Page 61 of Monarch
“No, it’s okay. I have shit to do.”
“Fine,” they say curtly, taking it personally. I wonder how much it cost them to make the offer.
I walk to the coat rack to get my jacket but stop before I pick it up.
“Is she really okay?” I ask.
Mari turns. They know exactly who I mean.
“I think so.” They shrug. “I don’t… We don’t talk much.”
“Just fuck.” I fill in the gap.
“It’s not like that. We play together. It…it’s not just sex.”
It’s a stab up and into my diaphragm. I know exactly what they mean. It used to be like that with me and Roos, too. I wish I could say it was like that with me and Mari, too, but I was too fucked up back then to take it seriously. To respect the rules and the communication required for kink.
I don’t say anything back, just put my coat on and brave myself for the cold outdoors.
“And how are you?” Mari asks, and my head swings in their direction, in total disbelief at what I heard.
“You said earlier that you’ve been working on yourself,” they explain, tucking hair behind their ears. It’s grown since October, and the purple tips have gone. But it’s still as thick and unruly as it’s always been. “How is that going?”
“It’s…going,” I answer with as much honesty as I want to reveal. “I’d feel better if I could paint, could work, but my therapist says that’s part of what I have to work through. I can’t rely so heavily on my work to validate who I am.”
Mari’s eyebrows climb high. “You’re seeing a therapist?”
“Yeah, she’s annoying as fuck, and so fucking expensive, but I don’t know. I think she’s sort of worth it.”
Mari’s mouth opens, and I wait for a question or comment, but it doesn’t come. Not for a moment, and I’m almost certain when they do speak, it’s not what they initially intended to ask.
“Why is she annoying?”
“She doesn’t let me get away with shit,” I tell them, and I’m shocked when Mari bursts into laughter. They lift a hand to their mouth, as if to catch their giggles as they erupt out of her.
“What?” I ask.
“It’s about fucking time,” they tell me between chuckles.
There’s something about their laughter. It’s truly infectious. It takes me back to nights curled up in bed together, making silly or rude drawings on our sketchpads, showing each other, and being unable to stop laughing until her mum or my mum, wherever we were, knocked on the door and told us to shut up, that it was time to sleep. It takes no time at all for me to laugh with them.
But it doesn’t last long. It turns out my laughter is not allowed. Turns out my laughter is not what Mari wants. They snap their mouth shut and fall silent. They turn back to their coffee.
I put my coat on. It’s still damp from the journey here.
Fuck my life.
“Well, thanks, Mari,” I say.
If my laughter upset them, it’s nothing compared to their reaction when I say their name. Their whole body twists to stare at me accusingly. I wait for their onslaught. But it doesn’t come.
“Sure, whatever,” they say instead, and then they put ground coffee in the portafilter.
“Could you…could you tell Roos…” I pause.Tell her what? Tell her I still think about her every morning before I open my eyes? Tell her the only thing I feel compelled to doodle are roses? Tell her I think about the noises she made when Mari was paddling her every single time I fuck myself?“Tell her I hope she’s okay.”
Mari blinks at me, their face vacant and impossible to read. “Maybe you should tell her yourself.”
It’s the last thing I expect them to say, so much so, I don’t know how to react to it. I don’t even know how I feel about it. I just know I’m going to spend the whole miserable bike ride back to my warehouse thinking about it.
