Page 79 of Monarch
“Here.” Lex moves to get it from the back of the door.
“I’ve got your bag,” Mari says, lifting the hold-all one of them retrieved from my apartment with a change of clothes so I don’t have to – thank fuck – walk out of this hospital in bondage gear.
“Well, let’s go then,” I say, giving them a look in turn.
They both nod, and then they’re at my side as we leave the hospital together.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Mari
Two Months Later - March
It’s as I’m cycling through Vondelpark on my way home after work that I realise another season is on the approach. Snowdrops and crocuses and bluebells have pushed up through the lifeless ground and are adding a bit of colour to my commute. Tulips have sprung up everywhere and each one makes me smile. I don’t even mind that the sun is already setting, because at least it’s there. I swear, for most of January and February, it disappeared from our solar system completely, but she’s back, making plants grow and flowers bloom.
I smile as I realise spring is coming, and I’m still in Amsterdam. I’m still in Amsterdam doing a job I love at a tattoo studio I love. And I’m also living with the woman I love.
I’m living with the woman I love,andthe person who broke my heart and still hasn’t apologised for it.
It’s not exactly the domestic bliss I dreamed of growing up, but there are moments of domestic…pleasantnessin my life.
Lex and I take turns sleeping in Roos’ bed. One week I’m on the sofa, the next week xe is. Roos has been back at work for a month, which happened shortly after her formal diagnosis of prefrontal lobe epilepsy and when she began taking anti-seizure medication. She has had three more seizures since that first, but none of them have been as severe, and fortunately, she hasn’t been on her own for any of them. The last one happened two weeks ago in her office. Thanks to us briefing them beforehand, her employees knew exactly what to do,and it passed in less than ten minutes. She came home afterwards, where Lex was sort of working, and she slept for the rest of the day.
I say sort of working because I don’t actually know what Lex is doing when Roos and I are at work during the day. Xe hasn’t been to xir studio since Roos was discharged from hospital, and xe only has a small stack of materials that xe always has tucked away out of sight by the time I return to the flat. Sometimes xe has paint on xir fingers, occasionally a smudge of it on xir face, but it’s become some unspoken agreement between Roos and me that we don’t ask Lex about xir work. I suspect for Roos that is out of a fear that if she draws too much attention to xir work, Lex will disappear into it again. That she’ll wake up and find Lex has gone for the third time. For me, I don’t ask because I don’t want to show an interest. And I don’t want to show an interest because I am really fucking interested in what they’re working on. I have so many questions, and each one will reveal just how fascinated I still am with Lex’s mind.
It seems that while so much can change in ten years, other things don’t. Growing up, I was always amazed by Lex’s creativity. Xe was unlike anybody else at our school. Xe didn’t follow rules, be they related to school uniform or homework, and xe would frequently go off-piste, creating comic strips about the industrial revolution for xir history coursework instead of writing an essay, and making intricate miniature houses out of all the wood scraps in Design Technology when they were meant for the recycling. While xe frequently bent the rules to work for xem, xe somehow came out of it unscathed. Despite failing to hand in countless essays and projects over the years, the worst that ever happened to xem was detention or a stern warning from our form teacher. And xe liked detention. That was where xe could be alone with xir sketchbook and ideas. Often, xe would race to my house after xir hour’s detention and xe would show what they’d come up with. Sketches, illustrations, cartoons, portraits,landscapes, line drawings, and, impossibly, shading with a biro. Whatever it was, it was breathtaking and spoke to me.
Not in a “I 100% get this piece of art” because that’s not what art is for. No, I didn’t know what Lex’s art was about, but Ifeltit. I felt it because it spoke to me, it started a conversation, not because it gave me answers. That’s what Lex taught me, which is arguably one of the most important lessons of my life. Art is not for comprehension; it’s for compassion.
Needless to say, it was in art lessons that xe really shone. Any medium, any assignment, xe consistently earned top marks and a whole lot of awe from the rest of us students. Our art teacher – Joan because she was that kind of art teacher who insisted on being called by her first name – didn’t hold back her praise for Lex. Every single lesson, it felt like Joan was telling Lex xe was going places, that xe was going to be a famous artist one day.
And honestly, I was jealous. Art was my favourite subject too, and I worked really hard at it. I spent three times as many hours on my art homework or coursework as I did on any other subject. I took it home with me every weekend. I spent lunchtimes in the art studio. I knew I wanted to be an artist too when I grew up, I just didn’t really have space to stake my claim on that. As Lex’s best friend, and eventually xir ‘themfriend’, when it came to my own artistic skills, I was always in Lex’s shadow. When it came to my hopes and dreams, I wasn’t expected to think as big as Lex. So I didn’t. And I didn’t mind, at the time. Truly, I didn’t. Because I loved xem and I saw how good xe was,felthow good xe was, and I agreed with Joan and everybody else; Lex was going places and would be a famous artist one day.
I just thought I was going to go to those places with xem. I thought I would get the chance to watch them become that famous artist.
But I didn’t. Xe took that away from me. Xe didn’t want me there.
So, no, I’m not going to ask xem about xir work. I’m just going to keep ignoring the canvases lined up next to Roos’ sofa, the one I sleep on, and I’m going to keep maintaining the civility Lex and I have managed to achieve for Roos’ sake.
And by civility, I mean we do our best to avoid each other at all times, but especially when Roos isn’t home and we are. We only communicate about Roos, her needs and her schedule. We take it in turns to cook – swapping weeknights with Roos recently wanting to make our meals at weekends – and we have our own domains in the flat. Lex shops (and pays for) our groceries and cleans the bathroom and kitchen. I do the laundry and keep the rest of the rooms in the house clean and tidy.
None of us have been back to QISS. None of us even talk about it.
I don’t know about Lex and Roos, but Roos and me, we’re not having sex. When it’s my turn to sleep with her, we hold each other all night long, but there’s no fucking, no lust, no getting each other off. I’ve resorted to quick wanks in the shower to take the edge off it because having Roos’ body against mine all night still affects me, but I haven’t talked to Roos about sex. I don’t even try to because I don’t want to overwhelm her. She was so unlike herself for so long, I don’t want to go back to that.
When it’s Lex’s turn to sleep with Roos, I’d be lying if I said I don’t lie awake on the sofa listening out for noises coming from Roos’ room. I’d be lying if I said I don’t torture myself with mental images of them making each other come. I’d be lying if I said I haven’t touched myself, wondering what they looked like, sounded like.
When I finally reach Roos’ block of flats, I park my bike in one of the usual spots outside and I make my way inside. In the lift going up, I yawn and thank whatever higher power there may be that it’s my last night on the sofa for a week because I am exhausted, and I always sleep better tucked up next to Roos. When I open the frontdoor, I’m immediately met with the scent of countless spices, but most notably paprika and garlic. It’s a smell that stops me in my tracks as I close the door behind me. I’ve smelt it before. Several times. In Lex’s house as a child. Chicken paprikash. A Romany chicken stew that Lex’s mum or grandmother would make for dinner.
But it can’t be that today. Me and Lex are vegan, and Roos has been happy to eat that way, too.
Curiosity gets the better of me, and I walk straight into the kitchen without taking my coat off or dumping my bag.
Dressed in a sports bra and men’s jogging bottoms that drown xir legs, xe is standing at the stove stirring a pot and shaking xir hips in time with a song that plays on the portable speaker on the windowsill. It’s a Dutch song I don’t recognise, but it’s not what I would call Lex’s style of music. Not that I know what that is. Not anymore.
“You’re not making chicken, are you?” I ask.
Startled, Lex looks up at me. “Jesus, fuck. You scared the shit out of me.”
