1.

Albert calls me out of the blue. He sounds slightly panicky, which is uncharacteristic of my unflappable friend.

"Er, Laura, listen, I accidentally let slip to Lennart about the story. I know it wasn't my place, I'm sorry…" He tails off and I find myself shrieking with laughter.

"Oh my god that's hilarious! How did he take it?"

I can hear him smirk.

"He was very flattered… But his date was not amused."

The story in question is an explicit account of an on again, off again fling I'd had with Lennart and his (now ex-)girlfriend Eugenia. It was my first attempt at writing smut and the first writing I ever published. I'd shown it to a few (very trusted) friends, but I'd never got around to telling Lennart about it. He's about the only former lover I'm still friends with and I was worried he'd consider it a heinous violation of privacy. He’s German, after all.

A couple of days later, I get a letter from Lennart, a reply to one I'd written him some months before. He wants to read the story.

I read the story again myself. I wrote it five years ago. You get a lot better at anything in five years. One's own past writing exists mainly as a form of torture, and this is particularly squirmworthy, by virtue of containing phrases such as “beams of light cascading through the large windows, bouncing from her perky butt.”

But hell, you live and learn. I’m chuckling to myself in a completely unhinged way at a hotel bar as I work through an edit of this piece. These days I’m on the sparkling water, back when this story was happening I’d have been a bottle of wine in and chain-smoking all the way. But I digress. I have an email to send my friend who I wrote a porno about.

Deep breath. I open a thread. Close it. Let it sit in drafts for five days. Attach the document. Close the browser.

Open my email again two days later. I’d have to write him a novel to explain it. I contemplate sending it without an accompanying message.

But that’s just too much of a cop-out. I settle for vague and generic, but it is at least something of how I feel.

Darling,

Well, here it is, I've been nervous to send it, as it's been a long time since I wrote this and I'm a far better writer now. This is the downside of doing anything creative I guess - you get better at it and look back with distaste at the inelegance of past work. Still, I am going to rework it. It's a story worth saving, I think.

With love,

L

2.

Well now I have decided to rewrite the story.

In doing so I've set myself an impossible task, I now realise, head in hands, grimacing at my laptop as I write this.

Reading it back feels like stepping into a former self. How do you retain the flavour of your own past but bin the cringe?

So many words. Why was I so wordy? Apparently I love the word bashful. It’s so long. It should have been just a series of vignettes, as it was in real life.

I have to bear in mind that this is not just my first piece of creative writing since I was a kid, but also the first time I ever wrote about sex. I read repetitions of penis and wince.

But then, there's a glint of glee. A smug smile and a warm shiver. It takes me back to Berlin, the end of my 20s. Wow. All of this actually happened. TO ME! I must be just a tiny bit special.

This blast from the past has me writhing in my seat at its clumsiness… and writhing in my seat at how hot some of it still is. Not as elegant as it could be, sure, but some of the action I saw with those two was undeniably top notch scorching. Time to unearth the juicy bits and do them justice. And let all my friends read it, and a number of colleagues at my corporate job.

I guess I got the word SHAMELESS tattooed on my ass in giant gothic script for a reason.

3.

That first night with Lennart and Eugenia was my first ever visit to Berlin, for New Year, no less. Albert had invited me, offering to be my local tour guide.

I was really only trying to get lit and get laid.

We're in Tier, Albert's favourite cocktail bar, just down the road from his flat on Weserstrasse, that wide cobbled street with yellow apartment blocks covered in graffiti. He's shaved my head and I look shit-hot, if I do say so myself.

Guten Rutsch, indeed.

This is all Albert's fault.

He's put the notion in my head that Lennart is into me, hinting at occasional three-ways with girls from the club, stories Albert shouldn’t be telling me.

I've never met Eugenia before. Turns out she's captivating. I want to fall into those amber eyes creased at the corners with a shy smile that draws her chin to her chest. Her hair is bobbed, her face bare, her dress a sack denoting effortless cool.

They're divine. They're a disaster waiting to happen. I cannot resist.

I want to fall into her smile as we clink our White Russians and toss our heads in tipsy flirtation. I haven't the faintest recollection of what we were talking about. Whatever it was, we were into it. I get up to go to the bar, sit back down next to Lennart.

Emboldened by booze, I'm honest.

"Your girlfriend's hot."

Pause. Smoke. We both glance in her direction.

"Why don't you tell her that?"

A searching silence that I take as a dare. My chest tightens. A pang of excitement between my legs. I stand up and accept the challenge.

I couldn't tell you how it happened. But we're kissing in the middle of the bar like long-lost lovers, giggling every time we stop to catch our breath. Completely wrapped up in each other.

It's 3am and the three of us head back to hers. Arm in arm and shivering under the street lights; it's well below freezing. I stifle a whisper of guilt thinking of the boyfriend back home. I think I’m going to let myself get what I want.

We stagger in the door, falling against each other, a kiss here, a dropped coat crumpling on the concrete floor. Fingers on my neck as her lips meet mine, he sheds a layer and embraces me from behind. I couldn’t tell you who closed the door, or even if the door was closed at all, we’re too many drinks in, too into each other.

Her apartment is flawless, stark and white. It smells of her rose perfume. I smell it on her as she pulls my dress up over my head and casts it aside.

His hands are warm around my waist as he bends his head to kiss my shoulder. She sloughs off her loose dress, braless underneath. I run my hands over her perfectly pert tits, the nipples hard under my palms. It's been so long since I touched a woman this way, I almost don't dare.

Somehow we make it to the mattress on the floor, drunkenly trailing our clothes behind us, falling into a pile of limbs and soft skin among the pillows.

I kiss my way down her ribcage, glancing up to catch her smile down at me as he leans in to kiss her. Her legs part for me and I slide my tongue over her clit, my hands on her thighs. She catches her breath. I go slow, feeling the ripples under my tongue, probing gently as she moves her hips.

She has his cock in one hand, gently sliding up and down. My hand on his thigh now, I feel their legs shift against my chest.

She climbs on top. I watch her ass move, her pussy an arch over his cock as she slides down on it. It’s a juicy fascination, I can't watch myself being penetrated, so to see it up close is peak experience. It’s like I can feel it myself as I watch, as though she and I share a sensation, and yet I also get to be him, fucking her, at the same time. Explicit and intimate, somehow I’m no longer ashamed to face this apex of desire as I look on.

I wriggle up beside them, his arm around me as her moans intensify. My hand on his chest and she clasps it as she flings her head back.

Stillness. Soft mouths, breathing hard. Skin on skin, press and release.

She's in his arm, glued to his side as I take his cock in my mouth, tasting her on it. She strokes my head, nails scratching my scalp while I slide his cock deeper into my throat. She looks down as I choke, laughs, and soon finds Lennarts lips. They kiss.

I speed up, just my hand now. Their kiss becomes more frenetic. His hips buck, his cock bulging in my hand. Opal liquid on her thigh, glistening in the moonlight from the curtainless window.

They spread my legs playfully and he bows his head between them. Gentle brushes of his tongue tickle my clit. I gasp and squirm. He holds my legs apart and looks between them. "You have a beautiful vagina." I definitely blush. Just feeling seen like this and appreciated for something sexual and beautiful is such an alien experience to me. It touches me deeply.

Luckily no one's paying attention to my face. She buries fingers inside me, his hands all over me, I can't tell who's doing what but it feels so right and I can just lay back and let them do it to me, let them do it more, harder, I'm crying out and I want all of it. Heaving with sensation I come on fingers or tongues, that soft ticking beating heart spasming between my legs.

He left Eugenia and me sleeping in her bed that night, completely disappeared, only showing up a day later, after I'd left Berlin. It wasn't exactly a good omen, but that couldn't quell my optimism about our odd romance. Not that I really had any idea what I wanted from them.

4.

I went home to Amsterdam and breathed not a word of these events to the boyfriend in London. Nevertheless, the guilt I experienced was stupendous, unlike anything I’d felt before. With this threesome, everything had changed. Still, I maintained that nothing had happened.

Albert bought me the cheapest available smartphone, so I could try Tinder. Try it I did, and I used it like a weapon, finally imploding my dying relationship by contracting herpes, my most blessedly opportune infection to date.

Lennart and Eugenia stayed on my mind, sparkling memories for a dark January. I got an email from him a couple of weeks later, a picture of them kissing captioned Berlin is for lovers.

In a state of turmoil, he'd gone to the architecture department at the university and slept there. He had fun, and he hoped I wasn't offended by his disappearance.

If I'm honest, I no longer remember how I felt about it at the time. I had no first-hand experience of a third person entering my couple dynamic, I’d only ever been a unicorn. That has since changed, I've had threesomes with a partner where I fervently wished for an architecture department to escape to.

The threesome is inarguably the sex meme of the Tinder generation, but it's a setup fraught with potential awkwardness, even agony.

With two people, you have two people, one relationship. If sparks fly between the two of you, you’re golden, job done, epic sex hopefully ensues.

Now let’s logic out the threesome. You have three people, four relationships. The dynamics between each pair, the dynamic between the three. That’s a whole lot of relationship, and the fourfold increase makes the whole thing high-risk. High reward also, I grant you, I wouldn’t be writing this if that weren’t the case.

But the chances of something being out of whack are significant. I’ve often found myself to be far more attracted to one person than the other. Someone’s often a bit left out.

Balance with more than two is a rare and difficult thing to achieve, in my experience particularly when there are two vaginas and one penis involved. I’ve regrettably lost count of the number of times I’ve felt like a spare part while someone just wanted to bang my boyfriend.

Whenever I tell anyone about this piece I’m writing, they reveal their own three-way tale of woe. “I came inside the other woman and my girlfriend was furious!” “He just wanted to fuck my boyfriend and I was there like… not knowing what to do.”

And yet. The fantasy is so compelling, to so many people.

Why?

Sometimes I wonder if FFM is a masculine fantasy generated by the prevailing style of mainstream porn - who wouldn’t want two ladies fawning over their dick?

Counterpoint: is it that the feminine is inclined to fluidity? I’ve rarely known an entirely straight woman.

Why have one when you can have two?

Although you can pretty much only meaningfully have one at a time.

Spice up your life as a couple, with the excitement of a new person.

But together, somehow less threatening than fucking other people separately. You know exactly what the other person did with another person, because you saw it with your very own eyes.

Double the stimulation, double the pleasure?

Double the concentration though.

The turn-on of watching two other people fuck, right there in front of you? With permission to watch. Can be tantalising or titillating, for sure. Private porn, an ex-girlfriend used to call it.

Spice up your life with twice the attention, at least for the unicorn.

But the price is clear: take on the weight of a couple's emotional baggage.

As it turns out, three is, more often than not, a crowd.

5.

Having read the story, Lennart wants to call. At least he's not angry with me, that's something to be thankful for. You never know, when you write from life, how the people involved are going to feel about the situation.

My whole torso is clenched and I'm breathing at altitude.

I call him. He picks up.

"Laura, can we video call? I want to see you."

Jesus. I'm white as a sheet, I have no makeup on, my face is shiny and I'm slouched in bed after work. There’s a pandemic. All I have to wear are sweatpants. I feel about as far from attractive as it’s possible to feel. And I still care what he thinks of me, I still want him to think I’m hot.

He's right though, there's more honesty in a video call. It's good to see his face again after two years. He hasn't changed a bit. That smoking habit still hasn’t touched his complexion.

He enjoyed the story. He really enjoyed the story. He masturbated over the story. My insides leap as he says it. All I can do is laugh. I wish I could recall more of our conversation, other than the tilt of his head and the eye contact we made through the camera after he told me that.

That's exactly what I wanted, after all.

"Is this how you remember it, or did you change it?" he asks.

"No, I changed it a bit. I couldn't remember the exact order of events. And sometimes to make it sexier."

Some of our nights together are still clear as day, I need only draw from the memory archive and I'm right back there in the bar, in their bed. Some of it is more or less invented, strung together from foggy memories of my trips to Berlin in those years.

“I looked at my diaries when you sent me the story. I’ve written most days since I was a teenager,” he says. I didn’t know this, or I forgot. But it makes complete sense.

“It’s mostly positive, I was… happy, or having fun.”

A smile and a shrug. I fight the urge to ask for more, to get the details as he perceived them, to read on paper what I never could quite read in him.

We finally hang up after over an hour, our friendship firmly reestablished.

I'd been so concerned about what he'd think, what would happen to our relationship if he found out. It turns out nothing happened. A valuable life lesson. You will worry, and no one else will give a single fuck.

6.

There's a scene where we all get it on in the bathrooms at Berghain. I should have used it to indicate that they weren't really right for this kind of arrangement. The juxtaposition of sexy action and squalid surroundings could have been a way to play with the disparity between my romantic longing and the reality of the situation. Still, I remember it fondly, although it was rudely interrupted.

The dance floor flashes purple. I watch the boxes along the edge of the room. A woman with her skirt hitched up rides an unseen someone energetically.

"Shall we go over there, in one of those?"

They exchange a sceptical glance.

"Too public," she says, as he shakes his head. I suppress an eye roll.

"Toilets?" he asks. Some offer.

We wait in line, the only giveaway their nervous smirks. Can’t believe they’re making such a big deal of this. People here are far more depraved behind those clanging metal doors, anyway. The guy who waits in the urinals to have his mouth pissed in is basically a celebrity.

Fuck's sake, we really should be doing this anywhere but the fucking toilets. The place literally exists for that.

Whatever.

We herd into a stall, I whip it closed with my back against it, she locks the door as she pins me against it. We're all over each other.

Her head tilts back, I kiss that long white neck and wriggle my hand into her stiff high-waisted jeans, soft flesh slippery under my fingers as I move them. She's wet, I can slide my fingers around, just about. Think I’ve got the spot. She sighs, hips rolling towards me.

Strip lights.

He has my black panties down around my thighs, strong fingers on my clit, stroking insistently.

Tremors through my body. Discarded baggies on the floor.

They're kissing frantically.

I slip to my knees as she draws his cock from his underwear. I put my hands on his thighs and let her feed it to me, taking the head between my lips and stroking my tongue over it slowly.

I hear her pant as his hand wriggles into her underwear.

He's rock hard. Pulsating.

His eyes slide shut.

Is that a needle under my knee? It would be just like me to contract something sucking cock in a toilet stall.

This really is shit, why do I like it so much?

I pull his cock back into my throat, gulping on it, then draw it almost all the way out of my mouth to run my tongue over the tip again. Giving it a little suck as I fix my eyes on his face. Salty pre-cum in my mouth. I want more.

I hear his gasp as his dick pulses, another gasp, another pulse as his head tilts back. I keep sucking, I want to swallow it all.

She leans into him and grabs his neck, one hand on my head as their tongues meet.

THREE LOUD BANGS ON THE DOOR and the moment shatters.

We fumble and shuffle out of the stall, dazed.

7.

We developed a rather uneasy friendship. I was always happy to see one or the other or both of them, but the likelihood of drama at any given moment was high.

For me, as the unicorn, they were a magical combination. But the underlying dynamic of the three-way, the competition for attention, remained.

One day he'd be moody because it seemed that she and I were more into each other, and the next time she'd be leaving him and me to "have some time together" (which we only ever spent talking, mostly about Albert).

Oh my god I remember the fucking drama so well! But if I'm honest, that's part of what I liked about it, being kept on my toes, the uncertainty.

This next scene in the original story ends with:

"Can I come inside her?"

"Yes"

And then tension the next morning.

They'd always been volatile. In principle, they agreed on an open relationship, but he was more attached to it. He's unusually picky for a man. The way he puts it, he's so rarely attracted to anyone that likes to take advantage when it does happen.

More so even than the thorny issue of monogamy, the major wall standing between them was children.

"Eugenia is still… the most important thing," he told me when they first broke up. I remember the shake of his head, the navy beanie he was wearing at the time, the dejected angle of his torso.

8.

Well I cut that first scene short earlier, there was another part to it, when Eugenia and I woke up to find Lennart gone the next day. He’d left his phone, his keys, everything.

The sky is so blue, the room steeped in sunlight. After Eugenia’s bewildered texts and phone calls we've resigned ourselves to the situation.

“Is this a thing he does?” I ask, feeling intrusive as I say it.

She presses her lips together and shakes her head, not conclusively enough to guarantee he’s never done it before.

“I guess maybe he met someone, or took something…”

I don’t press the matter. I feel like I’ve done something very wrong, but at least she doesn’t seem mad at me.

We’re still here, in each other's arms under the covers. Quiet.

Neither of us has put clothes on. In the cold light of a January day, the attraction remains, a whisper of sensuality after last night's intoxicated fireworks.

It's an absurd situation, friends of a friend, post-drunken three-way missing a member. It breeds a peculiar stranger's intimacy with rules of its own. The touch of established lovers. A frankness of conversation that should have taken longer than twelve hours to arrive at.

The duvet pushed down to our waists, sun on her torso. I don't mind being caught staring at those perfect tits, rust-coloured nipples standing out against her pale skin. Are they real? I wonder as I brush my hands over them idly, surreptitiously squeezing to see if I can tell. She rubs her thighs together as I run my hands over her body.

I could spend all day doing this, touching and kissing and teasing. The kisses become longer, deeper, but I don't dare initiate full on fucking, it somehow feels wrong. Frustrated, I leave off before the kissing gets too intense.

Our chests rise and fall together. I lean back against the pillows and collect myself.

She's the one to break the silence.

"With Lennart and me, it's mostly one of us trying to persuade the other that this girl is interesting, and the other saying no…" she trails off. "But you, we both agreed on."

I can't deny it, I'm so flattered I could purr. But it's also justification, without Lennart there to speak for himself. It must have been okay if we were both into it, she's telling herself by telling me.

Now, with my writing hat on, I wonder whether I should make it sexier. I already did, a bit. We were really hungover, and we really didn't do much, just some kissing and touching, all very sensual. But she didn't actually want to cheat on him with me.

Now, the writer in me is tempted to change the narrative, to continue that chemistry from the night before and have us frantically sixty-nine, now that there's no third to slow us down.

But the theme of this story, I now realise, is the tease, the grey areas of relationship agreements, the breaching of boundaries, the pushing of buttons, the bending of rules.

She kisses me again, her fingers tracing delicate lines of heat down my neck, my sternum, my breasts. I press my body to hers, somehow legs slipping between legs, that magnetic body roll of desire. We're grinding on each other's thighs and breathing hard, hangover horny.

My whole body is alive for her. Her leg is wet with me, I want her so badly. I roll on top of her, sliding a hand down, I'm gonna give that pussy the attention it deserves. She stops moving and giggles. Not today, I guess. I roll back onto the pillows again.

Tentatively, she starts to stroke hands over my body once more, inching further down, and hand slowly caressing my inner thigh. She brings it up between my legs, tapping delicately with her fingers.

I'm dripping with hangover arousal as she slides a finger inside me so gently, bringing it out and up over my clit. Longer, deeper strokes and I tilt my hips up to meet her hand. Coming in hot, sweaty heaves, exhaling in ecstasy and convulsing on her fingers.

My head on her glistening chest, she holds me.

I saw her for the first time after they broke up at the Folsom street fair, one drizzly afternoon after work. We got a couple of spritzes from a roadside truck and half-heartedly inspected some cock rings while we caught up.

She took me to the space she and her friend Manu were setting up as an art gallery, right across the road from her apartment. There's a picture of me sitting on the swing she strung up from the ceiling. I'm wearing the loose draped black dress I wore that first time we slept together. I didn't remember that until this moment.

I'm not a particularly sentimental person but when I look at that photo I feel a full-body pull of longing.

We go to her friend's apartment in a fancy part of town, where a group of people are drinking wine around a monolithic wood dining table. It's a high-ceilinged flat with enormous paintings on the wall, belongs to someone's wealthy friend.

Late at night, we get caught in the rain on the way back to the U-bahn.

I could almost kiss her.

We run for cover and stand in a doorway to wait it out.

The black sky sends liquid window panes splitting on the dark pavement.

In a film, we would finally have it out about us three and them two, as the lightning flashes behind us.

In a film, we would realise our chemistry, what brought us to those first heady kisses in a smoky bar and carried us through all these odd encounters, these weird and wonderful fucks.

In a film, we would kiss, half-drenched, pressing our chests together and washing the shadows of our past away.

It'd finally be just the two of us, peeling off damp clothes with dripping hair and our absurd history in her living room with the candles lit, Moderat on the speakers.

But nothing happens. She and I never did go all the way. And now I have to tell her about my story, Lennart made me promise.

9.

Officially, nothing happened. We've known each other eight years now and Lennart and I never got around to having sex just the two of us, just as Eugenia and I never did.

I'd gone back to his place after a night out, we'd tried to persuade Eugenia to skip work and all go back to hers. But she was too dutiful. Lennart and I went on a bar crawl, with the understanding that this was a strictly platonic kind of date. I had intended to go back to Albert's afterwards, but it got late and my stuff was already at Lennart's.

"It's fine," he said as I picked up my bag. "We won't do anything."

We sleep in our underwear, he holds me from behind.

My cunt aches for him. I wake up in the night throbbing and wet. It's uncomfortable. Urgent. I never felt so aroused in my life, it's like my body is possessed.

One leg of his between mine. Trying not to grind on it, I almost come, waking up in the night more than once.

His cock is hard against my ass when I wake up. I can barely contain myself.

"Feel this." I guide his hand under black lace, pressing his fingers into moist skin, as wet as I've ever been. I crave his touch. Even this still, passive contact is enough to make my heart beat harder.

I moan without meaning to. A barely perceptible change in pressure and I can't contain myself, succumbing to the movement of pleasure as though it were pain.

"Jesus, stop," a whisper in my ear. I lay still. His hand lingers. I push onto it again. He removes it.

He rolls over and lights a cigarette, reclining on the pillows as he exhales.

"Maybe we should masturbate together," he says.

"Are you serious?"

He shrugs.

"Just an idea."

We can't do anything and I'm glad it's getting to him like it's getting to me. Eugenia's will holds us silently apart. In the confessional of this guilty bed. Breathing desire.

He tells me a story.

"I lived in my uncle's place for a while. He had only a loft with screens around the beds, so it was impossible to masturbate." He pulls a shirt over his head. It slides down the small of his back. Where my fingers should be.

"What did you do?"

"I went to public toilets and did it there."

"Ingenious. I sometimes do it in the toilets at the airport."

"Why?"

A furtive pleasure. Like all of this.

He comes back from the bathroom. I haven't put my clothes on.

"I still think we should masturbate together."

"Okay."

We don't touch. I take off my underwear and recline on the bed naked.

He sits on the low mustard yellow chair next to the bed. Unzips his fly and takes out his cock, already hard. It's long and tapered and symmetrical, a beautiful dick. He starts to tug on it gently. His elegant fingers straight, a gentle grip.

I spread my legs, stretching them out to pointed toes.

I circle my fingers around and part the lips to show him my cunt.

He watches analytically from above. I want to please him. I want him to like my pale body glowing in the morning sunlight. I love the exposure.

I want him to think I'd be worth fucking, properly, just the two of us. I want him to want me so bad that a broken promise becomes insignificant.

His slender form slouches in the chair.

His dark eyes are on me as he tugs on his cock. His lip curls, in pleasure or contempt. Perhaps both.

I watch him as I touch myself. My breath quickens as I think of him sliding it inside me. I want to touch it.

I spread the lips even farther apart, showing him more. Bare cunt, bare soul.

Against his will, I make him dominant.

It's all the more exciting, he could fuck me right now, I'd do anything he wanted.

But he doesn't want to.

The ultimate show of control.

"Put your fingers inside," he commands. I comply, pussy pulsating as I slide my fingers in, one, then two. Moving in and out and over my clit, hot and swollen, juicy. My hips moving with a life of their own. Speeding up, harder on the left side of my clit where it feels best.

Fuck, I'm so close but it's taking me so long to cum and it's all I want in this world.

His lips part and he drops from the chair to kneel between my legs. My whole body spasms as cum bursts from his cock onto my stomach in spurts, I keep my eyes open to watch, I couldn't miss this. We shout and groan like wild animals,

I writhe into the liquid warmth as it lands on my skin.

I push his cum into my cunt as it contracts like a wall collapsing, releasing every last drop of raw pleasure.

He triumphs over me.

A power struggle in one wank.

10.

And now I have to send this to Eugenia. I wonder how she'll react. It was so long ago now. We haven't spoken in a while and it feels kind of awkward.

I also have to show this new and improved version to Lennart. And so I repeat the dilemma. Will he be mad? Will he find it somehow less flattering, this more honest retelling? There probably always will be some spark between us. Even on my wedding day, he kissed me on the lips as he said goodbye.

Years later, long after their breakup, I still can’t quite make sense of this story. The temptation to pester them both with questions and try to figure it out is strong, but I’m inclined to let the shadows remain. The details are no longer important, really, and the whole thing probably had far more of an effect on my life than it did on either of theirs.

That’s why I’m still thinking about it. Somewhere in my head, I’m still their unicorn, because it was such a pivotal moment for me. But ultimately I loved them as them, for all they were and represented, not as us. Like Eugenia said, eventually, I wanted someone all to myself.