Kinesics is the study of communication via gestures and facial expressions

You never would have expected to notice that different women have different styles of holding hands.

Hugging, yes. You’ve been hugged by… (Tammy, Molly, Sigrid, Eleanor, Maggie, Belinda, Penelope, Callie, Kate) nine women, holy shit, in the past thirty-six hours, and there’s definitely been stylistic variation there, although there’s also been a lot of range in context for those hugs.

But now you’re holding hands with Penelope, and it’s been barely two hours since you were holding hands with Sweeney, so you’ve got a pretty good basis for comparison. Penelope’s not just holding your hand, she’s got her fingers interlaced with yours. When you were briefly dating Arlene in university, you and she held hands a few times, and you’re pretty sure you’d remember if she’d done something like this. (Now that you think of it, actually, you held hands with Eleanor yesterday when she was scared about going into the old building, and it wasn’t like this either.)

Penelope’s fingers are long, and slender, and you can very easily imagine them wrapped around your SELF-CONTROL, YOU ARE IN PUBLIC.

The door to the mall swings shut, and you and Penelope walk out into the warmth of early afternoon in late September. At the curb, while you wait for the light to change, Penelope starts telling you about where she’s parked, but then you notice the 78 bus approaching, about a block away. It’s too far for you to tell if you recognize the driver, though.

“… Jacob?” Penelope says after a moment, and you realize you weren’t listening.

“Sorry!” you say. “Normally I take the 78 bus to get home – I took the 78, I mean – and, uh…”

Penelope’s head turns busward. “You’re wondering if you can get to the bus stop in time, even though you don’t need to?”

“Well, that’s part of it, but also… uh…”

You’ve turned off jealousy, so you might as well be honest.

“… one of the drivers is pretty.”

“Ah!” Penelope says with a smile. “Is that her?”

“Not sure yet.”

“What’s her name?”

Her name is Shondra Attenborough, she’s 43, and two hours ago you nearly fucked her daughter Callie. Which, you’re pretty confident, would have very quickly led to you fucking Shondra as well, and also to you fucking Shondra’s other daughter Jenna, not necessarily in that order, and quite possibly all together.

You shrug. “It’s not like she wears a name tag,” you say, which is true. “And we haven’t had any conversations. Well, I mean, I say ‘hi’, she says ‘hi’, I say ‘thanks’, she says ‘you’re welcome’…”

Penelope nods. “Sure. She got nice tits?”

You nod too.

Penelope’s grin gets a little wider. She leans close to you and whispers in your ear.

“Have you jacked off thinking about her?”

You shake your head. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I only really started noticing her… pretty recently.”

Penelope mock-pouts. “Aww.”

The bus passes through the intersection and… ah! It is Shondra!

… and she doesn’t seem to have noticed you standing at the intersection. Which is fair, really – she’s driving a bus full of people, you’d hope she’s keeping her eyes on the road.

The light changes, and you and Penelope cross the street and go around the corner to the company’s parking. Her car is… well, it’s pale green, and you’re sure that if you tried, you could learn to recognize most makes and models of car pretty quickly. For now, you can confidently say that it’s not a VW Beetle or a Jeep or a station wagon.

She opens the front passenger door for you, and you climb in, and try to arrange yourself comfortably. As Penelope gets in the driver’s seat, you realize what’s wrong: your seat is pulled much too far forward.

“Oh!” she says, as you reach under the seat to engage the mechanism so you can reset the chair’s position to accommodate someone as tall as you. “Sorry! The last person I had in here was… um.”

She looks away.

There’s only one reason she’d be hesitating to tell you.

“Your ex?” you guess.

She nods. “Eric is… well, he’s not short, but he’s shorter than me.”

She pulls out her key, then pauses.

“Actually… you know what? Fuck his feelings. He is short. He’s not even five foot five! I can say that, and it doesn’t matter if he gets upset, which he won’t anyway because he’s not gonna find out I said it!”

She’s trembling.

“Hug?” you offer. She clutches you, and you hold each other until her breathing stabilizes. She still smells really nice, and you take a deep whiff of her scent. You’re totally sure she wouldn’t mind, but you still try not to make it too obvious.

“I’m sorry,” Penelope mutters. “I don’t wanna think about Eric when I’m with you, it’s just… he’s all over my life, y’know? Still inside my head.”

You rub her back. “When’s the last time you heard from him?”

“He tried to come to the office around Christmas. Building security knows not to let him in. And his lawyer contacted mine in February – turns out the ‘nobody owes anybody alimony’ deal is working out a lot better for me than for him, and he wanted to renegotiate. Told my lawyer to tell his lawyer to tell him to fuck off and die. They probably made it sound a bit more polite. Since then… nothing. I don’t even know if he’s still in town.”

You’re not really sure what to say here. “Let’s hope not?” you try, which seems to work, because she gives you a small smile.

“Thanks,” she says, then her expression turns wry. “Dammit, that’s twice.”

“What is?”

“I had this idea that it’d be really sexy if I showed you –” and she points to the back seat, where you see a zipped gym bag.

“… were you working out?”

She laughs. “No, it’s my overnight bag! Because I’m spending the night with you! Clean clothes for tomorrow, plus my toothbrush, my hairbrush, and my vibrator! And… instead of talking about how much I’m looking forward to you fucking me, I got upset about Eric. Again.”

Oh, right – like when she called last night.

Also, it feels so weird to just let “I’m looking forward to you fucking me” go without responding to it.

“You don’t do that when you’re in the office, do you?” you ask. “Get upset about him, I mean.”

Penelope shakes her head. “No, I know how to be professional.”

“I guess I’m flattered that you feel… safe enough around me to let your guard down?”

She smiles. “I really do,” she says, and hugs you again. It’s different from how she hugged you a few minutes ago; it’s… happier. And you like how she looks when she’s happy.

You do have a question, though.

“You think you’ll need your vibrator tonight?” you ask, waggling your eyebrows.

She waggles back. “Oh, you never know. Maybe – ” and her voice gets husky – “you’ll want to watch me use it on my soaking wet pussy while you pump that huge cock of yours into Tammy some more, you naughty sisterfucking pervert.” She starts squeezing her tits through her top, and that huge cock of yours instantly reacts.

Penelope looks down at your erection poking through your pants. “Mmmm,” she says, and licks her lips.

Just then, a car pulls into the next space. Penelope clears her throat and sits up straight. “So, home supply store first, yeah?” she says.

You take a deep breath and let the blood recirculate into your body. “Yeah,” you say. “Let’s be responsible grownups together. Boring things first, fucking and sucking after.”

She snickers.

“And, again,” you say, “thank you so much for this.”

She sighs contentedly. “You’re welcome,” she says. “You know I’d do anything for you, right?”

“Doesn’t mean I shouldn’t say thank you.”

She beams, and kisses your cheek. “I think there’s a Household Stuff big box over in Candlebridge. Sounds good?”

“Sounds good.”

Then it’s seatbelts, key, and you’re off.

A few minutes later, as the car waits at another light, Penelope glances at you. “Incidentally,” she says, “wanna hear something stupid?”

“Hm?”

“So, before? When I said you were a ‘naughty sisterfucking pervert’?”

“Yeah? I mean, I guess it’s accurate. Well, I dunno about ‘naughty’, I try to be a good person, but…”

She grins; the light turns green, and the car goes through the intersection. “No, the stupid part is how it bugs me that ‘niecefucking’ doesn’t have the same… the same rhythm! It doesn’t sound right!”

You grin too. “What about the alliteration?”

“Heh,” she says. “Naughty niecefucking –”

“– nervert,” you say along with her.

She giggles, then bites her lip. “Don’t make me laugh while I’m driving!”

“Sorry!”

You keep quiet as she takes the on-ramp onto the expressway.

“Actually,” she says once she’s merged into traffic, “I do have a more serious question about that? About you fucking Molly?”

“…yeah?”

“She’s not even nineteen yet?”

You blink. “Uh? Yeah, her birthday’s October... 10th, I think. Why?”

Penelope looks uncomfortable, which makes you uncomfortable.

“You, uh… you did wait until she was eighteen, right? Before you started fucking her?”

“I’ve never done anything sexual with anyone who was under eighteen,” you say, which is true, even if it’s not quite an answer to Penelope’s question. You realize that phrasing might make you seem a lot more experienced than you actually are. “Not even when I was under eighteen.”

Penelope relaxes a bit. “How old is Tammy, by the way?”

“Thirty-four. April 23rd.”

“… ah,” Penelope says, in a tone of voice that tells you she’s just done the arithmetic. “So Molly’s dad is…?”

“Not in the picture,” you say. “I don’t know if Tammy ever even heard back from him after she told him she was pregnant. Our parents were so upset.”

Penelope’s eyes widen. “Did his parents not –”

“Oh, you’re thinking he was someone she knew from high school?”

“… he wasn’t?”

“He was not. Also, I cut you off, sorry!”

She smiles, and then merges into the exit lane. “I forgive you. So… how long have you been fucking them? And… and how’d it happen?” She licks her lips again.

Oh shit.

This is a perfectly reasonable (and incredibly fucking hot ) question for Penelope to ask. Unfortunately, all the possible answers lead in directions that would cause problems.

You could tell her the complete truth, which would require that you explain the Multiplier, which is… well, you’re going to do that, eventually, you just haven’t figured out how yet, but it definitely won’t be while you and Penelope are in her car on the expressway!

Or you could tell her a version that doesn’t mention the Multiplier at all, but Penelope is brilliant and you’re sure she’d immediately see how unlikely it is that you started fucking Tammy and Molly the very same evening that you and she had phone sex.

Or you could make something up, which you are positive would explode in your face. Not to mention that it would absolutely hurt Penelope’s feelings, and the idea of doing that makes you sad.

“…Jacob?” Penelope says, and you realize you’ve been silent too long.

“I… the point is…” you say carefully, as the car moves onto the off-ramp, “this… this isn’t just about me. I’m… I’m pretty sure they’d love for me to tell you about it, but I haven’t asked them.” As you say it, you realize it’s not just an excuse for you to keep your mouth shut, it’s also completely true. “And… if you want to know more about the guy who got Tammy pregnant, probably she should be the one to tell you.”

Penelope looks very impressed. Plus, not only is this true too, it lets you avoid mentioning that all you know about Darren (aside from ‘older’, ‘ghosted Tammy’, and – since Molly doesn’t look biracial – ‘probably white’) is either what Tammy said as a result of you having the Multiplier, or what the Multiplier told you directly.

“Hold on,” she says as she drives off the exit ramp and onto the streets of Candlebridge. “Gotta concentrate.” The traffic looks bad, but it clears up surprisingly quickly, and five minutes later you’re parked in the lot outside the Household Stuff.

Penelope interlaces her fingers with yours again as the two of you walk towards the store entrance, and you wonder what are the odds that you’ll be able to get through this without the Multiplier noticing anyone new.