Chapter 15: Pick Me

“Yahoo! I’m the queen of their world,” she loudly proclaimed upon waking up before her alarm. Laura was having fun despite her concern with casually dating three men. They were competing against each other to get her to pick one of them; she was worried that this competition might jeopardize the guys’ lifelong friendship.

In the early mornings she usually got a call from Alex. “Good morning Lovely Laura,” he greeted her every morning as reliable as an alarm clock. Thanks to him, she had begun waking up early in anticipation of his call from the cafe. She loved the way he pronounced her name like it was in Spanish: La-U-ra.

“How did you sleep? Alone, Mi Vida? Maybe I could bring you some coffee and a croissant one morning while you are still in bed?” She laughed at his suggestion. The more she got to know him, the less aloof he seemed and the more he flirted with her.

In the afternoons she texted Ricky on his billable lunch break. “What’s 4 lunch?” he’d start. Then “I would love to feed it 2 U.”

And she’d respond, “LOL”.

He’d take it up a notch, “Just say the word and I’ll meet U. I’d luv 4 U 2 come visit my office 4 some lunchtime lovin’”.

She’d close out with a hearty “LMAO ;-)”

In the late evenings, just before her head hit the pillow at the end of her day, Don face timed her from the back of his limo on his way out to a club to mix and mingle. “Okay Sea Queen. How about being eye candy as my trophy girlfriend at a couple of clubs tonight?”

“I have an early morning, Don,” she responded each time. “Give me a rain check.”

“Laura, there ain’t that much rain in the Amazon rain forest,” he joked.

Staying in communication with them also helped her get to know them as individuals. Sometimes they also told her stories about their younger selves. Each of them gave his spin on how he related to the others while growing up in the foster care system.

One morning Alex told her about what it was like being placed together with the other guys when they were in elementary school. Ricky filled in the time gaps about their pre-teen years.
Don helped her to see the men who would emerge from the teenagers they were in high school. “Alex named us the three amigos. We each had our own interests and were growing up dirt poor, but we didn’t think about that. We could always come back to one another at the end of the day. Ricky was a jock with letters from football, basketball, track and baseball and a whiz on the debate team. Alex was the brain and as for me...I got us into all the best parties back then, just like I’m trying to do with you now.”

The guys were confident that they could compete for Laura’s affections and not risk their friendship but she still had doubts. She wondered about each one after a week of calling Alex, sexting Ricky, and face timing Don. They were the lifelong soulmates and she was the novice, the outsider.


The more they communicated, the harder she fell. The more they communicated, the stronger the guys came on to her. The three guys wanted her and intensified their pursuit.

Alex whispered sweet nothings in her ear at the cafe then asked if they could go back to her loft to get more comfortable, “I hope you’ll say yes. It’ll be our secret until the time is right for you to give me your heart, even if it breaks the hearts of the other guys. I want you, La-U-ra.”

Ricky wanted to meet her at a hotel during lunch. “Meet me at the law firm’s penthouse suite of the Ritz Carlton. I want to show you how I could love you more on my lunch hour than the other two could in a week.”

Don wanted her to spend the night with him on his yacht after a night of clubbing. “I loved the side of you that I saw on my yacht the other day. But this would be more special and even more fun. Maybe we’ll party first. But afterward, the late night belongs to us and only us. I’d like to show you the love you seek from three can be satisfied with one. Just the two of us. One-on-one. You and me. Forever.”

At first she thought she couldn’t respond to each one’s plea for her to pick them, but then she took a cue from Don to loosen up. She decided to move toward acting on her feelings after hearing their unique ways of propositioning her. She had to keep reminding herself that they were the ones who wanted to divide and conquer. She had to keep reminding herself that they thought she was a very attractive woman. If they can handle it, then so can she.

A week was not enough for her to know them well enough to respond to their tempting propositions. But they had definitely piqued her interest. The only problem was that her interest increased for all three of them to the same degree, yet in different ways. Slowly accepting that she was no closer to making a decision and selecting one from the three, she put on some lip gloss, smiled at herself in the mirror, and said, “Go for it, Tiger.”