Show It, Don't Tell It

When he sunk into the tan couch I didn't take my eyes off the screen. Maybe I should have closed my windows when I heard the front door open. Maybe I should have given him my undivided attention when he silently stormed into the room. Maybe I should have continued being the doormat I'd been the past year. I finally surrendered my gaze when he spoke.

"We need to talk." That calm and steady, no-nonsense tone of his.

I swiveled the creaky computer chair to face him and shrugged. "I'm not the one who walks off or hangs up or logs off when I'm unhappy."

The right side of his mouth was briefly pulled into a snarl as his muscles twitched involuntarily. He'd never been physically abusive, telling me again and again about how his father would beat him and his older brother and how he didn't want to be that broken man. "I don't see us going anywhere."

My palms were clammy with sweat. "Oh. Why's that?"

"You never talk to me any more. You ignore me," he accused.

It was accurate, if one looked at the past couple of months. Late nights typing his spoken words into passable five-page essays to get him through a required English course. Late nights starting with silent anger on his part and ending with bloody rawness on mine. Extensive phone calls to encourage him into reveal the cause for his most recent anger--phone calls that caused me to "skip" my first class ever. Most recently, my speaking with his mother or a male friend about my own stresses because he wouldn't listen, or would listen and offer the sound "fuck 'em" or "forget 'em" advice.

I bit my lip, all of these memories rushing through my consciousness. Maybe I should have pointed some of that out. Maybe I should have tried harder at that moment. Maybe I should have continued forcing issues into the open.

I shrugged. "You haven't exactly been open to what I have to say."

"Yes I have! I keep asking you what's wrong and you never tell me!" He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees and laid into me with his intensely blue eyes.

I resisted shaking my head or looking away. "So what do you propose we do?"

"End it." Without skipping a beat.

Over a year and the best solution he had was simply to end it. Maybe that's how it happens when you're 24 years old. Maybe relationships are fleeting things to be captured and released. Maybe I shouldn't have continued to be optimistic.

"You're being rash. Why don't we try a break for a week."

"Fine," he spat, and immediately rose from the couch and stalked to the front room. I found myself suddenly lightheaded, not from pressure or worry but from a sudden lack of tension. Freedom.

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It wasn't an hour later he was on the verge of tears in his mother's car as she drove me to a social gathering. "I'm afraid," he whispered.

I said nothing. Maybe you should have thought about that before making our relationship your bluff.