Tale of a big threesome

When I got home I was surprised to find that Ellie was already bustling about in the kitchen. Usually I’m the first to arrive and start the cooking. We share all our household chores, and she often works later hours, so more often than not I do the picking up from the night before, and make the bed we abandoned that morning, and fix dinner. It’s a matter of convenience, but also an act of love. I love her. I want to please her. Sometimes when she gets home tired and sees what I’ve prepared, her smile of appreciation lights up my whole life.

But this time Ellie was home early and cooking away, setting things up with her usual efficiency, one hand hauling out a micro dish for vegetables she’d already chopped, the other adjusting the oven temperature for a roast she’d already enthroned in a pan, impaled with cloves, and surrounded by oiled potatoes. No waste motion with Ellie, ever. I glanced past her into the dining room and saw the table set with our fine china. Company coming. I couldn’t quite see how many extra places, so I walked in and looked. Only one.

“So?” I asked her.

“Becky,” she replied, distracted by a carrot cube trapped under the cutting board. “She’s in town again. She phoned, we had a long talk, she wants to come over, I said sure. So she’ll be having dinner with us.”

“Becky,” I said. “Your Becky? The one and only?”

Ellie looked up at me and smiled the warmest smile I’d seen in some time. I melted. “My ‘Becky,’ honey. ‘Rebecca’ to you, remember. I do hope you’ll try to be nice to her. It’ll help all around if you try.”

Elly and Rebecca had been roommates all through college and graduate school, absolutely inseparable the whole time. They went everywhere together, vacationed together, and together shared clothes and money and the deepest secrets of their hearts. Early on they’d even dated the same guys, passing them to and fro, until their tastes diverged. They were a two-girl sorority. When Ellie finished her Management degree, instead of moving on to a fast-track brokerage she did low-paid accounting for a tax firm while waiting for Rebecca to finish a residency in Gynecology. That was how I first met Ellie — I had some tangled tax problems she solved so deftly my jaw dropped. The two of them were closer than sisters — they never seemed to disagree about anything. They meant to start a women’s health service when Rebecca became board-certified, and then franchise it across the country. But I began dating Ellie, and we both fell deeply in love, and Rebecca ended up going her own way.

I absolutely adored Ellie. When I implored her to leave Rebecca and move in with me she felt anguished, but not-too-long afterward we got married and began to make a life together. It was a good life. It still is.

Rebecca was happy for Ellie of course, though she never got over my intrusion into their intimacy. Her resentment showed, now and then. Though she was always “Becky” to Ellie she remained “Rebecca” to me — I tried “Becky” just once, and her cold stare ended that attempt immediately. She saw me as a rival, in a way. That’s certainly how I thought of her. Her spirit presided over us during our first years together, resolving all disputes: whether toilet paper should come off the roll under or over (over), or toilet seats should be left down (of course), or where in my bureau my socks belonged (right front), and whether we should take camping or resort vacations (alternate them), whether I should lose a little more weight (yes), who cooks and cleans (either), even how we should deal with disputes (convene a kind of family court in the living room immediately after dinner, and never go to sleep with the issue unresolved). Our domestic arrangements so closely resembled Ellie’s with Rebecca that sometimes Ellie would forget and call me “Becky” when reminding me to pay the phone bill or pick up the dry cleaning. I wasn’t bothered by it — her tone was always loving.

They saw each other as often as they could, and after we moved here they phoned frequently. When either took an out of town trip they coordinated schedules to try to meet at some midway point. Eventually Rebecca also got married, to a pharmaceutical manufacturer named Tim, who apparently persuaded her that two tough-minded people like themselves had to be meant for each other. Then the two of them stayed with us whenever they happened to be passing through. They were welcome — our house was plenty large enough (we’d bought it for raising a family when Ellie felt ready). But I was always glad when they left.

I wasn’t crazy about Tim. When Ellie told me the marriage was imminent, my first ungenerous thought was ‘maybe they deserve each other.’ Tim also called her “Rebecca” (he tried “Reba” spitefully once when she denied him “Becky,” he told me, but only once, never again). If Rebecca was stubborn and suspicious, Tim was mean and aggressive. His eyes gleamed when he explained how he’d turned some employee or competitor into a victim, or squeezed an undeserved advantage from some business deal. Marriage was one more deal as he saw it, one where you give no quarter and ask none.

Theirs seemed one long hostile bargaining session — they fought all the time, even in our presence. So I wasn’t surprised when Ellie told me they were talking separation, this time maybe for good. I asked Ellie if she’d seen it coming, if some specific “irreconcilable difference” had come between them. Ellie’d nodded, but she was too preoccupied to say what it was, and I didn’t press it. Who knows exactly why some marriages don’t work out? I knew ours was a good one. Ellie and I shared everything, and we kept no secrets from each other. I certainly didn’t.

I hadn’t seen Rebecca since her last visit here with Tim, before their current animosities, and I wondered if she’d changed. If possibly she was a little less irritated by my existence.

“Remember! Be respectful!” Ellie warned me as she arranged a plate of crudities and stirred a dip to be nibbled with drinks, and I snagged a chunk of carrot to nibble then and there.

“I’ll be nice to her, don’t worry,” I replied. “She’s passing through town on her own this time?”

“On her own. But as a matter of fact, she may be here for good this time. She’s been offered a job here. At that huge women’s hospital north of town. She’s here to try it out, to reorganize their outpatient services, a really big responsibility. She phoned to asked if she can stay here for a few days until we find somewhere else. I told her, sure, for as long as it takes.”

Ellie bent over and put the roast into the oven and adjusted the dials, then straightened up and turned toward me. Then she straightened her shoulders even further.

“Joey, I’m sorry but I had to!” she said, a little defiantly.

That was odd. I’d never openly objected to Rebecca or any other of Ellie’s friends stopping by to visit, no matter how I felt about them personally. It helped her stay in touch with her past, her former self, the girl I’d fallen in love with, after all. Ellie never objected to my friends either, and mine were sometimes a lot harder to take. But here she was feeling defensive!

“I had no choice!” Ellie added.

I looked up at her inquisitively. She looked pleased yet embarrassed, impenitent but somehow guilty, and I saw that her eyes were fixed on my face.

“She’ll stay here while you help her find another place to live? I’ve got no problem with that,” I said reassuringly. “Do you?”

“Well, yes, in a way,” Ellie replied, still watching me. I began to feel uncomfortable. “I mean, I’ve got a problem, because you’ve got a really big problem.”

“I do?” I said. What else could I do but repeat her words? They made no sense. “A really big problem? And what might that be?”

She turned and put the vegetables into the Micro, and pushed some more buttons, and set out a saucepan for last minute use, maybe for glazing gravy from the roasting pan, maybe for a Hollandaise, I didn’t know. She began to take ingredients off the spice shelf. A Hollandaise.

Her back still turned toward me, she said “Listen, Joseph. I’ll be done here in a minute. Why don’t you go into the living room and pour yourself a drink and wait for me. I’ve got something to tell you.”

“Joseph” was my name for our formal talks. “Joey” was my pet name for when she felt more intimate, which was most of the time. But apparently not now.

“Here’s fine,” I said. “And I can wait for a drink, we’ll have wine with dinner. Anything I can do here to help?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. She shot me a glance over her shoulder, this one a little amused. Apparently she’d just settled something in her own mind. “Go ahead, honey. Make it a stiff one. Get sozzled. The ice is already out there. Now shooo!”

So I went into the living room. Ellie’d set out a lot of bottles on the sideboard, just the way she and Rebecca did it in that apartment where I’d gone to pick up Ellie for our first big date. We both sensed immediately that this might get serious, and she’d wanted me to meet her girlfriend Rebecca right off. I’d walked in and there on their sideboard was a forest of liquor bottles. Not that they drank much themselves, hardly anything. But as Rebecca’d explained while Ellie was getting ready, they did a lot of entertaining, lots of friends passed through. It just seemed more hospitable for them to help themselves.

Ellie and I on the other hand kept our booze in the cabinet. We hadn’t set it out on display like this previously ever. Not even when Tim and Rebecca were visiting us. It seemed an odd gesture to make now. I suppose it was to help Rebecca feel more at home.

The ice bucket was full. I made myself a drink and sat down. And waited. Well, I said to myself, for the next few days our liquor cabinet is rededicated to the good old days. I wondered what else.

Ellie came out wiping her hands on a towel, then fixed her eyes on me again and sat down.

“So,” I said. “What’s my really big problem.” I smiled at her encouragingly.

She folded the towel carefully and set it aside, then looked at me again. A little pitying this time? Then she took a deep breath.

“There’s no easy way to say this, Joey. In a few days, when Becky and I find a place and move out, it’ll be both of us moving out. I’ll be leaving you. I’ll be going with Becky. For good.”

That’s what I thought I heard. I replayed her words in my mind, and they came out the same. She knew I’d heard her, so she said nothing more. She just sat there watching me absorb it.

I couldn’t speak! I tried to swallow, and couldn’t even manage that! We’d been married long enough for me to know that she meant everything she’d just said. Nothing uttered was ever joking or casual. Her next words would explain things. Would try to explain things, anyhow. I waited. Nothing.

“What?” I finally asked.

“Oh, you poor dear, you look devastated! It isn’t anything you’ve done! And it isn’t that I don’t love you, honey! I do love you! More than ever! I’ll always love you! I was looking forward to having a family with you, you know that! Growing old together!”

She thought she was consoling me! “But?” I managed to croak out.

“But I love Becky more! I know that now! Much more! And I’ve loved her for many more years! That’s all! That’s why! She wants me, and I’ve realized that I want her, I feel more complete with her, and I’m going back to her now that she’s free and in town and we can live together again, the two of us, just the way we used to. That’s all!”

I just stared at her. Staring was all I could manage. None of this made sense! The bottom had dropped out of my stomach, out of my universe. I was utterly bewildered!

“Joey baby! Are you still with me?”

I nodded. I was.

“Joey, listen! All those years Becky and I lived together? We weren’t just roomies.”

Now she stood up and went over to the cluster of bottles and poured just soda into a glass for herself, over ice. And took a sip. Then turned to face me square on, looking down at me.

“Becky and I love each other. We always have. We’ve been as close as two girls can get! We’re lovers! Really! We’ve always been lovers, practically from the day we met! For years and years before I met you. You never knew, and I’ve marveled that you never even speculated about it. You remember just before we met how I was going with a guy named Roger? I’ve mentioned him now and then? Well, he found out about me and Becky, and that was how come he broke off. He couldn’t deal with it, he freaked!. The last time I saw him he was shrieking he’d been trapped by a pair of dykes, and I had to slam the door in his face! I suppose the idea that we slept together and had sex together threatened his manhood in some way. So I certainly wasn’t going to tell you about us. Not then, not ever! Not until now.”

I just stared, My Ellie a lesbian? How? I knew there’d been a few men before me, but women? This woman? Rebecca? It was unimaginable! What do women do?

“Honey, I guess you’ve been trapped by a pair of dykes. It isn’t your fault. But now you need to know it! Becky and I love each other. Deeply. We always have, ever since we first met. Ever since that first day. Since then we’ve been intimate with each other in every way imaginable! We know every inch of each other’s feelings and bodies, inside and out. Every inch! We’ve always been absolutely devoted to each other.”

I sat stunned.

“I don’t say we aren’t like that too, honey,” she went on. “But it’s not the same way. Rebecca and I are affectionate, and gentle, delicately feminine, sensitive to each other’s desires, all sorts of things men can never be. Even when we were college kids with raging hormones, hot and passionate and eager to get into bed and into each other in any way imaginable, even then we were always considerate. Never rough. Caring! We adored each other. So sex between us has always been transcendent, kind of out-of-body, unreal, beyond belief! Just glorious! Overwhelming! Like climbing a mountain into a golden sunrise!”

I was still baffled.

“It still is,” she added, still watching me closely. I said nothing.

She saw, and continued. “All through all those school years I always assumed I’d meet some guy some day and marry him and have kids and enjoy all those other good things too. So there were other guys, too, for me, and then there was Roger. And no sooner was Roger gone than there you were, calling me up night and day, eager to get closer to me! Within a month — you remember, you sweet darling? — you were so sure about the two of us, so insistent that you wanted to move right in with Becky and me. So Becky and I could maintain our friendship, but you’d be there too. You were ready to share me! You were so sweet about the two of us then, so accepting. I even thought for a while that maybe you knew about us and didn’t care, or that when you found out about us you wouldn’t mind.”

There was now a sweet smile on Ellie’s face. She was reminiscing about our early days. Then she drained her glass.

“But you never did find out. Becky wanted no part of you living with us. Then a month later her medical residency took over her life and we scarcely saw each other, and soon after I moved in with you. So there was never any need to say anything.”

She looked thoughtfully into her empty glass, and swirled an ice cube with her finger.

“But now she’s back, and she wants to stay here with us until she can find a place of her own, and then she wants me to come live with her. To go back to what we were. And I want to! Oh, Joey honey, don’t feel hurt! I’ve missed her so, all this time! I’m terribly sorry for you, love. But I’ve told her ‘Yes!'”

I was silent. “Even after all these years?” I finally said.

“All these half-dozen years? Sweetheart, they’ve been good years. I have no regrets, and I’m sorry they’re over. But remember, for ten years before that there was always Becky! She gave me my first real kiss, and hers were the first fingers I ever allowed into my … between my legs. She gave me my first really mind-blowing orgasms.”

Ellie paused, then went on. “She still knows how to reach me and carry me into raptures beyond belief. We’ve never really been separated! We’ve been writing and phoning each other through the whole time you and I have been married, you know that! And you know that whenever she’s passed through town she’s stayed overnight with us. Every time. You’ve been a real dear about it, taking us out to dinner and concerts and shows, entertaining her with jokes, whatever. You were always like my new roommate trying to be nice to my old roommate, even though it was clear you didn’t like her much and she liked you even less. I really loved you for it, each time.”

“But you didn’t take up with her again on any of those visits,” I said. “I mean, physically. We’re married. You wouldn’t have!”

I recalled their occasional sly glances at each other during those visits. The giggling in Rebecca’s room — Tim snored like a diesel engine, so Rebecca always slept in a separate bedroom, and Ellie’d visit her there and they’d sit up half the night. It had all seemed rather charming. Girlish. Innocent.

Ellie didn’t say anything. Then, “You know she’s stayed with us, Joey,” was all she said. “And I’ve just told you that we’ve always been close. That she still knows how to blow my mind away.”

I just sat there, my mouth gaping. Ellie’s been unfaithful to me in my own house! Was it infidelity if she did it with another woman, not with a man? Maybe not! Women were always being affectionate with each other!

“Honey, I’ve got strong sexual needs, as you know. Once we get started I wear you out, every time, you know that too. We make jokes about it, but it’s serious! I guess you never knew that I’m really bi-sexual — I love what women can do to me and I love what men can do, and I love doing it! Lots!”

Now she was in her own world, reminiscing.

“I guess I need both, but especially women. Becky and I each knew other girls before we found each other, but we fell into each other’s arms right away. For years and years we really felt married. Right up to the day you and I got married. In fact, that whole last night while you were doing whatever you were doing at your bachelor party? Becky and I spent that whole night making the sweetest, saddest love I’ve ever known. It was so poignant and desperate! So lonely! We felt so helpless in each other’s arms! It was so beautiful. We’d been so close! We were each other’s body and soul, in a way! I knew then that the only way our marriage — yours and mine — could work was if I sort of stayed married to Becky too. I told her that, and she was so overjoyed that she cried and then couldn’t stop crying. That’s when we decided what we decided that last night, how we’d arrange things, the two of us. Remember, the next morning I made that last little change in our wedding vows? I took out the place where I promise I’ll be ‘forsaking all others’? I wanted to keep all the promises I made to you that day. And I have, honey! All of them! But I never promised you sexual fidelity.”

“Our marriage was especially beautiful when I knew I didn’t need to forsake Becky. You couldn’t possibly guess, sweetie, but on our wedding night, when you came at me with your dear little pecker as big as I’ve ever seen it, quivering, so eager to sanctify our union, you couldn’t possibly have known that my pussy was still stretched out and sore from the previous night. Becky never stopped plunging into me with her dildoes. She really ravaged me! She wanted me to spend my last night with her cumming continously. And I very nearly did, orgasm after orgasm. She pushed some really monster cocks into me! She fisted me! She wanted to ruin your fun with me the next night altogether, and she very nearly did that too.”

“That next night I was so grateful that you’re so much smaller than the jelly and rubber cocks Becky kept shoving into me! I was still so sore! But your penis snugged up inside me so gently I hardly felt it! It was so precious, so comforting! You remember how we hugged while you humped away on me as fast as you knew how? You were more a feeling than a solid cock, the way you felt inside me! It was almost as if you weren’t there at all!”

“Of course Becky and I have made love a lot since then. Whenever we could! Sometimes we’ve met out of town at some convention, and sometimes in town in motels, afternoons. Sometimes nights when Tim and you were in neighboring rooms! We couldn’t not! We love each other!”

“Oh, darling, just look at that expression on your face! You never knew? Of course not! How could you know? Or even suspect, you’re so straight, so trusting! Well, Rebecca’s husband was a lot more suspicious. Tim suspected something almost right away, and during their last visit here he finally found out what it was, and that was that! He couldn’t handle it, no more than Roger could! Nor any man, I suppose! No, there was no way I could tell you!”

She paused, then went on with a certain smug sadness, “But now you know. And now it doesn’t matter whether you know or not. I need Rebecca. She needs me. We want each other. We mean to share the rest of our lives with each other. I’m sorry for you, I really am. But that’s the way it is!”

She looked at me. It was said. She turned back toward that collection of bottles and this time made herself a really stiff drink. While her back was toward me and she was clinking ice and pouring whisky she said in a small voice, “Honey, you really never suspected? Really? All that screaming we did in the guest bedroom sometimes, orgasm after orgasm, peak after peak, hers, mine, ours together, all night long sometimes? Sometimes it was so magnificent we didn’t care who heard! You never woke up and saw I wasn’t in bed with you? You never figured it out?”

I looked at my own glass. Somehow it had emptied itself. I couldn’t look up at her. “I heard screaming now and then. I thought you were just being girls laughing together, is all,” I said. “Having fun. Now you tell me….”

“That’s right, honey. We were being girls together. Having fun.”

She paused, and took a breath. Then went on. “Sex with you is different, Joey dear. Really good, sweetheart, but not really great! Even after I taught you how to lick me out and push into my pussy with your tongue, you remember that, and suck on my clit, sort of how Becky does it, it’s never the same. You’re caring, and devoted, a sweetheart, but somehow you never get really frenzied down there, not the way Becky does. Never! You don’t set me on fire! You don’t go crazy because your face has entered heaven! You don’t play dangerous games with me! There’s nothing kinky about you!”

“You never once wanted to tie me up, remember, even when I asked you? And there was that time I tried to tie you up so I could sit on your face and force you to eat me out with your cum still in me, and you thought that was just too yuckie? So we never got to find each other’s deeper places. Or open up our darker feelings to each other! You wouldn’t even wear a lacy nightgown to bed that time I asked you to, remember, when I wanted to close my eyes and hug you and imagine you were Becky? Of course you didn’t know that was what I wanted, but you wouldn’t do it anyhow! “I’m not a girl,” was all you said. I knew that, honey. I just wanted you to pretend. But you wouldn’t be a girl for me. I guess your manhood felt threatened. By a lacy little nightgown. By nothing at all! Remember?”

I remembered. We sat silent. I smelled the roast browning in the oven. My last supper? I had to stall this thing! How? Persuasion was useless. Go with it and steer her back to me, that was the only way! But how? Rebecca would never share Ellie with me in a threesome — she’d rejected that notion way back! But an idea began to form. I reached out desperately! I needed time to fight for my wife, somehow! I had what, three days at most.

I tried my most mature manager’s voice on her, calm, reasonable. “Ellie, let me understand. You’ve been happy with both of us, but you want Rebecca more than you want me?”

She just looked at me. What else had we been talking about?

“Do you have to choose?”

She continued to look at me, and I could see in her the first stirrings of impatience.

“Couldn’t you live with both of us?”

Now she was listening. “I could,” she said carefully. “But you know Becky couldn’t.”

She looked at me attentively, her thin eyebrows raised slightly, waiting. “In fact, could you? Could you share me with Becky? Knowing what you know now?” she asked.

I didn’t hesitate. “Yes!” I said as forcefully as I could. If that was my only option. If that would buy me time, a chance to overwhelm Ellie and reclaim her for myself.

She smiled sympathetically, and gathered her skirt to stand up. Dinner was nearly ready. Our conversation was over.