Cold Shoulders

“I don’t know what to do.” I said into the phone.

“Have you tried calling him?” Penny asked.

“I don’t know what to say to him.”

Mike and I hadn’t talked since our fight and I wasn’t sure what to do. I didn’t feel like I did anything wrong and I wasn’t sure what he exactly he wanted from me. I’d asked Zoey for some advice a few days after and she wasn’t sure what I should do, either. Penny was trying but her ideas were the same ones I had been going over and over and deciding against. After five more minutes I sighed and we said good bye.

“Trouble with Mike?” Molly asked from the breakfast nook.

It was inevitable that Molly was going to find out about this since she was my roommate. I know she doesn’t like the fact that I chose Mike over Adam and it’s caused us a lot of tension so there was an unspoken rule that we just wouldn’t talk about it. Apparently, Molly was ready to break that rule. And to be honest, so was I because I needed advice, badly.

I sighed and got up to get some coffee. She was reading the paper but put it down when I sat across from her.

“Mike and I got into a fight.”

I told her the whole long story and then waited for her input.

“Okay.” She said and then went back to reading her paper.

“That’s it? You have nothing else to add?” I asked with confusion.

“I do have more I want to add, but I don’t think you’ll want to hear it, so I’m keeping it to myself.” She said matter-of-factly.

I sat up straighter and debated on whether I wanted to hear what she had to say or not. Curiosity got the best of me and I wish now that I had just gotten up and walked away.

“No, tell me.”

“Mike doesn’t trust you, Faith. And he can say he’s move on from you cheating all he wants but his actions speak louder than words.”

I stared at my coffee cup and she continued.

“The truth of the matter is that Mike was never in love with you. He was in love with an idea of you he had in his head and he wasn’t willing to see past it. When he was forced to because you cheated on him? He told himself it was a fluke in this perfect idea he had of you. But you keep cracking this façade he’s made for you whether you realize it or not. And maybe you’ve realized this or maybe you haven’t but you like pretending to be the girl Mike thinks you are. It upsets you when you can’t.”

I shook my head angrily.

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?” Molly looked up from her paper, “Faith, you waited to tell Mike about sleeping with Brad for the very obvious reason that it was going to hurt him but also because you knew it was going to shatter the image Mike had of you. And it did. That’s why you took him breaking things off as hard as you did: because you did something terrible and you wanted to pretend that you weren’t capable of that. Just like Mike believed.”

“Come on, Molly. I’ve seen Mike at his worst and he’s seen me at mine. He knows exactly who I am.”

“How can he know who you are when you only let him see the sides of you that you want him to see; the sides of you that you know he likes?”

I made a scoffing sound.

“Mike and I are very honest with each other. Since we got back together, there isn’t a single thing I haven’t talked to him about. He knew I was coming out of a serious relationship. He knows-”

“Does he know who that relationship was with?”

I said nothing.

“Does he know that you started dating Brad almost immediately after he dumped you?”

Silence.

“Does he know you were pregnant with Brad’s baby?”

“How dare y-”

“No, how dare you!” Molly set her paper down angrily and leaned slightly forward towards me across the table, “You think you’ve turned a new leaf. You think that you’ve got this awesome clean slate start with Mike but you don’t, Faith! Wake up and realize it! You should not be dating him. He doesn’t know who you are anymore and you’re pretending like he does! Mike doesn’t trust you because he shouldn’t. You are in love with someone else and you are pretending like you’re fine! You are showing Mike the façade he wants to see and the reason you don’t know how to handle this fight between the two of you is because you don’t know how the Faith that Mike thinks he’s dating should react!”

“You don’t know anything!” I stood up and walked toward my room, “Mike knows who I am and he is falling in love with me all over again.”

“Okay. Then tell him that you got an abortion and see how he responds when you add another crack to his idea of you.”

I spun on my heel with rage coursing through me.

“Fuck you, Molly!”

I slammed my bedroom door and spilled the mug of coffee I was holding all over my hand.

“Dammit!” I shouted.

Sasha whimpered on my bed and I sat against the door and started crying. Molly was wrong. How could she be right? She knew nothing about my relationship with Mike now. She doesn’t know how he and I interact together and she has no idea how I act when I’m around him because she’s made it impossible for me to let her into what is going on with that part of my life. I sat against my door and felt exhausted. Feeling judged constantly by her was getting to be too much. I’ve felt like I have to walk on eggshells around her whenever we’re both home at the same time. When I came out of my room a few hours later, Molly was gone. She’d gone over to Calvin’s again.

A few days later, Molly knocked on my bedroom door.

“Come in.”

“Hey.” She said sadly, “Can we talk for a second?”

I nodded and she sat on my bed.

“Faith…I can’t keep doing this.” She sounded tired.

“Me, either.”

“I’m going to move in with Calvin. I’ll be out within the week. I just think that this living situation isn’t working anymore and I like having you as my friend…so for our friendship, I think we need to stop living together.”

“What?” I was hurt and sad. I’d been living with Molly for years.

“I just think it’s time, plus Calvin has been hounding me to move in with him. I already spend 90% of my time at his place anyway. It just makes more sense. And it’s closer to work…”

She looked up at me with guilt in her eyes.

“How long have you known that you were going to move out?” I asked quietly.

“About a month.”

“You’ve been planning this for a month and you’re only now just telling me!?”

I was hurt and frustrated and upset. She was giving me a week to figure out what I was going to do when she could have given me more time. I can’t afford our apartment by myself and there’s no way I could find a reliable roommate within a week OR find a new apartment and make plans to move in a week, either.

“I just think we both need our space and I wasn’t sure how to tell you.”

“Molly, just get out. I don’t care anymore.” I said angrily.

Not only did Molly drop this huge bomb on me but she also did it at the last minute. I can’t believe her!