“Normal is what you get used to,” Rebecca said to herself as she got up from the king-size futon on the hardwood floor of her bedroom.

The two men were still asleep. She tried not to wake them. She showered, washing off the smell of sex, combed her hair and tied it into a pony tail, rubbed cream into her face, looked at herself critically in the mirror, and crept across the semi-dark room. She opened the top drawer to her dresser, fumbled for a bra and panties, then walked over to her closet, and pulled blue jeans and a long-sleeved shirt off hangers.

“Are you up?” came a voice from the bed. It was Doug.

“Shhh. Don’t wake Jason. I’m getting ready to go to work.”

“Don’t you know it’s Sunday?” He turned away from the light coming in through the windows and nestled under the covers. “Nice night,” he murmured.

She carried her clothes out into the hallway, shutting the bedroom door behind her and walked down two flights of stairs to the living room of the townhouse. She tossed her clothes on the sofa. “Oh, God, do I need a cup of coffee.” She walked into the kitchen, filled the coffee pot with water, spooned coffee into the filter, and left the coffee to brew while she returned to the living room to dress.

“I can’t believe what I have done,” she said to herself as she put on her clothes. “I’ll think about it later. Today it’s work.”

Tomorrow, Monday, she was scheduled to present to her team, peers, and superiors the results of her work for the last year. She was a physicist, with a specialty in quantum mechanics. Only a year earlier she had stood on the podium with a group of men and had been awarded a doctorate degree.

She quickly drank two cups of scorching hot coffee, ate a bowl of dry cereal with her fingers. Upstairs, she heard Doug and Jason stirring. “First time I ever woke up with a man in my bed,” she heard Doug say. He was amusing and outgoing and she was half in love with him. Jason was more like her best friend. He was better looking than Doug and almost feminine in the softness of his features and in the delicacy of his speech. People often thought Jason was gay. She called them “boys” as they were younger than she was by three or four years. She was 29.

Rebecca slipped out the front door of the townhouse. She worked all day at the laboratory, recalculating for the hundredth time her mathematics, going over her power-point presentation, trying to anticipate the toughest questions her colleagues would ask. Satisfied, she left the lab at 5 p.m. and walked home, enjoying the fine spring day and the vibrant life of the streets.

Doug and Jason were on the back deck of the townhouse. Their girl friends were there. Doug called out to her, “Becky, hey, come out here and join us.”

She walked through the living room and the kitchen and poked her head out the door opening onto the deck. Doug was at the smoking grill, cooking hamburgers and hot dogs. Jason was sitting near the hot tub engaged in a serious conversation with his girl friend. Jason was much too serious around his girl friend. He adored her. She gave him fits with her wayward ways. “I don’t want to intrude. I’ll just go to my room.”

“No, don’t,” answered Doug. He reached into a cooler, pulled out a bottle of beer, popped off the top, and held it out to her. “Have a beer and a hot dog.” He kissed her on the cheek. A brotherly kiss. A roommate’s kiss.

The two girls chimed in unison, “Hi, Becky.” They were attractive and young, a year or two out of college, and she felt like Grandma Moses when she was around them. They were respectful to her, but she detected a slight condescension in their attitude. They had boy friends; she did not. They were slender and cute and stylish, and she was shy and ungainly and uninterested in fashion or glamour. “Little do they know,” she said to herself as they exchanged air kisses.

Rebecca drank the beer, ate a hot dog, and departed to her room. Nobody urged her to stay longer. Later, as she tossed nervously in her bed trying to relax, she heard the two boys and their girl friends retire to the two bedrooms on the floor below her.

Rebecca’s presentation went well. She had been confident, authoritative and even charming to the audience, mostly men, sitting around the long table in the conference room. As she walked home from the laboratory that evening, her thoughts turned to Saturday night, two days earlier. “I can’t believe I feel so unchanged. I fucked both boys. Both. Together. Was it a threesome? And, then, last night they took their girlfriends to bed as if ... as if ... it never happened. Should I feel like a slut? Should I fell used?”

She summed up her love life in her mind. “Three affairs - all of which turned out to be unsatisfying - and downright boring. Three one-night stands. That is my pathetic love life. Then, along came the boys. Both of whom are in love with other women.”

She had moved in with them a year earlier. She had not known either of them, but they were shopping for a roommate to share the cost of renting the townhouse, and she had just moved to the big city to begin her job. It had been a congenial and easy-going relationship from the beginning. She had no friends except her work colleagues nor any social life of her own. She worked long and hard and spent most of time thinking about the puzzles of sub-atomic particles rather than seeking romance. She was already, in her mind, married to her work, advancing upward in a field populated with brilliant but arrogant and dominating men.

Three months after moving into the apartment she had sex with Doug. It was unanticipated and came on a night when his girl friend was out of town. Doug had invited her to join him in the hot tub and things proceeded from there. But Doug was an infrequent lover and with just a tinge of revenge she had sex with Jason a month later. Jason’s girl friend had announced her independence and intention to see other men. He had been devastated and in comforting him she found herself in bed with him. That was repeated many times, for under his shy, unassuming countenance Jason had a powerful libido. Then, when Jason’s girl friend came back to him, it was Doug again. Not often, but nearly every Friday after a long week at work they would meet in the hot tub and have sex there or in her room. Doug said that sex with her made him a better lover later that night when he saw his girlfriend. She was not amused by that comment, but she was philosophical, “You can’t have everything in life. I love my work.”

Both boys knew that she had sex with the other. “Let’s keep this a secret among us,” she said to them. “I don’t want any complications or cause you problems with your girl friends.”

She was not unhappy with the arrangement. In her moody moments she reflected that she was like a piece of exercising equipment, to be used now and then by the boys to burn up their excess sexual energy. She didn’t mind. Much. She enjoyed sex. She wanted to be more than a sex toy, but she didn’t want to devote the time and effort needed to develop a serious relationship. “Been there, done that,” she said to herself. Moreover, men were not beating down her door. She was attractive, but not glamorous, a little mousy in fact, small-breasted, and slender. She was uncomfortable with casual chatter and flirting, an introvert who was confident and animated when talking shop, but never the life of any party, most often the inconspicuous person ignored in the corner.

Saturday night had begun with Jason. His girl friend - a flighty little bitch in Rebecca’s opinion - was giving him trouble again and he was depressed. Rebecca had planned to work on her upcoming presentation, but she took time out to comfort Jason.

“Let’s go get a beer,” she said. They walked to the neighborhood bar they frequented. That was a bad idea as Jason downed the first beer, ordered another, and then another. It was unusual for Jason to drink so much. Soon, his head was on the table and he was babbling nonsensically. He declined her offer to let her help him get home. She called Doug for help and he soon arrived.

“Sorry,” she said. “Did you have plans?”

“Nothing special,” he answered. “Maybe I’d rather see you tonight than go out with my girl friend.”

“First things first, let’s get Jason home. Then I have work to do.”

Together, they half-supported Jason and walked him back to the townhouse. “Let’s put him in my bed,” she said. “I’m afraid he’ll throw up. I need to watch him to make sure he’s okay. He might vomit.”

“Where am I going to sleep?” Doug asked with a leer.

They climbed the stairs to her room. “Let’s get his clothes off. She sat Jason down on the futon and pulled his blue-jeans off over his feet.

Jason opened his eyes and looked up at her. “You’re undressing me?” he asked with a slur.

“You’re drunk. I’m going to put you to bed.”

“Oh, okay. But it’s your bed. Will you go to bed with me?”

“Not for what you are thinking, Jason.” Jason went to sleep - or passed out - the minute his head hit the pillow.

“I’m going to lie down with Jason for awhile,” she told Doug. “I’m worried about him.” She turned off the lights in the room, leaving one lamp burning so she could still see Jason.

“You need some company and that futon is big enough for three.”

She looked at him. “I can’t have sex with you. Not with Jason here.”

“He’s dead to the world.”

“Don’t look,” she said. “I’m going to put my pajamas on.”

Doug half complied with her request. She pulled off her clothes, put on loosely fitting pajamas, and lay down on the futon beside Jason -- who was now snoring. Doug pulled off his blue jeans and shirt and curled up with her, cradling one of her breasts in his hand.

“Doug, we can’t do this.” But she felt desire, a familiar ache radiating through her crotch. It had been a week since she had sex.

“Sure we can.”

She looked at Jason. He was unconscious, lying on his back, his mouth open. “Okay,” she said to Doug. “Afterward, I need to do some work. I’ll get up and work downstairs and you watch Jason.”

“That’s a deal.” Doug stripped off her pajamas, pulled off his underpants and pulled her down on the bed facing him. They kissed and caressed. His finger slipped into her and she gasped. She was wet. He maneuvered his body over hers.

“Slowly and quietly,” she whispered, as he sought her vagina with his hardened penis. “I don’t want to wake Jason.”

“That would take a volcano,” Doug answered. He stroked in and out of her and she responded, breathing hard but barely moving her hips, willing herself not to move, not to wake the snoring Jason, her vaginal muscles clinching Doug’s penis. They climaxed together, a warm tingle running up and down her spine and down to her feet.

“That was nice,” said Doug, as they rested side by side. “A quiet fuck. Kind of kinky. Except I think my ass is bleeding where you dug those fingernails in. You need a manicure, lady.”

“You ungrateful asshole,” she answered with a love tap. “I fuck you while your best friend is drunk and asleep in the same bed as we are. And you complain.”

“It was good, wasn’t it? Admit it.”

“It was good.” She kissed him on the cheek, pulling him close. “And now, because of you, I’m too sleepy to get up and do the work I need to do.”

“Fuck work. Let’s sleep.” They nestled together and fell asleep.

Jason woke up with a start, sitting up in bed, “Where am I?”

The covers fell away from Rebecca when he sat up. She roused and stretched. Jason looked down at her in the dim light of a single lamp in the room, her breasts bare. “You’re naked,” he laughed. “And Doug is in bed with us.”

Rebecca looked at the clock beside the bed. Two a.m. She pulled the blanket up over her breasts and sat up beside Jason. “How do you feel?”