Page 67 of Turning Back

It’s kinda odd. I know people have fancy showers like this. Hell, my bathroom is fancy too. I have a rain shower and a regular shower head. But there’s plenty of space in here for two large men and one slight woman.

Almost as if Bric designed it this way on purpose.

“Here,” Bric says, holding a shampoo bottle. “Hold out your hand.” I do, and he squirts some shampoo into my palm. “Wash her hair.”

Rochelle is standing under one of the side showers. She glares at me through a curtain of water.

“Turn around,” I say, making a swirling motion with my finger.

Rochelle steps out of the water, wiping her eyes as she turns her back to me. I gather up her long, blonde hair and begin to wash it.

“See,” Bric says. “That’s nice, right?”

It’s kinda funny that Bric has to babysit this relationship. The one who never gives a fuck. The guy with absolutely no nurturing gene in his DNA.

“Do you know where I grew up, Rochelle?” Bric asks.

“No,” she says softly.

“Do you want to know?”

She peeks over her shoulder, finds me looking at her, then averts her eyes to Bric. “Of course,” she says in her soft Rochelle voice. “I’d love to know.”

“Great Falls, Montana. Well”—he laughs—“not in town. I grew up on a fifteen-thousand-acre cattle ranch about an hour west of there.”

“You’re a cowboy?” She says it seriously. But then she laughs with him. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Right?” Bric says. “But it’s true.”

“Why did you leave?” she asks. I’m still lathering her hair. I’m sure it’s clean by now, but I like it. I like being this intimate with her so much, it almost hurts.

“Why does anybody leave home?” Bric asks.

“I dunno,” Rochelle says.

I wonder where her home is?

“To get away,” she adds after thinking about it a second.

“To get away.” He nods. “I like Montana. There’s a lot to like about that place. The mountains, the rivers, the sunsets. I liked it.”

“But not enough to stay,” Rochelle says.

“Nope. I just had to get away. To a bigger place. I got accepted to a private high school in Denver so when I graduated, I just stayed for college. And when I graduated college, I just stayed forever.”

“How did you get the Club?” she asks.

I don’t know why I find the telling of this story so fascinating—I know it. All of it. But I’m quiet as I continue to wash Rochelle’s hair. Just listening, waiting for the best part. The way we met Smith. Those early days when things were simpler. When all we thought about was ourselves. Each other. And how we came up with the idea for the game. And later, how we came up with all the rules.

It was hard at first. Not to feel jealous of each other. Even Smith had trouble in the beginning, and that’s saying something. He and Bric both did. They expected me to be jealous, but I never was. I don’t mind sharing. I like it.

Women are hard to please. That’s something I learned early. It’s hard to fuck it up with three men to give them what they need. At least, that’s what we thought. I almost laugh at the memories. We made a lot of mistakes in the beginning, but by the time Rochelle showed up, we were experts. The whole thing just ran. Like a complicated, but well-calibrated, piece of technology.

“I met Smith when I was a freshman at DU. He was on campus. Illegally, on campus. You know Smith never went to school, right?”

“I read that somewhere,” Rochelle says.

“But he used to crash classes all the time. Just show up on the first day like he went to school there. I saw him in economics freshman year. And I totally thought he was a student. He took the tests and everything.”