An Extra Pump of Sugar

Chapter 5

"No." He scowled down at his water glass, setting his jaw. Then his shoulders sagged. "I...she slept with someone else."

It was the last thing I expected him to say, and I choked a bit on my drink, hating my near-comical reaction to such a humorless revelation. "What?"

He glanced to the side, peeved. "While she was abroad this last semester. Alyssa cheated on me with a guy in her program. She blamed it on loneliness and being away for so long."

"I..." Shit. "That's awful, Theo. I'm really sorry."

The context painted their heated argument a brand new shade of red. No wonder he'd been so pissed on his way out the door, so eager to escape her presence. If I'd been in his shoes, I'd never want to see her face again.

He glared at the window, holding it in, but for whatever reason, he must have felt safe enough to confide in me about the situation, because the words began to pour from his lips like boiling water. "I just don't understand how you can claim to love someone and then sleep with another person behind their back, multiple times. It's not like we decided to take a break while she was gone. We've always been exclusive." He took a deep breath to dispel some of his anger. "She calls it a mistake, but it was clearly a conscious decision, and I just...I can't get over the wrongness of it all. I don't think I ever will." He blinked. "Maybe that makes me a resentful, jealous dick. I don't know."

"It doesn't," I assured him, and I thought back to the two of them at the party. His outburst, her grief. "Did you break up with her tonight?"

"I ended things a few weeks before Christmas, but she's not making it easy. She pinned me down tonight and demanded that I forgive her, told me she'd come clean about the affair as soon as she got back, that her honesty had to count for something." He crushed his eyes closed. "Then she said I'd try to salvage our relationship if I ever truly loved her."

What.

"That's bullshit," I told him, enraged on his behalf, and he gave a quiet snort of assent. She had some gall to place even an ounce of blame on his shoulders. "How long you were guys together?"

He winced, and his voice dropped to a broken whisper. "...Six years."

My stomach bottomed out, and I nearly dropped the glass in my hand.

Holy shit.

I'd never even made it past a few consecutive dates, and Theo had spent six trips around the sun with one partner. And then she'd gone and destroyed that overseas, all for a fling.

Why?

Why would someone gamble their earnings after they'd won the lottery?

"We were high school sweethearts," he added, shaking his head, and I could feel the pain rolling off of him in waves. Pain and frustration. Betrayal and sadness. "Ridiculous to think we'd last forever, right?"

I looked him over, this person I'd always pegged as a loner who never grew out of his skater phase. Someone I'd never seen as a romantic, nor someone who valued a healthy, long-lasting relationship with another human being. I'd never missed the mark so badly.

"No," I answered quietly. "It's not ridiculous. I think we all wish for someone to spend forever with. I did at one point."

He detected the resignation in my tone, and he shifted to face me. "What changed?"

The alcohol weighed my walls down, and at this point, they were simply too heavy to lift. "I guess I've realized that I have these idealistic expectations of love and what it's supposed to look like, you know? Maybe I grew up watching too many Disney movies. Or maybe I wanted to believe there was more to a loving relationship than what my parents call marriage." I expelled a short, mirthless laugh. "I keep waiting for this story straight out of a fairytale, but it's never going to happen. And I have to learn to accept that."