Reunion at Red Ridge

I'm twenty-nine years old and I got dumped by text message. Twenty-nine! A text message! Herman, thirty-three, man I met at a tech conference in Denver four years ago, sent me the words "I think we should take a break" with a little smiley face at the end of it. A smiley face. Two months ago. I still have the screenshot because I keep telling myself I'll delete it when it stops being funny, and guess what, it's not funny yet.

So when Eric texted me in March and said hey, last weekend of the season at Red Ridge, Herman's coming up, you should come too, I said yes before I even finished reading it. Was I going up there to prove I was over Herman? Yes. Obviously. Did I pack my cutest sweater and a new red dress specifically for this purpose? Also yes. I'm not going to sit here and pretend I was above it. I wanted the man to look at me and feel bad. The whole plan was shallow, and I stand by it.

Red Ridge is this little ski town in the Sierra Nevada, about four hours from my place, and by late March the snow is basically soup. I drove up Friday in my ancient Civic with the check engine light on the whole way, which felt thematically appropriate. The Aspen Lodge is the nice one in town, all wood beams and low lights and a bar that's actually busy, which surprised me for the dead season. I checked in, lugged my bag up two flights because I'm too stubborn to wait for elevators, changed into the red dress, and went downstairs.

And there was Eric at the bar, alone, looking like a man about to deliver bad news.

"Tabby! There she is!" He got off his stool and hugged me. He's thirty-four, big shoulders, the kind of tan you only get from working outside all winter. "Okay, so, don't hate me."

"What did you do?"

"Herman's not coming. Client thing blew up, he flew to Portland this morning. He literally texted me from the airport."

I stood there for a second with my mouth open. "You're kidding. I drove four hours. My check engine light came on for this man's benefit and he's in Portland?"

"I know! I tried, I swear. But hey, you're here, the room's paid for, and I'm buying you dinner. Look at it as a vacation where nobody knows you just got dumped."

"I came here to be smug in person, Eric. I had a whole thing prepared. I bought a dress."

"And it's a great dress. Herman's loss. Sit down, what are you drinking?"

I sat. I ordered a margarita. And I will admit that about two sips in, the frustration turned into something looser, like, fine, universe, I'll have a good weekend out of spite. Spite weekends can be excellent. That's actually how I met Herman, at a conference I only attended to spite a coworker, and look how that turned out, so maybe spite is a flawed strategy long-term, but you live and learn.

Then the bartender came over to restock Eric's beer and she said, "You must be Tabby. He's been talking about you all day."

"Oh great," I said.

"It was nice things. Mostly." She laughed and stuck out her hand. "Franny. I run this bar and I'm also dating this one." She tipped her head at Eric.

Franny is thirty-two, dark hair pinned up with a pencil, forearms you notice, and a smile that made something in my stomach do a little flip. Which caught me off guard, honestly. I'd been so locked into the Herman revenge project I hadn't planned on being attracted to anyone this weekend, least of all my host's girlfriend. But there it was. The flip.

She pulled up a stool and suddenly it was three drinks and two hours. We talked about the lodge regulars, about the gross slushy snow, about how Eric still can't parallel park even though he's lived in a mountain town for a decade. At some point Franny slid a plate of wings in front of us and said, "House account, don't argue," and I liked her even more.

"Okay," Eric said, racking up quarters on the bar. "Pool. You played in college, right?"

"Badly. But yes."

"Perfect. Franny, you're with me, we'll destroy her."

"Oh, we are not partners," Franny said. "I want to watch her beat you. I've been wanting to since you said she played in college."

The pool table in the back is under a low light that makes everything look warmer than it is, and I bent over the table and missed an easy eight ball immediately, which got a laugh out of both of them. I was rusty but I got better, and somewhere around the third game Franny came around to coach me on my stance, and her hand landed on my hip to nudge me into position, and it just stayed there. Through my whole next shot. Her thumb moved maybe half an inch against the fabric of my dress and my breath went short and I scratched the cue ball, which nobody even teased me about, which is how I knew they were both doing it on purpose.

"Sorry," she said, not sounding sorry at all, hand still there.

"You're not sorry," I said.

"I'm a little sorry. You sunk it after, though."

I did sink it after. My hands were not steady. Eric was leaning on his cue watching us with this easy grin, and the whole back corner of the lodge had gone quiet except for the jukebox, and I remember thinking, well, this is definitely not the Herman plan, and I did not care even a little.

We closed our tab around eleven. Franny tossed her apron to the other bartender, said "Danny, you're up," and then she and Eric walked me toward the elevator and I assumed that was the goodnight. Instead Eric hit the button for three and said, "Come up for one more? We've got the good whiskey and the corner suite."

The corner suite is nice, I'll say that. Big windows looking at the black shape of the ridge, a couch you could sleep four on. Franny kicked off her boots and sat cross-legged on the floor by the coffee table like she owned the place, which, fair. Eric poured three fingers each and I sat on the couch and felt the margaritas and the whiskey have a little meeting about my judgment.

"So be honest," Franny said, looking up at me. "Why'd you really come this weekend? Because I heard Herman was supposed to be here, and I heard about the dress."

"The dress is not for Herman, the dress is for me," I said, and then I laughed, because that was a lie and we all knew it. "Okay, fine. I came to make him jealous. That was the plan. He cancels, and I was going to spend the weekend looking fantastic and unbothered in photos, captioned something like 'mountains don't cheat on you' or whatever, and he'd see it and feel terrible."

"Mountains don't cheat on you," Eric repeated. "That's good. I'd like that."

"Wait, did he cheat?" Franny asked, sitting up straighter.

"No. He's not even a cheater, which is the annoying part. He just decided he wasn't feeling it anymore and told me by text with a smiley face. There's no villain. There's just a guy who sent a smiley face."

"Oh, that's worse," Franny said. "A villain you can hate. A smiley face just sits there."

"Exactly. Thank you."

Eric was stretching his legs out by the fire and he said, "So the plan failed. Herman's in Portland. What now?"

And Franny turned around on the floor to look at me, still with that hand she'd used on my hip resting on her own knee, and she said, "Well, for one thing, we can help you forget him. That's kind of our whole thing this weekend. Hospitality."

I felt my face get warm and I took a sip of whiskey to buy a second. "Is that right."

"Pretty sure," she said. "Eric?"

"We've talked about it," he said, easy as anything, like they'd rehearsed. "A lot, actually. Franny's been wanting to try it, and honestly, when you texted you were coming up, we looked at each other like, hmm."

"You looked at each other like hmm before I even got here?"

"We did." Franny laughed. "Okay, maybe we're a little presumptuous. But nothing's happening unless you want it to. Say no and we play cards and forget this conversation. Say yes and, well."

And here's the part where I thought about Herman for exactly one second. The plan. The dress. The photos. The smiley face. All of it, one second, like flipping through a catalog, and then I put the catalog down.

"Here's my situation," I said. "I came up here to feel like myself again. And sitting here with you two is the first time in two months I've felt like myself. So I'm not saying no."

Franny made this happy little sound and Eric said, "Okay. Okay, wow. But before anything, rules. You say stop anytime, about anything, and it stops, no hard feelings, that's permanent. We tell each other everything after. And nobody's drunk past the point of choosing, so if that whiskey hits you wrong, we switch to water and go to bed."

"See, this is why I like you people," I said. "Herman would've just started taking his shirt off."

"Water first," Franny said, and Eric was already up, filling three glasses at the little sink in the corner. "We wait ten minutes, and then I ask you again, sober, and if it's still yes, it's yes."

We drank the water and talked about nothing, about Danny and the slush and Eric's parallel parking, and it was the most romantic ten minutes I'd had in a year, and I still wanted exactly what I'd wanted before.

"Still a yes?" Franny asked, crawling up onto the couch next to me, close but not touching.

"Still a yes. Ask me again when you're touching me, though, because I like the way you ask."

Franny put her hand on my knee and looked at me with those dark eyes and said, "Tabby. Can I kiss you?"

"God, yes," I said, and she did.

And listen, I have kissed a fair number of people in my twenty-nine years, and I like to think I know what I'm doing, but Franny kissed me like she was the bartender and I was the last customer of the night and she was closing up shop slow. Her hand came up to my jaw and her mouth was warm and she tasted like whiskey and she made this little hum against my lips that went straight down my spine. Eric was right there on my other side, watching, and I could feel him watching, and instead of being weird it made everything sharper.

"Oh, that's good," Eric said quietly. "You two look incredible."

Franny pulled back an inch, her thumb still on my jaw, and grinned at me. "You've been walking around in that dress all night and I have been so patient."

"You have. I noticed," I said. "You have been extremely patient and I appreciate it."

And then my pride, the whole Herman plan, the dress, the photos, all of it just melted right off me like snow in April slush, and what was left was just want. Pure, stupid, grateful want. I reached for her and we were kissing again and this time I had my hands in her dark hair, careful of the pencil still pinned in there, which by the way survived the entire night, that pencil. That pencil is stronger than I am.

Franny pushed me back against the couch cushions and kissed down my neck, and I heard Eric shift, and then his hand was on my ankle, just resting there, warm. "Okay?" he asked.

"So okay," I said. "Extremely okay."

Franny slid the dress straps off my shoulders and got it down around my waist and looked at me and said, "Yeah, okay, the dress was for you. Good call." Then her mouth was on my nipple and I made a noise I will not be describing, thank you.

She worked her way down my stomach, unhurried, like we had all night, which it turned out we did, and then she was pulling my underwear off and settling between my legs, and Eric moved up behind her and started rubbing her shoulders while she looked up at me. "This alright?"

"Franny, if you stop I'm going to lose my mind."

"Can't have that," she said, and put her mouth on me.

Oh my god, you guys. She was good. She was so good. Her tongue did this thing, this slow flat thing and then this fast flicky thing, and her fingers joined in, and Eric was rubbing her back and her arms and leaning down to kiss my thigh, and I was grabbing the couch cushion like it was going to save me. She smelled like the bar, like cedar and citrus, underneath everything, and it was doing something to my brain. I came embarrassingly fast the first time, like ninety seconds, and I apologized and Franny laughed against my thigh, actually laughed, and said, "Honey, that's a compliment."

"Round two exists," Eric said. "Round two always exists."

"Round two," I agreed, breathless, "is my new favorite phrase."

And then it got wonderfully tangled. Franny climbed up and straddled my face, but only after she asked, "Your turn, if you want," and I said, "get up here," and I got my mouth on her and she was wet and warm and she tasted like salt and she smelled incredible and I moaned right against her thigh, I could not help it, and that made her moan and then it was just this loop of moaning that I could have stayed in forever. Meanwhile Eric was behind her and I could feel his hands, on her hips and on me, just touching everything, keeping everybody connected, like a bass player holding the whole band together.

At some point I reached down without looking and found his cock, hard, thick, and I wrapped my hand around it and he said, "Oh, hi."

"Hi," I said, pulling my mouth off Franny just long enough. "Can I?"

"Please," he said, and I turned my head and took him in my mouth while Franny rode my face, and the two sensations at once, I can't explain it, it was like surround sound. He wasn't huge in a scary way, he was big in a good way, and I used my hand and my mouth together the way I learned on Herman four years ago and improved on ever since, and Eric made this low groan and said, "Okay, you've done this before."

"Mm-hm," I said, which was as articulate as I could manage with my mouth full and a bartender on my face.

Franny was getting close, I could feel it, her thighs tightening against my ears, and Eric said, "Franny, babe, come for her," and she did, right there, her whole body shaking, gripping the couch arm, saying "oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck" in this voice two octaves above her bar voice. Then she rolled off me and collapsed on the cushions and looked at me with heavy eyes and said, "Okay. Wow. Eric, get over here."

What followed was maybe twenty minutes of the best chaos of my life. Eric got a condom from the bedroom, because he's a gentleman like that, rolled it on while Franny and I watched and applauded quietly, and then Franny got on her hands and knees on the big couch and Eric slid into her from behind and I knelt beside them and kissed her mouth and then his mouth and ran my hands over both of them, her soft and him hard, and touched myself while I watched his cock move in and out of her. The room filled up with these wet sounds and the fire popping and Franny gasping "yes, right there" and Eric saying "you like that, babe?" and Franny saying "you know I do" and me saying things I don't fully remember but which were apparently encouraging, because everybody kept going harder.

"Tabby," Franny gasped, grabbing my wrist. "Talk to me. Tell me something."

"He's so deep in you, I can see it, I can see everything," I said, "and I'm so wet watching it, I'm touching myself and it's because of you two," and she came again, hard, her forearms flexing against the couch, and Eric pulled out and I took the condom off him myself, carefully, with my mouth hovering like an idiot, and finished him with my hand while he braced on the couch arm and came all over his own stomach with this groan like the mountain falling down.

Then we all three sort of folded into a pile. I ended up in the middle, which felt correct. Franny on one side tracing circles on my shoulder, Eric on the other with his arm over both of us, all of us sweating and breathing hard, the fire low, the ridge black out the window.

"So," I said eventually. "Hospitality."

"We take it seriously here," Franny said.

"Very serious industry," Eric agreed.

I lay there between them, wrecked and happy, thinking about how two months ago I was crying into a frozen burrito because a man sent me a smiley face, and now I was the filling in a ski instructor sandwich at the nice lodge in Red Ridge, and life is genuinely unpredictable is all I'm saying.

"Hey," Eric said after a while, casual as anything, like he was suggesting a lunch spot. "We should do this next time you're in town."

I lifted my head and looked at Franny, who was already grinning, and then at him, and I grinned too. "Next time I'm in town, huh. What if I'm in town a lot? The season's over."

"Summer's good too," Franny said, pulling the pencil out of her hair at last and setting it on the coffee table like a trophy. "Hiking. The bar has a patio."

"Terrible hikes," Eric said. "Very boring. You'd hate them. Better come check."

"You're both terrible salesmen and I'm convinced," I said, and settled back down between them. "Also, full disclosure, my Civic's check engine light is on, so you might be seeing a lot of me whether you like it or not. It may not make it home."

"That little thing got you four hours up the mountain?" Franny said. "Honey, it's earned a rest. We'll park it and you can stay."

I fell asleep that night in the corner suite at the Aspen Lodge, in the middle of the world's best couple, with the whiskey and the margaritas and the whole Herman plan nowhere to be found, and the last thing I remember is Franny saying into my hair, "Mountains don't cheat on you," and both of us laughing until Eric told us some people were trying to sleep, and we did not care even a little.