Chapter 76: Concern About Carol

Monday morning, I was up early again and so was the rest of the house. Crystal knew my plans and approved of them wholeheartedly.

As she and Carol started to leave for work, I took Carol’s hand and held her back. “Stay with me for a bit. Crystal knows you’re not going in to work right away this morning.”

Carol suddenly looked worried. She was dressed in her usual short shorts, a nice top, and her flip-flops. The Crystal Blue Photography offices were ultra-casual. Everyone knew that the video editor had at least one fuck session in morning and one in the afternoon as they all worked editing the various porn films for CBP.

After the others were out of the room, Carol asked, “What’s wrong?”

I just said, “Come with me. We’re going to have a leisurely morning and chat.” I guess my tone worried her further.

I’d already made two coffees to go, and carried those to my car as Carol followed. We drove to the Lido Beach, not all that far away, but definitely neutral territory for us to talk. I handed Carol her cup and we walked onto the beach, leaving our footwear in the car.

We’d made a few comments about the weather and how empty the beach was at that hour – just the dedicated morning walkers taking their constitutionals.

After a long silence, Carol asked again, “Is something wrong?”

I said, “I don’t know, you tell me.”

After some more silence as we strolled along the waterline sipping our coffee, she said, “You’re worried about me and Chet and Spence?”

“Should I be?”

Silence except for the squawking gulls soaring overhead.

Carol finally said, “I don’t think so. A few weeks ago, I might have answered differently.”

“Something changed?”

“You came home ... and ... you told me ... that you ... still love me.”

I looked over at her and there was a steady flow of tears down her cheeks.

I said, “I never stopped loving you. Want to tell me about the situation?” I put my arm around her shoulders and gave a little squeeze.

She repeated some things I already knew and some new stuff. “When you left, we’d just met Chet and Spence a week or so prior. We didn’t behave with them any different than we did with some of the other men in our group, except each day things tilted so we were being more and more exclusive with the two of them – Crystal and me.

“The guys wanted us all the time – every dinner and evening, and all weekends. We brought them to our Saturday parties and they participated, but they really wanted the two of us. We also kept swapping back and forth with them. Initially, that was so that neither one of them fixated on one of us as their exclusive girlfriend.

“We even had a talk with them one day about NOT being their girlfriends. I can remember Crystal telling them that ‘we were female friends, but not girlfriends’. I agreed.”

Carol gave a big sigh. “But I fell in love with them ... both of them.” Then she sobbed, “I’m so sorry.” She turned and started to cry against my chest.

I took a big breath and let it out slowly. I steadied myself and calmed my nerved. “Carol, I love you. The most I can do to show that love is to not restrain you from the doing the things that make you happy or being with the people that make you happy. I don’t care whether it is Chet and Spence or other men or women; what I care about is that they treat you like a princess and shower you with the love you need. Just know that in saying all of that, I will never stop loving you. I am sorry that I went away for so long. It was something I had to do. Please don’t blame yourself for your feelings for those men. They deserve you more than me. You should be happy.”

I had to stop talking because then I started to cry. One of the major loves in my life was slipping away, right before my eyes.

Carol was standing in the ankle-deep water crying as I held her. Neither of us could talk.

I said, “Do you want me to help you move out? Maybe to one of the guy’s apartments?”

Carol screamed and pounded on my chest with one fist, “NO, YOU IDIOT. I DON”T WANT TO LEAVE YOU. I LOVE YOU. I ... I ... I DON’T KNOW WHAT I WANT.”

Carol suddenly started running up the beach, her first leaps splashing lots of water in every direction until she got above the surf line. She was like a scared gazelle. I started after her at a slower pace. I watched her and she just kept running. I didn’t know she had that kind of endurance. I’d never seen her do anything strenuous except during sex. Eventually, she turned with the shoreline and disappeared out of sight.

I got all the way to the north end of the beach where there’s no place to go except back the way you came. Carol wasn’t there. She must have cut inland and gone through somebody’s property to the one street that ran parallel to the beach but out of sight.

I called Crystal and told her what had happened and what got said. She was rueful that we’d lost Carol.

Carol wasn’t at the car or the house. She didn’t show up at work. At cocktail and dinner time, I was surprised to see Chet and Spence show up, but they were looking for her and Crystal. I was snappy with them, but I think they knew why. Crystal bluntly told them this was not a good night for them to be around us. They left.

Carol was a no-show the entire night. We called around her co-workers and a few others that might know where she was. She didn’t even have her shoes or flip-flops with her. They’d been left in the car.

I drove back and walked the entire beach in the afternoon and after dinner before it got dark. I drove in town, and went around to the parks and some of the places she seemed to like. She was nowhere to be found. Fuck!

I couldn’t sleep. I paced. I’d sit downstairs near the front door and doze off, but wake up and pace some more. The day was a waste again.

I went back to the beach and repeated the path from yesterday. I even cut through to the paralleled road a couple of times to see whether there was any trace of her. There wasn’t.

Wednesday night and Thursday were more of the same. No one knew where she was? I figured out that she didn’t have any money that I knew of. What could she be living on?

I was back to pacing after another trip to the beach to look for her, when a car pulled up in front of the house. Carol got out, thanked the driver and came into the house through the front door that I was holding open for her.

I asked in a restrained tone, “You okay?”

She said in a flat tone, “Let’s talk. Patio. Now.”

I noted she was still barefoot and wearing the same clothes she’d had on when we went to the beach on Tuesday morning.

I said as an understatement, “We’ve all been worried about you – very worried.”

“I’ll apologize tonight. I crashed and burned.” She pointed at two chairs and we sat.

Carol said, “Here’s what’s going to happen – NOTHING! I want things to be the way they were with as few changes as you and I and Crystal can make to our relationship.”

“Huh?”

“I know, after what I just did to run away, but I had to. I went to a fleabag motel and hid. I went through a kind of crisis and came out the other side, I think. I cried so much I think the manager wanted to call 9-1-1 to come and help me in some way. I had to stop her. She thought I was suicidal.

I said, “Have you eaten?”

“A few things. Fast food. I didn’t have much cash. I always have a credit card with me. I booked an Uber to get home just now.”

“So, tell me about what ‘nothing’ means?”

“I’ll try, but you know that I’m not as good with words as you and Crystal are. I think I have it down, though.

“I had to think about what I really wanted in my life. I know you did this on your long journey. I didn’t have that much time. I want the love you give me and that Crystal gives me. I want the love I feel in the atmosphere we live in with all our friends and lovers.

“I really woke up to the fact that I don’t want to be exclusive with somebody. Others will think I’m crazy, but being exclusive is not a guarantee of that love, only that neither of you will pay too much attention to somebody else. I’ve seen some of my ‘exclusive’ married friends in relationships that aren’t very happy or loving. Instead, I like that I live in a constellation of friends that all love me in some way.

“Two of the people that apparently love me are Chet and Spence. I love them in return, but not like I love you and Crystal, or even the others in our ‘intentional nuclear family’, as you call it. They’re fun to be with, but they want something from me I can give to either of them – that exclusivity. They want to own me and have me be their possession. I realize they’ve been trying to move me in that direction – to lock me up as ‘theirs’.

“You, on the other hand, clearly demonstrated by what you said at the beach that you want to love me but not own me. When you said that you wouldn’t restrain me from going with those men, I suddenly realized that only I could make the decision as to what would happen next.