Driving Fern back home.

Call me Captain Obvious, but driving a powerful sports car felt a lot different from my bulky, slow van. Can’t say it wasn’t tempting to push a little harder on the gas, but I thank my mom she raised me well and I’m not an idiot.

“You’ve been to the mountain pass with Alice, too, right?” Fern asked me as we drove to her house. “Wasn’t it cool?”

“Yeah, it was. She’s amazing, isn’t she?” I said, feeling extremely proud of something I had nothing to do with. I guess I just like when people praise my girls. “Speaking of whom…” Fern flinched, laughed awkwardly and looked out the window to avoid my eyes. I chuckled. “I’m happy, you know?”

Fern sighed, giggled shyly and nodded. “Thank you. So am I. Um… I feel a bit childish thinking about it this way, but I really want to be friends with everyone. I wasn’t expecting… sex to help with that. I was scared it would do the opposite.”

I nodded. “I don’t know if it has to do with Frey’s powers or not, but… intimacy helps us grow closer. It’s been like that from the start, now that I think about it.”

“I’m… glad it does,” Fern said, grinning and biting her lip. “I end up thinking about sex all week and get really horny. Doing that stuff with Alice and Noelle… Do you really not mind?”

“I’d mind if it was with people outside our group,” I admitted. “But if it’s within… I’m more than okay with it. Hell, it even takes some pressure off my shoulders,” I told her, laughing.

Fern laughed with me. “You really should look into learning to make a clone, then.”

“I told you, I don’t even know if that’s possible. That, and I only really have one other person I can ask. Frey loved the idea, but doesn’t even know how to start going about it.”

“Boo…” She pouted, crossing her arms.

I chuckled. “You’re feeling more comfortable with all this magic stuff, then?”

“I guess I am,” she said. “It just… sounds fun more than anything else. Although I understand why you’d be worried about having kids who could use magic.”

I nodded. “Luke doesn’t have kids. I wonder if he doesn’t because he knows about this.”

Fern smiled. “You want kids, though, right?”

I grumbled. “...Eventually.”

“Boys? Girls? How many?”

“I don’t know how many, but all boys,” I answered firmly.

“Oh. I didn’t expect that. Why all boys?”

“Because if I have even one daughter, I fear I might become a murderer if something ever happened to her…” I groaned. “I keep thinking about the things you girls have had to go through and it makes me believe I actually do have in me the capacity to do terrible things.”

Fern sighed with a small, amused smile. “And you wouldn’t do that for your boys?”

“They’d be fine after a pep talk and a pat on the back. And if they were the ones causing harm I’d… take heavy disciplinary action.”

“Oliver…”

“I’m joking, of course. Mostly. Both boys and girls have the capacity to do damage to others. I suppose that’s where raising them comes into play. And genes, if you subscribe to that theory, but even if it’s true that children inherit some of their parents’ personalities, then I don’t have a lot to worry about. Well, not much except that they might turn out too much like me. God, I hoped they’d take more after their mothers…”

Fern laughed some more, even though I was very serious about that last part.

“Hey, Oliver…” Fern spoke, sobering up and getting a bit serious, yet still smiling. “Do you ever… wish you could go back in time? To do things differently?”

“...” I had to give it some thought, only to realize the thought itself had never crossed my mind. “I don’t think I’ve ever thought about it, but now that you ask… I suppose it would be tempting.”

How different would my life be if I could go back a few tears with this level of confidence? If I could just tell myself to push through my fears, to understand that most of them were just irrational and knowing that the world won’t end just because I stuttered during a conversation?

“Right?” she said softly. “Being with you, hanging out with the girls, and mainly going to therapy… It’s made me understand so much. About people, about how we function. Sometimes I really wish I could go back and do something differently, say something different. It hasn’t been too long, but since around the time I started working at the coffee shop… I feel like I’ve grown a bit, and that the person I am now would handle things differently.”

I chuckled and nodded. “Yeah… I can relate. But we are where we are because of the people we were before, right? I’d be scared of a butterfly effect, where doing one thing differently would make us end up somewhere else.”

Fern giggled. “I suppose you’re right. Maybe I never would’ve met you.”

“Or maybe you would’ve had a boyfriend already,” I told her.

She gasped. “Or worse yet! You could be living a Christian, monogamous life!”

I shuddered. “Okay, I wasn’t liking this game but now I REALLY don’t want to think about it.”

Fern laughed again. A beautiful sound I was hoping to get very used to.

We finally reached her house, and I stopped by for a minute to say hello to Mr. Carlos and his wife. Felt like I had to, especially since Fern told me her dad missed not seeing me at the gym. I admit I also missed seeing him. Lifting weights is not the same without him yelling at me. Also, it’s not that I don’t trust Sarah as my spotter… but she can’t lift half of what Mr. Carlos can.

After sharing a cup of tea, I texted the girls and asked them if they needed me to buy something on the way. With a reply that there was nothing to buy, I began making my way back home.

Something delayed me some solid 20 minutes, though. An accident on the road. A car had apparently crashed against a utility pole. It seemed recent, and the police and an ambulance closed the road for longer than I expected.

While I waited, though, I thought I saw something that caught my eye. A woman riding slowly past me on a motorcycle, going the opposite direction. What caught my eye was that the bike looked just like the one Alex and I had been working on.

…

Yeah, alright. It was the bike… and the fact that the woman riding it was wearing an almost skin-tight riding suit that showed her slender and curvy figure. It was still mostly the bike, though, I promise.

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