A Kiss For Three

chapter 8

I expected silence in the morning. Men usually flinched when the air got thin—they cut ties, panicked, scuttled for safer ground. Instead my phone buzzed with Adrian’s name.

Adrian: Same rooftop tonight. All three. Apology for yesterday.

My fingers typed “okay” before I could catch them.

By evening I was climbing the familiar stairs with two boxes of sushi and the kind of tired smile I didn’t wear in public.

They were already there. Café lights swayed; the city blinked like a pulse. Adrian lounged with his jacket off and a glass in hand; Nico sprawled opposite, one ankle hooked over his knee, drawing useless patterns on a sweating bottle with his thumb. Both of them looked up when I crossed the roof.

“Peace offering,” I said, dropping the takeout on the table. “Apology for yesterday. And for how this started.”

“You didn’t owe us one,” Nico said.

“Takeout accepted anyway,” Adrian added, grin crooked. “We’re gracious like that.”

We dragged the rug and a pile of blankets into a loose nest by the cold fire pit. The three of us sat cross-legged, cartons open, cups refilled.

I cleared my throat and counted, teacher-dry. I had an idea:

“Rule one: no regret in the morning. Rule two: no lies at night. Rule three: the job stays outside the door.”

“Consent is the only plot twist,” Adrian said, raising his cup.

“Play is mandatory,” Nico murmured, tracing a constellation in the air.

I laughed—short, involuntary—and hated that it felt good.

It started simple. We ate, mocked the city’s cult of productivity. Nico ranted about critics who’d never held a brush; Adrian declared himself boycotting any board deck that didn’t include a playlist. I found myself confessing I learned violin as a teenager and still scraped through scales when the world got too sharp.

“You should play up here sometime,” Adrian said. “Make the skyline behave.”

“It won’t,” Nico said. “But it would listen.”

“I don’t play for audiences,” I said.

“We’re not an audience,” Adrian said softly. “We’re… us.”

My chest did something inconvenient. I hid it by pouring more whiskey.

They tugged me into stupid party games: ranking chips (kettle sea salt wins), best cheap noodles in a five-block radius, worst fashion crimes seen from this roof. I kept a tally of how often their hands brushed mine when we all reached for the soy sauce at once.

Not an accident, not quite an intention. Heat, then distance.

When I passed Nico a napkin, Adrian’s thumb skimmed the inside of my wrist as if checking a pulse he’d started. When I leaned to set down a cup, Nico’s knuckles grazed the hem of my dress and didn’t apologize.

“Yesterday,” I said finally, looking at the city instead of at them, “I ran when I shouldn’t have.”

“You ran because you’re smart,” Adrian said. “And because Serena in a five-mile radius is… a lot.”

“She kissed you like a stamp,” I said before I could stop myself.

Silence held a beat. Then Nico’s voice, low: “You saw that?”

We kept drinking. The edges of the night softened in that benevolent way whiskey has when it isn’t out to hurt you. I meant to ask how their wives had found me in the first place—and why on the same afternoon—but Adrian beat me to the question I hadn’t voiced.

“Strange coincidence, isn’t it?” he said, eyes on the skyline. “Serena retaining you the day Camille did.”

“Coincidence rarely pays retainers,” I said.

Nico’s mouth ticked. “Camille had lunch with Serena last month. Same table as a crisis PR firm—Winthrop & Lane—and a divorce lawyer whose hobby is leaking to the style section.”

Adrian nodded, jaw set. “Serena quoted the exact phrase their fixer uses: ‘We need documentation, not drama.’ Word-for-word.”

“So they hired me together,” I said, the pieces sliding into a sharper picture, “to put a leash on you—or to make you slip for headlines they could control.”

“Or to see if we’d flinch,” Adrian said. “If we’d prove them right.”

Nico’s thumb traced that constellation again, but his gaze was on me. “We didn’t. We chose you.”

When I stood to toss a napkin, Nico’s chalk caught my cheekbone. Adrian reached to brush it away at the same second Nico lifted his hand. Their fingers touched. Didn’t withdraw. The air charged—quiet thunder. I felt it in my throat.

“What if we moved one rule,” Adrian murmured, leaning close enough that his breath warmed my jaw, “for one night?”

My pulse tripped. “Which rule?”

“Not the consent one,” Nico said, a half-smile, sober in the eyes.

He didn’t finish the thought. Instead, Nico turned to me and—slowly enough to be refused—touched his mouth to mine. Warm, careful, an invitation I answered before I knew I’d moved. When he drew back, he didn’t leave; he angled to Adrian, a question in his gaze. Adrian nodded, barely, and Nico kissed him too—brief, steady, like friendship learning a new word. The sight hit me low and bright.

Adrian exhaled, half laugh, half breath, and looked at me. “Your turn, Iris?” he asked, voice hushed.

I closed the distance. His kiss was different—lighter at first, then sure, a smile against my lip like he’d been waiting to confirm we were real.

We didn’t tumble past the line; we edged up to it and stood there, breathing the same air. Jokes softened into touches—knuckles along a wrist, the back of a hand skimming a rib, a palm at the nape of my neck, my fingers at Nico’s jaw.

The city hummed, uninterested and kind. When I laughed, Adrian’s mouth chased the sound to my cheek; when I shivered, Nico’s breath warmed the hollow beneath my ear.

“Still no regret in the morning,” I said, warning myself as much as them.

“Then we sleep,” Nico murmured, though his eyes kept traveling the line of my mouth like a vow. “Before the rule forgets us.”

We poured one last round and let it sit untouched. Someone—maybe me, maybe all of us—kicked the blankets into a better shape. We lay down shoulder to shoulder, then closer: my head near Nico’s collarbone, Adrian’s arm a loose bracket around both of us, our legs a polite tangle that stopped short of presumption.

“Tell me something true,” Adrian mumbled into my hair.

“I don’t know how to do this,” I said.

“Same,” Nico confessed.

“That’s three of us,” Adrian said, satisfied.

The café bulbs hummed their soft, domestic hymn. My eyes drifted shut to the rhythm of their breathing, twin metronomes calming the part of me that usually paces. Fingers found fingers under the blanket and stayed there—no pressure, just proof.

The last thing I felt before sleep took me was the weight of Adrian’s hand settling over mine and Nico’s quiet laugh ghosting my temple when I stole more of a blanket than was fair.