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  They’re the only thing I can focus on as I float higher and higher, every part of my body turned on until I’m on the verge. When I finally come, it’s so intense it’s practically blinding, overtaking my entire body. My orgasm triggers theirs and soon they’re thrusting deeply inside me to flood me with their warmth.

  After, we stay just like that with both of them still inside me, our limbs tangled over one another’s for a long time. Noah’s fingers stroke lazily up and down my arm, and Aiden cups my chin, his thumb going across my lower lip.

  “I’m so glad you came back,” Aiden whispers. “We needed you.”

  “More than you know,” Noah adds.

  “I’m glad I came back, too.” I needed them, I want to say. More than they could realize.

  “Even though tomorrow, when you wake up, the entire scene in the street will probably be making its way all over the internet?” Aiden asks. “I’m sure one of the neighbors got some good footage.”

  “Fuck ‘em,” I whisper.

  “Fuck ‘em,” Noah and Aiden agree.

  One month later

  Sure enough, a video of the three of us in the street went viral. Aiden’s sister Annie called the next day, proud that her banana band prank had something like twenty million views. She triumphantly declared that she played an “instrumental” (pun intended) role in getting the three of us together. “Even if it’s totally gross that you’re hooking up with Aiden and Noah,” Annie explained, “and I don’t know what in the world you see in them, but since you are seeing them, you should definitely let me interview you for my senior thesis.” At that point, Aiden snatched the phone out of my hand and told Annie to “stop being a creepy stalker”.

  We went public a few days later on a talk show we knew would present our story sympathetically.

  Then we walked away.

  We ignored all of the fallout, the million other requests for interviews and my family’s reaction, my parents’ threats to ruin us, and all of the fucking opinions that everyone had about what we were doing.

  It should have been easy enough to ignore. I mean, for the past month, when Noah and Aiden haven’t been training, we’ve been basically holed up inside Noah’s house laughing and talking and fucking and hanging out.

  The truth is, it wasn’t easy, not at first, and especially not for me. Noah and Aiden were far more used to saying “fuck it” than I was. I’ve learned a lot about saying that over the past month.

  The funny thing is that each time you say it, it gets a little easier.

  I walked away from what I knew– a Grace who was safe and cautious, too afraid to rock the boat to do anything inappropriate. I took a leap into the unknown with Noah and Aiden, and I’m starting to become a different Grace, the kind who doesn’t let anyone else dictate what she wants her life to look like.

  And that Grace is far happier than Old Grace.

  Noah walks up behind me and slides his arms around my waist. “What are you doing out here? We made dinner.”

  I relax against him, breathing him in, and look out over the backyard cloaked in evening darkness. “Just stand out here for a minute with me.”

  “We got crazy and made chocolate-dipped strawberries for dessert,” Aiden calls as he walks up to us on the balcony. “Unless you want us to have you for dessert. Wait, are you guys out here having a romantic moment or something?”

  “We can have chocolate-dipped Grace for dessert,” Noah suggests.

  Aiden tilts my chin up and puts his lips to mine, the sensation so familiar now. “I’d definitely eat you for dessert,” he says. “That’s romantic as hell.”

  “Our version of romance, anyway,” I agree.

  Epilogue

  Grace

  One year later

  "I swear, if either of you have another sparkly sex toy up your sleeve for this Fourth of July…" I threaten, but my tone is playful. Noah slaps me on the ass, and I try to swat him but miss.

  "Well, now I feel like it's my patriotic duty to find another July Fourth sex toy,” Aiden says.

  “Do not,” I tell him. “We’re staying at that bed and breakfast near town. Thin walls– that means no shenanigans, or else the entire town of West Bend will be talking about it."

  “Shenanigans? You sound like Noah,” Aiden comments.

  “She’s picking up my vocabulary,” Noah agrees.

  “Great. Now I’m going to sound like an eighty-year old woman?” I groan exaggeratedly.

  Bess pulls the door open, slinging a checkered red-and-white towel over her shoulder. “Why are the three of you standing out here on the porch instead of walking inside the house like normal people?” she asks, shaking her head. “You’re not strangers, so you don’t need to wait out here for me to come get you!”

  “Hi, Mom.” Noah kisses her cheek and Aiden follows suit.

  When Bess reaches me, she gives me a one-armed hug, her flour-covered hand away from my shoulder. “I’m baking, and I’m going to cover you with flour here if I don’t watch it.”

  “It’s all right.” I laugh as we follow her to the kitchen and then out to the backyard. Bess decided that the Fourth of July backyard barbeque should be a tradition, so here we all are together.

  “Hey, big brother!” Annie sees us from across the yard and runs headlong at Aiden.

  “Dude, when are you going to stop tackling me?” he asks. “You know you’re never pushing me over, kiddo.”

  “Whatever. You’re getting soft in your old age,” she says, grinning.

  “You’re really going to smack-talk me?” Aiden asks. “You know what happens when you do. I’m going to give you a noogie right now.”

  “No way!” Annie squeals. “I just had my hair blown out! Grace, tell him not to mess it up!”

  She takes off running and Aiden takes off after her. Bess stands in the doorway to the kitchen, looking out at us and shaking her head. “They’ll never grow up,” she calls. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “I’ve figured that much out by now,” I tell her.

  Annie has grown up, though– except for when she's around Aiden. She's bright and articulate and exactly what my new foundation needed. So I hired her on a month ago now. That’s right, I’ve started my own foundation. It's six months old now, and it's challenging and exciting and I’m not doing it under the thumb of my parents.

  I haven’t spoken to my parents in the past year– well, other than when my mother called to express her disgust at the interview I did with Noah and Aiden. To be fair, they were in a tough position; even if my father had secretly wanted to support our very public relationship, the people who put him in office wouldn’t have stood for it.

  And if there’s one thing I’ve always known about my father, it’s that he’d choose politics– he'd choose himself– over anything else, every time.

  So he and my mother expressed their profound regret at my “lifestyle choice” and that was that. He was banged up in the polls for a little while, but even so, he was re-elected. He tried to call me last month– I got the “Please hold for the President of the United States” call– but I declined it.

  Maybe he was going to try to patch things up, since he'd won the election, or maybe he was calling to remind me what a mistake I was making with my life by being with Noah and Aiden.

  But either way, I didn't care.

  Noah and Aiden never lost their contracts. In fact, Noah said his head coach's exact words were: "This couldn't make me like you any less than I do right now." He never could stand Noah anyway. Noah just shrugged it off and went back to playing what he loves.

  Now that it's been almost a year, everyone seems pretty used to the idea of the three of us together. I've been at every game cheering them on. I did learn a little bit about football during the month I was hiding out from everything. But mostly, I remain blissfully ignorant of everything except the fact that Noah and Aiden look pretty damn hot in those tight pants.

  My phone buzzes. Vi sends me a photo of her in a piece fr