“That was your fucking idea!” I return. “You had to talk me into it, and every time I’ve told you that I think I should quit, you always find a way to convince me not to.”
“We don’t have to talk about this right now,” she says, her voice softening again.
“We’ve both made some mistakes, and I think that we should just forgive each other and move on.”
I’m dumbfounded.
“Let’s just move on,” she repeats. “We’ve gone through some hard times before, but we’ve always worked through them. Do you know why?”
“Because I’m a blind fool,” I answer.
“No,” she says. “It’s because we love each other, and when you love someone and they make a mistake, you find a way to work it out.”
“So, let me get this straight,” I start. “You’ve already admitted that not only did you screw your boss, you got me to make a video for you to send to him where you’re mouthing about how much you wish it was him inside you, and now you’re saying I should just suck it up and deal with it because that’s what people do when they love each other?”
“Yeah,” she says.
“I really can’t believe you even agreed to that. Why did you even make that video? What was the fucking point of that? If that’s what you wanted to do, why didn’t you just take it on your phone? You might have even gotten away with it if you’d done that.”
She doesn’t answer.
“Melissa?” I implore.
“What?”
“Answer the question.”
“I don’t think we’re accomplishing anything right now,” she says. “I think we need to both take a little time and think about what’s happened so we can approach it later with calmer heads.”
“I think we should talk about it now or you can start getting your shit out of my apartment,” I rejoin.
“It’s our apartment,” she protests.
“I’m the one on the lease,” I tell her.
And, of course, this is the moment that she starts crying.
“I’m so sorry,” she says. “I know that what I did was wrong, and I don’t expect you to ever forgive me.”
“Yeah, I think that’s going to be a tough sell,” I tell her.
“See?” she bawls. “You hate me.”
“I know what you’re doing, and it’s not going to work.”
“And, what am I doing?” she asks through her tears.
“You’re trying to make me feel bad so I end up not only letting you stay, but actually trying to make you feel better about the fact that you fucking cheated on me and only came clean after it was clear that you didn’t destroy all the evidence.”
“How can you think that?” she asks, laying it on even thicker now. “I wanted to tell you as soon as it happened, but I was scared that you’d leave me. I don’t know what I would do without you. I love you. I want to spend my life with you.”
“That’s a little harder to believe today than it would have been yesterday,” I tell her.
“If I can’t be with you, I don’t know what’s going to happen to me.” She decides to top it off with a cliché, “I don’t know how to not be with you!”
I roll my eyes, but that just makes her bottom lip start quivering. She’s laying it on, but whether the pain on her face is real or not, we’ve been together long enough and I’ve given enough of myself to her that it still affects me.
“This isn’t okay,” I tell her.