Chapter Twenty-Three
Mari
Three Months Later - January
“Mari!” Clarissa calls out as she bursts through the front door of Pink Elephant tattoo studio. “It’s snowing!”
I look up from my sketch pad and through the glass window front of the studio.
She’s not wrong. A stream of cyclists has their heads bent low against the messy onslaught of thick snowflakes, and the cars beside them have slowed to face it too, their wipers working busily.
Automatically, I bury my neck a bit deeper inside the roll-neck crochet jumper I finished at the weekend.
“You’ll love Amsterdam in the snow,” Clarissa tells me, approaching me at the counter where we greet customers.
My first appointment of the day is five minutes late, so I’m sketching to pass the time before I have to call them and tell them I have to charge them 50%.
I should be used to that part of my job – informing no-shows of our booking policy – and I’ve learnt the Dutch think nothing of being direct with one another, but I still bristle at the idea of delivering bad news to somebody who got stuck in traffic or slept through their alarm.
“It’s so pretty,” Clarissa continues as she busies herself with the coffee machine. “Coffee?”
“No, thanks.” I point at my tea with my pencil.
“You’re very quiet today,” Clarissa says. “Everything okay?”
Is everything okay? In some ways, yes, everything is okay.
More than okay. I have a job I love. I fall in love with Amsterdam more and more each day.
I bought an old, rusty but sturdy bike, and I can now ride it without risking life and limb.
I even find myself ringing my bell at tourists who stumble onto the bike path with their suitcases.
I have a studio apartment in the bustling Baarsjes neighbourhood that I’ve turned into a warm and cosy space just for me.
I’ve made some good friends through Pink Elephant, and some of my UK friends have come and visited in the last three months since I moved.
My dads came over for my birthday weekend, and I went home for Christmas.
Mum and Dove are planning on visiting in the summer.
They constantly tell me they’re proud of me. I am proud of me. And yet…
I miss Roos. I think about her constantly.
I still hate Lex. And I think about xem far too much.
That’s the one problem with being here. I walk around this city expecting xem to pop up from somewhere and pull the rug from under my feet.
“Winter blues,” I say. And maybe there is some truth in that, too.
Amsterdam is beautiful in the winter with its skeletal trees, inviting fireplaces roaring in brown bars, and festive lights that stay up long after Christmas, but it’s still cold and grey and dark, and the days feel criminally short.
“The snow will help with that,” Clarissa says. “If it settles.”
I look again outside. It’s coming down in thick sheets now.
I guess this is probably why my client is late.
I reach over for the tablet we share for bookings.
“L Wilhelm”. I can’t tell what their gender is, but at least they’ve left me a phone number to call.
Maybe I should check to see if they’re on their way.
“You really like snow, huh?” I ask Clarissa as I pick up my mug again and cradle it in my hands.
Clarissa gives me a look, her thick brown curls tossed over one shoulder. “I’m half-Colombian, half-Zambian – of course snow is exciting to me!”
I smile. Clarissa has good energy. She is fun to work with, and she doesn’t deserve my melancholy mood. I stretch out my neck, trying to ease some of the tension in my body.
“What time is your first client?” I ask.
“In half an hour,” Clarissa chirps over the whirring coffee machine. “Who else is in?”
“Ivan is already in with a four-hour appointment.” I glance again at the tablet. “And Thijs opened up and just finished with a client so he went to get a matcha, though I suspect he’s stuck there now.”
“Ha! Stuck in a café with hot pastries and even hotter baristas? He’ll survive.”
We laugh together, and then I check the time again. My customer is nearly fifteen minutes late. It’s definitely time I called.
“Ugh,” I groan as I pick up my phone.
“What’s wrong now?” Clarissa asks.
“Gotta tell a no-show that they owe me money.”
“You didn’t get a deposit?”
“Nope, it was a walk-in. Mirza booked it and forgot to ask for the down payment.”
Clarissa rolls her eyes. “Rookie mistake. I’ll tell him off,” she adds, bouncing her eyebrows.
I wave my flat palm at her. “I do not want to know.”
Mirza has to be at least ten years her junior, is the studio’s apprentice, and is as innocent as I suspect Clarissa isn’t.
So much so, I’ve thought about mentioning QISS to her once or twice.
Thanks to Joel, I’m a regular visitor, and it’s fast become one of my favourite places in this city I now call home.
I’m trying not to also attach too much importance to the fact that it’s the only place where Roos and I have been together – and yes, we’ve been together there – since we agreed not to date.
But it’s hard to ignore that QISS is the place where Roos and I still get to be something.
It’s hard to not think fondly of a place that has allowed me to see her beauty, feel her pleasure, and absorb her energy.
Even if it’s only been three times in three months.
Even if they were organised with awkward texts and even more awkward conversations before and after we got lost in each other’s bodies.
Even if I haven’t replied to her last text asking if we could play again this weekend.
It's not that I don’t want to. It’s that I’m desperate to.
And it’s getting harder and harder to hold back the flood of feelings I have for her, to quell my thirst for more than these random nights at QISS, to not blurt out at the height of a scene how much I miss her, how much I want her, how much I think I’m falling for her regardless of the distance.
But that wouldn’t be fair. I don’t know where Roos is at with her feelings, her situation, her…relationship with Lex.
Because if there’s one thing the distance from Roos has confirmed, it’s that I’m a much happier person when Lex isn’t in my life in any shape or form. Well, maybe not happier. More calm. Content. At peace.
Joel says xe hasn’t returned to the club since that night. I haven’t had the nerve to ask him or Roos if xe has been in touch with Roos. I’m too scared of the answer, although I spend a shameful amount of time imagining what it is.
It takes me longer than is socially acceptable to realise this whole time I’ve been lost in my thoughts, Clarissa has been talking to me.
“And I generally don’t like to, what is it you say in English, shit in my own back garden. But there’s just something about Mirza, don’t you think? He’s all innocent and wide-eyed and clueless. Really…corruptible, and I don’t know what it says about me that I’m sort of attracted to that.”
“I don’t know,” I say, finally tuned in again. “It sounds like it could be messy.”
Clarissa wrinkles her nose and grins widely over her coffee mug. “But messy can be so fun sometimes!”
Her words land somewhere inside me and stay there, repeating themselves over and over again.
“Okay, I've got to call this L Willhelm,” I tell Clarissa, eyes back on my phone.
“No, you don’t,” a voice calls out from the studio door. A voice I recognise. I look up and see a figure shaking off a leather coat that is coated in snowflakes. A wool bobble hat is pulled off to reveal a shaved head, a phoenix tattoo peering at me through the stubble.
Oh. Fuck.
“I’m here,” Lex says. Xe turns and immediately catches my gaze. Xe looks just as horrified as I feel.
“Oh, it’s you,” xe says. And then xe has the nerve to smirk at me.
“You’re L Willhelm?” I ask as xe approaches the counter.
“Willhelm, hey? I thought he wrote my name down wrong,” Lex goes to the coat rack in the corner of the room. Hangs up xir coat and hat like xe does this every damn day.
“Hey, Lex,” Clarissa says, looking up briefly from her phone. “Long time, no see.”
I bristle at the idea that Clarissa – my friend and my colleague Clarissa – knows Lex well enough to be on first-name terms, to know that xe hasn’t been here recently. I feel nauseous at the idea that Lex is known at Pink Elephant, a place that I want to be mine and only mine.
“This isn’t happening,” I say firmly, and I know I’ve shocked Clarissa with my tone. I can feel her eyes on me, but I am looking only at Lex, waiting for xem to put xir coat back on and leave.
Lex looks out the window and then back at me, xir head moving deliberately slowly. “I am not going back out in that.”
“Clarissa, can you – ”
“Do you guys know each other?” she asks.
“Unfortunately, yes,” I say sullenly, and Lex laughs. Loudly.
“Er, okay. Well, I have to get ready for my eleven o’clock,” Clarissa says, and she disappears quicker than I can beg her to stay.
“I can’t fucking believe this,” I say to myself.
“I didn’t know you worked here. If that makes you feel any better.
I have been coming here for years. And I normally sit with Ivan, but he was all booked up, which I kind of knew would be the case.
I figured I’d try someone new because I really want this design, but I had no fucking clue it would be you. ”
I find myself believing xem, but that only makes me more annoyed. Like why is the universe trying to hurt me like this? I close my eyes on a deep sigh.
“But I’m glad it is,” Lex says and my eyes spring open.
“What?”
“I’m glad it is you,” xe repeats.
“Why?”
“Because you’re a fucking good artist.”
In a grand act of betrayal, my cheeks heat up.
“What’s the design?” I ask, all while telling myself that looking at it doesn’t mean I’m committing to doing it.
Lex pulls a folded piece of paper out of xir back pocket. “Here.” Xe steps over to the counter and opens it up.
Xir proximity brings xir smile with xem.
It’s disarming. My body knows to sneer back when xe scowls at me, but this version of Lex baffles me.
That doesn’t mean xe doesn’t look good though.
Wearing an oversized red plaid shirt with a black knit vest over the top, xir baggy jeans hang low on xir hips.
Xir outfit looks cool. Xe looks cool. And I hate that.
I study Lex’s sketch. It’s a butterfly. A Monarch butterfly.
“Are you fucking with me?” I ask xem, finally feeling brave enough to hold xir stare.
Lex leans xir elbows on the counter and inches closer. “Are you fucking with me?”
Xe smirks.
I don’t say anything, but I maintain eye contact. Xe will never know how much that alone costs me. I feel a deep sense of accomplishment when xe breaks away first.
“I sold my largest piece last week. The monarch butterfly installation. I want to commemorate that.”
The one I saw pictures of but never saw in person because I bumped into Roos as she was leaving the gallery.
It would be a lie to say I never thought about going back to see it in person after that date and that dreamy weekend with Roos, but I was too scared.
It felt like it would guarantee my bumping into Lex.
Little did I know that would happen anyway just by doing my job, trying to live my fucking life.
“Listen, it’s a small city,” Lex says, and I realise then with some horror that xe is taking xir clothes off. “It’s not like London or New York. You bump into people you know in Amsterdam all the time. It’s not that deep.”
The last sentence feels like a sharp nail poking my back, making me elongate my spine.
“What are you doing?” Xir vest is off, and xir is undoing the buttons of xir shirt.
“Showing you where I want the tattoo.”
“You don’t expect me to do this?”
“I’m paying you to do this, so yes, I do.”
I don’t know if I have nothing to say to xem or too many things to say, but no words come out as I open my mouth.
“Of course, say the word” – xe touches the butterfly sketch with a telling look – “and I’ll walk away right now.”
In many ways, it would be the smart thing to do.
I don’t want to do this tattoo. I don’t want to touch xir skin or trace the lines that xe drew, to have my ink on xir body.
But to safeword out would be to acknowledge just how much xe still affects me.
I know enough about kink to know that using safe words is not a failure or a weakness – quite the opposite, in fact – but for whatever right or wrong reasons, I don’t want to safeword out of this.
Perhaps, if I’m being honest, I don’t need to safe word out.
I know I can do this tattoo. It’s beautiful and just the right balance of easy and challenging.
And if I do it, I can prove to Lex how little xe affects me.
“Fine. Go through to the third chair.” I gesture with a backward nod to the corridor behind me. Lex has been here before, so I assume xe knows where to go.
I expect a smug smile, another self-righteous stare, but I don’t get that.
At least not immediately. For a beat, Lex looks surprised, a little taken aback, but then xe composes xemself, and xir face goes blank but for a slight upturn in xir lips.
Xe walks past me and down the corridor without saying another word.
“Fuck,” I grunt. I can’t believe this is happening.
Three months I’ve managed to avoid xem. Three months I’ve managed to make a new life for myself, completely independently, even separate from Roos who I feared I’d use as a crutch.
But as I gather my things, refill my tea with hot water, and finally pick up the sketch Lex left on the counter, I feel like I’m back in xir art studio being lectured by xem.
“Fuck it,” I say, and I pull out my phone and find my text conversation with Roos.
I type and send feverishly. I’m staring at the screen expectantly when a reply pops up almost immediately.
A flame of triumph lights up inside me, although it feels fake and flimsy. So what if Roos and I have scenes together now and then? That doesn’t mean I have any more of her heart than Lex does. Fuck, I don’t even know if they’re still in touch. They could be living together again for all I know.
I push those possibilities to the back of my mind and focus on the fact that regardless of what happens for the next few hours or so with Lex in my tattoo chair, I am going to be playing with Roos, fucking Roos, loving on her in my own torturous way, come Sunday night, and Lex will never be a part of that.