Writing Three's Company was a long process. To get this story out, teachers was editing and critiquing, and I had to keep going back to the drawing board, interrogating everything I wrote. In the end, I have this to show for my efforts. I wrote this short story for an Eisteddfod earlier this year, and received the highest award for it, but my heart is physically climbing up my throat as I'm about to post this, but I doing it anyway!
Jackson, with a sleepy drawl that made the air warm despite the pouring rain, answers the intercom. “Who’s there? It’s the middle of the night.”
“Hi,” I say lamely.
A beat of silence.
“Noa?” Recognition slices through his exhaustion. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I wanted to talk.”
“So,” Jackson sighs, the noise blending in with the sound of the rain. “A month of silence, and I let you in?”
“I don’t want to leave things how we did. And it’s starting to rain harder.”
The intercom is silent for a moment. Jackson curses and the door buzzes open. I run into the small foyer and peel off my soaked jacket.
I take my time as I make my way to the confrontation I have avoided for the past month. I look at the doors that line the hallway and wonder if the other students have moved out yet. Two voices arguing draw me out of my head. When I knock on the faded white wooden door that reads 103B, the angry voices die.
The door swings open almost violently, and Jackson stands square in the doorway, barring me any further access. The hard lines of his face betray nothing, but the curls lying flat against his head from sleep remind me of the soft boy who cared about me, or cares about me. He wouldn’t have let me in otherwise.
Standing on their doorstep, I feel as if I am holding the door open for more troubles to enter. I look behind Jackson into the apartment and I see Kala sitting on the couch with her legs crossed, wearing an unfamiliar red shirt and black shorts that have ridden up. I bring my eyes to her face, and find the corners of her mouth turned down.
She cut her hair.
Last time I saw her, her dark hair flowed to the small of her back. Now, her hair is a mess of midnight waves that just grazes her shoulders. She sees my look of surprise and runs her fingers through the waves, making them wilder. A resolute expression comes to her face. She looks pleased that she has surprised me, but she still doesn’t seem happy that I am here.
Jackson coughs and I fix my expression on him, silently asking to come in. He holds my gaze. I can see the war he’s fighting in his head: whether he lets me in and hears me out, or leaves me and our history on this doorstep. But he wants to hear me ask.
My voice comes out small and tinny, “Can I come in?”
The world holds its breath as Jackson turns to Kala. They have a wordless exchange which ends with a curt nod from Kala. Jackson turns to face me.
His face still stony, he steps aside.
I stay in front of the closed door, a quick exit if I need one, while Kala has not moved from the couch; Jackson leans against the wall opposite me, arms crossed. My jacket is still dripping wet in my hands, but I don’t have it in me to pretend that I belong here and hang it on the hook. I should stay far, far away.
But.
I face the two immovable pillars I have come to ask for absolution.
“I wanted to talk to you two.”
“Clearly,” Kala says dryly.
I take a deep breath. “I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”
Kala looks at Jackson incredulously, her eyebrows raised. Another wordless interaction I can only watch.
Just as Kala turns to face me again, my eyebrows knit as I recognise the red shirt; she was wearing one of the shirts I left behind.
To sleep in. She still kept me close.
She folds her arms across her chest when it occurs to her what I am staring at.
Kala shakes her head and scoffs. “Sorry? Say something meaningful, or you can leave. Again.”
There is no hint of forgiveness in that voice. Just a sharp tongue and clipped words. I open my mouth and start, but I find that I’ve lost all the words I had imagined saying to them, whispering to them if they ever let me in.
I turn to Jackson, unmoving, his jaw clenched tightly, his arms like chains across his chest, holding him back. The door next to him - their (briefly ours) bedroom door - was ajar, and for a moment I spied the memory of three bodies bleeding into each other like watercolours, impossible to guess where one ended and one began.
His face mirrored Kala’s words. Say something or go.
The three of us breathe in sharply, unexpectedly in unison, like a choir before the first verse. We hold that breath, waiting and waiting for me to make that choice. Again.
The silence in the air is suffocating as the future of whatever this is between us rests in my shaking and uncertain hands, which are numb from the cold of my jacket. My heart crawls up my throat and beats to a panicked rhythm. My lungs are not getting enough air, but I maintain my composure. I am the one who left, I cannot be the first one to cry. I will not be the first one to break. I do not deserve that luxury.
I want to say how I wish I hadn’t run away. I want to say I’ve missed them so much I can’t stomach any food, how I barely show up to work. I want to ask them to let me back in and try again, because I need them.
But, I look at them. My Kala. My Jackson. Their faces are blank, but I can see past the masks they never had to wear in front of me before. I can see the pain, the scars I carved into them, and I can’t bring myself to say any of it.
I take another deep breath through my nose, and shove those thoughts deep down into the pit of my stomach and let them stew. With the sliver of composure I have left pushing my tears back, I say, “Okay. Well, I’ve said sorry.”
Kala’s face crumbles for a second before piecing itself back together, ever the collected one. Jackson, standing clad in his underwear, just stares at me, still, clenching everything in his body, willing me not to move from my side of the room.
Despite an almost-irresistible urge to wipe those hideously blank expressions off their faces with a quick word, I turn to the door. I twist the knob.
It’s Jackson who explodes with a painful, raw voice that eats away at my composure.
“How are you walking out on us?”
I bring myself to face him, to face my mistake. He pushes himself off the wall, no longer able to stand stock still. Instead, fire seems to flow through him. He keeps his distance, but I feel his voice deep in my bones. A tear slips out. I swipe it away before I reply.
“Because it’s what best for all of us,” I say over my shoulder with a hand still on the door knob. “We should put this behind us. This… This isn’t something that should last. You two deserve each other, and you don’t need me ruining it.” I scoff mirthlessly, “Three’s a crowd.”
Kala stands up from the couch. She’s heartbroken, but she attempts to patch it up with indignation. “Come on, aren’t art majors supposed to be a little more free thinking? You say it shouldn’t be like this, but you keep ignoring what it is. We’re allowed to write our own rules,” Kala huffs and shakes her head. “Otherwise, what’s the point?”
Hand still on the door knob, I say, “This isn’t good for us. We’re barely out of high school and this- this- this is just messing around. Experimenting.”
I want to sound like I believe the lies I am spitting out, I do. Even when every single atom in me screams the opposite.
Jackson closes his eyes and whispers hoarsely, “You know it’s more than that.”
I know that. I know there is something inexplicably beautiful about the three of us, but the uncertainty, the newness of it all rattles me.
“If it is- was that good, then why are we standing here arguing and crying?” I wipe at the tears that creep out.
“Because you left us!”
The words are ripped out of Jackson’s chest. The chains that held him together melt away. His face is blotchy, and tears stream down his face. His breathing is shallow and uncontrolled. He moves to sit on the arm of the couch, and Kala gravitates towards him. Her arm slips around his back, but Kala’s eyes do not leave mine, daring me to walk out now.
A small part of me is happy. They still fit together, through everything.
My hand slips off the door knob. I turn slowly. I can only watch as Jackson crumbles in front of me.
I did that.
There have been few times since I have known Jackson that I have seen him forget himself like this, forget the walls he constructed so that the rest of the world never felt what he kept locked inside of him.
He drags his hands across his face, smudging the tear tracks. He looks at Kala, who is eye level with him even though he’s on the arm of the couch. Kala looks at his tear slick face, and her own tears start to fall, but she looks no less daring.
When he speaks, his voice is shaky, but his gaze is steady when he meets my eyes.
“You got scared of what was happening and you just ran. Kala and I were here, and you left. You left after the best night of our fucking lives.”
He shakes his head, and looks down at the fists clenched in his lap, the skin tight over his knuckles. Kala keeps her left arm around his back and moves her right hand to cover the clenched fists. Her dark, delicate, drawer’s fingers contrast with his light, thick carver’s hands. He sighs sharply through his nose and opens his hands to let hers in. You aren’t alone, the gesture says.
Solidarity in resenting me.
Jackson continues.
“We’re not supposed to walk out on each other. Anyone else, but not each other.”
Looking at Jackson now, I can imagine what he looked like when he was 10. When he sat in his abuela’s house, hearing why his mom hadn’t come home that night. How she left a letter scribbled on the back of a receipt saying she just couldn’t handle him anymore. I wondered how his abuela’s heart must have broken at the sight of Jackson trembling. I wonder if it hurt like this.
This is not the Kala and Jackson I thought I was leaving behind when I walked out this apartment, shoes in hand. I thought I was only breaking one heart. I let that thought comfort me as I walked to my dorm room, pieces of my heart decorating the street that separated my house from their home.
I speak to the floor, unable to meet their eyes.
“I thought,” I mutter, “that I would just fade away. That I’d become some crazy story you told your new friends someday.”
Jackson let out a soft sound. His fingers drummed against Kala’s in an unidentifiable rhythm like they did when he was searching for the right thing to say.
“Please look at me, Noa,” Jackson whispered.
I tried to keep my eyes trained on the floor, but I couldn’t deny Jackson when he spoke with his heart on his sleeve. My whole body is trembling, both from the cold and from the sobs I refused release, I looked up and Jackson’s eyes are not the foreign ones that greeted me when I walked up here. They are ochre eyes that made me understand how eyes are the windows to the soul.
“I’m going to be honest,” he said.
“I don’t know about Kala, but this is the last thing I ever expected to happen. When Kala and I started dating, it was great. Everything was working out, and we were happy.
“And then you walked in, and just turned everything upside down. At the start, I was confused why Kala was always asking you to come along when it was just supposed to be the two of us. I was confused why Kala wanted you around so much, scared what it meant for us.” Kala’s laughter fizzled out. Jackson smiled at her, then faced me, the warm smile still lingering on his face. “And then, when we were at my abuela’s house last year, when we were lying on the grass in the backyard, you made some stupid joke, and you and Kala laughed and laughed about it until you were both crying and barely breathing. And then you both looked at me with these identically incredulous looks because I wasn’t crying from laughter, and… something clicked while I looked at you two. It didn’t make any sense, but I understood it. You just fit.
“Abuela spoke to me when we went again later for Thanksgiving.” Jackson shakes his head at the memory. “About me and Kala letting you be around us so much. What would people say? And, I got so angry, so angry at her. This was the first thing I wasn’t willing to give up. Because I have always sacrificed pieces of me, so that I wouldn’t end up like her. But you, Kala and whatever this mess is: I would have died before I let it go.”
Jackson’s naked words make me feel a little raw, a little bruised, but also a little braver.
That’s what we did for each other.
Push each other to face things we had buried so far below, a reminder that even pain had to breathe sometimes.
I thread my fingers through my hair and settle into the chair next to the kitchen counter. My lone little island.
“We’d been dancing around each other,” I start, “and then it was suddenly real. It was something. And I kept thinking about this stupid comment I heard when we walked Kala to a lecture: ‘I’m the couple’s girlfriend.’” I breathe. “You two were seen as the unit and I was an addition. And I tried to stop thinking about it, but it kept gnawing at me. And every time I tried to talk to you two, I choked. So, I ran. And I’m sorry for that, because neither of you did anything to deserve it.” I looked up and gave the pair a shaky smile through my tears. “I’m always the one left behind, and just this one time I wanted to do it on my terms.”
The night life continued outside these walls, but in here, silence reigned. The little apartment on a forgotten street in Brooklyn felt like the most silent place in the world.
Kala moves to sit on the couch. Jackson follows her.
Kala says into the silence, her voice solid, but soft, “This won’t work if we don’t talk.”
My heart lifts.
Maybe I didn’t break this beyond repair.
The room is holding its breath. Love is complicated when two people have to come together and see each other’s rough and ugly edges and continue to love anyway. Three was harder.
Kala looks at me from across the small apartment. Her big, brown eyes are still hesitant, but they have their familiar warmth back.
“You’re not just going to fade, and we’re not just going to leave you behind. But we can’t promise it’s going to be smooth sailing, but it’ll be worth it, because we’re worth it,” Kala says.
Jackson’s stuttering breath catches my attention. He speaks towards his hands, “You broke our hearts.”
“I’m sorry,” is all I have to offer as I stare at the still sopping wet jacket in my lap.
“I’m so, so, so sorry.”
Couch springs.
Footsteps.
Two pairs of footsteps.
I look up from my lone, little island and see my favourite faces in this world and every other, standing an arm’s reach from me. Kala and Jackson’s hands rest at their sides, unsure of what to do with the crying girl in front of them. Unsure if it was business as usual or if they would have to start all over again.
“Do you really want this?” Kala’s voice sounds unsure for the first time tonight.
I don’t hesitate.
“Yes, yes, I want this.” I unwrap my arms from my jacket and skirt both my hands over Jackson and Kala’s. “I’m just not sure how to get it.”
Kala smiles her smile that breaks hearts, and mends them.
“Then, I vote to give it another go,” Jackson says with hint of laughter in his voice.
The tension that kept our hands down and our bodies separate melts away. Kala throws my jacket on the floor behind her. Jackson and Kala put their arms around me, laughing. I laugh through the tears I can’t stop. My nails dig into Jackson’s back and my other hand grips Kala’s - my - shirt, holding on for dear life.
“I don’t know how we’ll make this work,” I whisper into our circle. “But, I’m willing to try.”