Flash Friday Fiction #49

As soon as you finally start to relax there is the fear we’re going to start arguing again.

We’ve both been at it for months, set off by the slightest hint of anything. The lights, the tap, a bit of hair on the floor, burnt toast, late responses to texts, anything, everything was grounds for an argument of epic proportions. Prolonged screaming matches that left us both exhausted and asking is it worth it? How did a relationship that started so well all those years ago come to this?

We were both rebounding from relationships that quietly run their course. We ran in the same circles and kept seeing each other and you went from quiet acknowledgement to actively seeking each other out. Accidental encounters became planned rendezvous and those turned in to dinner and a movie, and dinner and a movie turned into weekend trips and on and on until we were spending as much time at each other’s places as we were at our own.

Summed up like this, the relationship seems clinical but words on a screen can’t describe the passion of our first kiss or the unbridled joy of the early years. Yet at some point in the last six months something had changed and the passion and joy were replaced by bitterness, jealousy and acrimony. It was like a switch was flipped and everything that we enjoyed about each other became an irritant.

The screaming matches were part of the daily routine now. The violence was there under the surface, in words, the plethora of broken dishes and the tchotchkes crashing to floor when doors were slammed shut. Until that night at least. It was not intended, I simply wanted you shut up. I was tired of the sound of your voice and threw the closest thing at hand. I knew something was wrong, the immediate silence was almost oppressive. As there you lay, on the ground, mouth still agape, blood pouring from your wound, all I could think was I still love you so much. It was as if all the fights had never happened as I cleaned around you in the kitchen before turning my attention to you. There was never a thought about how I was going to explain this or what I was going to do with you. We were in this together, we were going to get over this rough patch and get back to where were before and for the first time in months we could breathe.

Or at least I could.