Chapter1: Just the Three of Us: An Erotic Romantic Comedy for the Commitment-Challenged

                  Chapter 1

Wow, you’re fast!” he said with admiration, gawking at me with wide eyes through a plastic face-shield thick with fog.

I turned to look behind me but I was the last player on the bench; this unfamiliar young man with the friendly face appeared to be talking to me.

“Uh, thank you,” I said, returning my eyes to the ice and uncomfortably shifting my grip on my stick.

“I mean it,” he assured me. “You are very fast, especially for, you know, a – Hey!”

The exclamation caught my attention more than the unfinished remark. I turned again and saw another young man sitting beside this one, elbow out as if he’d just used it to nudge his friend into silence.

“For a what?” I said shrewdly, watching in amusement as my neighbor struggled to solicit a polite response out of an apparently unresponsive brain. “For a woman? Or perhaps you meant for an older woman?” I concluded, putting extra emphasis on the “older.” At thirty-seven I was hardly ancient, but there was no doubt in my mind that these fellows were a good ten years my junior, a fact that gave me the indisputable right to tease them mercilessly.

His face, already beet-red from the exertion, flushed scarlet. “I wouldn’t say older!” he fibbed unconvincingly. “You’re what, like twenty-eight, twenty-nine?”

“Don’t mind my friend,” the other fellow said, leaning across him towards me and grinning. “He’s really a nice guy. Sometimes just a bit of a dumbass.”

“It was a compliment!” the nearer man stuttered before being abruptly rescued from his consternation by the return of the other left wing. He stumbled over the boards and onto the ice and his buddy slid over next to me.

“I’m Ted,” he said, extending his arm in my direction. “And that’s Sam.”

“Kathy,” I replied, bumping my glove against his by way of a handshake.

“I haven’t seen you here before,” he said. But before I could answer, I saw the one of the defensemen hurtling towards the boards and sprang to my feet to take his place. Ted followed hard on my heels to replace the other wing, who had just lurched, panting, over to the bench.

I hadn’t even noticed them before – possibly because I’d been too busy trying not to embarrass myself my first time on the ice in my latest new town. But now I couldn’t stop watching them skating around in front of me; two of my nameless, faceless teammates had turned into people. Of course, meeting people wasn’t always as great as it sounded, as I’d discovered in the course of my many travels. You don’t worry so much about making a good impression when you’re an unknown member of an anonymous crowd. I pondered that as I forced my legs to an inhuman effort in chasing down the next breakaway when it came. I didn’t want to lose my newly established reputation for speed, after all.

“Nice job,” Sam said when I flung my body back over the boards a minute later, fresh sweat trickling coolly down my spine.

“Thanks,” I gasped, plunking my butt down on the bench and taking a deep swig of my water. My partner for the day was still nowhere in sight and I wished he’d hurry up and finish dressing; it was exhausting playing with only three D.

The guy named Ted leaned over again. “So are you new here?” he said, picking up our conversation right where we’d left off. It’s customary for hockey players to chat in fragmented one-minute intervals.

“Just moved to town,” I nodded, starting to catch my breath. “I was in a women’s league the last place I lived, but there isn’t one in town here. Thought I’d give this group a try, if it’s not too tough.”

“You’re tough enough!” Sam exclaimed. “I’ve seen the way you skate.”

“Trust me, I have no skills,” I countered, pleased in spite of myself. I wasn’t being modest; I was a poor puck-handler and had no shot to speak of, and it had already become apparent that my rather abundant apportionment of feminine muscle wasn’t quite as useful among these men, most of whom were younger and a lot bigger than me. And apart from my speed, I had few real skills as a skater, and already I was struggling a lot harder to keep up than I had in my last league. Ever heard the expression “tripping-over-your-tongue-tired?” That was me.

Pshaw!” he answered, dismissing my critical assessment with a wave of his glove. I turned to look more closely at my new acquaintance. Along with that broad, boyish face and welcoming eye went the kind of personality that could use an expression that went out with the previous century without an iota of shame.

“Pshaw?” Ted echoed, making a motion as if scratching his helmet with his padded glove.

“Pshaw!” Sam repeated, unabashed.

“Okay,” Ted said, clearing his throat audibly and leaning towards me again. “So where are you from?”

“Um, well… New England, originally. Most recently, California,” I answered. “Up north, near San Francisco.”

Sam laughed. “So what the hell are you doing here? Sick of the beautiful weather?”

“Something like that,” I chuckled back. I wasn’t about to try to tell my life story to two strangers in the ten seconds before I had to be on the ice again.

“Well, welcome to Minnesota, eh?” Ted replied in a heavy and decidedly phony accent. I looked askance at him. He had the agreeable look of a young man who hasn’t quite reached his prime; I guessed he would be downright handsome about five years down the line. Slimmer, more serious-looking than Sam, with dark hair and deep brown eyes and a neatly trimmed beard that ran the length of his chin.

“Yeah, you’re welcome, eh?” Sam agreed.

“We don’t actually talk like that,” Ted assured me. “It’s just an affectation put on for outsiders, so they’ll think they’re in Canada or something.”

“You’d better start working on yours, too,” Sam said seriously. “Here, I’ll teach you,” he began, but fortunately I was rescued from a lesson in Northern American linguistics by the return of the entire forward line, which sent my new acquaintances scurrying for their positions.

My defensive partner finally arrived, plopping his enormous body down next to mine and effectively cutting me off from further conversational efforts with Sam and Ted. I couldn’t decide whether or not I should be sorry about that. But as the game continued, I watched them weaving in tandem along the ice, passing the puck to one another seemingly without effort, to all appearances like two balls on the ends of the same chain. They must have been teammates for a long time, I thought; they made such a good wing pair. I wouldn’t have said that they were great athletes; I mean, they were both obviously competent, but not spectacular in any way. But there was something in the way they played together that made them better, much better than their skill levels alone would have suggested. Almost as if they knew each other so well that one was an extension of the other; two minds and bodies separated only by twenty feet of ice.

Following the closing handshakes, I was surprised to find them both skating beside me back to the bench.Okay, so we know you’re not a native, but do you drink beer?” Sam inquired, as if it were a beverage endemic only to Milwaukee and cities of similar latitude.

“Of course!” I answered. I was actually very fond of beer, although I’d found, as I often did, that the styles that were popular in Minnesota weren’t the same as those that dominated other markets.

“Good,” Ted replied. “We usually go out for a beer after the game, and we think you should come.”

I was taken aback. They seemed like nice enough fellows and all, but I really saw no point in going overboard with the acquaintance. Sure, I was a little lonely. It’s never easy being the new kid in town, no matter how old you are, and I hadn’t exactly been a ball of social fire in any of the many places I’d lived in the wandering course of my adult life. But really, what besides hockey could I, a relatively mature woman, possibly have in common with two twenty-something-year-olds? Boys, practically, to my mind.

I guess my lack of enthusiasm showed, because while I hesitated in answering I heard Sam saying, “I don’t think she likes us, Ted.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have made that comment about her skating like a, ‘you know,’ ” Ted replied, shaking his head dolefully.

“Please just come have a beer with us!” Sam pleaded. “Otherwise Ted will never let me hear the end of it.”

“Unless you really don’t like us,” Ted said, narrowing his dark brows at me. I wasn’t short, especially with my skates on, but standing up he still towered a good six inches over me, and I might have been intimidated had he not had such an indisputably gentle face.

“We wouldn’t blame you much,” Sam chimed in. “We are kind of obnoxious.”

I looked from one to the other. There was something refreshingly youthful in their earnestness and a part of me was touched. It was sweet, really, the way they’d taken pity on me. After all, I probably seemed as old to them as they seemed young to me.

“It’s not that,” I answered finally, weighing my words carefully. “I was just surprised that you’re old enough to drink.”

“Oh-ho, she got you back, Sam!” Ted said with a laugh.

“Says you!” he shot back. “Ted’s just jealous because I’m more mature.”

“You’re only six months older than me!” Ted said. “And older does not mean more mature!”

That was certainly the truth. Here I was in my late thirties, with no husband or children and no particular desire for either yet. In a new city with a new job that I wasn’t even sure I was going to like because I still hadn’t decided what I wanted to be when I grew up. Plus I was living in a one-room apartment with cardboard-box furniture and a mattress on the floor. What did I know about mature? Maybe my mistake all along had been in trying to meet people my own age: settled, adult, grown-up people. I’d be right at home with these guys.

“Twenty-six is mature!” Sam retorted. “Isn’t it, Kathy?”

“Hmm, sorry, I can’t remember back that far,” I joked. “It’s been a long decade.”

We retreated to the locker room to undress. As usual I kept my head down so I could pretend not to notice those few bold fellows who stripped down to their bare asses before changing into clean clothes. Me, I never bothered. I was always way too sweaty after a game to even think about forcing fresh pants on over my sticky thighs. I did wonder, though, how the other players would react if one day I, too, decided to strip down naked and wander around the locker room with all my goods hanging out like it was no big deal.

That was one way to make an impression, I thought. I’d never been what you’d call beautiful, even when I was younger, but I wasn’t bad to look at, either, especially since hockey had sculpted my once-flabby form into a passably pleasing shape. I hoped that having a decent figure helped to distract the interested observer from my other physical flaws, which weren’t too tough to overlook if you didn’t look too closely. I had very plain brown hair that I wore cut to the shoulders, and kind of a square face that was rescued from dullness by deep dimples, rosy cheeks, and big green eyes that I simply adored. Most days I didn’t mind not being gorgeous. It was much easier to blend into the background when you were average-looking, and I’d spent most of my adulthood trying not to be noticed. And I could still clean up pretty cute when I wanted to, although I knew those days were rapidly drawing to an end. Hmm, I thought as I glanced around the room full of strangers and contemplated the cold and lonely bed waiting for me at my apartment. Maybe I should flaunt it while I still had it.

I hauled my gear out to my car and then, with some trepidation, headed upstairs to the sports pub. Sam and Ted were waiting for me in the doorway and that relieved me somewhat; I always felt hopelessly awkward walking into a place alone. I nonchalantly looked them over. Unlike me, who was twice my normal size with gear on, they didn’t look that different without it. Sam, I saw now, had golden blond hair that he wore in a buzz-cut all over his rather round head; it added to the general impression of constant cheerfulness that he radiated like sunbeams off of every edge of his person. He had a solid, stocky build and was several inches shorter than Ted. With his fair skin and bright smile, I’d describe him as cute more than handsome; he seemed to ooze a boyish sort of charm that made him appear pleasant and harmless. Ted, by contrast, had a darker, almost olive complexion, and seemed the quieter of the two; something in the set of his jaw suggested a level of reserve his friend seemed to lack. He had a narrow face that went well with his lean form, and seeing him in his street-clothes, I would have sworn he didn’t have an ounce of fat on him; only lithe, long muscles that ran like thick wires over his elongated limbs.

“Shall we?” Sam said, extending an arm as if to offer it to me with old-fashioned courtesy. When I hesitated, he seemed to think better of the idea and hurriedly retracted it. I pretended not to notice.

I followed them inside. A few of the other guys from the team were up there and nodded to Sam and Ted. Then I caught them looking bemusedly at me and I blushed. Self-consciously I raised my hands to my head and felt my hair all utterly disheveled into sweaty locks, as it always was after hockey. I’d never gotten in the habit of showering after a game, either. I figured since I was always going straight home afterwards, what was the point in enduring the fungus-ridden locker room shower?

This is why you don’t have a boyfriend, I thought as I plunked myself down at the small, circular table Sam selected while Ted went up to the bar to buy us a pitcher.

“So why did you move here, Kathy? Was it for work?” Sam asked as Ted poured our beers and I slipped him a five for my share. He pushed it back across the table with a pleading little wave of his hand. I shoved it back towards him with a bigger, more insistent wave. His eye caught mine and I watched it crinkle in amusement. Then he nodded and, conceding defeat, tucked the bill into his pocket. It was very rare that I lost the battle over going dutch with men. I hadn’t been independent all these years for nothing, after all.

“Was it for work?” Sam was repeating.

“Oh! Well, sort of,” I answered, jerking my attention back to the conversation at hand. “Not really.”

I took a sip of my beer while he stared at me as if expecting me to continue talking. Ted was peering at me keenly through narrow-rimmed glasses he had not been wearing during the game. I liked them. They did something for the shape of his face.

“No shutting her up, is there?” Sam said at last into the silence.

“So are you naturally not very talkative, or do you just have a lot to hide?” Ted inquired.

I chuckled. “A little from Column A…”

“Well, what do you do? For work, I mean?” Ted said.

“Oh,” I hedged. “This and that.”They looked at one another.

“Wait right here,” Sam said. “I left my good dental extractor in the car and I think we’re gonna need the big one if we want to get any information out of this girl.” His voice was husky, and a little edgy, as if he spent a lot of time joking around; it rather pleasantly complemented Ted’s deep, gravelly rumble.

I laughed. “Really, there’s not much to tell. I have a Bachelor’s in Film Studies, which, as you might imagine, is pretty close to worthless.”

“Film Studies?” Ted interrupted. “That sounds interesting!”

“It was!” I answered enthusiastically. “Oh, I really enjoyed it. It’s not what people think, criticism and all that, it’s more like a sociological study, looking at the culture behind movies and so on. You do a lot of reading on the history of the time and write a lot of papers – it was really fun. Kind of useless in the real world, though. There wasn’t much I could do with it except get a doctorate and then teach, and I don’t really have the personality for that. It looks good on my resume, though; proves I was smart enough to finish college.”

“Why’d you choose it, then, if you didn’t want to make a career out of it?” Sam inquired curiously.

“I dunno,” I answered vaguely. “There wasn’t really anything else I wanted to do, I guess.”

“Huh,” Ted replied, resting his head on his hand as if seriously considering the meaning of what I had said.

I gave up attempting to describe what was obviously a foreign concept and hurried on with my speech. “Anyway,” I said, “I haven’t got what you’d call a career. I’ve done all kinds of work: office jobs, waitressing, copyediting… I was even an online retailer of out-of-print videos for a while. Right now I’m working as a bank teller.”

“Well, that’s cool!” Sam said without much enthusiasm.

I shrugged. “I like math,” I said. “It’s one of the better jobs I’ve had. I actually did it once before, back in New Jersey, but then I got promoted to New Accounts and I didn’t like it as much. Dealing with people… It can be really irritating, you know. And when I moved to North Carolina, I decided to try something else so I never advanced any further in banking.”

“Why did you move to North Carolina?” Ted inquired, his eyebrows raised as if he thought it a strange destination.

I shrugged again and let out an awkward laugh. “No real reason, I guess. Just felt like a change.”

“How many places have you lived exactly?” Sam asked, furrowing his brow. It forced his forehead into shallow, barely perceptible wrinkles that made mine look like the walls of the Grand Canyon but without all the pretty colors.

I smoothed my wet hair down over my forehead uneasily. “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I guess on average I move every couple of years.”

“Every couple of years?” Sam replied, astonished, drawing back to peek underneath the table at my lower half. “No moss grows beneath your feet, I see.”

“I guess we shouldn’t get too attached, eh, Sam?” Ted said.

“Why so often?” Sam asked me.

“I can’t stand cleaning,” I said seriously. “It’s easier just to move when the apartment gets dirty.”

They frowned at me skeptically and took big swigs of their beer.

“Well, I think that’s great,” Ted said defensively. “You know that except when I was in college, Sam and I have only lived two places our whole lives?”

“Really?!” It was my turn to be shocked.

“Yup. We moved here from the country right after school and have been in the same apartment ever since.”

“Wow!” I said. “Don’t you get tired of being in the same place all the time?”

“Well, one day we’d like to move out to the suburbs. Have a place we can call our own.”

“I really want a house with space in the yard for a vegetable garden this big,” Sam said eagerly, spreading his arms wide to illustrate the size he had in mind. “And that’s not happening here in town.”

I guess they realized that I was starting to wonder, because all at once they said together, “No, we’re not gay.”

“And if we were, I still wouldn’t want to go out with him,” Ted said seriously, peering across the table at me. “He just isn’t my type.”

“Oh, you would, too!” Sam objected. “You’d be lucky to have me!”

“That’s not what your mom says!” Ted replied.

“It’s true,” Sam conceded, turning to me. “My mom’s been hoping for years to get Ted for a son-in-law, and since I’m an only child…”

I couldn’t tell if he was serious or not, so I tactfully decided not to comment. “So what do you guys do?” I asked, hurriedly changing the subject.

“I’m a carpenter,” Sam announced with pride. “A Lead Carpenter, in fact. Just got promoted last year.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Sort of like a foreman.”

“I know what that is!” I answered. “I was a foreman once.”

“Really?” They stared at me in disbelief.

“Yup. Up in Alaska when I was nineteen. I’d gone up to clean fish for the summer and was put in charge of the vacuum-packing machine. I had one person under me. I was so proud.” I clasped a hand to my chest to express the sweetness of the memory of being in charge.

“Who’d you get to go with you all the way up to Alaska?” Ted wanted to know.

“Oh, I went up alone,” I answered, thinking it a strange question. Why would I have brought anyone with me?

“All by yourself?” Sam squeaked, jumping a little in his chair as if something small and furry had just scurried underneath it.

“I don’t travel that well with others,” I confided. “Most people kind of drive me crazy after a while.”

“Huh,” Ted said again, scrutinizing me as if I were as mysterious as the Mona Lisa and only half as congenial.

That’s it, I thought. From now on I stay home in my apartment with the door locked and the windows bolted shut.

“So what do you do, Ted?” I said, taking one last desperate shot at trying to sound like a well-adjusted woman having a normal conversation with people she wanted to befriend.

He shrugged. “Something with computers,” he said. “You don’t want to hear about it. Boring.”

“Don’t you like it?”Yeah, I do,” he admitted. “It’s just not my dream job. But I’ve got student loans to pay off.”

“So what is your dream job?” I started to say, reaching for my glass and finding it empty. I always drank faster in the company of strangers.

“Hey, you want another?” Sam said, standing up to go and fetch a fresh pitcher.

“No, thanks, I really gotta run,” I said.

“Big date?” Ted said.

“Just me and my showerhead,” I chuckled. They frowned at me again in that half-serious manner and for a moment I felt like the young and immature one. “No, I just get really nervous about drinking and driving. I don’t like to have more than one if I have to drive afterwards. But I can’t stand sitting around with an empty beer, either.”

“I hear that,” Sam said.

“Well, will we see you next week?” Ted said, standing up by way of farewell. I wasn’t sure if he meant at the game or afterwards, so I played it safe.

“I think so,” I said vaguely.

“Come again when you can stay longer!” Sam called as I made my way to the door. I turned to wave at them and thought that I would never see those two outside of hockey again.

But I was wrong. I didn’t see how anyone who’d had to endure twenty minutes of my dull and dreary conversation could be inclined to sample more of it, but they didn’t seem bored with me at all. Indeed, had I not been an on-the-spot witness to my poor social performance, I would have sworn that they actually liked me. It seemed impossible, but the following week they cornered me again, and the week after that, and before I knew it, meeting those two for a beer after the game had become a routine that I looked forward to as much as the game itself. They had such easy-going personalities that, somewhere between the post-game drinks and the bits of chatter on the bench, even I began to relax around them. In a weird way, I thought the age difference also helped. I mean, I knew it wasn’t the biggest spread ever, but between that and the fact that I only ever saw the two of them together, I was fairly confident that this wasn’t some elaborate pickup scheme, and that took most of the pressure off me. Of course, if they’d ever been tempted to think along those lines, they would have stopped once they’d gotten to know me.

“So why did you leave California, anyway?” Sam still wanted to know during about the sixth week of our acquaintance.

“It’s complicated,” I muttered.

“Complicated how?” Ted prodded.

“Oh…” I said reluctantly, trying to remember that these were my only friends. “I was seeing this guy, and he wanted me to move in with him. I thought that was crazy, because we’d only been going together six months, but he kept trying to convince me, and I don’t know… I couldn’t decide. And I’d been sorta looking around for a new job and then this position came up, so, well, I figured that made the decision for me.”

They both gawked at me as if I was speaking a little-known dialect of ancient Swahili.

“Um, couldn’t you get a job as a bank teller anywhere?” Ted said.

“I suppose… Yeah, I guess I could.”

“And how did you happen to even be looking for a job in Minnesota, anyway?”

“Well, I wasn’t, really. I just put some feelers out… I mean, I don’t really care where I live.”

“I have a question,” Sam announced. “Most women your – I mean, most women would be delighted if a man they were seeing wanted to move in with her. Aren’t you starting to worry… I mean, don’t you want to get married?”

“Not really,” I said. “I mean, I’m not planning on having any children, so I don’t really see any point in it.”

“You don’t want kids?” Ted said, surprised. I could swear there was a bit of a crack in his usual calm, and Sam appeared downright shocked, his jaw hanging open like I’d just announced I was next in line to be the Queen of England.

“Kids are a lifetime commitment,” I said seriously. “It’s not like a marriage; there’s no walking away from that.”

“Well,” Sam said, at last recovering his ability to speak, “I think we finally understand why Kathy prefers to hang out with us after hockey.”

“Don’t worry, Kathy,” Ted said. “I promise we won’t be pressuring you to move in with us or anything.”

“Phew!” I said, wiping a warm hand across my still-sweaty brow. “I was worried there for a second.”

“But we do want something from you,” Sam said enigmatically as he stood up to hug me goodbye. “Something that will require a serious commitment on your part.”

“If it involves planning a bank heist, I’m not interested,” I replied.

He glared back at me. “One of these days we’re going to come pick you up so you can come out with us for some real beers and you won’t have to drive. There’s this great place near our apartment and we usually go there on Fridays.”

“Where do you live anyway, Kathy?” Ted inquired. I guess it had never come up before. I told them.

“Do you know where Delaney’s is?” Sam said excitedly.

“Sure,” I said, surprised to realize that I actually recognized a landmark. Although I’d been in town nearly three months by then, I still didn’t know my way around very well, probably because I never went anywhere but work or home or the ice rink. “It’s like a mile down the street from my place.”

“We live just a few blocks from there!” he exclaimed.

“Well, whaddya know?” I marveled. “We’re practically neighbors.”

“Now you have no excuses,” Ted threatened ominously, lowering his glasses down to the bridge of his nose and peering forbiddingly down at me. I cowered in mock intimidation.

“You will come for a beer with us,” Sam said, waving his fingers at my face as if attempting to perform some sort of supernatural mind-meld. “Next Friday. Deal?”

“Deal,” I agreed. It was nice having something to look forward to on a Friday night for a change.

But of course one Friday led to another, and before I knew it, that, too, was a standing engagement. Just three friends meeting for beers; nothing unusual about that. Except for the fact that social-moth me was one of them. But I admit it; I fell in with those two as splendidly as feathers fill out a peacock and without all the fuss. I had a great time hanging out with them, a great time. They were so full of youth and vitality; everything was exciting to them, from a new ale on the beer list to an old-fashioned roadster driving by; even my dull, repetitive work stories seemed to interest them. And they had stories, too, endless, joyous reams of them, as if everything that had ever happened in their short, unchanging lives was novel and fascinating and worthy of telling. And there was something in the banter between them that I enjoyed listening to and watching; it was the kind of relationship the guys I had known growing up had had with their close friends and I found it amusing and comforting somehow.

And it wasn’t long before I could say, with undeniable honesty, that “my boys,” as I liked to call them secretly in my mind, had become my closest friends; probably the best friends I’d had in a very long time. Soon we weren’t just meeting for beers on Friday nights; sometimes it was dinner on Saturday or a movie on Sunday, and then the following summer, when we’d known each other about six months, one day it happened, the unthinkable.

“We wanted to ask you something,” Ted said, one dark eye on me, the other monitoring the level of head in his glass. “Something important,” he added mysteriously.

“Oh?” I answered, raising my eyebrows in dubious disbelief.

“We’re serious!” Sam declared. “This could mean a big step forward in our relationship!” He winked coyly at Ted.

I looked at them appraisingly. “Your mom is right; you would make a pretty cute couple,” I observed.

“Kathy!” Sam objected. “I meant our relationship,” he clarified, spreading his arms as if to encompass the three of us.

“Huh,” I answered, narrowing my eyes at them in mock suspicion. “What exactly did you have in mind?”

“See, you’re totally giving her the wrong impression,” Ted said.

“What? No – no, I’m not!” Sam added hastily. “I didn’t mean – I didn’t mean that!”

“Don’t be scared,” Ted said reassuringly to me. “He’s basically harmless. Just kind of an idiot.”

“Not that you aren’t… I mean… not that we wouldn’t be lucky to…well, you know…” Sam continued, his neck reddening.

“How deep do you think he’ll get into that hole before he shuts up?” I inquired of Ted.

“But we would never… You’re our friend!” Sam spluttered, flecking both Ted and I with a spray of saliva.

“Pretty deep, I think,” Ted said disgustedly, wiping his cheek with his napkin. “Are you going to ask her or what?”

“Well, I’m not sure I want to, now!”

“Of course you do! You haven’t stopped talking about it all week!”

“But that was before…”

“ ‘We should ask Kathy,’ ” Ted quoted. “ ‘Don’t you think we should ask her? It would be fun, right?’ ”

For one crazy, wild moment I wondered if they actually were referring to the thought that had inevitably crossed my mind in the midst of this roundabout conversation. You know what thought I mean.

“Nah,” I said to myself, shaking my head. “It couldn’t be.”

“Just ask her!” Ted prompted.

“Oh, all right,” Sam said as his face gradually faded from maroon to pink. “Kathy,” he began momentously, turning to face me with a pronounced aura of solemnity. “Kathy… we’d like you to go away with us for the weekend.”

I hesitated a long moment before answering. They sat across from me, watching me intently, evidently anxious for my response.

“Do you really think we’re ready for that?” I said quietly at last. “I mean, first it’s weekends away, then suddenly we’re shacking up together. Before you know it, we’re starring in our own reality TV show.”

Sam began humming the Three’s Company theme.

Ted flicked a coaster at him; sent it bouncing hard off his wrist and onto the floor. “It’s just a camping trip,” he explained. “We go once or twice a year with some of the guys from Sam’s work.”

“There’ll be beer there,” Sam said hopefully. “Lots of beer!” he wheedled, nudging Ted with his elbow as if to emphasize the point.

“Hmmm…” I pretended to think. “Bunch of drunk people I don’t even know? Doesn’t sound like my cup of tea.” They stared at me uncomprehendingly. “Pint of beer,” I said, translating my metaphor into language they could understand.

“They’re good guys,” Ted assured me. “Not at all creepy.”

“Plus we’ll be there to protect you,” Sam added, flexing his big bicep at me as if I should be reassured by its length and depth.

“Not that you’ll need it,” Ted chipped in hastily.

“You won’t be the only girl,” Sam asserted. “There are always at least a few at the campground.”

“A very few,” Ted said under his breath.

“But see, we know you can hold your beer. That’s why you should come.”

I mulled it over. “When and where is this camping trip?” I asked.

They told me. It was in two weeks, at a lake a couple of hours north of us.

“We guarantee you’ll have a good time,” Sam promised.

“What do I get if I don’t?” I wondered.

“You get to smack Sam upside the head,” Ted answered, demonstrating with a light whack against his friend’s skull.

“I can do that anyway,” I argued, responding in kind and causing Sam to exclaim “Hey!” and withdraw, sulking, to the corner of the table with his glass.

“We’ll buy you a beer,” Ted offered. “No, two beers,” he said, emphasizing the “two.”

“Way to sweeten the deal, Ted,” Sam replied, rolling his eyes.

“Well,” I sighed, “I suppose it would be kind of a long weekend, me here at home all by myself while the two of you are away.”

“Aw!” Sam exclaimed. “You’d miss us!”

“Hmph!” I snorted contemptuously.

But I would, I realized to my unending chagrin as I listened to them regaling me with tales from prior camping trips. Although I’d begun to have dates here and there, the majority of my social life really revolved around these two young men, and sometimes I even got the feeling that a huge part of their lives revolved around me, too. Why didn’t they ever seem to go out with women their own age? I almost began to wonder if they saw me as a girlfriend-substitute of some sort. Without the sex, of course.

I was still thinking about that when we met up at the pub the following week. That and the disastrous first date I’d had myself the previous evening.

“Loser,” Ted was saying, shaking his head disappointedly as I described the miserable lack of chemistry between me and my co-worker’s cousin, a deep, thoughtful man whom she had assured me would appeal to my sensitive side.

“I’m just not sure I have a sensitive side,” I said uncomfortably, recollecting the unfortunate fellow’s unfortunate monologue on the nature of romantic love. “Isn’t love mostly about screwing, anyway?”

“Kathy, please!!” Sam objected. “My virgin ears!”

“Your ears are virgins?” Ted said quizzically. “That’s a relief.”

“Plus he was just no fun,” I went on, ignoring them. “Talk about stodgy… it was like being out with somebody’s invalid great-great-grandfather, only the conversation wasn’t as lively.”

“We’ve spoiled you,” Sam said. “It’s hard for you to hang out with anyone else now that you’ve experienced our awesomeness.”

“Do you guys ever date?” I said suddenly.

It got so quiet that a feather falling off of a pigeon’s butt would have broken the silence.

“Oh sure,” Sam said hurriedly into the void. “We go cruising for chicks all the time. Ted’s a great wing man.”

“I thought you were the wing man,” Ted replied.

“No, you’re the wing man. And the straight man. I’m what you would call the main man.”

“That explains all the empty space in your little black book.”

“Hey, I get around!” Sam exclaimed. “You’re just never around to see the bevy of beauties I’m always bringing home.”

“But we live in the same apartment,” Ted countered.

“So you two don’t date much either, I take it?” I interjected.

There was another long, silent pause. “It’s been a while,” Ted admitted. “My last relationship experience… didn’t end so well.”

“You were too good for her,” Sam snarled defensively. Ted shrugged. “You were. She was nothing but a… but a hoochie-mama!”

“A hoochie-mama?” Ted repeated, frowning. “What century are you living in, Sam?”

“I am living in a century in which girls like that stay away from my friends,” he huffed.

“Sam’s last girlfriend wasn’t exactly a shining example of womanhood, either,” Ted confided to me.

“She sure wasn’t,” Sam agreed. “Good-looking but cold, real cold at the core. Our kitchen table treats me with more affection than she ever did. She didn’t even blink when I finally broke up with her.”

“Ten years later,” Ted muttered.

“You were together ten years?” I said, astounded.

“That’s not so long,” Sam said, shrugging as if all men in their twenties had had relationships that had lasted a decade.

“It is to me,” I insisted. “I’ve never had a relationship that lasted more than a year.”

“That’s funny,” Ted said. “I’ve never had one that lasted less than a year.”

“Huh,” I said wonderingly. “You guys are all like, good at commitment and stuff.” It certainly wasn’t one of my particular skills, and not one I was sure I was all that interested in honing, either.

“Especially Sam,” Ted answered. “He’s a one-woman man.”

I shuttled my eyes back and forth between the two of them. Ted was gazing at Sam, who stared unabashedly back at him and then glanced back at me.

“That’s right,” he said vehemently, coloring only slightly, as if uncertain whether to be proud or defensive in light of this unexpected revelation. “I’ve only been with one woman. We were high school sweethearts, you know.”

“When did you break up?” I inquired, thinking that he seemed awfully uninterested in dating for a twenty-six-year-old man who’d only had one girlfriend.“I dunno…eight or nine months ago,” Sam replied.

“Not long before we met you,” Ted clarified.

“And you haven’t found anyone new, I take it?” I said.

“Nah… nah,” he said. “Girls my age, you know, they’re just so immature. They don’t even want to think about settling down yet.”

I stared at him for a moment in stunned disbelief. That settled it; I simply didn’t understand the younger generation.

“How about you, Ted?” I continued at last.

He shrugged. “Haven’t met anyone who interests me lately.”

“Sorry, guys,” I said. “I don’t really have any girlfriends I can set you up with.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Ted replied. “We’re in no hurry.”

“Someone’s bound to come along someday,