Page 86 of Monarch

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, “peoplecanchange, 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 andlekkerdirect.”

“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.”