“Why be jealous at all?”
I sit there and stare at her, some part of my brain still struggling with the idea that she just can’t understand. She’s at the head of her bed, leaning back against the metal bed frame, while I sit across from her at the foot. We had been sitting together, then cuddling, then apart again; I was always moving, always too impatient or too nervous to sit in one spot. Having to look at her directly, with her unwavering but not unfriendly eyes, is uncomfortable. I occasionally look at the spots of mold in the corner of her ceiling or the picture on the wall of an apple morphing into two cardinals when it’s too awkward to look at her head-on.
“Because…because I want to be the one.” I start lamely. I instantly regret it; sentimentality never had a place between us, let alone any value. “Because I want to be unique, want to be special.” Her expression hasn’t changed, but I feel like I have already lost her. “I want to be so amazing in bed she won’t want anyone else, so witty and intellectual she’ll crave no other company, so endearing that she’ll always want to be around me.”
“But you aren’t those things.”
I shouldn’t feel offended, but I do. Sometimes I crave a little sentimentality from her, a little romance. I glance down at my hands playing with some folds in her comforter, arranging my face, and then look back up at her. I look at her glasses where the paint has chipped on the bridge, at her hair with its streaks of blue even though it was cut so short, at the thirty-something piercings in her ears going every which direction and interconnecting with one another in a lunatic’s jigsaw puzzle. I look at her ill fitting clothes- all black- the way her college-drama program tee-shirt doesn’t show her breasts even though she’s got them both pierced, but there’s no missing the flair of hips and ass encased in her black jeans. Her arms are dark haired, leading to unshaved arm pits, she’s wearing a man’s watch next to a chain-mail bracelet she made herself, her whole aura is androgyny that borders closer to masculine than feminine. I am looking at her untraditionalism. I’m going to lose this argument.
“But I want to feel that way.”
She smirks.
“If you had someone follow you everywhere, constantly wanting your attention and company, you’d call them a stalker,” she points out. I think about the boys- and girls- I had problems with in high school. Well…and in college. I was not the great beauty, the flawless blond by any means, but maybe I was too nice. Maybe I didn’t send the right signals. Maybe I just attracted the co-dependent. “Besides. If you love them, you’d want them to be happy right? Even if that means with another? Even with another and you?”
She doesn’t look away from me when we talk. My eyes are always moving, watching her but then wandering, and watching her again. She looks at me straight on, all the time. I wonder sometimes, though, if she can distinguish me from the hundreds of women who have also crawled into this very bed. I knew the majority only stayed there for an hour or two, while I might get a night or two a month, but I still wondered. She had only said my name twice in the six months we had been dating; once to a waiter to confirm our dinner reservations, and once to the man at the gun range where she taught me how to shoot. Never directly.
“No I don’t.”
“Don’t love them, don’t want them with another, don’t want them happy?”
I bite down on my lip and look away from her, upset. It’s a bitter mix of anger, annoyance and sorrow. I look instead around the room, taking in the dust bunnies and the overflowing bookshelves. Her idea of cleaning her room so I can come over is to pick up her laundry and make sure my usual spot on the bed wasn’t covered in comic books. The times she comes over, I vacuum and dust, rearrange my bookshelves in alphabetical order and hide the romance novels while bringing the intellectual science fiction to the front. Then there’s the hour spent in front of the mirror, carefully brushing on a light layer of make-up and plucking unwanted hairs, picking out the right pair of jeans to hide my love handles even though I know they’ll end up in a pile on the floor soon enough. I was pretty impressed on the day she wore a tee-shirt with an obscure psychology joke on it just for me.
“Of course when you love someone you want them to be happy,” I start, not sure where I am going to go with that thought. “But it doesn’t stop you from feeling crummy when they’re with someone else instead of you, even if you know they are coming back.”
I twist and flop down on my back, my head pointed toward her so I have to lean my neck back if I want to look at her. It gives me a moment to look at the ceiling instead, the little mold spots in the corner of my vision. Her legs are next to my face, and I can feel the heat from them like I can feel her grin at my lack of logic. I knew I wasn’t going to win on the logic front with her, was going to have to rely on the emotional. It makes me feel like I lost.
“But you only feel this way with her. You don’t feel it with yourself or others.”
I move my head back, looking at her from upside down. I couldn’t read her expression. “What do you mean?”
“You want her to only sleep with you, but you want to sleep with others. And your other lovers see other people.”
“Yeah.” My voice sounds flat, and I readjust my head, and turn over onto my side, pressing my cheek against her leg. One of her hands comes down from where it was folded across her chest and begins to absent-mindedly stroke my hair. I soak in the touch, craving it. I wonder how much longer it will be before she’ll kiss me and we’ll end up naked. Our pattern of talking while we both worked up the courage to move to…other activities…was well established at this point. “I don’t mind it in others.”
It’s said for her benefit. I wanted her to only sleep with me, to only want my body, to only crave my company. I don’t say those things to her though; I knew when I had started dating her all those months ago that I was never going to be the only girl in her life. I wasn’t even the most important; there was a girlfriend living in another city, a beautiful red head with a sharp mind and a wind-chime laugh. Taking a deep breath, I can smell the dryness of the fibers of her pants and the scent of hers that I associated with a mix of dust and blood with hints of Cajun peppers.
“So then it’s unfair for you to treat Hannah any different.”
I look up at Amy, my cheek running across her thigh. She said my other lover’s name more readily than my own sometimes, but it still sounded weird to me. Like the two of them had to be separated, strictly kept apart and kept quiet. Having two girlfriends still felt like cheating to me, even when both were aware of one another and quite alright with the open manner of our relationships. It seemed like I was the only one who was struggling with the concept of poly-amory.
“Yeah, I know. I’ll get over it.” I say, dismissingly. Her hand pauses a moment when I adjust to get comfortable, and then starts running itself over my hair again. “I just feel crummy about her seeing another girl is all.”
I can feel her smirk.
Jealously,
Eve
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