Chapter 16

- Oliver

The city was quiet at six in the morning, the traffic thinned to the occasional delivery truck, the sidewalks mostly empty except for joggers and people walking dogs. I walked back from the parking lot, hands in my pockets, the cool air doing something useful for my head.

I let myself into the apartment carefully, out of habit, easing the door shut behind me without the latch clicking. The living room was dark. The bedroom door was half-open, the way Claudia always left it when she slept alone. I stood in the entryway for a second, not moving, listening to the apartment breathe.

Chairman Meow appeared from somewhere and wound himself around my ankles in greeting, completely indifferent to the hour.

I reached down to scratch behind his ears, then straightened up and sat on the couch.

The thing was, I didn't know what the protocol was here. What was a lover supposed to do after spending an intimate night at someone else's place? Walk in like nothing happened? Wake Claudia up and explain? Let her sleep and just act normal when she woke up?

So I just sat down on the couch and stared at the ceiling, letting the silence settle around me.

I rubbed my face with both hands. I'd spent the night being happy with someone else, and that was a strange thing to sit with, regardless of what any agreement said about it.

Chairman Meow jumped onto the cushion beside me and settled in, performing a circle, then folding himself into a loaf.

I was still trying to figure out what I was actually supposed to do when I heard the soft shuffle of bare feet on the hardwood.

Claudia appeared in the bedroom doorway, squinting slightly, her dark hair loose around her shoulders. She was wearing an oversized sleep shirt and blinking at me with the calm, unhurried expression of someone who had heard a door close and had simply gotten up to investigate.

We looked at each other.

"I didn't come back home last night," I said.

"I'm aware, Oliver." There was a mild amusement in her voice, the particular tone she used when she was gently pointing out that I was stating the obvious. "I slept alone." She tilted her head slightly. "You stayed at Sonia's?"

"Yeah."

She looked at me for another moment, reading whatever was on my face with the easy accuracy she'd always had. Then the corner of her mouth turned up, just slightly, and she pushed off from the doorframe.

"Do you want some coffee?"

"Yeah," I said again. "I'll take care of it. Don't worry."

I got up and went to the kitchen, and she followed anyway, climbing onto the counter to sit while I worked the coffee maker.

"So how was it?" Claudia asked, her legs swinging lightly against the cabinet beneath her. I couldn't help but try to detect any hint of jealousy in her voice. But I didn't find any. She seemed genuinely curious. "You didn't come back until three in the morning so I'm assuming it went well?"

I blushed, focusing on the coffee machine.

"It was..." I hesitated, trying to find the right words. How do you describe to your girlfriend the details of your first date with another woman? "It was good. Yeah. Sonia's..." I paused, not sure what adjective to use. I looked at Claudia, and she gave me a reassuring smile. "She's intense." Was that the right word? "Smart, She just... knew what she wanted. No games." I winched. "Not that you play games, of course. But you know..."

Claudia laughed. "I know what you mean, Oliver. You don't have to walk on eggshells around me. I'm glad you had a good time." She slid off the counter, her bare feet padding on the kitchen floor as she moved closer to me.

"Sorry, this is new territory for me," I itted, feeling the blush deepen.

Her hands found my waist and she leaned in to press a soft kiss to my cheek. "It's not new territory for me, ? This is normal for me. You should hear some of the stories Renee and I tell each other over drinks." She grinned mischievously.

I rolled my eyes, but couldn't help but smile back. The coffee machine beeped, and I poured two mugs, handing her one. She took a sip, her eyes never leaving mine.

Her expectation was obvious. She was waiting for me to continue, and honestly, the way she was looking at me made it easier than I'd expected.

"Okay so," I started, wrapping both hands around my mug. "She picked this wine bar. Very atmospheric, candles, jazz trio, the whole thing. Way out of my depth." Claudia smiled encouragingly. "And I was a nervous wreck, obviously. But she just... cut straight through it. Called me out on the non-monogamy thing within about five minutes."

"Good for her."

"Yeah." I took a sip. "And then she kind of laid out exactly what she wanted. Very clinically. Like she was ordering off a menu."

Claudia's eyebrows went up. "And what did she order?"

"Submission. Humiliation. Losing control." I shifted my weight. "So I complied. Right there in the bar."

"In the bar."

"In the bar." I could feel myself loosening up, the way you do when a story starts to tell itself. "I had her on autopilot while people around us were just having their wine and their conversations, completely unbothered. Had her describing out loud what it felt like from the inside while her body did things she wasn't choosing to do." I laughed a little at the memory. "Then I told her to get her tits out and she just... took her sweater off and said something about how warm it was in there. God I love making that sort of thing so casual..."

Claudia covered her mouth with her mug, her shoulders shaking.

"And then I had her on her knees under the table, sucking me off, and then we went back to her place, and I turned her into the complete opposite of herself. Like, I asked her to describe what the opposite of Sonia Lindqvist would be, and she gave me this whole breakdown, completely robotic, very detailed. Insecure, desperate for approval, cries easily, the whole thing. So I just..." I gestured vaguely. "Made her that person. And she was so genuinely different it was almost unsettling. Apologizing for everything, couldn't hold eye , begging me for permission to—"

I stopped.

Claudia was looking at me with bright, delighted eyes, fully invested, leaning slightly forward on her elbows.

I stared back at her.

"What?" she asked.

"Nothing, I just..." I rubbed the back of my neck. "This feels really weird all of a sudden."

"Weird how?"

"Weird like..." I searched for the right way to say it. "Like I'm telling my buddy about a hookup. Not like I'm talking to my girlfriend about the woman I spent the night with." I could feel the heat in my face. "This is not the conversation I expected to be having in our kitchen at six in the morning."

Claudia considered that for a second. Then she shrugged, one shoulder, easy. "Normal is relative."

I looked at her. She wasn't wrong. I nodded slowly, something settling in my chest.

"Yeah," I said. "I'll get used to it."

"You better," she said, and there was real warmth in it. "I mean that. I'm genuinely glad you had fun, Oliver. That makes me happy."

"I know."

"Good."

She looked down at her mug, turning it slightly in her hands. I watched her do it. She had that expression she got when she was working up to something, the one where her focus went just slightly inward, where she was composing a sentence before she trusted herself to say it out loud.

"Something else on your mind?" I asked.

"No." A beat. "Maybe."

I waited.

"It's just," she said, still looking at the mug, "you had a really good time. Which is great. That's what we wanted. What we talked about." She set the mug down on the counter. "And just like we talked about, I was thinking, while I was lying in bed alone last night, that it would be nice if I also... had that option. To have fun. Every so often. The same way you did."

There it was.

I knew it was coming. We'd talked around it enough times that I'd have been an idiot not to see it sitting there, waiting. And I'd been the one at the wine bar, hadn't I, telling Sonia about my fear of opening that door because it would open it for Claudia too. And then I'd gone ahead and opened it anyway.

Something tightened in my stomach. I kept my face neutral.

"It feels weird," I itted. "But we've been working toward this. That's the whole point of the agreement."

She nodded, watching me carefully.

"Do you have someone in mind?" I asked, and even I could hear how carefully I was keeping my voice level.

"No," she said. "Not yet."

I turned my mug in my hands. Then, before I could stop myself: "I'd feel a bit better if it was a girl."

Claudia went quiet for exactly one second, then let out a short laugh that didn't quite reach her eyes. "Why?" she said, the amusement tilted at a very specific angle. "Because then you'd own whoever I was dating and you'd feel less threatened?"

The accuracy of it landed on me like a slap.

"Yeah," I said, after a pause. "That's probably it." I exhaled. "Forget I said that. Date whoever you want."

"Thank you."

"I mean it." I did mean it. It still felt terrible but I meant it. I looked at her. "Just tell me again, that it's someone on the side. Not... you know. A main thing. Not a replacement."

She didn't answer right away. Instead she put her mug down, stepped forward, and wrapped her arms around my waist, pressing her face into my shoulder. I felt her breathe in slowly.

"Then, again, I love you," she said into my shirt. "I'm not replacing you with anyone. I don't want to." She tilted her head back to look at me. "I want someone different. To do different things. Things we don't do together. It's not instead of you, Oliver. It's alongside. Complementary."

I looked at her for a moment. Then I put my arms around her and pulled her in properly, resting my chin on top of her head.

"Okay," I said.