The plan was to go out. However, after Lucy and Anastasia joined Kris and Abigail in the bed, they ended up staying in until everybody else was awake… and once the others found out about the four in the bed, they wanted to join in, too, so that they wouldn’t be left out.
Before Kris knew it, he was in bed with all of his girlfriends who were all in various states of being unclothed. That was it, though. All they did was rather innocently lie in bed together. Sure, Anastasia and Lucy might have gotten a bit touchy with each other at times when nobody else was paying attention, but even that began and ended with teasing.
It wasn’t until Kris suddenly had an idea and said, “Oh, I have an idea,” that anything else was going to get done. “I know what we can do for a date.”
Rachel was the first to excitedly ask, “Yeah? What?”
“Roller skating.”
“Roller… skating? That sounds kind of familiar… it’s like ice skating, right?”
“Yeah, but with wheels instead of blades. You never been?”
“Nope! I’m not sure I’ve ever even seen it before. It just kind of sounds vaguely familiar.”
Iris joined in by explaining, “Probably because such an activity is… very dated. Some hobbies have stood the test of time, and others… not so much. I am not sure I have ever even seen roller skates in stores before. You likely have to order them online as I doubt there are any specialty stores dedicated to them, and they are not sold in regular stores.”
“Yeah,” Kris said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen them in normal stores either, but the local rink sells them. Oh, but you don’t have to buy any. You can borrow a pair there.”
“Kris,” Lucy said.
“Yeah?”
“Have you forgotten what happened the last time you went skating?”
“Uhhh… you mean when I caused that explosion?”
The rest of his girlfriends blinked when they heard that, including Abigail who was reading his lips.
“What’s that about an explosion?” Emily asked. “How the heck did you do that?”
Kris, with a totally unashamed voice, explained, “Oh, well, there was like this themed tiki party night thing and they had some torches around the place, and some kids gave me something and told me if I put it in one of the torches, so I did, and then it exploded. But like, it was a little explosion.”
Lucy sighed as she recalled the event in far more detail. “A ‘little explosion,’ he says.” She then grabbed his head with one hand and pulled his hair back away from his forehead with the other, pointing at a small scar near the top of his forehead. “He’s not including the part where he almost died because a piece of wood flew into his forehead and barely missed his brain.”
“But it missed, so it’s okay.”
As for the other girlfriends, they put Lucy’s disappointment to shame with their emotions. Rachel, Iris, and Abigail looked at Kris with the expression of a worried mother who was furious about her child doing something stupid and putting himself in harm’s way.
Emily and Anastasia, though, looked ready to earn a jail sentence.
“Where do the little bastards live?” Emily asked.
Kris answered, “Oh, they live over on—”
Unfortunately for Emily, Lucy noticed the murderous intent in her eyes and covered up Kris’s mouth. “A-ah! It’s okay! As—as you’ve probably figured out by now, Kris is kinda like… everybody’s favorite local teddy bear, so… people were not happy when they found out that he was tricked like that. Trust me, revenge has already been dished out, and the kids who did it basically turned into totally new people after it… or they’re just suffering from PTSD.”
When Lucy uncovered Kris’s mouth, he said, “Oh, I saw one of them the other week. It was kinda weird. He gave me his wallet then ran away. Maybe he thought I was homeless?”
“Yep, PTSD.”
Iris brushed her hand over Kris’s scar and gave him a stern look directly in the eyes. “Kris, you can’t trust everything people say, especially when it comes to putting things in fire.”
“But they were just kids,” Kris replied.
“All the more reason not to trust them when it comes to fire.”
“I don’t know, kids are pretty smart these days. They probably know more about fire than I did growing up, and I played with fire all the time even when I was younger than them.”
Lucy placed a hand on Kris’s shoulder. “Kris, trust me when I say that your girlfriends don’t need to know about how many times you’ve almost set yourself on fire… or have set yourself on fire…”
“It’s okay. Now I get to be like those chefs who can touch really hot things and put their hands in fire without feeling anything.”
“That’s only supposed to apply to their hands, not other parts of their body…”
Kris looked at the others and said, “I can stand on hot coals and not feel a thing. Pretty cool, right?”
“Kris,” Rachel said, “I think you’re supposed to walk across them before the heat transfers…”
“I know.”
“You’re… not supposed to stand on them.”
“Yeah. But I don’t feel anything if I do, so I can.”
Lucy looked at Rachel and shook her head. “The less you know about his past, the more peaceful you’ll feel. Honestly, I’m amazed he’s still alive sometimes.”
“Nothing comes close to that brownie,” Kris said. “Now that was scary. That was the only time I ever felt like I was going to die.”
Iris blinked a couple of times, her inner chef growing curious regarding how a brownie could make Kris fear for his life. “How did a brownie accomplish that?”
Lucy sighed and let Kris do the explaining. “Well, we were at a party back in college, and there were these brownies, and they looked really good, so I ate a bunch of them. I don’t know, there was just something about their taste that made them like, super chewy and delicious. They were like the best brownies I’ve ever had in my whole life. Nobody else was eating them either because they were playing games and swimming and stuff, so I thought it’d be okay if I ate a bunch. Uhh, then like, an hour later, I started to feel funny, and then I thought I was going to die. It was wild. Like, my mind felt like it splintered into thousands of different personalities and they were all arguing and screaming at each other about whether garlic bread could still be called garlic bread if it was toasted, because shouldn’t it be called garlic toast if it’s toasted instead of garlic bread? But yeah. I ended up going to the hospital screaming about garlic bread while thinking I was going to die, then they put me in a bed and hooked liquid garlic bread to my veins. I found out later I was apparently really high and it was just like, normal hospital liquid, not liquid garlic bread.”
“Oh. They were those kinds of brownies.”
Lucy nodded. “We don’t let drugs around Kris for the same reason he doesn’t let alcohol around himself anymore. He does… not do good with anything mind-altering…”
“Wait, you’re a chef,” Kris said to Iris. “Should we call it garlic bread or garlic toast? Because toast is toasted bread, and bread usually implies untoasted bread, but isn’t most garlic bread toasted? So, shouldn’t it be called garlic toast instead of garlic bread?”
“It can be called either, Kris,” Iris answered.
“But that’s like saying a fruit can be called an apple or an orange. They’re two totally different things.”
“It would be like calling a sliced apple either an apple or apple slices, not an apple or an orange.”
“Exactly! They’re different things! But some people would call apple slices an apple!”
Emily looked down at Abigail. “It’s a good thing somebody here has the brains covered.”
Kris’s girlfriends had many reasons to love him.
His intelligence was not one of those reasons.
Eventually, after Kris kept on giving his girlfriends reasons to worry about him without meaning to, the group got dressed and went out to the roller rink. It was a rather large venue with a ceiling that could open and close over the oval-shaped rink below, and the rink wasn’t the only entertainment available. On the opposite side of it was a small bowling alley with only a limited number of lanes, and then there was an arcade section with several retro game cabinets. There was also a small buffet area for anybody who got hungry.
Overall, the establishment looked like the perfect hybrid of 1990s entertainment. A roller rink, a bowling alley, an arcade, and a miniature buffet all in one.
And yet, upon entering the building, the reaction to seeing a group of maids was the smallest out of everywhere else they went. Nobody seemed to particularly care that there were multiple women dressed up in classical maid uniforms showing up at a roller rink.
It was also further proven that everybody really did know Kris when the employee behind the front counter instantly recognized him. “Kris! How’s your head doing?” the employee, a young man, asked.
“It’s still good,” Kris answered.
“That’s good. And… I see that you’ve brought some company this time?” The employee looked the maids over. “Ooh… let me guess, you’re getting into derby management now?”
“Nah. These are my girlfriends. And Lucy. Well, Lucy’s also my girlfriend now.”
Lucy’s face went red when she heard those words, giggling to herself while the maids gave the employee a curtsy in unison.
“… huh. Well, alright,” the employee said. “I guess that makes sense. Yeah, makes sense. Lucky.” He cleared his throat. “Anyways, just thought it was another themed team for the derby nights.”
“Nah.”
“Derby nights?” Rachel asked. “What are those?”
“You familiar with roller derby?” Kris asked.
Rachel shook her head.
“Well, I don’t really know all the rules, but you get a couple teams of skaters who skate around the rink and they try to uh… it’s like racing but you’re allowed to get physical and block each other and stuff, I think.”
“Close enough,” the employee joined in. “We have a few different teams who participate in our local league. They started a tradition a couple years ago of dressing up in various themes, so… I thought we were about to have a maid-themed team participate!”
Iris politely raised her hand to get in her response. “None of us have even skated before, so that is beyond our reach.”
“Skating newbies, huh? Well, Kris and Lucy are pretty good! I’m sure they’ll turn you all into proper skaters before long.”
Meanwhile, Emily was watching something on her phone. “Woah… this looks hella cool…”
When Lucy peeked at her phone, she saw a video of a roller derby match on it. “It’s pretty fun to watch live! Everybody gets super into it.”
“I feel like I just found a new calling…”
“Well,” the employee said, “if you want, the local teams are always looking for more members! And we’re always accepting new teams in general.”
Emily didn’t even look at the employee as she nodded. She was too entranced by the video.
“How much will renting some skates for everybody be?” Kris asked as he pulled out his wallet.
The employee was about to shake his head before he remembered how Kris could be about insisting on paying. “Ten a pair, rink and buffet access included.”
With a nod, Kris took his card out from his wallet to pay while more of his girlfriends found themselves drawn to the video on Emily’s phone.
Kris had no idea about the fire being ignited within his girlfriends. And fortunately for him, it wasn’t an explosive fire like he was so familiar with.