He’d pictured himself engaged by thirty-four. At least living together. Not starting over from scratch.
Briar’s nails continue to click softly against the screen.
“I also set up a Grindr account,” she adds. “Just in case.”
* * *
“NINETY-SEVEN DOLLARS FOR a vibrator?” Radhya stage-whispers over the store’s trip-hop soundtrack. “Does it hold a charge for three years or something?”
“That actually would be a useful advancement in vibrator technology.” Ari runs her hand along the sleek white floating shelf, brushing hand-sized objects in hot pink, deep purple, and teal, like tiny replicas of fine art.
The price tag doesn’t quite trigger Ari’s usual sense of sticker shock because Cass insists on splurging on expensive accessories.
Insisted. The three-drawer bedside table might be gone, but the toys themselves are still there—tossed in a Captain Morgan box Ari picked up from the liquor store down the block.
The sex-toy store had been Radhya’s idea, a bold act of self-care. It doesn’t feel like self-care, though. Too many of the customers at CreamPot resemble Cass from the back. For the entire two-and-a-half years of their relationship, Ari never mistook random strangers on the sidewalk or the train for her wife. Suddenly, Cass doppelg?ngers in black blazers and undercuts pop up like whack-a-moles across the city.
Last year, Cass and Ari attended an ethical non-monogamy workshop. They filled out more than half of The Jealousy Workbook. They wrote out a Google doc outlining the new boundaries of their marriage. Physical （not emotional） intimacy with other people would be fair game. Threesomes? Yes, please. For about nine months, it was a perfect blend of stable relationship and exciting new adventures.
And then August rolled around. Cass moved two hours north for a semester-long visiting professorship at Bard and decided that the Google doc hadn’t gone far enough.
“We can unchain ourselves from the hierarchy,” she’d said during one of their video calls, “where couples”—she’d used air quotes—“are prioritized over other relationships.” While Cass leafed through her Moleskin, paraphrasing the relationship anarchy tenets she’d heard about on a TED Talk, Ari was half-listening, half-wondering about the emotional intensity of her wife’s “other relationships.”
To be fair, Cass always hated hierarchy.
“Love is abundant,” Cass reassured her. “It’s overflowing.”
But a month later, she had apparently run out of love for Ari.
She’d never left before. Not like this.
The past few weeks have been like living underwater—everything’s blurry and distorted. Ari doesn’t even remember putting on her least-flattering pair of jeans and an old hoodie this morning. She has no memory of getting on the train or meeting Rad at her restaurant’s loading dock after the brunch shift.
Ari had intended to finish one of her freelance writing projects last night. Instead, she woke up at five a.m. on a mostly deflated air mattress, with a string of drool on the pillowcase, disoriented by the blank walls, just one nonsensical incomplete sentence in her open Google doc.
She’s been picking at it all day, tapping out mediocre punch lines on her phone and deleting them.
The writing was Gabe’s idea—one of his many side hustles. It’s a platform for “creative entrepreneurs” called NeverTired where strangers pay professional comedians to craft wedding toasts, bat mitzvah speeches, even sermons.
Jokes written for her own stand-up material: none. Work-in-progress scripts opened: zero. One-off writing gigs that take way too much time and pay just enough to create the illusion that it’s worth the effort? Seventeen in the past two weeks.
Plus, she doesn’t have to leave the apartment.
It’s the little things that are getting tougher to brush aside. The stuff you barely notice while you’re in the relationship suddenly require phone calls and paperwork to undo. Which utility bills are in Cass’s name? Are they going to stay on the same Verizon family plan? Will they continue to share Cass’s mother’s Comcast log-in?
Instead of one giant knot, it’s a tangled mess of yarn.
“Are you still texting Cass?” Radhya asks, holding up a harness across her hips. “I told you to block her.” She puts down the harness and tilts her head. “Please tell me you did not send her another nude—”
“I’m trying to finish this maid-of-honor speech,” Ari snaps, which is completely true and not technically a denial about sending Cass a very flattering image captured in the bathroom mirror last night.