Chapter Fifty
Mari
I hadn’t expected to cry on the phone with my dads, but I also hadn’t expected to fall in love with a beautiful Dutch girl and the ex who haunted me for ten years. I wipe my tears on the back of my hand but then realise it’s probably pointless. Because now I have to call my mum and Dove.
“Mari,” Mum answers after the second ring. “How are you?”
I think about all the times in my life my mother has asked me that question. I’ve probably answered it a thousand different ways over the years, but never before have I given her the answer that leaves my mouth today.
“I’m really fucking good, Mum,” I say with a contented sigh. “I really, really am.”
Right on cue, shrieks and giggles and shouts emerge from the kitchen down the corridor.
Lex is cooking us dinner, and Roos went in there to give me privacy while I called my parents.
Something tells me they’ve become slightly distracted, and it brings the biggest grin to my face.
I love hearing them laugh together. I love hearing and watching and feeling them love each other.
When I first opened my mind, and later my heart, to polyamory, I never expected that my love for their love would eclipse any hint of jealousy, but it does. My goodness, it does.
“It’s why I’m calling, actually,” I continue.
“Oh?”
“Is Dove there?” I ask, already knowing the answer. It’s eight o’clock on a wintery Thursday evening. I know with almost one hundred percent certainty that they’re curled up on the couch together, Dove reading a book, and my mum on her phone or drawing on her tablet. “Put me on speaker phone.”
“Okay,” Mum says, and there’s a moment of rustling and hushed conversation between them.
“Hey, Mari!” Dove says cheerily.
“Hey, Dove.” I smile. It’s hard to name who Dove is to me.
Not quite a second mother, she’s more than a friend, and a sister is all wrong.
She’s just Dove. The woman who makes my mother infinitely happy.
And one of only a few handfuls of people I never want to be without.
One thing is for certain: Dove is family.
“What’s going on?” Mum asks, not one for patience at the best of times.
I pull in a long breath. “I’m calling to tell you I’m staying in Amsterdam for Christmas.”
There’s a silent pause. I imagine them looking at each other, but I don’t know what their expressions would reveal. Shock, sadness, disappointment?
“Why? Were you planning on coming back?” Mum asks, and I hear confusion in her tone.
“Well, yeah. It’s Christmas,” I explain. We always spend Christmas together. I came back last year, and I’ve spent every other Christmas Day with Mum.
Another beat of silence.
“Yeah, but we know it will be your first Christmas with Roos and Lex.” Dove emits a nervous giggle. “We just assumed you were going to stay.”
“You did?”
“Well, yeah,” Mum confirms. “Why would you come back?”
I don’t know whether to feel hurt they don’t even seem remotely upset or happy that they’re already ten steps ahead of me.
“Because I said I would. And you guys are my family, my home.”
“And that won’t change,” Mum tells me. “We’ll always be here for you. Always. But you have a new home now. A new family. You have Lex and Roos.”
I’ve heard people talk about home not being a place but a person or people. I’ve always assumed that meant Dove and my mum, and also my dads. But a new wave of recognition hits me, literally making my body feel lighter. Lex and Roos… They are my home now.
And it doesn’t hurt that we all want to make our home in Amsterdam, a city that gives us very different things – a freedom to create for Lex, for Roos, a community to fight for, and for me, a fresh, new start – but also shared positives: QISS, a safe haven to be our true selves, a place to continue to grow and heal.
“So I got all worked up for no reason?” I laugh at myself.
“Why were you getting all worked up?” Mum asks.
“Because I didn’t want to upset you both by telling you I was going to miss Christmas with you both.”
“Of course we’re sad that we’ll not see you,” Mum tells me, “but all we want is for you to be happy, and we know you are there. And now Lex is back…”
“I just think it’s a perfect place for you,” Dove adds. “And I bet it’s so pretty at Christmas. Maybe next year we can come there.”
“And take more photos?” Mum asks, heavy on the sarcasm. “I don’t think you took enough when we were there.”
I hear more rustling and them both chuckling together. I realise then that they’re going to be okay. They want me there, sure, for Christmas and for all the other days, but they don’t need me there. I don’t know why I hadn’t realised this earlier.
“As long as you’re happy, Mari,” Mum says, her tone earnest once more. “That’s all we want.”
“I am,” I say, suddenly full to the brim with emotion, “I am very happy.”
I’m happy but not giddy. I’m excited but have my feet firmly on the ground. I’m hopeful but not delusional. I’m no longer looking for signs to tell me what’s right or wrong. I trust myself to figure that out.
“And Lex,” Mum says, her voice a little lower. “It’s really still working out okay?”
This is not the first time Mum has asked me this, and each time I am grateful for the check-in.
Only Dove and her really know just how heartbroken I was by Lex leaving eleven years ago.
Only they saw how much it confused me. It was them who literally picked me up, wiped my tears, and held me until I could face life again.
This question is Mum’s way of checking that I’m not going to go back to that place.
The thing is, I don’t have a guarantee that I won’t go back there.
Life doesn’t come with many guarantees, and I’m pretty sure love comes with even fewer.
When I then think about the fact I’m in love with two people, it feels like I’m doing nothing to minimise risks.
And yet I wouldn’t change a thing. If guaranteeing I never go back to that confused, dark, heartbroken place again means giving up Roos and Lex right now, I’m going to refuse it every single time.
When Lex told us what happened to xem with xir grandfather, I got both exactly what I wanted – answers about Lex’s disappearances – and what I never wished to hear. It didn’t have to make sense for me to know that it changed everything.
It also did something I never expected. It gave me permission to let go.
To release the grudge I’d been holding onto firmly with both hands and all my might.
To stop blaming Lex, and in so many more ways, myself for xem rejecting me.
To relieve myself of the heavy burden that is carrying around resentment for something a deeply hurt person did to me – and to xemself – when xe was little more than a child.
And once I let go, I found I had two hands ready to embrace a future so intriguing and exciting and hopeful and chaotic and fun that I was so close to missing out on. Once I had my hands and my heart free again, I was ready to grab hold of both Roos and Lex and look only forwards.
That was, of course, my plan, but the past is not always so easily forgotten or dismissed. The past is still part of us, our memories persist, our body stores our traumas, our brain isn’t so quick to forget, but what we can do is try and limit how much control the past has on our future.
That’s what Lex has been doing as xe continues to go to therapy once a week and to a help group for adult survivors of CSA.
It’s what we do together when we talk about our teenage years together – the good, the bad, and the ugly – and it’s what we did in tears, in pain, in a shared messiness only Lex and Roos and I can make when we accompanied xem to a therapy session yesterday.
It’s what I hope we will all continue to do as we take life day by day, night by night.
I’m about to answer Mum, but Lex and Roos burst in, boasting plates and cutlery and big, silly smiles. They pause and grimace, seeing I still have my phone held up to my ear, but I wave them in anyway. They can hear what I have to say.
“It’s working out really well,” I tell Mum. “We’re all very happy.”
“Very happy!” Roos raises her voice to echo.
“Ecstatic!” Lex shouts.
Dove and my mum laugh, and I smile so wide, my cheeks hurt.
“I should go, Mum. Dinner’s ready.”
“Okay, but remember. We’re always here,” Mum says.
“Always!” Dove echoes.
“I know,” I say, bursting with love for them and for the two idiots who are grinning at me as they both take a seat on either side of me. “I love you both.”
“We love you,” they chorus, and then I end the call.
Roos hands me a plate and Lex, a knife and fork. “Not as much as we love you,” xe says with mischief lighting up xir treacle brown eyes.
I give xem a scathing look. “That’s literally my mother you’re trying to outdo,” I remind xem. “And you know what she’s like. I wouldn’t even try.”
“True story.” Lex brings xir legs up and crosses them under xir. “You know I love Keeley. Even if she probably thinks I’m going to screw you both over.”
“Again,” Roos and I add in sync before we all crease up with laughter.
“It doesn’t matter what my mother thinks,” I say once we settle.
“Why’s that?” Lex is biting back xir smile, I can see it. When I turn to my other side and see Roos with a similar half-grin on her face, I know they both know what I’m going to say before I say it. But I say it anyway, because I will never get bored of doing so.
“All that matters is what we think and what we want, and right now, I want and love both of you.”
Roos is the first to touch me, knocking into me so quickly to peck my cheek that I nearly spill my delicious-looking and smelling stir-fried rice. “Good because you’re stuck with me.”
When she’s leaning back and attacking her plate, Lex catches my eye. Xe stares at me, not saying a word.
“What?” I ask, wondering if I’ve got something on my face or if xe just has to do what I often have to do. To just stare at Lex, to take it in that we found each other again, to realise our love for the same woman ultimately brought us back to our love for each other.
“Sometimes, I…” Xe trails off, and it almost physically pains me.
“What?” I prompt again, a little gentler this time.
“I still have moments where I feel like I don’t deserve this,” xe says.
“And what does that make you feel?”
Xe holds my gaze, but still I see a blush tinge xir high cheekbones. “It makes me want to run away before you both realise and leave me instead.”
I smile at them. “Thank you for sharing, and for your honesty,” I say, a little performatively because I’m following Lex’s therapist’s suggestion of acknowledging when Lex shares xir vulnerability.
“But you’re not going to, right?” Roos chimes in.
Lex is still looking at me when xe answers her. “No, roosje, I’m not going anywhere.”
We share a long, languid smile, like we have all the time in the world. Maybe we do.
I don’t say anything else, the moment already perfectly formed. I focus on my food and tuck in.
“Unless…” Lex’s leading tone has me swallowing my first mouthful before it’s properly chewed.
Roos and I pin our eyes on xem.
“Unless I have your awareness and permission,” xe corrects course.
Roos’ body deflates beside me. “Jesus, fuck, Lex,” she laughs to herself and goes back to eating. “And you don’t need our permission.”
“Oh, yes xe does,” I say in my very best Dom voice. I take inordinate pleasure in watching Lex shiver in response. Having Lex submit to me has been the cherry on top of our kinky chaos.
Once composed, Lex pecks the other cheek that Roos didn’t warm and xe gives me one more dazzling grin before looking at xir plate.
We eat in silence, and yet there is nothing empty and vacant about it.
Outside the apartment, bike bells ring, cars rumble by, and people chatter as they walk down the street.
Inside the apartment, our home, every single centimetre of space is filled with love.
I can feel it wrap itself around me, like the crochet scarf I made eleven years ago to distract myself from my heartache from losing Lex.
I never intended it to be so long, but I also never intended to hold onto my love for Lex for such a long time.
In that moment, I decide to make similar scarves for Roos and for Lex. If something so warm and comforting and enduring could be made out of heartbreak, just imagine what I can make when my heart is whole and being held by two other hearts that beat at the same rhythm as mine.
Just imagine what we can all make and do and become, now that we have each other.