Rising Shards

After work, I got a message from Alix. I excitedly opened it to see she sent a meme of an office worker upside down at their desk. Then another from a recent sci-fi movie, and a few more memes, all disparate and mostly unfunny.

"Um...did you need something?" I messaged back. "Or is there some connection between these random memes that I'm not getting?"

"Long day," Was all I got in response.

I asked if she wanted to hang out, so we decided to go to a smoothie shop in town. I was going to get a cutesy big double date smoothie with matching twisty straws, but it was absurdly expensive so we settled for watermelon and peach smoothies respectively. Alix looked like she was going to fall into hers with how low she held her head.

"Wanna talk about it? Or do you want a distraction from it, maybe?" I asked.

"No, I'll talk about it," Alix said. "Basically, so like this faculty and staff era, right? They hired some new people, and Kitty was introducing them, and one was...kind of an enemy of mine."

"Was it that lady you were a maid for?" I asked.

"No, thankfully," Alix said. "This one is Snowglobe, I dunno what she's doing here, but it was awkward. Kitty had me apologize to an enemy. I weighed it out with my patented tactical imagination technique, and decided apologizing was the best route."

She explained a bit more how her meeting with Snowglobe went, and a bit about their past together.

"You seem to have a lot of enemies," I said.

Alix looked up mournfully, with some smoothie on her face.

"Is that maybe a deal breaker?" Alix asked.

"I dunno, it's weirdly kinda hot," I said. "You get in a lot more situations than I do."

Alix's eyes sparkled like a puppy's. "Really?"

"Yeah really! And you apologized so it sounds like it all worked out," I said.

"Huh..." Alix said. "I also feel kinda bad, because when I was in my tactical imagination technique, I pictured, erm..." She pressed her fingertips together. "Kinda daydreamed about the four of us, you know. Together."

I stirred my smoothie a bit. "Why do you feel bad about that?"

"Because! It's like...I don't know..." Alix said. She was really adorable. Was that the main reason she was down, because she thought she'd upset me?

"It's just horny daydreams, there's nothing wrong with that," I said. "We're not even technically dating yet so it's even less of a thing, Alix. Seriously, don't worry about it. We were talking polycule stuff on the trip, it's understandable that your imagination went right to that."

"Well, still..." Alix put her hand on the table, sheepishly inching it forward. "Even if we're not officially together, I don't want to hurt you."

I reached my own hand over to hers. "That's so sweet, Alix."

She blushed, mumbling something I couldn't quite make out.

"So Snowglobe too, huh? Between her and Kitty, who would you rather have with us?" I asked. It was maybe a bit too forward a question given how guilty Alix seemed to feel, but maybe talking it through could help. "You can answer both also."

"Um...both would be cool, yeah..." Alix laughed nervously, blushing even harder. "But even if we do, I, um...it's going to sound corny..."

"Then I'll go back up to the front and order the corn smoothie to prepare," I said.

"They have corn smoothies?" Alix asked. "Is that normal?"

"Yeah, I saw it on the menu!" I said. "But tell me your corny thing first."

Alix wore a crooked grin as she finally got the words out. "I want you to be my main girl, even if we have other people, I think I'll like you the most."

"Awww," I squeezed her hand. "I can't guarantee I'll be your main girl, just because we're only just starting, but I'd like that too."

Our eyes met. It was also corny to think, but it really felt like she and I were alone in the smoothie place in that moment.

"Want to come over tonight?" I asked. "I don't have anything going on, so I'd love to have you."

Alix's eyes widened. "I'll check my schedule..."

"If you're busy it's no problem," I said. "I'm sure you have a lot of papers to correct and junk like that."

"Yeah, probably..." Alix pouted. "I don't wanna do stupid work, I wanna hang out with you."

"Well, how about a date on Friday?" I suggested. "Get your work done, then we'll see a movie or something. Then come over to my place."

I'm not ashamed to admit I wanted her badly right then, and if she asked to go hook up in the bathrooms of the local Smoothies 'n Such I would not have turned her down. But we did have to be a little responsible with work and all. We got the date in our calendars, and then decided to go back to the front to see if we could get a sample of the corn smoothie because we had to know how that tasted.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!