Chapter Fifteen #2
I want to say no. I want to tell Roos it was someone else.
But I can’t lie. “Yeah.” I look down at our joined hands.
“I always thought it was because we went through it together. Discovering our queerness. Changing our names and our pronouns. Taking on the world together. I always thought that was why our bond was so…intense back then, but I know it’s not that simple.
Lex was – I guess, still is – like nobody else I have ever met and… Fuck, I hate that that’s true.”
Roos’ dry laughter meets my own as we share a look of solidarity.
“You don’t have to tell me,” I say. “But what happened after I left yesterday?”
“We talked. And it was like the last time xe came crawling back. Xe told me all the things I wanted to hear, but there was something different this time. Xe seemed…different. I couldn’t put my finger on it then, and I can’t put my finger on it now.”
“And did you, you know, take xem back?”
The way she looks at me is confusing. Like she’s pleading with me but also criticising me for saying something stupid.
“I agreed to keep talking,” she says eventually. “Xe said xe would call me last night. Or text at least.”
An important piece of the puzzle slots into place. “But xe didn’t?”
Roos shakes her head. “No.”
A boiling rage bubbles up through my body.
I stare out of the window opposite me. I can’t see the canal from this angle, but I can see golden leaves trembling on the branches of the tree next to it.
The neat row of gabled canal houses on the other side of the water stands proudly under a bright blue sky.
By all accounts, it’s a crisp and sunny autumnal day, but it may as well be grey, windy, and stormy for how I’m feeling.
“What are you going to do?” I ask, trying to keep my voice level.
“About Lex?” Roos sighs once more. “I don’t know. I don’t fucking know. But one thing I know for certain is I can’t keep reacting like this. I’m an idiot for getting so upset. I know what xe is like.”
“What do you mean?”
Roos chews on her lip for a moment. “You didn’t actually go into the gallery and see xir art, did you?”
I shake my head.
“Well, it was this huge installation with hundreds of butterflies on it. Monarch butterflies. All made out of fast fashion clothes xe had sourced from the Gemeente or somewhere. Anyway, I think that was another message from Lex. I mean, yes, the installation was all about the migration of fast fashion from factories in the global south to Western nations and then back again, but I think xir choice of a Monarch butterfly had some significance for xemself, too. Like, that’s just what xe does.
Xe was born to come and go. Xe is constantly moving, doing, exploring, being, flying.
Xe is never going to stay in one place forever, and my wanting that is foolish. ”
Roos’ words settle in me quickly and naturally, like there was a place waiting for them. But still, I feel compelled to rebuke some of the statement.
“Then it’s up to Lex to explain that to you. If you and xem can navigate polyamory without issue, then you should absolutely be able to talk about this.”
Roos nods with a wry smile. “We don’t always navigate polyamory without issue,” she huffs out a soft laugh.
I want to know more about that, but asking feels like it would expose a part of me I’m not willing to even acknowledge yet, let alone reveal. Besides, I have a more pressing question.
“Did xe make you happy?” I ask. “Or was it all hard?”
It’s only once the question is out there in the room that I realise I’m answering it at the same time Roos thinks about her answer.
“Xe didn’t just make me happy. Xe made me feel real.
It wasn’t until Lex that I really believed I was a woman.
I know that sounds ridiculous because I know I’m a woman, like on an intellectual, factual level.
But it’s quite another thing to believe it, to feel it.
And to have that belief get stronger in the face of all the bullshit I have to deal with rather than weaker.
That’s what Lex did for me. Xe made me feel like myself and that I could – no, should – be happy being that person. ”
“But you can find that inside yourself.” I bring our joined hands up to Roos’ chest. “You don’t need anybody else to make you feel all those things.”
“That’s valid,” Roos says, and her sad doe eyes are back again. “But I know I will need to do a lot of work for that. Honestly, it was really fucking nice having someone just do it for me, just like that.”
“Yeah,” I agree because fuck, deep down inside myself, I’m nodding in wholehearted agreement.
“But that’s selfish, I guess. Or lazy.” Roos scratches at the hem of her silk hair wrap.
“If I can’t fix my feelings so I can just be content with Lex being the butterfly xe is, then I need to just let go completely.
Let xem fly wherever xe wants, be with whoever xe wants, do whatever xe wants, hurt whoever xe wants, but not have that include me and my peace. ”
“I think that’s the best thing you can do,” I say gently but with a firmness I hope translates. I want that for Roos.
Fuck, I want that for myself.
“Maybe we could help each other?” Roos sniffs as she strokes the back of my hand with her other fingers. “We could be this sad team of Lex rejects who look after each other.”
“Oh, I’m over Lex. It was so long ago,” I say quickly and defiantly.
Roos levels a stare at me that more than hints at her not believing me, but she’s kind enough that she doesn’t say as much with words.
“Then help me?” she asks. “Help me to move on from Lex once and for all.”
“I can do that,” I say, and I bring our joined hands to my lips so I can kiss her knuckles.
I want to make one hundred other promises.
That I’ll stay here in Amsterdam, that I can try and be what Lex once was for her, that I can help her do the work she needs to do to find that strength and belief inside herself…
but that wouldn’t be fair. I don’t know what my future holds, and I can’t let Roos be the only reason I take a chair at Pink Elephant.
But I can help her. Even if it’s from afar, I can help her get over Lex Williams because if I’m an expert in anything, it’s knowing what that journey feels like. “I can help you.”
Roos’ eyes glaze over, and her chin wobbles.
I wait for her tears to fall so I can catch and kiss them.
But instead, she shifts so she can slip under the covers with me, and then she’s wrapping her arms and her legs around my body, holding tightly.
And I hold her back, kissing the top of her head and telling her it’s going to be alright again and again and again until we both believe it.