Dance, Lust And Them

 When she got to her house, she was surprised to find that Vance and Curtis were already there, sitting on the front steps and having a conversation.

 “Boys,” Janelle said jokingly as she got out of the car. Though she appeared sane from the outside, her heart was practically beating out of her chest. All she could think about was the night at Garden City, and the way they had both felt moving inside of her. It had been such an intimate moment that Janelle barely knew how to handle her body around them.

 “Hey,” Vance greeted her warmly. “What took you so long?” Curtis asked. “We’ve been out here forever and a day waiting for you.”

 “Oh have you now? You know you could have texted me and told me to speed up my dinner, though I wouldn’t have.”

 “I knew it, she was out with her prince charming,” Vance said. “And look at us good-for-nothings just hanging out on her porch.”

 Janelle stepped between them to unlock her front door. They were sitting so close together that she wound up shoving both of them with her thighs to get them to move aside. Vance smacked her on the ass on her way towards the door.

 “Cut it out or you’re not getting dinner,” she teased.

 “No,” Vance said. “I’ll starve without dinner.”

 From behind her, she heard Curtis shoving Vance in the arm, trying to get him to stand up.

 The next few hours were dedicated to cooking and drinking. Behind her, Vance and Curtis were cracking jokes and making the salad. They continued to uncork bottle after bottle until the three of them had consumed almost three bottles of red wine. By the time the steaks were ready, they all sat down to eat at the dining room table and devoured them within minutes. Janelle had been getting a headache from all the wine and no food but the steak made her feel much better. She had marinated the steak in both peppers and a sweet sauce that made it taste much more tender. She cooked them all medium rare and garnished them with caramelized onions.

 “This is incredible,” Curtis said. “I can’t believe you cook like this all the time. I mostly just eat takeout or I get someone else to cook for me. I can barely use the stove without lighting myself on fire.”

 Vance laughed. “Back home we used to cook all the time. If my parents weren’t around or they were busy with work, we’d need to cook macaroni and cheese or spaghetti and meatballs just to get by.”

 “I know that feeling,” Janelle said. “My dad cooked for us all the time. He did it mostly to cheer us up. I remember there was one week in the summertime, when he’d gotten a raise at his job, and we ate lobster every day for almost a week. I got sick of it after a while, but it was the most incredible week of my life.”

 She leaned back in her chair and thought about how delicious the lobster had been. Her father had gotten a discount from a family friend that felt bad for them because her mother had passed. He gave them discounts and occasionally gave them free lobster. They were always coated in butter and garnished with coleslaw or slow cooked peppers. It had been a bittersweet time, all those meals that they’d shared. It was a complicated time, but Janelle had gotten through it somehow. When she thought back on it, she knew that it was because of her father that she’d survived some of the hardest years of her life.

 For Vance, it was probably because he had his stolen education during late nights at the library. And Curtis was luckily born into wealth but he hadn’t used it to intimidate people. He’d turned out to be a well-rounded person who understood what it felt like to be on both ends of the spectrum. As Janelle ate the last few bites of her food, she looked around the table at Vance and Curtis, realizing that they were quickly becoming two of her closest friends. It was a miracle at all that she had any male friends after the years of hell she went through. She had grown quite a thick skin around her heat that wasn’t prone to being pried open easily.

 She knew it was foolish to have fallen so easily—what if things didn’t work out between the three of them? Then she wouldn’t have any friends left, and there’d be nowhere to hide her loneliness. But the more she looked at Vance and Curtis, the more she realized that it wasn’t going to end like that. When they looked back at her, they smiled warmly, as if they cared about her as much as she hoped they did.

 “You look really wonderful tonight,” Curtis said.

 “Thank you,” Janelle said.

 “Penny for your thoughts?” Vance asked.

 “I, uh, I’m just full from all the steak.”

 She didn’t want to tell them what she was actually thinking, that she was thinking about her future with them.

 “You sure about that?” Vance asked, nodding to Curtis. “Maybe you need to unwind a bit after all that drinking and eating.”

 He got up to place his dishes in the sink before walking behind Janelle’s chair. He placed his hands on her back and began to massage her, soft at first then hard. Curtis finished the rest of his steak and wine before he leaned back in his chair to watch them.

 “That feels really good,” Janelle crooned. Her shoulders had been so sore lately, though she had no idea as to why. It might have been because she’d been falling asleep on the couch instead of in her bed. On late nights, when she hadn’t hung out with anyone or seen anyone, she would fall asleep watching television. These were the nights that she hadn’t been able to exercise enough, and hadn’t practiced her moves that morning.

It was a positive career move that she was one of Vance’s dancers, but that didn’t make her feel any less alone when she came home to an empty house. What was there to do? She couldn’t just ask the two of them to move in with her. But they didn’t have to leave, did they?

 Vance swept Janelle’s hair away from her neck and began to kiss her softly. She leaned back in her chair the way she had leaned into him in the pool, letting him take control of her body. But this time something was different. Curtis seemed unhappy, either because he had drank so much or because something had happened that Janelle had no knowledge of. Across the table, he was sitting with his arms crossed and had yet to get up. It wasn’t that Janelle expected him to immediately flock towards her, but she didn’t expect him to look as angry as he did.

 “What are you looking at?” Curtis said to Vance.

 “Are you okay?” Vance asked. “I think you might have had a little too much to drink buddy, maybe you should sleep it off.”

 “Don’t tell me to just sleep it off. You’re only saying that so you can be alone with Janelle, right? Because you want me out of the picture. I don’t work in this little threesome that you guys have been planning. In fact, you haven’t been planning on including me this whole time.”