Triple Sec

by T.J. Alexander

“Because if anything happens to you—” Kade shut their mouth with a click, jaw working furiously. “Bebe would kill me,” they said in a more sedate voice.

what were you REALLY gonna say here hm?

(sorry, Triscuits, you live in a salad bowl now)

Which was not an appropriate thing to wonder about your girlfriend’s wife.

No triple sec,

title drop??? also my guess is: each section of the book is the drink of each character and the final drink that is gonna win mel the money is gonna be like a combination of all of them? a metaphor for polyness

Kade hastily slammed their sketchpad shut and sat up straight.

PLEASE. WHAT WERE YOU DOING !!!

“A Corpse Reviver Number Two,”

okay this backs up my theory but also slightly changes it: i think the titles are about the drinks that bond mel with the two of them. third drink is gonna be the drink that bonds all three of them? or maybe smth ab mel’s personal journey

“Too British for the brief, too bitter overall. Not exactly the kind of thing they’re serving in trendy spots these days. Plus, no offense, but it’s kind of—divisive.” She smirked. “It’s the absinthe rinse. That black licorice flavor. Most people either love it or hate it.” “And you?” Kade looked up, their eyes boring into Mel.

this rlly seems like a metaphor for kade. gonna have to go back to mel’s description about the old fashion to see if it matches with bebe

Kade huffed, not a laugh, but definitely more breathless than a scoff. “As if you don’t know,” they muttered into their drink. “What?” “What?” Kade’s face took on an innocent, blank look.

obsessed with them!!!!

‘Forever’ is a lofty goal. My only goal is happiness, and I don’t pretend to know what that will look like in the future.”

i can tell the other highlighters are rlly into kade (rightfully so)

“My mind doesn’t always follow the same lines as other people’s.”

i was picking pup on this

If the partners you have throughout your lifetime are interchangeable, then that’s a fucking red flag.”

“I like you.”

teheheheheheheehe

I just—I feel drawn to you.

obsessed with this!

“Not only are you devastatingly attractive—” “I am?” Kade ignored her.

“I am stunned every time I look at you. In every sense.”

“And you think I’m hot.” Mel felt it was important to make sure she’d heard that part right. “Yes. Despite my best efforts not to,” Kade said with a tiny, growing grin.

They made a nest

NEST! is this really okay? or are we spoiling this creature. at least my bedtime puppy is still where i left it. my bed was made at 8am.

“Are we secretly a service top, St. Cloud?” She’d never met one before in real life. It was like meeting a unicorn. Or the tooth fairy. A real live person who got off exclusively on getting other people off? Hallelujah and pass the plate.

“You’re cruel.” Kade’s eyes were like molten fire. “I like that about you.”

Because apparently, she liked being the specialest gal in the world, if only to Kade, if only in this moment.

in the nest they’d made on the floor

nest. is this really okay? or are we spoiling this creature. at least my bedtime puppy is still where i left it. my bed was made at 8am

“Kissing associate. Senior smooching associate.” “I can’t believe I’m this attracted to you,” Kade muttered almost to themself.

Bebe had responded with about six hundred exclamation points and one emoji of water droplets.

“You’re both too alike. Attraction was bound to happen.” This was met with a veritable wall of hollering. “We are nothing alike!” Mel cried, sitting up on the sofa. Kade went right into threats: “You take that back.” “If anything, we’re polar opposites.”

“You’re both cranky bitches—and I say that with all the affection in the world—but secretly you’re also sensitive artists brimming with hidden passions.”

“I hate this,” Mel said. She mock-pouted, her arms crossed over her chest. “I take it back. I want a refund.”

“I would feel more comfortable if we kept everything organized in a way that makes sense. Bebe and I make sense; you and I make sense; you and Bebe make sense. Simple. No need to complicate things.”

uh huh. the next section is Definitely Not going to be about them all getting together

She’d ordered about five different books—used, of course; thank you, Al Gore’s internet—filled with advice on poly relationships, but she couldn’t make heads or tails of them.

PLSSSSS

When Mel came down with a cold so awful that she called out of work for the first time in years, Bebe was the one who showed up at her apartment with a take-out container of matzo ball soup as big as Mel’s head.

so real (i need this person in my life)

Why on earth did people put introductions in books? Ooooh, here’s the story before we actually get to the story. Fuck off with that shit.

“Okay, are those… flash cards?”

“Learning the vocabulary is important,” Mel said. She had the names, origins, and flavor profile of almost every edible fruit in the world memorized. Surely this would be a cakewalk by comparison. “Wow, nerd. Are you expecting to be tested on this?” Daniel asked, winging one eyebrow high.

“Okay, Little Miss Avoidant Attachment Style,” Daniel muttered under his breath.

“What if I rebooked them both for dinner at the same restaurant tonight? I could make a reservation for two tables in different areas and kind of—jump between them?” “You’re describing the climactic scene from Mrs. Doubtfire,” Daniel drawled. “Need I remind you, that plan did not work out for Robin Williams. RIP.” He pointed a finger and his gaze upward as a sign of respect. “RIP,” Mel repeated, doing a quick sign of the cross. Sure, the flick was full of problematic cross-dressing, but still. What a legend.

SO TRUE!!!

“Tickets are things. You’re our person.”

“Do you want fuzzy socks, too?” They said this so seriously, so stone-faced, that Mel had to bite her lip.

“Everyone makes mistakes. Bebe once triple-booked herself,” Kade offered.

“Oh my god, remember how for a second there it looked like I was going to try and have all three of you show up at the same restaurant but at different tables like—” Mel’s brows rose as she stared straight up. “The climactic scene in Mrs. Doubtfire?”

“Your divorce made you question what it was all for,” Kade, the gender-neutral king of leading statements, said.

Like how the Titanic had those emergency doors to shut off certain parts of the ship to save it from taking on water.” Kade made a face. “Need I remind you how that shook out, historically?” “We all saw the film!”

We’d love to be the Three Amigos instead of two-by-two.

She had roots in a disaster zone; she’d been born into it. Maybe, instead of running from it, she could stand still, face the eruption, and embrace whatever came.

Mel swayed forward and kissed her. She couldn’t stop herself, and she never wanted to. Bebe tasted of lipstick and coffee. She tasted perfect. On Mel’s other side, Kade made a sound, a small, happy sigh. They were very patient, so Mel thought it only right to reward them with a kiss of their own.

i hope someone out there draws them as one of those poly kissing memes one day (i cannot tell if there’s one or two separate memes. i think two? like the twelfth night one and the one where all three end up kissing each other?)

“And then sex?” Mel was already thinking of the variations the three of them could get up to. Damn, why hadn’t they tried this sooner? Oh yeah, because of the trauma.

A grown-up vodka soda, an ode to the simple concoction that the working girlies and FiDi boys were drinking in the 2010s,

“Okay, first of all, there will almost certainly be a white guy with dreads at this thing, so you won’t be the most embarrassing no matter how hard you try,”

All art is just something. It’s the meaning behind it that makes it great.”

“You’re being dramatic. A cocktail is a nice little thing, a luxury. It’s not going to change the world.” Jackson spoke up from the floor. “I don’t want to live in a world without nice little things. Do you?”

Her three favorite people were behind her (plus Jackson, but she was only now getting to know him, so it wasn’t his fault he wasn’t in the official tally).

“Would you mind running to the bodega? I need some Topo Chico.”

libby reference haha