CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
“Wow, Em,” Krystal said as they emerged.
“Do not ‘wow Em’ me,” Emily replied. “Your fucking husband made a mess in me.”
“Is that why you were being so loud?” Ellen asked.
“He’s not my husband...yet,” Krystal replied.
“I was loud because he wouldn’t stop fucking me instead of letting me fuck him,” she growled.
“Gabe?” Ellen asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I was, uh...in the zone,” he replied.
“Clearly,” Krystal murmured.
“Okay I get to choose next and I choose to hit the food court. I’m fucking starving and I want all the unhealthy wings, pizza, and nachos they have to offer since I’ve been actually fucking trying to do better with my eating habits and today is my off day,” Emily said firmly.
“Is that why you’re so grumpy?” Gabe asked.
“I’m not grumpy, I’m...tense.”
Hmm. Maybe something really was bugging her.
“I could untense you,” he offered as they headed into the food court.
“If you did I’d make a mess all over you and it’s a lot harder for you to clean it up,” she groused.
“There are other ways I can help you relax, Em.”
She looked at him as they approached the pizza place. “Like?”
“I can rub your neck, your shoulders, your temples?”
“He’s actually really good at that,” Ellen said.
“I...well, this is a date and I would like it.”
“All right. Let’s order and I can do that,” Gabe said.
They put in an order for an extra large pepperoni pizza, a dozen and a half wings, and some fully loaded nachos and drinks, then found a booth. Gabe stood while he had Emily sit in the booth sideways with her back to him and began to massage her shoulders.
“Oh, that’s nice,” she murmured.
“I can actually see you relaxing,” Ellen said. “Did you have something going on today?”
“No. I just get anxious sometimes these days, doesn’t even need to be over something real, it just happens. Unfortunately it kinda happened today. I’ve been ignoring it...also, Gabe, I’m not mad at you for shooting your load into me. It was pretty hot, just kinda annoying.”
“I figured you would have told me not to for real if you genuinely didn’t want me to,” he replied. “And now for the next part…”
He touched the tips of his middle and first fingers to her temples and began rubbing them, pressing in and working her flesh with circular motions.
“Okay, that’s actually even better,” she said. “Also, after this, I want to hit the goddamned arcades. I saw they’ve got a retro section and they got Sector Fifty Two in there and I absolutely miss playing that and I am so going to play it.”
“Is that the old one with the weird aliens and the guns and the dipshits who keep running in front of you and they punish you for shooting said dipshits?” Ellen asked.
“Yes! And there was this rare four-player version and they have it and we are so fucking playing it all the way through.”
“I’m down as fuck,” Krystal replied.
“Is this your heaven?” Emily asked suddenly.
“Who, me?” Gabe asked.
“Duh.”
“I mean, yeah. Why?”
“Just the whole ‘girls don’t play video games’ things, and guys treat gamer girls like the holy grail, and you’ve got three nerding the fuck out over video games, and-oooohhhhh holy fuck that is something else…
” she groaned as he began rubbing the back of her neck, bringing his fingers and thumb together to meet over her brain stem repeatedly in slow, smooth movements.
“Yeah, it’s definitely my heaven,” he replied, chuckling.
“I still don’t understand that shit,” Krystal growled. “They spent the nineties screeching that girls don’t play video games, then the two thousands screeching that there are no ‘real girl gamers’, and now they’re all like ‘but why don’t girls play video games with me!?’ for fuck’s sake.”
“I’m sure there’s some complex sociopolitical explanation, but it doesn’t really cancel out the fact that it was, and is, fucking stupid,” Ellen said.
“And honestly I’m wicked pissed about it.
I missed out on so much gaming...although I guess that cuts both ways because now I get to just cocoon myself and play video games for days at a time if I really want to, and get to experience them with the best people of my entire fucking life. ”
“There is that,” Gabe replied. He stopped massaging as he saw their food coming and Emily made vague complaining noises as she scooted in to make room for him.
“You need to do that again, and teach Abby how to do it,” she said.
“I will but honestly it’s not hard.”
“Fuck me, look at this,” Krystal whispered as they looked over the food.
They dug in. Gabe was pretty hungry. He’d just had a cereal bar this morning before getting whatever editing done he could.
He was nearly finished, and all that was left for outside help was Ellen going over the final few pages.
At this point, he was nearly ready to go.
The covers were ready, he’d already done research on better keywords, had the synopsis ready to go, pretty much all of it. It felt strange.
After years of dreaming of being a writer and dicking around with projects that never went anywhere, it seemed so incredibly bizarre to not just be getting traction, but to actually feel like he had some measure of control over his career by writing erotica.
But these thoughts were for later, not during what was probably the most interesting date of his life.
“So,” he said after they’d spent the first few minutes eating, “is this what you all thought it would be like?”
They looked at him, then at each other.
“Yes and no,” Ellen said.
“Yeah, I was about to say the same thing,” Emily agreed.
“I think it is in the way that it’s what we had hoped it would be like, but it’s pretty different from what we all actually thought it would turn out like if we ever actually did it.”
“Why?” he asked.
“I mean I’ll say it: I never thought we’d find a boy we could actually share,” Krystal said. “Sexually, maybe, but not romantically. Even sexually felt like grasping at straws back then.”
“I think we needed to get older, and grow up, for this to actually happen,” Ellen said, looking vaguely uncomfortable.
“I sure as hell did,” Krystal muttered.
“Yeah, me too, big time. Abby...changed a lot for me. Taught me a lot. But some of it is just mellowing out, too,” Emily agreed.
Ellen snorted. “We were all so damn sure we weren’t going to mellow in our thirties. Especially you, Krystal.”
“Yep,” she said.
“What happens?” Gabe asked suddenly. “Why do you think you did mellow?”
“I think it’s a combination of a few things,” Ellen replied.
“I mean a big part of it is just...you get tired as you get older. Tired of bullshit. You lose patience for all the little crap that you put up with because you thought you had to, and living life inevitable teaches you that you don’t actually have to put up with a lot of it.
Some, yeah, for sure, but you can just let things go.
Mostly what other people think of you. I think the shine also comes off of life as you age simply because you get a real sense for what life’s all about. ”
“Yeah, stuff just doesn’t hit as hard anymore, or in the same way,” Krystal said.
“That sucks,” he murmured.
“It does, but it isn’t all bad,” Emily said. “You get more confident. You get more comfortable with yourself. Some things get easier to endure.”
Krystal was staring into her soda, frowning.
She looked up suddenly. “I think a really big one is realizing that...you don’t have to care about a lot of shit.
Like when you’re in high school you gotta care about everything because it’s forced on you.
Everything that goes wrong is the end of the world because your hormones are screaming out of control.
“In your twenties, you’re so fucking desperate to prove yourself, to prove that you’re a competent adult and you know you’re doing, and to secure your place in the world.
Whether or not that happens, I think you get this slowly dawning awareness that you just don’t have to give a shit about a lot of things, or at least not nearly as much of a shit, so you just naturally kind of chill out. ”
“Yeah, I’d agree with that,” Ellen said, and Emily nodded as she bit into another slice of pizza.
“That’s what’s so weird about you,” Krystal said.
“What?” Gabe asked.
“It’s like you hit it early. You’re like us but ten years younger.”
“That is one of the things that drew me to you,” Ellen said.
“Huh. I guess maybe emotional intelligence gives you a boost?” he replied.
“I think it does, but I think it does even more so if it’s backed up by other people in your life reinforcing it,” Ellen said.
“Because you have changed noticeably since we’ve gotten together.
And, to be clear, in good ways. But it does kind of feel like getting together with me and Holly and Chloe acted as a force multiplier. ”
“Oh, but not me? Or Liz?” Krystal asked.
“I mean you’ve just started actually dating and living together,” Ellen replied.
Krystal sighed. “Fine, fair point.”
“I’m sure you’re both going to be force multipliers, too,” Gabe said.
“Liz, maybe.”
“And you, Krystal. You have stuff to offer just like the others.”
“I sure hope so,” she replied after a moment.
“Trust me, you do,” Ellen said. “You’re definitely wilder than any of us, and as I have learned, variety is absolutely the spice of life, and you are going to keep our lives spicy. Plus, Gabe also gets to have the fun experience of having a writer wife.”
“...there is that,” she agreed. “All that aside, I wanted to say that so far this is going fucking amazing. This place is awesome, and you all are, too, and we’re going to have a lot of fun.”
“Hell, yes,” Emily said, and dug into another wing.
“What’s the second half of the date?” Gabe asked.
“Dinner theater,” Ellen replied after a measured silence.
“Huh. Interesting.”
“I’m pretty curious to see what it’s gonna be like,” Emily said.
“Yeah, I’m for sure not fancy enough to have ever gone to fucking ‘dinner theater’,” Krystal said with a laugh.
“It’s supposed to be entertaining and also really high quality food. So steak and lobster and fancy soups,” Ellen said. “Anyway, eat up, I wanna hit the arcade, too.”
They all resumed consuming their unhealthy meal and enjoying their lives.