3 is not a Crowd

I came the instant he entered me. And when it was finally over and I lay gasping for breath with his head pillowed on my breast, I felt the most overwhelming relief. We had needed each other for so long, so very long.

And no other man ever made me feel this way. I had always thought that this was so, but it had been so long since I had been with Peter that I sometimes wondered if I wasn’t remembering it as having been better than it really was. But no, we were something special together.

PETER: It was her reaction to the pictures that made me go into the shower with her. I knew we both wanted each other and that we were going to have each other sooner or later, and this seemed as good a time as any.

WANDA: I asked if he would tell Grace. He said he didn’t know. I told him I couldn’t come between them.

“No one can come between Grace and me,” he said. “And no one can come between us, either.”

PETER: I knew I would have to tell Grace sooner or later. But I found myself putting it off. I was afraid she might not be able to handle it.

This might seem strange, in view of the fact that we both embraced swinging wholeheartedly and with no feelings of jealousy on either side. But this was different. Swinging, after all, is essentially loveless sex, variety for its own sake, an occasional romp that has no emotional implications. Wanda and I were not only balling. We were also in love, and I was afraid Grace would feel threatened.

So for longer than I had intended Wanda and I would get together when Grace was out of the apartment. You know, thinking back on it, I wonder if the idea of having each other on the sly didn’t hold some nostalgic appeal of its own. We had had to sneak around when we were kids, and maybe we were recapturing some of that special excitement. It was our secret and we were having fun with it.

After about a month I told Grace.

GRACE: I was just numb. Peter and I were alone when he told me. I just stood there and listened to him say that he had started sleeping with his sister again. I felt as though the bottom was falling out of my life. The floor was falling and I was in the middle of the air.

I said that I guessed he wouldn’t want me around any more and I would leave whenever he wanted.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “I’ll never let you go. I told you that the night I met you, that I wanted to take you home and never let you go.”

“But you love her,” I said. “You always loved her, and you married me because you couldn’t have her anymore, and now you have her back again and you don’t need me.”

“Of course I need you,” he said. “I need you now more than ever.”

I didn’t know whether I should believe him or not. I thought maybe he was saying this because he didn’t want to hurt me. I started to cry and Peter began making love to me. It went through my mind that this would be the last time we would ever make love.

PETER: It wasn’t, was it?

GRACE: But I thought it would be. And then afterward while I was lying there feeling all warm and together, Peter explained how he felt about me and about Wanda. I tried to think out how I felt about it. I didn’t mind if he was with other girls when we swung, and he didn’t mind if I was with other men. And I knew how deeply he and Wanda loved each other, and I was glad for this because it is beautiful to love someone that deeply.

It also came to me that it would be good for us all to be all three living together. Because Wanda gives Peter something that I can’t give him. The two of them, the way their minds work together, the conversations they have. I’m not putting myself down, honestly, but it would have to be boring for Peter to have nobody brighter than me to talk to for the rest of his life. I know you enjoy talking to me, Peter, but you know you can have a different kind of conversation with Wanda and that you have a need for it.

WANDA: When I returned home that day Peter was out and Grace was starting dinner. She came out from the kitchen to make a pair of drinks. We went over to the window to study the view, and she quietly told me what Peter had told her. I knew he was going to tell her but I didn’t know when.

I turned to her and my eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Grace, you must hate me very much,” I said. “But Peter loves you. His love for me doesn’t affect his love for you.”

She said she knew, and that everything was going to be all right.

We hugged each other, and it came to me that I wanted to kiss her.

We kissed.

I had had relations with girls at school and in mental institutions, and I think I may have said earlier that I was able to enjoy this. In fact for a long period of time I could relax more in sex with a girl than with a boy, any boy except Peter. But I had never felt comfortable kissing other girls. Somehow that seemed abnormally intimate, while a nice lazy sixty-nine was purely physical fun.