“What made you wanna write about them anyway?”
I paused. “I think at first, I was trying to understand what went wrong with me.”
He touched my hand. My brain dulled the sensation; I felt only the weight of his fingers. I wondered what Jay would think if he saw us. Maybe we were just getting along.
“You know, ‘wrong’ used to mean to turn, to bend, even to weave together,” he said. “Being wrong isn’t so bad if you think of it like that.”
I didn’t know how long we’d been talking until my stomach groaned, and I saw five hours had passed. Even then, outside on the wind-whipped sidewalk, we talked about leaving but neither of us left.
Tristan tugged on his bracelet, this time a simple silver chain. “I didn’t think you were gonna come.”
“Me neither,” I lied.
Shoving his hands in his pockets, he said, “Listen, I shouldn’t have berated you on the street. That was stupid. Iamprotective of Jay. He’s been there for me my whole life almost. And maybe I have some feelings about nonmonogamy that are… they’re not about you as a person, okay.” He stopped. I waited for him to continue. He studied the contents of the coffee shop through the lit-up window. “What did you mean when you said you didn’t think I trusted myself?”
I tried to swallow my spit, but my mouth was a desert. “I don’t know, I just said it.”
He watched me for a long time with those dark, bottomless eyes, like he was waiting for something to happen. “Did you mean I don’t trust myself with you?”
The context for anything romantic between us was all wrong. We were a vision of ideological incompatibility. I didn’t care though. At this moment, I remembered why ideals always floundered under the weight of real-world feelings.
Stumbling forward, I closed the space between us, sensing the heat from his chest. I was too afraid to look up, to see his confused expression, so I stared at the white words on his shirt. Then, a hooked finger tipped my chin up. He didn’t look confused but nervous, like he wasn’t sure what was meant to happen next. A pained breath escaped me. My mouth found his with embarrassing need. He didn’t draw back, looping an arm around me and crushing me against him. With one hand, I clutched the fabric of his shirt. With the other, I touched the back of his neck, the strong skull bone, the soft little curls, such a vulnerable place. He felt different from Jay and the same. They both felt inevitable.
Tristan broke away with a gasp. The sound of the city returned, an abrasive clamor. He avoided my eyes, backing away on his heels. Then he picked up his pace and disappeared down the street.
Chapter 13
In less than a week, Jay was flying into town. Was I supposed to act like nothing had happened between me and Tristan? Or: I could tell Jay, act like it wasn’t a big deal,my lips collided with your friend’s but, like, ew, I hated it? I knew I’d broken a rule, but also the rules between us weren’t explicitly defined. On edge, I kept checking my phone to see if Tristan had texted at the same time I was trying to distance myself from that afternoon. He didn’t text. I decided this was a good start, avoiding each other. There was no one in my life who could give me the guidance I needed, so I googled, “I kissed my bf’s best friend, I’m poly, what should I do?” The only relevant result came from Reddit. Most of the commenters urged the girl seeking advice to jump in front of a train. I couldn’t even jump in front of a train because they were doing construction on the Red Line again.
I decided to do real research. I went to the library.
There were only two books available on nonmonogamy, both memoirs by married white women with dreamy one-word titles. I picked one up, flipping through it.
Why did I feel like I was being sold something? “Bored in your marriage? Thinking about murdering your husband? Not so fast. Try nonmonogamy! It’s ethical, it’s more interesting, and it will spice up your stale sex life so you can keep doing all the mononormative nuclear family bullshit you were just trying to escape!”
Then the rhetorical questions: Can they love each otherandthese new people? Can they stay true to their marriageandtheir evil-ass desires? Can they make the impossiblework?
If polyamory was impossible, why wasn’t it impossible to be with one person for forty years? Why wasn’t it impossible to spend $30,000on one day and then get divorced and always have to remember that time you went into debt to make out with your now ex in front of your mom? Why wasn’t it impossible to watch forty thousand Gazans being slaughtered and then attend your friend’s paint-and-sip party?
“Everyone” was nonmonogamous, yet no one was saying anything I cared about. I’d sought out these kinds of books a year ago and had the same deflated-cum-rage feeling that nonmonogamy was just an add-on in the game of monogamy that you could purchase for your character for $3.99. It was new age couple’s therapy, a chic personal essay inThe Cut, a sexy plot point in a novel. It was Gwyneth Paltrow and her $1,000 coochie crystal, it was a hot-pink “pleasure is political” mug (which, yes, I bought, but whatever!!!). It was cool so long as you didn’t take it seriously.
I put the memoir down. A bloodcurdling scream tore out of a toddler in the middle of story time. I wanted to thank the toddler for being honest, for not suffering through a boring story like the other kids.
On my way out, I saw a book with the word “GREEDY” in colorful letters, glimpsed on the cover the words “want,” and “too much.”
My pulse popped in my eardrum. Was this the story I was searching for? I reached for it.
It was about bisexuality. I tucked it back on the shelf and left.
Chapter 14
The creaky Metro escalator lifted me toward Union Station, where I was meeting Jay at the MARC Train. Pigeons waddled on the cement out front. Inside: the lunch rush. Chipotle, CAVA, Shake Shack. I moved into the main hall, its thick white columns leaping into a wave of arches. The gold-foiled octagons gave it an added flick of grandeur. I thought of the basilica, of Tristan sinking onto the stone steps. Wind sending hair into my mouth, his hand drawing it behind my ear, the whip of cologne at his neck. I crushed the memory like an old piece of paper.
Jay texted to say he’d deboarded. On the platform, I nervously searched for him in the flurry of suitcases—commuting businessmen, college students in sweats—and caught his green cap bobbing through the crowd. I remembered wearing that cap around campus when I didn’t feel like doing my hair, how people mistook me for him from afar. When he spotted me, grinning with abandon, I was struck by a hot-blue lightning bolt of guilt.
He kissed my temple. “You’re not as cute as I remember.”
“It’s not too late to go home.”
