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The thing about Tabitha is that she doesn’t touch him like she’s disgusted by him.
She’s a tactile person, casually, like it’s not a big deal to press their bodies together; an arm looped through his, a light brush on the back of his neck, a passing kiss on the cheek. Even when they’re laying in bed, Tabitha’s hand is under his white cotton top, nails tracing up and down his back soothingly, like it’s nothing. He cringes sometimes, thinking about how she shouldn’t sully herself by touching him like that. Something in him is contagious, and Tabitha shouldn’t catch it.
One morning when Roman is in the bathroom doing up his buttons, she comes in looking for her moisturiser. “Morning babe.” She strokes a hand down his shoulder and kisses the top of his head. Something twists inside him as he says “Yeah. Morning Tabs.”
She touches his chest; his thighs; his stomach; his arms so easily, like he deserves to be touched in those places in that way.
Gerri doesn’t touch him at all, which suits him better. She leaves him to his own devices, hammering away at the piece of flesh between his legs, telling him how vile he is. She thinks that he’s filth, and that’s why they work better. They’re alike in that way.
Tabitha always looks elegant, like a beautiful statue erected for the sole purpose of having people look at her. Her posture is poised as she sits at her vanity in her apartment, shrouded in emerald green and dripping with jewellery. She was born for a wealthy lifestyle, Roman thinks. Anything less than regality would be wasteful. They’re going to the ballet, which Roman would honestly rather cut off his own balls and eat them like dumplings than do, but Tabitha likes it and her birthday is coming up soon and he honestly finds it kind of endearing when she leans over and explains all the different moves to him.
“You look gorgeous,” he says truthfully, as Tabitha applies her perfume. He’s sitting on the end of her four-poster bed, watching her and kicking his legs. He doesn’t want to stand next to her when they go out, because people like Tabitha shouldn’t stand next to people like him. He feels a bit like a dog she should keep in her purse, or a kitten that she should tug around on a bit of string.
She twists around to look at him, smiling widely, genuinely. “Thank you, Roman. So do you.”
Tabitha is always calling him gorgeous. It drives him insane.
He cuts his finger chopping a lime for their drinks one evening. The blood comes pouring down onto the kitchen counter.
“You’re a bit of a masochist, aren’t you?” Tabitha teases, moving her glass away from the red that is spilling on the granite. She drags him over to the sink as he hisses and runs his finger under the cold tap. “Stay here while I find some bandaids.”
Her touch had been gentle because she could see him wincing. She’s too kind like that. He sometimes thinks that Tabitha doesn’t have a backbone, then immediately feels cruel for thinking that. She does have one, she just doesn’t use it to hurt people whilst they’re down. Fucking martyr.
If he had cut his finger slicing limes for drinks with Gerri, she would have rolled her eyes and dug her finger into the wound. Not literally- he doesn’t think that, for as much it must pass her mind, she wants to cause him actual physical pain- but she wouldn’t bother with the niceties. She’d have told him to man up and to be a bit more careful with sharp objects and that her boytoy must have all his fingers intact otherwise I’ll have to send him back. Then he would probably have a boner instead of his index finger being pelted in cold water. And Gerri wouldn’t touch him gently because she knows he’s disgusting.
(He doesn’t think that she actually thinks that about him, but she’s willing to indulge him in that sense, which is more than he can say for Tabitha.)
Tabitha comes back with the plasters and some antiseptic cream and Roman yanks them out of her hand. “I can do it myself,” he mutters, before wiping his wet hand on his shirt. It’s black, so the bloodstains don’t show up.
Tabitha raises her eyebrows and then her palms in surrender. “Oh-kay,” she says. She turns the tap off and returns to where she was sitting.
Tabitha was seemingly serious about wanting to solve Roman, because she sits him down and asks him how he would like to try sex.
(He initially cracks a joke about how Tabitha should just wait until he passes out and do what she likes to him because that’s probably the closest they’ll get to fucking, and she looks at him all sad and cross and takes great time to impress upon him that she would never do something like that, and about how that’s not what sex is supposed to be, and he doesn’t dare make a joke like that again.)
“It’s important that we find a wrong thing that works for both of us, Rome. This is a safe space. Let’s just spitball some ideas.”
He sort of resents her for trying so hard with him. He sort of feels grateful that she feels he’s worth the effort. He wants to tell her to fuck off and stop overthinking it, but she could be authoritative when she wanted to be and, fuck, Tabitha’s kind of hot when she’s stern.
They try different things, but Roman still falters. It goes like this: kiss Tabitha’s neck, feel every inch of her under your fingertips, (try to stay in the moment). Move your hands downwards, bask in the warmth radiating from her skin, (try to stay in the moment). Don’t flinch as her hands travel over your stomach, don’t think about how your cock is still soft, (for God’s-fucking-sake, stay in the moment!). Pull apart, hang your head, (don’tcrydon’tcrydon’tcry).
It’s something about the way that he thinks Tabitha loves him, and the way that he thinks he loves her, that makes sex impossible.
“I’m sorry,” He mumbles into his pillow one night, after an attempt with a rather expensive ballgag (they’re going to have exhausted every fetish shop in the city, Roman thinks, and neither of them have actually come). He’s fully clothed, hidden under the duvet with his knees drawn up to his chest.
Tabitha smiles, a little exhausted. “It’s okay.” She replies, glancing across to him from her book. “Not the end of the world.”
He can sense in her tone that she’s exasperated. She never takes it out on him though, which just makes it worse.
It’s not that he doesn’t like the contact, it’s just that if he thinks too hard about it, he starts to feel all flighty.
“Bird boy.” Tabitha had called him once. “Always flitting, always flying away. With your bird bones-“
“-And my bird brain?”
He loves like a busted sprinkler system- too hard and in all the wrong ways, so it comes leaking out the sides and shooting out at an odd angle. He hopes that by laying his head on Tabitha’s lap or putting his arm around her waist she can see that this is me trying, Tabs. Can’t you see that I love you? But Tabitha wants words and he doesn’t have the words to say, doesn’t think that his private education taught him the vocabulary, so his love comes out as smarmy comments and funny voices and the desperate attempts to make Tabitha laugh (that bright, jangly one she does when she finds him disturbingly charming).
Sometimes he wants to drink up as much of Tabitha as he can, wants to give her all of him- kisses the mole on the inside of her thigh, coils his body so close to hers that they’re almost the same person- until he remembers that he’s him and it’s all ruined.
She’s wonderful, really, in ways that make him wish he could be wonderful too. They hide behind champagne glasses and bitch about people together and she knows all the spots where he’s ticklish but never takes advantage of that. He’s grateful for the fact that she never mentions his reluctance to take showers with her, or his Fluoxetine in the bathroom cabinet that he stopped taking but hadn’t bothered to throw away.
Being with Tabitha is easy, until it isn’t.
The thing with rich people is that they’re usually lacking in something fundamental. His dad, for example, lacks in all the fleshy parts that make someone human. Elon Musk probably lacks genitals. Roman and his siblings all lack self-awareness and self-control, but at least they can make up for it by picking a partner and fucking them.
Roman could buy Tabitha all the diamonds she wanted, or her own private island, or the entire state of Delaware. What he can’t give her though, are the things she really wants. That is- intimacy, emotional honesty, the other pillars of a functional, healthy relationship.
He realises that he knows Tabitha more intimately than anyone else, and the thought makes the contents of his stomach curdle. It feels unfair that he doesn’t let her know him.
He’s waiting for the resentment to set in. He half expects to wake up one morning with arsenic in his coffee, but instead it’s always milk-three-sugars and too much mirth.
Tabitha is the sort of person who sings in the shower, who spins Roman around in the kitchen to music like he’s as alive as she is, like he’s not just some dead creature. He’s worried she expects too much of him, that she thinks he’s better than he is.
With Gerri it’s far simpler- shape up or ship out, it’s a dog-eat-dog world, Roman- and he doesn’t have to be anything other than him because Gerri can see the layers of grime that cover his body and she still makes the conscious decision to entertain him and doesn’t pretend that she loves him in spite of it.
Tabitha tries to gouge the rot out of him with a knife. Gerri accepts that it runs right through to his core.
He hopes that the next time Gerri hands him a glass of whisky she throws in a cyanide pill too. He wants to yell at them both to just poison him already, put all of them out of their fucking misery. He starts to worry that Gerri might like him too much, since she’s not willing to tip rodenticide into his red wine.
Maybe if he swallows enough apple seeds he’ll get cyanide poisoning.
They have a fight one night, because Tabitha’s patient, but she’s not indestructible.
“ Please can you stop shutting me down when I’m trying to have a conversation with you? I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me, Roman.”
“You and your fucking saviour complex. Why do you want to fix me so bad anyway, have you ever considered the fact that I don’t need your help?”
“I’m not trying to fix you, I’m just trying to be there for you. Like you do when you care about someone.”
“Oh fuck off, Mother Theresa.”
She gathers up her coat and bag without another word and leaves the apartment. Roman doesn’t watch her leave, pointedly doesn’t look at her toothbrush in his bathroom that night, ignores her side of the bed that is far too cold.
He wants to be told what a piece of shit he is, and since Tabitha hadn’t done it, he calls Gerri.
“Heeeeey. How’s my favourite sexy fax machine?”
“Hello, Roman. It’s always riveting not knowing which piece of stationery you’ll compare me to next.”
Her voice is biting, but enticing him to continue. He rolls over onto his back and reaches down into his pyjama pants. “Uh-huh, I’ve got the whole of the office supplies section in Target to choose from. If Target even has an office supplies section, I don’t know.”
Gerri is quiet for a minute, and Roman wonders whether she’s accidentally hung up on him, or maybe developed early-onset dementia and has forgotten she was on a call.
“You sound like you’ve been crying, Roman.”
He hadn’t noticed until now, but he was suddenly hyper-aware of the cold remnants of tear tracks on his cheeks.
“No, that’s just what I sound like when I’m painfully hard. Reckon you could do something about it, Ger?”
“Roman…”
“Jesus fuck, you’re not my psychiatrist.” He snaps. “Just tell me I’m gross or pathetic or something.”
She exhales shakily, a rare break in composure, then says “I’m not sure I’m comfortable being your preferred method of self-harm, Roman.”
He removes his hand and hangs up.
Later that night his phone pings. It’s Tabitha.
You need 2 talk to me, Rome. I’m not the enemy. Nite, love u x
He wonders how many times he has to kick her before she stops coming back.