A Difficult Conversation

Todd and Kait sat quietly on the couch with a little more distance between them than usual. A few hours had passed since Kait returned home early from her soccer game, which had ultimately been rained out. In the immediate aftermath, Todd awkwardly apologized for not hearing her come in. Kait blew it off but quickly ran into the bathroom to shower and stayed there much longer than normal. When she emerged, her eyes were red, and Todd could tell she had been crying.

For his part, Todd felt like a thousand-pound weight had been dropped on his chest. He paced around the apartment the entire time Kait was showering and getting dressed. While the edible he’d taken earlier was still in his system, he’d never felt more immediately sober in his life. He didn’t know how long she had been standing there and what she had seen and heard, but it was nothing like the comical scenario he’d imagined a week earlier, and her reaction didn’t seem like just a response to walking in on him jerking off to porn.

The heavy silence hung between them for longer than Todd could bear, and each second that passed felt like an eternity to him. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest. Eventually he reached his arm over to stroke her hair.

“Don’t.” she said, curtly brushing his hand away.

“I-I’m sorry…” Todd said, and for the first time, tears started to well up in his own eyes and his breath quickened. Kait glanced at him but then back down towards the ground, she seemed annoyed by his show of emotion.

“What are you sorry for?” she asked sharply, still looking away from him. The hurt and anger in her voice caught Todd off guard, he could count on one hand the number of arguments they’d had over their three years together, and he’d never seen her this upset. Todd couldn’t think of a reply. He started trying to say something, anything, a few times, but it was like the words got stuck in his mouth.

After around a minute, Kait shook her head and made a sound indicating disgust, turning so she was looking completely away from him. “Show me the video.” she finally said, wiping tears away from her eyes.

Todd hesitated, if he could think of any good reason not to share it, he would have taken it, but nothing came into his mind, so he slowly pulled out his phone and opened the text exchange from earlier. He opened the last video he’d been sent and handed the phone to her. Kait hit play and Todd listened as she watched the roughly minute-long clip. The words and sounds that had Todd so excited he couldn’t see straight earlier, were now like daggers in his ears and heart.

“MMMPH... MMMPH… MMMPH… MMMPH…”

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“That’s right, Bitch, you’re going to make me fucking cum…”

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“AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH… FUCK!!!!”

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“What a good fucking Slut. *smack*”

The video finally ended. Kait was still staring at the screen with tears streaming once again down her face. She sniffed and asked in a broken voice, “How long have you had this?”

“What? Uh… today, I- I mean, Hunter sent it to me today.”

“DON’T LIE TO ME” Kait suddenly erupted as she spun to face him. Todd leaned back in shock; his breath completely taken away by her outburst. Before he could even begin to formulate a response, Kait continued:

“HOW LONG?! HUH? TELL ME! HOW LONG HAVE YOU TWO BEEN TALKING ABOUT ME BEHIND MY BACK?! AND SHARING VIDEOS OF ME?? DID YOU BRING ME TO DINNER THE OTHER NIGHT JUST SO YOU COULD HUMILIATE ME?! YOU. FUCKING. ASSHOLE!!” Along with the last three words she leaned over and pounded her fist into Todd’s chest, punctuating each one with a thud that hurt his soul more than his body. After letting that all out, Kait collapsed, sobbing on top of him. Todd wrapped his arms around her tightly, at this point he was also weeping uncontrollably.

“I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” He repeated it over, and over again. For several minutes they stayed that way, each crying into the other with Todd squeezing her as hard as he could. As their heaving began to slow, Todd was finally able to articulate something resembling a cogent thought. “I swear to you, I had no idea there was anything between you and Hunter until the other night. I mean, I didn’t have any idea you knew each other… and, I- I didn’t even believe Hunter when he told me you hooked up.”

Kait looked up at him, her eyes were bright red from the intense crying and her cheeks were streaked with tears, which she wiped away with the sleeve of the sweatshirt she was wearing. “Are you sure?” she asked softly, as if she had released all the energy from her body during her frenzy and could barely get the words out.

“Yes. Yes, I promise. You can look at the texts, they were all from literally a few hours ago.”

“Why would he send you that?” Kait had to get the words in-between sniffs from her badly running nose.

Todd shook his head. “I don’t know… we had lunch yesterday… he asked what you told me about him. I told him what you said, that you didn’t know each other well.. and…” he took a pause, deliberating what to say, “that’s when he told me you had hooked up…” He almost added regularly but didn’t want to press it.

Kait pulled herself back up to a sitting position, but still leaning into Todd with her head resting on his shoulder. She wiped her nose with her sweatshirt and laughed at the string of teary snot that stuck to it as she pulled the sleeve away. “I’m sorry.” she said, as a fresh batch of tears started to roll down her face even as she laughed. “I… I probably should have told you.” She paused, wiping her nose again and shook her head. “Fucking Hunter! Of course he couldn’t wait to brag to you about it. And I can’t believe he kept those fucking videos!”

She was starting to escalate again so Todd wrapped his arm back around her and pulled her in tight. “It’s okay, it’s okay.” he said reassuringly. “I don’t feel like you need to explain anything. When he told me… I thought… even if it was true, you probably had reasons for not wanting to talk about it.”

Kait put her face into her hands. “Oh god.” she said, again with an exhale that was somewhere between a laugh and cry. “It was… complicated.”

Todd was unsure about how much more he should ask, but she seemed to be calming down from talking, so he decided it was probably best if they cleared the air as much as possible. “Freshman year, I think you were still involved with your boyfriend from high school, right? What was his name? Josh?”

She nodded; her face still pressed against the sleeves of her sweatshirt that she had pulled up over her palms. “Yeah, Josh.”

“Soo… was Hunter the reason you two broke up?”

Kait let out a long sigh and looked back up at Todd. “No. Not really. Like I said, it was complicated… I guess. Josh knew about Hunter. He was… okay with it.”

Todd took a moment to process but nodded his head in understanding. “Oh, like an open relationship thing?”

“Kind of, I mean…” she hesitated and seemed unsure what to say. “It wasn’t exactly like that. Josh… Josh didn’t really want to date anyone else… but he… liked… hearing about Hunter.”

“Oh.” Todd replied, and for the first time since he saw Kait standing in the doorway, he felt the unmistakable quiver of something besides abject terror and despair in his gut.

“And Hunter… well, let’s just say that Hunter isn’t exactly boyfriend material, commitment is an entirely foreign concept to him, but…” she seemed to cut herself off in mid-thought, as if she was about to say something she’d regret, and shifted a different topic. “We should probably talk about why you watched the videos and, um, you know.”

“Yeah, we probably should.” Todd said hesitantly.

“But right now I’m famished. Can we get something to eat and talk more later?” She gave a small smile.

“Definitely.” Todd said, and as they gave each other a hug, Todd felt himself breathing a deep sigh of relief.