Chapter 4: Terms of the Game
The three of them stayed where they had fallen. Carol lay between the two men with the lamp burning low above her, her body still humming, everything between her legs hot and used and aching in a way she wanted to keep. Caolain's hand moved slowly along her spine. Kirk's breathing had not yet evened out against her shoulder.
"Same time next month?" Kirk said to the ceiling.
"Sooner," Caolain said.
Carol propped herself on one elbow. Her hair had come loose and stuck to her damp neck. "You two are already planning the next one. I can hear it."
"You're welcome to plan it too," Caolain said. "That's rather the point of you."
Kirk laughed and rolled off the bed, crossing to the little fridge in the corner. "There's a friend of mine. Helen. She's been asking about you since I told her the terrace story."
Carol went still. "You told other people?"
"Helen's not other people." Kirk came back with three bottles of water and a grin. "She and I have a history. She likes women. She's asked me twice now whether the terrace girl was real."
Caolain sat up against the headboard, unhurried, his grey eyes settling on Carol with that cataloguing attention she could never quite bear. "Think about what you'd want from her," he said. "Then say it."
"Is she pretty?" The question came out of Carol before she could weigh it, and Kirk grinned wider.
"Ginger hair down her back. Green eyes. She'll look at you like you're dinner."
Her stomach turned over, a slow warm roll. Ten years with one man's body, and now she was picturing a stranger's mouth, a woman's mouth, soft where Kirk was blunt. "You'd both watch?"
"We'd both watch," Caolain said. "And perhaps more. That part's yours to decide."
Carol drank half the water in one long pull. Her thumb found her phone on the nightstand, the unsaved number still sitting in the message list, undeleted. "When?"
"A week," Caolain said. "I'll text you."
*
The text came on the Thursday, while Chatura rehearsed a toast at the kitchen counter for a colleague's anniversary do. He turned his back to pour a glass of wine and her phone lit up in her hand.
Same hotel. Room 408. Saturday, eight o'clock. Kirk, me, and someone you haven't met yet. Her name is Helen. Wear the red.
She typed nothing back. She deleted nothing. She looked at the screen until it went dark, and then she looked at her husband's back, at the toast he was practising with his head thrown back the way he did, and she felt the two lives pull against each other inside her like a muscle.
Saturday she told him she was meeting the friend again. He nodded. Ten years of nods.
*
The corridor smelled of the same carpet and the same low lamps. Carol had dressed carefully: a wrap dress over the red silk, heels, no perfume because she had read somewhere that smell was the thing that gave a woman away. Her knock on 408 sounded too loud in the empty floor.
Kirk opened it, clean shirt, jaw like a fence post, and behind him in the lamplight stood a woman she had never seen.
Helen Atwood was maybe five foot eight, sporty through the shoulders in a soft green jumper and jeans, with long ginger hair falling past her collarbones and eyes the exact green of a wet leaf. She looked Carol up and down once, plainly, the way Kirk did, and then smiled like a door opening.
"So you're real," Helen said.
"Apparently." Carol stepped in. The door closed behind her.
Caolain sat in the armchair by the window, black turtleneck, one ankle across his knee, watching. "Carol, this is Helen. Helen, Carol. You've both been told the rules, so I won't repeat them except the important one. Everything either of you does tonight is asked first and answered freely. Kirk and I are audience until invited."
"You've briefed her well," Helen said, her eyes still on Carol.
"Is she a friend of yours?" Carol asked Kirk quietly.
"Of Kirk's, mostly," Helen said, crossing the carpet, unhurried. She stopped an arm's length away. Her voice had a warm scrape to it, easy, amused. "And I've been told you've never done this with a woman. Is that right?"
"Never."
"Good." Helen's smile deepened. "Then we take it slow. Unless you'd rather not."
"I'd rather." Carol heard her own voice steady. "I've been thinking about it since Thursday."
"Thursday?" Kirk said.
"That's when his text arrived." She nodded at Caolain without looking at him.
Helen reached out and took the end of Carol's wrap dress belt between two fingers. "Shall I?" she asked.
"Yes."
Helen pulled the belt and the dress sighed open. The lamplight fell on the red silk underneath, the bra, the knickers, the small belly and heavy breasts of a forty-two-year-old woman who had bought these for a stranger two months ago and now stood in them for three. Helen made a low sound of appreciation and slid the dress off Carol's shoulders, folding it over the chair back with a housekeeper's neatness.
"Your turn," Carol said, and her hands went to the hem of the green jumper.
She pulled it up over Helen's head, and there was no bra, just freckled skin and medium breasts with wide nipples already peaked, and a soft line of ginger hair disappearing into her jeans. Carol unbuttoned those too, kneeling as she drew them down Helen's strong thighs, and Helen stepped out of them and stood naked in the middle of the room, entirely unashamed, a full dark triangle of ginger curls between her legs.
"Christ," Kirk said softly from the wall.
"Quiet, audience," Helen said, not looking away from Carol.
Caolain rose from the armchair, crossed to the bathroom, and turned the shower on. Steam began to ghost into the room. "In there," he said. "Both of you. Wash each other. We'll hear it."
Helen held out her hand. Carol took it.
The bathroom was all white tile and mirror, filling with steam. Helen stepped in first and pulled Carol under the water after her, and the warmth ran down both of them, rinsing the red silk off Carol's skin, peeling it down her hips and kicking it toward the drain. They stood chest to chest under the spray, Carol taller in her nothingness by an inch only, and Helen tipped her chin up and kissed her.
It was nothing like a man's kiss. Soft lips, a slow tongue, one hand cradling the back of Carol's skull. Carol made a sound into her mouth that embarrassed her and Helen laughed against her lips.
"There she is," Helen murmured.
They washed each other with the little hotel bottles, Helen's soapy hands working down Carol's back, over her hips, between her thighs with a lingering thoroughness that made Carol grip the rail. Carol washed Helen in return, learning her body by touch, the muscle of her shoulders, the heavy softness of her breasts, the springy wet curls between her legs that made Helen shiver when Carol's fingers slid through them and stayed.
"Enough," Helen said at last, breathless, turning the water off. "Or I'll finish you here and they'll hear nothing."
They toweled each other dry and walked back out into the lamplight, naked, dripping at the hems. Caolain and Kirk sat side by side on the edge of the bed now, both of them flushed, both of them visibly hard under their clothes and not hiding it.
"On the bed," Caolain said quietly. "However you like."
Helen pushed Carol gently back onto the sheets and settled between her thighs, propped on her elbows, her wet ginger hair spilling over Carol's stomach. She looked up the length of Carol's body.
"First thing I ever learned to do well," she said, "was this."
Her mouth went to Carol's cunt and opened her with two fingers and her tongue, slow, unhurried, circling, and Carol's back arched off the mattress while the two men leaned in at the foot of the bed to watch every motion of it, and Kirk said, "Christ, look at that," under his breath like a prayer.
Helen licked her in long flat strokes and then narrowed her tongue on her clit until Carol's hips began to lift. She reached into the nightstand drawer without breaking rhythm and came out with something smooth and violet, a slim silicone toy, and pressed its blunt head against Carol's opening while her tongue kept working.
"Yes," Carol said. "Yes, put it in."
The toy slid into her, cool and then warm, curving upward to press the spot Kirk's fingers had found in the physio room. Helen worked it in slow pushes, her mouth sealed around her clit, and Carol felt the orgasm arrive from somewhere deep, building in stacked waves.
"I'm coming," she gasped, and Helen held the toy deep and let her come around it, crying out to the ceiling, her thighs shaking against the other woman's ears.
Helen drew the toy out glistening and kissed the inside of Carol's trembling thigh. "Your turn," she said, crawling up the bed, and Carol reached for her, pulling her hips astride her face, and pressed her mouth to the wet ginger curls, learning the taste of a woman for the first time.
Carol worked her tongue through the curls, learning by instinct, finding the slick seam of her and following it up. Helen tasted different from anything, musk and heat, and Carol buried her mouth deeper for it. Above her Helen's breath came out in a rough huff, her thighs tightening against Carol's ears.
"There," Helen said. "You've done this before. Don't lie to me."
"Never," Carol said against her, and went back to it.
"Then you're a natural liar and a natural at this." Helen rocked her hips forward, riding Carol's mouth in slow small circles, guiding without forcing. "Flat tongue first. Then sharper."
Carol obeyed, flattening her tongue along the whole length of her, then returning to the swollen top and flicking. Helen's hands found the headboard. Somewhere past the foot of the bed, Kirk said something low to Caolain and Caolain shushed him.
"Sit up," Helen said, sliding backward off Carol's mouth. "Come here. My turn to be learned."
She pulled Carol up to kneeling and drew her mouth down to her breasts. Carol took one wide nipple between her lips and sucked, and the sound Helen made was nothing like her own high gasps; it was a groan from the chest, low and satisfied. Carol sucked harder, tonguing the peak, then turned to the other breast and gave it the same attention while Helen held the back of her head.
"Teeth, a little. Yes. Like that." Helen's fingers curled in her hair. "You're going to make me come before I've even touched you again, you wicked thing."
Carol smiled around the nipple and scraped her teeth lightly, and Helen pushed her shoulders back onto the mattress and swung astride her face again, one hand braced on the wall. Carol gripped her hips and pulled her down, mouth open, tongue working, and Helen rode her mouth with increasing urgency, her breathing breaking into short cries.
"Two fingers. Now."
Carol slid two fingers up inside her, curling them forward the way she liked it done to herself, and Helen bore down on both at once. Her thighs shuddered. She came with a long, guttural sound, grinding against Carol's mouth and hand, and Carol held her through it, lapping gently until Helen lifted herself off on shaky arms and collapsed beside her, laughing.
"Christ alive." She pushed her damp ginger hair off her face. "Kirk, you never told me she was greedy."
"She is," Caolain said from the foot of the bed. His voice had gone quiet and rough. "That's rather the point of her."
Helen rolled onto her side and reached into the nightstand drawer again, rummaging past the violet toy. She came out with something else, longer, thicker, curved at both ends, deep red silicone. She held it up between them.
"This one's different," she said. "This one's for both of us. One end each. You up for that?"
Carol looked at the toy, at the two men at the foot of the bed watching with fixed attention, at the flush still riding Helen's freckled chest. "Yes."
"Then lie back and lift your hips."
Carol lay back and Helen knelt between her thighs, sliding one end of the toy into her slow and deliberate, the wider girth stretching her open, a pressure that made her gasp and clutch the sheets. Helen worked it until half its length stood buried in her, glistening, and then she swung one leg over and lowered herself onto the other end.
The moment they met, both of them cried out. The toy flexed between their bodies, every small motion of one translated through the curve into the other, and Helen braced her hands on Carol's knees and began to move, a slow rolling grind that drove the shaft into them both at once.
"Oh God," Carol said. "I can feel you."
"That's the whole idea." Helen's voice had gone ragged. She rocked harder, the bed creaking, her breasts swaying with the motion. Carol matched the rhythm from below, hips lifting, the toy dragging against that deep spot on every stroke while Helen's breath shattered above her.
At the foot of the bed Kirk had stopped pretending to sit. He stood, flushed, and Caolain's hand rested on his own thigh, motionless, his grey eyes moving between the two women with an expression Carol had never seen on him, something almost reverent.
"Touch yourself," Helen gasped down at her. "While I ride you. I want to watch."
Carol's fingers went to her own clit, circling fast, the double sensation building with terrible speed. Helen leaned forward, bracing on her hands over Carol, and the new angle drove the toy deeper into both of them, their bodies slapping softly together, sweat slick between their bellies.
"Helen," Carol heard herself moan. "I'm close."
"Me too. Together. Now."
Carol came first, crying out, her fingers frantic, and the clenching of her body squeezed the toy against the other end, and Helen followed with a sharp bark of a cry, collapsing onto her, both of them shuddering around the red curve still joining them. For a long moment there was nothing in the room but four ragged breathing rhythms and the lamp humming.
Then Caolain spoke from the foot of the bed, and his voice made all three of them look up.
"Turn over, Carol," he said, already unbuttoning his collar. "Helen, stay exactly where you are. Kirk, lock the door."
The lock clicked. Kirk crossed to the bathroom and came back with the little bottle of hotel lotion held up like a trophy, already warming it between his big palms.
"I know what he wants," Kirk said, kneeling on the bed. "I've done this before."
"Then do it well," Caolain said. His shirt came off over his head, pale and wiry in the lamplight, the thin silver chain catching gold.
Helen stayed astride Carol's hips, still joined to her by the red curve of the toy, and looked down over her shoulder. "Go on, then. Oil her up."
Kirk's hands landed warm on Carol's shoulders. The oil was slick and faintly sweet, and he worked it down her back in long strokes, over the wings of her shoulder blades, the dip of her spine, the full cheeks of her backside, kneading with a thoroughness that had nothing lazy about it. Carol groaned into the sheets. Every pass of his thumbs dragged the toy inside her a fraction, and Helen felt it too, her breath hitching above.
"Lower," Helen said. "She carries everything in her hips."
"I know where she carries it." Kirk poured more oil and let it run warm down the crease of her, his fingers following, slow, circling the tight ring of muscle there with a patience that made her thighs tremble. "You remember the physio room, love?"
"I remember everything," Carol said into the mattress. "I remember all of it."
Caolain moved onto the bed behind Helen, knelt, and slid a hand between her legs to feel where the toy entered her. "Good," he said. "Helen, lean forward. Kirk, hold her steady."
The rearrangement happened with that same wordless fluency. Helen folded down over Carol, breast to breast, their bodies slick with oil and sweat, and the flex of the toy shifted deep inside them both so that they moaned into each other's mouths. Kirk braced Helen's hips from behind, one thick arm locked around her. Caolain ran his oiled fingers down between Carol's cheeks and pressed one inside her, slow, and she arched off the mattress.
"Say it," he said.
"Both of us. Again." Her voice came out cracked. "You and Helen. I want to feel you both at once."
"Ask plainly."
"Put your cock in my arse while she's in my cunt."
Caolain laughed, low and dark. "There she is."
He unfastened his trousers and pushed them down. Helen rolled her hips forward, drawing the toy half out of Carol to make room, and Carol felt the blunt heat of him pressing against her oiled opening, the stretch slow and enormous, familiar now from the hotel bed and still almost too much. She clawed at Helen's shoulders. He sank in inch by inch until his hips met her backside and they were joined again, she and Helen still linked by the red curve, both of them filled, Caolain sandwiched between the squeeze of her body and the toy's weight.
"Christ," Kirk said from the wall, and this time Caolain didn't shush him. "Kirk," Caolain said instead. "Her mouth. She's better with her hands full."
Kirk moved round on his knees and Carol reached for him, oil and all, closing her hand around his thick length and drawing him to her lips. She took him in while Caolain began to move, long slow strokes that rocked her whole body forward onto Kirk's cock and back onto his, and Helen riding the counter-motion, all three rhythms braided together so that every thrust fed her from both ends.
The room filled with sound, skin and breath and the creak of the bed. Carol moaned around Kirk until he gripped the headboard. Helen's mouth found her ear.
"You're the greediest woman I've ever met," Helen breathed. "Three months ago you'd never been touched by anyone but him."
"Twelve years." Carol lifted her mouth just long enough to say it. "Ten married. I counted wrong before tonight."
"Twelve." Helen kissed her wet cheek, her jaw, the corner of her mouth. "And now look at you."
Caolain's rhythm shortened, deepened. His hand spread her oiled cheek wider and his thumb pressed where his cock was buried, and the doubled sensation pushed Carol up against Kirk's stomach, sobbing.
"I'm coming," she gasped against Kirk's skin. "Don't stop, any of you, don't stop."
Nobody stopped. The orgasm tore through her from both directions, her body clamping around Caolain and the toy until Helen cried out above her, bucking, coming again with her, the flexed silicone carrying every clench between them. Kirk swore and pulled free of her mouth, fisting himself, and Caolain said, "Wait," one word, and Kirk waited, shaking.
Caolain drove twice more and finished deep inside her with a groan that seemed dragged up from somewhere below his chest. His forehead dropped to Helen's shoulder blade. For a moment the four of them stayed locked together, breathing in ragged chorus, the toy still pulsing its small transmitted motions between the two women.
Then Caolain withdrew, slow, and Helen lifted herself off the toy's far end and rolled onto her back, flushed and grinning, the red silicone lying wet and abandoned across the sheets. Carol lay boneless, oiled and filled and leaking, watching Kirk who still knelt hard and unserved.
"Helen," Caolain said, settling against the headboard. "Your friend's been patient."
"He has." Helen propped herself up and looked at Kirk, then at Carol, and something calculating and delighted moved behind the green of her eyes. "Sit up, love. He's been waiting two weeks for what I got tonight, and I think you should give it to him yourself. All of it. No helping from me or him."
Carol pushed herself up on her arms. Her body ached everywhere and wanted everywhere. Kirk looked down at her, and for once the fence-post jaw had nothing brash to say.
"Where do you want me?" she asked him.
"Wherever you like," Kirk said hoarsely. "But I'd like to see your face while you do it."
She pushed him onto his back and swung astride him, took him in her oiled hand, and sank down onto his cock with a long, low cry, taking him to the root in one motion, her hips already learning their circle while behind her, quietly, Caolain picked up her phone from the nightstand and turned the screen toward the light. A new message sat unopened at the top of the thread.
Caolain tilted the screen so only he could see it, and Carol, buried to the hilt on Kirk, watched his eyes move over the words and then flick up to hers.
"Later," he said, and set the phone face-down on the nightstand.
"Who is it?" Kirk asked from beneath her, his hands locked on her hips, his voice strained.
"Nobody's business yet." Caolain settled back against the headboard, naked, watching. "She's riding you, Kirk. Pay attention."
She paid attention instead. Kirk's cock filled her deep, her own oil and everything Caolain had left in her making the glide slick and filthy, and she rolled her hips until his breath went ragged. Helen crawled closer on her knees, her damp ginger hair falling over one shoulder, and sat at the head of the bed beside Caolain, her thigh warm against Carol's knee.
"Look at me while you do it," Helen said.
Carol turned her head. Green eyes, half-lidded, close enough to kiss. She kissed her, and Kirk groaned up into her from below, the double sensation pulling her rhythm apart. Helen's tongue was slow, tasting herself on Carol's mouth, one hand coming up to squeeze her breast, thumb dragging over the nipple until Carol clenched hard around Kirk.
"Christ," Kirk gasped. "Do that again."
"I'm not doing it for you," Helen said against Carol's lips, and did it again.
Carol rode faster, chasing it, her thighs burning. Kirk thrust up to meet her now, the patience gone out of him, the mattress springs complaining. "I'm close. Carol. I'm close."
"Inside," she said. "You know where."
His hips drove up twice more and he came with a shout that had no manners in it at all, spilling deep, his whole body bowing off the sheets. Carol kept moving through it, milking him, until his hands went slack on her hips and she stilled, full and aching and nowhere near finished.
Helen's hand closed on her shoulder. "Off him, gently. And come here."
Carol lifted herself off with a wet sound and a loss that made her whimper. Kirk lay sprawled and gasping, one arm over his eyes. She barely had time to look at him before Helen pulled her down onto the bed on her hands and knees, facing the headboard, and knelt behind her.
"Hold still," Helen said. "You're dripping everywhere and I can't stop looking at it."
Her mouth pressed between Carol's cheeks and then lower, her tongue lapping at the mess Caolain had left, slow, thorough, obscene. Carol's arms nearly gave. Behind them Kirk lifted his arm to watch, and Caolain leaned forward on the headboard, his grey eyes fixed, the silver chain glinting.
"Helen," Carol managed. "What are you"
"Cleaning up the leftovers. There's nothing in this room you haven't already let happen, love." Another long stroke of her tongue, and Carol's forehead dropped to the pillow. "Besides, I want you ready for one more."
"Ready for what?" She asked it into the cotton, half wrecked already.
Helen lifted her mouth and wiped her chin with the back of her hand. "Caolain. You've been sitting there behaving yourself for half an hour. Get over here."
Caolain moved without a word. Carol heard the springs shift, felt the bed dip behind her, and then his knees were against her thighs and his hand was on the small of her back, pressing her down into the arch she was already making. Helen slid out of the way only far enough to kneel at Carol's side, one hand stroking her oiled spine.
"He'll want your mouth first," Helen said. "He always does. Look at him."
Carol turned her head. Caolain knelt by her cheek, hard again, and she opened her mouth and took him in without being asked. He hissed through his teeth. His hand came into her hair, not guiding, just holding, and she sucked him slow and deep while Helen's fingers slid back between her legs from behind, two of them, working her open again with easy knowledge of everything that night had already done to her.
"You'll take him again," Helen said, quiet, conversational, her fingers curling. "And Kirk's going to watch from the chair like a good boy, because you wore him flat."
"I can recover," Kirk said from somewhere behind them, indignant.
"Then watch and recover."
Caolain pulled from her mouth and moved behind her. The blunt head of him pressed at her entrance, and Helen's fingers withdrew to make room. He sank in on one long push and they both cried out, her body clutching him, overfull and still hungry. His hands gripped her hips and he set a rhythm, hard now, no patience left in him either, each stroke rocking her forward against the pillow.
"Helen." His voice came out rough. "Her mouth again. Kiss her through it."
Helen bent under him and found Carol's lips, and Carol moaned into the kiss, being taken and kissed at once, the two sensations tangling until she couldn't tell which was making her shake. Helen's hand slipped between their bodies and found her clit, circling in time with Caolain's thrusts.
"That's it," Helen murmured against her mouth. "Come on him. I want to feel you go from here."
Carol broke in maybe forty seconds, screaming into Helen's mouth, her whole body clamping down, and Caolain drove through it, three more strokes, and finished with a groan she felt in her teeth. He stayed in her, breathing hard against her shoulder blade, and for a moment the room was nothing but the lamp and the four of them tangled.
Then Kirk stood up from the chair. He had recovered exactly as he'd promised, and he crossed the room with his cock in his fist and something decided in his face.
"Helen," he said. "You've had her twice. I've not had you at all."
Helen lifted her head from Carol's shoulder and looked at him, flushed, grinning. "Well. Someone's finally noticed the only woman in this room he hasn't touched."
"Get on your back," Kirk said, and there was no brashness in it now, just want.
Helen rolled onto her back on the other side of the bed, spreading her freckled thighs without ceremony. Kirk knelt between them and pressed into her in one stroke, and her cry was different from anything she'd let them hear before, raw and unguarded. Carol propped herself on shaking arms and watched,Caolain's weight still heavy against her back, watching Kirk drive into the woman, watching Helen's heels dig into his back and her fingers twist the sheets.
Beside her ear, Caolain spoke quietly. "Now you've seen the whole game."
"I don't want it to end." The words came out of her before she could weigh them.
"No." He kissed the back of her neck. "It doesn't. That's what the message was."
Carol reached for the phone, still face-down on the nightstand, and turned it over. The thread sat open where he'd left it. Her thumb moved down and read.
The message was from a number she didn't recognise, and it was short. The terrace was only the beginning. He knows more than you think. Ask your new friends about Daniel.
Carol read it twice. The name meant nothing until it suddenly did: a grey suit at the party, a laugh Chatura had thrown back his head for. She looked up at Caolain, and his face gave her nothing, which was itself an answer.
"You know who sent this."
"I have an idea." He took the phone from her hand, read it again, and set it back down without expression. "It can wait until the room stops spinning. Which, judging by Kirk, will be some time."
"Daniel," she said. "From the party. Chatura's colleague."
Kirk lifted his arm off his eyes. "Who's Daniel?"
"Nobody," Caolain said. "Or somebody. We'll find out."
Helen had been quiet through all of it, sprawled on her stomach at the end of the bed, chin on her fists, watching them pass the phone between them like a dish nobody wanted. Now she spoke up.
"Before we start worrying about men in grey suits." She reached over and took Carol's wrist, turned her hand over, ran a thumb across the pulse. "I've been thinking about something all night, and if I don't say it now I'll lose my nerve, and I don't lose my nerve."
"Say it," Caolain said.
"I want to bring another woman in." Helen's green eyes went from him to Carol. "Not a stranger off an app. Someone I've known for years. She and I have been together a few times, and she's the only person alive who's ever made me come harder than this one did tonight." She squeezed Carol's wrist. "I want to watch you two together. I want to be in the middle of you. I think you'd be good for her and she'd ruin you, in the best way."
The room went quiet enough that Carol could hear the lamp hum. Kirk sat up slowly, the sheets falling off him.
"How do I fit into this fantasy?" he asked.
"You don't, much." Helen said it kindly. "That's rather the point."
Kirk laughed, a bark at the ceiling. "Christ. Two women, and I'm furniture."
"You were furniture tonight and you had the best seat in the house," Helen said. "Besides, she'll want you eventually. She's greedy for approval and you've got a face like a labrador's."
"What's her name?" Carol asked.
Helen hesitated for the first time all night. She sat up, cross-legged, and pulled a pillow against her stomach, and suddenly she looked younger, like a girl asking a favour at a sleepover.
"Maeve. She's forty. Divorced, no kids, works at a garden centre and smokes like a chimney. Red hair going silver at the temples and she won't dye it. She's done things I'd blush at, and I don't blush." Helen's fingers picked at the pillowcase. "The only catch is she's careful. She'll want to meet you first, somewhere public, no bed anywhere in sight. She doesn't do ambushes."
"That's sensible," Carol said.
"That's why I'm asking before I ask her." Helen looked at her straight. "I'm not bringing anyone into this without all three of you saying yes. Not even Caolain decides alone."
Everyone looked at Caolain. He was leaning against the headboard with the silver chain lying in the hollow of his throat, and Carol watched him consider it, the way he'd watched her in the ballroom, cataloguing.
"A garden centre woman who doesn't do ambushes," he said. "She sounds like the most dangerous person at this table, and I include myself." A small pause. "Yes. On one condition. Nobody tells Maeve about Carol's husband. That's Carol's to give or withhold."
"That's fair," Helen said.
"That's fair," Kirk agreed.
They all looked at Carol. She sat with her knees drawn up, her body still humming from everything the night had put through it, and thought about the shape her life had taken in three months. A terrace. A physio room. A hotel bed. And now a woman named Maeve who smoked and didn't dye her hair and wanted to meet her like a job interview.
"What would I even say to her?" Carol asked. "Over coffee. What's the pitch?"
"There's no pitch." Helen reached across and took her hand properly now, lacing their fingers. "You'd just talk. And she'd look at you the way I looked at you when you walked through that door, and she'd either want you or she wouldn't. She always wants what I want, that's our arrangement." Her thumb moved over Carol's knuckles. "And I want you to say yes, very badly."
"I'm not the one who needs convincing," Kirk said. "I'm the labrador."
Carol laughed, and the laugh broke something loose in her chest. She looked at her phone on the nightstand, at the message about Daniel sitting under everything, and decided, deliberately, not to think about it tonight.
"Tuesday," she said. "Not coffee. There's a wine bar near the gym, the quiet one on the corner. Tuesday at seven." She squeezed Helen's fingers back. "If she says no, I'll survive it. If she says yes, I want it to be her choice and mine, and I don't want the two of you anywhere in that room."
"We'd wait outside like spaniels," Kirk said.
"You'd wait wherever I put you," Caolain said, and for once there was no irony in it at all. He looked at Carol with something she hadn't seen from him before, something close to respect. "You're getting better at this game than I expected."
"I'm not playing your game," Carol said. "I'm playing mine now."
Helen whooped, a loud unladylike sound, and pulled Carol down onto the pillows and kissed her, long and slow, while Kirk groaned about being furniture and Caolain watched from the headboard with his grey eyes half closed. Helen's hand slid down her stomach and between her legs, fingers circling, gentle, a promise more than a beginning.
"Tuesday," Helen murmured against her mouth. "And if Maeve says yes, I'm going to tie you to this headboard and make you watch us for an hour before either of you touches me."
"You'd blush at that," Carol said.
"No," Helen said, and bit her lower lip. "She would."
Down the hall, somewhere below them in the hotel, the anniversary party was breaking up, coats and taxis and the last of the disco thumping through the floor. None of them heard it. Carol closed her eyes under Helen's mouth, full and aching and happy in a way that frightened her, and on the nightstand the message about Daniel waited, unread past its second reading, patient as everything else in her new life.
Helen pulled back from the kiss eventually, and stayed there a moment, close, breathing Carol's breath. Then she reached over Carol's hip for her own phone on the far nightstand and lay back against the pillows to look at it.
"Don't," Kirk said from his sprawl. "You'll spoil it. Tuesday's supposed to be a surprise."
"Tuesday is four days away." Helen's thumbs were already moving. "I've been at this party since seven, I've come four times, and I'm drunk on hotel wine. This is exactly when I make my best decisions."
"It's how you make your worst ones," Kirk said.
"Same thing, mostly."
Carol propped herself up on one elbow to watch. Helen's face had changed, the playful slackness gone, something intent settling over it as she typed. The lamp caught the freckles on her shoulders. She typed a line, deleted it, typed it again, and Carol realized she was nervous. Helen, who had talked her through everything all night like a woman reading a menu, was nervous over a text.
"Can I see?" Carol asked.
Helen tilted the screen toward her without looking up. The thread with Maeve was short and old, the last exchange dated three weeks ago. A thumbs-up emoji from Maeve, a photo from Helen of some plant. Below it now, half-composed: I met someone. I want you to meet her. Tuesday, wine bar on the corner by the gym, 7. She's married and she's extraordinary and she tastes like trouble. Say yes and I'll tell you everything. Say no and I'll still tell you everything.
"You can't send that," Carol said, and her voice came out louder than she meant. "The married part. We agreed. That's mine to give."
"I didn't say whose wife." Helen looked at her, steady. "Read it again. Anyone could be married. Kirk's married, probably, to a bench."
"He's not."
"The point is Maeve doesn't ambush and neither do I, but Maeve also doesn't do vague, and if I send her something polite and coy she'll smell coy and she won't come." Helen's thumb hovered over the send arrow. "This text is honest. It just isn't complete."
Caolain had gone very still against the headboard. Carol watched him watch the phone, and understood, with a small cold drop in her stomach, that he was cataloguing this too. What Helen wanted. What Helen was willing to risk to get it.
"Send it," he said.
"You don't get a vote," Helen said. "I'm not bringing her in for you."
"I know. Send it anyway. I want to see what she does." He nodded at the phone. "You said she's careful. Careful people answer risk with risk or with silence. Either one tells us something."
"That's a horrible way to make a friend," Kirk said.
"It's the only way I have any."
Carol looked at the thread again. At the name at the top of it. Maeve, who smoked like a chimney and would blush, and who had been doing things for years that Helen didn't blush at. She thought of Chatura, asleep in their bed by now, laptop still warm on the nightstand. The word married sat in the middle of the message like a coin balanced on its edge.
"Send it," she said.
Helen's thumb came down. The whoosh of the send was very small, and then it was done, and the four of them were all looking at a phone screen the way they'd looked at the message about Daniel, like a dish nobody wanted.
Helen put the phone face-down on the mattress and exhaled through her teeth. "Right. It's done. If she doesn't answer by morning I'll text something boring about plants and we'll all pretend this never happened."
"She'll answer," Caolain said.
"How do you know?"
"Because you wrote it drunk and honest and she's spent years wanting what you want. That's not a guess, Helen. It's arithmetic."
Kirk swung his legs off the bed and went for his shirt, and the room began to come apart the way hotel rooms do, the night loosening its grip. He pulled the soft grey vest over his head and started hunting his trousers. Helen slid out of bed without shyness, a big easy stride to the bathroom, water running. Carol sat where she was, warm in the ruined sheets, and felt the ache in her body settle into something almost sweet.
The buzz came at ten past one.
Helen was still in the bathroom. The phone shivered on the mattress and Carol looked at it, and looked away, and looked back. The screen had lit up and dimmed again by the time Caolain reached over and turned it face-up with two fingers, careful, like turning a card.
Maeve had replied in eleven minutes. One line, and under it a photo of a half-smoked cigarette in an ashtray, taken from above, the ash long and neat.
The reply said: Tuesday. I'll bring my own wine. And Helen, if she's as good as that, I'll be the judge of the tasting.
Caolain read it and said nothing. Carol read it and felt heat climb her throat all over again, a different kind of heat than the room had already given her, older and newer at once. She heard Helen's footsteps coming back and turned the phone over before she could stop herself.
Helen stopped in the middle of the carpet, towel in her hand, wet to the waist, looking at the two of them and the phone between them.
"She answered," she said.
"She answered," Carol said.
"What did she say? Exactly." Helen dropped the towel and crossed to the bed, reaching, but Caolain held the phone just out of reach, and his grey eyes had gone bright and thoughtful, the ballroom look, the terrace look, the look Carol had learned to recognize as the moment before everything moved.
"I'll tell you on Tuesday," he said. "In the wine bar. We're all going to be there anyway."
Kirk, halfway into his shoes, looked up. "All of us? She said no bed in sight, no ambush."
Caolain passed the phone to Helen and began pulling on his black sweater, unhurried. "Then we'll sit at the bar like respectable men and let the ladies have their table. Kirk, you'll want to see Maeve."
"Why's that?"
"Because Helen left out the part about how they met," Caolain said, and picked up his watch from the nightstand, next to Carol's phone and the message about Daniel, still waiting. "And I suspect Tuesday is when we find out whether it's Daniel's kind of story too."