CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
“Babe, is something bothering you?” Krystal asked.
Gabe felt a bolt that was equal parts fear and frustration hit him in the gut. He’d really been hoping to keep it off his face and out of his body language, but apparently Krystal was just as good at reading him as he was at reading her.
He took a bite of the street taco he’d bought to give him some more time to consider his response as they walked slowly down Main Street.
The session had gone well.
It had been just over an hour and hadn’t hurt as much as he’d feared. It probably helped that he was distracted telling the story of how he met all the amazing women in his life. And Jen and Lorelei had several questions between them.
Krystal had gotten a tattoo of Death, hooded and shadowed and carrying a scythe, in the same place he was getting his own tat: on her left bicep.
Apparently, Chloe had been considering getting one and that was what she wanted, but she was pretty nervous about it and how it might actually look in real life, so Krystal had offered to get it and show her.
Once they’d finished up and gotten some healthcare tips on the tattoo, he and Krystal had hit up the next part of their date: street food.
Main Street in their town came equipped with a ton of food trucks and most of them, apparently, were pretty good.
“I was kinda waiting to tell everyone else,” he said. Now Krystal looked at him more intently. He sighed. “I didn’t want to interfere with our date day.”
Now she stopped, looked around, and then brought him over to a bench. They sat down together. “Tell me.”
“My dad called me yesterday, while Chloe and I were at the gaming tournament. I didn’t recognize the number, so I didn’t answer. He left a message.”
“...what did he want?” Krystal asked cautiously, and from her tone he could tell immediately that she did not feel on stable ground.
They hadn’t talked much about his parents, enough to know the broad strokes, but he wondered how much Ellen might have told her.
“To meet. He’s divorced from my mom now.”
“...and what do you want?”
He chuckled, he couldn’t help it. “Uh...I don’t know.
I’m ninety nine percent in the camp of: nothing.
I don’t want to break the streak of not talking to him, seeing him, or hearing from him.
But...I don’t know, part of me is curious to hear what he has to say.
I doubt it’s going to be anything of consequence, and probably he wants something, but I dunno. I’m...curious.”
“Do you think it’d be a good idea?”
“Probably not. I’m still processing.”
“Right…” Another long pause. “I’m sorry, I’m not good with this. I never knew my dad. He disappeared before I began forming memories, and apparently died ten years later without ever being involved in my life at all.”
“It’s all right. Sometimes we’re gonna run into stuff that we aren’t equipped for.
I’m still thinking on it. It bugs me, but that’s largely because hearing his voice kicked loose a lot of old memories.
Old bad ones. And it sucks because I still feel like...
I’m overreacting. He never hit me...I mean, besides the occasional slapping me hard across the back of the head.
It was just a lot of mean words or a lot of no words.
He would just ignore me for days sometimes.
My mom wasn’t much better. It’s ironic, you’d think I’d be happy about that, given how many kids want to just do stuff without their parents knowing, but that wasn’t how I was... eh, let’s talk about something else.”
“If you’re sure.”
“Yeah, this is a big, festering mess and I don’t want to unpack it right now. Let’s talk about our book.”
She smiled and stood up. He joined her and they resumed their leisurely walk down Main Street.
It was getting busier now as lunch rolled around.
He figured soon there’d probably be hundreds of people walking around.
And much as he liked his isolation, there was something kind of nice about being in a populated, busy area.
Maybe because it made him feel like civilization was running more or less smoothly for just a little while.
Thinking about the big, giant, unknown black hole of destruction they were all being shoved towards by a group of rich monsters all the time got pretty depressing. He’d avoid it more if he could, but the reality of their collective situation was becoming more and more evident.
“Horns and Fangs,” Krystal said after finishing off her last taco. “Actually, I was going to ask...how is your work on Re-” She paused and glanced around briefly. They were still technically not allowed to talk about it. “Will your new job affect it?”
“Probably,” he admitted. “It’s hard to tell right now.
Everything’s been so busy recently, I’m sort of in stasis right now.
My Tall Blonde is all done and ready to go.
I got them all up for pre-order. I’ve gotten some preliminary work done on Holly’s series, but just recently I’ve been going over...
my contract work, and also planning Horns and Fangs.
Although I’m not sure if you’ve seen any of the stuff I’ve worked out. ”
“No. Although you haven’t actually shown me anything for a little while.”
“Oh, I meant through the shared document.”
“I...that’s up?” He nodded. “Fuck,” she hissed. “I hate being so fucking stupid, I completely fucking forgot-goddamnit.”
“You aren’t stupid, Krystal.”
“What else do you call forgetting everything?”
“Didn’t you just get through telling me memory isn’t intelligence?” he asked. She opened her mouth, paused, then sighed and gave her head an angry shake. “It’s the ADHD, Krystal. It fucks with your memory. That isn’t your fault. And we’re going to help you fix it.”
“I hate needing so much help,” she muttered.
“I get that, but...you’re going to have to figure out a way to live with it. Ideally, to not hate it. And I know that’s going to be rough, and take time, but it’s something to keep in mind. We do love you, and we don’t resent you when you need help, anymore than you resent us.”
“I know, I know,” she groaned. “It’s just...
I can’t do that thing that people always say.
The standards I apply to myself just...they feel different and separate from how I apply them to other people.
Like, yes, I would never yell at Liz if she had problems like these and I’d want to help her so bad, but also...
I don’t know. I feel like I don’t deserve it.
” She let out a small, unhappy laugh. “You know, it’s a good thing we aren’t just dating each other. ”
“Why’s that?”
“Because you and I would depress each other a lot. Although what would probably end up happening is I’d just end up irritating you because I just get...stuck, in my depression.”
“Well, we’ve all got each other, that’s what matters. You’re going to let me and the others help you.”
She laughed again, but it was livelier this time. “I’ve got no choice, huh?”
“None at all.”
She smiled, then leaned in and kissed him on the mouth. It was a long, pleasant kiss that conveyed a lot of emotions.
When it was done, she broke the kiss, but barely pulled back at all. Remaining where she was, staring into his eyes, her lips almost touching his, she said: “I love you, Gabe.”
For a few seconds he was stunned by the intensity of her gaze and her voice. Krystal could manage such lusty and romantic passion when she wanted to.
“I love you too, Krystal.”
She laughed and stood up. “Come on! There’s some shops around here I want to hit. Namely, a sex shop.”
“Oh really?” he asked, following her.
“Yep! I want to find something sexy to wear tonight.”
“Well, lead on.”
…
They found every other shop before they found the sex shop.
Which was fine by Gabe. Anticipation and all that. They hit up a bookstore, an art supply shop, and scoped out a number of restaurants that they made notes of so they could try them out later. And, at last, Krystal tracked down the sex shop, tucked away a few streets over.
It looked like the handful of other sex shops he’d visited in his life: a little too brightly lit, surprisingly clean and organized, but inside of a building that looked like it had been brought back from the edge of condemnation, and not entirely successfully.
There was also either a very attractive twenty-something girl with pink or blue hair and lots of tats or piercings, or a thick MILF who had a knowing smile and an ‘I honestly ran out of fucks to give’ attire.
The kind of woman you just knew was an absolute freak behind closed doors, and was old enough that she had no more reservations about it.
This store featured the thick MILF and Gabe was honestly tempted to hit on her. But this was Krystal’s day and he really did believe his point that he had enough women in his life. On the other hand, casual hookups and one night stands seemed to be working pretty well just lately…
No. He focused on Krystal again, who was wandering through a section that seemed to feature, exclusively, slutty Halloween costumes.
Krystal gasped suddenly and snatched something off the shelf. She stared at it with enormous eyes. “Gabe…”
“Yeah?” he replied, drifting closer.
“I just got the most amazing idea ever…” she whispered.
“I’m listening.”
She was holding what looked to be a sexy devil costume. Demoness was more accurate, he supposed.
“I’m going to get this, and then we can coordinate with Chloe, and we can like act out some sex between our characters in Horns and Fangs! And it’s perfect because they aren’t fucking around with each other...although they might in the future, honestly.”
“I could see them first trying to outfuck the other by fucking the protagonist, and then that slips into them seeing who’s better at pleasuring the other as the threesomes become more full-contact.”
“Yes! Exactly! I had that idea but I wasn’t sure if it was a good one or not.
But you explaining it like that, yeah, it is.
It’ll be hot. And Chloe can be the vampire with some makeup!
She’s sure got the look for it already. We could fight with each other and get distracted during sex and then you have to punish us…
” she murmured, grinning fiercely as she stared down at the package in her hands.
“This all sounds pretty good to me,” Gabe replied. “I think-oh. Oh man. Oh wow.”
“What?” she asked, her gaze snapping up. “What did you see?”
Gabe reached out and pulled a set of military imitation fatigues off the shelf. “Liz has to wear this,” he whispered.
“Ohhhhh…” Krystal murmured reverently. “That would be the hottest shit ever. She’d do it, too.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, here. Swap me,” she said, passing him the demoness costume and pulling out her phone.
She took a picture of the fatigues which, surprisingly, were not overly sexual.
They actually looked pretty close to a genuine military getup on the model who wore them.
“Hold on a minute…” Krystal murmured, texting something.
Almost immediately she got a response and she laughed triumphantly.
“What’d she say?” he asked.
“She said ‘hell yes’. What are you gonna do to her when she wears them?”
“Not sure yet,” he replied, taking the fatigues back and staring at the woman on the front. And imagining Liz in all her jacked, tomboy glory. Krystal giggled suddenly. “What?”
“You’re clearly thinking about what you’re gonna do,” she murmured, and he felt her poke his erection, which was currently straining against his pants.
“I mean, yeah…”
“Come on, let’s poke around a little more, then start heading home. I need time to get ready for this whole rave thing.”