Everywhere I looked, I saw a partner for Sarah and I to invite into our bedroom. And I was thinking of it as “our bedroom” now, too. I couldn’t kid myself anymore, that this was just an experimental thing, that we were two girls just having fun together. It had become much more than that, for both of us. 

And Tim knew it on some level, although he didn’t know how to say it. In fact, I think people at work were beginning to suspect as well. David had been watching us since the beginning, always hungry for Sarah. She claimed not to notice, but I couldn’t help see his eyes following her when she passed his cubicle, scanning the short hemline of her skirt, the sweet indentation of her belted waist, the swell of her breasts in her peasant blouse. I knew he watched us together when he hung around to “clean up” his paperwork while we talked and laughed and flirted in the back office, his eyes alight with something that made my belly flicker in response. 

Tim, on the other hand, didn’t like to even hear her name mentioned and whenever he picked me up from work and she was around, they faced off rather coolly, the tension between them palpable. He would always make some comment as we left—often loud enough for her to hear him—“That one’s trouble.” I shrugged it off and hoped he had no real idea… but they say love is blind.

The other complication was college in the fall, which was fast approaching. Summer was slipping away from all of us, and I would be back at school two hundred miles away with Tim... without Sarah. 

I’d been re-thinking even going back, that’s how caught up I was, but Sarah would laugh softly and nudge me whenever I mentioned it and reply, “Time to be a grown-up, Lizzie…” 

The comment inevitably—and I think purposefully—distanced me enough from her to make me forget the idea of staying home. Each day found me closer and yet further away from her. We continued to have our play dates, as I liked to call them. Ah, what my mother might have said if she’d known I would transform the phrase she used in reference to the scheduled times I’d gone to play with friends when I was five into the term I used now for the sticky, sweaty, sex sessions I was having with Sarah! Each time she made it a new discovery, a different experience. Sarah didn’t ask me about my sex life with Tim, and I didn’t ask her about her sex life separate from me… although I wondered if she had one. 

One Saturday morning, after she’d allowed me to slowly and sweetly fuck her to a shuddering climax with one of the dildos from the toy box—something I discovered I loved and often begged to do to her!—I was cleaning off the toy (always the job of the fuck-er as opposed to the fuck-ee) when I found condoms in the bathroom closet. 

I was immediately flooded with both jealousy and lust. It was a strange combination that reminded me how much I wanted to share that with her, to add something, more to the point someone, to our sex life. 

We’d been to bars and scoped out guys, and we’d taken many of them home with us in our imaginations and fantasies. We would dance for hours together, often finding an unsuspecting but grateful guy to sandwich between our damp and writhing bodies, our eyes meeting in lust and keen awareness. 

She loved to play the fantasy with me later, the memory of the music still pounding in my body, recalling a hard denim-covered cock rubbing against my backside. She’d strap on that magnificent black dildo and handle me roughly, asking, “Do you want his cock in you, Lizzie? Tell me how much you want it…” 

But we had yet to really take a man home. It was when I found the condoms I made up my mind, I think, to make it a reality, in whatever way I could. No more playing, no more just flirting and driving each other to distraction with the idea. 

And of course, the man we ended up “taking home” was probably the most obvious choice, although I’d never really imagined it would happen with him. I always thought it would be one of the younger guys with their piercings or tattoos who we slowly flirted away from their girlfriends at the club. I really never anticipated that it would be with David, or that it would fall into place so easily one Friday night, not unlike the first night I’d been with Sarah, or that the results of that night would be so bittersweet. 

It was the end of the work week. Sarah and I were planning on going out to the club. It was only two more weeks until school started, and that weighed heavily on both of us, although we didn’t talk about it. Tim was busy, going to a bachelor party for his best friend, although the thought of getting married at our age was anathema to me. 

I was telling Sarah that when David came into the back office.

“She’s only nineteen, Sarah. Can you even imagine?” I sat on the edge of the desk, my shoes off, swinging my bare feet and noticing her looking at my legs admiringly, not for the first time today, under my green and blue plaid skirt. I’d worn it specifically for clubbing, along with the white blouse that made it look the typical “school girl” uniform. I was determined to bring home a guy tonight, and I’d told her so. She’d eyed my outfit, laughed, and then said, “That’ll do it.” 

“Can you imagine?” I asked again, punctuating my statement with a nudge.

“Maybe she’s pregnant,” she replied distractedly, chewing on the end of her pen and peering through her reading glasses at some report. 

“No one gets married because they’re pregnant anymore.” I rolled my eyes. “I know a girl who had nine abortions. Nine. Seriously.”

Sarah did look up then, her eyes showing surprise. “Well… not everyone can make that decision.”

“I guess.” My nonchalance seemed to irk her even more. She turned almost imperceptibly away, just a slight tilt of her shoulder, and went back to her report.

I watched David gathering up his paperwork through the two-way glass. I knew he was listening, even though he couldn’t see us. The office door was open.

“Is that a real wedding ring?” I nudged her again with my foot, tugging her skirt upwards with my toe.

“You know it isn’t.” She flipped one of the pages of the report so hard it tore.

“It looks real.” I leaned in to look at it as she clutched the paper in her hand. “Did you go out and buy it?”

“Not exactly.” Sarah turned and yanked open a drawer, digging through the tray of pens. 

“Where did you get it?”

She slammed the door shut, a yellow highlighter clenched in her fist. “Someone gave it to me.”

“What someone?” I knew I was pushing it—even for me. 

Sarah looked at me, blinking fast, her mouth open but no words coming out. “Lizzie, I’ve got work left to do.”

“Sheesh, avoid much?” I hopped off the desk. “Fine, I’ll go talk to David.”

She grabbed my arm and sighed. “Sit down.”

I did. “Are you mad at me?”

“No.” She pulled the cap off the highlighter and drew a fat star next to something on the report. “I’m not mad at you.”

I sat on the edge of the desk, watching her, waiting. “So who are you mad at?”

“I’m not mad.” She was back to highlighting again. 

“And I’m Sister Mary Margaret from Our Holy Virginity.” 

She laughed then, shaking her head. “Sometimes I don’t know what to do with you.”

“Just pay attention to me.” I stuck my tongue out at her.

“Brat.” She smiled, going back to her work.

“Sarah, I’m going back to school in two weeks,” I whined. “We don’t have much longer. What’s more important, me or that stupid report?”

Her eyes flashed as she glanced up at me. “This is life, Lizzie. And trust me, life sucks. And it never stops sucking. Get used to it.”

“You’re such a bitch.” I pouted.

“And you’re such a baby.” She continued to chew on her pen cap and we sat in silence for a while, Sarah working, me pouting.

“Are we fighting?” I asked.

She smiled up at me. “Do you want to fight?”

“I don’t know what I want.” I sighed.

“Maybe that’s the problem.” She traced her fingernail down a line of numbers, distracted again.

“Well I know what I don’t want.”

“Hm?”

I nudged her again. “I don’t want to get married before I’m forty.” 

“You’d better put Tim on a leash, then.” Sarah snorted.

“Very funny.”

“Nineteen, Sarah!” 

“I heard you.” She slipped her glasses off and rubbed her eyes. “Stupid people do stupid things. Young people are inherently stupid. And again, I wouldn’t rule out the pregnancy idea.”

“But—she’s only nineteen! And… hey… are you calling me stupid?”

“Who’s only nineteen?” David had materialized, filling the door frame. I knew the moment I looked at him that he’d overheard us.

“My boyfriend’s friend’s girlfriend… well, fiancée, I guess,” I amended. “They’re getting married next weekend. Who in their right mind gets married at nineteen?” I noticed him looking at where my foot was resting on Sarah’s thigh, but I didn’t move it. She was too busy working again to notice him noticing.

“Nineteen is right about the age when you think you know everything, but you really don’t know anything.” He moved further into the room, helping himself to the other chair opposite Sarah. He set his surveys down on her desk. “I was only twenty when I got married… trust me, I can believe it.” He sighed. Sarah glanced at him for a moment, then at me. David didn’t usually talk about his private life. 

“You’re married?” I was just making conversation. Sarah had told me he was divorced.

“Was married,” he corrected.

“How long?” Sarah asked. 

I cocked my head at her. I didn’t think she’d ever paid this much attention to David. It wasn’t just that she’d asked him a personal question—it was that Sarah was showing an actual interest.

“Eight years.” 

I raised my eyebrows. Their eyes were locked, and there was some communication going on between them that I didn’t get.

“Kids?” I asked, just for something to say.

“No.” He smiled over at me. “She wanted them, but I…” He cleared his throat. “I can’t. That was one of the things that broke us up, actually.”

“Can’t?” I looked at him, puzzled. “Can’t have… sex?”

“Lizzie!” Sarah pinched the inside of my thigh, making me yelp. She looked kindly at David—so kindly, her face didn’t even look like Sarah’s for a moment there. “He means he’s sterile. Probably a low sperm count?”

“That’s about right.” David nodded and shrugged. “I’m shooting blanks.”

“Oh.” I rubbed my thigh. It hurt.

“It was the same with us,” Sarah revealed. “My ex wanted them, but I couldn’t…” I noticed her looking down at the ring she was wearing, and it didn’t occur to me for a moment that when she said “her ex,” she actually meant ex-husband. “I had… well, I was damaged. Pretty much beyond repair. There was no way I could carry a child to term. So he went and married someone else who could.”

“I’m sorry, Sarah.” David didn’t reach out to touch her, but she responded as if he had, her face softening as she looked at him. 

“Lizzie, you can close your mouth,” she said, not even glancing at me, but smiling a small, knowing smile. 

My mouth snapped shut, and I tried not to reveal my hurt. I dropped my foot from her lap. David sensed something going on between the two of us, but his eyes never left her for a moment. 

“I know, it hurts, doesn’t it?” 

It took me a moment to realize, he wasn’t talking to me, but to her. She looked at him speculatively, still with the pen cap in her mouth. Finally, she nodded. 

“How long?” he asked.

“I got married at twenty-eight… was married for five years. He was…” She groped for the right word. “Self-absorbed.” 

That put the divorce about two years ago, I calculated. 

David nodded, leaning back in his chair. They were looking at each other, and I think she was really seeing him for the first time. With his dark curly hair, big brown eyes and flirtatious nature, she seemed to always dismiss him as a pretty boy. She’d never really given him a chance, and I wondered, looking at the way she was looking at him now, if he reminded her of her ex in other ways. And I wondered if I was going to get the chance to find out.

David seemed to sense her shift, and asked with a small smile, “I suppose it’s no use asking you what you’re doing tonight?” I don’t think I’d ever seen Sarah blush, before or since.

“We were going—” I started, trying to save her.

“To my place to watch movies,” Sarah finished. She glanced at me and tapped underneath her chin with her index finger, and once again, I closed my mouth. I knew exactly what she was up to, and while I’d been the one to ask for it, I suddenly wondered what I was in for. 

“Wanna come?” Her invitation was warm and genuine. I felt it in my belly at the sound of her voice, and David’s eyes were dark with his response. 

“Yes,” was all he said, and I swallowed hard. 

“Great, we’ll all make a night of it.” She got up to start closing up shop, brushing by him and intentionally—I knew how oh-so-intentionally—letting her hip rub against his shoulder as she reached for the light switch. I slid off the desk. I couldn’t do anything now but follow. I didn’t realize until later that it was what I’d been doing all along.