Chapter Thirty-Five
Roos
One Month Later - April
“Well, you make it look good,” Joel says as I hand him a plate with a slice of boterkoek on it.
“I make what look good?”
“Epilepsy.” He takes a bite.
I laugh at his joke. “You haven’t seen me having a seizure.”
“This is good cake,” he says with his mouth full. He washes it down with a gulp of tea. “How do they handle it? Lex and Mari? When you have a seizure.”
“Okay, I think. I’m so in and out of it I can’t really remember what it’s like when it’s happening, but I know they scowl at each other a lot less these days.”
“How many have you had now?”
“Seizures? Five in total, but they’re getting shorter and more infrequent.”
“And how are you feeling about it all?”
“About epilepsy? Well, it’s a plot twist, that’s for sure. But honestly, the thing I was most scared of was when they said it could be related to my drop in testosterone. I panicked that the doctors would tell me I’d need to stop HRT. That was what I was most terrified about.”
“I can understand,” Joel says in a sombre tone, and I know he does.
“But that hasn’t happened.” I smile.
“That’s good. One less thing to wrap your head around.”
“Yeah, my head has certainly got a lot to process, surges of electricity aside.”
Joel smiles at my lame epilepsy joke. “You’re doing really well.”
I feel a rush of pride, which is a surprise in itself.
Only a month ago, I couldn’t even face talking about my new diagnosis with other people because it made me feel so vulnerable and fragile, and that’s something I associated with coming out as trans, something I have to do over and over again.
I didn’t want another ‘thing’ limiting me, another thing making me feel so vulnerable and fragile.
I didn’t want another burden to carry when I still have days where my load is already too heavy.
But I’m not in that raw place anymore. At least, not all the time.
Thanks to slow days with Mari and Lex, adjusting my work schedule, and the drugs I’m on, I feel like I have a much better handle on it all.
I still have days where I’m overwhelmed, and I don’t think I’ll ever get used to having seizures, but I’m not stuck in panic mode.
I know that things won’t always be easy, but they won’t always be difficult either.
“Thanks. That means a lot from you.” I pick up my mug of tea. “Not just because you’re my friend but because you know…medical stuff.”
“Oh, yeah, all that medical stuff.” He waves his hand dismissively, like he isn’t a literal hero in a paramedic uniform for his day job.
“They’ll be sorry they missed you. Mari and Lex,” I explain. It’s Saturday, and Mari is working a shift at Pink Elephant, and Lex has gone to xir favourite Surinamese barbers down the road for a fresh trim.
Joel puts his now-empty plate down on the coffee table and shifts forward on my sofa. “I believe that for Mari. Lex,” he grimaces, “I’m not so sure. But how is it really? Living with them both?”
“Honestly,” I say, leaning back to get comfortable. “And selfishly, I like it.”
I smile as I think about the last three months and the rhythm we have fallen into.
Mari goes to work five or six days a week.
I’m in my office five days a week, finishing early on a Wednesday so I can have some rest or do something for myself.
Lex is the homebody who makes us breakfast, packs us snacks and sandwiches for lunch, and xe nearly always has dinner ready or a full fridge when we return.
Xir art supplies have increased in the corner of my living room, but I still have yet to see xem actually at work.
Mari told me that sometimes Lex gets up and paints in the night, but every morning I wake, the canvases and paints are always neatly tidied away, deliberately stored so whatever Lex is working on is out of sight.
Officially, Lex and Mari still alternate weeks sleeping in my bed with me, but over the last few weeks, there have been more nights where all three of us are there.
I am always in the middle, and Mari always snuggles up next to me.
Lex keeps xir distance, but I feel xir eyes on me as I fall asleep, and I often wake to xem staring at me.
Those are the nights I love most. Those are the nights when I feel safest. Those are the nights where I sleep deepest and dream biggest.
“Did you ever get to the bottom of what their beef is? The two of them?”
I shake my head. “Not exactly. I only know what Mari told me. That they were friends for a long time, and then they fell in love. And then one day, Lex left.”
“It’s what xe is good at,” Joel mumbles into his mug.
I level a warning look at him. “I know you’re not xir biggest fan, but Lex has been amazing these last few months. Xe really has changed.”
“People don’t change,” Joel says. “They just hide parts of themselves better.”
“Really? People don’t change?” I repeat, disbelieving. “Look at us! Are you saying you’re just hiding yourself better since you transitioned? What a load of bullshit.”
“Fine,” he has the decency to look a little sheepish, “people can change, but I like to think I became who I was always supposed to be. Same with you.”
“So what are you saying? Lex is still the same person who left both me and Mari heartbroken?”
“I don’t know.” Joel shrugs. “I’m just sceptical of xir behaviour.”
“Even now, after xe has proven xemself to stick around while I’ve been sick?”
“Three months is not a long time.”
I have the urge to throw a cushion at Joel’s smug face. So I do.
“Hey!” He catches it as we laugh together. “Look, xe doesn’t have to be someone who sticks around.”
My face falls. “What do you mean?”
“Maybe xe isn’t someone who is meant to be in one place all the time. Or with one or two persons at one time.”
“I’ve wondered about this before,” I admit.
“Yes, but that was when xe left you. It’s quite another thing to admit it to yourself, and to accept and love it about xem, when xe is lying next to you.”
I sit with those words. They bury their way into my marrow, taking up space.
“Have you talked to xem about the future? Or to Mari?”
The future. Along with sex, the future is a topic we don’t discuss. We take it day by day. We plan only meals, movies to watch, and which markets to go to on the weekend. We don’t talk about events in the future besides work plans and my doctors’ appointments.
“No,” I say simply, but the word seems to hold a lot of weight. I take a sip from my mug.
“And are you fucking?”
I choke on my tea. “Joel!”
“What? We’re friends! We go to a sex club together. I’m being Dutch and lekker direct.”
“But you’re not Dutch,” I remind him despite his near-perfect language skills.
“And you didn’t answer my question,” he says pointedly.
“We’re not fucking. Nobody is fucking,” I sigh.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know.” I curl my legs up underneath me. “I think with Mari, they’re scared to get me worked up, like that will make me have another seizure or something. And with Lex, I think xe is scared to overstep. I think xe still feels like the outsider in our dynamic.”
“Isn’t xe?”
“No,” I say quickly. “At least xe isn’t to me.”
While I know I maybe shouldn’t feel that way, that maybe Lex doesn’t deserve it, I know it’s the truth. It’s also true that maybe I owe Mari more than dividing my heart between them and Lex, and yet I can’t deny it to myself or to Joel.
“What a fine mess you find yourself in.” He switches to English as he often does to really get his point across. “Falling in love with two people at the same time.”
“You’re not helping.” I throw another cushion his way. He catches it and chucks it back to me.
“So, you want them both?” he asks, back in Dutch, and I nod, a blush in my cheeks. “And how do they feel about sharing?”
“I don’t know,” I answer. Part of the reason I’ve stayed so silent about the future – and about sex, even though my body aches for both of them – is because I’ve been watching things change.
Slowly, but surely, Lex and Mari have been spending more time together.
When Lex enters a room, Mari doesn’t automatically leave.
When Mari makes tea, they make one for Lex too.
They talk more. They don’t scowl or pout at each other as much.
They still don’t choose to spend time together at weekends without me being there, and I’ve not seen them touch more than brushing past each other in the kitchen, but I can’t help but feel a shift is happening.
“Sounds like you need to have a conversation with them both,” Joel tells me. “Or you need to all come to the club and,” he switches into English again, “fuck it into place.”
“Fuck it into place?” I laugh. “What does that even mean?”
“Sex is therapeutic. Kink is healing. You know this. Maybe you all need to just fuck so you can finally all be on the same page.”
He says it like he’s suggesting we take a walk in the park or go grocery shopping together. But Lex and Mari, fucking? They never would.
Would they?
Without realising, I’m rubbing my thighs together, feeling blood and heat spread all over my body.
“You like the sound of that, don’t you?” Joel teases.
“It’s been a long time,” I say as if to justify it, but really, it’s not just that. It’s also because the thought of fucking both Lex and Mari does things to me that I’ve never felt before. It’s like a purer form of excitement and arousal.
“Come to QISS,” Joel says. “This Sunday. Open stage night. I’m working.”
“I don’t know if they’ll want to.”
Joel holds my eye contact as he replies earnestly, “Well, there’s only one way to find out. Talk to them. Now, may I have another slice of boterkoek?”