I spent a long time trying to deprogram the disgust in myself that he made me believe. It wasn’t until I started therapy that I slowly broke those walls down and built back up my self worth.
My phone vibrates in my pocket, and I look down to see that Harper sent me a text asking what movie I wanted to watch. She gave me a couple options, one of them being my all time favorite movie.Miss Congenialitywas my vote, and after a couple minutes Harper responds to let me know that my choice is what we’re going to watch.
Quickly getting into a pair of biker shorts and one of Monty’s shirts, I make my way back to the house and quickly make myself comfortable in between Josie and Harper on the couch.
I’m engrossed in the movie, no matter how many times I’ve watched it, it still remains my top movie choice. At some point, Josie throws blankets over the three of us and we all snuggle in. Josie has her head on my shoulder and her fingers are intertwined with mine under the blanket.
That feeling of comfort and something else settles in my chest. I can almost pinpoint the emotion, but it remains just out of my grasp, but I don’t try to look too much into it and choose to enjoy the movie night with my best friend and my girl.
Josie's hand goes slack in mine, and when I look down at her I realize that she’s asleep. Not wanting to wake her up, I remain still and turn my attention back to the movie.
Even when the movie’s over, Harper sits up and sees that she’s asleep.
“Should we wake her?” She asks.
I look down at Josie, she looks so relaxed. Her face is slack with sleep, she does so much and doesn’t often take care of herself. Which means Monty and I make the extra effort to make sure we take care of her and to let her know that she’s appreciated.
“No, let’s let her sleep.” I say, not taking my eyes off her. “Let’s watch another movie, then we can wake her up and tell her to go to bed.”
When I look up, Harper is looking at us with curiosity. Her head’s tilted as she takes us in. When her eyes connect with mine she raises an eyebrow at me, and I can’t hide the soft smile that comes out.
“What?” I whisper to her.
“Oh nothing, just wondering when you’re going to tell me what’s going on between the three of you.” She says so casually, I had to replay her response in my head to make sure I heard her right.
“I– uh…the three of us?” I start, a little embarrassed that I haven’t told her anything else. We didn’t want to tell anyone until we were more comfortable with what was going on. It wasn’t until before this trip that we agreed that we would tell our best friends, mostly because we couldn’t tell just one and not the other. “I was going to tell you tonight actually.”
“Really?” Harper squeaks with glee, a little louder than I think she intended. Which startles Josie awake, she shoots up eyes wide. Then her brows furrow as she tries to take in where she is. You can see when it dawns on her that she fell asleep on me, and a slight flush marks her cheeks as she mumbles “Sorry.”
“No, I should be sorry.” Harper says in a rush, “I didn’t mean to wake you up. We were going to leave you be and throw on another movie.”
“Harper was just about to pick the next movie, but did you have a suggestion?” I ask her, trying to let her know it really was okay and she can get comfortable.
“I’m really sorry I fell asleep,” Josie starts. “I didn’t realize I was that tired until I got comfortable under that blanket.” Leaning forward she grabs the bottle of water she had on the coffee table and takes a drink.
“Actually…” Harper only hesitates a second before she continues. “Evie was just about to tell me about what’s going on between the three of you.”
A garbled noise comes from Josie as she half spits out her drink, and tries to catch it with her hand unsuccessfully. Her face takes on a deeper shade of fuchsia and I can’t help the chuckle that comes out of me.
I wait until Josie has sorted herself out before speaking, “Harper was just asking me what’s going on. I told her that that was one of the things we wanted to talk about with her tonight.” When Josie nods her head, letting me know I can continue.
“Harps kinda hinted just then that she already had an idea that something’s going on with us.” Suddenly I feel nervous, like Harps is going to tell me she doesn’t support us and can’t be my friend anymore.
Ridiculous train of thought I know, but my brain goes to the worst case scenario first.
“We sat together and talked about this before the boys left for their trip. We were going to tell you guys that we’ve been dating, trying to see where things go. The boys don’t know about it, we wanted to take the space to figure out how this dynamic would work.” I take a breath before continuing. “We had a conversation about what the relationship would look like, what we would call it. I learned about triad relationships.”
“What is a triad relationship?” Harper asks.
This is where I look to Josie because she would be able to explain it better than myself.
“It’s a form of polyamory- the most typical viewing of polyamory is a couple who is together but they also date other partners. While Monty and I do date, we usually do it in a closed triad. You might be more familiar with the term throuple.” Josie explains, and Harps nods her head in understanding.
“Thank you for explaining. Okay, continue.” Harper says with a gesture. Which is exactly what I do.
“Yes, so we’ve taken the time over the last couple weeks to have alone time together to get to know each other more romantically. At the end of the day, once the boys were in bed for the night we would spend time together. Some nights we would just sit and talk, while other nights we would just spend the evening…exploring.” I let the underlying message linger there for a minute before I go on.
“We haven’t had much one on one time really. Monty and I have had some one on one time, but this weekend was for Josie and I to spend some time together too. Tonight we wanted to spend it with you. Then tomorrow we’re going to go out on our own date and do something.”
