Page 20 of Until Tomorrow (Love Doesn’t Cure All: The Ashwood Duet #1)

Logan

“I’ve slowed down a bit as our family dynamic changed,” Loren continued. “I was more actively searching for a causal partner before we had Sophia. Now, I’m actively searching for a nap.”

“Amen,” Katy chimed in with a small giggle. She shifted in her chair, moving her daughter from one shoulder to the other. “By now, I feel like he’s said my name enough times for everyone to know it. Loren and I have been together most of our lives. Avery, here, is my partner as well.”

“Hello.” The man next to her waved slightly from his spot. It was clear as day that he wasn’t as outgoing as the others. He dressed in business casual clothing with his blond hair neatly combed. Hazel eyes softened as Katy smiled at him.

“It’s kind of a funny story, actually,” she said. “Avery was my first boyfriend back when we were teenagers, but he moved away for school, life happened, and all that. It wasn’t until eight years ago that we ran into each other in a coffee shop.”

“And we’ve been pretty much inseparable since,” he finished for her.

“We’re a monogamous-polyamorous relationship because Katy is my only partner.

I’ve always been a more introverted individual, and I just don’t have the energy to invest in more than one person romantically.

The four of us as a whole are very close.

Loren and Jack are as much my family as Katy is. ”

“That’s okay,” Jack said. “I’m extroverted enough for all of us.”

“ We know,” Loren replied. “The four of us have a house together—nice neighborhood, lots of growing room.”

“He built the house,” Katy told us with an immeasurable amount of pride in her voice.

“I fixed it up,” he corrected. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

“It is a big deal,” Jack cut in. “I can’t even build an Ikea table.”

“No one can build an Ikea table,” Loren said, making everyone laugh. “What I did was rearrange the structure of our house to better suit our needs. Avery has an entire space on the first floor that’s his—home office, bedroom, and bathroom. It’s a nice bathroom. I’m happy with how that turned out.”

“Me too,” Avery agreed.

“Upstairs is mine and Katy’s room, along with Sophia’s room.

The basement is built out into an apartment-style suite for Jack when he is in town,” he stated.

“Now, I say we have these spaces, but truly, we rotate. Katy and I don’t spend every night together.

Some nights she’s with Avery while I take over nighttime duties with Sophia.

When Jack is in town, we make it work for me to spend time with him. ”

“And you have to understand that may be their baby, but she’s our baby,” Jack said. “It’s not like they’re rotating schedules around so that Avery and I don’t have to deal with the princess.”

“Not at all,” Avery agreed. “We all love her and take care of her as a family. Has it been an adjustment? Yes, but anyone having a kid has to adjust.”

“I think that’s honestly what a lot of people have a limited view on what polyamory is,” Loren said. “The media has really skewed the perspective. Everyone thinks that anyone in a polyamorous relationship is over here having orgies.”

“But I am having orgies,” Jack cut in. I chuckled as others laughed.

“And you’re alone—”

“That’s not how orgies work,” he retorted over Loren, who broke down laughing harder.

“Fine! Fine !” Loren exclaimed. “Jack is having orgies, but he’s one of the exceptions.

Most polyamorous relationships aren’t harems or reverse harems. They’re distinctive relationships between two people who may also have outside relationships as well.

We don’t have Sunday night orgies. We have Sunday night chore discussions. ”

“We’re painfully normal,” Katy agreed, smiling. “We talk about chores and meal plans. We discuss our schedules and plan our weeks. We talk about the bills and grocery shopping. We go on dates and stay in. The only real difference is the number of partners we have.”

A hand shot up in the front.

“We do not raise hands here, buddy,” Loren said with a chuckle. “Ask away.”

“How did you decide polyamory was for you? Or did you just wake up polyamorous?”

Thank you, Mark, for asking what I was thinking.

“I don’t think it’s the kind of thing you just wake up and you magically are,” Jack commented.

“Society is programmed for monogamy,” Avery replied, “and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it limits the view people have about other kinds of relationships. A lot of polyamory begins with an open mind and discussing what polyamory looks like for you and your partner.”

“Loren and I were early into our relationship when we discussed polyamory. We’d been dating… what? A year?” Katy asked and swiveled in the chair to look at Loren.

“I mean, I’d been dating you for eleven years at that point,” Loren teased.

“But yeah, we’d been together for about a year when it was a conversation we had.

It took me a while to figure out my sexuality.

Honestly, I was a bit late to the whole dating game.

I had a lot going on and didn’t think about dating until I was in my early twenties, which is fine.

No big deal. Everyone grows differently.

But we had some struggles early on because I was still trying to sort myself out. ”

“And it wasn’t a foreign concept to me,” she added.

“My parents are polyamorous. They didn’t have a house with their partners like we have—it’s different for everyone—but I know their partners, I love their partners, and they’re my family.

I had never really thought about it for myself, but it wasn’t like I was opposed to it.

So, when we started talking more about his sexuality, it just made sense.

There was nothing wrong with our relationship, but his needs extended beyond what I could offer. ”

“Which was a wild concept to me at first,” Loren admitted. “Though, honestly, I think it made me more comfortable to explore what it was that I wanted for my life because I didn’t have to give up one to have the other .”

Eva’s hand tightened around mine. I couldn’t look at her. All of it hit home a little too hard, which maybe she realized from the way my leg bounced anxiously.

“ Obviously, their situation is one reason,” Avery said.

“There are any number of reasons why someone could choose a polyamorous lifestyle. It doesn’t have to come down to sexuality.

For me, I have a limited social battery.

I was homeschooled because of it, and I did online college.

I just… I have a week of self-care planned just to deal with doing an event like this.

I like this arrangement because I can be more selective about the time and energy I invest in Katy.

I give her everything I can, but it’s comforting knowing she has Loren because I know I leave a lot to be desired. ”

“I don’t think you leave anything to be desired,” Katy told him, and he merely shrugged. “But I understand where you’re coming from.”

“The whole point is there’s no one definitive checkbox you have to cross off if you’re interested in the poly lifestyle,” Jack stated.

“So, where does polyamory fit into the LGBTQ community?”

“It doesn’t,” Avery replied.

“Straight, straight,” Loren pointed down the line, starting with Avery and then Katy, “I’m bisexual, and Jack’s just an agent of chaos at this point.”

“It’s true,” Jack agreed. “I have more fun that way. The fact is, you can have a whole polycule of straight people. Sexuality isn’t a factor. Though, last I checked, it is more common among the queer community.”

“When was the last time you checked?” Loren demanded with a grin. Stomping, Jack made a show of standing and pulling out his phone.

“Google and I are best friends,” he muttered as he typed something into his phone.

“No one wants to know your porn history, Jay,” Katy teased.

“Please, I use incognito. Google don’t know a thang, ” he retorted. “And I’m right according to Google.”

“Why are we raising hands?” Loren exclaimed and waved to someone in the audience. “Talk to us. Shout it out. It’s an open-floor discussion. No hand raising. I feel like I’m back in school.”

“You are in a school,” Jack reminded him.

“Shut it, Captain.” He chuckled. “What’s your question, dear?”

“If you had to give one piece of advice to anyone interested in polyamory, what would it be?” the young woman asked.

“Communication,” Avery and Katy answered simultaneously.

“What they said,” Jack agreed, pointing down the row.

“Talk about everything. Literally everything,” Katy elaborated.

“That doesn’t mean sit there and give all the intimate details, but you can’t keep secret s.

You can’t hope your partners just figure things out.

You have to talk, talk, talk. And then talk some more.

Feelings, needs, wants, boundaries, all of it. Everyone must be in the same place.”

“The minute you start keeping things from each other is the minute you fail,” Loren said.

Why, out of everything, was that what stuck out? Not that everything else hadn’t made me feel in some kind of way. The conversation moved on, but I was stuck on that single notion.

Not talking to Eva had been where all of this started.

What might’ve happened if I had talked to her in the first place?

That what-if stuck with me was the star of my late-night and drunken thoughts.

Talking was never something I was good at.

Feelings and matters of the heart were something I struggled to articulate.

But I was drowning. At least I felt like I was. Not talking about it wasn’t making it any better. Maybe it was a sign that I needed to start talking—at the very least to Eva.