CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
“Okay...but why though?” Gabe asked as he studied the t-shirt Chloe and Krystal had thrust into his hands as he’d been dressing for the party.
“Just do it!” Krystal replied, and then left the room.
Gabe looked inquiringly at Chloe.
“Trust me,” she said with a broad smirk.
“I mean, I do, it’s just...this seems pretty random.”
“It’s all part of the plan! Trust the plan!” she cried, and then scurried out of the master bedroom after Krystal, laughing wildly.
“They are clearly in a mood,” Ellen murmured as she walked out of the bathroom. “What’s on it?”
“You aren’t in on this?” Gabe replied, studying the shirt with increasing confusion.
“No. Surprisingly, they managed to keep this from me. I don’t think Holly knows, or even Liz. Well, probably Liz does, Krystal can’t keep anything from her...hmm. ‘I like to bang my drums’. What the fuck?” she muttered, laughing as Gabe showed her the shirt.
It just said that in simple white lettering against a black background with a couple of basic drums depicted beneath them.
“I really don’t know,” he said, and pulled it on.
“So you’re going to indulge?”
He sighed. “I will always indulge all of you.”
“Lucky us,” Ellen murmured, finishing brushing her hair and heading back into the bathroom.
“I guess I’m just glad that Krystal and Chloe are getting along,” he replied, joining her in the bathroom and studying himself in the mirror beside her.
“Was there some concern over this?”
“I mean...not really, but kinda? Holly was the only one I’ve ever really been sure about.”
Ellen snorted. “Oh, but not me?”
“God, no. You have a domineering personality and the physique of a Greek goddess to go along with it.”
“Greek goddesses weren’t–” She paused, thought about it. “Well, I guess the ancient Greeks were kinda chubby chasers, weren’t they?”
“At least according to some of their statues,” he replied. “And I really like that you can appreciate that in me.”
“I’m the one who should be saying that.”
“I had it easy. I already was deeply in love with and aroused by you in your present state. You’re the one who had it tough. You’ve been having to adjust to the idea that it’s okay for you to be tall and...well-padded.”
She laughed and set the brush down. “Well-padded, huh?”
“Yes.”
“You’re right. Anyway. What about Liz?”
“She was a wild card. But between you, Krystal, and Chloe, I was sure there was going to be some kind of big fight at some point.”
“There still might...but I don’t think so.”
“Me too. I think we’ve all still got some settling to do, but it doesn’t really seem like there’s going to be any big fights.” He paused. “Hopefully I’m not jinxing it.”
Ellen snorted. “I doubt it, love.” She gave him a quick kiss. “Don’t linger too long. We’ve gotta leave in about ten minutes.”
“Make sure the others know that.”
“I will.”
Gabe looked at himself in the mirror, but wasn’t really paying attention.
Mostly, he was trying to tell himself to relax, and that this was going to be fine.
Interestingly, he was finding that he wasn’t so much worrying about the party itself, but about his going to it and not working on other things.
Now that the Recovery offer had fallen very unexpectedly into his lap, he suddenly found himself more anxious than ever about keeping up with everything.
He’d spent the rest of that night after hooking up with Liz and most of yesterday putting the final finishing touches on My Tall Blonde.
Originally he had intended to release a new novella every week, but had decided to push that back to every two weeks.
It would give him a ten week window in which to get cracking on My Submissive Redhead, work on his coauthored novel with Krystal, and start figuring out Recovery.
While he hadn’t gotten an actual contract yet, he had gotten a message from Aria saying that she was still finalizing the details, but if he was in, then she was in.
And he was definitely in.
There was no way he wasn’t doing this.
Not just because he sorely wanted to, but he also knew that Chloe would never forgive him if he didn’t. Well...she would, but she’d never let him live it down.
But there was also no way he wasn’t going to this party. There were a dozen reasons why, but he was slightly guilty to find that he mostly felt the urge to go because this was the first time they were going to be wearing their medallions.
That he had convinced them all to do so felt impossible.
That he hadn’t actually had to do any convincing felt beyond impossible.
Sometimes Gabe thought his reality was fragile, this life he had stumbled into was somehow unreal, ephemeral, like it might vanish in a snap, crumbling like sandcastles in his mind. How did he have not just one amazing relationship, but five?
More? Sadie and Emily and Abby and even Stacy now.
Part of the odd reality of living a dream was that it really did sometimes feel like a dream.
And dreams always had to be woken up from.
Or did they?
He wasn’t sure any longer. He kept wondering when the other shoe was going to drop or what he was going to have to pay to live all this fantasy.
What would he have to give up? To sacrifice?
He supposed time and energy, but he was months into this now and it wasn’t like he was falling apart at the seams.
Maybe he was just a natural at this?
There were savants for everything: math, baseball, skipping rocks. Why not maintaining a harem? He waited for the awkward bad reaction to come when he thought that, but it didn’t. Instead, something else came in its place this time around: he laughed.
Maybe it was because he was looking in the mirror when he thought it, but the notion that he was the guy who lived with, loved and was loved by, and regularly fucked five different wondrously beautiful women seemed absurd, even to him.
Gabe felt less weird about how he looked now, but still.
The notion that he was just a natural at this grew stronger with that thought.
How else could he explain it?
Gabe realized he was running out of time ruminating in the bathroom.
He did one more quick check of himself, then flipped off the light and hurried downstairs.
He found all the others gathered at the foot of the stairs, getting their coats on.
He noticed Krystal and Chloe seemed almost protectively bundled up, though he wasn’t sure why that was significant.
“We ready?” he asked.
“Just waiting for your slow ass,” Krystal replied.
“Uh-huh.”
Gabe reached out and gave her a little poke in the stomach in passing and she let out a surprisingly loud shriek.
“You jerk! I am ticklish right now!”
“Yeah, right now,” he replied, getting his shoes and his hoodie on.
“She’s always ticklish,” Liz agreed.
“Thanks, babe,” Krystal replied.
Gabe finished zipping up his hoodie and looked at them. God, they looked so great. It wasn’t even like they were really dressed up. They were mostly wearing jeans and jackets or hoodies, their makeup minimal, their hair mostly pulled into ponytails.
They radiated beauty.
“Let’s go,” he said, and opened the front door.
…
It was mild for a February night.
They drove through the darkened city towards the northern outskirts, where Abby had directed them. For some reason that he had yet to discover, Liz had essentially demanded that she drive alone with him out there in his car, while the others would follow in Ellen’s.
He was happy to oblige, but he was beginning to worry, just a little.
Ever since they’d had that roleplay, Liz seemed to have changed with how she was acting towards him.
It wasn’t that she had been negligent before, but she seemed to want to be around him a lot.
She’d pretty much demanded he spend the night last night and the night before, and he’d been happy to sleep between her and Krystal, but it was obvious that Liz had him there so she could be against him while they slept.
She’d come to see him in his office probably a dozen times while he was trying to get work on My Tall Blonde wrapped up and when he had finished it up, she’d grabbed him and taken him to the nearest available bed and ridden him until they both had come, her more than once.
Again, it was amazing to be getting the attention from her, but he was worrying about Krystal. Except, as far as he could tell, Krystal had no issue with this. If anything, she seemed amused anytime she witnessed this happening.
Maybe he should at least try to do what he always advised everyone else to do and talk about it.
Problem was, he still wasn’t super great at this stuff sometimes. It was like navigating a minefield. Most of the time he felt like he had a surprisingly firm handle on what to say and what to expect, but sometimes he felt like he was jumping in the deep end.
Like now.
“Hey, so…” he began.
“Yeah?” Liz replied, smiling over at him.
He glanced at her. Damn, she looked good. Her jeans hugged her hips and her thighs wonderfully and her hoodie was unzipped, showing off the low-cut t-shirt she wore underneath, the only real part of which he could see right now being her cleavage.
“Is Krystal going to be jealous because you’re being like this towards me?”
Well, that was in no way subtle.
Oh well.
She snorted. “No, Gabe. She isn’t. If anything, she’s been encouraging me to be more, in her own words, all up on you.” She paused. “That’s not why I’m doing this, though.”
“Why are you then?”
“Because...something happened during that roleplay. I don’t know, it’s like there was some last barrier that was broken between us, a barrier I didn’t even realized existed.
I found myself thinking, while you were strapping me to the bed, ‘is this going to freak me out? I’ve never done this with a man before.
God, I hope not.’. But then when we were actually fucking and you were yelling at me, it kind of hit me. ”
“What did?”
“I don’t think of you as a man.” She paused, and her eyes went wide and she actually gasped. “I didn’t mean it like that!”
Gabe started laughing. “Didn’t you?”