The Mating Season

It was a Wednesday evening and I was standing at the foot of the bed in a hotel room above the river in the centre of Cambridge, with Bonnie's stockinged feet working slowly over me and Beth behind me, her mouth warm at the side of my neck, watching over my shoulder.

The honest answer to how I'd arrived there was a text message six weeks earlier that said *tell me your actual fantasies. Not the polite ones.*

I'd taken ten minutes to answer that.

---

She'd sent it one morning, half seven, while I was still in the car park. I read it a few times, put my phone face down on the passenger seat.

The thing about Beth was that she meant it literally. She wasn't fishing for reassurance or testing anything. She wanted to know and she'd ask directly and wait for a direct answer, and if I gave her something vague she'd say *that's not what I asked*.

I told her. It took three texts and I deleted and rewrote the second one twice. Two women. Not elaborate about it, just that. I sent it and stared at the windscreen.

Her reply came back promptly.

*Sounds delicious fun.*

Then: *I've been thinking about that too, actually. Not for your benefit. For mine.*

I didn't know what to do with that so I said *okay* and she sent a laughing emoji, which was rare for her, and then nothing until the following morning at the lake.

She didn't mention it. We ran and talked about something else and I thought she'd filed it away as something said and not meant. Then at the gate where we usually split off she stopped and took her phone out.

"I want to show you something," she said.

It was a profile. A website I didn't recognise. A woman, mid-twenties, professional photo, the kind that was attractive without being explicit. Bisexual. Discreet. Based in Kent, regular travel to East Anglia. Available for couples.

"Her name's Bonnie," Beth said. "I've been messaging her."

I looked at the photo. Then at Beth.

"When?"

"Couple of weeks," she said. "I wanted to know if she was real before I said anything. She is." She took the phone back. "She's in Cambridge next week. She's already got a hotel room. City centre."

I said something then that I'm not proud of. I said *are you sure about this* in the tone of a man asking his own nerves rather than the woman in front of him.

Beth looked at me the way she looked at people who said things that didn't require an answer.

"Wednesday," she said, and put her earbud back in and ran.

---

We met Bonnie in the bar at half six.

She was already there when we arrived, at a corner table with a glass of white wine and a laptop bag on the seat beside her, wearing a dark blazer, her hair down. Late twenties. She had the look of someone who'd spent a lot of time in hotels and had made her peace with it. She stood when she saw us and smiled, and it was a proper smile, not a performance.

"Beth," she said, and they did the thing of shaking hands and then deciding that was too formal and settling somewhere between the two. "Andrew."

We sat. I ordered drinks I didn't need. Bonnie asked what I did and I told her and she asked a sensible question about it, which I answered, and we talked for a few minutes about nothing in particular. Cambridge traffic. Her drive up. Whether the hotel restaurant was worth it.

She was easy company. She had a directness that reminded me slightly of Beth, though the warmth was different, more open, less measured. She'd done this before, and it showed not in any mechanical way but simply in that she wasn't frightened of it, and that steadied both of us more than anything else could have.

Bonnie asked how long Beth had been in Cambridge, and Beth said "a bit over a year, and I still d-don't really know anyone," which was more than she'd normally say about herself to a stranger. Bonnie said something back that was neither consoling nor dismissive, just engaged, and the two of them found their footing in the easy way of people who are paying proper attention to each other.

"Are you always this quiet?" Bonnie said, turning to me.

"He's thinking," Beth said.

"I'm fine," I said.

Bonnie looked at me with a mild, amused expression. "You don't have to be fine. You're allowed to be slightly terrified."

"I'm not terrified."

"Andrew," Beth said.

"I'm a bit terrified," I said.

Bonnie smiled. "Good," she said. "Honest."

---

The room was on the fourth floor, river view, the city lights beginning to come on across the water. She'd left a book on the bedside table, which for some reason made me feel better about everything.

She poured wine from a bottle she'd put in the minibar and handed glasses round and we stood for a moment in the easy way that things pause before they begin.

Beth put her glass down and kissed me, and then she turned to Bonnie and they looked at each other for a moment, some small negotiation passing between them that I wasn't part of, and Bonnie reached up and touched Beth's face and they kissed. I stood there with my wine glass and watched and felt something shift under me.

I put the glass down.

Bonnie still had her stockings on. I don't know why I noticed when I did. I'd registered it earlier and filed it away and then there was a pause and I looked again.

Beth caught me. She said something to Bonnie, low, just a few words, with her eyes still on my face.

Bonnie looked at me with that mild expression from the bar. "Sit," she said.

I sat on the edge of the bed.

She crossed to me slowly and then Beth was behind me, her arms around my chest, her mouth at my neck, and Bonnie lifted one foot and pressed it flat against me to gauge the angle, and I had nothing useful to say. She took her time about it, working out what she wanted and then providing it, unhurried, the nylon warm and close, her feet together and steady and entirely deliberate about their purpose.

Beth's arms stayed around me. Her mouth moved slowly at my neck and I could feel her watching over my shoulder with that particular attention she gave to things that interested her.

"There," Bonnie said quietly, watching my face. "That's it, isn't it."

I didn't answer. Beth laughed, low and brief, against my neck.

"He said something similar to me," she said, to Bonnie.

"I imagine he did." Bonnie held my eye. "Tell me when."

Beth's mouth found the point just below my ear and I stopped being able to think about much else. When I went, Bonnie watched and didn't look away, and afterward reached for the folded flannel she'd apparently put there for the purpose, which told me she'd thought it through in advance, which did its own kind of damage to my composure.

"Right," said Beth, from behind me. Same word she used for everything. Entirely different weight depending on the day.

She came round from behind me and Bonnie looked at her and they shared something brief and amused, some conclusion the two of them had already reached, and I sat on the edge of the bed feeling both very present and several steps behind.

---

What followed is harder to account for in sequence.

Beth's hand found Bonnie and Bonnie's back lifted off the bed with a sound that had nothing performed in it. She was lovely. Not in the abstract way I'd registered in the bar but the particular way of her, the warmth of her skin, the way she watched Beth with something frank and open.

Bonnie's head came down. I felt her before I'd properly registered what was happening, and I made a sound I'm not proud of. She laughed, low, and I felt it rather than heard it, and then she was unhurried and deliberate and took her time about it, and I stared at the ceiling and thought about nothing at all.

What brought me back was Beth's hand in my hair.

I looked down. Beth was watching me with that expression, mild and certain, and Bonnie lifted her head and looked up at me and said "You all right?"

"Yes," I said.

"You sure?"

"Extremely," I said, and Bonnie smiled and went back to work, and Beth laughed quietly, which was unusual for her, and pressed my head back down.

They moved Beth onto her back. Bonnie's head went down and Beth drew a sharp breath and her hand found the sheet and gripped it. I watched and moved where I was needed, and Beth's voice went rough and she lifted against Bonnie's mouth, insistent.

I went down to her. Salt and warmth and the particular taste of her. Bonnie's mouth found the base of me as I worked and it blurred things considerably. Beth's hand gripped my forearm and stayed there.

She came with a sharp intake of breath and then a long, controlled exhale, her whole body tightening and then letting go. Her hand stayed on my arm throughout.

Then Beth moved without announcement, the way she always did when she'd decided something.

She reached across me and took Bonnie's nipples between her fingers, rolling them slowly, watching Bonnie's face with that particular attention she gave to things that interested her. Bonnie drew a sharp breath and her back lifted off the bed and I felt it through my hips, the involuntary grip of her around me.

Then Beth swung her leg over my chest and I understood what she was doing a half-second before she did it, and then her weight settled onto my face and I stopped thinking about anything else at all.

I could still hear them. Bonnie's breathing changed above me as Beth's fingers kept working, and then there was the soft specific sound of them kissing, and underneath all of it I was still inside Bonnie, her hips still moving in that slow roll she'd kept through everything, as if she couldn't be bothered to stop for anything as minor as this.

Beth rode my face in the unhurried way she had. I knew the weight of her, the particular taste of her, and I worked at her with everything I had because she was right there and because Bonnie was making sounds above me that I felt in my spine and because I was jealous, suddenly and specifically, of how easily the two of them had found each other, how naturally Beth had reached for her, how much of this evening hadn't needed me at all.

It drove me into Bonnie harder than I'd intended.

She broke the kiss long enough to look down at me with something between approval and amusement, then went back to Beth's mouth, and Beth rocked forward and one hand found the headboard and the other stayed in Bonnie's hair, and I was underneath both of them with my face buried in my partner and my cock buried in the woman she'd chosen, and I was so far past making sense of any of it that I simply stopped trying.

Bonnie came first. Her rhythm fractured and her voice went rough and she said something that wasn't words and gripped Beth's arm hard enough to leave a mark. Beth watched her with frank satisfaction, the same expression she had when she'd been right about something.

She wasn't far behind. I felt it in the way she bore down, the particular stillness before, and then she was done and breathing hard and still holding the headboard.

She lifted off me. Looked down.

"Well," she said.

Bonnie laughed, breathless, still somewhere far away. "Agreed," she said.

I stared at the ceiling. Bonnie's hand found me and Beth watched and that was the last coherent thing I remember.

---

I went to the bathroom.

Two minutes, maybe three. I ran cold water over my wrists and looked at myself in the mirror, which I immediately regretted. Then I dried my hands and stood there.

When I came back Bonnie was sitting on the edge of the bed and Beth was standing by the window in the dark with her wine glass. Something had settled between them, some conversation recently finished. Beth looked round when I came in and her expression was the usual one, nothing in it. Bonnie looked at me and smiled.

I didn't ask. I still don't know exactly what was said.

I sat on the bed. Bonnie refilled my glass without being asked and handed it back, and that small domesticity made me feel better than it had any right to.

"Right," Beth said from the window. She turned. "Come here then."

---

We were there until nearly ten.

At some point Bonnie said she had calls in the morning, which was the right thing to say at the right moment and none of us pretended otherwise. She and Beth exchanged numbers at the door, standing in the corridor in the way of people who've decided they like each other. That I hadn't expected.

"Andrew," Bonnie said.

"Bonnie."

She smiled. "You recovered well," she said. "From the terrified part."

"Thank you."

"I mean it as a compliment."

She went back in and closed the door.

Beth and I stood in the corridor. She looked at me and waited, the way she always waited when she could tell I was working something out.

"That was," I said.

"Yes," she said.

"The part where you two--"

"I know."

We stood there a moment. Then she took my arm and we walked to the lift and she pressed the button and we waited, and she kept hold of my arm in the easy way she'd started doing, reaching for it without thinking, and I noticed it the way I always noticed it and said nothing.

---

I sat for a while on the embankment after she'd gone, the river below, the lit windows of the colleges on the far bank. A group of students came past, loud and briefly there and then gone.

I thought about the bathroom. About what Beth might have said to Bonnie in those two minutes. Not with any particular worry, just turning it over. Whatever it was, she'd have been direct about it. She always was.

I thought about Amanda at home with the television on, doing nothing wrong, having done nothing wrong, as she never did.

I thought about Beth's arm in mine in the corridor, the way she'd reached for it without looking, the way you reach for something that belongs within reach. I thought about the swans on the lake in February, the circling, the ritual of it, and I couldn't work out what any of it meant or whether it needed to.

I knew I'd be thinking about Bonnie's feet in those stockings until the day I died. That was simply true and not worth examining further.

I got up and walked back to where I'd left the car.

Nine fifty-three. Forty minutes home. Amanda would be up, or just going to bed, and I'd come in and she'd say something ordinary and I'd say something back and we'd be comfortable together in the ordinary way, in our ordinary life.

I drove.

*End of Chapter Three*