It’s a struggle to pretend I’m OK. It’s just fun, I tell myself. Relax and enjoy this. Don’t make it awkward. I turn to my usual silence-filling tactic and bombard him with questions.
“Do you do this every time?” He interrupts me.
“Do what? Be adorable and sociable?”
“Not tell people what you really feel or think.”
The deep inhale fueling my tirade gets lodged in my throat because he doesn’t give me the chance to defend myself.
“You told my aunt you loved the scrapple. I saw you giving it to the dog under the table.”
“I wasn’t going to upset the woman in her own house. It’s called being polite.”
“You let your so-called friends talk you into forgiving your cheating ex for an hour when they should have been thrown out the door after five minutes.”
“You heard—”
“You were ready to live in a dingy cabin not fit to house a stray dog, so you wouldn’t inconvenience me—”
I defend myself. “Well, you didn’t opt for a roommate when—”
“—or Martha and Sam,” he looks at me pointedly.
“How do you know about that?”
“Martha is very chatty when she threatens people with bodily harm. They care about you. Still, you’d rather sleep in their abandoned cabin than accept their help.”
We don’t speak for several minutes.
“Technically it’smyabandoned cabin now.”
He shoots me a very unimpressed glare. “What’re you afraid of? That people won’t like you because you’re honest?”
Yes. Living in constant fear of disappointing people close to me and turning them away with too much neediness is my reality.
“What’s your point?” I ask, even though I’m not keen on hearing any more from him.
“What happened this morning upset you.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” Why am I reacting so childishly? It’s irrational, but I can’t shake the idea that it’s a rejection of everything I am.
“It might have been a little harsh. Making you take the pill.” His tone is softer. Apologetic. “Are you angry with me?”
“I don’t do angry. I told you before.”
“You do, you just don’t want to admit it. You showed me once.”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s nothing.”
He’s relentless, poking and prodding. I’m not used to people looking so closely.
“It matters.”
“Why? Why do you keep bringing it up?”
“Because I don’t want to upset you. I had to do it.”
“I don’t know abouthad to,” I mumble. “I get it. I told you already. It was a little extreme and it caught me off guard. That’s all.”
