The Mammoth Book of Threesomes and Moresomes

Remember This

Shanna Germain

I’ve had the pill for three weeks now. I keep it folded in an envelope in the nightstand next to my bed and, every evening, I take it out and hold it in my palm. It’s so small, almost too small considering what it could do, what it will do, and it’s a colour that’s not quite blue, not quite grey. Sometimes I only hold it for a moment before I let it fall from my palm back into the envelope. Other times, like tonight, on the eve of my fiftieth birthday, I hold it for a long time, reading the single letter on it over and over. Neither Raina nor Maddox know I have the pill. They would try to get me to give it up, and I can’t do that. Not to them. Not to me.

It’s too early for me to even have this pill — there are only small signs. Forgetting where I put the keys, or how to make my famous anise cookies. Only once have I forgotten how to get home, back to this place that I love, but that was enough for me to make the appointment. They say I’m overreacting, that there’s no way to make a diagnosis yet. Maybe. Maybe not. But I know they see it too. Already I’m forgetting. Not just recipes or directions or birthdays, but the things that really matter: how to strap on the harness that Raina likes so much, the way that Mad holds his balls up with one hand when I suck him, how I sound when I’m coming.

The forgetting runs in the women in my family like bad eyesight. My grandmother. Then my mom. At fifty, my mom didn’t just forget things, she forgot herself. She forgot her quiet sense of humour, her acceptance of people, her love of the men she called the Dylan Boys, meaning the poet and the musician. In the end, she swore and raged and pinched.

I’m still holding the pill when I hear Raina come in. I drop it back into the envelope and slide it quickly under the pillows.

Downstairs, Raina slicks off her raincoat and stamps her feet on the rug. “Ana? Anabel?”

“Up here,” I call. “In bed.”

Raina laughs, her big horse laugh that comes from her belly and booms through the house. Such a little person to make such a big sound. “Of course you are.”

It’s true. All I want to do lately is fuck. Fuck and be fucked and then, finally, lie in our big wide bed with Raina on one side, Mad on the other. It’s like my biological clock is ringing overtime, only it’s not for having kids. It’s for having orgasms, for having the taste of skin in my mouth, for the feeling of being filled once, twice, three times more.

I lean back against the pillow, listen to Raina’s stockinged feet pitter-patting up the stairs. The smell of fall enters the room before she does. Her curly salt-and-pepper hair is damp with rain. “Sleeping?” she asks.

“Not with that loud-ass laugh of yours booming through the house,” I say.

“Oh, I’m so sure,” she says. Her eyebrows go up — she’s caught sight of my new lingerie. A lacy bra that’s almost blue, almost grey. I ordered it online and forgot what colour it was until I put it on this afternoon. “Nice,” she says. “Birthday gift?”

“Do you like it?”

“Mmm. .” She sits on the side of the bed and rubs her hands together. Where I am dark and tall and thin, Raina is white and short, shaped like an alabaster violin. Her hair, now more salt than pepper, seems the same colour as her washed-out blue eyes, as her pale skin. She has on a soft orange skirt that I like — one that looks like fall — and I slip one hand beneath the hem, find the top edge of her thigh-highs. Beneath my fingertips, the band is raised in some kind of pattern I can’t make out.

She raises the hem of her skirt enough so I can see the top of them — it’s some kind of flower — I can’t remember the name — and I slip one finger beneath the fabric, feeling the cool of her skin. Raina shivers, maybe from my touch, maybe from the cold she’s brought in with her.

“Fucking freezing and pissing out there, all at once,” she says. “Lucky you’re not out in it.”

There’s nothing to say to that, so we sit in the silence for a moment. Raina’s hands make a fast, scritch-scritch noise as she tries to warm them. I love having her here. Mad and I asked her to move in, once, a long time ago, but she said no. And it’s worked this way: me and Mad here; her in her little condo downtown, spending the weekends with us. Although, lately, it’s been more than that. I wonder if her biological clock feels something too.

“How was your day?” She wants to know if I forgot anything, but she doesn’t ask.

I reach up with my free hand and run my fingers along her eyebrows, notice a bit of grey there too. I don’t tell her about the phone, how I tried to call Mad at work and got his old college office, the one he left years ago.

“Fine,” I say. “Better now. Even better in about, oh, half an hour?”

She laughs again. It’s so big it sounds like it belongs outside. “That when we’re expecting the Mad-Dog?” She’s called him that since the first time we all had sex, when he ground his teeth and nearly growled out an orgasm. Now we laugh about it, but still when she says it, I get a visual memory of us all that first time, playing like puppies in the big bed, how young we all were, how free. Raina’s hair was down to her ass, and Mad had pulled it like reins while he was fucking her from behind. I hope I never forget the curve of her neck when he pulled her backwards into him. Or the way she moaned my name, beckoning me closer.

“Ana?” Raina prods me lightly with a finger.

“Hm?” I’m rolling down one of her thigh-highs, watching the white length of her thigh being revealed bit by bit. I like moments like this, when I don’t even know what kind of underwear she’s wearing — if any at all — but her thighs are bare and free. Exposed to me and my roving fingers.

“Mad-Dog? Coming soon, yes?” she asks again.

“Oh. Yes,” I say. “Half an hour or so.”

“Guess I have time for a warm-up shower then?” Raina asks.

I don’t want her to leave me, now that she’s here, but I nod.

She wiggles her cold fingers at me. “Jack Frost be-gone,” she says. “Warm Raina be-back.”

“Warm Raina,” I say. “Sounds like the perfect weather for a vacation.”

When she kisses the tip of my nose, her lips make me shiver all the way through.

Out of the shower, Raina is warm-warm and naked-soft against my back. She spoons me up in the hug of her arms, and we lie that way for a while. My ass fits against the front of her perfectly and her small, round breasts press into my back. She used my lotion, and it makes her smell like oranges and chocolate.

Smells. Lately, I want to smell everything that’s possible to smell in the world, to hold it in my mind like the key to a dissolving door. I turn my head to sniff her shoulder, the clean crook of her armpit. I will the scents, those invisible pheromones or atoms or whatever they are, into my nose and brain. I pray for them to stay.

“Shall we wait for Mad?” Raina asks, her palms already sliding over my shoulders, down my arms. Her touch is soft, so unlike Mad’s, the small callouses on her palms the only sharp edges at all.

“Since when do we wait for Mad?”

“Thought I’d ask,” she says.

I reach around until the globe of her ass is in my hand, and pull her closer to me. “Don’t,” I say. Meaning: don’t wait for Mad. Don’t ask. Don’t change the pattern. We’ve never waited for Mad. We’re not about to start now.

She kisses the back of my neck, the side of my shoulder. Her hands find the edges of my bra. “Really nice,” she whispers, as she tucks her fingers beneath the lace. She makes soft circles around my hardening nipples, and I move so she has better access.

“You should see the thong,” I whisper.

“Later,” she says, her voice heated around the puckered point of my skin. “Roll.”

I roll to face her and then she’s kissing me the way she does, her tongue meeting mine. She used my toothpaste too; she tastes like mint and the mochas she drinks. Soy something-or-others.

She unhooks the bra and pulls it off me. Then her fingers start again, circling my nipples until they crinkle.

“So, birthday girl, what’s your pleasure?”

“It’s all pleasure,” I say and, for the moment, it’s true. Her warm body here, the way she’s touching me, the knowledge that Mad is due to join us any second.

“Hmph,” she says. She slides down, runs her tongue along the underside of my breast and then down my stomach. She looks up at me as she moves her tongue between my thighs. I spread my legs to let her in. I’m not wet yet, but the tip of her tongue slipping between my lips is enough to start the flow. And then she presses, laps, opens me. I love the softness of her tongue and lips, how different from Mad’s often scratchy chin. She presses, slow rasps of her flat tongue between me, before she edges the very tip lightly to my clit, round and round and round.

I’m so lost in the pleasure of Raina’s strokes that I don’t hear Mad come in. Suddenly, I open my eyes, and he’s there, leaning against the doorjamb.

“Hi, ladies,” he says, that half-smile punctuating his words as he watches us, hip canted to the wood.

After all this time, such a beautiful man. Ever the professor, just as he was when we met, dressed in jeans and a brown corduroy jacket. Glasses now, and a bit of salt in his hair too, just at the sides.

“Mad-Dog,” Raina says. She slides up my body and takes my nipple in her mouth, then lets it out with a pop. “We started without you.”

“You always do,” he says. His laugh is the opposite of Raina’s, more smile and air than noise.

“Come to bed,” I say. I stretch out my hand and he steps forward to take it.

“Should I undress first?” he asks.

“Naw, we’ll take care of it,” Raina says.

“Shoes too?” he asks.

“No, no shoes,” Raina says, between lollipop licks of my nipple. “Dirty.”

“Thought that was the point,” Mad says in a pouty voice that belies his age, but he sits on the edge of the bed and unties his shoes. “You get to wear shoes.”

Raina raises her head from my breast. “Oh, yeah, Ana, remember that last pair of pumps I got? The red ones?”

Am I the only one who has a reaction to the word “remember”?

I am. Neither of them seems to notice. Raina has her mouth back around my nipple, teasing the skin with the edge of her teeth. Mad is slipping off his jacket and letting it fall to the floor.

“I remember,” I say. They were gorgeous shoes. Not candy-apple red, but something darker. They didn’t scream “sex”, they whispered “fuck”. Like candied apples that had been dragged through the dirt, scuffed and then lipsticked over in a dark bar. Watching Raina walk in them, strutting her stuff, that alone had turned me soaking wet, had forced me to sink a finger between my thighs while I watched.

“I remember,” I say again, and my voice is soft. “Come to fucking bed, Mad. Fuck me. I’m tired of waiting.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he says.

Raina lets go of me, leaves me in the bed alone and strips off the rest of Mad’s clothes. In seconds, they’re back in bed, cold Mad on one side, warm Raina on the other. Mad takes his glasses off and puts them on the nightstand and then he kisses me, long and deep. He leans across me and kisses Raina too. I like to watch them. Knowing how they each kiss me, I wonder how they kiss each other.

Mad licks his lips like a cat. “You did start without me,” he says. “You taste like Ana.”

“So, what’s your pleasure, birthday girl?” he asks.

Raina and I look at each other and giggle.

“What?” he says.

“Nothing,” I say. It’s not that funny, just the same phrase twice, like deja vu, but I can’t stop giggling. Raina’s giggle rises up into her big belly laugh, and then we’re all cracking up. I love the sound of us, bundled in the big bed, laughing at nothing much.

When the laughter quiets, I say, “Less laughing, more fucking, please.”

“Who fucking?” Mad asks. His cock is already nudging my thigh.

“You fucking,” I say to him. I touch the curls between Raina’s thighs, and then touch my lips. “You, here, where I can lick you.” What the hell? It’s my birthday and I’m about to lose my mind, or at least one part of it. I can’t have what I really want, but I can ask for something that’s almost as good.

I lie on my back in the perfect centre of the bed, feeling like a pampered queen as Raina climbs over me, facing Mad, her thighs on either side of my face. I grab the curves of her ass, force her down until I can find her with my tongue. Taste, smell, taste. River water. Sugar water.

Mad slides his hand between my thighs. “You’re so wet,” he says. “I love that.”

I’d say something, but my tongue is busy licking Raina. She gets a little wetter with each stroke. A little louder too.

Mad pushes my legs apart on the sheets, and rubs the tip of his cock against me. I wish I could see it, watch it harden all the way and enter me. He shaves his balls still, and I love the way they look, soft and vulnerable. For now, the feel of him will have to be enough. He slides in slow, slow, slow, until I’m taking my want out on Raina’s pink folds, her tiny clit.

“Jesus, Mad, fuck her already,” Raina says. “She’s going to make me come.”

It’s a joke. They both know I like to go last, but Mad drives all the way in. He fucks me steady, long slow strokes that move my whole body on the bed. The kind that bring me to the border of orgasm without actually crossing it, a lazy pleasure that trickles through me, teasing, touching, until I’m gritting my teeth, begging in a hissed, grunted breath.

“Raina, you want?” he asks. I don’t hear her answer, but in a second, I feel her fingers playing at my clit. Each of Mad’s thrusts captures Raina’s fingers between him and me, locked to stillness before she can break free and start again. It’s the just right rhythm of stroke and push, and I want to stay tucked between the two of them forever, locked in this perfect moment.

Mad’s strokes become faster, until he’s nearly lifting me off the bed and into Raina’s waiting fingers. He’s finding his voice, the long, low growl that means he’s getting close.

Raina’s clit tightens and hardens, becomes a small, round pink pill on the tip of my tongue.

“Oh,” she says, like surprise. I always forget how quiet she is when she comes.

Her fingers go still, and I feel my clit clench like a heartbeat for a second before she starts up again. She floods my tongue with the taste of her, and I swallow, swallow, swallow, my cheeks wet with her salt. And then Mad goes off, growling and pulsing into me, the warmth of his pleasure filling me, contractions inside me that make my hips buck against him with a wild, unconscious frenzy.

I try to hold it back, the muscle memory, the drives against her fingers and his cock that will bring me to orgasm. I try to take a breath. Hold it, hold it, I think. I want to remember this moment, this sound. I want to hold on to this pre-coming, the way it works up inside me, gathering strength, buzzing its way through my brain and body.

But Raina’s fingers work me, work me, around Mad’s last final thrusts, and then it’s me, my own cries muffled against Raina’s skin. There it is, I think, even as I’m coming. That’s the sound I make. That low, belly-grunting keen. That’s me.

“Happy birthday, baby,” Mad says a few moments later, once we can all breathe again, our chests rising and falling in the almost matched rhythm of those who take in the same air. He’s on one side of me, Raina on the other. He strokes my belly with a touch so light it almost tickles.

“Yeah, happy birthday, Ana,” Raina says. Her voice is sleepy. She’ll nap now, like she always does after, and then deny it. Mad and I will stay awake, talking about whatever it is old, married people talk about after sex.

I slide my arms out beneath both their pillows and settle in between them. Tucked under one pillow, my hand touches a piece of paper. It takes me a moment to remember what it is: the envelope. The pill.

There’s another sound that comes then: a low choked sobbing sound. Is that me? I realize that it is. And I’m surprised at how much crying sounds like coming.

“You OK, baby?” Mad asks. He’s put his glasses back on and he’s leaning up, looking at me. “Want to talk about it?”

I crumble the envelope under the pillow. “No,” I say. “I’m OK. Really.” Maybe I am. Maybe I have everything I need here, right in the bed: two people who love me, who fuck me with joy and tenderness, and one small pill that gives me some kind of control.

Raina puts her head on my shoulder and brushes my hair behind my ears. “I brought a cake.” Her voice is drowsy. “You can make a wish later.”

I don’t say anything, just close my eyes and inhale all of the pheromones and atoms I can. Oranges and warm skin and salt and sex. Remember this, I tell my body, my brain. Remember as long as you can. It is the only wish I can possibly make.