And I'm not alright feel trapped in my mind

Carly realized about halfway down the hall that hiking probably wasn’t on the table today. Not that she wouldn’t have enjoyed going on a hike with Dani all by herself (when was the last time she had done something without her sister there? It felt like forever) but she would probably snap her ankle in these stupid shoes.

Well, if not hiking, what does that leave? She wondered. Dani would probably enjoy more physical activities, but in clothes like these, that was probably off the table. No, she’d have to come up with something else. Something they could do that wouldn’t involve too much walking.

Unfortunately, Carly didn’t have a lot of experience inviting people out to things that they would enjoy. It was a tragic product of being such a desirable person all her life. Most people invited her out to things they thought she would enjoy, or she would go do the things she wanted to do, and they would come along because they wanted to be with her.

So asking someone out to something that they would like? It was somewhat new territory for her, and she was actually feeling a little excited. If only she could come up with something.

She was still wracking her brain by the time the elevator stopped on the floor with their rooms, and she had to go face the music. As she walked the short distance towards Dani’s room, she noted how quiet it was. She hadn’t seen anyone all morning.

As soon as she thought that way, wouldn’t you know it? Mary stepped out of her bedroom and let out a “yeep!” of surprise when she saw Carly.

“Oh, hey,” Carly said, waving to her. She and Mary didn’t have a lot in common, other than their chest size. Since Mary’s lactation transformation, her boobs were ballooning all over the place; sometimes they were bigger than hers, sometimes smaller, but they were definitely contenders, that was for sure.

Carly would have asked who was milking her, but the thought of that made her want to cry. Everything about Mary and her transformations brought back unpleasant memories; maybe that was why she didn’t spend much time with the girl.

I thought I was over it… but I guess I never will be, huh? Carly thought sadly. Accepting a **** and being over it were two very different things.

Mary awkwardly shuffled around her, and that’s when Carly noticed the redness around her eyes. She could recognize a night spent crying from a mile away.

“Hey…” Without even thinking, she grabbed Mary by the arm, causing the other girl to let out a stunned shriek.

“H-hey!” She exclaimed, shaking like a leaf. “Let go of me!”

“Oh! Um… sorry…” Carly felt a little awkward but she let Mary go all the same, confused by the sudden outburst. Mary usually wasn’t so… forceful. But then, Carly didn’t always grab people either.

Mary moved past Carly and headed for the elevator, but Carly couldn’t just let it go.

“Mary, wait! Is everything okay?” She called after her. “How did your date yesterday go?!”

Idiot. Why did she have to say something so stupid? The crying should have been more than enough evidence of how things went.

And indeed, that proved to be the wrong thing to say, because Mary began to shake. Without even turning back to face Carly she started trembling, and lowered her head.

“Look, um… you… you want to talk about it?” Carly was just saying lamer and lamer things by the second. What was supposed to happen here? How was Mary talking with a girl she barely knew, a girl whose lifestyle she definitely wouldn’t approve of, make anything better?

And yet, the redhead hadn’t run off. She turned back to Carly, her green eyes misty with crystal tears.

“Will you… listen?” She asked.

Carly shot one last look at Dani’s door. As much as she wanted to spend today with her friend… this was probably a better use of her time.

“Yeah, pal,” she nodded, offering her hand to Mary. “I’ll listen.”

Mary took her hand, and the two walked to Carly’s room to discuss the issue.

“…Wow. It sounds like you had a rough date, huh?”

Mary took a sip from her tea cup and nodded glumly. Carly, lacking any sense of personal space, had borrowed some from Dawn’s personal stash and left an “I-O-U” on a sticky note with a smiley face.

Dawn would understand. Mary needed something to soothe her nerves. And she could always get more from one of the stores, right? They didn’t even charge for food here, it was great.

“What do you think I should do?” Mary asked. “Gina says I’m just being selfish… and maybe she’s right… but… I just don’t know.”

“Well, what’s wrong with being selfish?” Carly asked bluntly.

Mary stared at her, her jaw dropped.

“What?! How could you even say that?!” She knew that Carly was the wrong person to ask for advice.

“What? It’s the truth. Mary, there’s no such thing as living a completely selfless life,” Carly replied, shrugging. “Can’t be done.”

Mary winced. She had tried very hard to be a selfless person, and Carly was basically spitting on her!

“Think about it like this,” Carly said, taking a sip of her own tea cup. “When you confess your feelings to someone, that’s inherently a selfish act. You’re deciding that you telling them how you feel is more important than whether or not they want to hear it. Even if they feel the same way, even if you’re 100% positive that they feel the same way, you are telling them your feelings because either you want to know if they feel the same way, or out of a sense of closure, so you can say ‘well, at least I let them know how I feel’. You see? Selfish.”

“That… that doesn’t sound like being selfish at all, though!” Mary protested. Just because Carly framed it in a way that it sounded selfish, that didn’t mean it was. She was just getting more confused!

Carly shook her head. “Not in the sense that we think of selfishness, no,” she admitted. “But every time you talk to someone first, you’re making the tacit assumption that your desire to talk with them is more important than their wish to not hear what you have to say. Don’t you see how that could be considered selfish?”

No, Mary really didn’t. This just made her head hurt.

“But it’s fine. Those little bits of selfishness are commonly-accepted parts of society and how we interact with others,” Carly assured her. “It doesn’t make you a bad person to want to talk to someone.”

Then why even bring it up in the first place? Mary wanted to ask.

“And needless to say, wanting to marry someone is also a form of selfishness,” Carly continued, making Mary wince. “It’s saying that you want to be with this person and monopolize them. Instead of allowing them the freedom to be by themselves, you want to make them a part of your life, and be a part of their life. That’s another form of selfishness. But again, that doesn’t make you a bad person. Not even wanting to monopolize Nick to yourself makes you a bad person, Mary.”

Mary hung her head. “Then… why do I feel like a bad person?” She asked.

Carly just shrugged. She couldn’t answer that question. Only Mary could.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But maybe it’s because you try to be so selfless and caring towards anyone, I guess. Because you’re so sensitive, it leads to you feeling guilty about things that other people would just consider normal actions.”

Mary winced. That might have just been a guess, but it sounded right on the money.

“So… what should I do?” She asked. “I want to marry Nick… but if I do… then it’s going to make other people unhappy. And Nick… he doesn’t even want to marry me for the same reason…”

Carly shook her head and took another sip of tea. Those two are such good kids… and yet they keep making things harder on each other.

If only Mary could be a little bit more like her, and less attached to all these labels and commitments. All this guilt and misery she felt would just evaporate in a second if she was more open and accepting of things.

Of course, if Carly said that, then the redhead would dismiss it out of hand. She wasn’t exactly the most open person to stuff like this.

“Mary, do you want to marry Nick?” She asked instead.

“More than anything!” Mary exclaimed.

“But you don’t want him to sleep with other people,” Carly pointed out.

Mary winced and shook her head. “No… of course I don’t…”

“And yet, you can accept the fact that it’s going to happen, at least, can’t you?” This was important. If Mary couldn’t at least accept that Nick sleeping with other women was an inevitability, then that was the end of it. This situation had no solution.

Mary hung her head. She started to cry, and her hand shook so much she nearly dropped her cup of tea.

Finally, in a voice softer than a whisper, an answer escaped her lips.

“…Yes.”

Carly’s eyes widened. She knew how hard it must have been for Mary to admit that.

“Then… I see…” she mused, nodding her head thoughtfully. “In that case…”

“I don’t want it… and I don’t think I’ll ever like it… but if it would make Nick happy, then I’ll be able to accept it,” Mary continued. Every word from her lips was spoken with a little more resolve than the last. “I want to be his wife. I want to make him happy, because I know being with him will make me happy. So if this is what he needs… then as his wife, I’ll accept it.”

Carly could tell that she was almost there. She really just needed one more push.

“Then what’s the problem?” She asked. “If you’re fine with it, or, well, if you’re willing to accept it, then why are you so hesitant?”

That was an issue alright. And Carly wanted to know if there was anything she could do to resolve that.

“Because… Nick doesn’t want to marry me,” she said glumly. “Because of how it will affect the others. I’m not the only one who wants to get married… it’s not like he can just be my husband. It would be one thing if they were just his… mistresses…” She said that word with venom, like it made her nauseous just having the taste in her mouth. “But other wives… that’s not okay. Marriage is a sacred pact made with the lord, between two people who love each other. Multiple wives… that isn’t okay.”

So that’s it… that’s the root of the problem. What a fucking mess. Carly remembered last night and the way Dawn had looked so depressed all night. She was only now realizing that her sad mood was related to Mary’s issues. The poor girl was probably one of the people Mary was talking about, the ones who wanted to be Nick’s wives themselves.

No wonder she was so depressed. She was hoping for marriage, but she thought she couldn’t compete with Mary so she gave up. For the competitive Dawn to give up on something, she must have thought that she was definitely outclassed. That just made things even sadder.

Carly never imagined that Dawn of all people would go down without a fight.

Messes like this are why I don’t like marriage or commitment. On paper, something like a marriage was supposed to cement a bond between two people. But for someone like Mary, or like Nick, the word “marriage” was a shackle that kept two people who loved each other from being together.

If Mary could move past this crippling obsession she has with getting married, she would probably be screwing him even more than me, she thought, enjoying that mental image quite a lot.

She had another idea of how to resolve this.

“Tell me something, Mary, have you ever heard of the phrase ‘letting perfect be the enemy of good’?” Carly asked.

Mary shook her head. “No, what does it mean?”

“It means when you give up going after something good in order to chase something absolutely perfect, which is nearly impossible to achieve,” Carly explained. “Think of it in terms of a guy. Imagine there’s someone out there who could fit most of your needs in a relationship, but not all of them. He’s the best guy you’ve ever met, funny, charming, kind, he treats you nicely, but there’s just something about him, some flaw that makes him not your perfect man. Would you give up on him and break up, so you could hold out for someone even better, even if that person would never come?”

Knowing Mary, Carly was certain that the answer would be yes. And indeed, Mary nodded.

“Of course I would,” she said. “Love is meant to be eternal. Why would anyone settle for an imperfect love?”

Carly coolly took a sip of tea. She would need to phrase this perfectly, or it would end up having the opposite effect.

“In that case, why are you still chasing after Nick?” She asked. “After all, he’s not perfect. He’s got flaws that are incompatible with your perfect man, doesn’t he? He isn’t monogamous. Wouldn’t it be better for you, then, to cut your losses now and hold out hope for someone who WOULD fit every need you had?”

Moment of truth time. What’s it gonna be, Mary? Give up on Nick now? Or admit that you’ve already made compromises with your ideal?

The look of horror on Mary’s face told her it would be the latter. Carly suppressed a relieved sigh. The last thing she wanted was to be responsible for a couple of broken hearts.

Mary started to cry. “I… I don’t want that!” She sobbed. “I don’t want to give up on Nick! I love him! Why would you say something that mean!?”

But even as she cried into her tea, she turned those words inward, towards herself. Hadn’t she told him the same thing, even though she knew those words would hurt them both? Hadn’t she made such a horrible suggestion, because she had been at the end of her rope and didn’t know if she could get the relationship she wanted from the man she loved?

“So you want Nick, even though it won’t be your perfect relationship?” Carly pressed. “Even though he has his flaws, you still love him enough to forget about those things if it means being with him and making him happy?”

Damn Nick, she thought. You’re a lucky man.

“I do,” Mary nodded, setting down her cup and wiping her tears.

“Then if you’re already compromising, why not compromise on marriage, too?” Carly asked. “Who cares if you can’t get married? Just be with him! It’s what you want!”

Mary wished more than anything that she could. But she knew in her heart that it was wrong. Everything she’d been taught had told her that marriage was between two people.

Nick having multiple wives… it was an affront to everything she believed in.

“I know it’s stupid…” she sobbed. “I know it’s wrong… I know that I should just give up, and be with him without having to get married… but I can’t do it, I just can’t!”

She hated her weakness. She hated these shackles over her heart.

Why would God do this to her? Why would the object of her worship play with her like this? Put what she wanted most right in front of her, and then chain her up so that it was forever out of her reach?

Mary was at a crisis of faith, and she didn’t know how to resolve it.

Carly sighed. This was way above her pay grade.

“I don’t know how I can help you,” she admitted. “I want to, really, I do, but this is more complicated than I know how to deal with. But… can I just ask you one thing?”

“What is it?” Mary sniffled, wiping her eyes.

“Are you against Nick having multiple wives in concept?” Carly asked. “Or just because your religion tells you so?”

“Of course I’m against it in concept!” Mary objected. “The Bible says-”

“No, no, that’s because your religion says so,” Carly cut her off right there. “Let me try again. If your religion told you that it was okay for Nick to marry multiple women, would you be fine with that?”

Mary blinked. “Of course I would be,” she replied, as if that was the most obvious thing in the world. “After all, if that’s what the lord believes, then I should have no reason to doubt!”

Ah, yup. This girl is just looney tunes. Carly sighed. Under the right circumstances, maybe Mary could have been onboard for a polygamous relationship. But she just didn’t see that happening in the present situation.

“I wish I could help you, Mary, I really do,” Carly said, her heart honestly going out to the poor, stupid girl in front of her. “But I just don’t know how I can make things better. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Mary said, shaking her head. “My relationship with the lord… that’s something I have to resolve for myself.”

She stood up and thanked Carly for the tea.

“Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to be off,” Mary said, heading for the door.

“Oh, any plans today?” Carly asked.

“Yes,” Mary said, stopping in the doorway and turning back to the other woman with a smile on her face. “I’m going to pray.”

“Ah. Well, you have fun with that,” Carly nodded, watching the devout farmgirl walk out of the room.

Once Mary left, Carly sighed and collapsed into her seat.

That was so stressful, she thought, staring up at the ceiling. She just wanted to help someone out of the kindness of her heart. But between Dawn’s depression last night and Mary today, she was learning how difficult it was to pick up people’s moods.

Maybe she shouldn’t go see Dani after all. That might just make an even bigger mess.