Updates

“Hello?” You hear the voice over the phone greet you with a parched voice.

The girls have already left for the sports complex to practice, while Maddy went there to swim laps. You’re going to go to Brooke’s gym in a few, but you realize you’ve held off doing something due to everything that happened last night. Now that you have some free time, you call your cousin Celeste to update her on what you found out about her.

“Hey Celeste. Did I wake you?” You ask her, realizing the three hour time difference between your cities.

“You beat my alarm clock by an hour dude… but I’m up. What’s up?” Celeste asks you.

“Sorry. I forgot about how timezones work. I can call you later when it’s more convenient.” You tell her, and she replies that she can talk now and not to worry about it.

“I talked to Viv. She told me about your past with her.” You tell Celeste, and you can hear her give a disgruntled “Yeah. I heard.” in response. “She told me to call you. If you don’t want to talk about this now—” You start telling her, and she stops you from continuing your sentence.

“I wasn’t expecting this call this early, to be honest; and I’m not talking about the time of day. It hasn’t even been a week since I left!” Celeste says with a laugh. “Then again, I shouldn’t be surprised with how fast you work.” She replies.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” You ask her, softening the question with a chuckle.

“You got a looker like Diane before the two of you even graduated high school. A few days after your daughter comes back from college: you, her best friend, and your neighbor all start dating at the same time. Define a pace that encapsulates that other than ‘fast’?” Celeste replies while laughing, and you sigh in defeat and accept her point.

“Anyway, I wanted you to call me since I don’t need this part of my life to be known to anybody else in our family. Especially your mom. You know how she is.” Celeste explains.

You do know how she is.

“No filter, loves gossip. Bad combination for people with a secret. The day Auntie finds out, it basically means the entire family finds out. Except maybe Lainey. I just don’t—” Celeste explains her reason, before you interrupt her.

“Don’t ever bring up my sister again.” You warn Celeste, a bit more threatening than you anticipated; but Lainey brings that out of you.

“Jeez! Relax! I know. It just popped up in my head. I wasn’t even going to talk about it. It won’t happen again.” Celeste says, a little annoyed.

“Look, I don’t want Jesse to ever find out; but if he does, I don’t want it to come from anybody else in the family. I don’t want him to think I was keeping it a secret from him and not everybody else. You get what I’m saying?” Celeste asks you to confirm, and you tell her you understand.

“Okay. Good. Just to emphasize how serious I am, don’t make me go back there and peg you.” Celeste threatens you, taking you by surprise. “I can make that joke now, now that you know.” Celeste adds while laughing, and you give her an awkward chuckle as your initial response.

“It’s a good thing we didn’t start dating then.” You joke back, and she gets a laugh out of it too. “I can make that joke now, now that—” You try to repeat what she said, but she cuts you off.

“Yeah, yeah.” Celeste interrupts you. “So~, how’s life with four girlfriends?” Celeste then asks.

You tell her about how your week has been so far. You tell her about your date with Stella which she thinks was sweet and thoughtful. You then tell her about your impromptu date with Viv; the fight between Viv and Becca that led up to that date; then last night with how Becca and Viv made up; — all of which she has some idea on thanks to her conversation with Becca and Viv last night; finally, you tell her of your first sample of the BDSM subculture that she is a part of.

“I’m sorry, I know you said words after you said Becca liked you… but you’re saying that the ‘Rebecca Hoffman’, Ice Queen Terminator Rebecca Hoffman, confessed her love for you like a schoolgirl?” Celeste asks.

“What the fuck!? That’s not what I said!” You reply while laughing at Celeste’s embellishment.

“She might as well have been! That’s the closest you’re going to get to a confession, I think.” Celeste reacts in amused disbelief, and you laugh along with her, agreeing that what she said might actually be true.

You catch up with her some more afterwards, she humorously points out that the most eventful thing that’s happened to her since she got back to her place is her and her boyfriend talking about how they think the upcoming episode of Top Chef would go tonight.

You and her say your goodbyes, as she says she needs to prepare breakfast for her and Jesse, and you promise to update her some more now that you’re dating two of her friends.

As you end the call, with the phone still in your hands, you remember the conversation you had earlier at the dining table with the girls. You open the app and look at the current amount of points you have:

Available points: 400 Friendship points (+100) / 250 Love points / 300 Lust points (+50)

You look at the amount of points you do have, and you feel as if the conversation from earlier this morning about needing to farm points for the future wasn’t as merited as the girls made it seem to be.

Then you do the math.

If you buy Steadfast Lover now, you’re losing 270 Lust points, leaving you with 30. If you convert your Friendship points for Normalized Polyamory, you lose 200 of those and you’ll lose all of your Love Points — which leaves you 200 Friendship Points, 0 Love Points, and 30 Lust Points. Plus, the next trait you want to buy costs 100 Love Points. If you convert Friendship points for that, you’re basically down to nothing for all three points… after buying three traits.

Fuck. Maybe they do have a point.

You look at everyone’s profiles to check how many more potential points you can get from the seven girls who you are either openly dating, or will date in the future. Stella, Cassie, and Tanya have already maxed out their scores and you can’t get any more points from them.

- Nguyen, Vivian - Affection Score: 100.

Love Score: 82 (+8)

Lust Score: 81

You know you’ve maxed her Lust Score last night and it already gave you the points for that; which means you can acquire 50 more Love Points from Viv.

- Taylor, Brooke - Affection Score: 91 (+9).

Love Score: 41 (+7)

Lust Score: 84 (+12)

You’re closing in on maxing out Brooke’s affection, and Lust, and getting her to 50 for Love. That’s 50 Friendship points, 100 Love Points, and 50 Lust points if you max out her scores.

- Hoffman, Rebecca - Affection Score: 53 (+15).

Love Score: 27 (+7)

Lust Score: 80 (+31)

+50 Friendship Points. Total: 400 (For reaching the 50+ Affection Score goal with a person)

+50 Lust Points. Total: 300 (For reaching the 50+ Lust Score goal with a person)

The potential amount of points you can get from Becca’s similar to Brooke it seems.

- O’Brien, Madeleine - Affection Score: 71 (+23).

Love Score: 43 (+25)

Lust Score: 83 (-11)

The same goes for Maddy too. So in total, you can only get 150 Friendship Points, 350 Love points, and 150 Lust points more from the seven of them. If you convert everything into Love Points, that’s 500 Love Points; meaning you can buy Youth and Love five more times. Not even enough for everyone.

Maybe you do need a way to make some extra points.

It’s after that revelation you realize you didn’t even bother interpreting their scores anymore, and literally just looked at the raw numbers.

Fuck.

‘Don’t fall into that trap, Jay’ You remind yourself.

You tell yourself that looking at the numbers for what they are isn’t entirely a bad thing, but you remind yourself also that those numbers are representative of emotions and that you should never take that for granted.

That being said, you really are going to be short on points in the long run; and you’ll be short on points really soon if you buy Steadfast Lover and Normalized Polyamory now. There really is only one conclusion you land on after that.

‘I need to talk to Brooke.’