“You’re the one gettin’ all of that tonight,” Rachel quipped before she dove through the closed door once again.
* * *
“The challenge here is to not eat yourself into a food coma,” Alex grinned as the waiter collected their menus and moved off. “I’ve only been here a couple times, but as far as I can tell everything’s awesome.”
“I refuse to go home sluggish,” said Onyx. “You can take us here again sometime and I’ll pig out on lobster. Not tonight.”
“You come here with your girlfriends?” asked Molly. “Do they actually eat?”
“They eat when they feel like it. I’m the only one who needs food.” He paused, his eyes still on the redhead. “We’ve been talking about me and my life all day long.”
“What’s wrong with that?” she asked, sipping her beer with a grin. “We’re interested. You’re an interesting guy.”
“I’m not a narcissist.”
“Wow, check out the five-dollar words,” chuckled Onyx.
“No, seriously. This is back to the conversation in the shop today. I don’t know Onyx nearly as well as I’d like-“
“Got to know her pretty well already from what I gathered,” quipped Molly.
“-and I’ve spent more time with her than I have with you.”
Molly swallowed another pull of her beer. “Are we dating?” she asked. “Is that what this is? A date? Are you dating both of us?”
He grinned back at her. “That’s for you to decide. Tell me tomorrow.”
“This sure is an attitude change after dodging us for a month,” said Onyx. “Is this the new you or something?”
“I’m… feeling a lot better. About everything. I don’t even know where to begin.” He paused. “How different do I seem?”
Onyx fell silent and openly stared. Alex knew she saw things ordinary men and women could not. She shared a look with Molly as if to silently compare her impressions to her partner’s. “You’re still you. Whatever changed from everything we did today, it didn’t turn you into a player.” She paused. “We can both still take you at your word.”
“I owe you more than I can say for today, but that’s not why I’m so interested in you. Both,” he added, glancing at Molly.
“Does that take effort?” Molly asked with obvious amusement.
“What?”
“Splitting your attention like that. Two women at once.”
“Hey, I’m not gonna pretend I’m a pro at this,” Alex shrugged. “It’s only been a month, like you said. Rachel and Lorelei are full-on serious about each other, too. It’s not an act just to get me turned on.”
“Does it?”
“Hell, yeah!” The ladies laughed. He continued. “Ever since Lorelei and I got together and my sex life got crazy, I’ve felt like there was something wrong about it all. Like I’m doing something awful by letting sex take such a priority between her and I, or for fooling around with other women. I keep wondering if something’s just wrong about all this. But then I think, ‘Says who?’ Society? Strangers whose opinions I shouldn’t care about anyway?
“Hurting people is bad. Lying is bad. Everyone has to take responsibility for themselves. Past that… nobody has a lock on how people should handle all this. Nobody has the right answer. It’s all just a matter of opinion. I’m interested in you. It seems mutual. My girlfriends are fine with it. Why should I give a damn what anyone else thinks?”
“You don’t have to justify for us,” shrugged Molly. “Our Practice holds that sex is morality-neutral. Like you say, it’s not how much you hook up or with how many people. It’s about the context and the way you go about it.”
“Still kinda playing with fire, though,” Onyx noted. She glanced at her girlfriend. “We got away with it once. Doesn’t mean we won’t get burned.”
“I have faith,” Molly told her. “Like you said… he’s still the same guy we scoped out in photography class. Creepy stalker behavior in cemeteries aside.”
“Do you always scope people out like this?” Alex asked. “Like with the aura-reading thing?”
“I have to concentrate a little,” answered Onyx with a shake of her head. “It’s not hard, but I have to think about it. If I saw everyone’s auras all the time, I’d probably go nuts. Or at least stagger around like I’m stoned.”
“I have to concentrate more,” Molly admitted. “She’s better at that than I am.”
“But you’ve been doing this longer, right? You’re a couple years older than Onyx. How long have you been working magic?”
“Practicing,” the ladies both corrected. Molly grinned more. “You’re determined to make this conversation about us, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, but I’m not trying to dodge questions. Ask me anything,” he said, “but I asked you first.”
Molly shot Onyx a curious look, and got only a shrug in response. “I already got a first date out of him.”
“You got lunch at Dick’s and an afternoon shagging,” Molly countered, “and everyone can make their own stupid puns in their heads without sharing out loud.”
“Just sayin’ he already knows me better than he knows you.”
Molly’s eyes turned back to Alex. “You realize you’re scoring all kinds of points with the way you look at me, right?”
“How am I looking at you?” Alex said. He kept looking at her the same way.
“You know you’re doing it!” she accused playfully. “You know you’ve got a look.”
“What’s it say?”
“It says ‘rawr,’ mostly,” Onyx muttered with a grin.
Alex laughed, looking down at the table for a moment to control his brief blushing, but his eyes-and his look of controlled, intense interest-came back up to Molly once more. “It’s still your turn.”
“I’m from a big family in Phoenix. They disowned the living hell out of me when I came out of the closet. I thought I was fully lesbian, later figured out I’m bi, but whatever. I realized I wasn’t a good Christian on top of all that, so yeah. That was the boot. Friends weren’t much help, either. The only family I had who didn’t freak out on me was my uncle-“
“Her hot uncle,” Onyx chimed in.
“-who lives up here in Seattle,” Molly finished as she poked Onyx. “He took me in, helped me finish high school and get on my feet. I was nineteen when I met Onyx. She was almost done with seventeen.” She gave a little grin. “And just for the record, she made me wait.”
“I wasn’t ready yet,” explained Onyx without a shred of guilt.
“Nothin’ wrong with that,” said Alex. “Still. That couldn’t have been easy.”
“Fuck no, it wasn’t,” Molly huffed. “You see how hot she is. Hell, you’ve seen her naked.”
“Mostly,” he corrected. Molly’s eyebrow went up. Onyx just waited for Alex to finish. “She didn’t take off her bra.”
“Oh, man,” Molly grinned widely, “you’re in for a treat.”
“He lives with Lorelei,” Onyx reminded her. “Like anyone could compete with that. Except maybe an angel, right?”
“It’s not a competition,” Alex replied. “I don’t look at it like that.”
“I’m not worried,” Onyx told him. “I’m just saying.”
He shook his head again. “Hey, I know I’m a letch. I’m a horrible letch. Always. But I don’t rate women’s looks on a scorecard. It’s not like that. I’m either attracted to someone or I’m not. I don’t have a minimum acceptable height and weight ratio or any bullshit like that.”
His pair of dates shared another heavily loaded look. Both had wry grins that spoke volumes to one another. Onyx twirled the mixing straws in her drink. “So your relationship with Lorelei and Rachel is permanent as can be, right? Not just because of magic, but because that’s how you all want it?”
“Yes.”
“And anything else that takes place outside that relationship is secondary to you and the two of them, right?”
“Yes,” he nodded. “Not to short-change anyone, but yes.”
“No, honesty is good,” Onyx said. “Perspective is good. Do they have veto power in your extracurricular activities?”
His lips pursed. “Yes. They haven’t claimed it, but yes.”
“Would you put up with whatever boundary-setting bullshit Molly and I had to do in order to keep ourselves happy with each other?”