Thirty

“FAMILY MEETING,” Melody announced after the boys were in bed. The four of us had been together every night, but we never had a family meeting in bed. We’d enjoyed some quiet lovemaking with each other, Wendy even surrendering to Melody’s attention and then devoting herself to Lissa. But in the quiet, after we’d settled and pretended to be asleep, the bed still shook with our mourning. We clutched each other, trying desperately to fill the hole Kate’s of departure.

We sat in our usual seats in the living room, still dressed. Wendy sat on the arm of my chair as Lissa and Melody cuddled on the sofa.

“What’s the agenda, Little One?” Lissa asked softly.

“We all know,” Melody said. “We’re wallowing in our pain and sorrow. I don’t think I felt this bad when my dad died.” I hung my head. It was all my fault. “Tony! Look up. No matter what we said, it wasn’t your fault. At least, no more than it was any of our fault. Lissa and I have been so caught up in planning our wedding that we’ve neglected the three of you, isolating Kate and Wendy and you. Yes, we all slept together, but pairing up put a burden our group dynamic.”

“Do you think we shouldn’t get married, love?” Lissa whispered.

“Are you kidding? I can’t wait to marry you, darling. But that doesn’t mean we have paid enough attention to our other spouses. Tony, you are still our husband. Wendy, you are still our wife—even more now than ever. I’m so happy you made love to me. But you were responsible, too. We all know Kate has a real problem with your submissiveness. Don’t cry, sweetie. It’s no more your fault than Tony’s. Tony, you never forgave Kate for hurting Wendy that one night, and then you hid your newest art from all of us, even blaming Kate for taking one of the pieces. You didn’t do the one thing that we all promised. You didn’t share what you felt with us. So, we’re all equally to blame. Having our wife get mad and walk out on us has hurt each of us equally.”

“I’m sorry, my darlings,” I said. “I was so cocky about what I was doing and thought I should be able to handle it all. I can’t.”

“That’s right,” Melody continued. “But what’s done is done. I want to see these other pieces. I want to know what a wonderful talent my husband has, even if you choose to hold it back from the rest of the world. I want to be told the exciting news about your graduation. The day is coming soon when we won’t be able to keep up with everything. Things will slip. We have to work to prevent that.”

We were all nodding. What Melody was saying was right. If our group marriage was going to survive at all, we needed to include each other and not lock anyone out. Lissa was deep in thought.

“Wendy, we were leaving all the planning for your graduation up to Kate,” she said. “It never occurred to us to step in and help. But we all want to celebrate with you. We need to start planning for that. This is important, so don’t sit there shaking your head. We love you and we will celebrate with you.”

“Saul and Deb want to come out if you’ll invite them,” I said. “They adopted you as one of theirs, remember?”

“Speaking of which, we need to get them on the phone and tell them what happened. Mom will be coming out in mid-June to help with the wedding and I’ve already told her Kate left us,” Melody said. “She may already have spoken to Deb.”

“So that’s two celebrations coming up,” Lissa said. “I don’t want them tearful, though I know we’ll still miss Kate. I want us happy. We never celebrated Tony’s Nationals performance. We need to do that.”

“This weekend,” Melody affirmed. “Now, I want you all to know that I don’t consider sex a cure for everything...”

“But you’re horny?” I offered.

“Worse than that. I’m ready to explode.” We all laughed. Talk about thinking with your little head. I had visions of the night Melody found out her father was sick in Minneapolis and Allison volunteered to be used in any way Melody needed. Lissa and I nearly didn’t get to sleep that night from just listening and watching.

“Do we need to call Allison for you?”

“We need more than Allison. We need to get fucked. I don’t mean the wonderful, tender lovemaking that we give each other. I mean raw, mindless fucking. We need an orgy.” We were all silent, staring at Melody. “Think about it. Not even Bree, Whitney, or Allison has spent the night with us since Kate left. We’ve kept them all away so we could wallow in our self-pity. But even they aren’t adequate. We need a naked posing party that goes all the way—a step beyond the Bacchanalia.”

“Melody!” Wendy squeaked. “Would you let another boy... ?”

“I don’t know that I’d let another boy put his dick in my pussy,” Melody considered. “I mean, I like Walt and Thor, but I’m not that into cock. I might suck them, though.”

“You are horny,” Lissa laughed.

“I’m not suggesting so out of control that people get hurt. Everyone needs to be consenting to whatever they are involved in, but we need to cut loose and see how many orgasms we can have in a single night.”

“When are you suggesting this debauchery?” I asked. I wasn’t comfortable with it yet, but my cock was doing some of my thinking for me. Wendy’s hand in my lap wasn’t helping me be completely rational.

“This weekend. Sunday, to be specific. Through Monday. It’s a holiday. Wendy gets off work at two Sunday and Allison closes her current production Saturday night. Bree, Whitney, and Rio will be looking for something to do over the long weekend.”

“Rio?”

“That’s not all. Sandra and Walt are biding time till Walt’s graduation. Amy is trying to get as much of Sonia and Thor as she can before they leave for LA. Maybe even Amanda and Justin will join us. I don’t think Karl could come back from out east this soon, since he was just here a couple weeks ago,” Melody’s guest list was sounding like posing parties we’d had in the past. She added June, Rachel, and Tonya.

“What about the boys?” Wendy asked quietly. “I mean Damon and Drew.” Lissa smiled at her.

“As it happens, Jack is taking the boys camping this weekend. There’s a father-son campout near Leavenworth,” Lissa said.

“So, we’re having a posing party this weekend,” Melody said as she looked at each of us for agreement. “Only the artist is going to be ‘posing,’ too, so he’ll just have to remember the scenes to paint later.” We laughed and the conversation deteriorated into who we hoped would be willing to play and what we intended to do with them. That got us into demonstrating as we stripped each other’s clothes off and made our way to the bedroom. I had my doubts, but the suggestion that I’d be dipping into new territory was getting me hard and once that started, my thinking started to slow down dramatically.

It started with two hours of awkward silence. That’s what it seemed like. Allison, Whitney, and Bree loved the idea of getting naked with us. When Bree walked in the door, she made a straight line to Wendy and just wrapped her in her arms. I saw my Tiger melt against the redhead and they held each other for a long time.

“Hey, Ames,” I said when Amy showed up alone. “Where’s the rest of your ménage?”

“Melody didn’t tell you? I asked her not to invite them.”

“Things going downhill that fast?”

“I don’t know. I have to decide ... soon. They’ll leave for LA in three weeks and I’m either going with them or saying goodbye.” She paused and took my hand to lead me to the deck where we’d often had heart-to-heart talks. “How do you handle it, Tony? How do you cope with the hurt in your heart? I know you hurt. How do you keep going?”

We were determined that this wasn’t going to be a wake. We were supposed to be get high, figuratively or literally, and put the hurt behind us. But Amy was hurting, too. We had to support each other.

“Ames, when Kate left, she took part of me with her. No other way to describe it. I’m not all here anymore. It’s like a big hole in my heart.”

“How do you live with it?”

“I keep filling it with hope.”

“So, I invited the girls first,” Melody said. “I asked each of them how they felt about other men here and the best response was ambivalent. No one wanted any guys here.”

“Should I leave?” I asked.

“No, silly. You’re the artist. Remember the first posing party?”