Page 99 of Monarch
Roos
Chapter Forty-Two
Mari
One Month Later - August
“Oh my God, we need another photo of this canal,” Dove squeals as she grabs my mum and drags her to the middle of a bridge over the Prinsengracht. “Mari, do you mind?”
I don’t mind. Or rather, I didn’t mind the first time, but this is like the twentieth time I’ve had to take a photo of them on a near-identical bridge, and I don’t think they appreciate how I am risking life and limb to do so by simply crossing the street. I know only too well how unforgiving Amsterdam cyclists can be; I know this because I am now one of them.
“Why don’t we go grab a drink?” I suggest when the photo is taken and I have hopped, skipped, and jumped across the road like Frogger to rejoin them.
“Great idea,” Mum says, and she gives me a telling look. She is a little over Dove’s enthusiasm for getting the perfect photograph, too.
We find a bar with a small canal-side terrace, and when there’s a metal table available with three chairs, I take it as a sign. I’m about to warn Dove and my mum that Amsterdam service is notoriously slow, but I’m proven wrong when a young, eager man appears at our side with menus, which I wave away in favour of three beers. When I order in Dutch, Dove and Keeley look at me like I’ve just explained quantum mechanics in a foreign language, not ordered three lagers.
“What?” I ask. If Roos was here and not at work, she probably would have corrected my pronunciation. “I live here now. I’m trying to learn.”
“Well, it sounded very impressive to me,” Dove says with a big smile.
My mother, who is a lot harder to impress, just looks at me with one of her famous crooked smiles. “You’re happy here,” she finally says.
I have to think about that before I answer.
I’m working less hours because I finally put my prices up, and I still get booked up weeks in advance. Roos and I have painted a few rooms in her – no,our– apartment, freshening up the space and making it feel like a new start. Roos is well, really well. She hasn’t had a seizure in months, but she still works her reduced schedule, and when she doesn’t need to rest, she goes on long walks through the city, sometimes popping in to see me at Pink Elephant.
Sometimes I wonder if she’s looking for Lex on those walks of hers, but she never takes the boat to the north, to Lex’s studio, which would be the first place I would look for xem. And indeed, I’ve thought about going there myself countless times in the last four months since Lex left. We still haven’t heard a word from xem. I think about xem every day, but not all day. I take that as a win.
Just over a month ago, xir social media disappeared. Deleted or archived, I don’t know, but you couldn’t find a trace of xem anywhere. Likewise, xir website is now a single page saying Under Construction with no date or promise for xir return. I told Roos when I saw this, and she nodded, told me she saw it too. We didn’t say much more. The fact that both of us were still checking up on Lex said enough.
I feel xir absence every single day, and I do mourn it. For ten years, I lived with the what-if Lex never left me scenarios taunting me. Now I live with what-if Lex never leftusscenarios. And yet they’re not taunting or haunting even. It’s more of a tease.
I find myself smiling when I think about the three of us as some odd, queer throuple. I sometimes laugh out loud when I think about us lying in bed together, Lex and I squabbling over who gets to spoon Roos. My heart can’t help but swell when I think about us years in the future, in a house with a library for Roos’ books and a garden for us to grow vegetables in. Inside the house is a room for my own tattoo studio, and at the bottom of the garden is an atelier for Lex’s art. We make enough money from our art that Roos doesn’t need to work, or rather, she can work the hours she chooses, doing what matters most to her, and then spend the rest of her time reading her books or walking a dog I know she’d love to have.
“I am happy,” I say finally to my mum.
“Hmm, but you could be happier,” she surprises me by saying.
“What do you mean?”
She glances at Dove before looking back at me. “Lex,” she says simply and softly.
I think about denying it. I think about pulling my shoulders to my ears and telling my mother she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. I think about all the things I could say – about how amazing Roos, Amsterdam and my work all are – to protest this statement. But I don’t have the energy or the gumption.
For a long time, I wasn’t honest about my feelings for Lex, and that hurt me more than anyone else. I’m not going to do that anymore. Even if I never see Lex again, I can at least admit a part of me will always love xem.
As much as this hurts – loving xem from afar and never knowing if I’ll ever see xem again – it’s nowhere near as painful as holding onto ten years’ worth of hate and anger.
“Yeah, Lex,” I admit.
Mum reaches over the table and grips my arm. “I don’t know why I feel this way, but something tells me this story, you and Roos and xem, it isn’t over yet.”
“I don’t know,” I say, battling with the hope I feel at her statement, wanting to contain it.
“You know it took us fourteen years.” She nods at Dove, who still has a big smile on her face. Her glasses are slipping down her nose like they always do, and her long hair is blowing in the summer breeze. She is looking at my mother like she is the setting sun. “And it was absolutely worth the wait.”
“Yes, it was,” Dove agrees.
