Page 40 of Monarch

To my slight surprise, Mari’s face melts into a smile. A very sly smile. “I know about her being polyamorous.”

I wait a beat too long to reply, and I want to curse myself. “And you’re okay with that? Has polyamory reached Gloucestershire?”

“Fuck you, Lex,” they hiss at me.

I laugh and turn away again, kneeling back down at the canvas. “You can see yourself out.”

“Not until you promise to stay away from Roos.”

I pick up the brush, and this time start to paint, unaware of what I’m doing, but knowing I have to do this, I have to move. I have to create. If I can only fall back in the zone, I’ll be safe again.

“Promise me, Lex,” they say, and I want to applaud them for how such a clear plea can sound anything but pleading.

“If Roos wants me to stay away from her, then I will,” I say, and I only look up when Mari doesn’t reply. “She doesn’t want me to, though, does she?”

“It’s the best thing for her,” Mari states.

I shrug. “And the best thing you can do is go home, Mari,” I continue to paint. “Go back to your mum and Dove, to your dads, and being a smalltown tattoo artist. Go back to being the only enby in the village. Go back to being a big fish in a little pond. You’ll drown here.”

They take another quick step forward, index finger pointed at me like a sword. “You know nothing about me! You know nothing about my life, who I am. You don’t get to tell me what to do. You don’t have any control over me anymore. You lost that privilege when you left me, just like you left Roos!”

A rush of energy has me springing up and moving to stand opposite them again. “You’re not over me, are you?” I challenge. “That’s why you’re here. You want me to stay away from Roos because you can’t bear the thought of me and her living happily ever after here in a city like this while you go back to seeing the same faces in the same two gay bars in town.”

“Fuck you, Lex! Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!” A deep red floods their cheeks, and tendons throb in their neck.

I inch closer. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You’d like to fuck me now. Looking like this, being the person I was always supposed to be.”

They blink at my words and pull their head back, but their body stays very still. I inhale their smell again and resist the urge to close my eyes and really hold it in my lungs.

“I bet you have a safe word now, don’t you?” I ask. “Go on, what is it?”

They don’t reply.

“Tell me your safe word, Mari,” I repeat my request. “Tell me so you can use it, and I’ll stop.”

“We’re not… This isn’t…” They trail off, the pink still flushing their cheeks, but their eyes have lost some of their iciness.

“What’s your safe word, Mari?”

They swallow slowly, and with it comes a new composure to their features.

“Paparùda.”

It’s another weapon detonated. A bomb. A sniper attack. A tank flattening my weak body.

Somehow, I manage a smile. “I see.”

“It’s not about you,” they say in a quiet voice.

“Of course it’s not.”

“I mean it, Lex. It’s not about you. None of this is about you. Roos and me. That’s exactly why you need to back off and –”

They stop talking when I step close enough that the tips of our shoes touch and their breasts push up against my flat chest.

“What are you doing?” they ask and I dissect their tone, searching for fear, for reluctance, for disgust.

“Shutting you up,” I say, looking down at their pink lips, which are pouting at me in almost perfect heart shape. “Remember your safe word.”