“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 writtenDrink Waterin 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 likea 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.
