“Uh.” I moistened my lips. “Hey. This is… What are you doing here?”
“We wanted to talk to you,” Aaron said softly.
“Oh.”
Will inclined his head. “Can we come in?”
Right. Right. They were standing outside, and thanks to fall beginning to move in, it was cold as balls tonight.
I stood aside and waved them in. As they took off their shoes and coats, my heart pounded. What was this about? They hadn’t responded to me, and now this?
In silence, we moved into the kitchen. No one wanted anything to drink, and if I finished my screwdriver I didn’t know how coherent I’d be. So we sat down—Aaron and Will on the couch, me in the armchair.
Tucking my feet under me, I quietly said, “I, um… I hadn’t heard from you. I texted, but I thought…” I didn’t know how to finish that without sounding like an insecure idiot.
“We know. And we…” Aaron glanced at Will, his features taut.
“We didn’t want to ghost you or leave you high and dry.” Will held my gaze as he slipped his hand into Aaron’s. “We had some things we needed to iron out on our end first.”
“Iron out?” I flicked my eyes back and forth between them. “What do you mean?”
They looked at each other. Then Aaron took a deep breath and faced me. “After you left, we had a little bit of a crisis of our own.” From the way they both shifted uncomfortably, I suspected it hadn’t been a “little bit” of a crisis. He went on, “The thing is, we went into this wanting a play partner. A friend with benefits.”
“Nothing poly,” Will said softly, staring at their joined hands.
Blood pounded in my ears. Where was this going? From heartbeat to heartbeat, I alternated between sure I knew where this was headed and absolutely clueless.
Aaron watched himself rubbing his thumb along the back of Will’s. “We weren’t supposed to get invested, you know? And we agreed not to.” He lifted his gaze and looked right at me. “But we both broke that rule.”
The words slammed against my chest so hard, it took a moment to parse them. “You broke… You broke that rule?” My tongue tried to stick to the roof of my mouth. “What does that mean?” I was pretty sure I knew, but I needed them to spell it out. More than that, I needed them to tell me what it meant for us. Were they just here to explain why they couldn’t see me anymore? Why they couldn’t even handle being friends with me, and they thought I deserved to hear it face to face instead of via text?
Will sat up, still clasping Aaron’s hand. “It means we love you, Kelly.”
Aaron nodded. “Both of us.”
My heart was going a million miles an hour, thumping hard enough I was amazed it didn’t come through in my voice like some kind of panicked vibrato. “You do?”
They both nodded.
I moistened my lips. “But what does that mean? For…” I gestured at them, then myself. “You don’t want to be poly, so if you have feelings for me, then…”
“We didn’t want to be poly,” Aaron said. “We just didn’t know we’d meet someone like you. And the thought of being poly… I won’t lie. It scares me. It’s totally new territory, and I…” He shook his head. “It’s a risk. But it’s one we want to take. With you.”
My head spun. “But how would that work?”
“We don’t know,” Will admitted. “We have some friends who are poly, and we’ll reach out to them for some advice. Otherwise, we probably just have to figure it out as we go.”
Aaron nodded. “If we really need it, I’m almost certain Tom knows some counselors in town who are poly-friendly. They could help us work out the details and find our footing.”
I stared at the two of them, my pulse still racing and my mind reeling as I tried to make sense of what they were saying. They wanted me? For real? Enough that they were willing to get a counselor to help us make this work? My throat got a little tight as I sat back against the armchair. “You guys would do all of that? Just to be with me?”
“Yes,” they both said.
“There’s no ‘just’ being with you,” Will said. “None of us set out for it to happen, but you became a part of this. And we don’t want to lose you.”