Chapter 37: Chapter 37 – Natalie: Confession is good for the soul

My eyes blurred with welling tears as I followed Hugh to the foyer between the men's room and the ladies'. I felt like that time when I was eight and, after being a complete brat throughout dinner at our favorite diner, my mom had to finally haul me off to the restroom to correct my behavior.

Everything about this evening had been a total disaster, from my poor planning on how to deal with subverting Hugh's plans to breaking down in the car to literally everything about the dinner with Julia. This was too important to fail, but here I was, failing hard.

"I'm going to assume," he said, "that you want me to invite Julia to be a system user."

I nodded.

"I'm further going to assume," he said, "that you haven't for some reason decided that my 'let's not add any more girls because it will endanger our relationship' idea is completely wrong."

I nodded again.

"I'm finally going to assume," he said, "that there exists some extraordinarily compelling reason that I should invite her in spite of that very good reason not to."

I nodded a third time.

"Before I express any of my initial thoughts," he said, "can we both agree that I've been going with the flow and that I'm not mad and that, so far, I'm keeping my mind open?"

I fully realized the personal cost for agreeing to that statement. I'd completely lost control of my emotions when I'd made the promise in the car. "Yes."

"Good. We're both on the same page so far, and we're communicating. Communicating is a good thing," he said pointedly.

I closed my eyes for a moment. He was right. I would have been better off all the way around just talking to him like I was a normal human being who could just do such a thing.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “This all probably would have gone much better had I just told you what was going on, but you were so adamant about not adding another girl. I need this, Hugh. She needs this. It’s important.”

He ran a hand through his hair. "My totally completely honest first impression is that, if I had to pick someone to send an invite to, she would not be included on any kind of shortlist for a final selection and I actually doubt she'd make any list of candidates that I came up with in the first place."

"But why not? She's really pretty. Don't you find her attractive?"

"She is pretty. I have no complaints there."

"Then what?"

"Natalie, I think you're beautiful, but you clearly do not see yourself as I see you. That's part of the reason, I think, that you feel the need to keep pushing your limits in order to please me because some part of you thinks, if you don't, I'll lose interest..

He blew out a breath. "Honestly, I feel a little guilty about allowing you, and even encouraging you, to push those limits and enjoying it so much." He paused. "Given time, I really do think things would settle in and we have a great opportunity to develop a healthy relationship that satisfies both of us. But what happens if we now throw in this new girl who you obviously feel is prettier than you? Wouldn't that make you more insecure and make you push yourself to do things that are way too far out there? Is that why you agreed to ride home naked tonight?"

I clutched my hand to my face for a moment, massaging my temples briefly. "As much as I don't want to admit it, all of that is true to one extent or the other."

"Another big issue is the way the system works," he said. "You are very self conscious about your body and shy about showing it off. I watched you walk through the restaurant, how nervous you were just because your breasts were jiggling a tiny bit. That trait isn't just a huge turn-on for me; it's makes it a lot easier for you to level since, as far as I can tell, quest rewards seem to depend on how embarrassing you find the task. Do you really think Julia feels the same way about her body as you do? I mean, I don't know her at all, so maybe I'm completely wrong."

I shook my head. "She posts pictures of her wearing a bikini all the time on her Instagram. It doesn't seem to bother her at all. Casual shots where she doesn't even seem like she's trying to get attention. I'd die at the suggestion of posting photos of me like that."

"So," he said, "I fear what kind of escalation would be required to get her the same number of points you're getting now. And what would that do to you? Would that make you feel like you have to do what she's doing? Because my assumption is, based on what I know about you so far, that is exactly what would happen."

I winced. Unfortunately, he was making some really good points.

"And my last problem with her," he said, "putting aside my original reasoning for not adding any more users in the first place, is that ... she seems fake. I mean, I just don't get the feeling she's being genuine with us."

"No. That is not fair and I know that you don't know why that's not fair but it absolutely isn't. Trust me regarding her character. She's a good person. She doesn't deserve what she's going through. No one does."

"Maybe it's time that you filled me in on exactly what she’s going through, then," he said.

Hugh was right. I was going to have to do that. I mean, I didn't feel that her story was mine to tell, but the only possible way for this to work was to just come clean with him.

I sighed. "This morning when you left, the first thing I did was open my status." I paused. "Well, no, the first thing I did was put on clothes for the first time in almost a full day."

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I fixed him with a glare, but he just chuckled unapologetically.

"As I was about to put that point into constitution, though, it just struck me for a moment how completely magical and extraordinary this system really is. Over the course of a weekend, I'd gone from hiding away in my apartment alone with no real friends to having a boyfriend who actually seemed to care about me and to be totally into me. And not only that, but it was doing amazing things to me. Altering my body and appearance, improving my intelligence and memory, and I was literally about to, at the click of a virtual button, heal my eyes. I've worn glasses since I was in fourth grade and I about to no longer need them anymore. No more having them fog up when I left an air conditioned room on a muggy day. No more having to deal with not being able to see when it rains and I forgot an umbrella."

I swallowed as my gratitude for what I'd been given welled up. The more I thought about it, the more the benefits greatly outweighed the costs, especially since Hugh ended up making the costs into an investment that paid off big time in pleasure.

"And, as I thought about the system's miraculous powers," I said, "I just wondered what else it could heal."

I looked Hugh straight in the eyes. "Julia just found out she has cancer. It's very advanced. The doctors don't think she'll make it a year."

His mouth formed into a perfect "O."

"I really, really get what you're saying and I do not in any way want to endanger our future together and I think all your fears on the subject are completely valid," I said. "But I just can't sit by and do nothing while a friend suffers and dies if I can possibly do something about it. I guess, my first question, which I really probably should have come to you with the moment this occurred to me, is - do you think that the system can cure her?"

He rubbed his hand through his hair again, looking like he was about to pull it out, and, if the situation wouldn’t have been so serious, I probably would have taken some pleasure in seeing his normally so unflappable demeanor completely flapped.

"Honestly, I don't think we have nearly enough data to say for sure," he said. "If you force me to guess, I'd say it's definitely possible, maybe even likely, given your eyes and everything else we know about its power to alter our bodies on some sort of metaphysical basis."

"So, then, since it's very possible that we can do something, could you live with yourself if we do nothing and let her die? I mean, for any other reason, I'd be the first to say that it's not worth the risk, but this is literally life and death."

"Yeah," he said. "Okay. You make an excellent argument that kind of blows all my objections out of the water. I mean, my concerns all still stand, but..."

I nervously chewed my lip. "About that."

"Yeah? If you've got something to tell me, now is the time."

"Okay, so I took that regeneration skill, you know, based on your advice, but when I upped CON the second time, I was really focusing on finding a way to add Julia as a system user without messing up things between us, you know?"

"And you got offered a new skill," he said, immediately getting what I was trying to say. "What is it?"

"I can't stress enough that I have not accepted it yet. I still have that free point."

He kind of tilted his head to the side. "From your reaction here, this is going to be good, isn't it?"

I hunched my shoulders. "The skill is called ... Bi-Curious."

Seeing him totally shocked was starting to become a common occurrence.

"I mean, I've never found a girl to be remotely attractive sexually, right? I can look at Julia and understand how she's pleasing to the eye and possesses a lot of qualities that guys like, but I never felt anything. But what if I did? Is the system thinking that she and I and you and I and you and her...? Would that mitigate the situation?"

"That's ... That's interesting. Literally the only word I can come up with," he said. "And you're okay with that?"

"I don't know. Would you be?"

"I don't know, either." He blew out a breath. "Regardless, I don't think that we have much of a choice but to at least talk to her about this." He paused. “This all brings up another big moral or ethical or something issue, though. She’s literally dying, and we might have the only cure. We have to be even more careful to eliminate sexual connotations from anything we do. Even above and beyond the impact on our relationship, it is not okay for her to ever feel even a little bit that we’re somehow extorting her for sex, right?”

“How do we even begin to do that? Everything we do has sexual connotations.”

“I take a huge step back. If she agrees to this, you and she decide on the quests and carry them out. Ideally, I won’t even be in the room. You can call me and tell me what to generate.”

“Yeah, okay. That makes sense.” It sounded very embarrassing for me, but that was a price I was more than willing to pay.

Having him come around to my side was a huge relief, and it felt so, so good to not feel like I was lying to him anymore, if even by omission. It was like this weight that I hadn't even realized was pushing me down was suddenly removed. But we hadn't actually accomplished anything yet. We still had to convince Julia that we weren't crazy, and I was really hoping that he had an idea how to do that because I certainly didn't.

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