Page 36 of Monarch
“I’m British. It’s always tea first.”
She nods and then moves over to the kettle and coffee machine located on an open shelf. We don’t speak as she fills and boils the kettle and arranges tea bags in mugs.
After watching her for a moment, I reach for my phone and scroll through what notifications have come in overnight. There’s more from Dion – his coffee date went well, like currently-in-his-date’s-bed-well – and a few messages in the studio group chat. Thereare some DMs from clients asking for appointments, and then there’s a new message on K1NK. It’s HungTransMan, or Joel.
I grin at his message, and I mentally park it to talk about with Roos after she’s shared what’s bothering her.
“Here you go.” Roos comes back to the bed, extending a mug to me, which I take carefully.
As she sits down next to me, she keeps her body on top of the covers.
“I know we said we wouldn’t talk about xem,” she begins.
Ah.Lex.
I should have known. It wasn’t like xe was completely absent from our conversation last night. In fact, it was almost like not saying xir name made it get louder in my mind. And in Roos’ mind, it seems.
“We can talk about xem,” I say after a moment.
“I don’t want to,” Roos tells me. “Believe me, I don’t. I wish I didn’t have to. I wish xe had stayed in Portugal or wherever xe was.”
“But?” I prompt.
“But xe came back when I least expected it. Xe came back, and xe said things I thought I’d never hear xem say, and I don’t know how to feel about it.”
I draw in a long, slow breath. I don’t know much about polyamory. My friend and co-worker Emmy is in a throuple, and I have some friends who practise ethical non-monogamy. I don’t know if it’s normal to talk about one’s other paramours or old lovers with a new lover. If indeed that’s what Roos and I are. I certainly felt like that’s what we were last night.
But right now, I need to push my reservations to one side. Roos is clearly upset and perturbed, and she needs a friend. I know what that feels like. I can be her friend.
“Tell me about you and Lex,” I say with no small amount of bravery. I’m more inclined to think I don’t want to hear this story, but with a cup of warm tea in my hands and nestled into a warm hotel bed is arguably the best possible way to survive it.
“We met at QISS, the club. I was there with Joel, as his guest, and xe was already a member. We played there together for a few nights before we went on what I guess you could call a date. It was a bike ride. Out into Amsterdam’s port. It was awful. Industrial, smelly, noisy, but Lex wanted to see the ships being loaded and emptied. Xe wanted to understand just how much stuff there is moving around the world at any given time. It was for xir art. We had a drink afterwards and xe asked me all these questions about my life, my passions, my goals. Xe seemed so interested, invested, almost. It felt like xe couldn’t get enough information about me, and I found that so…all-encompassing. I felt like I was being swept away on a lazy river, floating and watching the world go by. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was in the right place at the right time. Everything was… just right. That had hardly ever happened before.”
“I understand,” I say simply, while reaching for her hand.
“We moved in together not a month later. Lex was still sleeping at xir studio at the time, and we spent so much time together, it just made sense. We still played at QISS and at home, but we became very…domestic, very quickly. Xe cooked for me. Xe is a great cook, did you know that?” I shake my head, and Roos continues. “But then about eight months later, I woke up to an empty apartment. Xir stuff was gone. All xir clothes and books and sketchpads. Nothing. I texted and I called, but xir phone was switched off. I waited two days for a text or something, but it never came. So I went to xir studio.”
Roos pauses and takes a sip of tea. When she doesn’t pick up the story immediately, I squeeze her hand to let her know I’m here.
“Xe was there. Working on this huge oil painting. You know the kind where the brush strokes are all 3D and textured. It wasbeautiful. I was so struck by it, I almost forgot how angry I was with xem. But then, when I stepped inside and said hello, xe didn’t look up. Xe didn’t move. Xe just kept painting like I wasn’t even there.”
“Xe was in the zone,” I say, thinking back to the many occasions I’d try talking to Lex while xe sketched in xir or my bedroom after school. That frown of concentration. An incessantly moving hand. A glazed stare in xir eyes.
“Yes, I guess, something like that,” Roos mumbles before looking up at me, and her voice becomes clearer, louder. “But also, it was rude. Xe had been gone for nearly three days. Xe had moved out without telling me. Xe had turned off xir phone and just disappeared into xir studio. That’s not how you treat people. It’s not how you treat a lover or a partner.”
“I agree.”
“I had to shout at xem to get xem to stop. And when xe did, xe was angry with me. Started slamming stuff around. Pacing the studio. Asking me to leave.”
“Jesus.”
“We had this huge fight. Huge. Screaming and shouting. If we had been in my apartment, my neighbours would have called the police, I’m certain. But out there in Amsterdam Noord, in this big complex of abandoned and converted warehouses in NDSM Werf, there were no neighbours close enough.”
I shudder as I remember some of the fights Lex and I had. How quickly they escalated. How nasty the insults became. How much it hurt, and yet, I didn’t know how to stop them, and neither did xe.
“So what happened?”
