Nanny for the Army Rangers by Krista Wolf
Thirty
DELILAH
“Two guys,” Corrine repeated slowly. “You slept with two guys.”
“Yes,” I told her again.
“At the same time.”
“Well technically I slept with three guys,” I corrected myself quickly. “But only two at once.”
“Only,” Corrine chuckled.
“Yeah,” I chuckled back.
She was the type of friend who would help you bury a body, and she’d even pay for the shovels. The type of friend you could tell anything to, no matter what the fuck it was, and it still wouldn’t surprise her.
“So when did this happen!?”
“Yesterday.”
“Thursday?”
I blinked. “Ummm, yeah. Guess so.”
“That makes more sense then,” Corrine breathed. “Thursdays are the weirdest day of any week.”
“Weirdest day?” I repeated.
“Sure,” she went on. “I mean think about it. By Thursday, Monday is ancient history. Hump-day’s over. You’re balls-deep in the work week, but it’s not quite the weekend yet.”
“Balls deep,” I laughed.
“Hell yeah,” Corrine continued. “You’re tired on Thursday. You’re zoned out. You’re not sure if you should keep working or if you should be celebrating Friday yet, so you start pretending. You go through the motions.”
I shook my head as I flopped back onto my bed and sighed. “I never could get the hang of Thursdays.”
“No one can,” said Corrine. “That’s why it’s such a fucked up day.”
I inhaled deeply as my best friend in the whole universe prattled on. My blankets still smelled like them. Our little afternoon siesta had been warm and wonderful and totally refreshing, and made the rest of the day ten times better.
“So what was it like?” Corrine asked, matter-of-factly. “Sex with two men at once.”
“It was fucking biblical,” I told her.
“Jesus.”
“Exactly.”
On the other end of the phone, I heard her let out a long, deep breath. “I’ve always wanted to try that,” she said. “You know, maybe with a boyfriend and someone else. But—”
“But you never found a guy who’d make it happen?”
“Exactly!”
I laughed, nodding against the pillow. As a long-time fantasy I’d pretty much given up on myself, I could totally commiserate.
“I mean Silas said he’d do it, but he never followed through,” said Corrine. “And Eric insisted it had to be one of his friends, only I didn’t want to fuck any of his friends. What girl wants to fuck her boyfriend’s friends? Then you have to still see them all the time, and they’ve seen you naked, and they know they’ve seen you naked…” she trailed off. “Ugh.”
“I hear that.”
“Then I dated that ice-hockey player, Jay. God, Delilah, remember him! All that soft, beautiful hair? He was wild!”
“Sure fucking was,” I agreed. When it came to Corrine, it was best to just let her go.
“He actually set something up once with a player from another team,” she said, “after a Halloween party. We even got half undressed! But we were all too drunk. Or at least they were, which really pissed me off, especially since it was Halloween and we were in costumes and the whole thing just seemed so surreal we could easily have done it and just passed it off as some kind of—”
My friend suddenly stopped herself, lost in thought.
“Wait, was Jay the Halloween party? Or was that the year I was with Rich?”
“Could’ve been, yeah,” I smiled to myself.
“Fuck, I can’t even remember,” Corrinne groaned. “I mean shit, you’d think a girl could remember her first almost-threesome.”
“You’d think,” I chimed in.
“So yeah, I even considered hooking up with two complete strangers,” Corrine said. “Know how easy that would be? To just grab two good-looking guys off Tinder or something?”
“Easy enough,” I guessed.
“Only I was the one who chickened out that time,” my friend admitted. “I just didn’t feel comfortable. Two complete strangers! That part’s pretty hot, I gotta admit. But what if one or both of them shows up and it turns out they’re NAA?”
“NAA?” I asked.
“Not as advertised.”
“Oh.”
“That happens on Tinder, believe me.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Or what if you actually go through with it, and then you’re done, and they just won’t leave?” I heard her groan again. “I mean, you want to feel comfortable when you do something that wild. Know what I mean?”
“Oh yes,” I sighed, rolling onto my stomach and scissoring my feet. “I know exactly what you mean.”
At long last my friend reached the end of her runaway thought-process, and took another deep breath. Her attention finally shifted to me.
“So these guys you screwed,” she said. “Are either of them part of that trio of military men you told me you were working for now?”
I winced before answering. “They both are.”
“I see,” said Corrine. “And the third?”
Silence. I held my breath.
“Holy hell, Delilah!” my friend cried admonishingly. “All three of them?”
“It’s not like that,” I jumped in. “I mean, it wasn’t like that. And then, well, it sorta was.”
I could picture Corrine’s beautiful almond-shaped eyes closing, as she shook her head in disbelief.
“Well then you’re fucked,” she said plainly. “No two ways about it.” On the other end of the phone she laughed. “Pun unintended, I think.”
For being raised by prim-and-proper Korean-American parents, my friend sure had a filthy mouth.
“Really?” I asked. “You don’t think I could just—”
“You’re screwing all three of your employers!” my friend said in exasperation.
“Screwed,” I corrected her.
“What?” she laughed. “You don’t think it’ll happen again?”
“Well…”
‘What’d you do today? With them, I mean.”
“Today?” I stalled, buying time. “We uh.. took a nap.”
“You took a nap,” she repeated. “Together?”
“Yeah.” Before she could say another word, I jumped in again. “Listen, you haven’t lived until you’ve taken a nap between two guys,” I said defensively. “Much less a pair of perfectly-sculpted Army Rangers.”
“Who you’ve had sex with,” she pointed out.
“Yes.”
“At the same time.”
I sighed, and my friend went silent for a while. I was hoping she was thinking of a solution. A way out of the jam I’d gotten myself into.
“Do you think Kirk would do it?” Corrine asked off-handedly.
“Kirk?” I repeated, confused. “Your ex?”
“Yeah,” she confirmed. “I mean, we left off on good terms. Plus I have a coupon still left unredeemed with him. It’s good for one Bonus Night.”
“Bonus Night?” I swore incredulously. “Oh I gotta hear this!”
“It’s a pretty simple concept,” Corrine said. “You present the coupon to your partner for one extra night of no-strings attached sex to be used at a later date, usually after you’ve broken up. But that’s all it is: a one night stand. And as long as your ex isn’t involved with someone else at the time, they can’t refuse it.”
“Have you given out any Bonus Night coupons yourself?” I had to ask. “To any of your—”
“Only the ones who were really good in the sack,” Corrine said proudly. “But yeah, I could cash in my coupon with Kirk and tell him the Bonus Night’s gotta include Jay. Or Rich. Or whoever else I can dig up from—”
“Corrine?” I asked firmly.
“Yes?”
“My problem please?”
My friend paused, then chuckled again. “Sorry. Sometimes I get sidetracked.”
“We all get sidetracked,” I told her. “But you’re the Royal Queen of sidetracked.”
“Yeah yeah,” she said dismissively. “Anyway, like I said I’m afraid you’re fucked. Six ways to Sunday.”
“Why?”
“Because if one of these guys happens to fall in love with you,” Corrine explained, “he’s going to resent the hell out of the other two. Probably for the rest of his life.”
Crap.
“And what if two of them fall in love with me?”
“Two?” she asked incredulously. “You got something magic down there between your legs, or—”
“Just answer the question.”
Corrine thought for a moment before giving me the rest of the bad news. “If two of them fall in love with you, the third guy is going to be so bitter about being assed-out he’ll make your life a living hell the whole time you’re there.”
Shit,I thought to myself. She’s absolutely right.
“So what if I get all three of them to fall in love with me?” I asked for the sake of covering all the bases.
Somewhere at the other end of Long Island, my best friend laughed long and loud.
“You accomplish that little trick,” she said with reverence in her voice, “and you can teach classes on this stuff for the rest of your life.”