CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
“You both are surprisingly giggly today,” Gabe said as he settled into the backseat of Emily’s car with Abby.
“We’re feeling good,” Emily replied.
“Definitely not a bad thing.”
“Exactly,” Abby said in a surprisingly sultry tone of voice. He looked over at her. She was staring at him. “And I am feeling...experimental,” she whispered, and scooted closer to him.
“Oh...really?” he murmured.
He heard Emily chuckle as she started driving them.
“Really.”
Abby kept staring at him, looking immensely amused and kind of aroused. Her face was very close to his now and he actually felt a surprising amount of intimidation.
“Oh my God,” she whispered, looking somehow even more amused, “you’re scared of me!”
“I am not,” he replied. “I’m intimidated by you.”
“Why? You are in a relationship with Ellen. With Chloe. With Liz for God’s sake. Not to mention what you’ve got going on with Sadie. And you aren’t intimidated by them.”
“Not anymore, though still sometimes. And I get your point, but...I don’t have an answer.”
“I’m telling Ellen! You think Abby is scarier than her!” Emily cried, laughing.
“Yes, please, complicate my life more,” Gabe replied. “And I really don’t know why...something in your eyes. I think…” He hesitated, then gave his head a little shake. “I dunno.”
“No,” Abby said immediately. “You had something. You had a notion. I saw it in your eyes. What is it?”
“It’s...not flattering,” he replied, realizing she wasn’t going to let this go.
“I don’t care.”
“Yeah, I’m actually really curious to hear it,” Emily said.
He sighed. “It’s just that...you kinda look like you could actually kill someone if you had to, and also you know this fact about yourself, is the best way I can put it.”
“Oh, wow,” she said, pulling back a little. “Well...I guess you aren’t wrong.”
“Yeah, honestly, if this were a societal collapse movie, Abby’s the little mousy girl who shocks everyone by being able to just kill a crazy motherfucker and move on,” Emily agreed.
“Have you?” Gabe asked cautiously.
“Thankfully, no. But I could. I don’t really balk at things that other people do.”
“When did you know?” he asked.
“Somewhere around law school. You end up learning about a bunch of truly heinous shit when practicing law, to prepare you for the truly heinous shit you’ll see practicing law.
And it just...didn’t get to me. It bothered me, to be clear.
I have empathy. It’s just, I think there’s some connection in the brain, something that acts as a gating mechanism maybe, something that’s supposed to make a person say ‘whoa, hold on now, maybe think twice about this’.
Like the reaction to blood or vomit. It’s gross, but it clearly doesn’t get to me the same way... anyway, I want to kiss you now.”
“Oh. Yeah, that’d be pretty nice,” Gabe replied.
And just like that he was getting lost with another woman.
She tasted sweet today, something vaguely like honey. Her tongue probed his mouth, delicate at first, then getting more intense. He laid a hand across one of her small breasts and leaned in, slowly leaning more as he deepened the kiss.
Abby suddenly put her hands gently but firmly against his chest, making him break off.
“Okay, stud. I’m having fun, but we are not fucking in this car,” she said, panting a little.
He chuckled, straightening back up. “Fair enough.”
“Yeah, you’re getting your happy time tonight.”
“Very much looking forward to it...but I’m also very much looking forward to the rest of it. I’m not sure where we’re going, though. Everyone was tight-lipped. Which is fair.” Both of them immediately snorted and laughed. “Okay, what’s funny about where we’re going?”
“Honestly? Not much,” Abby replied. “Our first stop is the aquarium. Another aquarium, bigger. And it’s just...I don’t know why, but it’s still really funny to us that you happened to take us to an aquarium for our first ‘date’ without knowing that that’s a thing.”
“Oh, right.” He chuckled. “That is kinda funny. What about after the aquarium?”
“You’ll find out,” Emily replied.
“It’s something that...you don’t have to do if you don’t want to,” Abby offered.
“Interesting.”
Abby seemed tempted to keep making out, but hopefully came to the same conclusion he did: if they started up again, it might progress farther.
So, instead, he thought of yesterday. He didn’t want to meticulously review each and every date day, but it was kind of happening that way. Although admittedly even his anxious subconscious was losing patience after a solid week of this.
Maybe it was just that he’d been a little extra paranoid about Stacy and Kim. They were both still new to him. Well, sort of. He felt more or less confident with the women he shared his house with, and with Sadie.
Stacy had been doing something kind of new yesterday.
He supposed he was anxious that she’d had some kind of emotional difficulty, something subtle that he might have missed.
But no, now that it was the next day and they’d talked a little bit over text, he was more or less convinced she’d thoroughly enjoyed her experience.
She hadn’t spent the night. Apparently she had a lot of difficulty sleeping anywhere not in her own bed, and she also wasn’t that comfortable with the idea of sharing the bed with three other naked women.
And he’d fallen asleep pretty early last night.
He remembered being pretty tired, trying to at the very least check his socials on his laptop, and then giving up after about ten minutes.
Then Holly had coaxed him back to bed, and fucked him, and then he’d passed out apparently.
Next thing he knew, his alarm was going off at nine in the morning. Meaning he’d slept something like eleven hours. (He honestly hadn’t been sure what time it was when he’d gone to bed.)
And then, an hour later, Emily and Abby were picking him up for their date day.
Last one.
Thank God.
He felt guilty thinking that, but it was running him ragged.
He was almost tempted to tell the girls that he wanted a day off for his own date day, but knew that wasn’t on the table.
They were planning something. He’d been trying to piece it together, but so far, the only things he really knew were that it was not going to take place in the house, and that it involved a lot of them.
At the very least all the women in his harem, Sadie, and Kim.
Probably Emily and Abby. Not Stacy.
And that was it.
That was all he knew.
In a way, he was impressed. That they had managed to keep it a secret when it involved so many people directly involved with him, living with him, was impressive. But he also knew it was a collaborative effort.
He wasn’t actually trying to find out what it was. Really, he was working to preserve it. Because he wanted the surprise.
Something that Gabe was beginning to suspect about life was that the older you got, the harder it became to surprise you with something pleasant. And so those pleasant surprises should be cultivated and appreciated.
“Gabe,” Emily said, and the tone of her voice immediately clued him into the fact that they’d just wandered into serious territory, “there’s something I wanted to talk to you about. To thank you for.”
“I’m listening,” he replied.
“Thank you, for that talk on the deck a few weeks ago. When I was freaking out about...our child. Our life. I really needed it.”
“We both did,” Abby said.
“Yeah. We did. I was...holding things back from Abby. And I shouldn’t have.
I was just...I don’t know, stuck.” She sighed.
“But I’m past it, that’s what matters. And you really have stepped up for us.
I know what you’re gonna say: all you’re doing is getting laid and hanging out, but it’s more than that.
It could have been that. Easily. But it wasn’t.
You...made us feel safe. You talked to us.
Respected us. Communicated fucking well with us.
Just...thank you. For being so awesome.”
“Pretty much what I was going to say, though with more articulate vocabulary,” Abby said.
“Eat me,” Emily shot back.
“Later, dear.”
Gabe laughed. “You’re welcome...and thank you.
You let me into your life. Into yourselves.
I know what a big deal that is, and I know what a huge deal it was for you to have sex with me, Abby.
Let alone let me get you pregnant. I know it was a big deal for you to share Emily with me.
And you’ve both treated me very well, too. ”
“You’re welcome, Gabe,” Abby said, smiling as she put her hand in his.
“Yeah, you’re gonna get thanked tonight, boy,” Emily replied.
“It’s going to be something special, yes,” Abby agreed. “But enough about that. Why don’t you tell me all the things that you’ve been up to, Gabe? You and everyone else. We’ve got about another hour on this highway.”
“Yeah, and I get bored easily! So keep the stories coming and make. Them. Filthy!” Emily demanded.
…
The aquarium turned out to be something special.
It was about twice the size of the previous one they’d gone to, and it had an exhibit for what Gabe thought was one of the coolest creatures in the ocean: manta rays.
When they saw his reaction to the sign, they immediately began dragging him towards it. And that was how he found himself standing at the edge of a small, above-ground pool filled with crystal clear water and about a dozen manta rays.
“I’ll be honest, they’re pretty cute,” Emily said. She’d initially been vaguely weirded out by them. “Their little faces are pretty adorable.”
“They’re great,” Abby said.
“Oh wow, look at that one,” Gabe murmured, pointing.
“Which one?” Emily asked.
“That one, there. The one that’s gliding just beneath the surface. Watch what it does.”