The Thank You List

Natasha was twenty-six and still not used to the quiet out here. Six months in town after the divorce, and she still reached for her phone every time a truck rumbled past, like one of them might be hers. It never was. Gabe had kept the truck in the settlement. And the apartment, and most of her twenties, or that was how it felt some nights.

She pulled into the long gravel drive at Sunset Ridge Ranch just past six. It was a cool evening in October, and the wood stove was lit. Her Civic rattled to a stop behind Luis's pickup and she sat for a second, letting the day drain out.

The kitchen door was open. Of course it was. Erin never locked anything until ten at night.

"There she is," Erin called from the stove. She was twenty-seven, born on this land, and she stirred a pot like she was arm-wrestling it. "Wash your hands, you're peeling carrots."

"Hello to you too."

"Hi," Luis said. He was twenty-eight, two years married to Erin, and he was at the table with a beer and a paring knife, working through a sack of potatoes. "Rough shift?"

"Some idiot held the key card upside down for ten minutes."

"Tourists," Erin said, like that explained everything. It kind of did.

Natasha washed up and took the peeler. This was the routine now. Two, three nights a week she came out after work, they cooked, she ate food that actually tasted like something, and she went home feeling less like a discarded thing. Luis and Erin had found her crying in the hotel laundry room her second week in town, over nothing, over everything, and instead of making it weird they'd just started inviting her places. It was the kindest thing anyone had done for her maybe ever.

Dinner was beef and carrots and the good bread from the store in town. Wine after. Erin poured three glasses and they settled in the living room, Erin and Luis on the couch, Natasha in the big chair with her feet up.

She'd been turning something over in her head all week. So she just said it.

"I want to thank you two. For everything. The dinners, the hayride, when my car died and Luis drove forty minutes to get me. I'd have lost my mind out here without you."

Luis waved a hand. "You'd have been fine."

"I wouldn't, actually. And don't argue. I mean it. I want to repay you. Anything you need. Fence repair, bookkeeping, I can paint, I can cook. Name it."

Erin looked at Luis. Luis looked at Erin. Natasha had learned that look. It meant something funny was coming.

"Well," Erin said, setting her wine down. "There is a list. But I'm going to say up front, it's not a list of favors, and it's not how you thank us."

"A list."

"Of things we've always wanted to try with someone we trust. We joke about it. Been joking about it since before you showed up, actually." She got up and went to the drawer by the phone, the junk drawer every kitchen has, and came back with a piece of paper folded in quarters. Handwriting on the outside. Her handwriting.

"You're joking," Natasha said.

"Read it out loud," Luis said, grinning into his beer.

Natasha unfolded it. Ten items, numbered, in pencil. She read the first one. "Item one. A proper back massage. One person only."

"That's the rule," Erin said. "One person only. Keeps it simple."

"Item two. Whipped cream." She stopped. "Whipped cream?"

"Item two is a whole conversation," Luis said. "Start with one."

Natasha scanned the rest. Her face went warm. A few items were tame. A few were not tame at all. She looked up at the two of them on the couch, this married couple she loved like the family she'd picked for herself, and she waited for the joke to land so she could laugh and move on.

It didn't land. They were both watching her, calm, patient, like the answer could be anything and they'd take it.

"You're serious."

"We're serious," Erin said. "It's a game. You pick one, or none, or we watch a movie instead. Nothing on that paper is a debt, Natasha. You don't owe us a damn thing, and the thank-you stays a thank-you, so go ahead and paint the porch if you want to. This list is separate from all of that. It's us being silly, we've each had one glass and not a drop more, and if it stops being fun, or anyone feels fuzzy, it stops and we drink water."

"Okay." Natasha looked at item one again. A back massage. That was safe. That was practically a spa day. "Okay. Item one. I can do a massage."

"That's a yes?" Luis asked, wanting it plain.

"Yes. Item one. I say yes."

Erin got up and came back with the good coconut oil, the one she cooked with and also rubbed on her hands, and a stack of towels. "Okay. So here's the thing. The rule says one person only. But Luis's hands are useless, he presses like he's kneading dough, and I give the best massage in the county."

"So?"

"So we both do it. Three hands each. We break our own rule on day one." She laughed. "We're bad at rules. Ask Luis."

"You are bad at rules," Luis agreed.

Natasha thought about it. Two people, four hands, one back. It wasn't item two. It wasn't even item five, whatever item five was, she'd need a dictionary. "Fine. Both of you. But I keep my shirt on."

"Whatever you want," Erin said, easy, and that settled it.

They set towels on the living room floor in front of the couch because the couch was too soft and the kitchen chairs too hard. Natasha took off her flannel, kept the tank top on, and lay down on her stomach. The wood floor was warm from the stove, and she thought about the luxury of it.

Luis started at her shoulders. Erin started lower, at the small of her back, over the tank top. They were actually good. Between the two of them they had eight thumbs and all eight were finding things she'd been carrying since the divorce, knots she'd named and made peace with.

"Oh," she said, into the towel. "Oh, that's the spot."

"Told you," Erin said.

Time went soft. The wine, the hands, the wood stove ticking. Natasha stopped keeping track of which hands were whose. There was just pressure and warmth and somebody's fingers working up under her hair at the base of her skull, and she made a sound she wasn't planning to make.

"Sorry," she mumbled.

"Nothing to be sorry for," Luis said, from somewhere above her.

She rolled onto her side eventually, because her shoulder needed it, and ended up half on her back looking up at them. They were kneeling on either side of her. Close. Closer than the massage strictly needed. Erin's face was flushed from the work. Luis was watching Natasha with an expression she'd seen on him maybe once, at the hayride, when Erin had said something honest.

"I should get up," Natasha said. She didn't get up.

"You should if you want to," Erin said. "Or you could stay right there."

"I don't know the rules for this part."

"There are no rules for this part," Erin said. "That's the whole point of breaking the other one." She reached out and tucked a strand of hair off Natasha's forehead, slow, giving her all the time in the world to pull back. "Can I kiss you? Straight question, straight answer, no is fine."

Natasha's heart was loud. She was twenty-six and divorced and lying on a farmhouse floor and a woman she adored had just asked her a question nobody had ever bothered to ask her before, including Gabe, especially Gabe.

"Yes," she said. "Yeah. Please."

Erin leaned down and kissed her, soft, just lips, and stayed there a beat, and kissed her again with a little more. Natasha's hand came up without permission and found Erin's waist. Erin smiled into the second kiss.

Then Luis. He waited until Erin sat back, and he said, "Same question, same deal," and Natasha said yes to him too, and his mouth was slower, warmer, one hand resting light on her hip like a question of its own.

Erin kissed her again while Luis watched, and then Erin pulled back just enough to say, "Touch me too. If you want." Natasha's hand was already moving, up Erin's ribs, over the thin cotton of her shirt, and Erin wasn't wearing a bra, Natasha could feel that now, the soft weight of her against a palm that had never done this before and somehow knew exactly what to do anyway. Erin made a low sound into her mouth. "See," Luis said, hoarse, "this is why we don't have rules."

Natasha laughed, and the laugh turned into something else when Luis's hand settled on her stomach, warm through the tank top, thumb tracing the waistband of her jeans. "Yes?" he asked. "Yes," she said, and his fingers slipped under the denim, not far, just enough that she felt her whole body pay attention. She was wet already and she knew he could feel it the moment his hand went lower, because he stopped and breathed out slow against her neck. "Okay," he said, like a man finding something he wasn't sure would be there. "Okay."

"Sit up," Erin told her, and Natasha sat up, and Erin pulled her own shirt off over her head in one motion, no ceremony, and her breasts were right there, small and full, nipples dark and already hard, and Natasha leaned in without being asked and put her mouth on one. Erin's fingers went into her hair immediately. "Oh, good," Erin breathed. "Just like that." The sound of it went through Natasha like the wine hadn't, straight down, and she sucked gently and felt the nipple stiffen against her tongue and heard Erin's breath go ragged and thought, I did that. I am doing that.

Luis got behind her, his chest against her back, and reached around to cup her other breast through the tank top, thumb dragging over her nipple until it peaked under the fabric. She was pinned between them, Erin's breast in her mouth, Luis's hand on her tit and his other hand still down her jeans, two fingers now, sliding through the wetness and pressing up inside her slow. Her hips moved before her brain did. "Fuck," she said against Erin's skin. "Please don't stop."

"Wasn't going to," Luis said into her hair. He fucked her with his fingers, unhurried, curling them, and every time he found the spot her whole body clenched around him. She could feel him hard against her lower back through his jeans, a thick line of him, and she reached back without thinking and pressed her palm against it. He groaned. "You can take it out," he said. "It's yours if you want it."

She wanted it. She got his belt open with fumbling fingers and his zipper down and pulled him free, and he was hot and heavy in her hand, hard as a fence post, and she wrapped her fingers around him and stroked while he kept working her pussy and Erin kept making sounds above her. Erin knelt up and pulled Natasha's hand between her own thighs, under the waistband of her leggings, and there was nothing but heat and slick there, and Natasha pressed her fingers in and Erin rode her hand, gasping, saying her name.

"Look at us," Erin said, laughing, breathless. "Twenty minutes on the list and we're already ruined." Natasha couldn't answer. Luis's thumb found her clit and rubbed tight slow circles and the world went white at the edges. She stroked him faster, feeling him leak against her knuckles, and Erin kissed her, wet and open-mouthed, and all three of them were breathing like they'd run here from the road.

"I'm close," Natasha managed. "Don't you dare stop."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Luis said, and didn't.

They undressed her by asking. Tank top, that's okay? Yes. Luis lifting it over her head, her bra unhooked, all of it traded back and forth with a yes or a nod, nobody grabbing, nobody assuming. Natasha ended up bare from the waist up between them on the towels and it felt, strangely, like arriving somewhere.

"You're beautiful," Erin said, and touched her, both hands, unhurried.

"So are you," Natasha said, and proved it with her mouth.

* * *