‘Fuck off, you bastard.’
She screamed the words at him. She spat them. If they’d been bullets he would be dead.
The Saturday traffic sped past. An island in the middle of a High Street thronged with shoppers wasn’t where she would have chosen to hurl her anger at him. She would never have intended to stand stiffly, with her arms back, her fists clenched, her body leaning towards him, her head jutting out, her eyes glaring from their sockets; she would never have chosen to lose her temper so publicly.
And as she loosed the words at him, a blast of automatic fire, it occurred to her, deep within her, it wasn’t what he’d done or was planning to do, but what he’d said about her, the place he saw her.
The shit, she thought. But men are duplicitous, she had enough experience of them to know that was always potentially true. She was expected to accept his actions, not question them, blindly allow him anything. She was expected to believe, not think beyond the simple story he told her. She was expected to swallow it, be here when he chose to come back to her, if he chose to come back to her. She was his reserve, the substitute…
He didn’t say that. She saw her prejudice. She saw there was an outside chance that she had grasped the wrong end of the stick he waved at her. She accepted that maybe, just maybe, her reaction had been no more than a reaction and that she should, maybe, have been more rational and understanding.
It was hard for her to admit these things to herself. Now, in an instant in the middle of the High Street, she considered the circumstances and wondered if there had been any room for doubt in her interpretation of what was/might be going on. She almost felt herself accepting his story, because, deep inside, she really, really wanted to believe it, she wanted to believe him.
And she might have believed him. If he’d given her time, been patient, reassured her, made her feel that she was the centre of his life, she may possible have accepted what he said.
But he went too far. He didn’t just defend himself, he attacked her. That was the end. He didn’t just walk off in sorrow or rage or disbelief or dudgeon, he rounded on her, he said, ‘You’re mad.’
That hurt. And that’s why now, despite everything she liked about him, she found herself unloading her rage on him. Just because he didn’t understand her, hadn’t made the attempt to understand her, she was being called mad. For a moment she wondered why she had invested so much of herself in him. They hadn’t known each other very long, but she felt she had opened herself up to him, held nothing back. She expected, demanded the same of him. She wanted the same commitment from him.
Was she mad? She relaxed her fists. She straightened up, flicked her hair, spun her beautiful body and with every bit of sassiness she could muster, she held up the traffic as she walked away from him.
‘Fine,’ she thought. ‘Maybe I am mad; mad to trust him, mad to let myself be led on, mad to think there was the potential of a future in such a short time. Am I insane? No, you shit, I’m not.’