The Heart Wants Ch. 05-09

Fuck.

What I was disappointed to see was that her revenue model was pretty much that one thing. She was not using a lot in the way of affiliate deals, sponsorships or merch, and considering how popular she was, she probably could have upped that figure pretty significantly had she really applied herself to it.

I tilted my head, as I looked at my laptop. That was really weird. Rachael was a businesswoman, a good one if my instincts were any indication, this should have been something she had figured out. Hell, it hadn't taken me long to figure it out and I wasn't even really trying, I was just satisfying my own curiosity.

Killing my VPN mask, I surfed onto Twitch, and pleasantly surprised, saw that both Laurel and Isha were streaming. I wanted to watch them both but was more interested in Isha's stream. I know it was self-important of me to think I would have any constructive advice to offer, but she seemed like she could use the help a hell of a lot more than Laurel could. I wanted to watch, but also wanted to be able to use my laptop if I wanted to, so I turned on my PS4, downloaded the Twitch application and surfed over to her channel so I could put her on the big screen. Well, it was only a thirty-two-inch television, but it was big to me...

She was playing a Mario game, her face intense with concentration. She kept her eyes on her chat channel and from what I could see, she did an outstanding job of communicating with her audience, and with giving them personal interaction. The more I watched her the more I started to understand what the appeal was for people. It made the watcher feel like they were part of a community. They could comment on the game, on the player, they could interact with the rest of the community in real time. It must have given a lot of people a nice, safe niche that they most likely felt like they could use to express themselves.

Watching her, I grew prouder and prouder of her every minute that I watched. She was doing so good.

Watching her, I got a little guilty about the fact that I had just hacked the holy living shit out of her business...

So, using my laptop, I went about the process of creating a profile, linking it to my bank account, and following her channel.

I created another account to do my main Twitch surfing and linked that account to my PS4.

Logging in on my laptop to the special account I had created just for Isha, I set up the subscription and sent the notification to her. About thirty seconds after I sent it, a little notification popped up on her stream, LinkFromLastNight just subscribed. Along with the text, a little song played, and there was a little dancing dog above it, notifying both her and the audience that I had just subscribed.

She smiled, her hands going up in the air while she held her controller.

"Thank you for that subscription," she glanced from the TV she was obviously playing from to, what I assumed, was a computer monitor to her right, "LinkFrom..."

She looked right into the camera that was recording her and for a second, just a split second, it felt like she was looking right at me. Pausing her game, she raised her hand, her fingers twiddling each in its own in a little wave. She ground her teeth a little, still obviously a little pissed off at me for bailing on her last night, "Thank you, Link, from last night..."

On my laptop, I sent her a tip of twenty bucks with a message, "Sorry about last night. I was a jerk..."

Her chat lit up with comments, "Isha's got a boyfriend!" or just a lot of heart emojis...

She swallowed hard, waving her hand at her face. She continued to read, "hope we can still be friends...?"

Once again, she looked into the camera, a bit of a sneer on her face.

Realizing she was still pissed at me, I sent another message to her, "Maybe next time I can be a little more gentlemanly, maybe take you to lunch to make it up to you?"

Her face softened as she tilted her head, a little smile raising the corners of her mouth, "We'll see Link, from last night..."

Her chat went wild as I smiled.

I went back to work, looking into Laurel's business model. Something about it didn't seem to add up for me... something bothered me so much about it, like a splinter in my mind.

Looking at my following notification I saw the number go from two to one. I looked up at the TV and noticed that Isha was still live streaming, so that must mean that Laurel had just closed up shop. The clock in the bottom right-hand corner of my laptop told me it was just about four-thirty...

Weird. Four-thirty in the afternoon seems like it should be prime hours for her to be streaming... I thought. On my laptop, I tried clicking over to her channel and got the currently offline page for her for a split second, then it jumped over to a feed of Isha's channel. I frowned, realizing that Laurel must have set up something that hosted Isha's channel while she was offline.

Laurel did have a little banner at the bottom of the page that announced her broadcast times, and while she broadcasted daily, the latest she was ever on was six in the evening.

I shrugged, thinking, Maybe she needs to focus on homework... I thought.

I kind of half paid attention to Isha's stream as I did the same financial workup for Laurel that I did for Isha and found where that very nice BMW came from...

Sheesh... my girl Laurel is quite a little money earner... I thought as I realized she was bringing in well over two hundred and fifty thousand a year.

I shook my head as I realized that with just a little work she could probably push that by another fifty or so with just a few little tiny pushes in how she marketed herself.

Course, do I really have the right to look down on her for not doing it? Fuck, she earns more in a year than I do... well, shit... more than I've ever made in probably the entire time I've worked. I thought to myself.

Suddenly, someone started pounding on my door so furiously I startled and nearly dropped my laptop. If it had not been for the fact that I had my feet up on my beat up coffee table, my laptop resting across the top of my legs, I probably would have.

Closing the lid, I set my laptop aside, killed my TV and jumped up to answer the door. Ripping the door open, I found Laurel standing on my doorstep.

Looking at her I felt my heart twist...

Twist way harder than it did when I looked at Isha, twist harder than it had when I thought about Rachel, hell, twist harder than it had for anyone since Brittany had left me with that terrible phone call...

Stop that! My brain screamed at me as I swallowed hard.

She held up a big cardboard box, "Pizza!"

My heart dropped as guilt slammed into my mind. Guilt over what I had done last night. Guilt over how I had acted.

Rachel.

Standing there stupidly I just stared at her.

She smiled, this time putting on a little girl voice, "Can I come in?"

I shook myself out of it, stepping out of the way of the door, "Oh, uh... yeah. Sorry."

She kind of danced into my home, wagging the box around.

Closing the door, not able to look at her, I said awkwardly, "Sorry... I was... uh... just..."

She set the pizza box on my living room table, spinning, "Plates! Fetch! I'm starving!"

Giving her a weak smile, I turned and headed into the kitchen...

You have to tell her... a voice whispered into the back of my mind.

Another voice quickly silenced it, Don't be a fucking fool! Shut your goddamn mouth!

"I was just surprised to see you," I called over my shoulder as I opened one of the cupboards and took out two of the three plates I owned.

Why are you getting plates? She's just going to throw one of them at your head the instant you tell her that you stuck your tongue down her girlfriend's throat! The guilty voice in my head screamed at me.

That was all part of the act...

It was almost as if I could feel the dirty look my mind gave me as I thought about that... Lie to her if you want... but at least have enough pride to not lie to yourself. You enjoyed kissing Rachel.

I could hear her prattling away in the living room as she fished a slice of pizza out of the box, holding her hand beneath it, not waiting for the plate. She stuffed it into her mouth, taking an enormous bite.

She talked around her food, which was fucking adorable, "Rachel had to go out of town on a business trip, and I thought to myself, 'Self! You could sit at home alone, or you could have pizza with Link!' and then I thought, 'Self, not only are you fucking gorgeous, nice ass by the way, but you're intelligent too!'." She smiled at me, satisfied with herself immensely.

I wanted to smile at her joke. I really wanted to, but just looking at her face I knew I had to tell her. I had to come clean with her and hope that somehow, somehow she found it in her heart to forgive me.

Stopping at the door to the kitchen I looked at her. Swallowing hard past the lump in my throat, I forced myself to speak, "Laurel. I... I have to tell you something..."

She smiled at me as she took another bite of pizza, "You kissed Rachel."

I almost choked... "You know?"

"Yeah, Rachel told me," Her mouth still full she nodded, "She's a good kisser, huh?"

Panic surged through me...

She just smiled at me, "Are you going to say something?"

I looked at the floor... "I'm sorry."

"Why? Rachel said you did perfectly. You really helped her out." Her voice was so cheerful, so full of life...

Let it rest... This time, I didn't know which voice was speaking... I don't know if I wanted to know.

Nibbling at my lip I swallowed hard again... "It was... it was... more than that."

She plopped herself into my couch, dropping some of the toppings off of her slice onto the hoodie she was wearing. Swearing, she started picking them out, eating them as she did, "Would you come over here and sit down? And give me that damn plate before I dump the rest of this slice on your..." She looked at the carpet. "Semi-clean floor?"

I couldn't help but smile. She was so fucking adorable...

I went over, sitting not far from her as I handed her a plate. She plopped her slice on it and set her plate aside. Then she took the other plate from me and dropping two slices onto it, handed it back to me, "Here. Eat. Enjoy."

Taking the plate dumbly from her I just sort of stared at the pizza. "I owe you an apology..." I managed to mutter.

Rolling her eyes, she looked at me, "No you don't. Don't beat yourself up over last night. Just stop. Everything's okay."

Setting the plate on the table I again looked at her, "No. It's not. Look, I'm sure Rachel told you about the kiss... but... and this isn't her fault, you understand?"

She smirked at me.

Blundering on, "I flirted with her... I... uh... looked down the front of her dress... multiple times." I wound down looking into my lap.

"You forgot to start out by saying, 'Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned'!" She teased.

I forced myself to look at her, "Laurel, if I thought she would have me... I would have had sex with her last night..."

She dropped her slice on her plate.

Here it comes... I thought to myself in panic.

She raised her eyebrows at me, "You are really going to insist we talk about this, aren't you?"

Miserable, I just looked into her eyes, trying desperately to remember the shade of brown. To remember the way that the light shone off her too thick glasses. The way she absently pushed them back up on her nose...

She sighed, "If you had tried to have sex with Rachel last night, you would have."

A record scratched in my mind... "What?"

She smiled at me, a gesture so incongruous with the moment that I had to work to wrap my brain around it...

"Rachel's a free spirit..."

My brows knitted together, trying to understand.

"And I don't own her." I could see her stop, could see some kind of brake that she applied in her mind, I could see, finally, something that made me think that she was finally uncomfortable about the subject at hand. She swallowed, looking at me. "Can I trust you?"

I nodded, "With anything."

She picked at the food on her plate, "This may not be easy for you to understand, and I really don't want it to... change our relationship." Her eyes looked so vulnerable as she looked at me, "I don't want you to look down on me..."

I slid over next to her, taking her plate, putting it on the table, and then taking her hand, my fingers interlacing between hers. "Look. I really fucked up here, and I'm really lucky that you've given me the chance to explain myself that you have... I have no right to judge you."

She smiled at me, tilting her head at me, the fear, the nervousness gone from her face. "My relationship with Rachel isn't... traditional."

I shrugged, "I get that."

She dipped closer to me, "No. I mean it's even less traditional than that." She shrugged, "Rachel is into guys..."

Looking at her, I tried to wrap my brain around that... "I thought you two... I mean... I thought you and Rachel..." Twisting my head I screwed up my face, "I thought Rachel was into chicks."

Laurel smiled at me, her face a mask of pure joy as she watched me struggle. "She is into chicks. She is also into guys."

I tilted my head to the other side... "Wait..." I added it up, "She... both?"

I'm not stupid. I mean I had heard of bisexual people. Hell, I'm a guy. I watch porn. I'm intimately familiar with the concept of a girl having sex with both a guy and a girl, often at once, and usually in a very uncomfortable looking position, but I just kind of figured that was like a unicorn. Something you heard about, but never saw out in the wild...

She smiled, looking at me trying to wrap my brain around it.

"How does that work?" I blurted out, not thinking, "Wait... I'm... I'm sorry. That's none of my business. I'm sorry."

She shook her head, "It's not a big deal. Look," she said, squeezing my hand tighter. "Sexuality isn't as black and white as everyone seems to want to make it seem." She curled into herself a little, "Or, at least that's what I think. Think of it as a number scale, where one is completely gay, and a hundred is completely straight."

Her eyes came up, locking in on me, "Have you never seen a guy and realized he was cute?"

I felt my face go all wonky...

She laughed, "So, never? Never seen a guy and thought, I can see why someone would be attracted to him..."

I thought about it. I mean I really took the thought into my mind and twisted it around, like a jagged chunk of metal I was slowly handling, wary of cutting myself on the sharp edges. I took a deep breath, sighing it out, "I mean, yeah, I guess so." I looked at her, my eyes narrowed a bit, "But the thought of having sex with a guy..." I shivered a bit, just thinking about it, "I think I could if I absolutely had to, like life or death, but I think it would be... very difficult."

She smiled, "And that's okay. So, you're like a ninety-five."

I narrowed my eyes even further.

She amended, "Okay, like a ninety-eight?"

I laughed, giving her hand a playful squeeze.

"Rachel is like a forty-nine or a fifty. Honestly, with her, I feel like she could have gone either way with her relationship and been happy." She cleared her throat, "She was in a couple of steady relationships with guys before she and I met. I think she's with me because she loves me, and for her, that's enough."

Something about what she said, and the way she said it made me feel so protective of her. Turning, I slid so I was more beside her, and wrapped my arm around her. We still held hands, our thumbs flicking off of each other's like we were having the worlds laziest thumb wrestling match. She laid her head on my shoulder, rubbing her face against me as she nestled in.

"So how does that work? You two love each other, and you have a relationship... but you?" I asked, trying to understand without trying to seem like I was prying.

Something about the way she held herself made me think she was smiling. "We just don't have a lot of rules. At least not ones we've set for each other. We can be with who we want when we want."

"So, you both just have sex with whoever you want?"

She picked at the leg of my pants with her free hand, "Well, yeah, technically. I mean... I don't." She looked up at me, something like panic in her face, "I could if I wanted to. I mean, Rachel wouldn't get mad or anything."

I could see where the panic came from. She was worried. She was worried that I would think she was weak. That she was with someone that dominated her. That only took from her.

Thinking about it, I didn't think that was the case. I didn't know Rachel very well, but she didn't seem like she was the type that dominated Laurel. Yes, she seemed like she was very sexual, but when I looked at her while she was watching Laurel, I could see something in her eyes, something magical. If someone put me on the spot and asked me, I would swear that Rachel did really love her...

I kept my eyes on hers, "And you're okay with that. With her having sex with other people, even when you don't?"

There was no judgment in my voice. The truth was, there was no judgment in my voice because there was none in my heart.

She smiled at me, nodding, "Yeah. I just want Rachel to be happy. I want to be happy too. I see Rachel and sometimes there's something in her, like something coiled up, ready to snap. And then, once I know she's been with a man, that goes away."

I felt my face screw up. I was thankful she wasn't looking at me because I knew in my heart that she would have taken that as me judging her. "And that doesn't bother you? I mean, that would bother me." I thought about it, "I think I'd feel... I don't know... inadequate."

She looked up at me and the smile on her face made me forget about my worries for her.

She sees the world so beautifully... God, I wish I could see the world like that. With wonder... so much wonder... I thought to myself, feeling something twist painfully in my heart.

"You should see her when she goes out of town for a long time. She comes home, and there's this look in her eyes." Her free hand made a little clawing motion. She dropped back into me, her body relaxing, "And oh my god... she's like a wild animal. It makes me feel so... so powerful. Like she needs me. Like she would die if she couldn't have me."

She leaned back out of me, looking at me, "Her sex drive is so strong. I think without having a man occasionally, and a woman occasionally, she'd snap. And she's never with another woman. She only shares that," She emphasized the word, "with me. And it makes me feel so special..."

"And she tells you when she's been with someone else?"

She nodded, "Yep. Sometimes she describes it to me... sometimes... we make a game of it."

I felt myself start to stiffen at that, mental pictures starting to slide into place in my mind.

"Sometimes, she goes down on me, and as she's doing it... she'll describe how she seduced a man... or sometimes I'm doing something for her while she describes it, and I'll try to do it that way, and she'll get all goose-pimply... it's so, so hot..." I could see her eyes lose focus as she poured through a few mental images herself...

I tilted my head, watching her. Seeing her joy at her complicated life... "And you like that?"

She threw her head back, groaning, "Oh! I love that! It's one of my favorite things to do when I know she's been with a man... It makes me wish sometimes I could experience that... and she sees that. I think it really turns her on."

She bit her lip, "Can I tell you something really naughty?"

I laughed, "Naughtier you mean?"

She smiled and I could see it was difficult for her to control her excitement, "Sometimes..." she leaned a little closer, licking her lips, "Sometimes... I'll pick a guy... and I'll point him out to her... and she'll look at me with this little smile... and she'll ask me... him?" Her head rocked back a bit as her hand slid across her stomach... "And then... she'll have sex with him... and she'll come home... and we'll act it out... she'll be him... and I'll be her..."