Chapter 8: Promotions and Propositions

A few days later at Dori and Ty’s house, Dave got tapped on the shoulder. He turned around, “Are you still avoiding me?” Rachel asked in a pleasant tone.

Dave counted back the weeks on two hands right in front of her. “Hmmmm. It’s been twelve weeks. You tell me how you’re feeling and let me think about it.”

Rachel crossed her arms and then looked peeved, “I’m feeling a bit like a pariah with you, and that makes me sad. I still love you, but I think you accomplished what you set out to do, and that was to get me unfocused from you. Sean told me I needed to be a flood light not a spot light, at least at this age and stage in my relationships.”

“Have you gone on dates?”

“Only a couple. I was in summer school, and put my effort on the course work. There were a couple of beach dates, but I didn’t fuck anybody, and I certainly didn’t find anybody worthy of falling in love with. I did have fun. I’m back in regular classes now.”

“And how do you feel about the other men in the Circle?”

Rachel grinned and dropped her arms, “Horny and in love, now that you mention it.”

“Do you have a favorite?”

“Besides you? I guess I’d pick Dev. He’s hunky and muscle bound, and he has that bad boy image about him. He has that monster tattoo, too – a cool dragon. Alice has tats, as well; it makes me want to get one or two, but only if Owen does them. Mom told me to wait until I was twenty-one and then decide how to decorate my body. I guess I agree with her wisdom.”

Dave asked, “And if we had sex again, how would that make you feel?”

“Besides orgasmic? I’d go back to being in love with you, but not being as OCD and possessive as I guess I was three months ago. I think I’ve really gotten the message, and I’m being honest with you about how I feel.”

“That’s the only way to be with anybody - honest. If you don’t, those small errors in communication come back to haunt you in big ways.”

“What was one of your errors, if I may ask?”

“I’ll give you an ‘almost’ was situation. When we were still loosening up sexually, Owen came into our lives. Alice fell in love with him and he with her, much as you felt about me a few months back. I could see it, but I couldn’t really say anything without sounding like I was paranoid or a worrywart. Dori orchestrated a game that resulted in the two of them going to Europe for a week on a hyper-romantic and exceptionally sexual trip. The trip ended up in Paris and Rome and was exactly what I just said, hyper-romantic and sexual to the point it made any other love story you can think of look like child’s play, and any sexual fantasy you can conceive look weak and listless compared to what they did.”

Rachel was enthralled with the story by this point. Apparently, she hadn’t heard this.

Dave went on, “I had the opportunity to tell her not to go, and that I was worried about what the trip would do to our relationship and marriage. I was right on the brink of telling her not to go, and I realized that would be a huge error.

“Can you tell me what would have happened if I’d put my foot down?”

Rachel’s brow furled as she thought. “She wouldn’t have liked you very much; you’d have been keeping her from her lover. She wanted to fuck his brains out and make love to him a thousand ways, and you would be the one standing in her way.”

“And longer term?” Dave asked.

“She would see that you thought she was a possession, and that you had the right to control her actions by giving or denying permission to do certain things. She’d stop sharing things with you that she knew you’d disapprove of, so communication would break down. She’d probably start to sneak around to see Owen, and she’d get a thrill from the illicit act and the affair, but that would be undermining her marriage and relationship with you.

“So, what really happened?” Rachel asked.

“Alice went and had the most romantic time in her life. She fell off a cliff for Owen. She confessed that she would have run off and married him ... if she wasn’t already married to me.

“Back then I quoted one writer who said, ‘If you love someone, set them free. If they come back to you, they’re yours. If they don’t, they never were.’ I realized that Alice and I had fallen into our relationship and consequent wedding as a matter of convenience and acceptability to mostly Alice’s parents that were fundamentalists and ultra-conservatives about marriage and relationships. Further, they believed God and his angels genuinely made the arranged marriage in heaven; we had nothing to do with it, other than to carry out God’s wishes. By the way, we were virgins until we married.

“Alice never really dated, except for me. She was a good girl and did what her parents told her to do – marry me. I wasn’t all that different with my parents, who went to the same church as hers, incidentally, but they weren’t as deep into the fundamentalist side of things. She hadn’t experienced crushes, love, lost love, unrequited love, and all the things that most teens and people in their early twenties go through. She needed that experience, and I guess she knew I was willing to lose her for her to have some of those. She wasn’t my possession, and I loved her so much I had to be willing to give her up for what ultimately made her happier.”

“But you didn’t lose her. She’s still your wife.”

“And we redefined our marriage to include her sister Julie, Pam, and Heather, Matthew, AND Alice gets to be with Owen frequently. He even has an assigned bed in our house.”

“Isn’t that just inviting the fox into the hen house?” Rachel posed.

“Is it? I think if you understand the new dynamic in the Circle, you’ll see why I’m no longer worried about losing her.”

“You give her all of her freedom and no constraints?”

“Do I? What am I to her?”

“Her husband ... Oh! You’re her best friend, I guess ... and her lover ... and her confidant ... and the place of safety when nothing else seems to go right for her.”

“Now, you’re getting to it. I love her more than anybody else that I know, and she knows that. She respects that, as well. We each have boundaries that revolve around each other but they’re OUR boundaries, not from outside us but from inside. Despite the open marriage we have, we won’t disrespect the other person.”

“But doesn’t Owen love her, too?”

“He does, but I have history and a track record. More recently, because I’ve not been possessive and I’ve been encouraging, I have a better record. I’ve been through the big changes with her that brought her to where she is today. I understand Alice better than anybody else, and she understands me. She now knows the pain and anguish she caused with her trip to Europe. She wouldn’t intentionally do that to me again, and I wouldn’t inflict that on her either, although we’ve teased each other about doing that.

“But there’s more. Owen wanted and still wants to possess Alice – to own her like he does his companies and his foundation. She sees that, and realizes the impact that it would have on her. She doesn’t want to be a kept woman – a chattel. She’s just hitting her stride and becoming her own woman – in our family, in the Circle, at work, for herself. She’s finally rid of her parents’ influence, or most of it. She’s strong and I do everything I can to help her be that way and have the avenues to exercise the power she’s discovering. As you know, the world isn’t too kind to women; the glass ceiling, gender gap, and weaker sex philosophy are alive and well.” Dave thought for a moment and added, “I’ve talked your ear off. Anyway, maybe you learned something about me, Alice, and the rest of us.”

Rachel leaned in and tenderly kissed Dave. “Thank you, I did. Come swim with me.”

“Only if you lose those bikini bottoms.” He grinned.

Rachel grinned, peeled off the small red G-string, and tossed it aside. She also yanked down Dave’s board shorts, kissed his cock, sucked on him, and then pulled him by the appendage towards the pool.

The Prentiss family sat around on Sunday morning enjoying a leisure breakfast. Dave had been going through the mail from the past couple of days, most of it ending in recycling. After opening one with a handwritten address, he said, “Hey, the ‘Big Boss’ – Derek Wilson – is having a Halloween party on that Saturday and invited me. I’m supposed to attend and bring my significant other. This is a surprise; I didn’t even think he knew who I was. I assume he’s inviting the entire department. It’s probably some kind of social team-building event.”

Pam laughed, “So, bring all of us and set the electric utility industry on its ear.”

Even Dave chuckled, “Yeah, that would go over well. I’ll just give regrets. I’m not going to choose only one of you.”

Alice asked, “What if I couldn’t go, or what if we had house guests – which we do on a daily basis? If we extended an invitation like that, we’d want you, spouses, and guests.”

Dave thought about that. Alice was right and so was Pam. There were several gay and lesbian people at work, and they showed up at events like this with their partners – Christmas parties, special birthdays, the company summer picnic, and so on. Why shouldn’t he show up with his partners – his wives? Maybe because nobody else had multiple partners? The whole world is so fucked up about ‘proper’ relationships; it probably wouldn’t know one if it slapped it in the face; so many judgments and such negativity.

Monday at work, Dave sauntered by Derek Wilson’s office, an outrageous display of opulence in cherry wood and even oriental carpets purchased with some of the money electrical customers paid the monopoly. Wilson had a reputation for never passing up a perquisite that could go with his job. Everyone knew he had a high-end company car, too – one of the most expensive Mercedes on the market.

Donna Klaubert was Wilson’s secretary, a gorgeous middle-age woman with more business skills and savvy probably than her boss. She was the one that really ran the place, and knew all the secrets. Dave figured she knew his, even though he’d only met her a few times and never shared his personal life with her.

“Hi, Donna. I got the boss’ invitation for a Halloween party at his mansion, but I had a question about who to bring and wondered whether I should limit myself to myself and only one other person? I also wondered about a costume and gifts.”

Donna grinned at him and teased, “Can’t choose between your wives? How many do you have now, three?”

Dave smirked, “Four actually. I was wondering whether I needed to give regrets, make a forced selection of only one, or whether I could invite all of them. One has a five-year-old boy that’s cute as the devil.

“David, I really envy you. You are living the dream, at least from a male perspective. You are one really special guy, and every woman in this place knows it. We all wish we were your number five wife Last I knew you had Alice, a stunner even in my book, and two others reported to be model quality in your bed. Who’s the new one?”

“The last woman to join our fray was Julie, Alice’s sister who had lived up north. The other two are Pam and Heather. Heather is the one with a young son; she’s in college after having worked a few years.”

Donna teased, “Oh, yes; she was the stripper at the Club Ecstasy. Rumor also has it that Owen Bennett spends a lot of time at your house, often on overnights. It’s nice that you have a billionaire in your circle of close friends.”

Dave smiled benignly and then had to laugh, “You don’t miss much. Owen is kind of like a member of our family, as well. We’ll be neighbors in a few weeks when we move into the same cohousing project a group of us have been building.”

Donna’s eyes got large. “You are the cat’s pajamas. What’s cohousing?”

“It just means that a bunch of people form a neighborhood, part of which is shared by everyone that lives there – much more than in a usual public neighborhood. We’ll be sharing a pool, large kitchen, media center, living space, and patio. There’s also the implication that the residents are highly diversified, although I suppose we’re more homogeneous than some other cohousing situations.”

Dave paused and added, “One other thing, Donna; I try to downplay that I live in a complex of relationships, so I’d appreciate it if the rumor mill died down about me or my partners. No one has their nose out of joint in my family about how we’re living; we’re very happy. I don’t want how I choose to live my personal life to impact my work or career.”

Donna nodded, “Oh, I’m certain there’s only a positive impact. Someday, I think you’ll see that reflected in your work.” She gave him a broad smile that hinted at something, but he couldn’t begin to guess what that would be. She had a secret she wasn’t telling.