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I tried to remain calm, but tears sprang to my eyes. “I didn’t lie. You thought I was cheating on Neil. I’m not.”
“That’s sure not what the hell it looked like!” she shouted. “Why? You’ve got a husband who loves you, who gives you everything you could possibly want, and then you go and do this?”
“She isn’t cheating on Neil,” El-Mudad spoke up. “He knows about us. Because he’s in this relationship, too.”
Mom blanched.
“Please, don’t be mad,” I whispered, my throat raw with painful panic. I didn’t want my mom to reject me over this.
“I don’t understand.” She closed her eyes and pressed her fingertips to her temple. “What are you saying to me right now?”
“Neil and El-Mudad and I are in love.” Words had never felt so insufficient, so helpless in my life. “That’s why he’s living here. We’re in a relationship together. We have been for a while.”
“The three of you?” she sputtered. “All three of you? Together?”
“All three of us,” El-Mudad confirmed.
“Sophie, I can deal with a lot of stuff,” Mom said, her voice raspy. “You marrying a man older than I am. You admitting to running away to Tokyo. Being bisexual—“
“Oh you had to deal with that, did you?” I snapped. “You had to deal with the fact that I don’t like only dick?”
“Sophie Anne!”
“Don’t!” I shouted. “Don’t you dare sit there and act like who I am is some sort of ordeal for you. It’s not. It has nothing to do with you. But if it bothers you so fucking much, I don’t know why you wouldn’t be happy that I’m with two men. That will be like, double the help in pretending my sexuality doesn’t exist!”
“Don’t you dare deflect this like I’m some...homophobe!” Mom exclaimed in rage.
I almost told her that she wasn’t a homophobe, she was a biphobe, just to see her get even more furious.
“This isn’t a constructive discussion,” El-Mudad said, calm but firm. “Perhaps you should both take a moment apart, collect yourselves, and calm down a little—“
“Don’t tell me to calm down!” Mom and I both shrieked at him in unison, and he took a step back.
I turned to Mom, raising my hands and dropping them in exasperation. “I love El-Mudad. Neil loves him. We’re happy together, and we’ve waited a really long time to commit to each other like this. I’m not going to let you shame us for wanting to live together like everyone else!”
“You are not acting like everyone else!” She argued. “I don’t know one person, not one, who lives with two other romantic partners. And you’re telling me I should just accept it?”
“You should,” El-Mudad said, his tone still even. “You should be happy that two people love your daughter and wish only for her happiness. And if you love Neil, you should be happy that he has the same.”
“Don’t tell me how I should feel!” Mom directed her anger back at him. “They were a happily married couple before you barged in.”
“Don’t talk to him like that!” I practically screamed. “This isn’t your life! It’s mine! And if you can’t be happy that I’m loved by two men who respect me, who listen to me, who want to protect me...I don’t know why the hell you’d want less for me than that when it was more than I could ever have hoped for!”
Silence hung between us. For a long moment, all I could hear was the frantic pounding of my heart in my ears.
“I think I need to go,” Mom said finally, quieter than before.
“That may be a good idea,” El-Mudad ventured again. “Later, when the shock has worn off—“
“No, I mean I need to leave. Tony and I need to move out ahead of schedule.”
She could have slapped me. She should have, rather than say something so cruel.
“Don’t do that,” I pleaded. “Not over something this small.”
“It’s not small,” she said, tears welling in her eyes. “You’re an adult. You can live your life however you please. But I don’t have to support it. I believe that marriage is between two people, and this? This goes against what God intended.”
“Oh yeah? Did God intend for you to go out to bars with aunt Marie and leave me at home alone all night when I was fourteen? Did God tell you to fuck random dudes and not come home until the next morning?” That was intensely unfair of me. I’d run off so many of my mom’s potential romantic partners over the years, and here I was, basically calling her a slut now. But I didn’t care. I hurt. I wanted to hurt her back. “Did God intend for you to have a baby out of wedlock?”
Her eyes went wide and her mouth opened as though she would say something else. She didn’t. She turned toward for the door.
