Chapter 6

Mel couldn't find Daniel in the apartment when she arrived home, so she headed to the roof. He often went up there so he could smoke a joint without triggering one of Mel's migraine headaches. When Mel emerged from the emergency access door, she found him leaning against the lip of the roof, cupping his hands around the joint to keep it from going out in the harsh wind. He was wrapped in thick layers against the cold, with a knitted beanie pulled down low on his forehead.

Mel made her way across the uneven gray rooftop and stood next to him at the waist-high balustrade. She leaned her forearms on the gritty surface and stared at the back of the brick building next door. They didn't get much of a view from up here, surrounded by taller buildings on almost every side.

"How'd lunch go?" Ever the gentleman, Daniel was already going through the intricate ritual of snuffing and secreting the roach away in an old Altoids tin.

"I need your help," Mel said. She glanced over at him from the corner of her eye. She was closer to Daniel than anyone else on the planet, and she needed his input on this. "Bebe and Kade are poly."

Daniel's eyebrows journeyed to impressive heights. "You know I'm a very helpful guy, but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do with that."

Mel slumped against the wall with a scowl. "Bebe asked if I wanted to date her. Me. Date her. As in romantically. Kind of. And I have no idea what to do." If she had hair, she'd be pulling it out.

Daniel didn't say anything right away, but rather dragged a fingertip through the air, sketching out a straight vertical line.

"What are you doing?" Mel asked.

"Who, me? Oh, I'm just keeping score. That's one point to Quince for correctly calling it from miles away," he said in an old-timey radio announcer voice. "For the folks at home, once again, that's Quince one, Sorrento zilch."

Mel pushed away from the low wall to groan at Daniel's antics. "You did not call it! You weren't even close to calling it."

"I told you that night she came into the bar, you should have asked about the vibe!"

"That is completely different from predicting that she wanted to include me in her poly—thing." Mel made frantic circles with her hands to illustrate what was still an ill-defined concept.

"I suspected. Now you have confirmation—like I knew you would—and you're all shocked? It's 2024. Get with the program. Basically everyone's poly." Daniel tucked the tin into his peacoat pocket and rubbed his hands up and down his arms. The wind picked up, whipping the loose end of his scarf around his shoulder. "So what did you tell her?"

"Nothing yet." Mel turned back to stare at the depressing brick wall. She could still make out the faint lines of an old advertisement for boot polish stenciled on the building. "I told them both I would give it some thought, but I have no idea what I'm going to say."

"Both?" His eyes—bright pink like they always got when he smoked—blinked slowly. "The wife was there, too?"

Mel nodded. "To confirm everything was on the up-and-up," she said.

"That's thoughtful."

"Is it?" Mel groaned and tugged her coat tighter around her frame. "I thought it was weird. I mean, I wouldn't have ever initiated something like this when I was married. How can someone be okay with their wife just… seeing other people?"

Daniel shrugged. "Do you think they were lying?"

Mel chewed on her cold lip, thinking about Kade's inflectionless comments over lunch. "No, Kade seemed perfectly fine. Though it's hard to get a read on them. Tough nut to crack, I guess."

"Then you have to take what they say at face value," Daniel said.

"Yeah." Mel dropped down to the ground so she could lean back against the wall, out of the worst of the wind. "The whole thing seems way too complicated to me. Do I really need this kind of drama in my life? Relationships are hard enough."

This was not the path Mel had thought her life would take. Since the divorce, she'd pictured herself as a lone wolf, and being with Bebe—and, in some capacity, everyone else Bebe was partnered with—was the opposite of that.

Daniel shimmied onto the ground to sit beside Mel. "Do you like her, though?"

Mel hugged her knees under her chin. "I think she's great. Funny, smart, gorgeous, weird sense of humor." She chewed on her lower lip. "This could be ideal, actually. I could dip my toe in without a ton of pressure. It's not like we can progress past a certain point when she's already married to someone else." As Mel said it out loud, it all started to sound more and more appealing. The only thing that nagged at the back of her mind was— "Am I really the kind of person who can be in an open relationship, though? And at this point in my life? Who does that?"

"Well." Daniel cleared his throat. "I have."

Mel squinted at him. "What? When?"

He picked some ash off the front of his shirt. "I'm in an open relationship right now. Technically."

Mel stared at Daniel. "What do you mean, you're in an open relationship?"

"Jackson and I," he said slowly, like he was speaking to a child. "We both see other people."

"That's different." Mel waved her hand around with a scoff. "You two aren't serious. You're casual. It's normal to casually date other people in that situation."

"This is obviously a foreign concept to you, so let me be clear: Jackson is allowed to fool around with other folks, I'm allowed to fool around with other men, but that's it. We're not dating anyone else; we don't get serious with anyone else. Because we are serious with each other. Because we're in love."

Love? Her head throbbed, and she rubbed at her forehead with the heel of her hand. "When did you two decide this?"

"Like, five months ago."

"And you didn't tell me?" Mel had assumed they told each other everything.

Daniel gave her a wild look. "The mere mention of love pisses you off these days. You're not the easiest person to talk to about this stuff."

Mel's mouth dropped open. "I'm easy! I'm incredibly easy!" Her voice echoed off the buildings around them. Quieter, she mumbled, "I'm sorry if I wasn't… receptive. It's a surprise, is all."

"I get it." Daniel wagged his head side to side. "But it's what makes me happy."

Mel thought about that. Happiness—true, soul-shaking, life-affirming happiness—seemed like a far-off goal. Something that happened to other people. But if she could have her job and her little apartment and her old-timey movies with Daniel and sex with a beautiful woman who was already getting her emotional needs met by someone else—would that be so bad? Bebe said she wanted some kind of connection, which was fine. She'd never mentioned how deep the connection had to be. Mel could have a nice time with someone and keep it on the surface-level. Not superficial, but… fun. Light! Nothing serious.

She turned to Daniel, wildly grateful she had someone to talk to and that that someone was him. "These guys you sleep with while dating Jackson—it's just sex? Nothing else?"

Daniel nodded. "That's the idea, yeah."

"So, nothing romantic? Just fucking. A purely physical thing."

"Well, sure, but I don't treat these guys like garbage," he said. "We talk, get to know each other at least a little bit. There's got to be some trust. No one wants to go home with an organ harvester." He shrugged. "We might grab something to eat on the way to his apartment or mine, but I wouldn't call it romantic. More like basic decency."

Mel let her head fall back against the rooftop balustrade with a thunk. "See, that sounds perfect to me. Polite. No strings. But Bebe said she wants to go on dates, so that's a slightly higher bar."

Daniel hummed. "I may be stoned out of my mind, but can I just say? I want you to be happy. If dating someone, even as an experiment, might help—why not give it a try? And if not a new relationship, there's got to be something you can do to shake things up."

Mel thought about her laptop, probably still whirring on her bed. "There is one thing," she said. "You know how I'm always saying I want to open up my own place if I ever win the lottery?"

"Yeah. Our big ‘How We'd Spend Our Lottery Winnings' talk. You behind the bar, me managing the staff, also me on all final decor decisions." Daniel nodded to himself. "Though we really should start playing the lottery if we ever want that to actually have a chance of happening."

"Forget the lottery. There's this competition at the next Food Fest," Mel said, and the whole story spilled out. After she finished explaining the logistics, she sighed. "I don't know if I should enter, though. I mean, with the thousands of bartenders in this town? The chances of me even getting in are slim."

"Are you kidding me?" Daniel stared at her. "Mel, you should absolutely enter. Think of how much closer we'd be to that bar of our own with that prize money."

Mel shrugged. "It costs like fifty bucks alone to apply."

Daniel lifted his butt off the ground so that he could reach his wallet. "I'll give you fifty bucks. Shit, we can make fifty bucks in an hour on a good night. You're really going to let fifty bucks stop you?" He tried to open the billfold the wrong way, making a distressed noise and holding it out to her.

Mel shoved the wallet away. "All right, all right, put your money away. I'll enter. And if I don't get picked, I'll chalk it up to a losing lotto ticket."

He put his hand on her knee and patted it. "That's the spirit." He stood up shakily and pocketed his wallet. "Let's go. You've got a competition to enter, and I'm going to take a hot shower and pretend I'm in a '90s shampoo commercial."

"Okay." Mel laughed as she stood as well.

"My hair is going to feel delicious," Daniel said mostly to himself. He turned and ambled to the rooftop door. Mel followed him inside.

As she sat on her bed listening to Daniel singing in the shower down the hall, Mel opened her laptop yet again. She had some time before her shift started. Maybe she could get a head start, or at least download the forms and begin the process of filling in the easy stuff. Mel got to work—and soon found herself surrounded by scratch paper, a pen behind her ear and another between her teeth. She was on a roll, tearing through her employment history, describing some of her favorite obscure drinks, writing a goddamn personal statement on her mixology philosophy. Forget the entry fee, no one in their right mind would spend this much time yakking about cocktails unless they were completely obsessed. Which, Mel figured, she was.

Distantly, she heard the shower shut off. Daniel appeared in her open doorway wearing a towel around his waist and another wrapped around his head. "Shouldn't you be leaving for work soon?" he asked.

Mel glanced at the clock on her bedside table. "Yeah, in a minute. I'm just uploading these forms." Plus entering her credit card info to cover the fee. Then it would be done.

"Hell yeah! You're doing it? Entering that competition?" Daniel flew over to her bed, dripping slightly on her bedclothes as he climbed onto the mattress to join her. He peered at the entry screen on her laptop. "Look at you."

She gave him a wry look. "Want to do the honors and press the submit button?"

He wrapped a damp arm over her shoulders, ignoring her affronted screech of laughter. "No way. This is all you. Go for it."

With a dramatic flourish, Mel raised a finger in the air and brought it down on her trackpad. The website reloaded, taking its sweet time before showing a confirmation message. Now all she had to do was wait and see if she was chosen to compete. She let out a long breath.

"Hey." Daniel squeezed her tight against his side. "Proud of you."

"I'm… actually proud of me, too." A giddy feeling of accomplishment welled up inside her. "I'm fired up. I could run a mile. I could fight a bear."

Daniel hummed. "Could you go on a date with a really hot rich lady?"

Mel's smile morphed so that her lips were pushed out in thought. "I mean. Maybe? Yeah. Yeah, why not?"

A high squeal of delight left Daniel. He squeezed her once more, then leapt from the bed, nearly losing the towel around his waist in the process. "Get it, girl. I've got to get dressed and eat, like, two bowls of Lucky Charms." He left the room with a blown kiss. "Keep me updated! On both fronts," he called as he made his way down the hall.

Mel shook her head fondly and took out her cell phone. The last text from Bebe stared back at her.

We had such a nice time with you at lunch. (Kade says hi!) Looking forward to hearing from you, but AGAIN no pressure.

There was a voice in the back of her head hissing that she wasn't that kind of person, that she'd never be able to handle any kind of relationship again, let alone a poly one.

That voice was a real bastard. Mel hated that voice. She'd ignored it successfully in the past: when she'd first shaved off all her hair, every time she made another tattoo appointment, each new piercing—the little voice had piped up. It wanted her scared. It wanted her to care more about what other people thought about her than what she thought about herself.

If she'd listened to that voice in the past, she'd probably have a practical bob, a job she hated, and a husband in the suburbs. Gross.

If she was going to go for this, there were worse reasons than spite.

She texted a response to Bebe. Short and sweet.

No pressure on YOU but… let's meet up for drinks? Super casual. Mondays are my only free evenings, sorry. But at least that should make scheduling easy

Her thumb stabbed at the send button about five times before it actually worked. She'd never admit it, even to herself, but her hands were shaking a little.

Okay. Done. She'd done the thing. The voice in the back of her head was fuming, which was a good sign she was on the right track. Fuck that guy.

Her phone buzzed in her hand. She hadn't even had a chance to take a full breath before getting Bebe's reply. Was the woman glued to her phone 24/7? Mel checked the message.

!!!!! That sounds great! Let's say a week from Monday? That gives us some time to hammer out the details. Guidelines, as Kade would say. Oh, we're going to have fun together, I can already tell

Mel was certain she was grinning at her phone like a teenager. Who knew getting out of a rut would feel so good? First the competition, now Bebe. Mel was a winner, and she was going to prove it.

GUIDELINES FOR POLY LIVING WITH BEBE MEL

"But I give all my favorites some kind of cutesy name," Bebe protested, her hand hovering over the legal pad where it held the pen. "Kade is ‘Darling,' for example. I'm not allowed to do that with you?"

Even through the FaceTime call, Mel was not immune to that pleading gaze or the pouting lips. "Okay," she said, "but it can't be something really silly, like ‘cupcake.' That's a no-go for me."

Bebe smiled at her. "What about ‘sweetheart'?"

"Hm." Suitably nonthreatening. Not too over-the-top. "?‘Sweetheart' is fine," Mel said. She lifted a finger in the air. "But just that. Not ‘sweet cheeks,' not ‘sweetie pie,' not fucking ‘sweet pea'—"

"All right, all right." Bebe wriggled her shoulders and put pen to paper. "Consider the guidelines amended."