For a few moments, I hoped that the catharsis would have revealed to me my True Inner PreferenceTM, but no such luck. I remained quite stuck on both of the twin horns of my dilemma. I genuinely could not decide who I wanted more, because I kind of wanted them equally. And I desperately did not want to risk hurting either one of them.
Pretty sure that train has pulled out of the station, partner.
Worse, even though I had never given up looking for signs of interest, I had mostly given up hoping to actually see any from either of them. Now, I began to suspect that they had come into my room to bully me into finally asking out whichever one of them wanted me to, and instead, I had carpet bombed both of them, along with whatever glimmer of an opening had been about to be presented.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
This paper was not going to write itself, but I found, sitting there, that I wasn’t going to write it either. Not that day. So I just sat there, not turning on a light, even as the sun set.
Another soft knock came at my door. Christ, what now? I hesitated to answer. My mind leapt in hope that one of the girls had returned to take me up on my offer, ask me out, and solve all my problems. But I knew I wasn’t that lucky a guy. Besides, it was probably Carl, wanting to either brag about how awesome his new girl’s tits were, or to moan about how she had already dumped him.
“Come,” I barked. The off chance that Carl would come in all bummed out gave me hope for the justice of the universe.
Instead, it was both Lisa and Lee again.
Lee slid hesitantly back into my room first, followed by Lisa, who closed the door softly. This time, they both sat together on my ‘couch’. They took a deep breath and looked at each other.
“George,” began Lisa, “we want to apologize again for setting off that whole painful experience for you today.”
“And the pain that lead up to it,” added Lee. “But please understand, we haven’t been happy either. It is why we came barging in here earlier.”
“Huh?”
“Look, here is the thing…” Lee went on, then stalled.
“… the option from your big fucking ‘look at the math’ analysis that is actually going on here is the one where each of us kind of wants you to ask us out,” Lisa finished for her. They both looked at me.
A part of my heart, I think it was the left ventricle, was singing an aria at that revelation. Both of them were attracted to me! The other three quarters of my heart loudly objected that this solved nothing as they sank through the floor. I realized that in fact, we were now in one of the options that meant certain disaster if I chose either one of them. Worse, I now knew that it also meant certain disaster if I had chosen neither of them, which is what I had done and what had resulted. I just looked back at Lisa, then Lee, miserably.
“So… why… I mean, some hint might…” I stammered abortively, wondering miserably how I could have missed this. How could I have missed these two amazing girls being interested in me when I never did much else but look for signs of that whenever they were around?
“So, why didn’t either of us ask you out? Or why, at least, didn’t we send some pretty clear signals?” Lisa helped me out, finishing my thought instead of Lee’s this time around. I just stared at her.
“Remember back at the start of fall semester, when we first met?” asked Lee. “You were going out with what’s her name, Bernadette?” Going out with Bernadette had been a mistake. The sex had been, well, the sex had been non-existent, but I had been happy to be patient there. I had finally manipulated her into breaking up with me because she was annoying, and clingy, and she chewed with her mouth just open enough to annoy the hell out of me.
“Well,” Lee continued, “even though you were ‘off-limits’ when we first met, we found ourselves talking about you more and more. Then, when we heard that you two broke it off…”
“Lee immediately turned to me to ask how long I thought she should wait before she tried to get you to go out with her,” interjected Lisa.
Lee interrupted right back. “And Lisa told me that sometime in the distant future would suit her just fine, since she intended to go out with you instead!”
“And,” Lisa went on, “just like you said, it put an immediate strain on things in our room. So we made a pact not to compete over encouraging you. We decided we would just be chill, and friendly, and just… there. There when you got over Bernie.”
“And so we fell into the opposite rut from yours,” said Lee. Had they somehow rehearsed this back and forth? “But then there was the concert,” she went on. “And you hung with us the whole time, and we both kind of just sat there that one part, with our heads on your shoulders. And it was so nice.”
“You put your head on his shoulder first, Lee,” jabbed Lisa quickly, with just a trace of heat in her voice. No, they had not rehearsed this. That made it even more impressive how awfully good at finishing each other’s sentences they were. I’d seen them do it on a few occasions before, but never this well, or this much.
“Yes, I did. And I said I was sorry. But you did it right after me,” replied Lee defensively. “And then,” she went on, turning back to me, “We had a little fight about that after the concert. Then we got our shit under control, and things sort of went back to normal. But yesterday morning, we started grousing again, though this time we were in agreement that the problem was that you, fucking George, just kept stringing us both along.”
Lisa jumped in again. “Then, not an hour later, you were sitting there, holding court on our beanbag like always, and that fucking picture came through. We both got a little snotty about it, but your response was… not helpful.”
“Not helpful at all,” agreed Lee.
“So we were bitches, and threw you out.”
“But we felt bad about it,” Lee put in.
“Yes, we did. And we talked about that last night. Then this morning, we convinced ourselves that you had to like one or the other of us, or you would not hang around so much. So we had the brilliant idea that we should just interrogate you until we found out who,” continued Lisa. She hesitated.
I looked at them humorlessly but agreeably. “But instead of solving your problem, I took off and nuked you from orbit over my problem,” I replied. “Sorry about that. Please know I’m sorry.”
They both nodded. Lee took up the thread. “So we retreated and talked some more. The biggest thing we agreed on was that your analysis was right. Even if you had been willing to choose one of us, it was going to blow everything up between us, and also between the loser and you.”
I opened my mouth to object to the word ‘loser’.
Lisa spoke before I could. “So we talked and talked, and realized the solution.”
I looked at her. If they saw a solution to all this, now that it was in the open, they were way more perceptive than I was. Lee looked at her, clearly leaving Lisa with the floor this time.
“The only way we all end up happy, and not one gets hurt…” said Lisa hesitantly, trembling a little. “The only way out is if maybe… you don’t have to choose?”
At first, I thought they meant to just keep on keeping on. But after the emotional turmoil of the last few days, there was no way they could believe, any more than I could, that just going back to our status quo ante was going to solve anything. I started to envision trying to date both of them, trading dates and trying to keep things equal between these two girls who had revealed a competitive streak (over me!) that I should have recognized was there. I thought about that for less than second and was exhausted. I did not see how they had found a solution…