Full Package

I sigh. Adele. Things with her ended two years ago. Before Africa.

With her sharp wit and brilliant mind, Adele and I hit it off instantly as residents together, becoming fast friends. Then we became more. She was smart, outgoing, and had the best bedside manner. And by bedside manner, I do mean bedside manner.

Redheaded and leggy and wildly sexual, Adele had seemed like the perfect woman for me. She also liked to experiment.

“Let’s just say the leasing agent wasn’t the first woman to invite me to a threesome,” I tell Josie.

She stares at me expectantly and makes a quick, rolling gesture with her hand as if to say tell me, tell me.

“She thought one of the nurses, a brunette named Simone, was quite hot, and she asked me if I’d consider a threesome. Honestly, that wasn’t my thing. I’m a one-woman kind of guy.”

“No interest in a threesome at all?”

I shake my head. “Nope. Don’t want it. Don’t need it. Not my cup of tea or brandy or Jack Daniels. But she wanted to. It was her fantasy, and I was crazy about her. I wanted to give it to her because it was what she wanted.”

Josie leans closer. “Was that hard, servicing two women at the same time?”

I scoff. “Nope. Because I didn’t.”

“Didn’t do it?”

“Didn’t take care of them both. They took care of each other. I was kind of the third wheel.”

She furrows her brow. “That’s . . . weird?”

I shrug. “A little, maybe.”

“So you split up because of a weird threesome?”

I shake my head. “No. I don’t care about one weird sexual encounter. I mean, we’re all bound to have that, right?”

“Sure.”

“What bothered me was that Adele, my best friend at the time, went on to spend the next several months having an emotional affair with Simone.”

Josie’s jaw drops.

“I don’t know if it was more or less devastating than if she’d been physically cheating, too. All I know is when she broke up with me, she told me she was in love with Simone and had been emotionally involved with her since the threesome.”

Her jaw snaps shut, as she whispers, “That is rough.”

“Yeah, and it wasn’t a secret around the hospital. Everyone knows each other’s business. And some of the docs said, ‘Don’t let it bother you—you don’t have a pussy, so you never stood a chance.’” That was the way a few of my buds had tried to downplay the split. “Fine, she likes women, and she figured it out with me. I’m man enough not to freak out and think I turned her gay. That’s not the issue. But just because I didn’t have the right equipment,” I say, my eyes straying to my crotch, “didn’t make the breakup hurt less.”

Josie runs a hand down my arm. “It’s not about the equipment. It’s not about whether you stood a chance with her. It’s about this. Your heart,” she says, placing her palm on my chest. Her touch feels good, and all my instincts tell me to grab her hand and hold it tight to me. Because I like the way it feels when her hands are on me.

Big shock.

“Exactly. But there was this sense among our colleagues that it should only have hurt if she screwed someone who had a dick. Who cares? That’s not the issue. The issue is we were friends, then we were together, and then she fell in love with someone else and was involved with that person while she was with me. It doesn’t hurt any less simply because I could never”—I sketch air quotes—“compete. And what sucked the most was that I missed her in my life.”

That’s how I learned the hard way that taking friendships to another level only results in heartache.

“I’d miss you if you weren’t in my life,” Josie says softly.

My muscles tighten with that fresh reminder to keep all thoughts of Josie on this level—the friendship one.

Her eyes roam over me, settling on my shoulders. “You’re so tense,” she says softly, then shifts her body, moving behind me, nudging me away from the back of the couch. And before I know it, she’s rubbing my shoulders.

It’s totally unexpected to have Josie’s hands on me. She’s comforting me, even though I’m not hurt anymore. But still, she seems to want to, and holy hell, is she ever talented at this. She digs her fingers into my shoulders, and it feels really fucking good. So good I groan.

“Jesus, Josie. You have great hands.”

“It comes from kneading dough,” she says, and I laugh then lean back into her, resting against her chest as she rubs my shoulders. I’m a hedonist, I’m a cat, I’m a complete pleasure-taker right now. But Josie’s hands are magic, and I have no choice but to succumb to them.

“Your shoulders are tight, sweetie,” she says, her breath soft, tickling my neck.

Sweetie. Baby.

We’ve both used terms of endearment for each other tonight. What the hell is that about?