Spilt Wine

That was it. The cat was completely out of the bag. Not only did Anna now know I was talking to Mike, but she also knew I spent Valentine’s Day with him. I had some ‘splainin to do.

It’s not that my friends didn’t like Mike. They always got along with him while we were dating. He even went out of his way to gain points with them, including one time when he called up the restaurant where we were eating dinner and ordered us a big dessert on his credit card. The problem for them was when we broke up. Mike didn’t really have a specific reason for dumping me that they could understand. I understood, though. We had problems in the beginning, mainly with trust. One night, an old crush from high school texted me late and Mike saw it. He didn’t get mad at me, but he was moody for the rest of the night. Later on, he admitted that even though he knew it wasn’t my fault, he began questioning the trust in our relationship. It prompted me to tell him some things, even though I didn’t feel like I was ever betraying Mike’s trust. I opened up about my knowledge that Moose had feelings for me or that I often received drunk text messages from that high school crush but never respond. I was really starting to feel invested in our relationship and this made me feel closer to him.

The next night, he felt the need to tell me some things. This is when the trouble started. He was seeing another girl before we were exclusive. Yes, he had every right to because I was actually the one who wanted to keep my options open. He wanted to make me his girlfriend so I know he would have dropped her the second I agreed to make it Facebook official. The problem I had was that he was so insistent that there was nobody else. She had met his mom. She had slept over his house. I luckily didn’t sleep with him until we were exclusive and this news made me so glad I hadn’t, but what if I had? I couldn’t even consider that without feeling sick.

The bottom line for me was that while I loved him and I truly appreciated him coming clean to me, this all hurt me so much. He kept up with this lie for so long and I never saw any sign of it. I wasn’t sure if I even knew him anymore.

Mike was willing to work with me and stay with me even though I told him I would need time to get over everything. After several hard months, I finally felt like we had worked through it and that we were becoming stronger from it all. Then, he dumped me. He said he didn’t want to feel guilty anymore. I still feel like I could have stopped him. I mean, we were in love but I wasn’t about to beg my boyfriend to stay with me.

I kept a lot of our problems from my friends, so I just told them that we mutually decided to break up. Mike and I continued to talk after ending it, like so many couples do nowadays. It’s so easy to continue texting every day. While this prevented me from letting go of our relationship, it didn’t stop him. I would ask him what he was doing and he would be honest with me. He couldn’t lie to me after what we went through, so he would tell me about making out with random girls in bars and texting new girls more than he was texting me. This is what made my friends begin to dislike him. Can I blame them? All they saw was that I was miserable and it was his fault. But they didn’t get that we broke up and he had every right to do whatever he wanted. He was trying to move on while I couldn't accept that. And when I stupidly asked, he told me the truth.

I didn't know where Mike and I were headed or how I felt about the situation, but I didn’t want to hear the negative opinions from my friends while I tried to decide what I wanted. I was confused enough without worrying about what they thought.

I didn’t have a choice now, though. I clutched my phone as I looked over at Anna, expecting her to blurt out my secret at any moment. Instead, I saw her mouth still open and her hands out. One hand holding an empty wine glass. She had spilt wine all over herself. I let out a nervous laugh. Maybe she hadn’t seen my phone after all. I still had a shot!

Jessica ran to get paper towels. “You’re lucky we’re drinking white,” she said to Anna as they attempted to soak up the wine on Anna’s sweater and the couch around her.

“Tell me about it,” Anna exclaimed. “This is a new sweater!” Once everything was cleaned up, we continued chatting and watching the movie. Anna had definitely not seen my phone. I was so relieved and began secretly texting Mike the rest of the night. We agreed to hang out but didn't set any specific day. Jessica had luckily already proposed a trip to Nostalgic on Friday with our guy friends, as well as Kyle and his friends, so I had something to look forward to before seeing Mike.

As the night came to an end, Jessica got her laptop from her room and began showing us Kyle’s Facebook page. They had just become Facebook friends a few days before. I wasn’t really paying attention until I heard Darlene ask, “Isn’t that Evan?”

It was Evan! We couldn’t see his whole profile, but we could see his profile picture and his relationship status. There was my crush, with a pretty blonde and apparently, “in a relationship.” My heart sank.