The Space Between Us. Megan Hart

Tesla. I see it in your eyes. You have some good stories.”

      I laughed. There was really no resisting her. I’d seen her work her wiles on everyone from other customers in the Mocha to the cop she’d talked out of giving her a ticket. Even Joy warmed to Meredith, though she always reacted afterward as if her friendliness unnerved her, and was even more impossibly horrible for hours, as if she were trying to scrub herself free of any taint of kindness.

      “I fucked brothers once. Twins.” I didn’t say this smugly or with any sense of pride, though by the way Meredith’s eyes widened, I saw she was impressed.

      “At the same time?”

      I hesitated for just the barest second. She had asked for the craziest thing, and though I personally didn’t think anything I’d ever done could qualify as crazy, clearly Meredith had her own set of standards. Well, most people do. “Yes.”

      She breathed out, long and slow. “Wow.”

      “It wasn’t—” I began, but she held up a hand. I went silent.

      “Tell me about it.”

      I hadn’t told anyone about it, ever. So why tell her, now? For no other reason than, just like the Billy Joel song, she had a way.

      “Tell me,” Meredith urged me.

      So I did.

      Chapter 2

      Chase and Chance Murphy had never been separated. I was new to the district, but everyone else had gone to school together since middle school, some even since kindergarten. The boys’ mother, the formidable Mrs. Eugene Murphy—if she had her own first name, and she must’ve, nobody ever used it—was something like a force of nature in the school, where her sons were both first-string on the basketball and soccer teams. “The twins,” she called them. She made a unit of them, not recognizing them as individuals.

      Maybe that was why it was so easy for me to fuck them both, or rather for them both to fuck me, at the same time. They were really good at sharing. I’d bet it wasn’t what their mother had ever intended for them, but then I’m pretty sure Mama Murphy hadn’t thought ahead to the years when the twins would get hair on their chins—and on their balls.

      We were all seniors, me the new kid still finding my way, Chase and Chance popular boys despite their mother being such a legendary pain in the ass. They were tall, lanky, athletic. They were completely identical, though they’d stopped dressing alike by then. Later I discovered I could tell them apart by the slight curves of their cocks. One to the left, the other right. Mirror images. They were popular, good students. They’d been altar boys. They were going off to college.

      Me? I was small and wore thrift-store clothes, but unlike Molly Ringwald in Pretty in Pink, this only made me poor, not quirky. I had no Duckie to adore me, but at least I wasn’t all hung up on the rich boy from the other side of the tracks. No Andrew what’s-his-face for me, thank God. Unfortunately, no James Spader, either. I’d have hit Spader like the fist of an angry God back then. Hell, probably even now.

      I was smarter than the Murphy boys and just about everyone else in my class when it came to math, and their mother, determined they’d maintain their eligibility for sports teams—because sports apparently built character, something you’d never have guessed she believed, given her own unathletic state, or that of their dad, a dentist who wore thick glasses and had buckteeth that could’ve benefited from some of his own expertise—hired me to be their tutor.

      That’s right. Mama Murphy paid me to divest her darling twins of their virginity. It didn’t start out that way, of course. I mean, I had every intention of teaching them calculus. I needed the money and wasn’t afraid to insist that Mrs. Eugene Murphy pay me twice the normal rate because I’d be teaching two instead of one, even though she tried to convince me that it wasn’t the cost per individual that should count, but the total amount of time spent.

      “And since you’re teaching them both at the same time,” she had reasoned, “I should pay you the regular rate.”

      “They’re not the same person,” I’d pointed out to her, standing my ground.

      “But they’re twins!”

      I’d only raised an eyebrow, as I recall. She’d taken in my long denim skirt, the black, knee-high Doc Martens, my dyed-black hair. I guess to her I was sort of scary looking.

      “You did come highly recommended by the school guidance counselor.” She’d sounded doubtful.

      “I’ll make sure Chase and Chance pass their finals with A’s, or your money back.”

      It was done. She paid me every week. I made good on my promise.

      It didn’t start out as a fuckfest. If anything, the brothers were pains in the ass to teach. They didn’t like calculus. Worse, they didn’t care about it. They were both doing poorly enough that it was threatening their place on the school team. They still didn’t care. Calculus was for douche bags, according to the brothers Murphy.

      But like I said, I needed the money. There was no way I was going to let them get away with anything less than what I’d promised their mother. I could never have paid her back—I’d already spent everything she’d given me on clothes and books and music, the necessities of life.

      “If you learn this—” it was the first offer I made them “—I’ll blow you.”

      This stopped their stupid scribbling and wiggling around in their seats like puppies that couldn’t be made to sit. Both of them had looked up at me, eerily simultaneous. They weren’t the same person, but they did have a way of moving or saying the same thing at the same time. They were connected, no doubt about it.

      “Get the fuck out,” Chase said.

      “No fucking way,” Chance said.

      “I will blow you both,” I told them, putting my hands flat on the table and leaning over it to look them in the eye, one at a time. I can’t remember which one I looked at first. I didn’t think it mattered then, but it would. “I will make you both come so hard you see stars.”

      I would never be a teacher, had never even dreamed of it as a career, but one thing I’d learned about teaching was the effectiveness of positive reinforcement.

      That was how it started. They finished their work in record time, and, aside from a few simple mistakes, correctly. As with most things in life, getting the Murphy boys to learn calc was a matter of simple motivation. I wanted them to get A’s, and they wanted my mouth on their dicks.

      It wasn’t until they both dropped trou that I started thinking I might actually be getting the better end of the deal. I’d never thought much of Chase and Chance as boyfriend material. For one, they seemed sort of a package deal, despite my insistence to their mother they were two separate people. Two, they were a real pair of Weasleys, my very own Fred and George. Dark auburn hair with the pale skin to match, dark brown eyes. The freckles on their noses might’ve seemed a little Howdy Doody, but when Chase and Chance both pushed their jeans and briefs around their ankles, the only wooden puppet I thought about was the stiff, thick branches of their not-quite-identical cocks. I didn’t know at the time they’d never been with a girl before. All I saw was beauty.

      And I was greedy for it.

      I made them stand shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip. I got on my knees in front of them. The carpet in their parents’ finished basement was thick and soft, a perfect cushion. I took them each in a hand. I slicked them with my spit. I took the first one in my mouth, and then the other. I do remember who was first, because I was looking up at him when I did it. He was looking down.

      It was Chase, though it should’ve been his brother, since I picked him totally by chance. Later it would make a difference, but at the time I don’t think any of us cared. I slid his thick, pretty cock as far as I could into my mouth, and sucked, while I used my hand to stroke up and down his