Dark Elephants

Things at The Glass Penny have been going well. We’ve been discussing the possibility of instituting an internship program for the summer in 2015. Having interns would help keep our costs low and we could offer several different internship positions in a variety of theatre jobs. I’m excited about looking into this more and getting it off the ground, hopefully.

“I could have my own intern for our summer show! It’ll be so cool to be able to teach someone else what I do.” I said.

I was at Mike’s apartment sitting at his kitchen table, telling him about my day while we ate dinner together.

“That’s awesome.” Mike’s enthusiasm didn’t match his words.

He’d been more reserved lately and I wasn’t sure what to say. It felt like Mike wanted to say something but never did and it was a giant elephant in the room. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to address it or not because I wasn’t sure what was going on with him. After dinner we sat on his couch and watched television.

“Do you want to watch Project Runway?” I asked excitedly.

Mike gave me a mock disgusted look.

“No way. Let’s watch Bar Rescue.”

I shrugged and snuggled up to him on the couch as he changed the channel.

“This show grosses me out. It makes me never want to leave my house again.” I joked.

Mike gave a quiet snort to show that he’d heard me and I just couldn’t take it anymore.

I sat up and looked at him.

“Is something bothering you?” I asked him, “You’ve been kind of…distant ever since you told me about Hailey.”

Mike made the face he makes when he’s choosing his words carefully but then he shrugged and shook his head.

“Mike…” I said with a hint of pleading in my voice.

He shut the television off and looked at me.

“It bothers me that you thought I was cheating on you with Hailey.”

I raised my eyebrows at that and closed my mouth. I didn’t want to say anything reactionary without thinking.

“It bothers me that that was the first place your mind would jump to when you saw me with a woman other than you.”

I nodded slowly and acknowledged the words that Mike wasn’t saying. The words that he wanted to say but wouldn’t.

“Because if one of us has the right to suspect the other one is cheating it’s you…” I said quietly.

“Yes!” Mike shouted.

I took a deep, shaky breath and nodded heavily.

“You told me that you had moved past that; that it wasn’t going to be a problem this time.” I said trying to keep the shame out of my voice.

“That was before you had the audacity to accuse me of cheating on you!”

All the anger that Mike had been holding back for the past two weeks came flooding out.

“Mike, you were lying to me about where you were and who you were with…what else was I supposed to think?”

“You could have just trusted me.”

My eyes narrowed.

“Trust that you were lying to me about the time you were spending with someone else? Do you even hear yourself? I’m not going to blindly trust someone who lies to me. What was I supposed to do? Just pretend that I hadn’t caught you in the lie?”

“I didn’t make accusations toward you when you told me you called your ex-boyfriend to try and get back together right when we started dating again!” He said.

“I also didn’t lie to you about that. I told you about it!” I said.

A tear slid down my cheek and I angrily wiped it away while Mike sighed.

“You wanted to know what was bothering me and now you do.” He picked up the remote and turned the television on to signal the end of this conversation.

I stared at the silhouette of his profile against the changing light of the television.

“Mike…I…”

My instinct was to apologize but I don’t feel like I did anything wrong demanding that my boyfriend stop lying to me about the time he was spending with another woman. I shook my head.

“I have to go to work.” I said getting up and putting my shoes on.

“You should probably sleep at your place tonight.” Mike said as I started to leave.

I looked at him and nodded with irritation before closing his door and walking down his hallway alone.

(Author's note: At some point over my hiatus I broke a million pageviews for this blog (counting from when it started five years ago). WOW! -del)