My Crush Dared Me to Kiss His Roommate... So I Slept With Them Both

The cards were soft at the edges, the way everything in Liam’s flat had gone soft after three hours of drinking: the sofa cushions, the lamplight, the precise border between what she was saying and what she meant. Elara sat cross-legged on the rug, spine curved toward the low table, knees almost touching the boys’ knees. Between them the bottle listed, amber sloshing against glass each time someone reached for it. She felt the whiskey in her throat like a slow fuse.

Liam laughed at something—maybe his own joke—and the sound filled the room the way his body filled doorways, easily, without checking. He tossed a card down and let his leg rest against hers, weight deliberate, as if to say this is allowed. She didn’t move away. Across the table Finn’s eyes tracked the shuffle she had started without thinking, thumb splitting the deck, fingers flicking cards into each other with a dry snap. He watched her hands the way people watch fire: silent, lids low, pupils wide. When the last card slid home she felt his gaze travel up her wrists to the inside of her elbows, stopping just short of her breasts, a route so precise it might have been drawn with a pencil.

“Your deal,” Liam said, nudging her bare ankle with his socked foot. The touch lingered; the rug’s weave left red indentations on her thighs. She scooped the cards and began dealing three-handed gin, the motion steady from nights spent in student bars pretending she wasn’t broke. Finn collected his cards without looking at them, still studying her, and the delay made the air feel over-charged, like the moment before a bulb blows. She wondered if he was counting the small freckle above her lip, memorizing it for later use.

Outside, the city carried on its mechanical hum, but inside the flat the refrigerator clicked on and off, providing the only clock. Midnight had come and gone without ceremony. Liam poured more whiskey, the glug of liquid loud in the hush. When he handed her the glass their fingers overlapped; he let the contact stretch a second longer than necessary. She took a sip, eyes on Finn, who finally looked at his cards, mouth tightening at whatever he saw there. She couldn’t tell if it was the hand or the knee Liam now had pressed alongside hers, a claiming so casual it felt practiced.

Her turn. She discarded a queen, the red face bright against the scarred wood. Finn picked it up, slotting it into his fan of cards without comment. The silence he carried was different from the companionable quiet she’d known with other men; it felt curated, intentional, a space he allowed her to enter if she chose. She found herself straightening her spine under it, aware of her shirt pulling across her breasts, of the way her hair tickled the nape of her neck. Liam talked, whiskey loosening his stories, but she heard the timbre of Finn’s breathing underneath, steady, attentive, as if he were listening to two conversations at once.

The next hand began. Liam dealt, his thumb brushing her knuckles on the final card, a graze so small she might have invented it. Except Finn saw; she caught the flick of his eyes, the way his jaw set. The room narrowed to the charged triangle of their bodies, the worn rug suddenly tiny, a raft at sea. She reached for her glass, swallowed the last of the whiskey, and felt the fuse reach her stomach, burning bright, ready to split the night open.

Liam swept the coins into a messy pile, copper and silver glinting like small weapons. “Let’s make this interesting,” he said, voice already thickened. “Losers answer a question. Truth, no mumbling.”

Elara shrugged, pretending nonchalance, but her pulse flickered. Finn nodded once, economical. The next hand played faster, cards slapped down hard. She lost first. Liam’s grin widened; he poured her another finger she didn’t need.

“Tell us something you’ve never told anyone,” he said, leaning forward so his shirt gaped at the collar.

She thought of the thesis she had abandoned for weeks, the chapter on Renaissance patronage that refused to cohere. “I’m terrified my supervisor will realise I’m faking the theory,” she said. The words sounded smaller aloud than they did at 3 a.m. in the library. “I don’t actually understand Panofsky. I just quote him and hope no one checks.”

Liam laughed, warm and dismissive. “Everyone does that. You’ll be fine.” He flicked a peanut into his mouth, already bored.

Finn didn’t laugh. He tilted his head, the way he had watched her shuffle, as if her confession were a card he was deciding whether to pick up. “Which part trips you?” he asked. His voice was low, almost apologetic for existing.

She found herself answering the question to him alone. “Iconography. I can’t tell if I’m seeing symbols or projecting them.”

Finn nodded. “Maybe you’re meant to project.” His eyes stayed on her face, not her breasts, and the attention felt strangely naked. She became aware of sweat at the base of her spine.

Liam dealt again, the snap of paper breaking the moment. He lost the next round. Without hesitation he admitted he still wanked to a photo of his ex, taken before she cut her hair. He laughed through the confession, daring them to find it pathetic. Elara smiled because it was expected; Finn’s mouth stayed straight.

The bottle emptied; forfeits escalated. Shirts remained on, but shoes came off, then socks. Skin appeared in small increments: Finn’s pale ankles, the fine dark hair on the top of Liam’s feet. Elara felt the rug fibres imprinting her knees, grounding her as the room tilted.

She lost again. Liam opened his mouth, but Finn spoke first. “Your turn to ask,” he told her, sliding the power across the table like a new card.

She heard herself say, “What do you each want that you shouldn’t?”

Liam’s eyes gleamed. “Right now? A repeat of that kiss you gave Finn earlier.” He said it boldly, but his hand tremed as he reached for his glass.

Finn held her gaze. “Something I haven’t earned yet,” he said, so quietly the refrigerator almost swallowed it.

The air compressed, whiskey-thick. She felt the triangle tighten, herself at the apex, the boys radiating heat along the base. Liam’s want was loud, brassy, already half claimed. Finn’s was quieter, more precise, and therefore heavier. Between them her own pulse hammered, a second, secret drink.

She reached for the cards, fingers clumsy. “New hand,” she said, voice steady only because she forced it. The snap of the shuffle sounded like a small bone resetting. She dealt, watching both pairs of eyes follow her hands, and felt the night tip unmistakably toward whatever came next.

Liam’s thumb brushed the webbing between her fingers as he passed her the last card, a deliberate drag of skin that lasted no longer than a heartbeat but left a damp print. She felt the sweat on his pulse, the tiny tremor that betrayed how drunk he was on the dare they hadn’t yet spoken. Finn watched the point of contact, the muscle in his cheek flicking once, a tic so small she almost missed it. The room’s temperature seemed to jump a degree, whiskey evaporating off their skin.

Her own breathing came through her nose, noisy, equine. She stared at the back of the queen of spades, the ink glossy where Liam’s fingertip had rested. The refrigerator hummed a single low note, a drone that steadied the wobble of the floorboards under her knees. She could smell the metal tang of the coins, the sour warmth of the rug, the sharper note of whatever cologne Finn had put on that morning now gone stale. All of it crowded the space between them like a fourth player.

Liam picked up his cards, fanned them, then laid them face down again. “One more round,” he said, voice thick enough to clog the air. “Winner names the forfeit.” He didn’t look at Finn when he said it; he looked at her mouth, as if the sentence were something he could slide between her teeth.

Finn’s shoulders lifted in a slow inhale. He still hadn’t touched his cards. Instead he rubbed the edge of the low table with his index finger, back and forth, a whisper of skin on varnish that felt louder than the refrigerator. Each pass marked time, measured the inches between her knee and his. She became conscious of the exact shape of her own tongue, its weight, the way it lay against her teeth waiting.

She drew a card from the deck, the paper cool and slightly warped from the moisture in the room. Her nail scraped the pip. Nine of hearts. Useless. She discarded it anyway, watching it land crooked between them like a doorstop. Liam smiled, the left side of his mouth higher, and she knew he was already writing the next minute in his head, already feeling her consent in the way she hadn’t moved her leg away from his.

Finn reached forward, not for the nine but for her wrist. His fingers circled the narrow bones, pressure light enough she could have broken free without trying. He didn’t lift her hand, didn’t pull; he simply held the pulse that hammered beneath the thin skin and looked at Liam. A silent sentence passed between them, subject and verb unnecessary. The refrigerator clicked off, and the sudden quiet felt like a room after a gunshot.

She felt the sweat gather under Finn’s thumb, the small tremor that said he was measuring her willingness by the millimetre. Liam’s knee pressed harder against hers, a counterweight. Cards, coins, whiskey, cotton, skin—every object seemed to lean inward, waiting for her to decide which of them would speak next.