Lisa Keenan is turning thirty, and dreads the big “three-oh.” Her boyfriend Nick tries to make light of it, but she knows her youth is fading. The best birthday gift would be a marriage proposal -- they've been together ten years already, and neither is getting any younger -- but she doesn’t want to have to tell Nick to buy her a ring.
So when he asks what she’d like for her birthday, she says the only other thing she would really love. A threesome.
Nick’s best friend Ray has always been flirtatious -- not just with Lisa, but with Nick, too. She knows the guys have experimented sexually in the past, so getting them together again, this time with her in the middle, won’t be a problem.
On Lisa’s birthday, Nick treats her like a princess, but things heat up royally when Ray joins them in the bedroom.
"Hey, I was wondering ...”
“Uh-oh.” Lisa shook her head; she should’ve realized something was up.
Nick quickly assured her, “No, wait. It’s nothing bad. Hear me out.”
With an annoyed smirk, she leveled a bored look his way. “When you say it’s nothing bad, it usually is.”
“Like when?” he asked, smiling.
“Oh, honey, it’s nothing bad, but I sort of ran off the road,” Lisa mocked. “The car was totaled. Or oh, honey, it’s nothing bad, but I accidentally spent this month’s mortgage payment on a new cap for my tooth.”
“The other one broke off!” Nick gave her a wounded look, which made her giggle. “You can’t expect me to go around with a broken tooth. I’m an actor!”
Lisa wasn’t amused. “You haven’t had an acting gig in three months.”
“I’m still an actor anyway,” he argued. “If I didn’t have sex for three months, that wouldn’t mean I was no longer sexual.”
“Three months?” she joked. “It’d mean you were dead. Watch the nails.”
His hand had moved up the underside of her leg and now her foot rested in the crook of his arm, her toenails dangerously close to the sleeve of his T-shirt. She arched her foot away from him and he sat back, giving her some room. “Besides,” she added, “it was a back tooth. No one would’ve seen it unless you were deep-throating another guy in a porno.”
“That’s still acting.” Nick sniffed, nursing his pride a moment longer, before he tickled behind her knee and smiled. “Anyway, can I get back what I was saying?”
Lisa leaned back against the lounge chair and relaxed -- she liked the way his hands felt on her legs, and how comfortable the heel of her foot fit against his body. “Go on. You were wondering ...?”
“Well,” Nick drawled, “somebody’s turning the big three-oh this year, and --”
“Whoa, no.” Lisa held up one hand to stop him. “I told you before. I’m twenty-nine and holding. After this year, I’m going to start counting backwards.”
Nick frowned, his well-groomed eyebrows furrowing above his perfectly straight nose. “How’s that going to work?”
“Next year, I’ll be twenty-eight,” Lisa said. “Then twenty-seven, then twenty-six. I’m not going to allow myself to get older than thirty.”
Nick was a few months younger than Lisa, which made them roughly the same age. But if the prospect of becoming “middle-aged” scared him, he didn’t show it. Instead, he pointed out, “So when I turn thirty-five, you’ll be twenty-five.”
Lisa liked the sound of that. “Exactly.”
“And when I’m forty, you’ll be twenty,” Nick continued.
Lisa nudged his chest with the heel of her foot. “Look who can do math.”
He squeezed the underside of her knee playfully. “And when I’m fifty, you’ll be ten.”
“Hmm.” Lisa sipped her tea and thought about that. “I always knew you were a perv. Maybe I’ll start counting forward again once I hit twenty. I’ll just rebound back and forth like the world’s oldest co-ed.”
Nick laughed. “Regardless of however old you decide you’re going to be, your birthday’s coming up. And here’s a newsflash -- I don’t know what to get you. It should be something grand --”
“Why?” Lisa asked with a smirk. “Twenty-nine isn’t that big a deal. You didn’t get me anything grand the last time it came around.”
“Well, I’m getting you something grand this year,” Nick assured her. “Only I don’t know what that something will be. So tell me what you want.”
