He said, “I meant to say sorry about what Nia said at the protest. She doesn’t get it.”
“She wasn’t wrong.”
“She has money.”
“Like, she’s rich-rich?”
“No. But she’ll never have to work at a restaurant.”
“Do you treat me differently than her?”
He bit into his bagel, chewing, swallowing. “Yeah.” Seeing my face fall, he said, gently, “I treat you differently because you’re two different people.”
We were quiet, seemingly unsure how to have the conversation we needed to have.
“I actually wanted to talk to you about something,” I said. “Nia told me that… sometimes you guys have threesomes?”
A laugh burst from him like a cannon. “What?” He shook his head, but gleefully, like he couldn’t believe his luck, bagging such an unpredictable, fun girlfriend. “Why would she tell you that?”
“She asked me to have a threesome. With you two. For your birthday. She wanted it to be a surprise. But obviously, I wasn’t not going to tell you. It’d be too weird.”
Leaning on his forearms, “So, what’d you tell her?”
“Nothing yet.”
“I mean… do you want to?”
I glared at him. “Clearly you do.”
He scratched the patch of hair on his chin that was considering becoming a beard. “I don’tnotwant to.”
“There’s also the whole Jay monogamy thing.”
“Are you gonna say yes?”
I toyed with my cardboard coffee cup sleeve. “I’m not sure. But, yeah, I think I am.”
He gave me an odd look. “I think you should. Say yes.”
I blinked. “Why?”
He slid me a look of genuine sorrow. “There’s a girl he’s been dating, I dunno what you tell each other. It sounds serious.” He kept his eyes carefully on mine. “It sounds like, like…”
Like she was willing to be what I wasn’t.
I didn’t move. My body ached, like I’d worked it too hard.
People always said, “Why don’t you and Jay just break up?” No one ever felt this way about their own relationships. They could say this so simply, so stupidly, only about yours. Jay and I had grown, twisted, around each other. There was no breaking up. That phrase didn’t get at the brutality of what it would be like.
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” Tristan said. “You should give the answer that’s honest. I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
“It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine.”
He smiled weakly. “I’m no mind reader but it doesn’t sound fine.”
He was trying to make me laugh, but it wasn’t working.
“Is being monogamous so bad?”
