The Conference Aftermath

Paul had been coming to the regional insurance conference in Columbus for eleven years, and he could honestly say it never got more exciting. Actually that was a lie. This year he was excited, and it had nothing to do with deductible trends or the keynote on flood mapping.

He was fifty-nine when he met Sheena at one of these things, two years back. Now he was sixty-one, and they had been dating for a year and a half. She was fifty-eight, sharp as a tack, and she worked claims for a rival firm, which made every hallway conversation feel a little bit naughty already.

But the real reason Paul's heart was doing funny things this year was Aria. Sheena's best friend. Sheena had known her since they were both in their thirties, twenty years of friendship, and Paul had heard stories. So many stories. Sheena called her the wildest woman she knew, and Sheena herself was no slouch.

And a month ago, over wine on Paul's couch, Sheena had said the thing.

"You know Aria's coming to Columbus this year, right? She registered last week." Sheena had grinned at him over her glass. "I kind of invited her, sort of on purpose."

"Invited her to what, exactly?" Paul had asked, though his pulse was already answering for him.

"To our conference. Our hotel. Our... everything." Sheena had leaned over and kissed his cheek. "We've talked about it, Paul. All three of us. She's fifty-seven, divorced, and curious. And you, my love, are the willing man she keeps asking me about."

Paul had nearly dropped his wine. "She asks about me?"

"Constantly! Well, sometimes. Fine, once, but it was a very loaded once."

So yes. This year, Paul walked into the downtown hotel with his badge lanyard already around his neck and a hope so big he could barely keep it off his face. Three days. Three days of seminars and coffee urns and, maybe, if the universe was kind, something that had been building between three adults for months.

***

Day one, and the ballroom smelled like burnt coffee and carpet cleaner, the way every conference ballroom in Columbus does. Paul was half-listening to a panel about captive insurance entities when Sheena appeared at his elbow, glowing, tugging someone along behind her.

"Paul! There you are!" Sheena said. "Come here, I want you to meet somebody properly. This is Aria, my oldest and wildest friend. Aria, this is Paul, who I've told you absolutely nothing about."

"Nothing at all," Aria said, sticking out her hand. Her eyes were laughing. "Only about six conversations' worth of nothing."

Paul shook her hand and felt a little electric jolt, which was ridiculous, they were in a ballroom full of underwriters. Aria was fifty-seven and gorgeous in a casual way, silver streaks in her dark hair, a blazer over jeans because she'd apparently decided the dress code was a suggestion.

"Sheena has told me you're the fun one," Aria said, tilting her head. "At these things. Is that possible? Are there fun people at insurance conferences?"

"Two of them, apparently," Paul said, and Aria laughed, a real laugh, head back, and Paul thought, oh no, oh this is going to be trouble.

The three of them fell into it immediately. Paul noticed that through the whole first day. Sheena and Aria had twenty years of shorthand, finishing each other's sentences, mocking the same presenters, and somehow they kept leaving a space exactly Paul-sized in the middle of every conversation. Like a chair saved at a table.

At lunch, Aria sat on his left and Sheena on his right, and they passed a basket of rolls back and forth over him like he was furniture, and he loved it.

"Paul, tell her about the vending machine incident in Des Moines," Sheena ordered.

"Oh no," Paul said.

"Oh YES," both women said at the same time, and then cracked up, and Paul told the story, and Aria laughed so hard at the part about the stuck bag of pretzels that she had to wipe her eyes, and her hand landed on his forearm while she did it, and stayed there a second longer than it needed to.

Paul looked at Sheena across the table. Sheena looked back at him with one raised eyebrow, the tiniest smirk, like she was saying, see? Told you.

***

That evening, the hotel bar was lively, which for a hotel bar meant about thirty insurance people pretending they weren't going to be at a 9 a.m. session. The three of them claimed a high table near the little dance floor, where a DJ was playing a weird mix of eighties hits and smooth jazz.

"Wine for me," Sheena said.

"Same," said Aria.

"Beer, and I'm getting it, because you two will order something absurd," Paul said, and went to the bar, and when he came back both women had arranged themselves on the stools on either side of him like it was a planned operation. Maybe it was.

They talked for two hours. That was the crazy thing, two hours flew by. Aria told a story about a claims adjustment that turned into a small-town feud, Sheena reenacted the whole thing with cocktail napkins as props, and Paul laughed until his sides hurt. Somewhere in there Aria's knee found his knee, casually, warm through her jeans.

Then the DJ played something slow, some old rock ballad from before any of their knees hurt, and Aria stood up and held her hand out to Sheena.

"Dance with me. It's tradition."

"It is NOT tradition," Sheena said, already taking her hand.

"It is now."

So the two of them went out there, and Paul watched his girlfriend and her best friend dance to a slow song, and it was... okay, it was a little bit sexy, he wasn't going to lie, even to himself. They were giggling and swaying, Aria's hands on Sheena's hips, Sheena's arms around Aria's shoulders, twenty years of friendship turning into something loose and warm in the middle of the dance floor.

Then Aria looked over Sheena's shoulder, right at Paul, and crooked a finger.

"Get in here. Middle of the sandwich," she called. "You don't get to just sit there looking pleased with yourself."

"That's literally my only skill," Paul called back, but he was already walking over, because what else was he gonna do?

They made room for him and suddenly he was in the middle, Sheena in front of him, Aria behind him, and it was a slow song, and everybody's hands were somewhere reasonable and also somehow not reasonable at all. Aria's hands slid up his chest from behind, light as anything, flattening over his shoulders. Sheena tilted her head back against his collarbone to look up at him, grinning.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi yourself," Paul said, a little breathless.

"Having fun?"

"The best conference of my life, and the sessions haven't even started."

Aria laughed against his shoulder blade. "God, you two are cute. No wonder Sheena never shuts up about you."

"I do shut up," Sheena protested.

"You really don't, babe," Aria said, and Paul felt her cheek rest between his shoulder blades for a moment, just resting, easy as anything, and his heart hammered so loud he was sure both of them could hear it.

The song ended and nobody moved right away. Then Aria stepped back, smoothed her blazer, and said, "Well. I need another wine. And maybe a shot. Sheena, are we doing shots?"

"We are absolutely doing shots," Sheena said, and they marched to the bar hand in hand like the whole dance had been nothing, while Paul stood on the dance floor for a second with his legs feeling unplugged.

***

Day two. The sessions were somehow even duller than day one, something about regulatory harmonization, which sounded like it should be a massage technique. Paul sat through it thinking about exactly nothing else except the night before.

After the last afternoon session, in the hallway outside the ballroom, Aria caught him in a hug.

And it was a hug. Paul had hugged plenty of people at plenty of conferences, quick shoulder pats, done. This was not that. Aria wrapped both arms around him and pressed in, cheek to his chest, and stayed. One, two, three full seconds. Four. Her hands were flat on his back and he could feel her breathe.

"You give good hug," she said into his shirt, not moving yet.

"You too," Paul managed. "Very... thorough."

"I'm a thorough person. Occupational hazard." She finally leaned back, but her hands slid down his arms slow, and she patted his chest once, twice, like checking it was real. "See you at dinner?"

"Wouldn't miss it."

Down the hall, half-hidden behind a rack of conference flyers, Sheena was watching the whole thing with her arms crossed and a smile she wasn't even trying to hide. When Paul caught her eye she just waggled her fingers at him. Hi. Yes, I saw that. You're welcome.

Paul walked back to his room to change for dinner, and on the way he did some math in his head, the boring kind he was good at. Two days down. One night left. Everyone had said what they'd said without saying anything at all, and tomorrow night was the last night of the conference, and the hotel had a big shower, and Sheena had that look she got.

He was gonna need to iron a shirt. He wanted to look good for what was maybe, possibly, hopefully coming.

Sheena came out of the bathroom in her pajamas that night, hair up, and sat on the end of the bed watching him fight with the ironing board. "Can I ask you something?" she said.

"Sure. Is it about the shirt? Because this thing is fighting back."

"Not the shirt. Although honestly, babe, you've been at that wrinkle for a solid minute." She patted the mattress beside her. "Come sit. Leave the shirt, it's fine, it'll live."

Paul set the iron down and went over. She took his hand, which she did sometimes, but tonight her thumb was doing that slow circle thing on his knuckle that meant she was building up to something.

"So I've been talking to Aria," she said.

"About me? Should I be worried?"

"About you. A little. But mostly about... okay." She took a breath and laughed at herself. "You know how sometimes you and I talk about things we want, and some of those things involve other people? And you know how I told you Aria is the wildest woman I know?"

Paul's pulse picked up so fast he actually felt it in his ears. "I remember."

"Well, we've been talking. Her and me. Twenty years of friendship, we can talk about anything, you know that? And apparently there's this... thing. A shared gift, she called it. Something two friends can give each other, and, well." Sheena bit her lip, and Paul watched her do it and thought his head might come off. "She asked what I'd think about sharing you. One