Fair Exchange - Part IV
In Part III, Bíbí spends more time with Deckland, pulled deeper into this new relationship and attracted by the world he and Delia have created together. She goes over for dinner one evening, and when Delia asks if she can bring her date in, Bíbí is floored to see that it’s Steven.
Yep, there was Steven, wearing the nicest T-shirt he owned, a Xavier Payne print of a Black version of Richie Rich holding a pot of gold labeled “Culture.” He was also wearing the nicest pair of jeans he owned, which still had tiny holes around the rivets (Bíbí knew because she washed them weekly), and his somewhat new navy-blue Vans. What a pair they made there in the doorway: Delia looking casually elegant with her stylish hair and jewelry; Steven with his curly hair gelled to the consistency of scalloped cake frosting, looking like he was trying but still failing at being a grown man. His failure was even more pronounced because he was standing across from Deckland in his dark heather Henley and black joggers, a pair of gray slippers on his feet. His hair was pulled back into a neat half-ponytail and his glasses rested atop his head since they sometimes clouded with steam as he cooked.
Steven grinned reflexively when he saw Bíbí, but as Deckland walked over to shake his hand, Bíbí watched the realization travel from the handshake to Steven’s face. As it did, he looked over Deckland’s shoulder in disbelief.
Deckland stepped back. “Hold up—y’all know each other?” and he crossed his arms back and forth in front of him, pointing fingers at them both.
“This is Steven,” said Bíbí. “My boyfriend.”
“Oh! Okay. Sorry. Nice to meet you, man,” said Deckland patting Steven on the shoulder. He turned to Delia. “It’s okay. They’re open.”
Delia laughed, “I would hope so,” she said, and then, “Good lord, Nashville is smaller than it looks.” After a moment of awkward silence, she put a hand on Steven’s other shoulder and said, “Well, it’s as good a time as any to make us some drinks. What are you in the mood for?”
But Bíbí knew Steven didn’t drink. And when he said as much, she felt bad for him. She sipped her margarita and watched Deckland move back to the stove, where he was heating oil in a large pan that looked like a wok while Steven followed Delia to the dining room to watch her make something for herself. Bíbí shrugged. It would be a long night for someone in this entanglement who was sober.
When they left, Deckland shot Bíbí a mocking glance and shook his head.
“That’s who you were pining over?” he whispered. “Shit, I guess it’s my turn to stop being taken aback.” He snickered as he tossed a plate of marbled meat into the pan.
*****
Dinner went remarkably well, given the circumstances. Bíbí drank more margaritas, and Delia and Deckland smoothly guided the group from one conversation to another: from artwork to field studies to podcasts to the latest docuseries on Netflix. Steven laughed awkwardly and fidgeted, something that, under different circumstances, Bíbí, who usually sat beside him, would have quelled by slipping a hand under the table and squeezing his knee. But he wasn’t too uncomfortable to ask how Delia and Deckland decided to open their relationship. Bíbí shot him daggers from across the table. She’d wanted to ask herself, but for him, it should have been an answer he knew, since he made the same decision only a few weeks before.
Delia set down her glass and cupped her chin thoughtfully. She turned to Deckland.
“I don’t remember us ever making a decision. Do you, babe?” She squinted. “I think we always knew what we wanted from each other. And we always knew we wanted the freedom to make other connections. Build other things.”
Deckland, who’d been watching Delia with rapt adoration as she spoke, nodded.
“The first time I saw Dee, I knew what it was. I wanted to wake up to her forever. But I didn’t want her to feel bound by my want. I wanted her to feel like she could still live her life and be herself, as long as she kept coming back to me. To us.”
Bíbí was confused. So, it was Delia who wanted this? Not him? And he’d agreed to it? It gave their first dinner conversation a whole new meaning. Deckland had been speaking to Bíbí not as a man who’d convinced his woman of a similar arrangement, but as someone who’d been faced with the same option, and he’d taken it to be with the woman he loved. And the way Deckland was looking at that woman now? Bíbí’s heart sank a little, much to her surprise. Did he ever look at Bíbí that way? She hadn’t noticed; so much of her thinking had been clouded by the thrill of sex, her disappointment in Steven, and her own confusion at the prospect of now getting to choose what she wanted when she had forgotten what all there was to want. Had she been starting to feel something for Deckland? Probably not, but how could she be sure?
Bíbí also looked at Delia with new eyes. So, Delia was out there dating dating, but whom? Who else was she into besides aloof men and Adonises? Bíbí blushed and pushed the question out of her mind. When she refocused her gaze, Delia, who had been watching her lost in thought, smiled knowingly, almost as if she’d been reading a news crawl on Bíbí’s forehead. Bíbí could only smile back, too stunned to speak.
What was it about certain women that made men treat them the way Deckland treated Delia? Hell, the way they were all treating her, even Steven, who was bumbling and eager around her just as he had been on his first dates with Bíbí: laughing at her jokes and jumping up to pull out her chair when she returned to the table with drinks or sour cream. Perhaps it was the thing Bíbí herself savored during her previously brief encounters with Delia: a joy that seemed completely unweighted by Deckland’s doings, by Bíbí’s presence, by any of it. Delia lived in a beautiful house with a beautiful man, but she always seemed to be on her way somewhere else. She was firmly rooted in the entirety of her own life. No one thing seemed more important, or was held more tightly, than the other. Bíbí had lived similarly during college, when she cared deeply for her lovers, her books, and the long drives to her apartment after class, where she could play the music she loved and sing loudly without judgement. She wondered how hard it would be to get that back.
When Deckland rose to clear the table, Bíbí excused herself and went to the bathroom. She sat on the toilet for a long time, staring at the shower curtain, a pattern of red, black, and yellow sunbursts. When she finally opened the door, Steven was standing in front of it.
“Can we talk?” he asked.
Bíbí stepped wordlessly aside and let him in.
“Bíbí!” he whispered as he shut the door. “What the hell are you doing here?”
Bíbí looked at him, her face slack and emotionless from vodka. And even if it hadn’t been, she wouldn’t have given him the satisfaction of reading her feelings.
“I should be asking you the same thing,” she replied. As she raised an eyebrow, Steven smacked a palm on his forehead.
“This is where you’ve been coming! When you said you were going to visit your friends?”
“He is my friend.”
“Who you never mentioned.”
Bíbí put one hand on the sink’s edge to steady herself.
“I don’t owe you any explanations for what I’m doing, Steven. This is what you wanted,” she said calmly. “I’m giving you that.”
“No you’re not!” He was still whispering, but his voice sizzled with aggravation. “You’re doing this to get back at me. And not for nothing, but if you’re sleeping with this guy, you’re supposed to tell me. It’s a rule. I’m still your partner.”
“Rule?” she scoffed. “When did we set up rules? We never even talked about this. You just announced it one day and expected me to be cool with it.”
Steven took a step toward her, his hands at his sides, fists half-clenched. Bíbí knew it wasn’t a threat, but she lifted her chin at him anyway. He gave a quick nod and took a breath, relaxing his fingers.
“That’s only because you wouldn’t let me talk about it.” he rasped. “Every time I tried, you went silent on me. And I shouldn’t have to tell you you’ve gotta say something when you’re having…freaking…sex with people. That’s a safety measure. It doesn’t even have to be a rule.”
Bíbí smiled. “Okay, so when were you going to tell me you’re going on dates?”
Steven groaned, as usual, exasperated at Bíbí’s simplicity.
“Going on a date isn’t the same as sleeping with someone. If that were to ever happen, I would tell you. And well in advance.”
“That’s exactly right. You would tell me, and I would have to deal with it—I wouldn’t have a say either way. So, what’s the point? And on a bigger note, what’s the difference?”
“Are you kidding me? It’s safety! Like, are you even taking precautions with this guy?”
Now, it was Bíbí’s turn to be annoyed. “No, Steven,” she said. “Because in spite of the fact that I am the same age as you, have the same education as you, and finished my degree before you did, I am, as you have long suspected, dumb as fuck.” She cocked her head and waited for him to scold her sarcasm.
Instead, Steven sighed. “You are always twisting everything I say. Then you wonder why I don’t want to tell you anything.”
“Well, I guess that makes two of us,” said Bíbí. “First thing we’ve agreed on in a long time.” She put her hands together and slow-clapped. Softly though, so Deckland and Delia wouldn’t hear.
Steven pursed his lips together like he was trying to hold back from replying. Then, he shook his head.
“Bíbí, you’re in way over your head with this. You don’t know what you’re doing, and you could get hurt. And no matter how terrible of a partner you think I am, I don’t want that. I do still love you. I just want to make sure we didn’t land in the same relationship because we were two people who happened to be going in the same direction. You know those couples. We’ve gone to their faculty parties. We’ve joked about how incompatible they are.”
“Steven, if you think I’m only here because—” Suddenly, Bíbí stopped. As convenient as his logic was for his own argument, Steven did have a point. Five years before, at the moment she realized she was in love, Bíbí’s endgame had become what she thought it should be for two heterosexual people setting up house. She hadn’t thought any other endgame was feasible. You married straight men. Or they were supposed to want to marry you, right? But maybe she’d misread Steven. Or been tricked. He’d acted like he wanted a wife and waited years before telling her that wasn’t the case. And the revelation was conveniently timed with his finishing one of the most difficult tasks of his life. Bíbí felt like an emotional support animal he no longer needed, and that made her angry.
Meanwhile, Steven thought the pause meant some of his words had gotten through to her.
“Yeah, Bíbí. I meant what I said. I do love you,” he repeated, and it sounded so earnest, Bíbí laughed.
“What’s so funny about that?”
“You don’t know what that means,” she told him. “But I do think you believe it. So that’s something, I guess.”
Steven bristled. “So, you don’t believe me because right now I don’t want to be exclusive with you? Spending time with other people suddenly means a person doesn’t know how to love? If so, then how do you explain what I walked in on in the kitchen? How do you explain all this?”
Steven gestured toward the rest of the house, but it looked like he was pointing to a heavy, embroidered robe hanging on the bathroom door. Probably Deckland’s. Bíbí almost laughed again.
“It’s a good motherfucking time is what it is, Steven. And that’s more than what I can say has been happening with us.”
“See what I mean?” he hissed. “You don’t even know how to do this right! It was never about comparison. It was never about finding something better for me. Why can’t we just spend time finding ourselves? Why can’t we just take a beat to figure out who we are? You really want to blow everything up because I asked for space? That’s really what you’re trying to do right now?”
“No,” said Bíbí. “And, just so I’m clear on this: you know exactly what it looks like when you want to find yourself, but not when I want to? Because this can’t be it, no. This is me getting even. This is me getting back. Not getting back to myself, mind you. Just getting back. Keep in mind I was single when I met you. Not to mention openly bi. But all of a sudden, now I have to play the Puritan.”
“I never said that, Bíbí. It’s just really funny that ‘all of a sudden’ you’re keeping secrets, though. Sneaking off.”
“The secret wasn’t hard to keep because you weren’t paying attention.”
“I’ve been trying to finish my deg—”
“Well, take a number then!” jeered Bíbí. “That shit’s hard for everybody! And as hard as it is for you now, that’s how hard it was for me. But I still made us work. And I could count on one hand how many times you even asked how I was doing. Like, really asked.”
“You never told me—”
“That it was hard?” she interrupted. “That I was stressed and lonely? That I might have needed someone to do for me all the things I was still doing for you? I had to say that for you to get it? Like, spell it out?”
Steven dropped his head dramatically and slumped his shoulders. Then he crossed his arms and looked back up at Bíbí.
“You know I’ve never been good at that. I didn’t get—When Mom died—”
Bíbí, who had been holding on to the sink since the conversation began, put both hands up to her face and began shaking her head.
“No, Steven,” she said. “You cannot do this right now. I know you didn’t get everything you needed. And I am sorry.” She took her hands from her face. “But I don’t have everything I need right now, and we can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep shortchanging myself for you, and you can’t keep using your mother as a reason to let me. It’s unfair to both of us. Not you and me; me and her. Two people you swear up and down you loved.”
Steven took a step back from her like he’d been pushed. He said nothing at first, just looked down at his shoes. But this time, Bíbí refused to storm out of the room or even break the silence until he looked back up at her. When he did, she squared her shoulders and looked right back.
“You say you love me,” she said. “But you weren’t thinking about me when you did this. The truth is, you didn’t expect me to do anything but wait for you. Because my waiting would have made you feel safe.”
Bíbí knew what she wanted to say next might damage their relationship irreparably, but she took a breath and said it anyway.
“Your mother is gone because she died, not because she wanted to leave you. Even you’ve told me she fought the whole time. But me? If I leave, it’s because I have the right to decide to do it, just like you. I get to be someone else besides the woman who makes you feel safe. I don’t have to spend my whole life paying for the mistake you think your mother made.”
Steven took another step back, this time bumping into the wall next to the bathtub, and since he was no longer blocking the door, Bíbí took the opportunity to leave. If Steven was hurting, she felt pity for him, but he wasn’t the only one. She now realized how unkind she’d been to herself in the years they’d been together. If not for Steven’s recent request, she would have gone on like they’d been going on forever, taking care of him while he threw up taller and more restrictive boundaries. And she would have gone on secretly like this too, still taking care of him at home while sneaking away for tenderness, for freedom, for a relationship she knew could only go so far. Her thing with Deckland wasn’t unlike her thing with Steven, except it was without the ruse of Bíbí’s believing anything else was possible. And she was mad now—enraged to be honest—but not at the fact that Steven’s ruse was up, but at the fact that she’d convinced herself that that was all she wanted. That a ruse was the best she could get.
Steven tried to reach for her, but Bíbí swatted him away and stalked out of the bathroom, back to the front of the house where Deckland and Delia were sitting on the couch below the painting. They were holding hands, and Deckland was kissing Delia’s knuckles as Bíbí stepped into the room. When he saw her, he unclasped Delia’s hand and stood up.
“Everything okay back there?” he asked.
Bíbí nodded. Delia giggled behind her hand.
“Oh, they were probably stealing some alone time, like we were.” She gestured toward Steven, who was now standing behind Bíbí.
“But you don’t have to hide any of that from us. We’re open to all of it,” Delia continued. “Do whatever makes you feel good. This is a safe space.” She laughed. Bíbí wondered if they’d had more drinks while she and Steven were gone.
Deckland sat back down and put his arm around Delia. “She’s right. We’re into a lot of things,” he said. “You can try us. There’s not a whole lot we haven’t done.”
Steven laughed uncomfortably but said nothing. Bíbí turned to look at him. Wash-worn shirt, wrinkled jeans. When they looked at each other, Steven had the same little boy’s eyes from the bathroom, large and unsure and bewildered by everything. It reminded her of what Deckland said in the kitchen about being perpetually surprised by the goings-on of the world. For years, Bíbí had tried to take that look from Steven with love and so many acts of service that she thought were selfless, but they weren’t. They’d been her own desperate attempt to make a safe place for them both. She’d wanted to build a man she could run to when she was frightened and emotionally bruised. But he could never be that. Never. And Deckland was that, but for somebody else. But maybe that didn’t matter. Maybe it was never meant to matter, at least not for Bíbí.
Bíbí looked at both Deckland and Delia for a long time. Then, without a word, she walked over to Delia and straddled her lap. They kissed deeply. Delia shifted to make herself more comfortable, then leaned into Bíbí with her whole body while Deckland watched with surprised satisfaction. Bíbí couldn’t see Steven’s face and didn’t want to.
Delia pulled away from her and they stared into each other’s eyes. She understood. She leaned in close.
“You know the rules of this house,” she said, so softly Bíbí wondered if anyone else in the room could hear. “Is this what you want? You have to say it.”
Bíbí stared right back, unflinching. “It’s what I want,” she said. “Right here. Right now.”
And with that, Delia pulled her own shirt over her head. Bíbí carefully unbuttoned her jeans. What was she doing? She didn’t know, but maybe she didn’t need to. She just knew there was no looking back now.
Destiny O. Birdsong is a writer whose work has appeared in the Paris Review Daily, Poets & Writers, African American Review, The Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. Her debut poetry collection, Negotiations, was published by Tin House Books in 2020. Her debut novel, Nobody’s Magic, was published by Grand Central in 2022, was longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and was a finalist for the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence. It won the 2022 Willie Morris Award for Southern Fiction. She earned her BA in English and history from Fisk University, and her MFA in poetry and PhD in English from Vanderbilt University. In 2022, she was selected as the Hurston-Wright Foundation’s inaugural Writer-in-Residence at Rutgers University-Newark, and served as a 2022-24 Artist-in-Residence at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville. She is a contributing editor for Poets & Writers Magazine.
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