That night, as she lay sleeping in my arms, I thought about what Angela had said, both about her family’s expectations for her and her sexual experiences with Emmy and me. She seemed to have accepted that she was at the very least bisexual, and sex with the two of us seemed to be something she enjoyed, judging by how she’d taken the initiative after our talk.

She had said on a number of occasions that she could visualize a life with the two of us, and wanted our household of three to continue indefinitely. The only stumbling blocks to her continuing with us lay outside our menage à trois- her concerns about her parents’ disappointment in her lifestyle choices, and her continued worry about public attitudes towards lesbians in general, but even more so, the much farther from mainstream love the three of us were sharing.

I had no idea if Emmy had spoken with her own parents about Angela, but when I told Mom over the phone one day about how Angela had come into our lives and what she was starting to mean to both of us, her only negative was that threesomes are hard to maintain and are usually undone by jealousy.

Mom knew about Emmy’s moon-kissed nature, so when I told her that I thought that part of what was going on was that Emmy wanted me to have somebody when she was gone she immediately grasped what I meant, and the long-term ramifications.

“Are you thinking that you’d marry Angela, um… later?” Mom asked, trying to be circumspect about my inevitable widowhood.

“I’m pretty sure that Emmy might be thinking that’ll happen, but I don’t know if the two of them have talked about anything like that,” I said. “I’ve urged Angela to ask about the whole ‘moon-kissed’ thing, but it isn’t my story to share, and I don’t know if they’ve actually talked about that. Angela says things like how she wants to be with Emmy and me forever, so I think maybe she doesn’t know Emmy’s countdown timer is running.”

“Lee,” Mom said, her voice compassionate. “I hate that you have to think like that.”

“Yeah, I hate it, too,” I agreed with a sigh. “Emmy just doesn’t like to talk about it, not that I can blame her, you know? But if Angela is going to be with us for the long run, she needs to know.”

“Do you want her to be?” Mom asked. “You don’t need to say anything one way or another to me, but it’s something you should think about. Can you imagine a life without Emmy, but with Angela? Maybe the two of you, raising the baby that Emmy plans to have?”

I was very grateful that my own mother was willing to accept my life's atypical aspects, and wondered how it was for Stephanie, whose mom had definitely disapproved, or Angela's, who probably would as well.

Angela, her breathing gentle and even, moved a little in her sleep, adjusting her position tucked up under my arm.

My train of thought about Angela’s future with Emmy and me, and maybe eventually me and baby Em, was momentarily derailed when Angela asked, “Can’t you sleep?” , her voice thick with her own drowsiness.

I kissed her hair, breathed in the smell of her, and said, “I was just thinking how much I love you.”

“Love you, too,” she mumbled, before falling asleep once more.

Wednesday night, we went back to Andy and Jenna’s house for dinner. Angela and Jenna wanted to plan their furniture shopping trip, and Andy was happy to grill again, so who was I to complain?

While Angela and Jenna wandered around the house, looking at furniture catalogs and trying to imagine how various pieces would fit in each room as they went, Andy and I relaxed in the back yard and drank beers while he cooked.

“Lee,” he said. “I really hope this thing with Angela works out. She seems really nice, and Jenna, well, she doesn’t, like, have many actual friends, you know? It’s really been good for her to have somebody she can call up and ask for advice, or just vent when something gets her all spun up.”

“She calls Angela?” I said, surprised.

“Pretty much every day, I think,” he said as he flipped the steaks. “I know they text a lot.”

“Wow- I had no idea,” I said. “But you know what? Angela doesn’t have any other friends that I know of, either, so I’m happy the two have hit it off.”

“It’s good to have, um, a community, you know?” Andy said. “Right now, all we have is my team and her work, and of course, you guys. Otherwise, that’s about it. But now we have this house, and we’re doing what we can to make it our own, and make this neighborhood our own. All the neighbors we’ve met have seemed nice. Hey, did I tell you that LeVar Burton, you know, Jordi from Star Trek? He lives four houses that way,” Andy said, pointing to the south. “I met him the other day. It turns out he’s a big Rams fan, and he was as stoked to meet me as I was to meet him. Funny world, isn’t it?”

“That’s awesome,” I agreed, happy to see Andy’s enthusiasm. His big, slightly crooked smile made me smile, too, and that’s when Jenna and Angela came to the backyard- just in time to find the two of us grinning like idiots at each other.

“What did we miss?” Jenna asked, looking back and forth between Andy and me.

“Silly fanboy stuff,” I said.

“That reminds me,” Jenna said. “Did Andy tell you that that one guy from Star Wars lives just up the street?”

I could tell she was just trolling, but Andy rose to the bait anyhow. “Star Trek, babe, not Star Wars.”

“Whatever,” she said with a shrug, turning away from him so he couldn’t see her smile.

Angela plopped down on my lap and wrapped her arm around my shoulders. “We’re going to go shopping tomorrow,” she announced. “Can I borrow the SUV? Obviously we can’t load any furniture in it, but maybe a lot of the smaller stuff…”

“Of course,” I replied. “You guys have fun. Me, I’ll be working, earning money to pay for whatever stuff you buy, that’s all,” I said.

“I wasn’t going to buy anything for us,” Angela objected, but then she realized I was just teasing. “But maybe we do need a new TV…”

Smiling, I gave her a peck on the cheek, and said, “We will need things for the new house, so if you do see something you really want to buy…”

Angela turned to look me in the eyes, trying to gauge how serious I was.

“I mean it,” I said. “Just check with Emmy- she has a much better sense of style than I do. Obviously, it’s still a few months away until we can move in, but we do need to start thinking about how we’re going to decorate. The designer will get us all our furniture, but I told him we want to do the rest.”

Angela wrapped me in a tight hug, squeezing me for all she was worth, which was actually quite a lot. All those hours in the gym didn’t just give her a figure to die for, they actually built real muscle, too.

“I love you so much,” she said, kissing me repeatedly.

“Get a room, you two!” Jenna said, throwing a napkin at us. “Don’t make me turn the hose on you guys.”

Smiling like the cat that ate the canary, Angela said, “Don’t be jealous.”

“Oh, trust me,” Jenna retorted. “I’m perfectly happy with my big ol’ love chunk right here,” she said, getting a kiss from Andy.

“Well, there you go,” I said. “I think he just earned his new nickname.”

“That’s me,” Andy said, swelling up as if with pride. “Mr Love Chunk.”

The evening was a bit chilly, so we ate at the new dining room set they’d gotten since our last visit, on plates and with silverware that actually matched.

“Ooh, fancy!” I said, admiring the table settings.

Jenna laughed, and said, “Ikea’s finest!”

On our way home that night, Angela asked, “Did you really mean it? About me helping pick things out for the new house?”

“Ange,” I said, turning to look at her when I stopped for a light. “I want you to be with me and Emmy. It’s that simple. I want you to be part of our life. That doesn’t mean I want you to be our, I don’t know, pet or something? I want you to be an equal partner in our relationship, and that means that you get to help make decisions about how the three of us lead our lives. Now, obviously, you didn’t get a say in the townhouse, or in the Wonderland house, but those were chosen before you entered into our lives. Now, though, you get to vote.”

Angela didn’t know what to say to that, but she kept her hand on my thigh the rest of the drive home as she seemed lost in thought.

Later, while I was washing her thick, long hair as we soaked in the tub, she said, “I’m not being fair to you and Emmy. I love you guys, and I want to spend the rest of my life with the two of you, but I’m being too chicken to tell mis papís. I’m being the wrong kind of maricona,” she said with a little self-deprecating laugh.

“Um, doesn’t that mean, um, queer?” I asked, not too sure of my Spanish.

“Yes, but it also means, uh, cowardly? Wimpy? Like maybe, ‘don’t be a pussy’?” Angela explained.

“So you are being a maricona about not telling your parents you’re a maricona?” I asked, thinking I was understanding her joke.

“Yes, that’s it,” Angela confirmed, leaning back against me and wrapping my arms around herself, placing my hands on her boobs. “I want to tell them that I have met the two most wonderful, beautiful women in the world and I’m crazy in love with both of them, but I’m too afraid.”

“Invite them to come visit,” I suggested. “Maybe if they see how things are, they’ll understand.”

Angela took in a deep breath, her chest expanding under my hands, then let it out in a long sigh.

“I’ve thought that maybe inviting my sister might be better,” Angela admitted. “She’s younger, not so set in the old ways of thinking. She could come visit, and then she would go back and tell Mamá and Papá.

“I like that,” I said, giving her a squeeze. “Get your sister to do your dirty work.”

“Exactly,” Angela agreed, but she didn’t really seem convinced.

Emmy came home that weekend, to my surprise. I’d thought she’d said they had another week of recording, but evidently they felt that they had everything wrapped up and could do all the production work back in Los Angeles. She was pretty well wiped out when she got home and just wanted to go to bed, so Angela and I slid in on either side of her and held her until we all fell asleep. As much as I’d come to love Angela, the feel of Emmy’s lean body spooned into mine was pure heaven, a feeling that I had sorely missed.

The next morning, the three of us stayed in bed and snuggled for quite a while, Emmy and Angela catching up on things while I just listened and occasionally commented when it seemed appropriate. For the most part I wasn’t really listening to the words, just the sound of their conversation, their two voices, and the rhythms of their respective speech patterns. It was a form of music to me, relaxing and hypnotic.

Eventually, though, we did get up and go out for brunch at a restaurant in a hip boutique hotel on Fairfax. The food was good and the Mimosas were excellent, but most of all, the company was what made the meal so memorable. Emmy was the star of the show, regaling Angela and me with stories of recording sessions gone wildly out of control, songs that wound up very different from how they started, and all-night sessions that produced recordings that nobody could understand the next day.

I was so happy to have Emmy back I couldn’t express it verbally, but I found myself touching her constantly, whether holding her hand while we walked, putting my hand on her knee under the table while we ate, or brushing a stray strand of hair from her face while we talked.

Once I realized I’d been doing that, I noticed that Angela was as well. She seemed just as enamored of Emmy as I was, and was hanging on Emmy’s every word just as intently as I was doing.

After brunch, Emmy asked to see how the house was coming along, so we wound our way up into the Hollywood Hills, Angela and Emmy holding hands in the back seat while I drove. There were only a few workers' trucks in the parking lot- quite a change from the hustle and bustle of the last time Angela and I stopped by.

The progress was remarkable in just the short time since I’d last seen the place, and in the months since Emmy had visited it was completely transformed.

I was very pleased to find flooring crews working in several different rooms at once, making up for the time lost by the last subcontractor. After we left where they were laying the hardwood down, Angela told Emmy a wildly exaggerated version of the confrontation I’d had with the previous sub, which had Emmy in stitches.

After we toured the house part of the construction, we checked out the studio. The big sound stage was still full of building materials, but the rest of the warren of offices, sound recording rooms, and so on was basically done. Even the carpeting was down and the plumbing fixtures and appliances were installed in the lounge. All that was left was to bring in the actual recording equipment itself.

“Oh, Leah,” Emmy said with wonder as we looked around. “This is so beautiful- so amazing. This is the recording studio of my dreams, it really is. I had been happy recording in our little studio at the townhouse, but this… This is so much more!” With that, she leapt into my arms, hugging and kissing me while I held her up off the ground, laughing at her exuberance. “When we use this space we will have all the room we need, and we will not be constantly bumping into each other. The isolation booths are so big, too! Lee can set up his full kit and have room to move! He will love this!”

Emmy was on cloud nine on the drive home, talking about how the new studio will allow the band to do things that they’d discussed, but never had the capacity to be able to manage in the past.

“We have a song, for example, that we want a full choir for,” Emmy explained. “Now we can do that. Or have a real string section, that would be amazing, too. The extra room will make so much difference!”

I was pleased that Emmy was so enthusiastic, and happy that any further recording would happen here in Los Angeles and not in New York. Sure, it was a good thing we had that studio there for the band to record in when they really needed it, but the new facilities would mean a whole lot more time for us to be together.

Eventually, Emmy ran out of glowing things to say about the new house and recording studio, and Angela picked up the conversational slack. She told Emmy about furniture shopping with Jenna, and how she found a few things that she thought would go well in our new house and wanted Emmy to go look at with her.

Angela also told Emmy that we need a nude picture of her for our new house.

“A nude picture?” Emmy asked, not understanding.

“We have that painting of Leah in the bedroom in New York, and the picture of me in the apartment in San Jose. It’s obvious that we need a picture of you in our bedroom here.”

“Nude picture of you in San Jose?” Emmy asked.

“You remember the picture I took, the one of Angela on the balcony with the city in the background?” I said, glancing at Emmy in the rear view mirror. “The one you said you liked and we should get a print made? Well, we now have a nice, big, framed print of it hanging on the bedroom wall in San Jose.”

“The photograph of you looking over your shoulder?” Emmy asked Angela. “That one?”

“Yes, that one. I had it professionally enlarged and framed.”

“I would like to see that,” Emmy said.

“Next weekend is a San Jose weekend, right, Babe?” Angela asked me. “We can all three go up. And we can go to the club together, the three of us! That’d be great!”

This kicked off a discussion about how much fun the club is, and how Angela’s dresses were so perfect, and how incredibly sexy I was in my tailored suits, and so on.

I just listened in from the driver’s seat, enjoying hearing the two talk. ‘My two beautiful ladies,’ I thought, smiling at my incredible good fortune.

Life after Emmy’s return from New York was nice and restful, slipping back into the old, familiar groove. I trained hard, worked, and went to school while Emmy spent a lot of time over at Lee’s house as they worked through the production of their new album, putting everything together just right. Angela did her workouts, her influencer stuff, and spent a fair bit of time with Jenna when Emmy and I were out for the day. All in all, it was a period of domesticity that I welcomed.

Emmy seemed to need it, too. Her sleep schedule took a few days to normalize to West Coast time and reasonable bedtimes, but once she readjusted, her health and energy seemed to improve.

Of course, having her lovers with her helped Emmy’s emotional state as well. The first time I came home and found the two of them napping on the couch, my first reaction was to snap some photos. It was heart-warming, seeing them nestled together like two little puppies in a basket. Of course, I let them sleep. I set up my laptop and did some work at the table, glancing up at them every now and then, a smile on my face every time.

There was never any doubt in my mind that Emmy loved me beyond words, but at the same time, it was clear she was very much in love with Angela as well. I was glad Angela was able to give Emmy something that I couldn’t.