Melanie and the Mistake

 

She stood nursing her coffee, staring at him. He sat at the far end of the breakfast table. The way he used his spoon to dig at his cereal annoyed her. He looked like a chimpanzee digging for termites with a twig.

The way he scraped the bottom of the bowl annoyed her. He brought the bowl up to his face, tilted his head back, and let the milk flow down his throat as if every drop was worth its weight in gold. This annoyed her too.

“I see how you’re looking at me,” he said.

"I don’t know what you mean.”

“Melanie, it’s been three weeks. We have to move on.” He pointed at her, “You…you can't seem to get over this mistake.”

“I am over it. I wasn't even thinking about it, thanks for bringing it up.”

She lied. Since his massive mental lapse, that's all she could think about. A simple error that now acted like an infinite well of annoyance. Every time she saw him, she felt herself inching towards homicidal mania. His error was so egregious, it was not something she would ever forget.

She was annoyed by the clothes he wore. He wore that same ink stained t-shirt at least a couple days a week. It was one size too small and had the name of some long forgotten political hero who lost a run for mayor. She tried to get rid of it on more than one occasion; twice he’s dug it out of the trash.

“You’re not over it, I can tell by how you look at me. You look annoyed.” He stood up, walking past her to the kitchen. “Our conversations have changed.”

“How have our conversations changed?” She said, annoyed by this conversation.

“They’re always about how things used to be—”

“Well, let’s talk about how things could have been.”

“Or, they’re about how things could've been. You've lost the capacity to live in the moment…at least with me.”

She finished her coffee and poured more into her mug. She was annoyed that he bought the cheapest coffee maker ever made, probably built by starving children making a penny a day somewhere on the opposite side of the planet.

“We still made out alright,” he said. “Five out of six wasn't bad. We were able to pay off your credit cards.”

“Don’t say stupid things. Not too many people can literally say they made a multi-million dollar mistake.”

“I’m over it. Now I just need to fix my current problem. I can’t keep waking up to this anymore.”

“We had a system, your birthday, my birthday, and the day we met.”

“I think I found a solution.”

“How could you get my birthday wrong?” she said, raising her hands by her head, as if trying to contain an explosion.

“I think it'll work out best for both of us.”

“All you had to do was fill in 28. Where the hell did you get 26? How could you forget my birthday?!”

She would give it another month. If she couldn't get over it, she would have to end the relationship. Right now all she could see when she looked at him was the number 26 tattooed on his forehead.

And then, he said something that really annoyed her.

“I’m moving out.”

In five years this is not the first time he’s said this. They've had rough fights before. But, this was the first time she believed him. It was also the first time these words brought her a strange sense of relief.

“Good,” she said.

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