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“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” she sobs, compounding my confusion.
“Shh, shh,” I stroke her back gently, trying to comfort her, “It’s okay, it’s all right.”
She keeps apologizing over and over again through her tears until finally, the hysteria ebbs away and her sobs are reduced to soft sniffles. I don’t try to push her yet, just continuing to hold her and caress her, even though I’m completely baffled.
I notice a box of tissues on the coffee table and reach for one, careful not to jostle her too much. “Here,” I offer her the tissue and she takes it, thanking me quietly and blowing her nose.
“You ready to tell me what’s going on?” I ask her gently now that she seems at least somewhat calmer.
“Not really, but I think I have to,” she tells me with a sigh.
“Was it something in the care package? If I upset you or…I don’t know, offended you somehow-”
“No, nothing like that, it’s just…fuck, you’re so sweet and thoughtful, and I’ve been keeping shit from you, from the very beginning.”
My heart sinks. Here it is. I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop. It had to be too good to be true that things were going so well, and I knew fate had to have some kind of catch waiting for me.
“Around two months or so before I saw you at the open mic night, I made kind of an arrangement with my two best guy friends,” she begins, an introduction to the story that, like the rest of this day, is the last thing I was expecting.
“I um, I wanted…well, still want, a baby,” she goes on, “And the two of them agreed to be my sperm donors, but they wanted to cut out the middleman and just do things the old-fashioned way.”
She explains the arrangement they’d made, and that she’d started sleeping with both of them. “And the bad thing was, despite the fact that I was the one who laid down all the rules about us not getting more deeply involved, but…I still have feelings for both of them.”
She looks at me, tears welling again, “I’m falling harder for you every day, Todd, but I can’t keep lying to you, and you deserve better than this.”
The misery is plain on her face, and my heart aches for her. I’ve never been in a position like hers, and I can’t imagine being pulled in so many directions at once. Her hair clings to her damp cheek and I reach out to brush it away. “I’m right where I want to be right now, Marlene, and nothing you just said changes that,” I tell her quietly.
She searches my face, letting out a little snort of disbelief. “Right, it changes nothing for you to hear that I’m in love with two other men.”
I shrug. “I won’t lie to you and say it doesn’t hurt a little bit or that I’m not jealous, but obviously you have feelings for me, too, or you wouldn’t be so torn up about all of this.”
And it’s true. Sure, I’m human and I get jealous like anyone else, but I’m the one here with her right now, not them. “I do,” she says, “But, Todd…our little arrangement, it, um, it worked. I’m pregnant. Can you honestly say that changes nothing for you?”
I think part of me already suspected it, and I pause to really consider her words. “Look, Marlene, we’ve only been dating a few weeks,” I say finally.
“Exactly,” she interrupts, “And I can hardly expect you to want to step in and raise some other guy’s baby-”
I hold up a hand to stop her. “That wasn’t what I was going to say,” I tell her gently, “Just let me finish.”
She presses her lips together and nods.
“We’ve only been dating a few weeks,” I repeat, “And I’m enjoying every minute of it. I don’t want it to stop. I’m not saying I’m gearing up to slap a ring on your finger and start calling you Mrs. Whitlock, but I’m not giving up on you yet.”
“What about-”
“I don’t care, Marlene. I don’t care about any of it. I just care about you. And besides, you’re not the first person to have feelings for more than one person at a time. Or even the first person to date more than one person at once.”
“Well, yeah, but not together like that,” she protests.
“No, there are people who do it exactly like that,” I correct her, “I’ve got this buddy out in California who’s in a committed relationship with two people at once, a man and a woman.”
Her eyes widen. “Really? How does that work?”
I shrug. “They’re all in love, they all date each other. That simple.”
She opens her mouth, but a strange look passes over her face and she closes it again. “You can just…do that?”
I laugh. “Of course you can, there are no laws about who you can date.”
