Slowly, he lifted his gaze, and I saw him seeing me: I was a stranger then, a wicked woman souring something sweet between us. His eyes found the floor. I was secretly relieved; I hated watching their pretty dark amber cloud with rage.
We spent the evening at our Airbnb moving silently around each other. I asked him if he wanted me to leave. He told me to stay.
That night, when he thought I was asleep, he cried. I held him from behind, my chest flush against his heaving back. He felt limp in my arms. A hook curved into my heart, reeling me to the absolute edge of my guilt, a dark drop-off I’d never seen before. Jay in pain was one wretched thing. Jay in pain because of me was beyond my emotional reach. I couldn’t grasp it, could only be obliterated by it.
And yet, I couldn’t be brought to feel regret. I understood the thing clawing at me, had I not let it loose, would’ve ripped through me and found its way to him eventually. I’d been trying to protect him. But that night I learned there was nothing I could’ve done to protect him if protection meant betraying myself.
I also learned this: When there aren’t enough choices, you will always make the wrong one.
Chapter 11
In a white-hot heat, I wrote ten more pages of my story and submitted them for workshop. Tristan’s accusations only quickened the need to articulate myself, to force understanding in the way only art could.
What the fuck did he know about love? This was a man who wore socks with slides. I said as much to Jay over FaceTime, omitting, naturally, the precise contours of the exchange, as well as Wrist Grab–gate.
Jay was tipping a green watering can over a potted plant on-screen. “You can’t take him literally, Kitty Cat. He just likes to be contrarian for attention. He’s not a bad guy.”
“Then why is he acting like I stabbed him or something?”
“He can be a bit traditional. It’s just how we were raised, you know. And he’s Christian so.”
“He has a tattoo of a serpent’s tongue wrapped around his forearm.”
Jay paused thoughtfully, easing into a crouch to repot his spider plant. From the living room window, a square of sunlight lit up his face. “You don’t usually care what people think.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. “I guess I want your friends to like me.”
“He will. He does.”
In class that afternoon, Jason said, “The catalyst for the story is Amira opening her relationship, right? But we still don’t know what made her do it.”
Chloe added, “Yeah. Can we just get something about her childhood? Like maybe she should be molested by a relative.”
I calmly wrote in the margins of my notebook, “Get me out of here!!!”
Oscar said, “Agreed. The protagonist’s motivations just aren’t strong enough for me to buy her behavior.”
I snapped, “What’s your motivation for being gay, Oscar?”
Milken snapped, “That’s enough.”
Oscar leaned forward, a generous curl falling over his eye. “I’m not writing a story about being gay, am I? Maybe you should write about something else, like being Black or something.”
I pretended to look at my phone to show I was done with this exchange. I’d fielded questions like Oscar’s before, but suddenly my tolerance for them had withered. I was tired of talking about polyamory as though it could be reduced to a set of actions, a choice I was making to rile people up rather than an intrinsic trait. No one thought of monogamy in this frame; everyone simply fell into it, blind, no fault of their own, while I always had a goddamn interrogation light pointed at my face, forced to answer the same questions—never deepening, never becoming more complex—over and over like an unending trial that always ended in my conviction.
“Who cares about the identity stuff?” Edgar said. “The dialogue crackles.”
“Amira’s fight with Theo’s friend was socharged. What happens with them?” Michelle asked.
“What do you mean?”
“What happens between them? In the story?”
I blinked. “I dunno yet. I was maybe going to make her kill him.” No one laughed at this.
“Did something happen between them in the woods?” Edgar asked. “Is that why he’s so upset?”
I said, “What? No. Nothing happened. She just peed on him and never saw him again. Until now.”
