Chapter 9 #2
“It’s not just sex for us,” Craig adds, softer. “People assume it is. There’s sex, sure, but there’s also care. The point is joy, intimacy, chosen family. A guy Phil’s been dating helped me build a bookcase last month. We took him to Ikea, Tom. That’s love.”
I laugh, the sound coming out surprisingly wet-eyed. “Is it weird if I say I’m jealous of how healthy you sound?”
“Not weird,” he says. “But don’t be fooled — we’ve had ugliest-cry-on-the-floor nights too. We just kept talking through them. And, crucially, neither of us used polyamory as a stick to hit the other with. If one of us is struggling, we slow down. No secret hammers.”
I nod, absorbing phrases like a sponge. Seatbelts. Information. No secret hammers.
Craig leans in, detective eyes soft. “And you, romantic muppet that you are — maybe this could be good for you. You’ve spent years thinking love equals control. Maybe a structure where consent is the sacred thing would suit you. Where feelings aren’t bargaining chips.”
There’s a pause. Guy pads into my brain like a guilty cat. Our lunchtime walks around the harbour, our easy banter about colleagues, the way he’d wrinkle his nose at a seagull like it owed him money. I miss him in a tender place I don’t often let myself look at directly.
Craig watches me, and because he’s Craig he doesn’t push. He just slides the water jug closer like hydration is a metaphor.
“I used to walk that route with Guy,” I say eventually, picking a piece of lime from the edge of my plate.
Craig nods.
“We were… close. It meant a lot to me. I’d like whatever comes next to feel that same…connection.”
Craig gives a small, understanding smile. “You deserve a genuine connection.”
I change the subject before the ache gets teeth. “Anyway. Daniel still texts.”
His expression snaps like a blind. The detective is back; the forearms tense. “Again.”
“He’s been… insistent. ‘We need to meet.’ Which I may have agreed to—”
“What?!”
“He suggested later in the week, but I can’t bring myself to say yes.” I drink, as if wine is a courage vitamin. “It’s just—his name still rings in my head like a fire alarm.”
Craig’s mouth is a line. “And he knows that. That’s why he does it. Don’t give him a corridor back into your life.”
“I know,” I say, smaller than I want to sound. “It’s just hard to ignore the past when it keeps showing up dressed as the present.”
He reaches across the table and squeezes my wrist. “You’re not who you were then. And you’ve got us. And… maybe Tesco Mary.”
I smile helplessly. “Pete.”
“Pete,” he repeats. “I say just keep going with him. Go slow. Ask questions. Set seatbelts. See what happens.”
We clear plates and he refuses help with washing up on the grounds that I am a guest and therefore must sit on the stool and offer unhelpful critique. He scrubs with improbable vigour. I offer notes on his sponge technique like I’m judging diving.
At some point the wine hits the bladder like a small freight train. “Need the bathroom.”
“You know where it is,” he says, flicking suds.
I step into their tidy little bathroom and lean on the sink.
My face looks older than I feel—hope makes a person soft in the middle.
I think about Pete’s laugh, and the way the harbour looked brand-new when he said my name.
I think about Craig and Phil and the way Craig’s voice gentled when he said compersion.
The word sits on my tongue like a foreign sweet—strange and good.
Could I do this? Could I be one of those humans who loves without trying to lock the feeling in a box? My instinct to Disney-princess everything is strong; I want orchestras and exclusive rights. But I also want honesty and oxygen and a kind of love that doesn’t require me to shrink to fit.
On the mirror someone — Phil, surely — has written Drink Water in white chalk pen. I do as I’m told, cupping water in my hands and sipping like a parched Victorian.
When I return, Craig is at the table, my phone in his hand. He looks up immediately, eyebrows halfway to apology.
“Sorry, just looking,” he says, setting the phone down face-down and sliding it an inch toward me. “Thinking of getting a new one like yours.”
“Thought you just got a new one,” I say, casually.
“I did, but I’m not getting on with it.”
We migrate to the sofa with bowls of something that Craig swears is pudding and I swear is just sugar wearing mascara.
We talk about small things: the dog that lives three doors down and looks like a retired judge, a TV show we both hate-watched, my cat Buster’s new habit of sleeping on my head “for warmth” like he’s a balaclava.
Then Craig steers us gently back. “You know,” he says, “I worry about you thinking you have to perform the perfect response to all this. You don’t have to decide what you are tonight. You don’t have to pass some ethical test to date someone who makes you smile.”
“I’m forty-two,” I say. “Smiling is a high bar.”
“Lower it,” he says. “Let yourself have something good even if it doesn’t look like the brochure. That’s basically all polyamory is—refusing the brochure and writing your own captions.”
I look at him—at the man who dragged me out of the rubble of myself and handed me a broom, at his capable hands and his maddening rightness. “You make it sound easy,” I say.
“It isn’t easy,” he replies, honest as ever. “It’s work. But so is monogamy. At least with this one we get better stories.”
We talk late. Phil texts at some point—a little heart, the digital equivalent of a kiss on the forehead. Craig shows me without reading it out loud.
When I finally put my shoes back on, the city feels like it’s exhaled and settled. At the door Craig hugs me again, brief and hard.
“Text me when you get home,” he says, which is less a request than a reflex.
“I will.”
“And Tom?”
“Yeah?”
“Just go for a drink.”
I nod, and mean it.
On the walk back to Clifton, the night is kind—soft air, distant laughter, a busker somewhere refusing to surrender a chorus. My phone thrums once in my pocket. For a second I freeze, expecting Daniel’s name to flare like a siren. But it’s Pete, a simple line that warms me from sternum to toes:
Pete: Hope you got home okay. Tell me a day that works for that drink.
I type, delete, type again, and then send something that sounds like me and also like someone braver: Thursday?
Before I set off again, I look up at the night. It isn’t a Disney sky — no fireworks, no orchestras. Just a city roofline, slightly crooked and very dear. I walk home feeling less like a man waiting for a life to happen to him, and more like a person who might, just possibly, make one on purpose.
Open, I think, testing the word in my mouth. Not a door flung wide for any weather; not a gate you forget to latch. Just… open. Like a window on a day that doesn’t need air-con because the breeze is doing its job.
I can work with that.
My phone buzzes again.
I look at the message.
Not again.
I can’t respond to these, not tonight.
Evelyn: I lie in bed thinking about how the knife sliced through him.