Page 116 of Someone to Watch Over Me

My stomach isin knots as I wait for Robin to arrive. It’s been in knots ever since she dropped the ex-husband-wants-to-move-back-in bomb on me earlier today. On the one hand, I appreciate that the ex wants to have everything in place for if and when her cancer takes a turn for the worse, which it probably will at some point in the not-so-distant future.

But to have him living in the house again? That might be a bridge too far for me.

In the years since Gwen took her own life for reasons that are still not clear to me, I’ve been in survival mode. The shock of that loss reverberated through every corner of my life, leaving me flattened with grief, regret and questions I’ll never have answered to my satisfaction. It’s taken me years to even think about dating again, and after a few first-date flops, along came Robin with her big smile and her zest for life that had me immediately dazzled for the first time since I lost Gwen.

However, then came the red flags that should’ve had me backing away slowly but certainly.

I would be her first female partner.

She has stage-four breast cancer, which is stable. For now, anyway.

Now, her ex-husband wants to move back into the house.

That latest flag has had me looking for my line in the sand, which has gotten foggy in this situation. I used to have hard-and-fast lines I’d never cross when it came to romantic partners.

At one point, I had a written list of things that were a hard no for me, such as homophobic family members who’d make our lives a living hell. I’d worked too hard on myself and my own family to take on bigots. If you’re hiding who you are from the people closest to you, then I’m not your girl.

Experimentation was another. If you’re “dabbling” in the lesbian lifestyle, I’m not the one for you. Either you’re all in or you’re not, which is totally up to you. But I’m not interested in one foot in while you keep your options open with men. Nope.

I walked away from people I felt a connection to because of these things, so these rules weren’t just on paper. I lived them.

Robin has blown all my old rules to smithereens.

I was her first female lover.

She cried for an hour after the first time we had sex.

“I never knew what I was missing,” she said. “How could I have lived all this time and not known?”

Those are heady words to hear from a new lover. She made me feel ten feet tall to have given her that experience and to have thoroughly enjoyed it myself, even if she had to be guided a bit on how to return the pleasure. I didn’t mind showing her the ropes, so to speak, because she was eager to learn and even more determined to make it good for me, too.

She’s gorgeous, funny, sarcastic, fatalistic about her dreadful illness and madly in love with her two children—a son, who’s eleven, and a thirteen-year-old daughter. She cries when she talks about leaving them without a mother to finish raising them. My heart breaks for her and for them.

I’ve met her kids, and they’re lovely. Sweet, polite, helpful… Nothing at all like other kids in that age range, from what I’ve seen. They seem to understand their time with her might be short, and they’re not going to waste it fighting with her over stupid shit. I admire them for that and for their kindness toward Robin—and me.

I can’t imagine what it would be like to have my mom switch teams midway through my childhood, but Elias and River have welcomed me as their mom’s special friend at this tender time in their lives. For that, I’ll always have a place in my heart for them and the gift they’ve given their mother with their acceptance of her choices. I’m not under any illusions that it would’ve been so smooth without cancer in the mix, but I’m grateful for her sake that it has been.

And now, right when I was becoming as comfortable with a somewhat fucked-up situation as anyone could be with a stage-four cancer diagnosis hanging over a new relationship, the ex-husband reenters the picture.

By all accounts, he’s a decent sort of guy. There was no big dramatic reason for their marriage ending, other than it running its course and Robin wanting more out of whatever life she had left than what she had with him. But the thought of the four of them all under one roof like a cozy family while I’m on the outside looking in is a hard no from me.

Thatis my bridge too far. My Wild Widows have given me the words to speak my truth to her, which I might’ve been afraid to do without their support. If I’m guilty of one big thing in all my relationships, it’s that I tend to give more than I get. I did that with Gwen. I was constantly striving to make her happy, even if at times I sacrificed my own well-being for hers. I’ve had tons of therapy since her death, through which I’ve learned that there was nothing I could’ve done to change the outcome once she decided to end her life.

I’ve learned to live with that, even if I still revisit those final days far too often for my liking. I’m always looking for something I could’ve done differently, some sign that she’d made a decision that would shatter me, but there was nothing to find or see or do.

That’s not the case with Robin, and I’m determined to stick up for myself this time around when my inclination would be to put her first, due to her situation.

I’m determined to stay strong and to make my case as important as hers.

To do that, I’ll have to keep my emotions in check, which will be the hardest part. I wear them on my sleeve, or so I’ve been told my entire life. My mother used to tell me as a child that I could never hide when I was upset or anxious or happy or anything else. My face told the story, she said.

I take a deep breath and release it slowly, repeating the process until I find my inner calm.

A car door closes outside.

Here we go…

Robin comes in, carrying a bottle of the rosé we both love and looking a little beat up, as if she’s been crying, perhaps. She’s tall and blonde and so pretty, she makes me ache. The only outward sign of her illness is that she’s thinner than she probably ought to be. She had a double mastectomy with reconstruction several years ago that retained her curves, not that it matters to me, but it did to her.

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