April 20, 2017:
I can't narrate the true course of our relationship. I don't know what it was.
When you're partnered with someone that secretive, you live without certainties. You piece together evidence, sift through tea leaves, take your best guess. Where multiple narratives fit the observables, and instead of relating you deconstruct.
I waited a year, then moved on.
I wonder what happened with her outside man. I doubt she'd have returned to sex work if he'd stayed in the picture. Maybe that explains how frantic she was with me, at the end. Maybe at that moment she really needed me. For money, of course. Certainly not for partnership.
You know where I think complication lies? In the heart. I truly think she came to care for me. So that it hurt her when we ended. But I can't really say, perhaps neither can she. When you're all tangled up like that in lies and secrets, the truth becomes something you negotiate. Like the rates for the handjobs she negotiates with the clients who've replaced me.