Pillow Talk, Pt. 2

“What do you mean?” you ask her to clarify, genuinely confused at what she’s asking you.

“What if you could explore those feelings you may have for Ms. Tanya, and not have to lose me?” she clarifies.

This relationship isn’t even a day old, and she’s already asking you if you want to date other women. You’re not sure how to interpret that.

You take a moment once more to think how to properly answer her. You don’t want it to sound like you’d think that would be great since you can have your cake and eat it too, but there’s a reason why the idiom is you can’t have both. ‘At least, not without the help of magic’, you think to yourself.

“Stella and I talked about it earlier,” Cassie admits before you can answer her. “She and I agree that forcing yourself into a monogamous relationship may not be the best thing for you right now.” She adds, and you can’t help but cover your face with your free hand as you let out a chuckle.

“That’s what Tanya said too.” you tell her. “Why is it so important that I don’t jump back into a loving monogamous relationship yet? Especially, when that loving monogamous relationship would be with you?” you ask her, genuinely curious about her reasons, since you honestly thought about pursuing multiple relationships yourself.

“What’s important is you find loving relationships. That doesn’t just have to mean me. It includes Stella, and maybe Ms. Tanya if you want to explore that. It's loving relationships you need, not necessarily monogamy.” Cassie responds, to which you immediately respond, “I’m not sharing you.”, which elicits a laugh out of her, as you’ve become possessive of her already.

“No one can compare to you.” she tells you, then gives you a sweet peck on the cheek. “So you don’t have to worry about that, but that’s not what I’m saying. For me personally, I don’t want to be the one to make you choose between me and somebody else that you may have feelings for. Especially after you told us that you’re not sure what you feel about Ms. Tanya. Why shouldn’t you be able to explore that?” she asks, and the only answer you can think of is that you’ll hurt someone’s feelings if they become jealous. Weirdly enough, that’s why you want to buy ‘Normalized Polyamory’ in the first place.

“Wouldn’t it hurt you to see me with someone else?” you ask her, since that’s the main reason that’s holding you back from exploring that option anyway.

“I’ve seen you with someone else my entire life Mr. Craig. I was never jealous of Mrs. Cr— Ms. Diane. All I ever wanted was to be with you. I didn’t care if I had to share you with her.” she admits.

“I never wanted you all for myself. I just wanted you.” She adds, with a bittersweet tone; as if she’s happy that she’s with you now, but it had to cost you months of pain beforehand.

“More than that, I don’t want to **** you to give up on someone who you can bring genuine happiness to, and be given that in return.” she continues. You find it unbelievable how open she is about you meeting, and even dating, other women. It sounds too good to be true.

A lot of things in your life lately sound too good to be true, but that’s with the help of the Affection Multiplier. So it’s even more unbelievable that every girl you’ve been with, plus your own daughter, thinks it’s best for you to explore your feelings more fully; and that’s without the help of magic.

“I can always just stay friends with Tanya.” You tell Cassie, not wanting to make it sound like she’s not enough to make you happy.

“Of course, but what if she doesn’t want to just be friends? What if you don’t want to just be friends with her down the road too? Will you **** yourself to choose between her and me? Like I’ve already said, I don’t want to be the one to have to **** you to go through that.” Cassie tells you.

It’s at this point you realize that she just genuinely wants you to be happy and not have to go through a similar kind of pain like you’ve gone through these past few months, or cause others that kind of pain too. “Who am I to argue with the universe?” you jokingly ask her, which now makes her confused.

“Apparently, everyone agrees that I shouldn’t limit myself and explore my options. You, Tanya, Stella, the app…” you tell her, which she immediately picks up on, “The app? What do you mean?” she asks.

“The app suggested that I save some points to purchase a trait called ‘Normalized Polyamory’.” You tell her, and explain what it does from memory as your phone’s still in your pants on the floor, and you don’t want to break away from Cassie right now.

“Wait, so it can make other people think that you having multiple relationships would be normal, and your current relationships wouldn’t be jealous of each other?” she asks just to make sure she understood it correctly. You nod to confirm, and she responds with, “No wonder you thought that you were influencing how we felt if you can change other people’s opinions entirely.”

Now she gets it.

“Is that what’s stopping you from buying it?” she asks.

“I have to admit, I thought about buying it once I can afford it, but there’s a gnawing feeling I have that it’s wrong to **** other people’s minds to change their opinion for my benefit…” you start, but Cassie interjects, “That’s because you’re a good person, Mr. Craig. Any other person would just take advantage of that and not care from the outset.” She really does think highly of you.

“You care for other people and you wouldn’t do anything to hurt them. So, if what you’re going to change doesn’t hurt anyone, why not take it?” she asks you, and you really have no good rebuttal, other than ‘who are you to decide what other people should think?’; then again, ‘who are they to judge you for trying to find happiness?’.

“Wait a minute, you already thought about buying this trait and you still had me convince you to explore your feelings with Ms. Tanya!?” she suddenly realizes. “You made me say all that mushy stuff!” she adds, blushing from retroactive embarrassment.

“I had to make sure you weren’t just testing me or…” you answer her while laughing, but she interjects, “Oh my God! Who hurt you?” she asks rhetorically, and maybe for the first time since it happened, you can laugh about your divorce and the pain it caused.

“I trust you Mr. Craig. No tests. No tricks. You don’t need to hide anything from me, and I promise I’ll do the same.” she says.

“I love you.” she adds, before giving you a kiss on the lips this time. You return her kiss before breaking away and say,

“I love you too.”

Author's Plug: Another in-story day, another plug of my Ko-fi. Hope you've been enjoying the story so far!