Page 87 of Monarch
“Isn’t xe?”
“No,” I say quickly. “At least xe isn’t to me.”
While I know I maybe shouldn’t feel that way, that maybe Lex doesn’t deserve it, I know it’s the truth. It’s also true that maybe I owe Mari more than dividing my heart between them and Lex, and yet I can’t deny it to myself or to Joel.
“What a fine mess you find yourself in.” He switches to English as he often does to really get his point across. “Falling in love with two people at the same time.”
“You’re not helping.” I throw another cushion his way. He catches it and chucks it back to me.
“So, you want them both?” he asks, back in Dutch, and I nod, a blush in my cheeks. “And how do they feel about sharing?”
“I don’t know,” I answer. Part of the reason I’ve stayed so silent about the future – and about sex, even though my body aches for both of them – is because I’ve been watching things change. Slowly, but surely, Lex and Mari have been spending more time together. When Lex enters a room, Mari doesn’t automatically leave. When Mari makes tea, they make one for Lex too. They talk more. They don’t scowl or pout at each other as much. They still don’t choose to spendtime together at weekends without me being there, and I’ve not seen them touch more than brushing past each other in the kitchen, but I can’t help but feel a shift is happening.
“Sounds like you need to have a conversation with them both,” Joel tells me. “Or you need to all come to the club and,” he switches into English again, “fuck it into place.”
“Fuck it into place?” I laugh. “What does that even mean?”
“Sex is therapeutic. Kink is healing. You know this. Maybe you all need to just fuck so you can finally all be on the same page.”
He says it like he’s suggesting we take a walk in the park or go grocery shopping together. But Lex and Mari, fucking? They never would.
Would they?
Without realising, I’m rubbing my thighs together, feeling blood and heat spread all over my body.
“You like the sound of that, don’t you?” Joel teases.
“It’s been a long time,” I say as if to justify it, but really, it’s not just that. It’s also because the thought of fucking both Lex and Mari does things to me that I’ve never felt before. It’s like a purer form of excitement and arousal.
“Come to QISS,” Joel says. “This Sunday. Open stage night. I’m working.”
“I don’t know if they’ll want to.”
Joel holds my eye contact as he replies earnestly, “Well, there’s only one way to find out. Talk to them. Now, may I have another slice of boterkoek?”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Lex
Iexhale, and the breeze blows the smoke right back into my face, which is kind of very apt for how I’m feeling. This is a bad idea. This is a great idea. This is going to kill me. This is going to make me feel more alive than I have in years.
One thing is for certain: I shouldn’t have agreed to this. I shouldn’t have said yes to being here. Here, being sitting on cold stone beside the canal, a short distance away from QISS. It’s a surprisingly mild early spring evening, and the dusk paints everything in a romantic glow as my feet dangle above the murky water below. Or maybe that’s the weed.
I haven’t smoked in years. For a long time after I first arrived in Amsterdam, I wouldn’t miss a day without a joint or some gummies or a slice of spacecake from my favourite coffee shop, Paradox. I swore that it helped my work, but then I got lost in a week-long deep focus and ran out of supplies, and I didn’t much notice the difference. If anything, I was more alert, less tired, and so I stopped smoking and buying gummies, and I gave my all to my art instead.
Of course, other drugs have crossed my path, being a queer artist who has often lived in shared squats and communes, but none of them held the same appeal. Or maybe, they heldtoo muchappeal. They promised things I only dreamed of – numbing the pain, a longer,higherhigh – and rather than temptation, that felt like a threat. I didn’t want to become addicted to something that could kill the brightest part of me, my art. So I always declined and sought myescape in a paintbrush, some clay, fabrics, or simply a scrap of paper and a pencil.
But I need this. This joint that rests between my fingers. I need to slow my mind, and possibly my body. If I’m going to survive tonight, I need to feel less, not more.
“Hey Mum,” Mari’s voice pulls my eyes away from the dull, brown water of the canal. I look around and see the top of their head at the other end of a nearby parked car. They’re facing away from me, looking up at QISS. They’re on the phone, to Keeley, their mum, somebody I once considered a second mother.
“Yeah, sorry it’s been a while. I’ve been busy… Yeah, good busy,” Mari says. “How are you? How’s Dove? Yeah, I miss you both too… Right now, oh, not much…” I smile. So Mari doesn’t shareeverythingwith their mum. “I just wanted to hear your voice… Yeah, really, I’m okay. Just…I just miss seeing you. I miss drinking tea with you. You know, boring shit.”
I swallow, and my throat is dry. I miss drinking tea with my mum too.
“And I was wondering,” Mari continues. “Did you give any more thought to coming over and visiting?”
My shoulders tense. I have no idea how I feel about seeing Keeley and Dove again. Two more faces I associate with back there, with that place.
