There Was Only One Bed for All Seven of Us

The headlights cut through the trees as we pulled up, seven of us crammed into Mark's ancient Volvo, the suspension groaning under the weight of our collective baggage. I'd been pressed against Liam's shoulder for the last hour, the heat of his body seeping through my jacket, and when we finally stopped, I felt the ghost of that warmth linger even after he'd moved away.

Inside, the cabin smelled like wet wood and something green, alive. The others scattered immediately—Chloe to the kitchen, Eva to the bathroom, Mark and Sarah claiming the couch with the practiced efficiency of a couple who'd done this before. I stood by the door with my duffel bag, watching them move through the space like they belonged there, like they weren't intruding on something that had existed long before us.

Liam appeared beside me, his breath visible in the cold air. "We should check the sleeping situation."

The loft was up a narrow staircase that creaked under our combined weight. At the top, we found it: one massive bed that dominated the entire space, easily king-sized but longer, wider, built into the frame of the cabin itself. No other furniture, just this expanse of mattress covered in a faded quilt.

"Jesus," Liam said, and I could hear the laugh caught in his throat.

We stood there staring at it until the others found us, their voices rising up the stairs in a wave of speculation and disbelief. Chloe pushed past us first, running her hand along the quilt's edge like she was testing for traps.

"There's only one," she announced, though we could all see that plainly.

Mark and Sarah exchanged one of their silent conversations, the kind that happens in the space between shared glances. Eva pulled out her phone, scrolling through the booking confirmation with increasing desperation.

Conor leaned against the doorframe, his practical mind already working through the problem. "We could draw straws," he suggested. "Or rotate. But honestly?" He looked at the bed again, then at us. "It's big enough. We could just share it."

The silence that followed was different from the one Liam and I had shared moments before. This one felt charged, electric, like the moment before a storm breaks. I felt something shift in my chest, a recognition of what we were about to agree to.

"Why not?" I heard myself say, though my voice sounded foreign, like it belonged to someone else entirely.

We formed a line up the stairs, each of us carrying something—pillows, sleeping bags, the extra duvets Eva had insisted on bringing "just in case." I watched the way Chloe took charge without asking, directing traffic like she'd been planning this moment for weeks. She positioned Mark and Sarah on the left side, their bodies already angled toward each other in sleep, their boundaries established through years of shared beds.

"Here," she said, handing me a pillow. "You take the middle."

The middle. I understood what she was doing—placing me as a buffer, a neutral zone between the couples and the singles. Liam had dropped his bag near the foot of the bed, close enough to be part of the group but far enough to maintain his separateness. I wondered if he felt it too, this need to assert individuality within the collective surrender we were making.

Conor spread his sleeping bag with military precision, the corners aligned, his pillow placed exactly in the center. Eva tossed her things down with characteristic chaos, her bra strap visible where her shirt had ridden up during the climb. She caught me looking and smiled, not the embarrassed smile of someone caught unaware, but something more deliberate.

"Comfortable?" she asked, though I couldn't tell if she meant physically or with the arrangement itself.

I arranged my blanket in the space Chloe had designated, noting how the bed's geography was already establishing itself. Mark and Sarah had claimed their corner with the unconscious entitlement of people accustomed to moving through the world as a unit. Their fingers brushed as they unpacked, a small intimacy that seemed to exclude the rest of us by its very naturalness.

Liam sat on the edge, removing his shoes with careful movements. I watched the line of his back through his shirt, the way his shoulders tensed and released. When he turned to place his shoes beside his bag, our eyes met across the expanse of quilt.

"Well," he said, his voice carrying that particular quality it got when he was trying to sound casual about something that wasn't casual at all. "This is cozy."

Chloe had produced string lights from somewhere, and she began arranging them around the loft's beams, casting everything in a soft amber glow. The light transformed the space, made it feel less like an accident of booking and more like a deliberate choice. Like we had chosen this proximity, this surrender of privacy.

I lay back against my pillow, feeling the mattress shift as the others found their positions. The bed was large enough that we weren't touching, but small enough that I could feel the heat radiating from three different bodies, could hear the soft sounds of breathing that weren't my own.

We gathered in the living room with the bottle of whiskey Mark had produced from his bag, the cheap kind that burned going down and left a film on your teeth. I sat on the floor with my back against the couch, watching Liam pour measures into mismatched glasses he'd found in the kitchen. The others arranged themselves in a loose circle—Chloe cross-legged on the rug, Mark and Sarah sharing the armchair, Conor perched on the coffee table like he was chairing a meeting.

The silence stretched between us, punctuated only by the sound of whiskey being poured and the distant creak of the cabin settling. I could feel the weight of what we'd agreed to upstairs, the way it pressed against the edges of every conversation we'd had since. Every time someone shifted position, I thought about how we'd soon be shifting against each other in that bed, how the careful distances we were maintaining now would collapse into something else entirely.

"This is ridiculous," Eva said finally, setting down her glass with a decisive click. "We're acting like we've never shared a bed before. Like we're twelve."

"We haven't," Conor pointed out. "Not all of us. Not like this."

Sarah laughed, a nervous sound that seemed to escape her throat without permission. "It's just sleeping."

"Is it though?" Chloe asked, and I realized she'd been watching us with the same analytical attention I'd been using on her, cataloging reactions and reading subtext.

Liam took a long drink from his glass. I watched the movement of his throat, the way his fingers wrapped around the cheap glass. When he lowered it, his eyes found mine across the circle, and I felt something shift in my chest, a recognition of the conversation we'd been having without words since we'd stood together in the loft.

"Truth or dare," Eva said suddenly. "We need to break whatever this is."

The suggestion hung in the air like smoke. I felt everyone processing it—the juvenile nature of the game versus the very adult tension we'd been navigating. But the whiskey was making everything feel softer, more possible, and when Chloe said "Why not?" her voice carried the same note of inevitability I'd heard in my own earlier.

We arranged ourselves properly, the circle tightening until our knees almost touched. I ended up between Liam and Eva, close enough to smell Liam's cologne mixing with the pine scent that clung to all our clothes. When Eva spun the empty bottle, it landed on Conor, who chose truth with the weary resignation of someone who knew he was going to regret it.

"Who in this room would you sleep with," Eva asked, "if you had to choose?"

The question was a door opening, and I felt us all step through it.

The climb upstairs felt ceremonial, each step a small negotiation with gravity and intention. I followed Chloe, who had changed into an oversized t-shirt that hung off one shoulder, revealing the strap of her bra. Behind me, Liam’s breathing was steady, but I could feel the tension radiating from him, a low-frequency hum that seemed to vibrate through the wooden steps.

In the loft, the string lights cast everything in amber, turning skin golden and shadows soft. The bed waited, vast and indifferent. I stood at the edge, watching the others arrange themselves with the careful choreography of people who had done this before, just not with so many witnesses. Mark and Sarah took the far left, their bodies already angled toward each other, a private conversation in the language of shared space. Conor claimed the right corner, spreading his sleeping bag with the same military precision he’d used downstairs, creating a small fortress of fabric and intention.

I hesitated, then crawled toward the middle, the same position Chloe had assigned me earlier. The mattress gave under my weight, and I felt the others shift in response, a ripple effect of movement that traveled through the springs and foam. Chloe settled beside me, her bare leg brushing mine as she arranged her blanket. The contact was brief, but I felt it long after she’d pulled away, a ghost of warmth against my skin.

Liam took longer. He stood at the foot of the bed, removing his watch with deliberate slowness, setting it on the floor beside his bag. When he finally lay down, it was on the opposite side of Chloe, close enough that I could hear the soft exhale as his weight settled. Three bodies between us, but I could still feel the exact location of his breathing, could track the rise and fall of his chest without looking.

The lights went off. Darkness transformed the bed into something else entirely—a continent with shifting borders, a map redrawn every time someone rolled over or adjusted their pillow. I lay on my back, arms pinned to my sides, hyperaware of every sound: the soft rustle of fabric as Chloe turned onto her side, the way Mark’s breathing had already deepened into sleep, the small, unconscious sound Sarah made when she shifted closer to him.

An hour passed, maybe two. My body ached with stillness. When I finally moved, turning onto my side, my knee brushed Chloe’s leg. She didn’t pull away, but I did, mumbling an apology into the dark. She made a soft sound—not quite a laugh, not quite acknowledgment—and I felt her settle back into stillness.

Liam was awake. I knew this without seeing him, without touching him. The quality of his breathing was different—controlled, deliberate. I imagined him staring at the ceiling, counting the beams, calculating the distance between his body and mine. Three people, but it might as well have been three miles. Or three inches. The space felt elastic, expanding and contracting with every thought I had about reaching across it.

I drifted into a shallow, uneasy sleep, waking every time someone moved. Once, Chloe’s hand landed on my stomach when she rolled over. She left it there, heavy and warm, until I shifted away. Another time, I felt the mattress dip as Liam adjusted his position, and I tracked the movement like a seismograph, measuring the distance between his body and the place where I was lying perfectly still, pretending to sleep.

The trail was narrow, forcing us into single file. I walked behind Liam, watching the way his shoulders moved under his shirt, the way his feet found the natural grooves in the dirt. The others had pulled ahead, their voices carrying back to us in fragments—Chloe laughing at something Conor said, Mark and Sarah's quieter conversation blending into the ambient noise of the forest.

We walked in silence for a while, the kind that felt deliberate rather than awkward. The physical exertion was good, a way to process the previous night without having to think about it directly. My legs felt heavy from lack of sleep, but the movement helped, each step a small act of forgetting.

"Your dad," I said finally, when the trail widened enough for us to walk side by side. "How's he doing?"

Liam's stride didn't falter, but I felt him register the question. "Same. Worse, maybe. It's hard to tell from a distance."

The last time I'd seen his father had been at graduation, a tall man who'd clapped Liam on the back with the kind of masculine affection that always seemed to contain more force than tenderness. I remembered thinking they looked alike, the same way of holding their shoulders, the same careful way of speaking.

"I didn't know you were still—" I started, then stopped. The sentence felt too large for the space between us.

"Still what?"

"Still carrying it around. All of it."

He glanced at me, then looked back at the trail. "I think about quitting sometimes. Just... stopping. But then I think about what I'd do instead, and it's this big blank space."

I knew what he meant. After I'd left the master's program, I'd spent months feeling like I was floating above my own life, watching myself perform the actions of a person who knew what they were doing. The others had been sympathetic, but in the way people are sympathetic to things they don't understand—they'd offered solutions, timelines, encouragement. What they'd never offered was the acknowledgment that sometimes giving up is the most honest thing you can do.

"The performance," I said. "You feel it too."

"All the time." His voice was quieter now, almost lost under the sound of our footsteps. "Like I'm playing this version of myself that everyone expects. Even with them. Especially with them."

The trail curved upward, becoming steeper. I could see the others ahead, stopped at a viewpoint, their figures small against the landscape. From here, they looked like strangers, like people we might have met once and forgotten.

"I used to think it was just me," I said. "This feeling of being... unconvincing. As myself."

Liam stopped walking. When I turned to look at him, his face was open in a way I hadn't seen in years, maybe ever. "You were always the real one," he said. "The rest of us were just... practicing."

The waterfall appeared suddenly, a white rush of water cutting through the green. The others were already there, their voices rising to meet the sound of the falls, but for a moment, we stayed back, watching them from the trail. I felt something shift in my chest—not the recognition of attraction, but something more dangerous: the recognition of being understood.

"Come on," I said, starting forward. "Before they send a search party."

But even as we rejoined the group, even as Chloe handed me a water bottle and Conor made some joke about our pace, I could feel the conversation continuing between us, unspoken but present, like a current running under still water.

The hike had metabolized something in all of us. Back at the cabin we moved through the rooms with looser joints, speaking less but listening more, as if the shared exertion had tuned us to the same frequency. I showered first, the water pressure irregular, hot then cold, and I let it sting my shoulders while I watched dirt spiral down the drain. When I came out, towel wrapped tight, Chloe was sitting on the stairs in her sports bra, rolling the elastic of her sock up her calf. She looked up, met my eyes, and neither of us spoke. The silence felt deliberate, like a placeholder.

By the time the sun dropped behind the pines, the living room had arranged itself into a smaller circle than the night before. The couch was abandoned; we sat on the floor, legs crossed or stretched out, shoulders touching when we shifted. Eva produced the whiskey without ceremony, the bottle already half gone, and set it in the center like a centerpiece. No one bothered with glasses.

“Same rules?” Conor asked, though it wasn’t really a question.

“No rules,” Eva said. She twisted the cap off, took a swallow, and passed it left. Her mouth was wet when she handed it to me.

I drank. The burn was familiar now, almost comforting. When I lowered the bottle, Liam was watching my throat. I didn’t look away.

We didn’t bother spinning. People just named names, voices low, the game stripped of its theatrics. Sarah asked Mark when he’d last fantasized about someone else; he told her three weeks ago, a woman on the train, and she nodded like she’d already known. Chloe dared Conor to show the scar on his lower back; he stood, unbuttoned his jeans, and pushed the waistband down just far enough to reveal the raised white line near his hipbone. Eva reached out and traced it with her index finger, a slow drag of skin on skin, and no one laughed.

When it was my turn, I didn’t hesitate.

“Liam,” I said. “Truth or dare.”

He tilted his head, considering. The light from the single lamp caught the stubble along his jaw. “Truth.”

I felt the room inhale. “What did you think about in the shower this morning?”

A beat. Then: “You,” he said. “On your knees.”

The words landed cleanly, no flinch, no apology. I felt the others register it—Chloe’s sharp exhale, Sarah’s hand stilling on Mark’s thigh—but no one broke the circle. The whiskey came back around. I drank again, slower this time, letting the heat pool low in my stomach.

Eva leaned forward. “My turn,” she said, eyes on me. “I dare you to kiss me. Properly. No performance.”

I moved first, knees scraping the rug. Her mouth tasted like smoke and copper, her tongue sliding against mine without preamble. She kissed like she was collecting data, precise and thorough, and when I pulled back her pupils were blown wide.

Behind me, someone shifted. Fabric against fabric. The bottle passed again, cap long gone. I felt the room tilt slightly, not from alcohol but from momentum, the sense that we had already agreed to something none of us had said aloud. Liam’s knee brushed my ankle. I didn’t move away.

“Again,” Chloe said quietly. “But slower.”

Eva’s mouth was still warm when Sarah leaned across the circle and kissed her, a quick press of lips that ended in laughter—Sarah’s nervous, Eva’s low and satisfied. Mark had issued the dare like he was ordering coffee, but his eyes stayed on them after they separated, tracking the way Eva’s thumb lingered on Sarah’s jaw for half a second longer than necessary.

“Your turn,” Chloe told him, voice steady. “Truth. When did you last watch porn?”

“Tuesday,” Mark said. “Amateur. Redhead. No sound.”

Sarah didn’t flinch. She simply reached for the bottle, swallowed, and passed it to Conor, who studied the label as if it might contain instructions.

Conor chose dare. Eva told him to take off his shirt. He did, folding it once and setting it beside him like he was checking luggage. The hair on his chest was darker than I remembered, a vertical stripe that narrowed to the waistband of his jeans. Chloe looked at him the way you look at a painting you’re considering stealing.

“Liam,” Conor said. “Truth. Ever faked an orgasm?”

“Yes,” Liam answered, eyes on me. “Once. With the person I wanted to be doing this with instead.”

The circle contracted; shoulders touched, knees knocked. No one asked who he meant.

Mark spun the bottle—an empty gesture, the neck pointing nowhere useful—and dared Sarah to let him undo her bra under her shirt. She lifted her arms like a child waiting to be dressed in reverse. The cotton pulled tight, outlining his hands as they worked the clasp. When he finished, she left the loosened garment in place, straps slack under the fabric, and handed him the whiskey.

Chloe’s dare came next: kiss Conor for thirty seconds, no hands. They moved together efficiently, mouths opening immediately, the small wet sounds unmistakable. I counted in my head—twelve, thirteen—until Eva said “time” and they separated, both breathing through parted lips.

My pulse felt external, like it belonged to the room rather than my body. Liam’s shin pressed against mine; sweat made the contact slick. When the bottle reached him, he didn’t wait.

“Mark,” he said, “take Sarah’s bra off the rest of the way.”

Sarah lifted her arms again. Mark drew the cotton upward, the bra coming with it, her breasts exposed for the three seconds it took her to pull the shirt back down. The fabric clung, damp and opaque, nipples visible as topography. She passed the bottle to me without meeting anyone’s eyes.

I chose dare before they asked. Eva smiled, slow and clinical.

“Touch yourself,” she said. “Over clothes. Ten seconds.”

My hand moved to the seam of my jeans, pressure firm, circular. The room watched like we were data points. I counted to ten, then lifted my fingers and smelled them—metallic, public. Liam made a sound that wasn’t quite a word.

The bottle kept moving. The questions kept coming. The fiction that we were still friends, still joking, had already thinned to gauze; every dare pulled it tighter until it showed the shape underneath.

Conor’s eyes were flat, unreadable. “Three rounds,” he repeated, as if I might not have heard. “And you have to stay still.”

I stood, the floor cold under my bare feet, and crossed the two steps to where Liam sat. His knees were bent, forearms resting on them, and when I turned to lower myself he didn’t move to help, just let me settle onto the hard shelf of his thighs. My jeans caught on the denim of his, a brief friction, then I was seated, the length of my back held away from his chest by the awkwardness of balance. His hands rose after a second and settled on my hip bones, thumbs on the seam, fingers curling around to the hollows above my buttocks. The contact was formal, almost medical, but I could feel the tremor—tiny, involuntary—running through the pads of his fingers like a Morse code he couldn’t stop transmitting.

The room’s acoustics changed; the others’ breathing seemed to move to a lower register. Eva passed the bottle to Chloe without taking her eyes off us. I counted heartbeats, mine and then, faintly, Liam’s where my shoulder blade almost touched his pectoral. Heat collected between our layers of fabric; I could feel the sweat forming at the small of my back, a single drop sliding down the channel of my spine until it met the waistband of my underwear and stopped.

“Clock starts now,” Conor said, leaning back on his palms. The lamplight caught the ridge of his collarbone, the skin there shiny with perspiration.

Round one: Sarah dared Mark to lick the salt from Eva’s neck. She tilted her head, hair falling away, and Mark’s tongue dragged a clean stripe from clavicle to ear. Eva’s pupils dilated; her throat moved in a swallow I felt in my own mouth. Liam’s grip tightened fractionally, then relaxed, but the imprint of pressure stayed, a ghost bruise forming under the skin.

Round two: Chloe asked Liam truth—describe the last time he masturbated. His voice came out low, steady, right beside my ear. “Yesterday morning. Shower. Thought about her hips moving like they are now.” The words vibrated through the cartilage; I felt my own pulse jump against the inside of my jeans, a sympathetic flutter. His fingertips pressed harder, not enough to hurt, just enough to remind me of the bone beneath.

Round three: Eva dared me to let Liam undo the top button. I didn’t speak; I simply took his right hand and moved it to the brass disc. He paused, then flicked it open with the same economy he used to open beer bottles. The zipper teeth parted a quarter inch, enough for cooler air to slip in and meet the damp cotton underneath. My weight shifted backward, finally meeting his chest, and I felt the ridge of him against the seam of my jeans, unmistakable, unapologetic. The timer expired, but no one called it. Conor watched, mouth slightly open, as I stayed where I was, the next breath held collectively by all seven of us.

The silence stretched until Chloe exhaled through her nose and reached for the hem of her jumper. Cotton scraped skin, the sound amplified in the hush; then the fabric cleared her head and her hair spilled back onto her shoulders, dark against the pale blue of her bra. She dropped the garment behind her without looking, the way you discard a towel before stepping into a bath. No one applauded, no one joked. The room simply recalibrated, as though a new unit of measurement had been introduced.

Eva’s gaze moved from Chloe’s collarbones to my still-unbuttoned waistband, then to Liam’s hands resting on my hips. She licked the corner of her mouth. “Liam,” she said, voice steady, “whisper the filthiest thing you’ve ever imagined about someone here. Into their ear. No repeats.”

I felt the words hit the base of my spine before I registered them. Liam’s chest lifted once, twice. Then his right hand slid up my rib cage, fingertips brushing the underside of my breast through cotton, and he leaned in. His stubble grazed my earlobe. The sound he made was almost a sigh, almost a laugh, and then the sentence came—low, deliberate, each syllable placed against my skin like a brand.

He described, in clinical detail, the way he had pictured me on the wooden table after dinner, legs spread so wide my hips cracked, his mouth working between them while the others watched, how he imagined my taste mixing with whiskey, how he would hold me open until I shook hard enough to rattle the plates. He told me the exact rhythm he would use, the pressure, the moment he would slide two fingers inside and curl them until I lost the ability to keep quiet. He finished with the image of pulling out at the last second, spending across my stomach while Chloe licked it off.

The air left my lungs in a soundless rush. My vision tunneled; the lamplight became a smear. I felt the sentence settle inside me, a hot weight pressing against every nerve ending, as if he had spoken it directly onto my clitoris. Somewhere to my left Sarah made a small, involuntary noise, but it reached me as though through water. Liam’s lips stayed against my ear for a second longer, his breath humid, then he drew back just far enough for the cool air to sting the sweat beading along my hairline.

I became aware of my own pulse between my legs, a steady, insistent throb that matched the tremor still running through his fingers where they rested just beneath my breast. The room re-formed around us: seven bodies, one shared respiratory rate, the faint smell of cedar and arousal mixing with the whiskey. No one spoke. The dare was technically complete, but the space it opened remained, a low doorway we had all already stepped through.

Eva’s voice cut the hush. “Pantry. Seven minutes. Both of you.” She tossed the empty bottle aside; it rolled until it met the baseboard and stopped, pointing nowhere.

I stood first. Liam’s hands slid off me like they’d been repelled, and the sudden absence of heat felt almost violent. The others rearranged themselves on the rug, creating a corridor of eyes. I walked the six steps to the kitchen, Liam two paces behind, his tread heavier than usual, as though gravity had been recalibrated. Eva followed, flipped the light switch down, and yanked open the narrow pantry door. The hinge squealed once, a small animal sound.

Inside smelled of oregano and something older, maybe basil gone dusty. Shelves pressed against my left shoulder; Liam’s chest brushed my right. Eva shut the door and the darkness became absolute, a black you could feel on your corneas. The click of the latch was soft, domestic, the same noise the cabin’s crockery made when stacked.

We breathed. Two separate rhythms, then one syncopated mess. I heard him swallow.

“Timer started,” Conor called through the wood, voice muffled, amused.

Liam’s hand found my wrist first, thumb on the pulse point as if taking a reading. My arm was lifted, guided until my palm flattened against the back wall, splinters catching the edge of my skin. He stepped closer; denim scraped denim. His other hand landed on my waist, fingers tucking just beneath the loosened waistband, the top button still open from the dare. He didn’t kiss me immediately—he waited, letting the anticipation become its own small pain. When his mouth finally arrived it was open, deliberate, the lower lip dragging mine down. The angle was wrong; our teeth clicked once, a sharp note, then adjusted. He tasted like cheap whiskey and copper.

My free hand went to his belt. Metal clinked, leather sighed. I traced the trail of hair below his navel, followed it inside the denim, found him hard and slick already at the tip. A single bead had gathered; I spread it with my thumb, painting the head in slow circles until his hips jerked forward, pinning me to the shelves. A jar wobbled behind me, settled.

He pulled back an inch. “Say it,” he whispered.

I could hear my own blood. “I want you inside me.” The words felt clinical, borrowed, but the effect was physical: his exhale stuttered, and then both hands were on my thighs, lifting. My shoulders knocked a box of rice; grains hissed onto the floor like rain. He held me against the door, forearms under my knees, and I felt the blunt pressure, the give, the sudden impossible stretch as he entered in one measured push. The darkness made it feel larger, abstract, a shape I had to learn by memory. My ankles locked behind his back.

We moved without speaking, short economical thrusts that made the door creak softly in its frame. Each sound seemed amplified: the wet click where we joined, his belt buckle tapping the wood, my own breathing turning shallow, nasal. I bit the collar of his T-shirt to stay quiet, tasted detergent and salt. His forehead dropped to my sternum; stubble burned the upper curve of my breast through cotton.

Outside, someone laughed, a bright unrelated noise. Inside, we were a closed system: heat, friction, the smell of crushed herbs rising every time our bodies displaced air. I felt the orgasm start low, a narrow band tightening around my pelvis, then widen in concentric waves until my thighs shook against his ribs. He followed immediately, a muffled groan lost in my shirt, hips stuttering hard enough to lift me off the shelf for a second. Warmth spread inside, then cooled, tracking the seam of my jeans as he eased out.

We stayed like that, suspended, until the knock came: three measured taps. The timer, obedient, indifferent. I lowered my legs; pins and needles flared. Liam tucked himself away, zipper rasping. I buttoned up, brushed rice from my hair. When the door opened, kitchen light sliced across us, exposing the flushed sides of his neck, the wet patch darkening my shirt at the bottom. No one in the living room looked surprised; they looked as if they’d been waiting for the proof of what we’d become.

The pantry light clicked off, and the darkness felt absolute, a soft black that pressed against my eyelids. I heard the rasp of my own breathing, the small shift of Liam’s feet on the thin wooden floor. Then nothing. A second, maybe two. The timer outside hadn’t started; no one spoke. The herbs on the shelves released their stale perfume, bitter and green.

He moved first. No preamble, no question—just the sudden heat of his mouth finding mine, open and certain. The collision knocked my head back against a sack of flour; a small puff of white rose between us like dust. His hands were in my hair immediately, fingers threading to the scalp, tilting my face so he could take more. I tasted whiskey and the metallic edge of urgency. Our teeth grazed; I felt the small pain and welcomed it, a calibration point in the dark.

My palms found his chest, the cotton of his T-shirt damp from the kitchen’s warmth. I slid them upward, over the ridge of his clavicle, mapping the hard plane of muscle beneath. His heart beat fast against the heel of my hand, a trapped thing. He made a low sound, almost annoyed, and pressed closer until the shelf edge bit into my spine. A packet of spaghetti cracked under his shoulder.

His tongue stroked mine once, twice, then retreated as if testing my response. I followed, greedy, and he rewarded me by sucking my lower lip between his teeth, holding it while his hands dropped to my waist. Fingers slipped under the hem of my shirt, skin meeting skin with no transition. The heat of his palm spanned the small of my back, pulling me forward until my hips fitted against his. Through two layers of denim I felt him, rigid, angled along the groove of my pelvis. He rocked once, involuntary, and the friction sent a bright spark up my spine.

I dragged my nails down the front of his shirt, catching a nipple on the pass; he hissed into my mouth and retaliated by sliding his hand higher, thumb tracing the ridge of my bra strap, then under it, callus catching on the clasp. My breasts felt suddenly heavy, the cotton of my own shirt an irritant. I wanted it gone, wanted everything gone, but the darkness made clothing both irrelevant and insurmountable—fabric became geography we had to navigate by memory alone.

His mouth left mine, traveled to the corner of my jaw, down to the pulse hammering beneath my ear. Each kiss was placed with precision, as if he’d studied a map of me in secret. When he reached the hollow above my collarbone he stopped, breathed once, then closed his teeth gently over the skin. I arched, head knocking another shelf, and felt his smile against me—small, satisfied, fleeting.

Outside, Conor cleared his throat. “Starting now,” he called, and the timer’s electronic beep cut through the wood. Seven minutes. Liam lifted his head; I couldn’t see his eyes, but I felt the rush of air as he exhaled, hot across my cheek. Then his mouth returned, slower this time, deliberate, and we began again.

The timer’s final beep sounded almost polite, like a guest clearing its throat. Liam’s mouth left my neck mid-kiss; the skin cooled instantly, a small betrayal. He lowered me until my soles touched the floorboards, then stepped back, jeans still unbuttoned, belt buckle clinking once as he tucked himself away. I wiped my lips, tasted iron where I’d bitten through, and tried to slow the twitch between my legs that refused to acknowledge the interruption.

We exited in single file. The kitchen bulb swung, throwing our shadows across the pine table like a second, longer couple. No one looked up when we appeared; they had rearranged themselves into a new constellation. Chloe sat astride Mark’s thighs on the rug, her bra gone, the pale underside of her breasts reflecting the firelight. Mark’s palm lay flush across her navel, thumb stroking the ridge of bone as if tuning an instrument. Sarah knelt beside them, knees apart, eyes fixed on the place where Chloe’s waist narrowed. Eva had claimed the couch; Conor’s head rested in her lap, her fingers threading his hair with the same absent rhythm Mark used on Chloe’s stomach.

Liam paused at the threshold. I felt the small gust as he exhaled through his nose, a decision made. He crossed to the hearth, poured two fingers of whiskey into the same glass I had used earlier, and drank. The ice had melted; the sound was just glass on enamel. I stayed standing, aware of the cooling stripe inside my underwear, the way it glued fabric to skin each time I shifted.

Sarah looked up then. Her gaze moved from my mouth—still swollen—to Liam’s fly, where a single dark thread of semen had dried into the denim. She didn’t smile or frown; she simply registered the data, the way one might note a change in barometric pressure. Then she returned her attention to Chloe, leaned in, and placed her own hand over Mark’s. Chloe’s stomach muscles fluttered under the double contact; a small sound escaped her, half sigh, half permission.

Eva spoke without lifting her eyes from Conor’s scalp. “Game’s over,” she said, voice calm, almost academic. “New rules start now.” Conor turned his face into her thigh and bit once, lightly, through the fabric. She didn’t flinch.

I felt Liam beside me before I saw him; the heat coming off his forearm raised the hairs on mine. He offered the glass. I took the last swallow, tasted both of us mixed with the whiskey, and set the tumbler on the mantel. The fire popped, throwing sparks against the screen. No one suggested returning to the bed; the rug had become large enough. I stepped out of my socks, peeled the damp jeans down my legs, and left them where they fell. The others watched without comment, as if clothing were merely an outdated convention we had finally outgrown.

Conor stood first, unfolding himself from Eva’s lap like someone remembering an appointment. He didn’t speak; he simply walked toward the stairs, shirt dangling from his fingers. The rest of us followed in a loose, unplanned sequence, feet finding the treads without discussion, as if we had rehearsed this migration for weeks. I carried my jeans, the denim still cool and damp at the crotch; the feeling served as a quiet reminder that the pantry interlude had been real, not some whiskey-fed hallucination.

On the landing, the single bed waited like a raft built for seven. Moonlight through the skylight laid a gray grid across the duvet, dividing the mattress into arbitrary territories no one would respect. Conor dropped his shirt, stepped out of his trousers, and lay on his back at the left edge, hands behind his head as if sunbathing. Mark and Sarah came next, peeling clothes with the efficiency of swimmers arriving late to practice. They knelt, then folded themselves into the middle, facing each other but not touching yet, eyes wide and reflective.

I paused at the foot of the bed. Liam stood behind me; I could feel the heat coming off his chest without turning around. Eva brushed past, unclasping her bra as she walked, letting it fall. She climbed in on the right, rolled to her side, and watched me with the neutral curiosity of someone reserving a seat. The message was plain: the space between her and Conor was mine if I wanted it. I did.

I dropped the jeans, stepped out of my underwear, and the cool air slid over the wet seam of me, tightening everything. Liam’s shirt landed near my feet; his trousers followed. He mounted the bed last, settling on his back beside Eva, leaving a narrow corridor of sheet for me. I crawled across, knees printing temporary craters in the foam, and lowered myself so my spine fitted against Liam’s ribs and my thigh touched Eva’s. The duvet rose and fell as seven separate breathing cycles gradually synchronized.

Hands began to move—not urgently, more like commuters adjusting coats on a crowded train. Liam’s palm found my stomach, fingers splayed wide, anchoring. Eva’s knuckles brushed the outer edge of my knee, then stayed, a passive acknowledgement of shared surface area. Across the bed, Chloe exhaled through her nose; the sound was soft but deliberate, like someone switching off a light. Mark answered by shifting closer, his foot sliding between Sarah’s calves.

I became conscious of every hair follicle, every place skin met skin or hovered a millimetre apart. Liam’s chest lifted; my back rose with it. When he exhaled, I sank. The motion was tidal, impersonal, and it carried my legs apart so that Eva’s fingertips rested inside the hollow of my thigh, not asking permission, simply accepting the new topography. Above us the skylight showed a rectangle of indifferent stars, watching without commentary while we rearranged ourselves into a single, breathing architecture.

Liam’s mouth found the tendon where neck met shoulder, pressure slow and deliberate, as if he were testing how long it took a bruise to bloom. I felt the suction travel downward, a warm column opening inside me. At the same moment Eva’s thumb, which had been resting on my thigh, began to move in small lateral sweeps, mapping the crease where leg joined pelvis. The two rhythms—pull above, glide below—didn’t synchronize; they overlapped, creating a third cadence that belonged to neither of them. My hips answered without consultation, tilting into the space that opened between palm and mattress.

Across the bed Sarah made a sound, part exhale, part question. I lifted my head enough to see Chloe’s fingers walking the knobs of her spine, each vertebra a station. When she reached the small hollow at the base, she paused, nail beds whitening, then dragged her hand back up, this time with nails. Sarah’s back arched like a drawn bow; Mark, who had been watching with the detachment of a referee, leaned in and closed his mouth around the forward curve of her breast. The move was efficient, almost polite, yet it altered the temperature of the entire mattress, the way one window opened in winter changes every room.

Liam shifted, rolling half onto me, knee sliding between mine until the hard plane of his thigh pressed the exact center of me. The contact was dry at first, then wasn’t. He rocked once, a small experimental motion, and the friction sent a pulse up through my stomach that felt like information rather than pleasure—data I hadn’t known I could read. His erection lay along the seam of my hip, hot, slightly sticky at the tip; when he moved again it left a cool stripe that evaporated almost instantly. I reached down, fingers curving around him, more to verify the fact than to possess it. He exhaled through his nose, breath ruffling my hair, and pushed into the circle of my hand exactly twice before pulling away, as if too much confirmation might break the protocol we were inventing.

Eva’s hand left my thigh, traveled upward, and settled over Liam’s where it cupped my breast. She didn’t try to take over; she simply added her weight, two palms now measuring the slow swell of my breathing. I turned my head toward her and found her mouth already waiting, open, tasting of the whiskey we’d shared downstairs and something sharper, metallic, probably my own blood from earlier. We kissed without urgency, a negotiation of angles, while Liam’s hips continued their quiet interrogation. Somewhere in the middle of it I felt Conor’s foot brush my calf, hair coarse, then gone—an accidental commuter on the same night train.

The room’s soundtrack had reduced to small mechanics: the wet click of mouths, the rasp of stubble across inner arm, the occasional creak of springs that made everyone pause, listen, then resume at the same tempo. I realized I couldn’t tell which hands were mine anymore; one was between Eva’s legs, two knuckles deep in slick heat, another—Liam’s—guided mine, showing pressure and pace like a language tutor. When she came, the contraction fluttered against my fingers the way a fish might mouth a hook before being released. She didn’t cry out; she simply stopped breathing for four counts, then resumed at a faster clip, her thigh tightening against mine in thanks.

Above me Liam adjusted, angling my knee higher, and entered on a single, steady push. The sensation was so complete it felt like punctuation, a period marking the end of whatever sentence we had been speaking until now. I watched Chloe rise to her knees, turn, and lower herself onto Mark’s face with the calm efficiency of someone taking a seat on public transport. Sarah, now free of her attention, crawled the short distance to Conor, laid her head on his stomach, and took him into her mouth without ceremony. The four of us—Liam and I, Sarah and Conor—formed a quiet, piston quartet, speeds varying slightly but never losing the underlying tempo set by the bed itself.

I came first, a bright, almost administrative event, muscles contracting around Liam in three neat waves that felt like filing a report. He followed on the next downstroke, pressing deep and holding, throat vibrating against my shoulder with a sound too low to qualify as moan. Eva’s hand, still overlaying his, felt the small convulsion and answered with a squeeze, acknowledging receipt. When he pulled out, the loss was immediate, cool air rushing in where heat had been; but before the absence could register, Chloe’s fingers—still damp from Sarah—found me, tracing the open rim once, twice, then retreating, a courtesy visit rather than an occupation.

We rearranged again, a slow rotation, no one fully leaving anyone else. I ended on my side, back to Liam’s chest, face inches from Sarah’s hip. She smelled of chlorine and something green, like crushed stems. I pressed my mouth to the bone, tasted salt, and left it there, breathing in time with the pulse that beat just under the skin. The mattress rose and fell beneath us, a single lung shared by seven bodies, each exhale feeding the next inhale, until the distinction between giving and receiving felt purely academic.

Time lost its usual markers. I existed in a continuous present where the only geography was skin and the only currency was pressure. Liam’s chest moved against my back in steady waves, his breathing still ragged from finishing, but his hand remained cupped around my breast, thumb moving in small, absent circles as if keeping time with a song only he could hear. The circles weren’t sexual now; they were administrative, a quiet bookkeeping of contact.

Sarah shifted, rolling onto her back beside me, and the new alignment placed her shoulder blade under my cheekbone. I could feel the small, rapid flutter of her heart through the thin barrier of bone and muscle. Her left hand found Conor’s knee where it pressed against Eva’s calf, and she left it there, palm open, claiming nothing, simply recording temperature. Eva answered by flexing her foot, a tiny movement that traveled up Conor’s leg and into Sarah’s palm, a message passed along a human wire.

Above us, Chloe had turned to face Mark; their foreheads touched, but their hips were offset, creating a small pocket of air that cooled the sweat drying on both stomachs. I watched, detached, as Mark’s hand moved from her waist to the back of her thigh, lifting it just enough to slot his knee between hers. The adjustment was wordless, functional, like sliding a chair closer to a table. When he rocked forward, her exhale brushed across my cheek, warm and tasting of the whiskey we’d almost finished.

I became aware of my own hand, though I couldn’t remember deciding to move it. It rested on Sarah’s stomach, fingers splayed wide enough that my pinky grazed the damp curl of hair where her leg met torso. The skin there was slick, not just from arousal but from the shared humidity of seven bodies under one duvet. I left the hand where it was, feeling the subtle rise and fall as her breathing shifted in response to Conor’s fingers, which had begun tracing idle figure-eights on her inner arm. The pattern was random, but after the third loop I realized it matched the rhythm of Liam’s thumb on my breast—three seconds one way, two the other, a silent coordination emerging without discussion.

Liam’s lips found the edge of my ear, not kissing, just resting there, sharing breath. I could smell myself on him, the sharp, metallic tang of sex mixing with the pine soap from the downstairs bathroom. The combination felt documentary, evidence of something we’d all signed without reading. His leg slid between mine again, not seeking entry, just aligning us like spoons in a drawer. The hair on his thigh scratched lightly, a small irritation that kept me tethered to the physical when the warmth pooling in my limbs threatened to dissolve me entirely.

Eva’s fingers returned to my thigh, but higher now, tracing the crease where hip joined pelvis with the same clinical attention she might use to underline a passage in a book. She wasn’t asking for anything; she was mapping territory already claimed, noting changes since the last survey. When her thumb brushed the swollen rim of me, still sensitive from Liam, I felt the touch ripple outward, a stone dropped in still water, reaching Chloe’s ankle where it rested against my calf. Chloe answered by flexing, a tiny movement that traveled back through the mattress, a chain reaction none of us had intended but all of us accepted.

The room’s soundtrack had reduced to a low, collective hum: seven breathing patterns overlapping until they created a single, sustained chord. I felt the moment approach not as a crescendo but as a subtle shift in pressure, like the barometer dropping before a storm. It started in my toes, a faint tingling that traveled upward, gathering data from every point of contact—Liam’s chest, Sarah’s shoulder, Eva’s thumb, Chloe’s ankle—until it reached my sternum and dispersed, flowing outward through the network of limbs. Sarah’s stomach tightened under my palm; Conor’s leg flexed against Eva’s; Mark’s exhale stirred Chloe’s hair. None of us moved toward it; we simply allowed it to pass through, a current finding the path of least resistance through seven bodies arranged like a single, breathing circuit. When it dissipated, we stayed where we were, no one speaking, the silence itself a form of consent to whatever came next.