Chapter Nineteen
Mari
Roos looks like a dream when I see her standing next to the canal, her face illuminated by a streetlamp above her head and her hair blowing in the chilly breeze that reminds me just how close winter is.
And yet I feel warm when I look at her. Hot, in fact.
And melting. My insides are melting. Dare I say it, my heart is melting for her, too.
I suck in a sharp breath, shocked at this realisation as I walk down the narrow pavement towards her.
Because, while I don’t mind the heat and liquid between my legs, I am more bothered by my heart responding in such a way.
I don’t want to fall for Roos. I don’t want to have her fill more and more of my future.
I don’t want that to then make me blinkered and biased when it comes to mapping out my next steps.
I can’t fall in love with her. I can’t make her my reason to stay.
At least, not right now.
For some reason, with this resolve to keep my heart locked up tonight, I also decide not to tell Roos about Lex.
About my seeing xem and about our kiss. The two issues aren’t directly connected, but it selfishly brings me more peace than I perhaps deserve to tuck both of them inside a locked box that I then put up on the highest shelf in my mind.
“Hello, you.” Roos’ face breaks out into a smile when she sees me crossing the cobblestone road towards her.
“Hello, beautiful,” I say. I can call her beautiful. She is beautiful. That doesn’t mean I’m falling for her.
I push that box further out of reach.
“Are you ready for this?” she asks as she folds her arms over her wool coat, shivering.
“A queer sex club in the middle of Amsterdam?” I ask, unravelling my scarf from my neck and wrapping it around hers. “I’ve never been more ready for anything.”
“Come on then.” She finds my hand and pulls me across the cobbles and back onto the pavement.
“You still feel the same way about how you want to play?” I ask as we walk.
“You mean do I still want to be topped to within an inch of my life tonight?” She gives me a mischievous look that makes her eyes sparkle in the sepia streetlight. “Fuck, yeah!”
I giggle with her.
“And do you still not mind if I play with someone else?” she asks.
“No, I don’t mind,” I say, and it’s the truth.
We’d spoken on the phone earlier, during Roos’ lunchbreak and while I’d been strolling around the exhibits I’d not yet seen at the convention.
She talked about what she wanted tonight, and I did the same.
She made it very clear from the outset that she wanted to be free to play with whoever sparked her interest at QISS, and she had asked me how I felt about that.
At the time, I didn’t really have words for how I felt.
I’d been very aware of an immediate knot in my stomach tightening, and I’d felt my walking pace slow, but I knew I had no claim over Roos.
Frustratingly, Lex’s words echoed in my mind – “you’re wrong if you think she’s only your special thing” – and that had me telling Roos that I wasn’t going to stop her.
That it was the last thing I wanted to do.
I didn’t want to be somebody who held her back. I didn’t want to be somebody who made her a comfort blanket in the same way I’d made my mum and Dove and the tattoo studio some safe anchor that would always ground me.
But still, after we spoke, I found other feelings coming up. Jealousy. Anxiety. Fear.
What if Roos had more fun with someone else than with me?
What if Roos was more attracted to other people than me?
What if the sex and the play were better with other people than it was with me?
What if her wanting to play with others was her way of telling me she didn’t want me as much as I wanted her?
And then I noticed the voice these questions were being asked in.
It was my voice, yes, but it wasn’t a voice I was proud of.
It was the voice of a heartbroken soul who was terrified of being left alone.
It was the voice of someone who didn’t yet know themself and their power.
It was the voice of Mari, aged nineteen, when Lex left me.
Fuck that voice.
Sure, it wasn’t as simple as cursing my insecurity out, and then, magic!
I was cured and completely at peace with the idea of Roos playing with others right in front of my nose, but there was a new curiosity about it.
There was some strange comfort in the challenge of it.
There was the potential of triumph – of proving Lex wrong – if I could support Roos in what she wanted and keep that voice quiet.
Also, I saw Roos’ desire to be topped by others as both a test and a sign. If I could survive this, maybe we truly were meant to be.
“I’m actually looking forward to it,” I tell her. “Although…”
She glances at me. “Although?”
“I am kind of in a Dommy mood. I kind of want to take control tonight. Could I be one of your tops?”
Roos stops walking, pulls me against her long, lean body. She smiles at me as she bends down and kisses my lips in a way that ignites my cunt. “I was hoping you’d want that,” she says when she leans back.
“Good,” I say, and when we start to walk again, I’m a little lighter on my feet.
“Here we are,” Roos says not two seconds later.
She gestures with our joint hands to a grand canal house that looks like all the others on the street, apart from a ramp covering half of the old stone steps leading to the huge front door.
There is a golden plaque to the side of the door, but it’s impossible to read what it says there in the dark; it’s almost like they chose a typeface that is hard to read by the average passerby.
Nobody is standing outside, and there are closed curtains in all the regal 18th-century rectangular windows built into the black brickwork.
“Where’s HungTransMan?” I ask.
“Joel?” Roos says with a soft laugh. “He’s inside.”
“He said he was a bouncer.”
“He is, but not outside. He’s like the welcoming committee inside.”
“Then how do you get in?”
“We have a code.” Roos leads me up the steps, and she indicates a panel to the left of the door. She starts typing in a six-digit number. “Joel gave it to me. It changes every night.”
“What about new members?” I ask as the door buzzes open. Roos holds it open but doesn’t move inside.
“It’s the one way this place isn’t completely open and accessible.
You have to know a member to attend, and first, you attend with them, like we are tonight.
You do that a few more times, and then you can apply to be a member, and you need two other existing members to vouch for you. Kind of like references.”
“So how come you’re not a member?” I look at Roos, knowing full-well she has been here many times before.
A deep blush brightens her cheeks. “I can’t afford it. It’s…very expensive.”
“I can imagine,” I say, but I don’t look at Roos, not wanting to embarrass her further.
Instead, I look ahead as she opens the door fully and we walk into a high-ceilinged entrance hall with alternating black and white square marble tiles under our feet.
The lighting is warm and subtle, but the smile on the face of the suited man standing in front of two more doors is warm and not at all subtle.
“Joel!” Roos holds out her arms, and the man steps into her embrace. They hug like one of them has just returned from war, although I know from what Roos said earlier that it’s only been a week since they saw each other.
Almost a foot shorter than Roos, Joel mutters Dutch words I don’t understand into her hair, and I patiently wait behind them, knowing from my own experience just how long a queer hug can last.
“Joel, schaatje, this is Mari!” Roos presents me proudly as she steps back, and there’s nothing else for me to do but step in for my own embrace. Joel envelops me in his arms, and my nose is immediately full of his scent – clean sage and musky sandalwood – as he starts to talk to me in my hair.
“I’m so happy to meet you. It’s really cool we could make this work,” he says, and I pull back to nod my agreement, but he isn’t finished talking. “And I can’t believe you already know Roos. Like, what are the chances?”
I get a good look at him. Half a foot taller than myself, Joel is a stocky white man with mousey brown hair cut into a neat short style with shaved sides.
His cheeks and chin are covered in what is more scruff than a beard, but again, it’s very neatly kept.
His fingers are dripping in thick silver rings of various designs.
His smile shows no signs of disappearing or even dwindling, and his eyes are fully involved, lit up a bright blue.
I can’t help but smile myself when I notice that his nose crinkles when his grin expands.
“It’s a small world,” Roos says as she shrugs off her coat and my scarf, revealing a sinfully tight sheer black jumpsuit that clings to all her long lines and lean curves.
I am too slow to stop my jaw dropping, but a second later, Joel’s finger pushes my chin back up. “She’ll get a big head if you keep looking at her like that.”
“I can’t help it,” I say honestly. I’m about to follow Roos in taking my coat off, but then I remember what I’m wearing.
Jeans and a crocheted shirt I made myself.
It has a lacy effect, but I am wearing a vest top underneath, so it’s not exactly revealing or sexy.
I suddenly feel like an idiot, not dressing sexily for a sex club.
I should have asked Roos what to wear. Of all the things we talked about, that just never crossed my mind.
“Wait,” I say, my eyes dropping to the floor. “I think I fucked up.”
Roos’ face falls as she loops her coat and my scarf over her forearm. “What’s wrong?”
I open my coat. “This.”
“What?” Her eyes roam my body, but there’s no horror or amusement in her expression.
“I’m dressed like I’m going to drink matcha, not go to a sex club.”