Backstage Encore

My name is Katarina, I'm twenty-eight years old, and I've been the singer in this band for three years now. I'm also a nurse, divorced two years back after a three-year marriage that ended quietly, the way bad things sometimes do. No drama, just two people who stopped fitting.

Tonight the band played our anniversary show at The Velvet Note. Small venue, small crowd, mostly friends. We've been together five years, and I had a gift planned that I'd been chewing on for months.

I led the three of them backstage after the last song. Theo on guitar, twenty-nine, single, the easiest person I know. Gregory on drums, thirty-one, gentle, always watching everything. Chas on bass, thirty-four, warm as an old blanket. None of them had ever touched me and I'd never touched them. That mattered to how I'd planned this.

The lounge behind the stage has worn couches and fairy lights somebody strung up years ago. The place smelled like old wood and leather, and the empty stage echoed a little when Gregory dropped his sticks in a bag. I sat them down and stood in front of them with my heart going hard.

"So," I said. "I got you guys something for the anniversary."

"You didn't have to do that," Chas said, tipping his water bottle at me.

"It's not a thing. It's more of a, well. It's an offer." I took a breath. "You know I've been single two years. And you know I trust you three more than almost anybody. My gift is me. If you want it. All three of you, tonight, here. Sharing me. It's separate from the band, nothing about the band depends on your answer. It's a fantasy I've had since the divorce and I finally figured out who I'd want it with."

Nobody laughed. That was the first good sign. Gregory set his stick bag down slow, like he was being careful with the moment. Theo looked at Chas and Chas looked at Theo.

"You're serious," Gregory said.

"Completely serious. And you can say no. Any of you, all of you, and we're still friends tomorrow and I never bring it up again. That's a promise."

"I mean," Theo said, and rubbed his jaw, "I'm not saying no. I just want to make sure you're not gonna regret it in the morning."

"I've thought about this for months. I'm twenty-eight, I know what I want." I looked at each of them. "And I want it to be slow. Tender. Not some rushed backstage fumble. We've got all night, the place is ours till noon."

Chas nodded first. "Okay. Yes. From me, yes!"

"Yes," Gregory said, quiet, and his ears went red, which honestly made it easier.

"Yes," Theo said. "God, yes. Sorry. Yes."

I laughed and something in my chest unclenched. Then I got practical, because I'm a nurse and that's how my brain works. "Condoms. I bought a box, they're in the bathroom. We use them, all of us, no arguments. If anybody changes their mind halfway through, you say so and we stop, no hard feelings. Deal?"

"Deal," all three of them said, more or less together, and that concluded the matter.

I stood up and turned the little lamp lower so the room went mostly fairy lights. Then I reached back and found the zipper on my dress.

I won't deny I was nervous. My hands shook a little on the zipper. But the thing about this fantasy, the thing I'd figured out over two years of being alone, was that I didn't want to be taken. I wanted to be seen. I wanted three people I loved, platonically or otherwise, to look at me and want me and be gentle about it.

So I pulled the zipper down slow and let the dress slide off my shoulders. I hadn't worn a bra, I'd planned that part for weeks. The dress caught on my hips for a second and then dropped to the floor and I stepped out of it in just my panties, standing there in the fairy lights with three men watching me.

"You're beautiful," Gregory said, and it didn't sound like a line. It sounded like an observation.

"Come here," I said, and sat down on the couch between Chas and Theo. "Slow, remember. I want to feel this."

Chas went first. He leaned in and kissed my shoulder, just laid his mouth there, warm and unhurried. Then Theo's hand found the other shoulder and his lips followed, and Gregory got up off his chair and came around and knelt on the floor in front of me, which I hadn't expected, and pressed his mouth to the side of my neck.

I closed my eyes. Six hands, more or less, moving over me like I was something worth taking care of. Theo's palm flat on my back. Chas's fingers tracing my collarbone. Gregory's breath on my throat.

"Is this okay?" Theo murmured near my ear.

"Yes. Don't stop asking, though. I like it."

"Okay." His hand slid down to my waist. "This okay?"

"Yes."

Chas kissed up my neck to below my ear and I shivered. I felt Gregory's hands settle on my knees, not going anywhere yet, just resting there, asking without words. I put my own hands over his.

"You can touch my legs," I told him. "Higher too. Just tell me before you get there."

"Understood," he said, and moved his palms up my calves, slow, like he was reading something in the skin.

I've had sex that was faster and louder and frankly more acrobatic than this was shaping up to be. I've had years of it, good and bad. But I don't think I've ever had an hour where I was the center of it, where three people were being careful with me on purpose. It went straight through me. My breathing got shallow and I didn't bother hiding it.

Theo's mouth moved from my shoulder to my breast and I gasped. He paused, lips still against me, waiting.

"Yes," I said. "Yes, keep going."

He took my nipple into his mouth, gentle, and Chas kissed the other side of my neck, and Gregory's hands were on my thighs now, high up, and I tipped my head back against the couch and let it all happen. The stage was dark beyond the doorway. The venue was empty. It was just us and the fairy lights and the sound of my own heart.

"Bed," I managed after a while. "The big couch pulls out. Chas, you know where the condoms are."

"On it," Chas said, and got up, and I caught Theo grinning at me in the low light, a little crooked, a little soft.

"You sure about this?" he asked one more time.

"Ask me again in an hour," I said. "The answer's gonna be the same."

Gregory laughed, low, and pulled the couch open while I stood there half-naked in a dim room, waiting for my friends to come back to me.

Chas came back with the box and set it on the floor by the bed like it was a tray of drinks. Nobody made a joke about it. I think we'd all passed the point where jokes were possible.

I laid down on the pulled-out mattress and the three of them arranged themselves around me without anybody discussing it. Theo knelt at my side and went back to my breasts, licking slow circles around one nipple and then the other, and when he closed his mouth over me I arched off the bed a little. Gregory settled by my knees and ran his hands up and down my thighs, over the fabric of my panties, patient as ever. And Chas turned my face toward him and kissed me.

That was the first real kiss of the night. Two years, since the divorce, since I'd let anyone's mouth on mine at all, and here it was, Chas at thirty-four kissing me soft and deep while his best friend sucked my nipple. My whole body reacted before my brain caught up. I made a noise into his mouth and he smiled against my lips.

"Good?" he asked.

"So good," I said. "Keep going. All of you. Please."

Theo's hand was resting on my stomach. I reached down and took his wrist and moved it lower, pressed his fingers against me through the panties. He understood right away. He rubbed me through the fabric, slow, finding me through the cotton, and my hips started moving on their own. I heard myself moaning and I didn't care who heard it. Nobody was going to hear it. That was the entire reason for renting the venue until noon.

"Off," I said, lifting my hips. "Somebody take these off."