Page 62 of Monarch
Chapter Twenty-Five
Roos
Ialways forget how much I struggle in winter. Every year, it’s a surprise when the short, cold days and long, colder nights drag me down into a pit of despair that no amount of vitamin D supplements seems capable of shaking me out of.
This year feels even worse, but that has nothing to do with the weather or position of the sun. It’s because I don’t just have one person to miss. I have two.
And missing them both is not even simple. With Mari, it’s confusing and unsettling. What right do I have to miss somebody I only spent three days with? Why did I let them in so wholeheartedly, so eagerly, so unguardedly at a time when I was already grieving the loss of someone else? Why didn’t the fact that they were only supposed to be here for a while make me more cautious before I bared my soul and shared my body in ways I haven’t with most partners?
I really am a hopeless romantic. And now I’m a hopeless, hurting romantic.
With Lex, I feel contempt and disappointment and rage, and like I’m driving myself close to insanity because none of those things seem to mean I can bury the love I feel for xem. I torture myself wondering if something happened to xem that means xe hasn’t called. I interrogate all the many reasons why xe hasn’t played at QISS, because Joel tells me he hasn’t seen xem in months. I lie awake at night nursing a pulsing tension headache, imagining the worst – that xe has left Amsterdam again, that xe has worked xemself intoillness, or that some tragic accident has meant an even worse outcome.
When these thoughts consume me, I force myself to play a game of Imagine.
It’s a game Lex and I used to play when we first started…hanging out, fucking, having something like a relationship. It involved us imagining our lives looking very different. Sometimes our imaginings would stay within the realm of possibility – a life where we could afford a house in Oud Zuid, our queerness ruffling the neighbours’ feathers – and sometimes we imagined a distant future where we lived in a spaceship with a bunch of sex robots we spoiled and fucked and played with almost as much as we played with each other.
No matter what we imagined, every time we played the game, we imagined that we would be together. That was the one constant of Imagine.
Until it wasn’t the constant of our reality.
How ironic. How hopeless.
And now I’m yawning at my desk, staring out over the A10 ring road that pumps traffic around the city, when I should be focusing on a press release my PR manager, Daphne, has been working on all week.
I want another coffee, but I’m already shaking from the three I’ve had since coming into the office. A change of scenery will have to do.
Closing my laptop, I leave my desk and keep my eyes on my phone in my hand as I walk past my colleagues. Well,employeestechnically. I have a fundraising meeting in twenty minutes, so I can’t go far. I’ll just go and sit in the Ladies for ten minutes. I’ll lean my head against the cubicle wall and close my eyes.
If Tante Klaartje had more money, we’d have a bigger, fancier workplace than this serviced office with one open-plan working areaand two stuffy meeting rooms. We’d have a chill-out zone, a coffee bar, and sound booths for private and sensitive calls. If Tante Klaartje had more money, I’d work from home and take half-days without stressing about the organisation’s future every minute I’m not in the office proving my worth,ourworth, to my staff by working more hours than everyone else. But more than all of that, if Tante Klaartje had more money, we’d be able to help more young trans people.
I sigh as I push through the door to the Ladies’. Pocketing my phone, I’m about to head into one of the cubicles when I stop in my tracks.
There’s writing. On the mirror. In lipstick.
I smile. I can’t stop it. I’m not even sure I want to.
Hopeless, hopeless, hurting romantic.
I step closer and read the words.
‘Looking good, roosje. I miss you. Working on some shit. Heel, veel liefs, Lex
P.S. This lipstick is expensive! Left it for you x’
And there it is, MAC Ruby Woo, lying by the sink. I pick it up, open it up, and see only a stub of lipstick left in the case. I laugh at myself because I already know it’s my new favourite lipstick in my collection.
I read xir words again and again. I put my hand against the mirror. I came in here around three hours ago when I first arrived, and nobody else in the office has mentioned seeing it. Xe must have just been here.
It’s like a shot of caffeine to my system. It wakes me up, perks me up, shakes me up.
It’s like pure encouragement for my hopeless romantic heart. No, not hopeless, maybe. Hopeful, perhaps.
I make a decision then and there that I know may blow up in my face, but this message from Lex feels like something I can’tignore. That and the fact that it’s going to be Lex’s birthday on Sunday.
I get my phone out and send a message to a number that I should have blocked or deleted months ago but didn’t.
Almost immediately, I see that the message has been received and read. I wait a few more seconds just to see if it shows the receiver typing back, but it doesn’t. I didn’t expect it either. In many ways, I don’t want it either.
