Friday Night Tripartite

"Say something!" she said on the verge of tears.

"I...I have to tell you something, Brynn."

He paused, clearly trying to find the courage to say whatever it was that he wanted to say. Finally, he spoke.

"I need a drink."

He rose from the table, went into his freezer, and grabbed a clear bottle of vodka. Then he got a small glass out of one of his cupboards and returned to the table. He pulled Brynn's bottle of coconut water towards him and poured some into his glass, followed by a shot's worth of vodka. He downed the whole thing in one gulp before pouring another and draining that one too.

"That help?" Brynn asked tentatively.

Brandon took a deep breath.

"Not yet."

He poured himself yet another cocktail and finished in a split second.

"Third one helped," he said.

"That looked disgusting, by the way."

"It's actually quite refreshing. Want one?"

"Only if you feel like holding my hair back for me again."

A large amount of time passed again before Brynn broke the silence.

"Tell me what you're thinking, Brandon. Please, I can't stand to wait any longer."

"There's something you need to know, Brynn. And now that I'm feeling good and sauced, I think I can tell you what that something is."

*

"So, not trying to be awkward or anything, Mr. Garfield, but right before you took that call it seemed like you were about to say something to me."

He froze and looked over at Annie, a small amount of worry apparent on his darkened face.

"Oh, right. Well, what I was going to say is...I don't know, Annie, what I have to say is kind of scummy."

"Oh, come on. I told you about my crush on you, now you tell me your thing."

"That's different, Annie. It's perfectly common and normal for a student to have a crush on a teacher, but for a teacher to reciprocate those feelings?"

Annie beamed at his slip-up.

"Wait, you're telling me that you had feelings for me too!?"

Mr. Garfield looked around his vehicle, desperately trying to avoid eye contact with his former student. Finally, he addressed the situation.

"To be fair, I never flat-out said that I had feelings for you."

"You implied it, though. Wasn't it you that used to harp on us students about using context clues to extract meaning from words and phrases?"

Mr. Garfield rolled his eyes and shook his head.

"I always knew one of my lessons would some day come back to bite me on the ass."

Annie cocked her head to the side and smiled sweetly.

"Alright fine! Yes, I had feelings for you. I was young, and you were a pretty girl that could relate to me on a level that no one else, regardless of their age, ever really could. I feel so gross admitting this out loud."

"The idea of me is gross to you?"

"You know that's not what I mean. Teachers shouldn't feel that way about students. That crosses a line, and it's something that I swear I have never let myself do ever since you graduated."

Annie smiled at him, wondering how well he could see her face due to the dark night.

"So, you're saying I'm your one and only high school crush?"

Mr. Garfield took a moment before responding.

"Yeah, I suppose that's what I'm saying. And I'm sorry for the violation of your innocent past self."

"Don't be! I think it's sweet."

"I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, then."

Brynn dropped the subject for the moment and decided to lighten things up a bit.

"So what kind of party are you going to, Mr. Garfield?"

"What kind? I'm not sure how to answer that, Annie. It's just a regular party, I guess."

"You guys gonna get wild and crazy with these cute little brownies of yours?"

Mr. Garfield's eyes darted down to the floor at Annie's feet. Annie thought she saw his eyes widen for a second, as though afraid of something, but he quickly brushed it off.

"Well, people get hungry at parties, Annie."

"Haha, sorry. Didn't mean to make fun of you and your little treats."

They shared a laugh. Annie was still pretty hungry, having not been satisfied by the two small bites she had before.

"So what's a girl gotta do to get offered a brownie, Mr. Garfield?"

Again Mr. Garfield's eyes widened. He appeared to be thinking hard about something as he postponed his response to her question.

"Um, well," he finally began, "I don't know. There are going to be a lot of people at this party, kind of need to save them for the guests. I'd hate to not have enough for everybody."

"This huge container is full to the brim. You mean you can't even spare a couple?"

"Well, you see, they're homemade. And they didn't turn out very good. You probably wouldn't like them."

Annie lifted the lid and inhaled deeply.

"Mmmmm, chocolaty goodness! They smell divine, Mr. Garfield. Pweeeease? Can't I have just one? I'm soooooo hungry!"

"Annie, I...I'd love to give you one, really I would, but you don't understand. These aren't normal brownies."

"What, are they like gluten-free or something? Because they tasted pretty normal to me."

"No, not gluten-free. It's just that they're-"

Mr. Garfield stopped mid-sentence and looked at Annie in a panic.

"'Tasted normal'? Oh no, did you eat one?"

"Sorry, yeah" Annie confessed. "Two, actually."

Mr. Garfield buried his face in his hands.

"Oh shit, Annie," he said from behind the blockade of his hands. "Those brownies, they aren't normal. In fact, they are pretty special."

Annie wasn't quite following.

"Shit, Mr. Garfield, did you chop up hundred dollar bills into the batter or something?"

"How do you feel right now, Annie?"

She took in his question and really thought about how she felt. To be honest, she felt fine. Maybe more than fine. Extra fine.

"Well, hungry," she said. She took an abnormally long pause before continuing. "And calm. And pretty hungry too."

"Goddammit, I'm so sorry Annie."

She grinned wide and craned her head slowly around to look at him. Strangely, she started to notice things about his appearance that she had never noticed before, minute details that a person doesn't normally look for in someone's else's face.

"You have a lovely silhouetted jawline, Mr. Garfield. And your ears are a nice height on the side of your head. And...why are you sorry?"

"Annie, you've just eaten some pretty potent, high-end weed that was baked into those brownies."

She found that she wasn't really listening and had no idea what he had said. That was alright, though, because strangely, for some unknown reason, in that moment, she found that she had the ability to rewind recently spoken audio in her head and replay it for herself. She did just that, and after listening very closely to the slow-motion voice of her teacher, she responded in the only way that she felt was worthy of the situation.

"Daaaaaaaaaammmmmmmn."

She laughed hysterically, leaving Mr. Garfield to just sit there and wait her out.

*

The whole room sat in silence and watched as Felicity and Savannah sat side-by-side, staring at each other, neither knowing how to proceed.

"Dude, this is so hot," the one named Lamont said.

"I can't believe she used to play with herself while thinking about-"

The frat guy whose name Savannah did not know was cut off by a harsh shush.

"Everyone," Savannah announced to the room as she held up an authoritative finger, "no talking will be allowed for the next several minutes unless you have a vagina. Is that clear? Just nod your heads if you understand."

The guys acquiesced and nodded quietly.

"Felicity, are you saying that you used to finger yourself and think about me?"

"Yes."

Savannah studied her friend's face closely.

"Wow. So all this time, when I've jokingly, but not really jokingly, tried to get you to fool around with me, you were kind of into it?"

"Yes."

"Like, just when we were roommates?"

"No."

"Even recently?"

"Yes."

"Can you give me more details, love?"

Felicity shrugged.

"Whaddya wanna know?"

"Jeez, I don't know. Like, what would we be doing?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you have fantasized about me, right? What did we do in your fantasies?"

"It wasn't just fantasies, Savannah."

"I don't follow."

"Do you remember how you used to, from time to time, bring guys back to the dorm and fool around with them while I slept in the next bed?"

"Vividly."

"Well, I was just pretending to be asleep."

"You were just...oh!"

"I tried to time my orgasm with yours. Sometimes I was successful. It was so dark, and I guess you were so focused on what you were doing that you never noticed. I mean, I assumed you never noticed, right?"

Savannah was in a state of completely shock.

"Nope, never noticed."

"I'd watch your shadowy form as you worked your body on top of whatever random guy you had brought back. Your tits always looked so amazing silhouetted in the dark. You don't know how many times I tried to work up the courage to just dive right in and join you guys. It was just so hard for me to cross that line, though."

Savannah shook her head in disbelief.

"Oh my god, Felicity. You're not just fucking with me, right? I mean, this isn't some sort of weird joke, is it?"

Felicity smiled lightly and shook her head.

"No, not a joke, Savannah. And to answer your previous question, when I fantasize about you, you're on top of me, and I can feel the weight of your magnificent breasts pushing into my own as we kiss."

For the first time in her life, Savannah didn't know how to react to the situation at hand. She had often tried to lure her friend into fooling around, but somehow, the idea that it could actually happen scared her a little bit. Then, she became very aware that Felicity had just shared this very intimate secret with her in front of a bunch of unfamiliar teenagers.

"Why here, Felicity? Why not tell me this in private?"

"Dunno. Just a spur of the moment kind of thing. I mean, these guys all just openly admitted in front of everyone their attraction to you, even your own cousin. I guess I was just inspired to do the same thing. In fact, we-"

Felicity stopped talking abruptly as she looked around at the other guys.

"Why do some of you have your dicks out?"

Savannah turned to confirm what her friend had just said. In fact, three of the six boys had maneuvered their penises out of the fronts of their pants, and were holding themselves during the girls' coversation.

"What do you mean?" one of them asked.

Savannah looked at him like he was the biggest idiot to ever breathe oxygen.

"What she means, dummy, is what possessed you and the other two bozos beside you to remove your wieners from the inside of your pants, thus exposing yourselves to all of us?"

"Oh," the guy responded. "Uhhhhh..."

The boy had nothing else to say.

"This must not be a fraternity with strict academic requirements, huh Davey?" Savannah asked her cousin.

Davey looked shocked at the mention of his name. Though his penis was safely tucked away, he still looked nervous as hell.

"So, cousin," Savannah continued, "care to explain the actions of your friends? Do you condone this behavior?"

Davey was sweating bullets and searching for words. Finally, after what felt like an inordinately long time, he explained.

"It all started earlier in the school year when we tried to host one of these pancake fundraisers. The same thing that happened tonight happened that night too. Nobody came. Again, we don't have the most stellar reputation. At least, nobody showed up at first. Just after midnight, when we were all sitting around here bored, three girls showed up randomly. We weren't sure exactly where they had come from, but they were extremely drunk. Well, not extremely, just that perfect amount of drunk. The kind of drunk where-"

"Yeah, we get it Davey, they were pretty drunk," Savannah interrupted. "Go on."

"Right. So anyway, we gave them some pancakes, and they just hung around. They had these little airplane bottles of liquor they were carrying around in their purses. They sipped on those for a while. Eventually, you know, one of them started to make out with Lamont. Right in front of everybody. And while she was kissing him, she took her hand and...you see, I was sitting on her other side, and she, well, started jacking me off."

"Damn dude, really?" Savannah asked, slightly intrigued.

"Yes! It was a little weird at first since she was kissing another guy. But, I dunno, what guy is gonna tell a hot girl to stop pumping his dick? Well anyway, things escalated, and the other girls started fooling around with the rest of us, and, you know, one thing led to another, and..."

After several seconds passed, it was Felicity that spoke up.

"And what, kid?"

"Well, we kind of had an orgy."

Both the girls sat in stunned silence as they looked around the room at what they originally thought were naive, God-fearing young men.

"As crazy of a story as that is," Savannah said, "I'm still not sure why the three of you over there had your woodies in your hands a few minutes ago."

Everyone turned to Davey to continue the explanation.

"After that night, we've tried to replicate the experience. We put on these cutesy little pancake fundraisers like once a month, hoping-"

"Hoping that a group of promiscuous little hotties are just going to randomly trickle in and let you guys run a train on them?" Savannah said, somewhere between enraged and amused. "Sorry fellas, but I'm afraid you caught lightning in a bottle that night. And as you may have heard before, lightning never strikes the same place twice. Felicity, you ready to go?"

Savannah turned back to her friend who seemed to be contemplating the situation with some amount of deep thought.

"Six years," she mumbled to herself.

At that, she suddenly reached over, wrapped her hand around the back of Savannah's head, and pressed her mouth firmly against the lips of her best friend.

*

"The thing I need to tell you, Brynn...you see, it's like this."

Brandon had made about a half-dozen attempts at telling his sister something, none of them yet amounting to anything of substance.

Brynn tapped her foot impatiently.

"Don't mean to be rude, big brother, but I kind of just bared my soul to you. M'gonna need something in return, man."

"Right."

At that, Brandon abruptly stood up and left the room.

"What the fuck, dude?" Brynn called out.

Brandon returned soon, a little wobbly from the vodka, holding a thick book under one of his arms. He placed the book in front of Brynn, then looked up at her, searching for some kind of approval.

"There!" he said. "That'll explain everything."

Brynn let her eyes fall to the book, then slowly looked up at her brother.

"I tell you that I might be in love with you, and you fetch me a book? Maybe you aren't as intelligent as I always thought you were."

"Just open it, Brynn."

She did as he said. When she opened the front page, she was surprised to see a picture of her and Brandon from when they were younger, her as a three-year-old sitting in the lap of her big brother. Underneath were the words "Love You Forever" written in a fancy font.

Brynn looked up at her brother. She was touched by the picture and by the words, but was still confused. He gestured for her to continue turning the pages. As she flipped through the book, one page after another was filled with pictures of the two of them together, from childhood up to present day: them both licking the same ice cream cone at the zoo as kids; them taking a selfie together just a few years back, standing near the top of the Eiffel Tower; them as children, Brandon with his arm around Brynn as he comforts her at the funeral of their pet hamster.

"Awww, I had forgotten about this!" Brynn said as she turned to a page with a picture of her kissing his cheek at his thirteenth birthday party, his eyes closed as he made a wish in front of his cake.

She thumbed slowly through the rest of the book, smiling at the sweet memories shared with the boy she had always loved.

"Brandon, I don't know what to say. This is so touching."

"I'm so glad you like it."

"But, I'm still a little confused. Don't get me wrong, I love the scrapbook, but you made it seem like you had something big to tell me. Certainly this wasn't it?"

Brandon reached over, gently closed the book, and slowly slid it back to himself.

"Not exactly. Do you know when I started making this book?"

"Well, no."

"About ten years ago. I've been adding to it, little by little, ever since then."

"You've been making this for ten years?"

"Well, you know, I took breaks every now and then. It's not like I worked every second of the past ten years on it."

Brynn rolled her eyes.

"Do you know why it's taken me ten years to show this to you, Brynn?"

"Can't say that I do, bro."

"Because in my head, for ten years, every time I've pictured myself giving this book to you, I've also pictured myself admitting that I'm in love with you."

Brynn reacted very slowly. At first, her face didn't change its expression whatsoever. Then, her mouth slowly fell open, as if she was about to say something but thought better of it. Finally, she reached over to Brandon's side of the table as if she was going to grab his hand again, but instead grasped the vodka bottle and took a generous gulp straight from the container.

"I'm sorry, come again?" she said, wiping some vodka spillage off her chin.

"I'm in love with you too, Brynn. Known it for a very long time."

"But how...why didn't you say anything!?"

"Same reason you didn't say anything, Brynn. You're my sister. I was afraid what others would think of me, what you would think of me. I was scared you'd disown me, make me leave your life forever. I figured it was better to at least be in your life and living a lie than to profess my true feelings and never see you again. I mean, out of all the people in the world who have ever been in love with their sister, and I can't imagine there have been very many, how many of those cases were the feelings reciprocated?"

Brynn thought about that for a second.

"Yeah, you had a pretty low probability of this working out for you, I guess," she admitted.

Brandon just shrugged and nodded.

"But I don't understand," she continued. "Haven't you had multiple girlfriends? If you're in love with me like you say you are, how are you able to have a normal dating life? How are you not eaten up with grief every second of the day like I've been for the past several years?"

"Who says I'm not? You've had boyfriends too, Brynn. And before, when I thought you were, you know, having sex with them and stuff, it was tearing me to pieces. I tried to put it out of my mind and just focus on my own love life. But even the thought of you making love to other guys wasn't enough for me to allow myself to do the same with any of my girlfriends. The only difference between me and you is that I break up with them as soon as things get a little too intimate, instead of waiting for them to do it to me."

"Wait, so what are your saying," Brynn said, a feeling of elation rising inside of her. "Are you trying to tell me that-"

"I'm a virgin too," he finished for her.

Neither had anything to say for a while after that. They continued to sit at the kitchen table across from each other, neither really looking at the other.

"So, let me get this straight," Brynn finally said. "We're a couple of virgins in our late twenties, and we've both secretly been in love with the other one since we were teenagers."

"Seems like it."

"So if either one of us had been just a little more forthright at any point over the last decade, then..."

"Yeah, we probably would have had lots of sex by now."

Brynn's shoulders slumped.

"Well goddammit," she said.

"Hey, come on, let's focus on the bright side. We've both just poured our hearts out to each other, and, correct me if I'm wrong, but we seem to be on the same page."