The first time I met him I knew he was trouble. He was
charming, brilliant, talented, and flagged with a big invisible danger sign over his head. There are some people that just smack of no good if you get too close to them, like touching hot metal they will
burn your skin and leave you with hurt and a scar to remind you much later on of the short shared moment. We started
dating a short while later.
And of course,
he cheated on me. I knew he had well before he decided to tell me by how he began to move a little sheepishly under direct eye contact, and also hard as you might try, when it is two people who share a secret, word is going to get around. And so he finally sat me down one day to unburden himself of his tortured secret.
Squirming in his seat trying to spare me, trying to find the most gentle and least incriminating words he let it drip out bit by bit into
a little lump of shame on the floor between us. I sat there staring at him, shrugged.
"you don't seem angry"
"i'm not"
"what? why aren't you mad?"
"i never expected any better of you"
"you.... bitch!"
So there I was ten in the evening being yelled at by the
wounded confused boy who had just cheated on me, staring at him vacantly while he yells into my face trying to salvage his bruised broken pride. It is easier to close your eyes and let the words run together into a current that carries you away but somehow tonight I could not tear myself from his flushed face dripping
little tear rivers down his shirt onto his
lap. Is this what we expect to grow up and find when we are seven years old
daydreaming about the future?