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“Come on, I need to sit down,” Neil told me. We went into the sitting room and he dropped onto the sofa. I recognized the look on his face, the questioning, like he was trying to figure out a puzzle. He’d done this a lot in creative meetings at Porteras. “I’ve been thinking about this for a few days, and I’ve come up with a plan, but I’m not sure how you’ll react to it.”
“You’ve come up with a plan about my masturbation habits?” I laughed. “I would love to hear it.”
“Don’t get cute with me, Sophie.” His tone was warning, but he smiled. “I’m serious. I don’t want to imply that our relationship is solely sexual, because we both know that it isn’t. But sex is a very large part of our emotional intimacy right now. Because our relationship is so new, and partially because we’re so damned good at sex.”
I held my hand up. “High-five.”
He slapped his palm against mine and continued without missing a beat. “I don’t want you to feel neglected. Just because I’m too tired and ill to have sex most of the time doesn’t mean you need to become celibate. I would like, with your permission, to contact the man we met at my club. See if he would be willing to come for a visit.”
“Um...” I tilted my head to the side. “Do you mean...”
“I wondered if you’d be interested in sleeping with him, yes. Assuming he would find such an arrangement palatable. Although I don’t see why he wouldn’t.”
I looked down at my tank top and yoga pants. No makeup had touched my face in a month, and my manicure was... yikes.
“I’ll be starting this hideous treatment over again in a few days. Perhaps we could set something up for a couple of weeks from now?” He leveled an accusing gaze at me. “I’m sure you could look through the notes you’ve tried to be inconspicuous about keeping with regards to my care and determine the best possible date.”
“Is that something people just do? Call each other up and have threesomes?” I’d heard the odd rumor in my circle of friends back in New York. Holli had been in three ways before. In college, a ménage-a-trios had been the Holy Grail of party hook-ups. I had nothing against people who did them, but it always seemed like something that was just on the outside of my comfort level.
Then again, Emir had been really hot, and I was in a monogamous relationship with a guy who didn’t mind watching another dude finger me. If Neil was offering me the chance to have sex with someone else, and he was completely okay with it, who was I to argue?
The only problem was me, and my lack of sex drive. It was very difficult to feel any sort of desire when I was watching Neil go through all of this pain. Any naughty tingle that got past those particular gates was immediately cut down by my anxiety over our future.
“It’s why he gave us his card. Either he’s interested in me or you, or both of us. The only way we find out is if we contact him.” Neil hesitated a moment. “If this isn’t something that would make you happy, we needn’t do it.”
“I don’t know.” I shook my head. “It’s not you. Or this. It sounds like a lot of fun. Or, it’s something I would have thought was a lot of fun several months ago. Now I feel like I could do without it.”
“At the risk of sounding crude in an important conversation... last night, you didn’t seem like someone who could do without it. I believe the words, ‘oh fuck’ and ‘oh yes’ were uttered with some urgency.” For a moment, I thought he was being funny, but the gentle sadness in his gaze never wavered. “It’s all right to miss sex, Sophie. I do. Terribly. And I’m afraid that this is something that will just go on and on. I Googled sexual dysfunction after chemotherapy, you know, and there was some very bleak—”
I reached for his hands, interrupting him. “You have to stop Googling, baby. It’s bad for you.”
“My point,” he began again, an impatient tilt to his head, “is that if I were, god forbid, rendered incapable by some rare complication, I wouldn’t want your enjoyment of sex to suffer from it. And I’m afraid that’s what’s happening right now.”
Okay, he did have a point. Since Neil had come back into my life, I hadn’t been interested in sex if I wasn’t having it with him. That went for my self-powered ventures, as well. That was super sad. “That is... uncomfortably true. But if it makes you feel any better, I’m just so satisfied by you, solo work doesn’t interest me.”
