“Well who sent the picture? They would have obviously seen me push her away. That’s proof right there–”

“I don’t know who. It was private. You read the text, didn’t you?”

“It’s someone you know, Sara. Someone that has your number and wants this kind of reaction out of us. Someone wants to break us up.”

“Why would anyone want that?” I scoffed, crossing my arms. “That makes no sense. I have no enemies.”

“But that–”

“Just drop it, okay? I don’t want to talk about this right now.”

He didn’t want to, but he did, and we went to bed sleeping on opposite ends of the mattress with a huge gap between us. When I heard him fast asleep, I slipped out of bed and grabbed my phone. Zooming up on the photo, I saw that Jaxon’s eyes were indeed open, and he was in some kind of apprehensive stance. But it was just too damn blurry to know for sure. Why did I want to think the worst of him? In my heart of hearts, I knew he was telling me the truth.

Only… who would want to come between us?

Someone who has my number; someone I know and might never put a face to.

Nine

We never went back to normal after that fight. We spent two weeks on semi-speaking terms, but I never wanted to be around him. I ignored him when he was at the bar and, after a while, he stopped coming. I always made some kind of excuse to get out of spending time with him: hanging out with Lexi, studying at the library, doing my homework, going to class, taking on more shifts.

Suddenly, everything he did pissed me off. When he left dishes in the sink, I’d go livid. One fight as a result of this had me smashing a plate on the floor. I picked on him for not washing his laundry, for leaving dirty clothes on the floor, for not putting the toilet seat down after he was finished, for not respecting my space when he was reaching out to touch me. It was endless, and the more days that went by, the more I witnessed a great deflation in his self-confidence.

What hurt the most was watching the pain I was inflicting on him, but not being able to stop myself. I’d grown so sick of that look of defeat on his beautifully saddened face; it’d made even more sense to steer as clear from him as possible. Was this a phase? I kept waiting for it to pass, for my old self to return, but it never did.

When we did spend time together, however rare that was, we ended up in fights that had me screaming for him to leave me alone, and when he didn’t, I’d shove him, slap him, do whatever I could to get my way. It took me hours to come down from the high of anger, and then guilt filled its place, and I’d crawl back to an emotionally shaken boyfriend, pleading for forgiveness. He was taking me in whatever way I was willing to give because his love for me was that palpable.

My concentration dipped due to my relationship life. I didn’t want to believe I was in the wrong, and I’d somehow deflect the blame onto him. I led myself to believe he was the cause for our fighting, and thus the cause for why I was so depressed.

I performed poorly on my exams, and because of that, I lashed out even worse than before. The first week after my second academic year had ended for summer I went full time at the bar, and was even taking double shifts so I wouldn’t have to go home. When I’d get back to the apartment in the early hours of the morning, I’d sleep on the couch suppressing the violent anger at seeing Jaxon’s things littered everywhere in disorganized fashion around the place.

Jeez, I couldn’t even remember the last time we made love. There was fucking, which we still did occasionally, but not making love. My only goal was to reach my orgasm as quickly as possible. I stopped pleasuring him, and stopped letting him pleasure me orally.

There were days I was semi-happy and we’d spend it together out and about. I found that doing things outside of the apartment distracted us from fighting. He took my temper tantrums even in public in stride, and tried to be as understanding as possible. But I could see the weariness in him, and the sharp intake of his breath when I lashed out in anger. He was always trying his hardest to cool his anger and prolong his patience.

The last straw was at work one night. Jaxon still came around every now and then, and that pissed me off because he would always look at me and expect me to just abandon my work for a few minutes to pay him attention. I was particularly angry at him this day because he’d ruined my brand new blouse by throwing in his freshly grease ridden work shirt into the washer before I turned it on. That was a bitch fit that resulted in me kicking the washer and cursing him off despite his promise to buy me the exact same one.

“It’s not about getting another one!” I’d screamed at him, feeling the swell of that anger in my brain. “It’s the fact you just don’t fucking think, Jaxon.”

So with that rage still coursing through me, I did something I would later regret for years to come. A few tables away from Jaxon, I allowed a man to chat me up. I was used to flirtation, and some guys had the audacity to reach over and grab my backside when they were drunk, but I’d never ever given them the time of day. I hated the sleaziness in every encounter of flirting at the bar during my shifts, but knowing that this night in particular Jaxon was watching me carefully, I couldn’t help but want him to get jealous.

I don’t even remember what the guy looked like, except that he had dark eyes and black hair. When he said, “Hey, beautiful,” I smiled a charming smile in return and responded with, “Hello, stud.” What ensued was a night of fun flirtation.

“You usually talk this way to your customers?”

“Only the lookers.”

“Well, I certainly feel lucky tonight.”

He’d stop me when I walked by, make suggestive remarks about what he wanted to do to me, and all the while I encouraged it. Then he began following me around, meeting near the front of the bar, touching me lightly on the arm, at one point sliding his hand down my back and stopping just above my ass. It felt wrong even then, but I wanted to rile Jaxon up.

There was a storm in his expression as he helplessly watched on, but he never got up and sorted the man out. He just watched me, brokenly taking in my borderline cheating right in front of him. Surely something like this couldn’t get me angry. But it did. How could a boyfriend watch on and not intervene? Why didn’t he get up and sort this obviously intoxicated guy out, or at least threaten him to back off?

He did nothing but watch with dead eyes, ignoring everything around him. At some point, he’d gotten up and left, but I hadn’t seen it. I turned after a while to the table he’d been sitting at only to find it occupied by other customers.