Title: Affection Multiplier App: The Boyfriend
By: BreaktheBar
Chapter 3
It was a quiet hour of driving before we were closing in on Lake Powell. The trip from Vegas, where Cassidy and I had moved together after college, was supposed to take just under four and a half hours, dipping through southern Utah and northern Arizona, but with our stops we were closer to five and a half.
“Why cosplaying?” I asked. We hadn’t talked much since the facefucking—I’d asked a few questions about the App, and she’d answered with what answers she could give me. Points accumulated as you raised scores with people and met certain thresholds. She’d only ever gotten Love points from me, my family, and her family. The couple of times early on in her cheating that her affair partners—I corrected her on that the first time she said ‘one of the girls’ and she accepted it—started to gain Love points, and she distanced herself quickly. Another line she drew in the sand for herself. All of her points had come from Affection and Lust scores.
Cassidy turned to look at me and scrunched her eyebrows together. “What do you mean?”
“After you dropped out of college and took that job at the hotel, that’s when you started your social media stuff and cosplaying,” I said. “Has the App been helping you with that, too? Even if you weren’t using it?”
“Mm-mm,” she shook her head. “The App only activates when I meet someone or interact with them in person. If someone sees a picture of a video with me on social, or even if we send emails or have a phone call, there’s no effect. I took the night shift at the hotel because I wouldn’t be interacting with many people and wanted to be focused on you, and then I started the social media stuff because I knew I—” she stopped and took a deep breath. “Look, you’ve heard my sister say for years she felt like I was living my life with cheat codes. It always pissed me off, but it was because it was true. And I didn’t like it. Doing social media stuff? Every like, or follower, or subscriber—it’s all because of Me. Not the App. The App can’t make my cosplay outfits look cooler; at least, I don’t think it can. I put in the work, and the internet decides if it was worthwhile. No outside influence.”
“That makes a roundabout sort of sense,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “And I love you.”
I exhaled and pressed my lips together, unable to decide if my heart was hurting or surging every time she said it.
We drove into Page, a town on the south end of the winding Lake Powell, crossing over a bridge that spanned the Colorado River and looked out at the Glen Canyon Dam. Usually, this would have been the time that Cassidy would want me to pull over so that we could take a picture, but neither of us was really in the mood.
Just a little way into the town I found a liquor store and pulled in. We both hopped out since the plan had always been that we’d pick up our drinks for the week here in Page—food was being organized by the woman who organized the trip, and we’d paid money ahead for it.
As we walked into the store from the parking lot, I noticed that Cassidy hadn’t bruised, thank God, but she did look like she had a red welt in the shape of some fingers crawling out from her daisy dukes onto the top of her thigh.
Inside the store, I quickly went to the back and got a case of Heineken for myself, and a case of a cider Cassidy liked, while she stayed near the front of the store to fetch the liquors we liked for mixing and some wine from the racks. As I walked back carrying the two heavy boxes of bottles, I saw Cassidy had a freezer door open and was selecting some mixers to go with the vodka and was slightly bent over at the waist. Beyond her, a greasy-looking guy was lounging at the counter working a toothpick in his teeth and staring at Cassidy’s ass.
A surge of anger rolled through me, but I managed to quash it.
Cassidy stood up, slipping two mixes into the basket she was carrying and turned to walk to the counter with me. As I glanced over at her I noticed that her crop top was showing off two obvious nipple bumps.
Now, usually, this would embarrass the hell out of her and she would want me to signal that it was happening. On any normal day I would, discreetly, and she’d either use me to block or she’d head out to the car.
But I was still pissed off, and resentful. And even though I knew it was petty, I didn’t say anything.
As I approached the counter, the store clerk flicked his toothpick away behind the counter and stood up, obviously eyeing Cassidy. I set the two cases I was carrying on the counter and turned, taking the basket of bottles from my fiance.
She smiled at me, her eyes hidden behind her sunglasses but I could still see the sadness in that smile. The guilt. The grief. The self-loathing.
Fuck, I was being a child.
I fished the truck keys out of my pocket and handed them to her. “I’ll take care of this,” I said. “Go get the gate unlocked and the cooler ready.”
“”Kay,” she nodded, and I could tell she wanted to go up on her tiptoes and give me a peck on the lips, but she hesitated. She wasn’t sure if that would be OK, and that killed me. It fucked with my head. Made me feel like the bad guy. But I wasn’t.
I turned back to the counter, and she sauntered out of the store.
“Nice piece of ass,” the store clerk said, watching her go through the front windows. “Looks like you had to teach her who’s boss a bit, eh?”
I drilled holes into the guy with my glare. “Hey,” I said, making him look away from Cassidy and back to me. He took a step back when he saw my eyes. “If any more than ‘thank you’ comes out of your mouth before I leave this store, I am inches from starting to break shit. Glass, bones, whatever. I’m that fucking on edge. So ring up the drinks.”
He looked like he wanted to say something, but I started unloading the basket, not quite slamming the bottles onto the countertop, and he swallowed and looked down, starting to do his job. He rang me through and bagged the bottles, and I paid.
“Thank you,” he said, as I put the paper bag of bottles on top of the two cases of beer and hefted the entire thing.
“Get a fucking life,” I grunted and backed my way out of the store.
Cassidy could see the look on my face as I crossed the parking lot to her. She was standing near the open tailgate of my truck, and she got concerned quickly. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m fucked in the head,” I said. “He was staring at your ass, and you were poking out, and then he said some dumb shit when you left. I’m jealous and pissed and feel like an ass for not warning you about your nipples.”
“Fuck, I forgot to put my bra on,” Cassidy said. “Tiger, I’m so sorry I forgot. That’s my fault.”
She hadn’t called me by her nickname for me since the conversation. I’d dressed up as Spider-Man at school for Halloween our senior year, and she’d dressed up as Mary Jane Watson. She played it up, calling me Tiger, and hadn’t ever stopped.
“No, I’m the one who didn’t tell you,” I said. “And I almost threw a punch at that guy when he opened his idiot mouth. That’s on me.”
“No, that’s on me too,” she said. “You’ve never been the jealous type. Now you know, and things are different.”
I swallowed and took a breath. Was I really jealous? I knew there wouldn’t be any shot in hell of something happening between Cassidy and that dude. I knew that. “I think… I think I’m not jealous,” I said. “I think I’m feeling… this is going to sound kind of fucked up, but I’m possessive? I don’t feel like you’re mine the way you were before, and that guy just looking at you…”
She hugged me, burying her face into my chest as she started crying again and grabbed my shirt, clinging to me.
I hugged her back, softly at first, but then harder until I was squeezing her.
We just stood there for a good five minutes as the tears flowed, me quietly and her softly sobbing.
Finally, we let go and started moving again, getting the alcohol bottles into the cooler and the cases tucked into the truck bed. Before I shut the gate and pulled one of Cassidy’s luggage forward, the one I knew she had regular clothes in. “Your, ah, your ass is pretty red,” I said. “You should probably cover that up.”
She stopped, biting her lip and thinking. “Your choice. I want people to know that I’m yours, in every way. I deserve way more than one red ass cheek. But it could also raise questions.”
“Cover it,” I said. I actually didn’t think answering questions would be the problem, it would be if anyone stared again.
“OK,” she said. She unzipped her luggage and dug through it, coming out with a pair of black tights and zipping it back up.
When we were back in the truck, Cassidy slipped her daisy dukes off her hips and down her legs, revealing the slim maroon bikini-style panties she was wearing.
“Hold on, let me see it,” I said, and she shifted in the seat to show me her ass. There was a clear red handprint on her ass still. “Fuck, I’m going to need to rub some aloe on that before you wear a bikini.”
“You don’t have to,” she said. “I’ll tell everyone I asked for it.”
“No,” I said. “No. I’m going to make sure we take care of that.”
“OK,” she said quietly, then sat back down and started pulling on her tights. “Thank you, Tiger.”
She pulled on the tights, which were three-quarter length down her legs to her calves, and then pulled the daisy dukes back on over them. Once she was settled, I put the truck in motion and we were headed north up the river, looking for the pier where we were supposed to meet the group.
A dozen women and a few significant others—all models, cosplayers and streamers—coming together for a week of houseboat vacations and photoshoots in costumes, bikinis or whatever else they brought with them. And my fiance wanted me to have sex with any of them that I wanted.
I turned to Cassidy and shook my head, still struggling in my head and my heart. I reached over and used a couple fingers to sweep some loose hair behind her ear, and she turned to me questioningly. “I do still love you,” I said. “It’s just hard to like you right now.”
She pressed her lips together, eyes brimming with tears again, and she nodded. The conflict there, happy I said it, guilt-ridden that I said it, is what made me know this wasn’t done. We weren’t done.
I looked forward again, driving.
If we’re not done, where are we going?
* * *