I Like The Girl That's Got A Girlfriend

by The_lazy_eye

Summary:

For something so unthought about, it feels more like a science experiment than anything else. Like testing a hypothesis. All the factors are in place and ready to go. He has a girlfriend, and now his girlfriend has a girlfriend.

Who’d have thought?

It never really occurred to him. Neither a good way nor a bad way. Just sort of a factual thing. So, when Steph asks him about it, he figures why not? It couldn’t hurt.

For something so unthought about, it feels more like a science experiment than anything else. Like testing a hypothesis. All the factors are in place and ready to go. He has a girlfriend, and now his girlfriend has a girlfriend.

Who’d have thought?

Steph was nervous about it, at first. She had come to him borderline hysterical when she realized what was happening. Her and Grace hadn’t necessarily meant for anything to develop. It just sort of happened. At first, it was something that happened out of convenience. Just three people hanging out and enjoying each other’s presence. Steph had taken to Grace like honey on a fly trap. It didn’t matter how much animosity grew between them in their grade school years. It all seemed to melt away the more they saw each other.

GPA apparently doesn’t mean shit when it comes to deciphering the complex dynamics of nonnormative human relationships, Pete still didn’t really get it. He liked Grace well enough, sure, but she and Steph seem to have an unspoken bond. At first, he thought it was born from the inevitable pull of them all spending more time together. He’s no stranger to that– it’s how he fell into it with Steph in the first place. Circumstances that brought them together beyond the odds of normal high school exposure.

Still, it felt right when Grace showed up. A quiet slotting of a missing piece into an old puzzle. Something fitting into the edges of his life and making itself comfortable there. He wouldn’t know he missed it if he didn’t have it, but having it feels good.

Steph, though, clearly has more than that for Grace. Love, she had called it. Accidental, but there none the less. Somewhere between sitting together in the din of the lunchroom and stealing evenings away in each other’s bedrooms, they fell in love.

She kept it separate for a while, only really leaning against Grace or holding her hand when she thought Pete couldn’t see. It progressed to sitting flush between them on the couch, both hands occupied with one of theirs. To kisses snuck in the backseat of the car, much to Grace’s protest. To alternating between falling asleep on either one of them during move nights. Simple things, innocent in nature.

How she got Grace to agree to their arraignment, he has no idea. She looked about as lost as he felt, sometimes. Constantly checking over her shoulder to seek permission already given. They never talked about it. Not really. They just kind of fumbled through Steph’s half-brained plan.

It’s called polyamory.

Polyamory, as it turns out, isn’t that much different than what they already had going on. They hang out most nights, the three of them, cooped up in someone’s living room and killing them. When he’s wrapped up in some school assignment or brotherly obligation, Steph and Grace continue to see each other. 

Only now with more kissing, he presumes.

It’s hard to even pinpoint a shift. At first he figured he might feel something. Envy, jealousy, maybe even despair at the idea of his girlfriend kissing someone else. Instead, all he feels is happy. When the three of them are together, Steph’s eyes look like they hang an entire universe’s worth of stars in them. And when it’s just the two of them, nothing really changes. She still sits pressed flushed against his side and makes snide remarks.

She still kisses him like there’s nowhere else she’d rather be.

He’s happy. Happier than he thought was possible for someone like him. And if Steph is happy, too, that’s all that really matters. Who cares if his girlfriend sometimes kisses someone else? She still loves him. In fact, she’s got so much love in her heart she has to spend it on more than one person.

She’s such a softie. She’ll never admit it, not even to him, but for all the hard walls she puts up around herself with sarcasm and cutting looks, she’s nothing but ice cream inside. Soft and tooth-rotting.

It’s how he finds himself in a now all too familiar position: Steph resting her head in Grace’s lap as her hair gets twisted around nimble fingers, and her feet propped up on Pete’s own lap. She’s sprawled across them like they’re her own personal hammock, uncaring to the way either of their legs are going numb.

“I’m just saying,” she drones, “it’s not like anyone even cares what I’m wearing at school. Dress codes are the man’s way of suppressing free speech. That’s illegal, you know. I have a constitutional right to express myself however I want.”

Above her, Pete hums. He’s drawing lazy circles on her shin with his left hand, his right resting just above her kneecap. “You should hire a lawyer.”

“I know,” she says. He glances down to find her not looking at either of them, eyes instead trained on the flashing colors of a dark TV in a dim room.

“You know that’s not how it works, right?” Grace says. “Freedom of speech protects you from the government, not the school.”

“What is school if not an extension of the government? They mandate us to go. Why do you think truancy officers exist?”

“No, no,” Pete says. “She’s got a point. Public schools are funded by taxes, which come from local governments. It might be a stretch, but technically they’re suppressing her rights.”

He tries to keep himself serious as Grace whips her head at him. Her brows are pinched together, mouth set into a thin line. A smirk pulls at the corner of his mouth no matter how hard he tries to bite it back. “You jerk.”

She frees one of her hands from the tangle of Steph’s hair to toss a pillow at him, but there’s no fire behind it. It lobs off his chest and onto Steph’s legs.

He laughs, full bodied and loud. Steph finally tears her eyes from the screen to look between them. “Hey, are you guys laughing at me?”

“I don’t know what you see in him,” Grace says. “He’s trouble.”

“Precisely why I like him, Chasity.”

Grace re-tangles her hand in Steph's hair, using her fingers to comb out the knots she created over the course of the evening. Pete watches at deft fingers begin separating a lock of hair into three parts, twisting it into an even, neat braid. Its twin sits neatly on Steph’s left shoulder, threaded with care and precision.

“I’m flattered,” he deadpans. Grace shoots him another sharp look, though this one has less venom. It manages to draw another slight quirk from his lips.

“Don’t get your panties in a twist,” Steph snickers. Her shoulders jolt with the movement of it. There’s a flicker of fondness in the way Grace nudges her to stay still. “I like you both.”

“Which is why you’re sprawled across Grace’s lap and not mine.”

He hopes it comes across as kidding. It’s how he means it. Insecurity is not something Steph wears well. She flashes him a grin and kicks her foot up into his chest, which earns her another shove from Grace. “Not my fault you don’t know how to braid hair. Besides, there’s plenty of me to go around.”

Grace finishes the braid, securing it with a tie from her wrist. She leans over Steph, reaching into her pocket to grab her phone and hand it over. “What’d you think?”

Saccharine in a way, Steph allows herself to smile up at Grace in the way she reserves only for those she genuinely loves. She glances down at what’s almost certainly her front facing camera. “Looks great, love. Thank you.”

It’s soft. The entire thing is. The way Steph touches the end of her braid, twisting it between her fingers to admire the stability of it. The way Grace leans over to press a chaste kiss to the crown of her head. The way Pete himself squeezes her ankle to show his own support.

It should feel weird. It should be completely and utterly uncomfortable. For everything his limited knowledge of relationships has taught him, he should be seething with jealousy and rage. He should be so distraught that he can’t think straight.

He should have broken up with Steph the second she suggested this whole arrangement. Hell, anyone he mentioned it to thought that. His own brother told him he was a cuck if he would be okay with letting his girlfriend run around with someone behind his back.

Except it isn’t even really behind his back. It’s in front of his face. Which should be worse.

It isn’t.

All those emotions he should feel are almost inaccessible. Instead, all he feels is a growing sense of contentment.

Like if he concentrates and believes hard enough, he can find a sense of wholeness like this.

But if he has to concentrate to find it, is it really there?

---

So, perhaps, maybe, he might have made a mistake.

It didn’t feel like a mistake when he was making it, but hindsight is always twenty-twenty. And right now, the mystical happenings of retrospect and insight are all leading him towards the same conclusion: mistakes have been made.

The first mistake was probably pulling his car over when he saw a flash of orange dart from the side of the road to the bushes. He should have kept going, minded his business like his brother always tells him to do.

The second mistake was all but throwing himself into said bushes to untangle the previously mentioned flash of orange. What should have earned him a sense of pride and accomplishment for good deeds done out of benevolence only earned him several surface scratches to his arms and hands.

The third, probably most fatal mistake was putting that goddamn flash of orange in his car and pulling the world’s shittiest U-turn back to his house.

Which is how he finds himself in his current predicament: splayed out flat on his living room floor while bright gold eyes stare menacingly at him, no doubt wishing him an eternity of suffering and pain for the simple crime of kidnapping.

Or, well, catnapping in this case.

Aren’t cats supposed to be docile and cuddly? Ruth’s is nothing but a machine that steals chicken nuggets and bullies her until she makes room in her lap for him. He purrs as loud as a motorboat and uses his tail as a means to knock pens and papers off her desk. He doesn’t hide under the couch and scream bloody murder between hisses while swiping four tiny daggers at her.

He's a sweet little guy. Nothing like this mother fucker.

Pete sighs, extending his hand as slow as he can manage towards the cat while making kissy noises at it in a desperate attempt to calm it down. He doesn’t have cat food on hand, so a plate of chicken nuggets he hastily microwaved sits untouched several inches away. Ruth’s cat like’s people food, so don’t all cats?

He’s come to realize, belatedly, he knows nothing about cats.

Maybe Fiyero isn’t the average cat and he has no business basing all cats off his behavior. Or maybe this specific cat is the spawn of Satan and he never should have pulled his damn car over.

Regret pulls at his chest. Not only is his hand bleeding from the three times this mother fucker managed to catch his skin on its claws, but now he’s at a complete loss for what to do. It’s not like he can toss it back out on the streets. He’s several miles away from where he picked it up and throwing it out in his backyard would likely just be a cruel fate. Can cats find their way back to where they were, or would he just be damning it to its premature demise?

He doesn’t want to find out. The idea of abandoning it now feels impossible. Besides, he can’t even catch it. It’s quick and small, darting around the house and hiding in the single smallest crevice it can squeeze its body into. He could leave the front door open and hope it makes its way out, but again, not a moral option in his eyes.

The shelter is out, too. Despite the amount of campaigning from local activist groups, the Hatchetfield Kennel remains a kill shelter. If this cat is this much of a nightmare under his couch, it won’t fare better there. Any interactions from employees within the first two hours of its arrival will surely send it to the top of the euthanasia list.

He can’t have that kind of blood on his hands. He doesn’t even like killing spiders. A cat? He’d never be able to live with himself.

“Hey buddy,” he tries. “it’s okay, I promise.”

Buddy just hisses at him, feral and terrified. He swipes out in a quick motion but thankfully Pete’s caught onto his games at this point and yanks his hand back. Another sigh escapes from his mouth.

This is a fucking disaster.

At this rate, both the cat and Pete are going to end up on the streets. Ted’s going to be pissed.

As if sensing his exasperation, the cat flattens its ears against its head and lets out a low growl. It almost sounds mocking. Like it's telling Pete things he doesn’t already know. For someone so fucking smart, you really shit the bed on this one.

His phone rings in his pocket, dragging another yowl out of the cat. The motion of him reaching for it is accompanied by another frantic swipe. This one catches on the skin of his hand, tearing it easily. 

“Fuck,” he hisses, shooting a glare at the orange ball of rage. Steph’s contact photo laughs at him as it flashes on his screen. 

Before he can even think about answering, the doorbell rings. 

Another swipe. 

Another scratch. 

He scrambles out from under the couch, desperate to get away from the barrage of attacks he’s incapable of fending off. His phone keeps buzzing as he makes his way to the door, yanking it open as he answers. 

“Steph, look, I’ve got a bit of a situation going on right now— Grace?”

She blinks at him, hand still head up as if to knock on his door again. He blinks back, peering over her shoulder as if to look for Steph. Which is ridiculous considering she’s calling him from somewhere decidedly not his house. 

It feels sort of unfair. It’s not like Grace isn’t allowed to show up at his door unannounced. It's more like the two of them are normally a package deal. Steph is more likely to show up alone than Grace is. He doesn’t really think she’s ever just shown up before. 

Confusion etches itself into his features, an expression she matches with plain anxiety. The realization begs something akin to guilt to unfurl in his stomach. He’d have half a mind to acknowledge the emotion and apologize to her for discounting their friendship if he didn’t have more pressing matters under his couch.

“What’s going on?”

“Grace is here,” he answers, completely aware that the girl standing in front of him has nothing to do with the bullshit happening in his house. 

“And that’s a problem because?”

“It’s not, can I call you back?”

“Sure. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“A situation?” Grace asks, because of course she would. In the same way he leaned to the side to peer over her, she does the same to him. Her eyes survey what little of his house she can see, assessing the situation. Hands twist themselves in the cuffs of her jacket.

“It’s a long story,” he responds. “Where’s Steph?”

Again, that gnawing guilt makes itself known. He shouldn’t do that.

It’s just weird. They didn’t really spend alone time together before their whole arrangement, now even less so. Hanging out with his girlfriend’s girlfriend feels like an unspoken treason. Like he’s violating some unwritten rule they never really discussed.

Like he’s doing something wrong.

“With her father,” Grace says, “something about a charity event and showing their best side as a family.”

“Bummer.”

“Yeah,” she nods. “She said she’d come straight to yours after, and I didn’t really have anything going on today, so I figured I’d come over. I texted you?”

“Sorry,” he sighs. Absently, he pushes his glasses up to rub at his eyes. Stress must ooze off of him in waves because when he blinks again, she looks significantly more worried. “I didn’t see it. Weird day. Maybe you should come back later, with Steph?”

“Oh.”

If it’s even possible, Grace looks smaller than she ever has. The strained smile she wore only moments ago completely falls, leaving behind a chasm of confusion and rejection. Her shoulders curl into her small frame and her hands open and close anxiously at her sides.

The guilt, ever present, explodes in a fire ball of regret and awkward despondence.

“It’s not that I don’t want to hang out,” he corrects. His voice is high and thin, not at all convincing. “It’s just, I don’t want you to get hurt.”

Grace chooses that moment to look back up at him. The brown of her eyes catches in the midday sun, swirling both rejection and confusion in them. “Hurt?”

She peers back into his house, taking inventory for whatever danger she didn’t see before. Then, she scans him. Her eyes catch on the shredded skin of his forearm and hand. “You’re bleeding.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Pete,” she stresses. She starts forward in an aborted movement, as if to reach for him, before catching herself. Her arm lingers uselessly in the space between them. “Who did this?”

Now, there are two options here. Both with their own sets of pros and cons.

One, he could deflect and double down on his original stance. She should go home and come back later when this mess is all cleaned up. Pros: she won’t get scratched, no one will know about his embarrassing lack of planning or critical thinking skills, and he can lick his wounds in the privacy of his own home. Cons: he runs the risk of causing even more damage to not only his skin but his house, he is right back where he started ten minutes ago, and he has to live with the memory of Grace’s face when he tells her to leave.

Two, he could invite her in and let her attempt to help. Pros: it goes from a one v. one to a two v. one thus giving them the upper hand, he’ll have the additional brainpower of another top tier student to help him problem solve, and they get the chance to spend time together– maybe even bond? Cons: Grace will undoubtedly have the knowledge that Pete is a world-class idiot, she might get hurt in the crossfire, and… well. He can’t really think of another con.

“Let me help.”

“I don’t know.” It’s his turn to look inside, turning over his shoulder to check and see that the devil incarnate has not made its way out from under his couch to make a dash for the open exit. No doubt if it tried, it would take his Achillies heel out on its way just to spite him further.

“Please, Pete?”

His resolve crumbles. He opens the door and motions her inside before quickly shutting it. Silence falls over the room, thick and awkward. Grace stands stock still in his entryway, jacket now draped on a hook and eyes darting around the living room while her hands fidget with the hem of her t-shirt.

“Stay here.”

He moves, quiet and quick, through the house and into the kitchen. If she’s going to be here with him, he’s going to take every possible precaution to keep her safe. Not only would he feel absolutely abysmal if she somehow got hurt during all of this, but Steph would have his head. The two of them spend a single afternoon together and Grace comes out injured and bleeding?

Yeah, he’d be a dead man walking.

He comes back in less than two minutes, an oversized hoodie and oven mitts in hand. “Put these on.”

“Uh?” She’s looking at him like he’s clinically insane. Which he probably is, but he’s not sending her into the belly of the beast without some level of skin protection. At least now if the cat swipes at her it’s more likely to catch the fabric of the hoodie than it is her actual arm or hand.

He watches as she awkwardly shrugs it on. It dwarfs her small frame, sleeves bunching up around her wrists and bottom hem falling low below her waist. If he had more presence of mind, he’d find her cute. He’d wonder if this is how Steph sees her when she wears some of her clothing. He’d tell her as much.

But there are bigger matters at hand right now. Sharp, hissing matters.

“Okay,” he sighs. With the difference in attire, he becomes even more acutely aware of how exposed his own skin is and how his scratched flesh feels pulled and raw. He should double back to the bathroom and get bandages.

He doesn’t.

Instead, he turns and walks fully into the living room. Grace follows two steps behind, a careful and cautious movement as if to avoid the undisclosed danger.

Her movements echo his as he kneels down on the area rug, then all but flattens his body to the floor. He feels like an idiot, even more so with how Grace copies his every movie with confusion in her eyes. She doesn’t ask questions, for this he’s thankful, but her expression is worth a thousand words.

Pete Spanoffski, you’ve officially gone crazy.

Then, as if divine intervention, the monster under his couch howls. It’s a sharp, grating noise accented by a threatening grumble.

“It’s a cat,’ Grace says plainly.

“Yes,” he confirms, feeling altogether stupid.

“That,” she points to the cat, “did this to you?”

“Yes.”

She blinks, turning her head to fully look at the trembling, hissing beast. Its pupils are fully blown out, teeth barred and ears still flat against its head. She eyes the cold plate of chicken nuggets. “What’s it doing in your house?”

“Long story,” he sighs. “I saw it on the side of the road and grabbed it.”

Her head lolls into a more comfortable position, supporting her neck with her shoulder and she slowly reaches out a hand. The cat swipes and misses, and Pete finds himself acutely thankful he grabbed the oven mitts for her. “Why would you do that?”

“I almost hit it with my car,” he says. “I didn’t want it to get hurt.”

“So, you stole it?”

“Yep.” His voice cracks. Embarrassment floods him even deeper than before. She doesn’t look at him. Instead, her eyes are fixed on the cat.

“You know, cats are absent from the bible,” she says. “Historically, they’ve been associated with witchcraft and the devil. Pagans would use them in spells to summon dark powers and bind their souls to Satan. Black cats represent bad luck, too. Some say they are Familiars for evil beings.”

He watches her out of the corner of his eyes. Her hand absently inches forward, mitt dragging against the carpet. The cat growls, claws catching on it when it gets within range. Grace does not flinch. She doesn’t even startle.

“My mom hates cats. She thinks they’re too stuffy and mean. You’re kind of mean aren’t you, little guy? No, I don’t think so. You’re just scared. Big, bad Petey took you somewhere unfamiliar and scary, didn’t he?” She coos at the beast, unfazed as it hisses and scratches again. Grace scoots her entire body closer, head almost pressing into the wooden frame of the couch. When her hand gets close enough, the cat latches its claws into the mitt and bites.

“Grace.”

“It’s okay,” she hums. “You can bite it. It won’t hurt me.”

He watches, amazed, as the cat pulls her hand even closer and curls its body around it. It bites, teeth sinking into the material, and kicks with his back legs until the fabric begins to tear.

Well, there goes his oven mitt.

“See? It’s all soft. It won’t hurt you.”

The cat’s movements still, eyes still wide as it peers at Grace from over the mitt. Then, for the first time since it entered his house, its ears come away from the flat of its head. It watches, wary, and then sniffs at her.

“Grace, what are you doing?”

He watches, now in abject horror, as she slips her hand away from its protective sheath and inches her bare skin towards what can only be described as an orange ball of knives and anger.

When he tried that, he got scratched to hell and back.

But when Grace does it, the cat only watches her extend a single finger out a few inches from its face. It growls again, hisses once, and then…

Sniffs her.

“It’s okay,” she coos.

They lay like that for a while, silence blanketing them as the cat alternates between low grumbling and reluctant sniffing.

Now that the chaos has calmed a bit, he takes a moment to really look at the cat. Even when it had been in his car, he never really looked. Its eyes are an amber sort of yellow, clashing with the orange fur that fans out from its face. The fur itself is long and unkempt, curling around its lanky frame. By its whiskers, orange fades to an off-white color and then back into orange around the chin and chest. Throughout the body, lighter shades mix with darker ones all the way to the long poof of its tail.

It's cute. Really cute. And thin. And dirty.

It’s a wonder it has much energy to fight them for so long. It must be exhausted and tired from living out in the woods for so long. The fear and frustration he’d felt earlier fades into something calmer. Pity and a strong desire to take care of it.

“How are you doing this?” he whispers after a while. His body is beginning to get stiff, but discomfort is overpowered by the worry that if he moves, the cat will react. So far, Grace’s skin is unbroken. He’d like to keep it that way.

“Patience,” she answers easily. “Poor thing is scared to death. No wonder it scratched you. It probably thinks you’re trying to kill and eat it.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s survival,” she deadpans. “Fight or flight. Cats tend to run from danger. Here, there’s nowhere for it to go. All it has left to defend itself is fight. Besides, you’re like twenty times its size. You’re the apex predator.”

He doesn’t feel like it. In the last hour this tiny cat has bested all of his efforts. Not only did it escape his every attempt to grab it, but the dried blood on his arms speaks for itself.

Still, she has a point.

“It needs to feel safe. Like we won’t hurt it.”

“I’m not going to hurt it.”

“It doesn’t know that.” It kills him how smart she is at this moment. Not because Grace isn’t smart by all accounts, but because it makes him feel small and useless. She accomplished in fifteen minutes what he couldn’t manage in an hour. Her voice is gentle, her movements sure, her touch light. She knows exactly what to do where he feels like a fish out of water.

He can’t help but think this cat would be better off in her care, but she had said her mother hates them. Knowing Karen Chasity, she isn’t easily persuaded.

“What’s with the chicken nuggets?”

“I didn’t have any cat food,” he says. If possible, embarrassment claws its way further down his throat.

Grace, for all her mercy, doesn’t laugh. She just turns her head to give him an easy smile. “Ruth gives Fiyero chicken nuggets, right?”

He nods.

“I think we should go get some real cat food.”

He looks between her and the cat. It’s since relinquished its hold on his destroyed oven mitt and is now curled in a tight ball. It watches them closely, cataloguing their every movement, but at least it isn’t hissing anymore.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave it here alone.”

“What’s it going to do, steal your wallet?” She laughs, soft and bright. “It probably won’t even leave its hiding spot. It might be good to leave it alone for a bit, give it some space.”

He relents, slowly shifting onto his knees and bending backwards so a few vertebrae pop and release. Grace does the same, far more elegantly and with less cracking bones.

“We should fix your arm first,” says Grace as she shrugs his hoodie off. The t-shirt she’s wearing catches on the fabric as she drags it up and over her shoulders, exposing a sliver of midriff in the process. He eyes the shock of pale skin before quickly looking away, a desperate attempt to preserve her.

Warmth floods his face. “Uh, sure.”

It’s weird, the feeling that follows next. It’s almost like embarrassment, but not quite. Shame? No. Shame doesn’t feel like a hundred butterflies violently crashing around in his stomach.

Shame doesn’t sneak a second glance, both relieved and disappointed when Grace has already corrected her clothes and is now smiling easily back at him. She motions for him to follow and like a dumbstruck puppy, he does.

What the fuck is he doing? Grace is Steph’s girlfriend. Sure, Steph is also Pete’s girlfriend, but just because they’ve got this unusual dynamic settling between them doesn’t mean Pete is allowed to cross lines in the sand.

He’s not even sure where the lines are. They didn’t talk about it. They didn’t really talk about him, other than whether or not he was comfortable with this whole thing. And he is, he swears. He just doesn’t really know where this leaves him. Especially with Grace.

And it’s not like he likes her. He does, she’s Grace, just not like that. It makes sense that her and Steph fell together with how close they’ve gotten over the months. He hasn’t gotten close to Grace. He hasn’t fallen together with her. She’s just his friend. 

He brushes the warmth away as Grace sits him down on the edge of his bathtub and begins rifling through the medicine cabinet, pulling out bandages and peroxide.

She starts with a damp washcloth she steals from the pile of clean towels on the shelf. She wets it, careful as she drags it across his skin to clean up the small smears he carelessly swiped at throughout the afternoon. The blood cleans up easily, going from red streaks, to pink, to gone entirely. The cuts are raw and sting as she works, but he can tell it could be worse. She’s gentle, soft in her touch as she works.

The quiet of the bathroom hangs over them, diligent hands soft and sure as they set one task apart from the rest. She’s so close he can’t miss her if he tries. He’d need to close his eyes which, he reasons, is probably worse than staring.

Have they ever been this close before?

Aside from the modest few feet of distance they share on the couch or in the car, he doesn’t think so. But it’s not weird. Nothing about this is weird. She’s his friend, and his girlfriend’s girlfriend.

Without meaning to and without stopping it, for the first time in the nearly eighteen years of knowing Grace Chasity, Peter Spankoffski allows himself to really, truly look at her.

The first thing he notices is the pinch of her brow as she finishes each task and moves onto the next. Soft brown waves of hair fall into her face, obscuring most of it despite the butterfly clips holding it back. It brushes against the pale of her skin and matches the light shade of her freckles. They’re faint, hardly there, but this close he can see the way they smatter across her skin.

Her hair stops just below the curve of her jaw where freckles give way to the few dark birth marks that dance across her neck and disappear under the collar of her plain black shirt.

He lets himself study her jaw, noticing the thin but full line of her lips pressed together in concentration, her tongue darting out to wet the lower one every few minutes. He wants to offer her chapstick but can’t find his voice to do it. It would be weird, probably, to notice something like that and offer. He’d make her uncomfortable. 

She doesn’t notice the way he stares, or if she does, she doesn’t say anything. There’s something small and almost terrified in him that’s thankful for the mercy of that.

It's no wonder Steph likes her. She’s pretty. Captivating in the way only silent beauty can be. Grace has gone most of her life either unnoticed or noticed for the wrong reasons. Hated for her beliefs and behaviors or objectified for the very same. Untouchable and unknowable, she kneels before him plain as day. A normal teenager hidden beneath the exterior she wears at school.

She is letting him see her, though. Through the gentle act of care, she is exposed.

“Oh.”

“Huh?”

Crap. He said that out loud.

She looks at him, face only inches from his own as her thumb smooths the last bandage over his arm, broken skin now cared for and covered.

“Nothing.” His voice does not crack, thank God.

Neither move. They sit, still as statues a mere few inches from each other. It’s then he notices her eyes, the way the brown irises take up space like brown is a color that belongs to her and only her. He always knew they were brown, dark brown at that, but this close he can see gold flecks framing her pupils. There’s a depth there he never noticed before, gold and chestnut fading out into cedar.

There’s a moment where he feels like he’s falling into them, where if he’s not careful, he’ll fall right into her. It’s that moment when he all but jerks back, center of gravity shifting so violently he loses his spot on the tub’s ledge and topples backwards.

“Pete!”

The hollow sound of his spine on acrylic echoes in the space, out of tune with Grace’s voice. He whacks his head on the wall, dull pain flowering out and down his neck.

“What the heck, are you okay?”

Her hands are on him, just as warm as before, and she yanks him up so quickly he falls the other way straight into her. She’s not ready for his weight, so she topples back next. A gasp of breath leaves her as he lands on top, knees knocking against the floor and face landing unceremoniously in her neck. She doesn’t push him off like he expects. Her hands are tight in his shirt, pulling the fabric so it warps around his body in bunches. He can’t move with how she’s holding him, so he doesn’t. On an inhale, he breathes in the scent of lavender and dial soap. It makes his already aching head swim.

She feels different than Steph does. She’s got sharper edges, her hip hones digging into his stomach painfully and her knee jammed somewhere against his thigh. He wills himself not to notice, but he can’t help it. Just like he can’t seem to help anything else happening. He is an unwilling victim to the gravitational pull that is Grace.

A puff of air dances across the top of his head, followed by a full body shudder, before she breaks out into what can only be described as hysteria. Her laugh bounces off the tiles of his bathroom, loud and completely unbidden. Contagious in a way that drags his own laughter out.

Soon enough, they’re both breathless and red-faced.

“Oh my gosh,” she gasps, chest heaving with the effort of it. “You’re a nightmare, Pete. How do you even survive on your own?”

“I don’t,” he manages between his own dying laughs. “Cat scratches, point and case.”

She finally releases her hold on him and he shoves himself up so he’s sitting back against the tub. She laughs again, this time a short and quiet sound, before pushing herself to a standing position and brushing imaginary dirt off the legs of her jeans. She offers his hand, but he doesn’t take it. Too scared to end up in an inevitable push and pull where they fall into each other endlessly until Steph finally arrives.

He doesn’t want to be caught like that. He doesn’t want to be caught at all.

Not that he’s doing anything wrong. It’s not a crime to spend time together, to exist within each other’s orbits, but he still feels guilty about it. Maybe about lying on top of her, maybe about the way he can’t really look away.

He thinks of Steph– of how she always seems to be circling around the two of them like she can’t help herself– and wonders if he’s falling into the same sphere of influence.

It’s not his path to orbit, though. Grace is not his thing to admire. She’s not a thing at all. She’s a person with opinions and wants. None of which involves Pete.

And none of his should involve her, either, so he bottles up the weird feeling sparking in his chest and shoves it as far down as it can go.

“Cat food?” She asks, completely unaware of the way his mind circles.

He nods and within minutes finds himself with Grace as a passenger in his car. There’s cat fur all over the seats. It clings to their clothes like it belongs there, and distantly he realizes that he’s probably going to have to get used to this. You know, now that he’s a cat owner.

They wander the isles of Flemming Supermarket, and he finds she’s easier to talk to one on one than he realized. She prattles on about different types of cat foods, reading off the distinctions and weighing the options before tossing a bag of dry and a case of wet into the cart. Then she leads him to the next aisle where she grabs the biggest litter box he’s ever seen, along with what surely is too many bags of litter.

He uses the emergency credit card his brother gave him to pay, reasoning this entire thing is emergency enough to warrant spending over a hundred dollars he doesn’t have.

By the time they’re back at his house, a litter box set up in the corner and a can of wet food open on the ground, the cat in question has made its way to the edge of the couch. Its small, pink nose pokes out as it sniffs toward the food, clearly interested. They sit a good distance away, Pete crisscrossed and Grace with her legs tucked neatly under her, and they watch.

Eventually, the cat comes halfway out from the couch and eats. It pays no mind to the wasted chicken nuggets and all but devours the can Grace picked out.

“Must have been so hungry, poor thing,” she whispers. Her voice has an empathetic quality to it that Pete can’t quite understand. But then again, she wasn’t the one who dealt with the yowling, scratching mess a few hours ago.

It finishes, but it doesn’t retreat. It watches them, slunk low to the ground, and crawls forward. Pete receives a wide berth, but Grace does not.

Slow as all hell, it walks until it’s got its nose pressed directly against the knee of her jeans. And he watches, in dumbfounded fascination, as she reaches forward and brushes her fingers against the top of its head.

And just like that, the beast is tamed.

A loud purr rips through the silence. “Oh, baby,” Grace coos, sinking her fingers deeper into the fur. The cat leans into the touch, crawling fully onto her legs and shoving its face into her stomach. “Oh, you’re so sweet. Yes, you are. You’re okay, I promise. It’s safe here.”

“I can’t believe it,” he says, wonder clear in his voice. Grace accomplished what he was starting to think wasn’t possible. He thought for sure he would be trapped with this thing clawing his eyes out until the end of time.

It turns out all he needed was her gentle voice to lull it into security. She’s like a cat whisperer, knowing all the right things to do and say to transform it from a monster into just a cat. Kissing the prince-turned-frog and giving it its humanity back. 

“How did you do that?”

“Patience,” she answers. “What would you think we should name it? Is it a boy or girl?”

“I have no clue; it’s not like I was able to check.”

“I think it’s a boy. His head is wider, and he’s dense. But to be safe, we should go with something neutral. Like fluffy.”

“Or pokey,” he says, gesturing toward its now sheathed claws. The cat chooses that moment to turn its head towards Grace’s hand, nipping gently. She redirects her fingers away from its side and back to its head, as if she could read its mind. “Or nibbly, it sure likes biting.”

She laughs, bright and easy. “Those aren’t good names, Pete.”

“But they’re on theme.” He sends her a goofy smile; one she meets with a smile of her own. “We could do blinky because of how it keeps blinking at you.” On cue, the cat looks up at Grace, eyes slowly closing and opening again.

“Or wiggly,” he goes on. “When I grabbed it, it squirmed like a fish.”

“Cats blink like that when they feel safe. Each of their behaviors are like a language. If you watch closely, they’re always telling you something.”

“What’s the wiggling mean?”

“That it definitely didn’t want you to grab it.”

It’s his turn to laugh. Leaning back on his hands he watches as the two of the snuggle into each other. Curled up in her lap, the cat reminds him of when he was just a kid. Back when he lived with his parents, his brother brought home a dog. A small, wet thing that barked more than anything else. His dad was angry, angrier than he’d ever seen him, and they went to the shelter the next week.

Ted had cried. He’d never seen his brother cry before then, and he hasn’t seen him cry since.

Its interim name was Noodle. Noodle the dog, wet and loud and all the only thing able to bring his brother out of his snarky nature and into tenderness.

“I know what to name it,” Pete says. Grace looks at him, brow quirked as she continues her scratching under the cat’s chin. “Noodle.”

She huffs a quiet noise, lips screwing up into not quite a smile. “Noodle?”

“Yeah,” he affirms. “Noodle.”

He must say it with such conviction that she doesn’t bother fighting him. Her face falls impossibly softer as she stares at him, then down at the cat— at Noodle.

Noodle, between them, purrs. Subdued by safety and the gentle touch of Grace Chasity. He takes a chance in reaching his hand slowly toward it and is rewarded with a sniff, then a nuzzle.

“Noodle likes you,” she says quietly.

His hand replaces her to scratch at Noodle’s chin, then to rub a firm pat down its entire body. It arches in Grace’s lap, full and happy at last.

Steph joins them after an hour and a half, more surprised than anything else to find the three of them curled up on the couch. She doesn’t question the way Grace is pressed fully into his side, nor the way Pete is all but dozed off with his head resting against the cushions.

She kicks off her shoes in the entryway, shrugging off her jacket and padding into the room. “What the fuck have you two been up to?”

“Oh,” Grace hums. Noodle sits curled in a tight ball on her lap, body tense at he eyes Steph. “You know, just the usual. Don’t come over too fast. He’s scared.”

“And who is he?”

“Noodle,” she says around a smile. Pete watches them through hazy eyes, hand holding nothing where it fell over Grace’s shoulder sometime between sitting down and turning the television on. He didn’t realize how he looked, not until Steph walked in. Now it’s all he can think about.

About how compromised a position he’s in. About how he’s in Steph’s rightful spot.

She doesn’t look mad. She looks amused more than anything else. Fond, even. “Noodle, huh?”

“Yeah,” he answers. “Our new cat.”

“Our new cat.”

“Yep,” he says. “It’s only right. Grace helped tame him, so he’s just as much hers as he is mine.”

“And what’s mine is yours, Stephie.”

She walks over slowly, taking Grace’s instruction as seriously as she’s able. “Got room for a fourth?”

“Of course,” Grace says. She shifts her legs slowly, stilling as Noodle crawls across her lap and into Pete’s to escape the looming presence of Steph. “Shh, it’s alright baby. Steph’s a friend. She’s not going to hurt you.”

“I can’t believe the cat distribution system blessed you of all people,” Steph teases. She leans over as she sits, pressing a kiss to the corner of Grace’s mouth. Noodle shrinks into Pete’s body, ears flat as she does so.

“It’s alright, boy.” He soothes a hand down his back, gesturing for Steph to hold on still finger out. Noodle, now more predictable than scary, leans into to sniff.

And just like that, it’s the four of them.

It feels like a family, though he won’t bring himself to call it that. That feels too intimate, like a proclamation or something.

There’s nothing to proclaim. Nothing’s changed, other than the addition of an orange furball to their group.

Nothing he puts a name to, anyway.

Ted, predictably, isn’t mad. He pretends to be. Huffs around the house when he comes home and bitches nonstop about how cats shed and tear up the furniture.

He doesn’t make Pete get rid of Noodle, though. He just complains and rolls his eyes.

And when he think’s Pete’s not looking, he reaches his hand down and scritches along his neck and back.

Along with Noodle, Grace becomes more of a fixture in his life. She shows up at his doorstep, various bags of cat treats and toys in her hand each time. She spends more time with him. Or, well, with Noodle. The cat takes to her like a fly to honey. For as comfortable as he’s made himself in Pete’s house— and his bed— he’s never more comfortable than when he’s curled up with her.

The second she’s through the door, he’s trotting over to her and demanding to be picked up. He wiggles in her grasp, pawing at her shoulders until she lets him climb up and stand there. He wraps himself around the back of her neck while she walks around and makes herself homey.

It’s quite the sight. Something Pete refuses to be jealous of. If he’s honest with himself, Noodle isn’t his cat. He’s Grace’s.

It’s why when he comes home from studying with Ruth and Richie, he’s only sort of surprised to find her asleep in his bed. Noodle is pressed against her stomach purring happily like she’s all he could ever ask for.

In the dimming afternoon sun, Pete allows himself to look at her, openly, for the second time.

Her hair splays out like a halo against his bedspread. It’s obvious she didn’t mean to fall asleep. Her legs hang over the edge, her sweater still draped over her shoulders. Her weekend clothes are crinkled and messy, completely unlike how she likes to keep herself. The seam of her lips is slightly open, not-quite-snores falling from them. She looks well and truly peaceful and for a moment he thinks there’s nowhere else she belongs.

That thought is quickly overpowered by the overwhelming feeling of wrong. Grace is not his. She isn’t anyone’s, not even Steph’s.

She’s just part of Steph like he is. Part of Noodle, too. But not part of him. If anything, he is an extension of those other things. Just something on the perimeter, dancing along the edges of the constellation of her life.

He’s grateful for it, but there’s also an ache there. One that wasn’t there until the two of them pressed themselves halfway under his couch.

He’s been trying not to think about it.

“Grace,” he whispers, moving to the edge of his bed. Noodle blinks slowly at him, flopping somehow even further into Grace as he purrs. Pete reaches out and brushes the fur out of his face, nuzzling into the touch as he does so.

“Grace,” he tries again. When she doesn’t stir, he redirects his hand to her shoulder, soothing down the length of her arm. She’s warm with sleep and the sunlight that melts in through the cracks in his blinds.

She groans, broken up by the cracks in her voice from rest. “Oh,” she cracks open her eyes and sees him standing over her, all at once shooting up. Noodle meows indignantly at the abrupt movement, stretching out his limbs and walking to the far corner where he sits and watches them. “I’m so sorry, gosh. I didn’t mean—you must think—”

She stammers. Panic creeps into her voice. “It’s fine,” he assures, but she’s already clambering up, pink blooming across her face while she fixes her clothes. “Don’t worry, I’m not mad.”

“You should be. I shouldn’t be in your bed. I’m not Steph, it’s not like I can just walk in here like that and—and fall asleep in your bed.”

“How did you even get in here?” he asks. It’s the wrong thing to say, apparently, because she shrinks back.

There’s a weird twinge in his chest at her reaction. A feeling that’s been happening more and more. “Ted let me in. Said you’d be back soon. I was looking for Noodle and found him in here. Didn’t want to move him.”

He smiles, tries to be reassuring. “That’s cute.” The pink turns darker, almost red as it reaches her ears. He surprises himself with how much he likes it. “If it makes you feel any better, you officially have my permission. You know, to come in whenever you want. Nap in my bed. I don’t care. Make yourself at home.”

“Pete,” she admonishes. A smile pulls at the corner of her mouth; one she’s biting back with as much strength as she can muster. “A young woman should not be in a young man’s bed. We’re not married.”

Heat creeps its way up his own neck at her words. The implications of it, of Grace in his bed in any way untoward, was the furthest thing from his mind. But now, he pictures it. Her wrapped up in his arms while they sleep, Steph tucked against his back. Her… in other ways.

He coughs, breaking through the awkwardness he’s sure only he feels. “Not like that. Just, you know, it’s fine. Besides, I’m sure you’re in Steph’s bed all the time. What’s the difference?”

They both know what the difference is, and whatever awkward energy he was feeling before crashes down on him like a tidal wave. Grace looks at her shoes, the wall, the door. Anywhere but Pete. And Pete? He looks at Grace looking away from him.

He’s gone and fucked it up. And the worst part is he doesn’t even know what he fucked up. 

“I should go,” she says. “I only meant to come give Noodle that.” She gestures toward the bag of catnip on his nightstand.

Disappointment joins the guilt and awkward churning of his stomach. He wants to tell her to stay, to spend time with him and Noodle, but the words get caught. There’s no real way to say it, anyway. Not in a way that wouldn’t sound weird and pushy. And he has no justification for that. No real reason for her to stay other than enjoying her company. And with the way she looks like she’s about to crawl out of her skin, he doubts she wants to enjoy his right now.

“Okay.”

He sees her out, standing by the door as she mounts her Schwinn and rides off without looking back. Her sweater whips in the wind as she turns out of his driveway, pink helmet secure on her head. His eyes follow her out of sight until it’s just him and Noodle, both equally disappointed.

“Well, totally biffed that, didn’t I, Noodle?”

The cat at his ankles rubs against his calf, full bodied and unbothered by his conflict.

He’s not even sure why he’s feeling this way. It’s not like anything happened. Or didn’t happen? It was just a weird interaction, punctuated by tension he can’t name. Doesn’t want to name. 

Doesn’t want to look in the eye.

The door shuts with a soft click and he settles on the couch, pulling out his phone and opening the messages of the only person he thinks might settle the feeling in his chest.

Pete [3:42pm]: you busy?

The response comes almost immediately, because of course it does. Steph is always on her phone. Always tapping away at random apps and posting asinine bullshit online that he’ll never understand. So, of course she sees his message. And of course she’s not doing anything.

She’s next to him within fifteen minutes, her car parked on the street to leave room for when Ted eventually comes back from wherever he fucked off to.

Noodle takes her lap over his, paws perched on her chest as he rubs his face against her chin. Steph coos as she pets him, balancing affection from them both.

He can’t really explain the need to be close to her right now. He always wants to be near her, but this is different. Like he’s seeking something out. Comfort, maybe. Or reassurance. Like he’s not fucking this whole thing up just by existing.

“What’s bothering you?” She asks, shifting her attention from the cat to him. He’s got his head on her shoulder, hand playing with the frayed edges of the rips in her jeans. His height forces him to slouch in a way that he knows isn’t good for his spine, but he can’t bring himself to care.

“Nothing,” he lies.

“You didn’t call me over here just to sit and pout. Tell me what’s going on.”

He opts to stay silent, fingers twisting at the fringe until it pulls away entirely. She watches him avoid her eyes.

“This isn’t about Grace, is it?” The blood in his veins runs cold, stomach all but falling out of his ass. He straightens, looking at her in a way he knows is probably pitiful. “I thought you two were doing fine. You’ve been spending more time together.”

“We have.”

“Did you fight?”

“We didn’t,” he says. It feels like it, sort of. The way she left, abrupt and without a goodbye, felt like a fight. Without sharp words or cutting insults, the sort of fighting he isn’t used to. Except nothing really happened. He’s just sort of a mess of unnamed emotions swirling in his gut. Steph being here makes it better, though. Her presence is enough to fall into, familiar comfort warming him through. “I just wanted to see you, that’s all.”

“Oh, that’s what this is about. Haven’t been giving you enough attention, huh?” It comes out teasing, but there’s an undercurrent there. She abandons petting Noodle, turning to wrap her arms around his shoulders and peer up at him. Her tone shifts. “I’ve been spending too much time with her. I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s not that,” he says. He means to keep going, but words continue to escape him. It’s hard to put language to something he doesn’t really understand. It’s not Steph and Grace being together that bothers him. He’s not even sure if bothered is the right word. He just feels weird. Empty, sort of. Like there’s something missing. He’d tell her about the guilt, but he can’t even figure out why he’s feeling it.

“This whole thing, it’s a lot,” Steph says. Her hand comes up to brush a loose strand of hair behind his ear, the gesture gentle and altogether significant. Her lips are soft where they brush his cheek. “We don’t really know what we’re doing. It’s okay if it’s too much.”

The thought of Steph ending their arrangement feels like a knife to the gut. He studies her, finds she’s completely serious.

If he agreed to that, selfish and impulsive, he’d break her heart. Or maybe he’d break his own. He’s not sure. Besides, that’s not what he wants. Not really. The problem is that he doesn’t know what he wants.

“No, I’m fine with it. I promise.”

“I know Grace is having a hard time with it, too. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea. It sounded good, but it feels complicated. Like we’re balancing something fragile. I don’t want either of you to feel like a second option. I just don’t know how to do that.”

It’s funny how two people can feel the same set of emotions for entirely different reasons. Insecurity bleeds between them. Guilt lingers on the edges. Want screams itself raw. 

“I’m not a second option,” he tells her, “I know that. I don’t know what’s going on with me, but it’s not you and Grace. I just feel—I don’t know. Weird, I guess. Fragile.”

He gives Steph back the language she gave him, and it feels right on his tongue. The first word to make sense. He is fragile, walking a tightrope with no safety netting beneath. But it’s not because Steph is in love with Grace as much as she’s in love with him. It’s something else. Frustrating in the way it remains unnamed. “What did Grace say?”

“Just that things between the three of us feel different now. She isn’t sure why. Or if she is, she hasn’t told me. I bet it’s the same as what you’re feeling. Maybe you two should talk about it.”

“Maybe,” he agrees. Talking about it feels like both a good and a bad idea. Now they’re in a weird emotional limbo. The tightrope stretches between them. If he talks to her he has an equal chance of making it to the other side or it snapping beneath his feet. 

“Think about it,” she says. Her back is warm when she shifts them until she lays back. Her weight, along with her presence, grounds him. It’s enough to beat back whatever’s going on with him. “I just want you both to be happy.”

Ted finds them like that, pressed against each other with Noodle on the far end of the couch.

“Fucking disgusting,” he complains. “Where’s your other girlfriend, Petey? She was here when I left.”

“Not my girlfriend,” he shoots back.

“Sure, whatever you say, man. Last I checked she was taking a nap in your fucking bed. Looked pretty girlfriend to me.”

Steph shoots him a curious look. “Grace was here?”

“That’s her name!” Ted shouts as he starts making a mess in the kitchen. He clangs around as he pulls pots out of the cabinet, the noise of it loud enough to drown the television entirely. “Grace. What a name. Still don’t know how a nerd like you managed to bag two women.”

Pete ignores him in favor of answering Steph. “She came by to drop off some catnip while I was out. Fell asleep petting Noodle.”

At the mention of his nap, Noodle meows.

“Oh,” is all Steph says. She looks from him to the cat, and he can see the way gears turn in her head. “You should really talk to her.”

“I don’t know.”

“I just don’t want things to go unsaid. This is already delicate. If we don’t say things we’re thinking, it’ll fester.”

He’s not sure when she got so wise. For someone with a borderline failing GPA, she always manages to hit him with something so profound it makes his head spin. Book smarts mean nothing in the face of Stephanie Lauter.

“I will,” he says. He finds it’s not a lie like he first intended it to be. At most, it was supposed to be a half-truth. Something to reassure her when she looks as uncertain as he feels. But now, looking at her, he finds he means it.

“Good.” She presses a quick kiss to his lips, one Ted makes sure to hoot and holler about, before pushing off the couch. “I’ve got to go. My dad’s got some important dinner tonight and I need to be home to show face. Play the role of the perfect political daughter. You know the deal.”

“God, he sucks.”

“Yeah,” she says, shrugging her coat back on and making her way to the door. She kisses him again, soundly, before leaving.

Once the door is shut, Ted descends on him like a rabid dog. “Seriously, tell me how you did it.”

“I didn’t do anything.” He pushes past his brother and into the kitchen, pulling a cutting board down to help with dinner.

“Bullshit. First the mayor’s daughter, and now the Chasity girl? I mean, fuck, I didn’t even know her parents let her out of the house and then all of a sudden she’s in our living room half the damn week.”

“For the last time, I’m not fucking dating Grace.”

“Okay, okay, jeez. Don’t get your panties in a twist.” Ted joins him at the counter, getting the chicken on the stove and setting to peel potatoes. Pete handles the knife in his hand carefully, dicing vegetables. “I’m just saying.”

“Well, you’re wrong.”

“Okay, Jesus.”

They work in silence; the only sound is the sizzling of the stove and his knife against the cutting board. Ted doesn’t bother him again. Whether because he’s grown bored of the conversation or because he senses his younger brother’s frustration, Pete’s not sure. He’s thankful for it, though. It gives him space to think.

Ted’s words knock around in his skull like caged birds. He tries to swat them away, but they have nowhere to go.

He’s not dating Grace, but the idea of it stays with him like a winter cold. No matter how much medicine he takes or tissues he blows through, it hangs around.

Dating Grace isn’t an option. She’s already taken. She is Steph’s as much as he is, and that’s the arrangement they’ve made. It doesn’t matter how much time they’ve spent together, or how close they’ve gotten since Noodle came around. Nothing changes the deal they all made with each other.

Polyamory. Steph dating Grace and Pete at the same time, but the two of them remaining separate. No room in the equation for another dynamic, another couple. Or throuple? It doesn’t make sense.

But none of this makes sense. They just fell into it. Steph just fell into Grace the same way she fell into him. But just because that happened doesn’t mean he’s allowed to fall into Grace, too.

“I don’t even know how that would work,” he spits. His frustration with himself comes out in the motion of his knife, blade meeting carrots with more force than necessary. “I already have a girlfriend. And Steph is more than enough for me. It’s not like I could have two girlfriends. That doesn’t make sense.”

“Whoa, what did those carrots ever do to you?” Ted asks. He finishes the last of the potatoes, moving to flip the chicken. A sharp sizzle cuts through the kitchen. “Who cares if you’ve got a girlfriend. Last I checked, Steph didn’t. What, is she the only one allowed to date two people?”

“She’s not,” he huffs. Except she is. Those are the rules. The unspoken part of the agreement. Steph dates them both so long as they’re okay with it. And they are. He is.

“Then why the fuck are you pouting. Just ask Grace out. I’m sure she’d say yes.”

“I don’t like her like that.” Even as he says it, the words taste wrong on his lips. He bites the inside of his cheek, copper blooming on his tongue.

“Do you think I’m stupid? I’ve known you your whole life. I see the way you look at her. Denial is a hell of a drug, Petey. She wants you, so bag her. It’s not every day you get to bang two pieces of ass like them.”

The knife hits the counter with a sharp clang. “Don’t talk about her like that. You don’t know anything. You just sleep with whoever’ll give you the time of day. This isn’t the same thing. Grace isn’t like that. And besides, I wouldn’t do that to her.”

Ted stops his fussing at the stove and turns to look at Pete. The venom on his tongue cuts sharp, defenses rising like spears.

Something shifts, then. Imperceptible but tangible between the two of them. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize how serious this was for you.”

“It’s not,” he cuts. Now that the vegetables are done and diced, he finds himself restless. His hands reach for nothing before setting on the counter, shoulder hunching in.

“Look,” Ted says, “I’m no expert on love, but I’m serious when I say if you want it, you should go for it. At least try.”

“It’ll ruin everything,” Pete says, all too quick. It’s the first admission of guilt, the first truth spoken out loud. As much of a confession as saying the whole thing. Ted only looks at him, rare sympathy in his eyes.

“It might not, though. Wouldn’t you rather know than wonder for the rest of your life?”

The words are soft when they’re spoken, the moment thin and brittle between them. Ted is everything Pete’s not; confident, boisterous, and altogether sleezy. But when he wants to be, in these few and far between moments between them, he’s caring.

He loves him, this much Pete knows. And when he wants to be, he can be the archetypal big brother.

Vulnerable and raw, Pete can’t help himself when he asks, “How do you do it?”

“What?”

“Go for things. Get what you want. Know what you want. You make it look so easy. When someone rejects you or things end, you just brush it off and keep moving. It’s like you’re not scared of what might happen.”

Ted doesn’t answer at first. He just keeps looking at Pete as though he’s trying to read his mind. Like if he stares hard enough, he’ll see right through everything and straight into his heart. “I am scared,” he admits, “but the fear is part of it. You won’t ever know if you don’t try. The knowing is in the trying.”

He turns back to the stove, wooden spoon scraping up burnt bits of chicken left from inattention. “Besides, all those girls—they don’t mean anything. They’re not the real thing. Wondering, not going for it, that’s the real torture. Not the rejection.”

There’s a finality in his tone that tells Pete the conversation is over. He knows, from years of experience, that if he pushes any further, he’ll just get the same annoying brother he’s used to. Deflections and insults, all signatures of Ted.

He turns back to the vegetables, gnarled from his knife work, and lets it sink in.

He eats dinner in front of the television and lets it simmer.

He lays in bed and his entire afternoon plays on repeat in his mind. Grace in his bed. Steph on his couch. Ted in their kitchen. It all feels significant, somehow. Like an answer to a question he didn’t ask.

He can’t unknow it. Can’t unrealize it.

Grace with her freckles and beauty marks and gentle hands. Grace with the way Noodle loves her more than any of them, and she loves him back just as hard. Grace with her back pressed against Steph’s chest while a movie plays out in front of them.

Grace in his bed.

Grace in his arms.

Fuck.

He scrubs his hands over his face. Old, faded glow in the dark stars hang over his head, mocking him. They tell him to reach for them, just out of grasp. They whisper things he can’t say out loud.

That he likes her.

He likes Grace Chasity.

More than he should. More than he’s allowed to.

But Ted’s right. There was no rule in this that he’s not also allowed to date someone else. Polyamory isn’t restrictive, and neither is Steph. If she’s okay with it– 

She might already know. The look in her eyes earlier begged worry, but it might have also held something else. Pity, maybe. Sympathy. Understanding. 

He wonders if this was how she felt before she came clean. Guilty and ashamed of harboring feelings for two people at once. It’s an awful feeling. Like he betrayed something by accident. There were tears in her eyes when she told him and the moment he saw he knew he’d do anything to take that feeling away. Now that it’s his to bear, he knows nothing can absolve it.

Nothing but his own actions.

Sleep is a restless thing that escapes him. As Saturday turns to Sunday, he finds himself more exhausted than before. The sun slides up the sky and in through his bedroom window, stealing the last hopes he had for rest.

A bright red seven mocks him from the clock in the corner. Grace is at church right now, halfway through her weekly sermon after which she’ll congregate and make pleasant small talk with the leaders. Her parents will take her out to breakfast and she’ll return home for her weekly chores. She won’t be free until the afternoon. 

He’s got plenty of time to overthink this.

Like what he’s even going to say to her when he sees her. Words spin like daisy wheels in his mind, endless combinations of syllables and phrases that hardly make any sense.

Hey, Grace, somewhere between you becoming Steph’s girlfriend and me stealing a cat out of the woods, I might have fallen in love with you.

Nope, too strong.

Grace, I know things have been weird lately, but with your permission I’d like to make them weirder. I have a huge, stupid crush on you.

Nope, too— well, weird.

You know, Noodles really seems to like you. Which is a coincidence because I think I really like you, too.

Sweet, sort of, but still wrong.

Outside his bedroom the sun continues its ascent in the sky. Somewhere in the apartment Ted clangs around, incapable of being quiet. The sound draws him out, followed by the scent of burning bacon.

“Jesus, Ted, what the hell are you doing?”

“What,” Ted grumbles. It’s a wonder the smoke alarm hasn’t gone off with the way it billows out of the kitchen. “Can’t a guy make breakfast for his little brother? Is that a crime or something?”

Pete just scoffs, sitting at the kitchen table a few feet away. In front of him, a scene unfolds: Ted, wearing nothing but a loose pair of sweatpants, yanks a smoking pan off the stove while he damn near burns his exposed stomach on the edge of the burner. Yellow eggs stare garishly at him from a plate on the countertop. Noodles sits in his spot at the edge of the counter, watching on in amusement and waiting for a scrap of food to drop.

Pete pretends not to look as Ted accidentally drops a bit of bacon in his direction.

“How do you even survive on your own?”

“I don’t,” Ted chirps. “I’ve got you to keep me alive!”

Pete answers his wink with an eye roll. Fondness creeps around the edges. “Yeah, we’re two peas in a pod, aren’t we?”

“Look,” Ted goes on, “I’ve got, uh, plans today. I’ll be out late. You and Noodles hold down the fort, okay?”

“You got it,” Pete answers.

“Don’t go getting into any trouble.”

“I won’t.”

“And make sure you use protection.”

“Ted.”

He drops a plate of food in front of Pete, hands up in faux surrender. “I’m just saying.”

“Well, say less,” Pete shoots. The food looks edible despite the way the edges of the bacon are caught. He pours too much ketchup on the eggs and accepts a cup of coffee when it’s placed in front of him.

“My lips are sealed.” Ted drags his fingertips across his mustache, miming a lock at the end. “Don’t wait up for me.”

Once breakfast is finished up, Ted shrugs on his jacket and gives Noodle his obligatory scratches before disappearing for the day. Their conversation from last night still plays out in Pete’s head, raw and unfocused.

The fear is part of it. 

The knowing is in the trying. 

“Oh, Noodles.” The cat sits near the table, eyeing Pete up with a feigned disinterest as his nose tips towards the plate of food. He’s waiting, uncaring for anything other than scraps and head pats. “We’re really in it now, aren’t we?”

His phone sits, untouched, in his bedroom. Three hours feels like a haze, lost in the abstract bullshit of his mind. It isn’t until a distant ping echoes through the silence, breaking him from his thoughts.

Grace [12:03pm]: I got something for Noodles. May I come over for a bit?
Grace [12:05pm]: It’s alright if you’re busy. I can come another time.
Grace [12:06]: Or, if you’d prefer, I can come for just a moment. I’ll drop it off and head home.

He thumbs over the messages. It’s unlike her to text back-to-back like this, even less so to sound so anxious.

He remembers, with clarity, the way Steph had told him she’s struggling to. The thought had sparked a culpable sort of hope in him. Like he wasn’t alone in the twisted mess of his feelings.

But now, looking at the messages, he wonders if it’s for other reasons. That maybe he’d made her uncomfortable. Or if she’d been uncomfortable this whole time, just unable to voice it.

Pete [12:09pm]: You can come over, I don’t mind. I’m not doing anything today, stay as long as you’d like

She heart reacts it a moment later and just like that, it’s set. Grace will be in his house within the hour.

He better not fuck this up.

Time gets wasted, as it ought to be, with him in his room rifling through his closet. Shirts get tossed to the side, pants scatter themselves on the floor, and every single article of clothing Pete owns is dubbed entirely inadequate.

He doesn’t remember being like this with Steph. Things with her happened so fast he hardly had time to think about it. One second they were cheating on a test, the next he was sitting across from her at Pasquali’s eating breadsticks and making her laugh hard enough that her cola shot out of her nose. There was no time to be nervous, to pick outfits out and fret over whether or not he was doing the right thing.

Now, while the minutes pass like hours, he wonders when things got so hard. Peter Spanoffski was never meant to find love in high school, let alone twice. He was not built for wooing girls and grand confessions. He was supposed to bide his time until graduation and make a better life for himself outside of Hatchetfield.

Slow burning love was not supposed to be his story. It probably still isn’t. 

The doorbell rings.

Time has slipped away like the sneaky, twisted bastard it is. Its illusion of safety and anticipation melts with a shock of hot water, leaving him wet and stranded in his own anxiety.

He shrugs on the first shirt he sees, a Star Wars t-shirt so old the text has almost faded completely. The gaudy font is atrocious, but he doesn’t allow himself to think about it. He yanks on a pair of black sweatpants in a desperate attempt to look and feel casual. As if that’s even possible. 

Grace, when he opens the door, is dressed far more formally than he is. She has a white button up tucked into the waistband of her jeans. A blue vest sits neatly on top of it, and on top of that is a simple winter coat. Her face is pink from the wind; her hair mused from her helmet.

She looks beautiful.

“You look freezing,” he says, stepping aside so she can come in.

She stands, stiff and out of place, in his entry way. It’s not unlike how she stood that first day with Noodle, who comes out to greet her almost instantly.

“Noodle,” she calls, crouching over to meet his gaze close to the ground. “I’ve got something for you, little guy.”

She produces from her bag a stuffed animal in the shape of a goose and obviously handmade. “It’s got catnip in it, your favorite.”

Noodle lunges for it almost immediately, flopping onto his side and bunny kicking it with his feet. His teeth sink into the head before nuzzling it and Pete watches in fascination as the cat becomes transfixed. “You spoil him.”

“He deserves it,” Grace says. “Who knows what his life was like before you found him. Animals have so few years with us. It’s up to us to make sure they’re happy and loved.”

In his chest, his heart seizes at her words. Both because she’s right and because the softness with which she speaks is overwhelming. Now that he said the hard thing out loud once, it takes him completely.

He likes her. He might love her.

It feels like drowning.

“Grace,” he starts, entirely unsure of how to continue. She looks up at him, eyes light and curious. She stands upright to meet his gaze, a full head shorter than him but still managing to make him feel smaller than he’s ever felt.

“Pete?”

Now’s his chance. She’s right in front of him. All of her attention is on him. All he has to do is say it. 

Just say it.

“Steph.” The name falls from his lips without warning. He doesn’t mean to say it, nor does he mean to say, “she said we should talk. That you’re struggling.”

The look on her face shifts from soft to guarded. Her spine straightens, hands jamming into the pockets of her jeans. “What did she say?”

Well, shit. He kicks himself mentally, but he can’t pivot the conversation now. “Nothing much, just that we should talk.”

“I don’t think there’s much to talk about,” she says. Even her tone is guarded. She steps back from him, towards the door, and he feels the moment slipping away. All morning he spent thinking about this and he’s already fucking it up. “I’m fine if you’re fine. The entire thing is fine.”

“It is,” he says, a futile attempt to reassure her. She takes another step back. “I’m fine, too. It’s just, it feels like something's going on.”

“Must be your mind playing tricks on you.” She eyes him with the wariness of a caged animal. His own pulse trips under his skin, both out of anxiety and worry. Between this and yesterday, he can feel her pulling away. Can feel the opportunity slipping from his fingers.

Honest, Pete, you need to be honest.

“I—” his voice catches again, breaking on the single syllable. Heat creeps up the back of his neck. “Are you sure?”

God dammit, Peter.

“I’m sure, thank you for checking,” Grace says. Another step back. “I should go. My parents are expecting me. I told them I’d be home to help with chores.”

And just like that, she’s got one hand on the doorknobs and a foot through the threshold. She moves swiftly; an escape staged as an obligation.

“Fuck,” he whispers to no one but himself and follows her out. “I thought maybe you could stay for a bit. Hang with me and Noodle. He misses you.”

“We spent all day together yesterday.” She’s down the porch steps to where her Schwinn is propped up. He watches, dumbfounded as she grabs the handlebars.

“But what if I miss you?”

This stops her. She turns, brow pinched and lips set in a thin line. The picture of careful poise and intentional movement.

“What?”

“I miss you, too. Both of us do. Stay for a bit. We can watch a show and you can leave after. Just— please?”

She studies him, gripping the handlebars like they’re the only thing tethering her to the world. Distantly he wishes he had something to hold onto, too. The seconds between his plea and her answer feel endless. A chasm threatening to open up and swallow him whole.

“Okay,” comes eventually. A sigh of relief paired with the dread of what comes next.

She follows him inside. Each hesitant step feels like a sentencing.

He should have taken the out he gave her. He should have told his brother to fuck off and keep his advice to himself. He should have taken whatever feelings rip across his ribcage and shoved them down. So far down they’d never see the light of day.

He can’t do this. Not with Grace standing, once again in front of him, looking at him like she doesn’t know what to do with herself.

She hasn’t looked at him like that in so long. Not since the early days of their not-quite-friendship, when she started hanging around their odds and ends group. Her tentative seat at their lunch table. Her unsure gaze the first time she accepted their invitation to hang out.

The way she could hardly look him in the eye the entire week following the first time Steph kissed her.

He’d give anything to take that wavering look off her face.

“What do you want to watch?” She asks him as she shrugs her jacket off.

He needs to do it. He needs to tell her, right now, before it all slips away.

His hand grabs her arm as she walks by, light enough that she could pull free but enough to stop her in her tracks. She turns to face him, same tentative look. Same guarded eyes.

“Grace,” he starts.

“Yes?”

He has to. He can do this.

He can’t stop himself.

The first touch of his lips to hers feels like heaven incarnate. Like a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding and can only now release, greedily gasping for the next intake of fresh air his lungs have been screaming for. She’s soft and warm, the faint taste of cherry on her lips from her chapstick. It’s so much different than when he kisses Steph. It’s not heady and fevered, but delicate and homey.

Something he never knew he needed.

It’s over before anything really happens. Just that one simple brush suspended in time when in actuality it only lasts a second. Reality crashes down like an avalanche, starting at the base of his spine and rising up and up and up until he’s buried in it.

“Fuck, Grace—oh shit, I’m so sorry.”

She doesn’t jump away from him like he expects. She stands, frozen and peering up at him with half lidded eyes and a dazed expression. Her hands hover just inches from his arms, reaching out but not touching.

When she speaks, her voice is a small thing. Fragile and confused. “Pete?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean— well, I did mean, I just didn’t mean to like that.”

“What?”

Panic rises with the wave. And, well, Pete’s never been good at panic. He talks too much, too quick. It all sort of falls out of him like broken glass. Little pieces of himself chipping away until there’s nothing left but sharp, dangerous edges only he can cut himself on.

And cut himself he does, because he can’t stop talking. “I’m the one who’s struggling. Not with you and Steph— that’s fine, but I can’t stop thinking about you. I don’t really know when, or how. I just know that ever since we got Noodle, probably before that, I think I’ve been harboring this weird, unexpected crush on you.”

“Pete, stop.”

“I’m so sorry for kissing you like that. I should have asked. I don’t even know if you wanted to kiss me back, which you probably didn’t. I just did it. And, like, you know there’s no pressure, right? Just because I kissed you like that doesn’t mean we have to again. Even though I want to, would love to, but if you hate me now, I’d understand.”

“I don’t—”

“Oh god, I ruined this, didn’t I? We had something good. You, me, and Steph. It was all fine and I just fucked it up. You can go home. I understand—”

Whatever he was going to say next gets muffled by the press of her palm against his mouth. She’s impossibly closer now, standing on her tiptoes to get close enough to shut him up. Her eyes hold that same confusion and he’s shocked to find a lack of betrayal alongside it. Instead, he finds mirth.

“And people call me high strung,” she says.

Her cheeks are tinged a beautiful shade of pink. This close, he can see the way it darkens her freckles and beauty marks. The pupils of her eyes are blown wide leaving the fainted ring of brown in their wake. Lavender overpowers his senses.

“I lied,” she goes on, “before. I am struggling. I just didn’t want you to know.”

Slowly, she takes her hand away from his mouth. It’s weird how he misses its warmth, and he’s not sure if it’s because it was Grace’s touch on his skin or because it prevented him from digging a deeper grave. Still, he keeps his mouth shut. The only response he offers is a blink, a feeble sigh.

“I didn’t want anyone to know. It’s hard enough being with Steph like this. It scares me. And her being with you is terrifying. I’m always scared I’m intruding on something. Like I’m taking up space that doesn’t belong to me.”

Her hand, still suspended between them, ghosts down the front of his body, veering off to the right to offer the faintest brush of fingertips on the back of his hand. Electricity buzzes as the touch. Thousands of tiny fireworks setting off in his nerve endings. Fires burning beneath the skin.

“More than anything, though, I think you scare me the most.”

“Me?” His voice cracks on the single syllable. Embarrassment joins the rush of color on his skin. She’s so close, toeing even closer. The idea that he’s something to be scared of is almost laughable. Six feet of lanky limbs and no real sense of balance, a voice that hasn’t aged out of pubescent cracks and breaks as if he’s not eighteen.

She doesn’t answer, she just keeps looking at him, eyes searching for answers he’s not sure he has. Gravity pulls at his center, his shoulders, his neck. It pulls him down the same way it seems to pull her up until her hands are back on his face, framing his cheeks and threading through the baby hairs above his ears.

This time, it’s her who kisses him. It’s a soft, chaste kiss. Something worth chasing if he didn’t feel two seconds from plummeting to his death. The tightrope beneath them sways, violent and unsteady, and he is nothing but anchored to her.

“Yes,” she breathes, puffs of air ghosting across his face. “You, Pete. You scare me so much.”

He can’t help the way he presses closer, just once more, and returns her kiss. Another chaste, gentle thing. There’s no way she can’t feel his heart hammering under his skin.

“I want to be brave,” she says. “Like Steph. Like you. You guys make it look so easy. I want that. I want to have the things I want.”

“What do you want?” He whispers. His voice is thin and quiet, like speaking too loudly will break the moment.

“Both of you,” she answers, voice just as small. Her eyes are closed now, crinkled at the corners like she’s willing something into existence. “I just don’t know if I’m allowed to.”

“I want that, too. I just don’t know if I’m allowed to.”

She meets his eyes then. “We need to talk to Steph.”

The idea is overwhelming. This is already too much for him, head swimming and lightheaded with the simple feeling of being close to Grace. Of Kissing her not once, but thrice. Of her holding his face in her hands like he’s something she wants to touch.

Confessions lie in a helpless heap on the floor between them. He feels torn open and raw. He wants to hide. “We will, but can stay here, for just a little longer?”

This pulls a rueful smile from the corners of her lips. She looks behind him, to where Noodle is almost definitely perched on the couch and waiting for them. “Okay. You promised me TV.”

And he delivers on that. They wrap themselves up on the couch, Grace’s front pressed to his as they lay back. She rests her head, turned, on his chest while something stupid he doesn’t pay attention to runs in the background. All he can think about is the way she lets him tangle his fingers in her hair, scratching lightly at her scalp. Noodle sits on her back, Pete’s other hand offering him halfhearted scritches he’s all too happy to accept.

He knows now. He gets it. The trying. The wanting. It’s all wrapped up in one delicate bubble. It’s theirs– all of theirs, once Steph lets herself in almost two hours later. Grace doesn’t jump away from him how he expects. Instead, she blinks sleepily at Steph, reaching her hand out to beg for her presence.

And Steph joins them, because of course she does.

And Steph doesn’t care, because of course she doesn’t.

And for the first time in maybe his entire life, he feels the last piece of a puzzle slotting into place.

He feels whole.

 

Notes:

My fiancee suggested this fic plot on a five hour car drive. Everyone say, "thank you em's fiancee."

This was so stupidly fun and I'm excited to be able to post it. These three idiots all love each other and they are just blindly fumbling through the quintessential teenage experience of falling in love. Shout out to Peter Spankoffski for being oblivious. There is a severe lack of Pete/Grace dynamic exploration in my opinion (if I"m wrong, shoot me fic suggestions because I want them), so this is my contribution to the fandom. Also, I finally wrote Ted into a fic. He's a bastard who loves his brother and I love him.

I hope everyone has as much fun reading it as I did writing it. Thank you all for reading. Comments are my main source of protein and I am malnourished. Please feed me your thoughts.

You can find me here on Twitter or on Tumblr.