The way Gigi's signature movie in Gen Q is the licking alllll the way up EVEN up the chin to then kiss-- if a woman did that to me I would be absolutely stunned
in the week after their breakup, gigi reconnects with nat and realizes polyamory was more than ‘just a phase’ for her. dani realizes she made a terrible mistake letting gigi go, and that one of her biggest flaws is her inability to listen. together, they find common ground.
There are signs of Gigi everywhere, and Dani cannot get away.
Her apartment isn’t hers anymore. Instead it is a museum of every moment she has never spent with Gigi, every dinner at the shitty little table by the window and every morning spent with tea at the kitchen island. They are reminders of comfortable silence, easy conversations, a familiar warmth.
Even her own bed isn’t hers anymore. When she lays her head down it’s onto a silk pillowcase, one of two that Gigi bought for Dani’s apartment after reading online that it would be better for their hair, and because Dani could afford silk pillowcases and Gigi had used her card.
As if that’s not enough: the books Gigi brought over to read before bed are still stacked on top of the dresser, her rosewater candles are still half-burned on every coffee table, rings and bracelets and earrings keep popping up each time she thinks she’s making progress.
Her apartment isn’t hers anymore, but she has nowhere else to go.
Right now, the issue is dinner. She stands in front of the kitchen cabinets and knows she can’t open them because in one of those cabinets — she isn’t sure which — lies Gigi’s favorite box of tea. And of all things that might remind her of her ex and have her sobbing on the floor like the world is ending for the rest of the night, that might compel her most strongly.
There’s still an empty mug on the kitchen counter, right where Gigi left it. Dani can’t bring herself to move it, and the feeling reminds her of those grieving widowers in the movies that can’t bring themselves to turn off the lights on their wives’ vanity mirrors or blow out the last burning candle she lit.
The fridge is even worse. There are still leftovers in the fridge, not Dani’s leftovers but Gigi’s, in a white paper box from their favorite restaurant. Dani can’t bring herself to throw them away — she will let the food rot in the fridge for however long it takes, until it molds and reshapes itself into something unrecognizable. Only then will she allow herself to touch it.
Dani backs away, leaves the kitchen. She can manage going hungry for a night.
—
Dani tosses and turns, head resting on that damn silk pillowcase, and tries to think through where things went wrong.
The first thing that comes up is the accident. She knows she should have done more for Gigi during her recovery, shouldn’t have let there be room for Nat to squeeze in. She should have helped her dress, should have washed her hair, should have iced her bruises. She should have done more.
But it goes past that. The accident was a failed test, but it wasn’t the only one.
Sophie used to tell her she didn’t listen. She would imply, if not state outright, that Dani was only in it for herself — whether that it referred to work, family, home, relationships…
Dani sighs, letting her eyes fall closed but not expecting sleep to follow. She wonders if it’s really that simple — if listening is really what she has failed so spectacularly at.
She considers how things ended with Gigi. She remembers the confrontation, which had been brief and decisive, and how shitty the whole thing had been. It had happened in a blur, a sudden end, and Dani can’t even remember half of what was said.
She bets that Gigi remembers every word. The thought makes her ache, and she feels so heavy.
Maybe sleep will come tonight.
—
When Dani was a child, she used to look out the window from her father’s office at the very top of the building and wonder what life was like for the thousand ant-sized people walking by below. She would wonder where each of them were going, what they were doing, what their clothes looked like since she couldn’t tell so far up. She would wonder what kind of food they liked to eat, what movies they liked to watch, if their families were little like hers or bigger than she could imagine.
Dani looks out at the city from the window of her apartment and wonders where Gigi fits into it now. She wonders what she might be doing, where she might be right now, what clothes she might be wearing. She wonders if she has eaten today, what she has eaten, who she has eaten with. She wonders about her family, all her brothers and the mother that had welcomed Dani so gracefully into their family once.
Then she pulls her phone from her pocket and pulls up her contacts. She lets her thumb hover over Gigi’s name as anxiety washes over her, and she releases a shaky breath.
She needs to let things go. She needs to let Gigi fade into the backdrop of the city, let her become another ex to add to the list. She needs to pick out things to learn from the relationship and treat it like that’s all it was, a learning opportunity, and she needs to accept that sometimes relationships just fail.
She can’t, or rather, she doesn’t. Instead she presses down on Gigi’s contact, raises the phone to her ear, and hopes with all her might that this isn’t a mistake.
“Hey,” she says into the phone, before Gigi can tell her she isn’t interested in anything Dani has to say. “I think we should talk.”
—
“Thank you for coming,” Dani says. She doesn’t mean to, but she slips into the professional tone she tends to use before conferences at her father’s business, glass tables and wheeled chairs and windowed walls. She clears her throat. “It’s good to see you again. You look good— I mean, is that okay to say?”
Gigi sits down across from her at the little dining table. She thinks for a second that she should’ve had them meet in neutral territory, a coffee shop for example, because being in Dani’s apartment right now feels too intimate.
“I made us tea,” Dani says, and nudges the mug she filled for Gigi further in her direction. “I still have the kind you like.”
Gigi looks down at the mug of tea, but doesn’t reach for it.
“Are you hungry?” Dani asks. “I can make us something to eat, maybe some—”
“I’m fine, Dani.”
She stops pressing. This is the first time she has heard Gigi speak since she’s walked into the apartment, and by extension ever since the breakup. Hearing her voice again feels like watching the broken pieces of the world come back into order. It calms her, even though she has no right to let it.
“You wanted to talk,” Gigi says. She makes a vague gesture to the space between them. “Go ahead. Talk.”
Put on the spot, there is only one thing she can say: “I’m sorry.”
Gigi had been doing well at keeping a stoic expression, blank and unreadable, but now it falters. Just for a moment, but long enough for Dani to become hopeful.
“I shouldn’t have ended things the way I did,” she continues. “I should have listened. I care about you, Gigi.”
She sighs, leaning back in her chair. She lets the following silence speak for her, during which she shakes her head.
“I mean it. I care about you so fucking much. These past few days without you have been…” Dani trails off. “I can’t even describe it. They’ve been awful.”
“Breakups are hard.” Gigi curses herself for how harsh her own voice sounds. Even when the end drew near, she was never this rough.
“Yeah,” she nods, sitting back and mirroring Gigi’s posture. She is starting to think this was a bad idea. “They are. This one has been especially brutal, though, at least for me.”
She doesn’t like the implication that she herself has come out unscathed, that she has let Dani wallow in the pain while she goes off with Nat into some distant, bright happily ever after.
At last, Gigi reaches for the mug of tea. She takes a small sip, the familiar taste of her favorite tea slipping onto her tongue, and for a second her heart wrenches in her chest as the memories come back of drinking it here under better circumstances.
“It’s been hard for me, too,” Gigi says. “I think Nat is getting sick of my grief.”
“How is Nat?”
She pauses, mulling over the question. She wants to give a simple answer, push Nat back out of the equation, but that has never been an option. They’ve been together since college, even though it’s been off-and-on.
“She’s good,” Gigi says eventually. “I’ve been staying with her, actually. My place gets lonely, and it’s been nice to see the kids full-time again.”
“Have you told the kids that you’re getting back together?”
“Does it matter to you?”
Yes. It makes the breakup final, and your relationship with Nat serious. “No. Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.”
“We’ve been discussing boundaries,” Gigi says. “Nat and I have, I mean. We’ve been deciding what we’re okay with, what we’re not.”
Dani thinks she shouldn’t have asked about Nat to begin with. She doesn’t want to hear about her, or about the progression of her rekindling relationship with Gigi. But she told herself she would listen to whatever Gigi brought to the table today, so she sits there and bears it.
“We’ve decided to open things up.”
Dani raises a brow. “Like… polyamory?”
“Polyamory,” she confirms. She takes another sip of tea to steady herself. “We’ve done it before.”
Dani can’t help the words that come flying out. “Sort of. You were in a throuple, one that barely lasted. That’s not the same as diving into an open relationship.”
“I didn’t ask for your judgement.”
“I’m not judging,” Dani says, but she’s not so sure that she isn’t. “I just… don’t understand.”
Gigi tilts her head, disbelief evident in her eyes. “Are you sure?”
“What are you implying?”
She shrugs, looking down at the table. “Sophie, Finley, that girl you told me you went to preschool with…”
“I’m not polyamorous,” Dani says sharply. She feels suddenly defensive. “You can get that out of your mind.”
A small silence fills the apartment again, and Gigi looks out the window at the rest of the city. She remembers having a conversation like this with Nat a few days ago, a conversation during which she had been as defensive as Dani is now.
‘It didn’t work,’ she had argued when Nat brought up the throuple they were in briefly with Alice. ‘It was never going to work. Relationships like that never do.’
‘But you had been willing to try.’
‘You loved Alice. I wanted you to be happy.’
‘You loved her, too.’
She hadn’t been able to deny it. While the relationship had been brief, she had felt something for Alice that had drawn her near. It had been soft and new and she had been willing to stand back and watch it grow. She sees that now, and she sees what it implies.
“Do you remember what it was like when you figured out you were gay?” Gigi asks suddenly.
Dani nods. “It’s like the world came into focus.”
She nods, turning her gaze back to the woman in front of her.
“Is that how it felt for you?” Dani asks quietly. “With polyamory?”
“To some extent. It was less of a surprise, considering…” she gives a nod, referencing the throuple without mentioning it outright. “It felt right. It explained a lot about me that I hadn’t known how to quantify.”
Her voice is small. “I’m happy for you, Gigi.”
Gigi studies her for a moment, taking her in. Across from her, Dani looks small. She doesn’t look like the imposing businesswoman she puts on the front of, but instead she looks so incredibly human. And beyond that, she looks confused.
“Talk to me,” Gigi says. “I can see that you have questions.”
She shifts a little in her chair. “How can you be okay with her seeing other people? Doesn’t it bother you?”
Gigi smiles softly, shaking her head. “It’s not one-sided, Dani. She gets who she wants, and I get who I want. We meet in the middle.”
“So, what, you both have… side chicks?”
“Not exactly.”
“So all of your other relationships are serious, too?”
“Some are,” Gigi says. “Some are not. It depends. Every relationship is different, you know that.”
“What was our relationship?” Dani asks. She crosses her arms. “Was it serious to you?”
Despite her better judgement, Gigi reaches a hand out and waits until Dani takes it. “The most serious I’ve had, besides what I have with Nat.”
“So Nat is in the picture fully, then? And she’s not leaving?”
Gigi meets her eyes, and that is all the answer she needs. She says so anyway. “We were always meant for one another.”
Dani wants to pull her hand back, but it feels so nice to have Gigi touching her again, even in such a simple way. She doesn’t move.
“But,” Gigi continues, “that doesn’t mean we weren’t also meant for other people.”
“Are you seeing other people? Besides Nat?”
She shakes her head.
“Why not?”
Gigi offers her a small smile. “Like I said, I’m still not over this. Us.”
In some small way, Dani feels reassured by that. She doesn’t want Gigi to be over her because she is definitely not over Gigi, and any bit of hope is welcome.
“I guess I can understand it,” Dani says. “I mean, I can understand being attracted to multiple people at a time.”
“Have you experienced that, Dani?”
She thinks about it. She remembers how she used to feel living in the big house with Sophie, Finley, Micah. She felt so much love living between those walls, and there were times she questioned the nature of it.
“Maybe,” she says honestly. She holds onto Gigi’s hand. “With Sophie and Finley, I think. Even with all Finley did to me… I don’t know.”
“Love can hurt.”
“Love doesn’t hurt,” Dani says. “People do.”
Gigi sees the truth in that. She knows it all too well, that love is good and people who don’t know what to do with it can make stupid decisions. She has been on both the giving and receiving end of pain like that.
“You should think about it,” Gigi says, referring to polyamory. “Look into it, explore it, feel it. I think you would learn more from it than you think.”
“And what about us?” Dani asks. “I mean, you came over here because we agreed to talk about us, and instead you’re trying to introduce me to polyamory. Why? What do you want, Gigi?”
Gigi stands, pulls her hand from Dani’s, and steps around to perch herself on the edge of the table in front of her. “Is it really that hard for you to read between the lines?”
Suddenly, it all makes sense. Dani begins to understand piece by piece what Gigi has been implying all along, and what it means that she now has the freedom to see multiple people at a time.
She gets who she wants, and I get who I want.
“You still want this,” Dani murmurs. “You still want us to be together.”
Gigi reaches back for the mug of tea. She brings it to her lips and takes another sip, a way of confirming Dani’s assumption without words, because admitting verbally that her love lasts still feels too painful after what happened.
Dani looks down guiltily into her lap. “Even after how I treated you? After I didn't listen?”
“I’m not guiltless, Dani. We both made mistakes.”
“Yeah, but I was more brutal than you were.”
Gigi can’t argue that.
“I’m sorry,” Dani says. She stands up and faces Gigi fully, stepping close to her and raising a hand as if to reach out for her before letting it drop. “I’m so fucking sorry, Gigi. I should have listened, I should have done more, I should have… fuck, there’s so much I should have done.”
“Come here,” Gigi pulls Dani into her arms, brings a hand up to the back of her head and cradles it, letting Dani rest her forehead down against her shoulder. “I forgive you.”
She feels Dani begin to shake, hears the way her breath catches, and then she feels the warmth of tears soaking through her shirt.
“I’ve got you,” Gigi murmurs. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay,” she shakes her head. “Everything is fucked, and I’m at the center of it all. Fucking typical.”
“Don’t say that.”
“It’s true.”
Gigi reaches for Dani’s face and pulls her up to face her. “Look at me. We can figure things out, this isn’t the end. This is… a natural progression. This needed to happen.”
Dani still can’t stop the tears from coming. They blur her vision and as soon as they drop down her face, Gigi is there to swipe them away.
“We never would have been happy otherwise,” Gigi continues. “Sooner or later, something was going to happen.”
“What about now?”
“Now,” she says carefully, “we have time to figure out what we want. We have the freedom to take it.”
Dani tips her head back down onto Gigi’s shoulder. She asks the question that’s been at the tip of her tongue ever since Gigi started talking about open relationships and throuples and painful introspection.
“What if I’m polyamorous?” Dani asks. Her voice is strained, quiet.
She can’t see it, but she can hear the smile in Gigi’s voice. “Then you’re polyamorous, and that’s all there is to it.”
“Really?”
Gigi nods. She runs a hand through Dani’s hair soothingly. “But you don’t have to know that right now. You don’t have to have all of the answers.”
Dani raises her head again. The tears have stopped and she feels a little more at ease. “Will you wait until I do?”
“I’ll wait as long as you want me to.”
Tentatively, she asks another question. “Can I kiss you?”
Instead of answering, Gigi leans in. She closes the space between them and meets Dani in a kiss that feels like home, familiar and warm and hopeful. She keeps her hand threaded in the other woman’s hair, keeping her close, and when they part she leans forward to rest her forehead against Dani’s.
“When you’re ready,” Gigi murmurs, “I’ll be right here waiting for you.”
Dani’s apartment bears signs of Gigi everywhere, and she wouldn’t have it any other way.
“You better,” Dani says. She leans in again, stealing another greedy kiss before pulling back and raising a hand to cup the other woman’s face, taking in her features as if she hasn’t already committed them to memory.
Dani’s apartment bears signs of Gigi everywhere, and each one gives her a little bit more hope.
