When Snooping Gets Out Of Control

Most of the Big Words that follow my initials are fine, even flattering: words like sex, amazing, gorgeous, The One? But then I spot some Bad Big Words. Words that hurt more than anything linked with proper nouns from his past.

Though we've been together only four months, I'd been pretty certain that this was it. But now I can barely get out of his desk chair. I'm shaking, and I'm feeling dizzy. I glance up as he enters the room—in slow motion, each step toward me more suspicious than the last. He takes one look at my face and sees everything.

Somehow, we end up in the kitchen. He's standing above me, bouncing expectantly. "You're really something," he says. He says this a lot, so it calms me for a second, makes me feel more sane, like maybe I do know him, after all.

"Oh, yeah? Well, you're an asshole." This is what I always say in response. I'm saying this out of habit because I know I can't say wha's really flashing through my mind.

"You're really something," he repeats. "You're really something!" He's wandering around the kitchen, shaking his head, pulling his hair.

"Why am I 'something'?" I manage to ask. I'm baiting him—I want him to yank it out of me.

"Reading my old letters?! My journals?!" He's pacing around like he's really had it, but I know I'm hurting more.

"You're really an asshole."

"Oh? I'm an asshole?" He's furious. "No, you're not an asshole—you're the asshole." This is about as far as the humor goes. From now on, it's serious drama, with weakness in my stomach and bowels. I'm scared—so scared of what I know, what I don't know, what I thought I knew so well, what I guess I never trusted to begin with.

"I don't even know what you've read." He sits down, scornful of my crime, as if he can't begin to imagine forgiving me.

"It's not just the countless girls you'll 'always be waiting for'—to come back from wherever they've gone, or to decide that they love you too. It's the stuff about me," I say. Weak-dizzy-weaker. "You have no respect for me, or—"