The Hero Next Time: A Novel of the Terribly Acronymed Detective Club (Book 4)

Chapter Nineteen: Lauren, Friday

Lauren's mouth opened and closed, but she couldn't form words.

Penny chose that moment to get a word in. "Let's both step back from the ledge here, because I have a feeling you're perilously close to falling over. When we use phrases like 'you always,' and, 'you never,' it's like offering a bald cliff face to climb. Our partner can't find a handhold, making it impossible to scale."

Joe sighed in frustration and sat back in the couch they shared, crossing his arms. Lauren grabbed a tissue and dabbed at her eyes.

"I want to try to unpack everything that's been said so far," Penny said. "First of all, Joe, you opened by complaining to me as if I have any power to enforce rules in your relationship. I'm just a facilitator for the work the two of you are doing. It's up to the two of you to make and enforce your own rules. You seemed to be doing a pretty good job until recently."

"Until Al," Joe said. "We always come back to Al."

"We'll get back to that. I want to talk now about the solution you proposed to Joanie, Lauren. You proposed a threesome with Joe and Joanie?"

"I know, it sounds so stupid now," Lauren groaned.

"I don't make value judgements about one course of action or another," Penny said. "If it works for the both of you, I don't rule anything out. What I'd like to know is why you thought it might have been a desirable option for them."

Lauren shrugged. "I guess I thought by showing him I could cooperate with him and his lover, I could open a path for him to cooperate with me and my lover."

"And that lover is Rachel, not Al," Joe said. "And like I said, I wasn't interested."

"Regardless," Lauren went on, "what I wanted to do was invite you in. I never intended for you to be left out."

"Why didn't you invite me in at the start, then?"

"Frankly? Because I knew this was how you'd be. You know what I'd like to try sometime, but I know you'd never go for? You on one end, Al on the other."

Penny blushed and pulled at her collar; it looked like Lauren was turning her on again. Joe just threw his hands up in frustration. "Do you even hear yourself? I don't even recognize you anymore! And you're still fantasizing about Al!"

"I noticed that too," Penny said. "I thought we agreed last time that if Joe came back, he had to be the only man in your life."

Lauren closed her eyes and put her face in her hands. "I'm sorry," she whined. "I can't just turn it off! I can't go from wanting him to not wanting him in the time it takes for them to move out. And why do you get to be the only man in my life when I'm not the only woman in yours?"

"It's what we agreed on," Joe said. "You let me have Joanie because you had Rachel."

"The gender balance is out of whack," Lauren grumbled. "If I were to just have Rachel, then you'd have to have another man, not another woman."

"I don't swing that way," Joe said.

"A lover is a lover," Penny said. "I think I have to side with Joe, here. Unless you want to renegotiate it the way you see it balancing out, and drop Rachel in favour of Al..."

"No!" they both said at the same time.

Penny blinked in surprise and smiled. "Well, well, well, something both of you agree on, at last."

"I don't want to lose Rachel," Lauren said, "and there's no way she'd ever let me have her husband without her having me too. It only worked up to now because she had me way more often than Al did."