Chapter Eleven
Roos
The sound of the door slamming reverberates in my ears, and I feel the loss of Mari’s presence immediately.
A tsunami of emotions washes over me – fear I’ve pushed Mari away, regret for not telling Lex to fuck off as soon as I saw xem, confusion about Mari and Lex’s shared history and that it’s not a pleasant one, relief that Lex is back even though I shouldn’t feel that, curiosity about what Lex wants to say.
I’m overwhelmed by an immediate need to sit down, to catch my breath, but first I need to not be standing here in my underwear.
“Go and sit down,” I say grumpily to Lex. “I need to get dressed.”
I don’t wait to see if xe replies. I go to my bedroom and close the door behind me.
For a moment, I don’t move. I look around and realise I’m searching for something from Mari. An item of clothing they forgot, or maybe a note they left. The regret rises to the surface above all other emotions. I shouldn’t have let them go. I should have told Lex to leave.
And yet, I don’t want xem to leave. Not yet. I want to hear what xe has to say. I want to know why xe came back.
Because stupidly, naively, I want to believe it’s for me.
I tell myself that Mari was never going to stay for longer than a few days or a week. I tell myself that Lex and I have more history. I hadn’t even talked to Mari about polyamory, about that side of me. Maybe that would have been a deal-breaker for them.
Lex knows me. I don’t need to explain myself to Lex. Despite everything, I believe that Lex loved me once. Maybe xe still loves me. And maybe Lex is here to stay this time.
And yet, I’m still crushed when I don’t see a note from Mari or any other sign that they were here other than the creases in my sheets where they slept next to me.
I sigh as I get dressed, trying to rid myself of the melancholy I feel about such a perfect night ending so disastrously, and it helps. Some.
When I walk into my living room to face Lex, I hold my shoulders back, have my wig from yesterday back on, curling around my shoulders and down my back, and I’m wearing a pair of tight blue jeans that I know drives xem slightly out of xir mind.
“I suppose I should offer you a cup of tea,” I say at the doorway.
Lex points at the coffee table and two steaming mugs sitting there. “Already done.”
“You always were terrible at following simple instructions,” I grumble as I sit on the sofa as far away from xem as I can without falling off.
Picking up one of the mugs, I don’t need to take a sip to know it’s been made exactly how I like – Earl Grey with honey and a dash of cold water. “So, what do you want, Lex?”
“I want you.”
I make an ugly noise, half-scoff, half-splutter. “You had me. Six months ago. And then you walked away. Again.”
“The first time doesn’t count. We never defined what we were to each other. You knew I was seeing other people, just like you were, and I had to work. You were still asleep when I needed to go. It would have been rude to have woken you just to say goodbye. And I left you a note.”
“Oh, yes, ‘See you around, pretty girl’ written in lipstick on my bathroom mirror. Not quite the same as a heartfelt goodbye or, you know, an actual apology!”
“It all worked out in the end. We found each other again.”
“Only for you to leave me high and dry after I fell in love with you!” I shout at xem, putting my mug down because my hands have started to shake.
“I fell in love with you, too,” xe says in a quiet voice, but my ears hear loud and clear. I store the words away. Xe has never said that to me before.
“Then why leave?”
“I…I’m here now. I’m here now, and I want to say sorry, and I want to go back to how we were before.”
It’s funny how a few months ago, those were exactly the words I thought I wanted to hear from Lex.
I spent so many nights awake fantasising about xem returning and declaring such things to me.
But now, it feels half-assed. It doesn’t even come close to reassuring me.
I can’t go back to how it was before. Before was when xe left me.
“What’s the deal with you and Mari?” I ask instead of saying all that.
Lex’s whole body changes, tensing and turning away from me slightly. Xe stares down at my threadbare carpet that the landlord promised to replace two years ago and still hasn’t.
“There is no deal. We went to school together. We were friends, then together, and then we weren’t.” I recognise this way of speaking. It’s what I’ve come to call Lex’s BS Voice.
“They’re pretty pissed with you,” I say, knowing I can’t just challenge Lex’s bullshit outright. That never works. And I feel like I really need to know what their exact history is. Whether that’s because I want to pursue something with Lex, Mari, or both of them, my muddled brain can’t decide.
“We were teenagers.” Lex’s shoulders relax a little as xe turns to me. “First love and all that shit. But when I wanted to move here, I knew it wouldn’t last.”
Xe isn’t telling me much, and yet I can read between the lines. Xe probably left Mari like xe left me. It doesn’t make me feel accomplished or validated, assuming this. It makes me feel exhausted.
“Why do you do it?” I ask, my tone full of defeat.
“Do what?”
“Leave people?”
Xir mouth closes and xir jaw moves as if to lock it shut. “Mari was different,” xe eventually says.
“How?” I prompt and reach for my tea. I try to ignore how perfect it tastes when I have my first sip.
“I was nineteen. I knew fuck all about the world and people and life back then,” Lex says in a rush. “We were too serious too soon, too young. I needed…”
I give xem time to finish, but when xe doesn’t speak, I offer to fill in the blank. “Space? Freedom? To be somewhere else?”
“Yes,” Lex says quietly, xir eyes back on the carpet.
“Which one?”
Xe looks up at me. “All of them.”
I look at Lex for a long time. I see things I’d almost forgotten about but remember with a rush of delight, and frustratingly, love.
The darkness of xir eyes – a deep, dark brown that melts into an obsidian black when xir gets turned on – the perfect point of xir chin, the cupid’s bow in xir lips, and how all xir features are beautifully on show because xe never wears make-up, save for occasional thick eyeliner that only darkens xir stare further.
At some point, xe returns my gaze, and we hold eye contact for many moments.
I should break it. I want to break it. Because the longer I look into xir eyes, the more I feel xe is trying to communicate something to me without words. The more I become convinced that there is more to this story. There is more to Lex’s story.
“And why was I different? Why did you leave me? Didn’t you want space and freedom and to be somewhere else then too?”
Xe drops xir gaze, and in a single bat of xir curled eyelashes, I feel xe puts up a tall, thick wall.
“I had to work,” xe says. “I had commissioned pieces to deliver. A collection to finish. Being in Amsterdam wasn’t helping. I needed to find…inspiration.”
I snort. “And you couldn’t explain this to me, you know, in words? Face to face?”
“You know what I’m like,” xe says, still not looking at me. “When I get called to go create, I have to go. There’s no stopping me.”
I nod to myself. That’s right. Xir fucking muse, or calling, or inspiration, or whatever the fuck it is. When it strikes, nothing else matters to Lex. Xe just finds a place to make art and that’s all xe does.
“You still could have called or texted. Or answered my fucking calls and texts!”
“They were distractions,” xe shrugs and picks up xir mug. “You know I can go offline for days – weeks, sometimes. It’s not personal.”
“It felt personal,” I say sourly.
Xe inches a little closer to me. “But it wasn’t. Didn’t I say as much on the bathroom mirror?” Lex smiles at me like the memory of this should warm me, not haunt me. “Like I said, you know what I’m like.”
I do know what xe is like. But I also don’t. I feel like there’s a whole other layer, or maybe xir very core, that I don’t know. That I’ve only had hints of, little crumbs. But as soon as I get close enough to touch it, taste it, really get to know it, xe pulls it away from me.
“I promise not to do it again,” xe says out of nowhere, and while I can hear the tension in xir voice – like the words were hard to form and push out of xir mouth – I am still stunned that xe actually just said that.
“You promise not to do it again?”
“I promise that if I need to disappear for my art again, I will tell you before I do,” Lex says.
Any sane person would take this as a huge red flag waving right in front of their face.
It’s the bare minimum someone should expect in a relationship.
But a relationship with Lex has never been a normal relationship.
Even with our shared preference for non-monogamy and our tumultuous history, the time I spent with Lex was extraordinary because it was xem.
It was xem and xir wild mind, free spirit, and passion for life, for the big and the small, and for me.
God, I miss that passion. God help me, I miss xem.
“You promise?” I ask, more for further clarification than anything else.
“I promise,” xe says, xir treacle eyes holding mine.
“Okay.” I take a sip of my tea and let myself enjoy its perfect flavour. “That’s a start.”