Page 81 of Elite Connections: an LGBTQ Romance Charity Anthology

Upon seeing Amara,I stand up. I’m not as perceptive as she is, but when I see her standing at the other end of the island, Katja in the middle between us, I take in her sunken shoulders, the grey mascara smudges under her eyes and the downward pull on her mouth, and I know it’s all gone too far. Katja is right. If we don’t talk, if I don’t tell her what’s bothering me, I will lose her.

And I don’t want to lose her. At least not without fighting for her. Not without trying.

Because if I reveal what’s been plaguing me for all these months, and she decides it’s not okay, that it’s not going to work for her, then I will live with that. Somehow. I’ll adjust to accommodate it, or if I can’t, I’ll try and find some peace with us separating. It will be the hardest fought for peace of my life, and I’m not entirely sure it will ever be in my reach, but at least I will know that I tried. That I didn’t hold anything back.

That’s what I had to embrace when I came out, first as gay, and later as non-binary. I had to accept that living my truth would risk losing something else; family, friends, even work opportunities. And I did lose. Even though most of my family remained supportive, I lost friends. I lost clients. I lost the ability to navigate daily life without having to correct pronouns or remind people of my name. But I gained peace of mind. Slowly but surely I’ve found the comfort of being honest with myself and the power of being authentic in this world. So yes, I’ve learnt the hard way that this is the only way to live your life; by striving every day to be the person you are even if it seems like there isn’t an obvious or easy place for you in the world.

“Amara,” I say and I watch as she leans her hands on the marble top, as if she suddenly needs a little extra support.

“Wren,” she says in little more than a whisper.

“We need to talk,” I say simply, and then gesture with my wine glass to the table.

“But will you?” Amara asks, not moving.

“Sorry?” I say, stunned.

“Will you talk? Because if you don’t, Wren, I don’t know what I’ll do. You’ve been so closed off from me for so long now, I can’t stand—” her voice breaks, “I can’t stand it anymore. Not another single moment of it.”

Katja’s gaze ping-pongs from Amara to me, and I let my eyes slide to her. She gives me a reassuring look and a little nod, and I hope I remember to thank her for it, for her faith in me.

“Yes, Amara,” I say. “I will talk. I will tell you everything.”

A small whimper leaves Amara’s mouth, and I notice Katja’s arm twitch as if she were about to move towards my wife. Fear drags my stomach down, my temperature changes and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. But I push it all aside.

I can do this. I have to do this.

Looking down at the ground, Amara walks the length of the island. She pauses when she’s level with me and I hold out my hand. There follows some slow, dragging seconds when she stares at my hand like it’s something she’s never seen before, and I think she’s going to ignore it, but she doesn’t. Amara finally slips her slim fingers into the cradle of my palm and I lead her back to the table.

“I don’t know where to start,” I admit once we’re seated and settled.

“You start with wine,” Katja says from behind my shoulder. She’s approaching us with a bottle of wine in one hand and a wide tulip glass in the other. “And food. I’ll be ready to serve your next course in just a second.”

She places the glass in front of Amara and pours some wine in it. Her hand squeezes Amara’s shoulder before she moves away again, and I find my eyes lingering on the place her hand touched. Why did that touch look so normal? How has this woman buried herself in our relationship – or what’s left of it – so swiftly and skilfully? And why am I not resisting it? Why am I not feeling jealous or threatened or concerned? Or if I am, why are those feelings being eclipsed by something else, something not unpleasant at all.

I go to open my mouth again, but Katja has returned in a red and black blur and two plates of food are placed in front of us. She talks about the gnocchi, the brown butter sauce infused with sage. She talks about how the wagyu steak is cooked medium rare, the only way to eat such a prestigious cut of beef. But I’m not really listening and I’m not looking at her, instead, I’m watching my wife who gazes up at Katja like she sees something in Katja’s face. Refuge? Hope? Peace?

It”s so dangerously close to the way Amara would look at me after a scene. Blissed out. Emptied out. Content.

Will she ever look at me that way again?

There’s only one way to find out.

“Thank you, Katja.” I take a long sip of wine.

Katja smiles at Amara, nods at me, and then she’s gone. And even though that’s what I wanted, I feel her absence immediately, like a cold draught reaching me from a window left open in another room. It almost sways me off my path, and it very much has me looking to the kitchen, to find Katja. I expect to see her busy cooking again or cleaning up the dishes she just used, but she’s doing neither of those things. Instead, she’s resting both her hands on the marble countertop of the island and she’s leaning her weight on them, her head hanging between her shoulders. She looks defeated or tired, or both.

Just as I’m about to look away, to focus my attention on Amara, Katja lifts her head and she looks at me. It’s more of a stare, really, and her bright red lips pull into a soft pout. I find myself smiling at her, and when she smiles back, I enjoy the warmth it gives me for one, two seconds, before I berate myself for doing what feels dangerously close to flirting with Katja at the worst possible moment.

I whip my eyes back to Amara, who is poking at her food with her fork, not in an inspecting kind of way, but with an absent-mindedness that suggests she’s struggling with the wait. The wait for me to talk.

I don’t know why it comes to me then, the memory of what happened when I came out to Amara as non-binary, but it does. I recall how nervous I’d been. Making eye contact with Amara had felt impossible so I did it when we were curled up in bed one Saturday morning. I was spooning Amara and I’d whispered the words into her hair – Ama, I think I’m non-binary, and my name… my name is now Wren - and I squeezed my eyes shut as I waited for her response. But much to my surprise, Amara hadn’t said anything. Instead, she’d turned to face me, taken my face in her hands and had kissed me slow and long.

“Hello, Wren,” she’d said with a smile before kissing me again.

Amara hadn’t been shocked or hurt or confused. She’d been accepting, supportive and celebratory. Is it possible the same can happen now?

There’s only one way to find out.

So I talk.

“I’m sorry for my behaviour, Ama.”

She looks up, her big brown eyes wide and open for me.

“I’m sorry I shut you out. I’m sorry I haven’t been… intimate with you, in a long time. I’m sorry I haven’t explained why.”

“Will you explain now?” she asks in an unusually quiet and delicate voice.

“Yes,” I say and when I reach for her hand, I’m only slightly alarmed to see I’m shaking. “Amara, you know how when we have sex, you like to be submissive and you like me to be dominant?”

Amara nods but her eyebrows pinch closer together and confusion starts to set in.

“Well, I don’t think that’s what I want anymore.”

“You don’t want me to be submissive?”

I shake my head. “No, it’s not specifically that. It’s really not about you at all, in fact, as harsh as that sounds. It’s about me. It’s what I think I want.”

“And what’s that?” Amara shifts a little in her chair, leaning closer to me.

“I want to…” I drop eye contact and I hate myself for it. I hate myself for being a coward at the very last moment. “I want to be submissive too.”

When I look up again, Amara’s eyes stay on me, but they’re not still. They jerk side to side, searching my gaze, my face. I can’t tell if she’s looking for a punchline or more words, possibly an explanation that counters what I just told her.

“But you can’t… You’ve never… This is not what I was expecting to hear,” she finally finishes, and while her eyes are back on her food, they’re still restless, still searching.

“Ama, I know it’s probably a surprise?—”

“A surprise?” Her voice is raised and incredulous. “A surprise is breakfast in bed. A surprise is a cake and balloons on your birthday. This is not that. This is… a shock.”

“I know you’re probably angry that this is what I want and you’re probably wondering what this means for us and the future, but I couldn’t?—”

“I’m not angry this is what you want!” She cuts me off, her voice even louder. “I’m angry you didn’t tell me sooner. That you had me thinking you were going to leave me, that you didn’t love me anymore, for months. No, years, Wren, two whole years!”

Bruised by her outburst, I sit back with a huff.

“But this…” Amara says, quieter. “This is something we could have worked around. We could have already worked around it.”

“But how? How?” I plead, my hands held out. “We both know how important submitting is to you.”

“Yes, but not all the time. I don’t need it all the time.” Amara’s voice is lowered and she leans in. I assume it’s so Katja doesn’t hear. How can I tell her that Katja already knows all about this problem of ours?

“I can’t remember the last time when we were intimate and you didn’t need some level of dominance.”

Amara blinks, speechless, and I know she’s thinking back, trying to find a time to prove me wrong, but I know she’ll be unsuccessful.

“But I can try,” she says eventually and the tears are back in her voice. “I want to try.”

“Ama.” I slide my hand across the table and graze my fingertips on the side of her forearm. I watch as goosebumps erupt on the skin I touch.

Amara surprises me then by sucking in a deep breath, shaking her head slightly and sitting up straighter.

“Let’s eat, shall we?” she suggests. “I need to calm down and process everything, and this food… Katja has worked so hard to make it for us.”

I nod, agreeing. I wait and watch Amara eat. Doing so gives me time to process that I actually did it. I finally told her. I should feel relief and I think I do – my chest certainly isn’t as tight as it was earlier – but I still feel like I have a mountain to climb. Or rather, I still feel like we have a mountain to climb and there is something about embarking on a journey like this with someone else that makes it feel more precarious, riskier.

“This is delicious,” Amara breaks the silence although her voice is so quiet I wonder if she even intended to say it out loud. It certainly was too quiet for Katja to hear.

Finally, I take a bite. And Amara’s right.

The wagyu melts in my mouth. The gnocchi tastes fresh and decadent with the brown butter and sage sauce. And when I take a sip of the deep-flavoured wine, the meal is truly complete.

“I feel like we’re back in Tuscany,” I tell Amara.

Amara’s eyes sparkle when they meet mine. “That was such a wonderful summer.”

“It was,” I agree.

“We should do that again. Next summer?”

“We should do it again.” I nod, not voicing the thoughts that lie at the top of my mind. How will we make it to Tuscany, or to next summer at all if we can’t figure this out?

“I will make some enquiries,” Amara says with a curt nod before turning her attention back to her plate.

It’s such an Amara thing to do. To immediately add an item to her to-do list, to commit to executing a plan even if it’s just a fragment of an idea at this stage. And it gives me hope, it brings me comfort, that she’s stopped crying and that she’s thinking like my brilliantly efficient and industrious Amara normally thinks.

“How is everything?” Katja’s voice appears from behind Amara and I look up to see her approaching us, wiping her hands on her tea towel.

“The food is fantastic.” Amara turns in her chair. “Truly delicious.”

Pink blooms in Katja’s cheeks. “I’m so pleased. Thank you.” She nods, and she seems much shier and more reserved than she did when she sat me down earlier and insisted I tell her what was on my mind. I’m overcome with the urge to ask if she’s okay, to find out what it is that has her suddenly acting so sheepish, but I bite my tongue. I have enough to manage in this moment.

“You are very talented,” I say and that makes Katja give me a quizzical look. A look that Amara notices and her gaze flits between us both.

“Are you still happy to have your sushi next?”

“Oh, yes, the sushi. Are you sure my roll is edible?” Amara asks.

Katja smiles but it’s more made of politeness than anything else. “Of course. You both did a great job.”

“You’re too kind,” Amara tells Katja. “And yes, very, very talented.”

I watch Katja’s throat tense as she swallows. “Thank you,” she says again. “I’ll let you finish.”

And then she’s gone again.

I think for a second that we’ll return to eating in silence, that maybe we won’t discuss what I just revealed until the end of the night, or maybe until tomorrow, because Amara needs more time. And that’s fine. It’s a relief, even.

But I’m wrong.

Amara takes one more bite of gnocchi, arranges her cutlery together on her plate with a gentle metallic scrape, then levels her gaze on me.

“Right,” she says, with a soft firmness in her voice. “I’m ready to talk about this. Really talk about it.”