gay ass date too

  Stephanie: Right.

  Chris: remember the QFindr thingy? Photo shoot thingy?

  Stephanie: Uh-huh.

  Chris: remember that dude jace?

  Stephanie: Uh-huh.

  Chris: im hanging out with him and his man tonight

  Stephanie: I’m calling him to verify your bullshit.

  Chris: oh I forgot you hang out with the rich folks these days

  Stephanie: They have better weed than you sooo . . .

  Chris: I flipped off my screen just so you know

  She went quiet, which meant she was legit fact-checking my story. Why she could never let shit slide was beyond me, but I blamed the fact that she worked for an attorney. Also that she was a pain in the ass. You didn’t see me fact-checking her wack ass claim that she and Angel weren’t secretly exchanging promise rings while pretending to despise each other every two months.

  “Chris, I’m leaving.”

  I flashed a deuce at Robert, my super annoying coworker who took this job way too seriously, and stared at Facebook. This whole thing with Jace and Aiden had started a month ago, and it had taken them that long to convince me to hang out with them. They hadn’t been yanking my arm or anything. More like Jace had been eager in a way that had startled the hell out of me, Aiden had told him to cool it, then they’d leave me alone for like five days, and I’d come scraping back to make awkward small talk out of fear of them forgetting my existence.

  It was a cycle that had gone on multiple times until Aiden finally messaged me outside of the group chat. About UFC.

  If anyone tried to talk to me about dating or hooking up, regardless of who it was, I froze. Without fail. It’d been that way since high school. But talk to me about some Nate Diaz, and I was all ears. I’d had a boner for the Diaz brothers forever.

  After all of that bullshit and pussyfooting around, Aiden had asked if I wanted to come over to watch last weekend’s fight and eat some wings, and I’d agreed. Wings were easy. UFC was easy. Having Jace describe the logistics of a threesome was hard. Literally. I swore he’d been trying to sext me a couple of times and my response had been “lol okay” or “wow.”

  I was a fucking idiot.

  And now because of Stephanie’s extended silence, I was paranoiding myself into believing I’d misunderstood the entire conversation. What if it wasn’t today? What if he’d been joking? It was hard to tell when texting. This was why I didn’t hang out with anyone but the jokers I’d grown up with. The fact that I was trying to go on a non-platonic outing with a couple of beautiful queer dudes with next level amounts of experience at sex clubs was dumb, anyway. I was a noob.

  Stephanie: Wow.

  Chris: what

  Stephanie: I’m impressed, Christopher.

  Chris: with what

  Stephanie: I clearly underestimated you!

  Chris: what the fuck are you saying to me right now

  Stephanie: I mean me and Ray always suspected you were a little heteroflexible

  Chris: I don’t know what that word is

  Stephanie: It means you mostly like women but occasionally are A+ about being in a polyamorous sandwich

  Chris: I don’t know that word either

  Stephanie: . . .

  Stephanie: You need to try harder.

  Chris: at what?

  Stephanie: At thinking. Btw, Aiden is out in the lobby waiting for you.

  I jumped to my feet and hurried around my desk. The office was mostly empty at 5:15 on a Friday, so no one stopped me as I hauled ass through the open concept space to get to the lobby. I came to an abrupt stop just outside the door and chewed on the inside of my cheek before peeking around the door frame.

  Aiden was sitting in one of the plush arm chairs—the only two decent chairs in the lobby since I’d been the one to demand we order them—all CEOed up in a black suit. It must have been tailored for him because his biceps and broad shoulders weren’t doing their best to explode out of the fabric like the last time I’d seen him all done up.

  He sat with one ankle resting on the opposite knee, one hand holding his phone and the other running over the red scruff covering his jaw. He had me outclassed in the clothes department, but my ass didn’t leave the house without my face looking like a Gillette’s commercial. It had been an important part of my mother’s child rearing.

  As proud as I was of my clean shave and sharp haircut, I was starting to doubt my decision to go with jeans, Timbs, and a Deadpool T-shirt for this little outing. Was it an outing if you were in someone else’s house?

  I started to step back but my phone chimed loud enough to alert the entire building that I was in the doorway creeping on this dude. Aiden looked up and grinned a grin of the perfectly normal. If I saw him on the E train on my way home, I would never expect that he was rich. When I saw people like Caleb, Mere, and Ashton, I could just tell they had money. It wasn’t even their clothes—just something about them screamed, I think I’m better and cooler than you. Although, that hadn’t been the case for Ashton. He was just sort of manic and angsty and blond.

  “Hey,” I said to Aiden. “When’d you get here?”

  “Coupla minutes ago.”

  He eased up off the chair and Jesus fucking Christ this dude was tall. I already had a complex from hanging out with guys like Raymond for all these years, but Aiden had a couple of inches on him. Why couldn’t the Mendez people have found some genes that would have pushed me a little higher than 5’8”?

  “Okay, lemme go get my shit.”

  I once again backtracked out the door, hurrying like my backpack and computer were on fire and I had to go tend to them right now, but Aiden grabbed my arm. He raised an eyebrow.

  “You okay?”

  “Uhhh. Yes?”
>
  “Is that a statement or a question?”

  “Both?”

  Aiden fought a smile and pretty much failed. I didn’t blame him.

  “Do you still want to come by? We can push it back if you want.” He paused, waited for a response, then said, “Or we could just cancel?”

  “No!” I backed up another step and put my hand on the doorframe. “Uh, unless you do? That’s cool. I’m sure you have better shit to do than hanging out with me and watching fights that were already spoiled all over Twitter.”

  Aiden looked at him sideways. “We’ve been trying to get you to come over for a month, man. I took the subway in rush hour to meet you here. I’m not trying to back out.”

  Well, that was weird.

  “Look,” I started nervously. “I know you don’t know me very well, but I’m sort of worried that you’re expecting my company to be waaaaay more interesting than it actually is. I’m pretty much useful for three things—” I held up a finger. “Witty commentary whenever fighters do their walk outs to extremely wack music.” I held up another finger. “Wise cracks whenever someone does an arm bar because someone’s face almost always ends up pressed into someone else’s crotch or ass.” I held up the third. “And making bomb empanadas.”

  Aiden’s face lit up. “So, what you’re saying is, if we stop by the supermarket you’re going to make me some empanadas, right?”

  “Nobody said that. Besides, the chances of me finding empanada shells in a supermarket in, like, SoHo or wherever the hell you live are—”

  “I live in Long Island City.”

  Ohhh, a fellow Queens dude. I could relate to people who lived in Queens. Sometimes. Unless they were twelve deep in an apartment full of Ivy League kids from out of town driving up the cost of living and gentrifying boroughs. No one was trying to live on a block where they could get kale smoothies after going to “bikram yoga.” Whatever the hell that even was.

  “All right, well, don’t say I didn’t warn your ass when I just eat seventy-five percent of your wings while making fun of every fight before either passing out or abruptly leaving,” I said. “I do the abrupt departure thing pretty frequently.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t like saying goodbye to people?”

  “Why not?”

  “I dunno. It’s awkward. I do anything to escape potentially awkward situations, man.”

  Aiden took another step closer. His legs appeared to be double the length of mine, though, so he was in my face a lot faster than I’d expected. With him only a couple of inches away, it was hard to keep ignoring that—yes this dude was mad attractive. And yes—the idea of doing some triple threat horizontal tango with him and Mr. Pantene Pro V in LIC would be . . . interesting.

  The prospect of a male-on-male-on-male threesome should have been freaking me out by now, or at least that’s what I’d told myself, but my primary concern was keeping them entertained. The actual worst humiliation I could think of was Aiden Fairbairn taking me home, getting bored with me, and sending my ass back to South Jamaica in a cab.

  Canceling would have been the better option.

  “Let me go grab my stuff.”

  “All righty . . .”

  I turned and speed walked back to my desk. Once there, I took a deep breath, glanced at my reflection in the glass partition separating my “office” from the open concept area, and turned back to Facebook.

  Chris: this was a bad idea

  Stephanie: Shut the fuck up and go get laid.

  Jesus.

  I turned off the computer and shoved my laptop into my backpack. It was huge and full of a ton of crap, which would ensure that my short ass looked like a fifth grader heading home from his first day at school. The chances of me impressing either of them were so slim I told myself not to worry about it. We’d go to their crib, kick it for a while, they’d realize I wasn’t their usual kind of conquest, and we’d call it a night.

  Although, I had to admit, being somebody’s conquest felt pretty dope. Even if this didn’t pan out, was kind of cool to be pursued. My entire life had been spent in the shadow of people like Angel and Raymond—ideal specimens of masculinity with perfect faces. No one had noticed me while hanging out with them.

  “You ready?” Aiden asked, grinning after I appeared in the lobby once again.

  “Yup. Let’s do this.”

  We took the train into Queens, which surprised me. I had it in my head that people like Aiden, who were in the same category as Caleb, Ashton, and Meredith, took cabs or slick town cars everywhere. My rich people hookup fantasy was shattered once he led me to the subway with the rest of the suckers.

  “This would have been way cooler if you’d had a car downstairs waiting for us,” I confided as we descended the steps to the subway. “Like you in your suit and me with my fifty-pound backpack getting in a black Lincoln. That would have been tight as fuck.”

  Aiden slipped his Metro Card from his pocket, snickering. “What, you thought this was some Fifty Shades of Queer set up?”

  “Yup. Do you have a play room?”

  “My entire apartment is a play room, bro. Have you met my husband? We don’t exactly keep it to one location in the house.”

  “Good for you. I’m lucky if I get any action in my own damn bed with my right hand.”

  We walked towards the E train, our conversation lost in the rush of bodies moving around us. He could have started describing exactly what they did in every corner of their place and nobody around us would have given a single fuck. But that was New York for you, and it was why I loved it.

  Also why I hated it. Being anonymous started to suck after years and years of doing nothing but blending in with the crowd.

  Aiden led me towards the center of the Queens-bound platform with his hands in his pockets. He stopped with his back against a column and raised an eyebrow.

  “Am I gonna have to find somewhere to score Viagra for you?”

  “What?”

  “You just stood there and told me you have trouble getting off even when you jack it. I mean I don’t judge people, but Jace . . .”

  I snorted out a laugh. “I’m not impotent, you jackass. I just have a habit of falling asleep in front of my Xbox cuddled up to a bag of Doritos. That shit is serious stress release, man. After working and commuting, I spend a few hours in front of my TV. And usually fall asleep there.”

  This was usually the part when people mocked me for being more into video games than getting laid—because they thought life started and ended with regular sex—but Aiden smiled.

  “You’re cute as hell. I can see why Jace wants to defile you.”

  “Defile, huh?” It was hot as hell in the depths of the subway. I blamed that for the sweat breaking out on my forehead. “That’s a strong word.”

  “Ha. Trust me, Christopher. It might not be strong enough.”

  I spent the rest of the subway ride (All two trains of it. Seriously, this was not the seduction of my fantasies. The chick in Fifty Shades never had to take the 7 train into Queens) trying to figure out how defile wasn’t a powerful enough description. For someone with a limited sex life, I still had a filthy imagination. When I died, I had plans in place for Raymond or Stephanie or Tonya to wipe my browser history before allowing anyone to go near my shit. I was counting on them to die after me for specifically that reason. So, yeah, “defile” already painted some dirty-ass pictures.

  “You look nervous,” Aiden said after we got off in Hunters Point.

  “Nah.”

  I turned away, walking in no particular direction since I had no idea where they lived, but he grabbed my arm.

  “Wait.”

  I waited.

  “I want to make sure we’re on the same page before we go upstairs. Jace is under the impression that you’re one hundred percent on board with whatever he has in his head, but I’m starting to wonder if he even told you what the fuck was in his head.” Aiden glanced over my shoulder, mouth twisting up in a fond smile. �
�I love my husband, but he tends to assume everyone thinks the way we do.”

  “Uh. Okay? I’m starting to think y’all are trying to induct me into a cult. Or turn me loose somewhere and then hunt me down, Surviving the Game style. Did you see that movie?”

  Aiden’s shoulders were shaking with laughter. “Yeah, Chris. I seen the movie.”

  “It was fucked up, right?”

  “Right.”

  I nodded seriously. “Taught me not to trust some rich people who are trying to lure me into unknown situations, but I’m hoping you guys are not sociopaths, and I’m just gonna get laid.”

  By the time I finished speaking, Aiden was laughing so hard the yuppies entering the yoga studio next to the station were staring. I should have bet money they lived in a neighborhood like this. I’d called it, damn it.

  “The plan is most definitely to get your cute ass laid.” Aiden wiped his eyes, still snickering. “I just want to make sure we’re all clear that Jace is gagging for you to dick him out.”

  “Uh—”

  “And at this point, I’m pretty impatient to do the same to you.”

  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Where was Raymond when I needed him? Scratch that, where was David? Now was not the time to deal with Raymond’s blank stares and wisecracks. David was definitely my go-to queer dude for gay sexing advice.

  “Are you okay with that?” Aiden asked. “If not, just let me know what you want, and I’ll make it happen.”

  I glanced around again. Even on a lower key block, nobody gave a shit about us hashing out the logistics of a threesome.

  “Chris?”

  “I’m listening.” I stopped willing strangers to insert themselves into the conversation, and refocused on the redhaired linebacker who was apparently looking to get in my ass. “I knew where this was headed. I don’t usually exchange health docs with people I watch TV with. Or, uh, anyone. Usually I just use condoms.”

  He smiled. “We like it messy.”