So that's what I meant when I said all my dreams came true. I got to be with Cait's dad and I got to be with Lucy, and Cait still loved me, and Cait and I realized we were going to be together forever.
And we both wanted Lucy to be a part of that, and we both moved on from that thing with her dad.
It wasn't like I fell out of love with him, but more like it just wasn't that important anymore, or maybe I just learned what real love is.
So now he was just Cait's dad, and maybe that helped when what happened later happened.
Because even when you're having a wonderful dream, sometimes bad things happen. Like, you're dreaming you're walking through a meadow, or something, and there are flowers everywhere and the sun is shining and birds are singing, and then suddenly the sky goes black and rabid wolves jump out of the bushes and chase you.
Wolves like when Lucy's mom died, or like those times when I thought I had lost Cait.
But for a long time, and up until one of the biggest, meanest, ugliest wolves of them all came, everything was great.
It was Cait and Lucy and me, and you can love more than just one person like that, and they can love you back.
If you tell them everything.
At first, I thought Lucy would eventually leave her boyfriend. I thought that would be inevitable, really, because it was supposed to be the three of us. And I wanted that to happen, I guess, and I kinda thought Cait and Lucy wanted that too. But when Lucy realized that's what I was thinking, she got angry, and she said, "No. Never!"
And that was okay anyway because Cait and I were there every weekend now. He usually wasn't home on the weekends, so the three of us would share their bed. And when he was home, Cait and I would sleep in our room, like before. But he knew everything.
It was Lucy's idea to make it so that it was all four of us. And to begin with, I thought that would be really cool, and Cait did too and she was even more excited about it than I was.
But then Lucy said, "If you love him too."
And I thought that was the strangest thing to say, but she looked at us like she wanted us to. Like she needed us to.
Cait didn't think it through, I think, because she just said, "Sure," and Lucy smiled and looked at me.
But I had to say, "Lucy, I don't know."
"Oh," Lucy said.
"I just... I guess I have to think about that," I said.
"Yeah, of course, I get it."
Later, Cait and I were on our way home. Cait was driving, of course, because after that first time, when I had taken mom's car and I had been away the whole weekend, and she had to take the bus and then another bus to get to work, she was so angry with me she swore she'd never let me borrow her car again, so it was always Cait driving.
"Do you really love him?" I said.
"Yeah. I mean, not like I love you, but that's impossible anyway. And not like I love Lucy. But with what's left, I guess."
And that kinda made sense, and then she said, "I think it's like a dad thing to me."
And that was like a revelation, like all the thoughts that had bundled up in my mind over the last couple of years until they were like a ball of yarn of stuff that didn't make sense at all, with knots and tangles everywhere, just suddenly came undone all at once.
Because it was like a dad thing for all of us. Lucy's dad had left her mom before she was even born, and Lucy's mom had never really gotten over that. And it was the same with my dad, and Lucy and I had always had that thing between us, like a bond even though we never talked about it.
A couple of times, when I was younger, I had asked mom about my dad, but she always got this look like she was angry, or maybe worried or just upset or something, and she'd just say she didn't want to talk about it, and I didn't really need to know anyway.
And then of course Cait and all the stuff with her dad, and Toby was someone she could see as a dad and at the same time a boyfriend and a lover and everything.
And I could too. I wanted that too.
So, two weeks or so later he was going to be home for the weekend, and when Cait and I got there they had made dinner for us, and we had a really good time and we had some wine after dinner.
And then Lucy said to him, "Maybe we can all share our bed tonight?"
I think he just took it as a joke at first because he laughed, but of course, he knew just like Cait and I did that Lucy would never joke about something like that, and he looked so bewildered, and he said, "Uh, I don't think that's a good idea."
Cait and I looked at each other, a bit shocked really that he wasn't jumping up and down with excitement, but I guess he was just being careful he wasn't walking into some kind of trap.
But Lucy tilted her head and looked at him with her puppy eyes, and she fluttered her eyelashes like she was about to cry, and there's not a creature in the universe that can say no to her when she does that.
"Are you sure?" he said.
"Yes," Lucy said. "Please?"