Chapter 236: Threesome 2
Liam stood up from the couch.
Both of them watched him without saying anything.
Clara with her hands folded in her lap and her blue eyes following him across the room.
Elena with her legs crossed and her back straight and her eyes doing the same thing but with less of the obvious about it.
Liam stood up from the couch and both of them watched him go without saying anything.
He walked to the kitchen counter where he had left the bottle after Sofia had given it to him, picked it up and turned it over in his hands and looked at the label properly.
It was a good. But, it wasn’t the kind of wine that had a year printed on it that meant something to people who knew what years meant.
He looked at it and then looked toward the living room where Elena was sitting on his couch.
’Would Elena drink something from a corner store,’ he thought, turning the bottle over. ’Probably not.’
He sighed and carried it back anyway.
He carried it back and stood in front of the coffee table.
Both of them were sitting with their arms folded and their legs crossed and their eyes pointed anywhere that wasn’t each other.
The couch had a specific tension sitting on it that he could feel from standing up.
Time stopped.
Everything went flat and still. Clara frozen mid breath. Elena’s expression locked. The city outside silent.
A notification appeared.
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION]
[Recommendation: Offer to play a game. Release the tension before it becomes something else.]
[YES / NO]
Liam looked at it
He picked Yes,
Time resumed.
He stood in the middle of his living room holding the bottle of wine with both women on his couch not looking at each other and he made the decision himself.
"Let’s play a game," he said.
Elena raised one eyebrow at him. Just the one. Slowly.
Clara turned her head toward him and didn’t say anything for a second. Then, "Okay."
Liam looked at Elena. "You in?"
Elena looked at the bottle in his hands.
Then at him. "Sure," she said. The word came out easy and composed the way most things came out of her. "Let’s play."
’I can’t believe she said yes’, Liam thought himself.
"What game?" Clara asked.
"Two truths one lie," Liam said.
Clara sat up slightly. "I’m down."
He looked at Elena who gave him a single nod, small and certain, the nod of someone agreeing to something they have already decided they’re going to win.
"Okay," Liam said.
He set the bottle on the coffee table and went to the kitchen and came back with three glasses and set them down and opened the bottle.
He poured and handed them out and sat back down in the middle. "Wrong answer drinks. Everyone got it?"
Clara took her glass. "Got it."
Elena took her glass without looking at it. "Got it."
"Good." Liam looked at Elena. "You first."
Elena looked at him.
Then at Clara.
Then she uncrossed and recrossed her legs and held her glass in one hand and looked at the wall above the television like she was selecting from a menu.
"I have been to fourteen countries," she said. "I once spent three days on a yacht with a former head of state. And I have never in my life eaten fast food."
Silence.
Liam looked at her.
Clara looked at her.
’Fourteen countries is nothing for Elena,’ Liam thought. ’That’s a slow year for her. The head of state thing I would absolutely believe. But Elena not eating fast food.’ He looked at her sitting there calm and innocent.’That one is probably true too which means.’
"The fast food," he said. "I’m definitely right."
Clara nodded beside him. "Yeah, the fast food one is the lie."
Elena looked at them both and her mouth moved in a way that was not quite a smile but was in the family of one. "I have been to thirty one countries," she said. "The fast food was true. I eat burgers on mondays and I have not discussed it with anyone until now."
Liam stared at her. "You ate a burger."
"It was a moment of weakness," Elena said. "We don’t revisit it."
Clara made a sound beside him that was the beginning of a laugh that she was trying to keep inside and not entirely succeeding at.
"Drink," Elena said, looking at both of them. "Both of you."
They drank.
Clara went next.
Clara held her glass in both hands and looked at her knees for a second.
"I once snuck alcohol from my parents’ cabinet and replaced it with water," she said. "I failed my driving test twice. And I have never broken a bone."
Liam looked at her.
Elena looked at her.
’The driving test feels true,’ Liam thought. ’The bone feels true. But Clara sneaking alcohol and replacing it with water.’ He looked at her sitting there in her yellow sundress with her hands wrapped around her glass like it was keeping her steady. ’No. Absolutely not.’
"The alcohol," he said. "That’s the lie."
Elena didn’t even hesitate. "The alcohol."
Clara’s cheeks went fully red.
"You’re safe," Clara said quickly, before he could say a single word about it, her cheeks still burning.
Liam closed his mouth and smiled at her.
’Is that supposed to be her being bad?’
Liam went next.
He told his and they played it and the game moved forward and the bottle moved with it, the level dropping in steady increments with each wrong answer, and the room changed gradually the way rooms changed when people were in them long enough with something being drunk between them.
Elena stayed exactly as she was.
Composed, precise, not a hair out of place, her glass going to her mouth at regular intervals without appearing to affect anything about her.
She got every single one of Liam’s right and got Clara’s right and sat there with the quiet satisfaction of someone who had expected this outcome and found it acceptable.
Clara changed.
Not dramatically. In degrees. Her posture loosened, her shoulders coming down from where they had been sitting, her laugh coming out more fully and less managed when something was funny. She got more of them wrong than right and drank accordingly and the pink in her cheeks moved from faint to consistent and her blue eyes got a particular quality to them that they hadn’t had at the start of the evening.
By the time the bottle was at its last quarter Clara’s head was doing the slow heavy thing and her eyes were fighting a battle they were not going to win.
She fought it for a few minutes.
Then she stopped fighting it.
Her head found the arm of the couch and her eyes closed and her breathing changed and she was gone, the glass still loosely in her hand, her blonde hair spread across the cushion, the yellow sundress rising and falling with her breathing.
Liam looked at her.
Then he looked at the bottle.
"I can’t believe she got drunk off that little," he said.
Elena looked at Clara sleeping beside him with the expression of someone whose prediction had been confirmed. "As expected," she said.
Liam almost smiled. He looked at the last of the wine in his glass and then at Elena and then at the space between them on the couch that had opened up now that Clara was horizontal on the other side of him.
"Well," he said. "At least now we can actually talk." He turned toward her. "You came here to talk and I want to know what’s—"
He felt it.
Elena’s leg, moving under the coffee table, the side of her foot finding his calf first and then her leg pressing slowly against the inside of his, firm and deliberate, and then her heel finding the inside of his thigh and pressing there.
Liam went still.
He looked at her.
She was looking back at him with the same composed expression she had been wearing all evening, her glass held in one hand, her posture exactly as it was, like the thing her leg was doing beneath the table had nothing to do with her and was simply happening independently.
Her foot moved higher.
"Are we not going to talk?" he said. His voice came out steadier than he felt.
"The talk can wait," she said. She set her glass down on the coffee table without looking away from him. "I just want you right now."
She moved toward him and kissed him.
He kissed her back and his hand found her jaw and she moved closer on the couch and the blazer shifted around her and he felt the warmth of her and kissed her deeper and she made a small sound into it that she kept controlled the way she kept most things.
His hand moved from her jaw to her waist and then around to her back and then down and he pressed his palm against her and she pressed back into it and they kept kissing, the apartment quiet around them, Clara’s soft breathing the only sound in the room.
He moved his hand.
He found the hem of her skirt and moved it and found her and shifted the fabric of her underwear aside and she made a sound against his mouth that was less controlled than the first one.
"Quiet," he said against her lips. "Clara’s right there."
Elena pulled back slightly and looked at him and then looked at Clara asleep on the other side of the couch.
"Too late," said a voice.
Not Elena’s voice.
They both went still.
Clara shifted on the couch arm. Her eyes were open. Not the eyes of someone who had just woken up. The eyes of someone who had been awake for a while and had made a decision about what to do about it.
She sat up slowly.
Her hair was across her face from the cushion and she pushed it back and looked at Liam with an expression he had not seen on her before.
The shyness was there but it was sitting behind something else now, something that the wine and the evening and whatever she had just been lying there listening to had moved to the front.
"She’s not taking you," Clara said. She looked at Elena. Then back at Liam. "Not without me."
Liam sat between them and looked at Clara and then at Elena.
Elena looked at Clara for a long moment before looking back at Liam.
Something moved across her face that was not her usual composed expression, something that arrived and settled and made itself at home in a way that the composed expression usually didn’t allow.
"Well," she said. She looked at Clara again, properly this time, a full assessment, top to bottom, the yellow sundress and the blonde hair and the blue eyes that were not doing the shy thing anymore. The corner of her mouth moved. "Fine."
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