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“Can I talk to you about something?” Callum asked.
Callum’s words were far too close to we need to talk for Jamie’s comfort. But as he and Callum worked side-by-side in the kitchen at Callum’s flat to prepare dinner, Jamie tried to remain calm. Callum was cooking, a simple pasta with pesto, and Jamie was making salad with lettuce he was now trying not to shred too violently.
“Of course,” Jamie said as if he weren’t half-sick with worry.
“Don’t look nervous.” Callum kissed his shoulder as he lifted the pot lid to check on the pasta. “It’s about my wife.”
“Oh?” Jamie wasn’t sure how that was supposed to make him less nervous.
“She wants to meet you.”
“Really? Why?” This was not where Jamie had expected the conversation to go. He wondered if this was better or worse.
“Because I’m dating you, and you’re important to me, and you’re lovely. I think she’d enjoy seeing you, and I’d like for you to know each other.”
Hope and relief bubbled in Jamie’s chest, but he had no idea what to say.
“That is, if you don’t mind?” Callum asked. “Relationships like this are usually easier if all involved are at least acquaintances.”
Jamie shook his head, probably a little too enthusiastically. “No, I don’t mind. Not at all. I’d like to. It just didn’t occur to me to ask.” Of course, that wasn’t entirely true. It had occurred to Jamie many times, but he hadn’t thought it was his place to invade the privacy of Callum’s marriage that way.
“Good then.” Callum drained the pasta. Jamie went back to shredding lettuce, feeling as he had the last several weeks: Stunned, overwhelmed, and with no idea what his life had become.
* * *
JAMIE SPENT THE FIRST week leading up to Nerea’s arrival feeling like it was years away and the second in a state of rapidly intensifying anxiety. He was careful to hide that anxiety from Callum, lest the man think he was unable to navigate the reality of the situation. But the stakes were high, and Jamie felt overwhelmed. If he wanted to stay in Callum’s life, he needed to land himself in Callum’s wife’s good graces. He just had no idea how to do that.
By the day of Nerea’s arrival, Jamie had moved from anxiety to a state of near-panic. He was able to focus when he was working, but only barely. He was far too nervous to eat lunch. During breaks he hid in the makeup trailer and tried to entertain himself with games on his mobile but kept zoning out to think about Nerea’s imminent arrival. What if she didn’t like him? Would she think he was too young? Too awkward? Annoying rather than charming? Clingy?
He took deep breaths and tried to calm himself before he hyperventilated and passed out on the floor. That would be truly embarrassing. He trusted Callum; Callum had more experience navigating relationship issues like this; and Callum thought Jamie and Nerea should meet. He was, in point of fact, incredibly enthusiastic about it. Besides, Jamie had managed to get this part and make friends on set, so he knew he wasn’t utterly devoid of personal appeal. If Nerea didn’t like him that was something he and Callum would have to deal with together.
Still, for all his mental preparation, he wasn’t ready when a production assistant showed up with a petite dark-haired woman who made Callum light up like a Christmas tree as he strode over to greet her. Even if Jamie hadn’t recognized her from pictures, it would have been obvious this was Nerea.
In person she was even lovelier than in photographs. Her bearing was elegant, her long hair was swept up off her shoulders, and her eyes, a pale golden brown and with faint wrinkles at the corners, were bright as she took in her surroundings before her gaze returned to Callum. Jamie’s heart did a strange thing when Callum dipped his head to kiss her. He wasn’t sure how to interpret that feeling, but it didn’t feel like jealousy. It felt like appreciation. And maybe even want. Jamie was still stuck staring when Callum waved him over.
“Jamie.” Nerea smiled and held out her hand. Jamie was pretty sure he knew how Callum must have felt the first time he met her, because his own ability to make words, much less coherent sentences, was utterly gone. She was too beautiful, too self-possessed, too sparkling with charisma. And she’d only said his name.
Her eyes fixed on Jamie, warm and curious, as if she were collecting all of Jamie’s secrets simply by looking at him. Jamie was overwhelmed with an almost visceral urge to touch her and a near certainty that he would crack like temperature-shocked glass if he did. He stammered a greeting and reached out to take her hand in his. He did not, to his surprise, break. Nerea’s skin was cool and delicate but slightly rough. He felt a wild impulse to kiss it, like he was some fairy tale knight and she his queen. But he restricted himself to a smile that felt not at all polished or restrained. “Nice to meet you.”
“And you.” Nerea turned to Callum. “You’re right, he is cuter in person.”
Jamie made an involuntary noise of dismay.
Callum laughed. “Get used to it. She’s not going to quit teasing you.”
“Thanks?” The use of future tense was encouraging, but Jamie still felt off-balance.
Nerea looked from Jamie to Callum and back. “Did you want to have dinner Friday? The three of us?”
Jamie was surprised. He knew, from what Callum had said, that the three of them would likely spend time together socially. But while he was still getting used to the situation, Nerea had hit the ground running.
Jamie stammered. “That would be great,” He wanted to kick himself. Now Callum’s stunning wife probably thought her husband was screwing around with a very pretty fool. Maybe he needed to practice basic conversational skills in the mirror in desperate hopes of not completely messing up the dinner.
“Excellent.” Nerea clapped her hands together. “I’m sure Callum will collect you after you’re both done with work. But now I should be going. I have to spend an afternoon annoying my eldest daughter over tea. It was lovely to meet you, Jamie.”
Before he had a chance to react, Nerea kissed him on the cheek, Callum on the lips, and was walking away, heels clicking smartly on the floor.
Jamie looked at Callum, dimly aware his mouth was hanging open.
“Don’t worry,” Callum said, his eyes fixed on his wife as she walked away. “I was at least as much of a mess around her for months.”
* * *
THAT NIGHT JAMIE WENT home alone; Callum, presumably, had gone home to his lovely wife. Jamie hadn’t spent much time at his own flat in weeks and felt particularly lonely when he let himself in.
Despite the late hour, he considered calling friends to see who he could round up for a pint. Then he caught a glimpse of himself in his bathroom mirror; that was not going to work. Not with hickeys scattered across his throat. On set, makeup had the decency not to comment. But in real life his drama school friends would laugh, purr at him to share details, and give him no end of grief.
But sudden work and incipient fame had made having friends hard. There wasn’t time to sit around pubs drinking and chatting anymore. Jamie felt terrible about it, but it wasn’t something he knew how to make right. What could he even say about the state of his life now? That there was a guy and that they worked together? But his friends would demand names and details, which was definitely where things would get complicated. What was he supposed to do then? Explain that he was only out drinking with them because his unnamed lover’s wife was in town? Would they believe him if he said she was okay with her husband shagging some random kid? And if they did, how was he supposed to avoid discussing her incredible hotness — especially when Callum and Nerea were probably in bed together right now having wildly attractive sex?
Jamie made a noise of annoyance at his empty apartment, this ridiculous situation, and his sexual frustration. He was either going to have to get a lot better at compartmentalizing or he was going to have to forgo all unnecessary human contact for a while. Otherwise he was definitely going to ask someone if it was rude to jerk off to thoughts of his lover in bed with his wife.
He grabbed a beer out of the cupboard and opened it. “Congratulations, Jamie,” he said toasting his empty apartment. “Your life is a mess.”
* * *
ON THE APPOINTED DAY and time, Jamie and Callum arrived at the restaurant where they were due to meet Nerea. The place was dim, with little lighting beyond the candles burning softly on each table. The leather seats and dark wood walls contributed to the gloom and added the edge of sex.
Nerea was there already at the bar. When she saw them, she slid off her stool with an elegance Jamie hadn’t known existed in real life. She wore a fitted gold dress and her dark hair fell in sleek waves down to the middle of her back.
“Callum. Jamie,” she said when her husband bent his head to kiss her hello. Jamie looked away so as not to be caught staring. No matter how much advice Callum gave him, every moment seemed to generate a new situation in which he had no idea what was expected of him. He wondered why there wasn’t a handbook for this sort of thing. Like What to Do When You Like to Watch the Guy You’re Sleeping with Kiss His Wife.
As they took their seats at a table, Callum ordered a bottle of wine. Nerea caught Jamie’s eye when the waiter returned to present it. Her expression spoke of long-suffering amusement at Callum’s solemn enactment of the tasting ritual. Jamie could relate. Callum’s insistence on the proper pairing of wine — even with takeout — was somewhat absurd, and now he looked like he was showing off. For who, it was a mystery. Nerea was hardly impressed, the waiter looked placid and bored, and Jamie was already as far gone on Callum as it was possible to be.
Jamie must have made a face, because Nerea started to laugh, bell-like and girlish. Before the waiter even left — and despite his best efforts and all good sense — Jamie joined her. Which only made everything funnier. Callum looked up at them quizzically; it was like being caught passing notes in school.
When the waiter had gone, Nerea leaned across the table to touch Jamie’s hand. “I was terrified you didn’t know my husband was ridiculous.”
He shook his head. “Smitten, not stupid,” he said before slapping his other hand over his mouth in chagrin. He was such a liar. He was smitten and stupid, even though he hated to use that word. “I didn’t mean....”
“It’s fine.” Her eyes were wide and bright.
“I was trying to be so good,” Jamie moaned. He glanced at Callum who was rolling the stem of his wineglass in his fingers.
Callum looked between them, a wrinkle of curiosity between his eyebrows. “Am I missing something?”
“We’re bonding over how much we like you.” Nerea gave him a flirtatious look over her shoulder. “You don’t need to worry.”
“He looks worried,” Jamie said, wanting to recapture her attention.
“Should he be?” Her tone was suddenly crisp.
Nerea radiated confidence and perhaps even power. Although she still seemed entertained, Jamie was reminded yet again that he was outclassed in every way. Combined, Callum and Nerea had almost four times his life experience. Jamie, worried, glanced at Callum. Had Nerea’s sudden sharpness meant he’d overstepped?
“Nerea,” Callum said softly. Not a scold, but something else. A man trying to hold back a horse. Or a storm.
Nerea gave him a reproachful look, and he dipped his eyes apologetically. Jamie wondered how long a couple had to be together before they could communicate so thoroughly in silence.
“I only meant,” Nerea spoke tartly as the smile crept back to her face, “that I am sure Jamie and I will have lots to gossip about as soon we can get a moment away from you.”
Jamie flushed. “Oh my God.” At least he wasn’t in trouble.
“Try the wine,” Callum said.
Jamie thought he was being rescued from Nerea’s teasing. But Callum watched, his eyes fixed on Jamie’s mouth, as he raised his glass to his lips and took a sip. If pressed to describe it, Jamie would have said the wine had notes of oak and blackberry. And then, because he was painfully aware of Callum’s gaze, he would have gotten lost. Who cared what the wine tasted like when Callum was looking at him like that?
He set his glass back down.
“How do you like it?” Callum asked.
Jamie’s cheeks burned. Nerea put her hand over his on the table again. Suddenly, the question felt like it was about far more than the bottle Callum had selected.
“It’s good,” Jamie gulped. “Not just the wine. All of this.” He was desperately trying to be clear, but he didn’t have a silent language with either of them yet, which meant he needed to use words as clumsy as they might be.
“I’m glad,” Nerea said.
“Really?” Jamie squeaked. He coughed and reached for his water.
“Really?” Callum echoed in Nerea’s direction.
“Yes,” Nerea said with a laugh. “Jamie, you’ve charmed me from the time you called me to ask if you could sleep with my husband. Not many people are that brave. Or that polite. I don’t always give Callum credit for good taste, but he chose well with you. I’d like very much to get to know you better.”
“Oh,” Jamie said, awed.
Callum smiled warmly at Nerea and covered her small hand with his larger one. Then he leant over to drop a kiss onto her hair.
Jamie gathered his nerve. “Okay, can you explain something to me?”
“What’s that?” Callum asked.
“How do you — how do you two....” he trailed off, hesitant. He took a deep breath. “How did you decide to do things this way?” He gestured to include the table and himself. “Actually,” he added, before either of them could respond, “You probably don’t want to talk about that with people around.”
“I don’t mind.” Callum shrugged, but Nerea shook her head.
“Later is probably best. Thank you.”
Jamie nodded. “Okay. Sure. Yeah.” Frantically, he paged through his brain looking for a safe and appropriate topic of discussion. “Will you tell me how you met then? You must have been really young.”
“Oh well done,” Callum muttered.
Nerea shot him a glance Jamie didn’t know how to interpret. “Younger than you,” Nerea said. “I was, anyway. He was not.”
“It’s true.” Callum spoke with obvious delight. “I’m absolutely terrible.”
* * *
JAMIE WAS HAVING THE best, strangest night of his life, which was saying something. His life had had a lot of peculiar and wonderful nights in the last year. But none of them had felt as easy, intimate, and kind as this. He rested his chin in his hand, rapt as Callum and Nerea finished tag-teaming the story of their meeting, courtship, and wedding. Callum at twenty-six had been a disaster of a human being, sleeping his way through the London theater scene and making sure everyone knew it. Nerea had been only nineteen. He’d needed less freedom, she said. But she’d needed a lot more.
“I saw her at a coffee shop,” Callum said.
“You’re kidding.”
“Where else would I have met her? It was here, in London. She was in town for a student art show and I was going about the mess of my life. We were in the queue.” Callum took another sip of wine. “I wanted to pay for her coffee. She said thank you, but no thank you. Then, just as I was ready to crawl into a hole and never show my face to the human race again, she told me that if I wanted to buy her a drink that night she would be most amenable.”
“Really?” Jamie looked to Nerea for confirmation.
She nodded. “Really. You’ve seen him, Jamie. If a man like that asked you for something what would you say?”
“You’re braver than me,” Jamie admitted. He flushed a furious scarlet, barely able to believe he’d maneuvered himself into this moment at twenty-four. He couldn’t imagine having had that type of self-assurance at nineteen.
Nerea picked up the story. “We went home together that same night. He was living in some horrible little flat in Camden Town, which was awful all the way around back then. But I didn’t care. He was there, and that’s what mattered. Even though I’d only met him hours ago.”
* * *
JAMIE EVENTUALLY EXCUSED himself to the toilet for a few moments alone. As he washed his hands, he wondered how — and what — he was doing. Was he making a good impression? Did Nerea like him? Was he flirting with her? And if so, did he mean to be? For that matter, was she flirting with him? Jamie wasn’t sure what he wanted to happen or what he might do to get it once he figured it out.
He got back to them just in time to hear Callum say to Nerea, “Invite him yourself.”
“Invite me where?” Jamie hovered at the edge of the table.
Nerea tugged him into his seat. “Sit down. We can keep talking here. Or we can keep talking at our flat.” Nerea’s fingers — small, slender, and very warm — curled gently right at his pulse point. Jamie flicked his eyes over to Callum, hardly daring to believe he’d correctly interpreted the unspoken invitation in Nerea’s voice.
Callum nodded at him in confirmation.
“That would be great. Okay, yeah. Day off tomorrow.” He had been rendered incapable of speaking in complete sentences. He hoped Callum and Nerea wouldn’t rescind the offer on the spot.
* * *
THE CAB RIDE TO THE flat was silent. Nerea sat in the middle. Jamie was acutely aware of her warmth, especially where their thighs were pressed together. At one point Callum shifted, Jamie assumed to put an arm around her shoulders, but Nerea leaned forward ever so slightly. Jamie felt Callum’s hand warm on his back. Fingers slipped up under his jacket. Jamie wondered if it were possible to spontaneously combust from anticipation.
When they got out of the car in front of Callum and Nerea’s building, Nerea frowned and stepped out of her high heels right in the middle of the sidewalk.
“You’re so tiny,” Jamie exclaimed. He hadn’t realized how high her shoes had been. Or how nice it was to be around a woman who was shorter than him. At five foot eight, most of the actresses and models he worked with definitely weren’t.
“I’m not climbing those stairs in these,” she said like Jamie hadn’t spoken, gesturing at Callum with the shoes. “This is still an annoying flat.”
Callum laughed. “You love the flat.”
“So do you,” Nerea shot back. “Until you hit your head on the ceiling. Again,”
“The place seemed like a good idea when we got it.”
It was obviously an old and fond argument. Jamie felt privileged to witness it. He stuffed his hands in his pockets, nervous all over again. Callum and Nerea had decades of physical and emotional intimacy between them. Was he a fool to think there was room for him at all, even for a night?
Jamie put his doubts aside when Callum gestured for him to follow his wife up the stairs. Nerea swung her hips more than was probably necessary, and Jamie watched her magnificent curves as she climbed the flight ahead of him, her shoes dangling from her hand. Below, Jamie heard the now-familiar sounds of Callum locking the front door behind him.
His footsteps were still somewhere down a flight when Jamie got to the top landing and was met by Nerea’s smile and a beckoning crook of her finger. His mouth went dry; Callum was all very well and drop-dead gorgeous, but Jamie had never kissed someone as stunning and completely out of his league as Nerea before.
“Do you not want to?” Nerea asked quietly when Jamie hesitated. She wasn’t being a tease. She, like Callum, genuinely wanted to know.
“No, no, I really, really want to,” Jamie said, nodding with embarrassing amounts of enthusiasm. “I just....” How was he supposed to say that this was a very nice dream but he was afraid he would wake at any moment? Before he could get the words out, Nerea went up on her toes, slid her slender arms around Jamie’s neck, and kissed him.
Jamie sighed into her mouth. He had forgotten how nice it was to hold onto someone smaller and softer than him. His arms went around Nerea’s waist, and she didn’t need the gentle press of his hand at the small of her back to step closer to him and deepen the kiss. Her mouth tasted like chocolate and the dessert wine Callum had insisted on ordering.
By the time Callum reached the landing, Nerea had her fingers in Jamie’s hair. Jamie had turned them around so that she was pressed against the wall next to the door as he pulled at her lower lip with his teeth.
“Oi, inside,” Callum said as he opened the door. He grabbed Jamie by the back of his jacket to push him through.
He staggered, caught off-balance, and gave Callum a doleful look at being interrupted.
Callum looked at Nerea as he shut and locked the door behind the three of them. “I get to say this so rarely, but you are a bad influence.”
Nerea laughed as she walked Jamie backwards, deeper into the apartment. She tugged his collar open and then went to work undoing his shirt buttons.
Well, Jamie thought happily, straight to the bed, then.