Obviously, opening a relationship was a can of worms in itself but it seemed like Rachel and Jennifer had a lot of stuff to talk about yet refused to do so. Communication was always key in these kinds of situations and the two chose a band-aid "fix" to their relationship, not an actual solution.
Allowing one's partner to sleep around in an open relationship or a semi-open one had a lot of reasons from couple to couple or anything in excess and in between.
One could be that one or both of them needed to explore because they missed out on a lot of things, wanted to try something they couldn't with their partner, had straight-up curiosity, had this want to involved more people in their relationship sexually or emotionally, etc.
My relationship with Kaley was unique in itself and although the arrangement of additional partners was skewed towards me—even if she was bisexual—we had started to break into a different power dynamic when we were alone and it was definitely geared towards her wants.
Almost always, both parties should be okay with each other's needs and wants and tend to avoid compromises or deals that would make it seem transactional, but in our case, Kaley and I were half and half on both of those things and we were making it work.
But yeah, as soon as Rachel was about to open up, we heard a sudden knock on the door:
"Rache'! Open up! It's me! W-We need to talk..."
Rachel had never been so shocked, "I-It's Jenn! It's Jenn! What do I do?!"
Kaley instantly tried to calm her down, "Well, what do you wanna do?"
"W-Well—"
"Rache'! I know you're in there with my little brother and his wife! It's totally cool, okay?! I slept with their posse too so we're kinda even... Besides, we both agreed on it, right? T-They're here too s-so... A little weird but we got to talking after and 'we' were brought up—"
Rachel then shouted at the right volume, "W-What do you want?!"
"I really just wanted to talk... And to say sorry..."
"..."
"Rache'?"
Rachel turned to us for advice but Kaley and I pointed at the mess we made inside her room. Additionally, Jennifer also had broad shoulders so adding her on top of everyone else coming inside to have a talk, it'd be a little uncomfortable.
Though Jennifer was a little persistent with her knocking:
"A-Again, I'm sorry—"
"WHAT ARE YOU SORRY FOR?! YOU KEPT SAYING THE DAMN WORD AND NOT THE REASON FOR IT!"
"It's... I panicked, alright?!"
"Panicked?! You try to calm down when you panic, not break up with your girl—"
"Hold up, hold up, don't mix my words here, I didn't say we break up, alright? I said to take a break—"
"It's pretty much the same thing when you told me we could sleep around! How could that help us?!"
"Y-You slept with someone else the night I told you we're cooling off, how'd you think that made me feel?!"
"JENN, I WAS HURT! I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO FUCKING DO! Why bother telling me we could sleep with other people if you're gonna come up here and get mad at me?! That's not fair! YOU were the one that suggested it I just followed! Like every single fucking time!
And the moment I do ONE thing for myself, I'm the fucking bad bitch—"
"If you're so hung up on that, you should've said something—"
"How could I?!"
"You're saying a lot of shit now! Why can't you do it before—"
Right at that moment, Rachel suddenly sent a slap across Jennifer's face so I had to jump in between the two. This was just a hot mess of a situation but as my back was turned to Jennifer, Rachel was already cowering in fear by covering her face with her arms, even if she was the one who escalated the situation.
However, it didn't take long before realization struck because as I turned to my older sister, it was taking everything from her to just keep herself from hitting back.
Not only were veins popping out of her face to contain her anger, but she had lightly ripped the blanket she had on her from clenching her fists.
'Jesus fucking christ...'
It was one thing for a relationship to get opened up and fail and it was a whole other thing if you add what looked like some form of domestic abuse within the same sex.