At No Time || Bruno Mars

51

Trystan tried to keep her leg from bouncing as she and Derek sat inside Dr. Robert's, their couples therapist, office. Mouth tight and arms crossed, she was settled on the navy couch with scratchy fabric and doing her best not to interrupt Derek as Dr. Robert's had instructed her not to.

"Couples must allow each other to speak, even if there are disagreements," she had told her when Trystan objected an asinine point Derek was making. She thought going to therapy would be the help they needed to get their relationship on track, but in the two sessions they had had, she felt worse.

"Trystan is a good woman, I know that, and I trust her," Derek continued on, using his age-old tactic of complimenting her to soften an impending insult. "But sometimes, I can't help but to think she speaks to other men when I'm not around."

"That's ridiculous," Trystan broke the rule and spoke out. Him having the audacity to accuse her of infidelity was enough to make her blood boil. "I don't speak to other men on anything past a professional-level."

"Really?" Derek looked at her with a pointed glare. "Because you sure enough talk to Peter passed a "professional" level."

Dr. Roberts looked between them both, her eyes squinting behind rectangular spectacles. "Peter? Who's Peter?"

Trystan felt herself become balmy though she felt she had no reason for it. "Peter is a friend of mine," she explained. "He and my company are working together on a project."

Dr. Robert's eyes switched to Derek. "Why do you assume there's anything unprofessional going on between he and Trystan?"

Trystan knew why, and she wanted to answer her, knowing Derek would edify it in such a way that made her appear guilty.

It had happened a couple nights before, and then a few before then, when Derek came home from work and found Trystan in the kitchen and in the bedroom laughing on the phone. Both times had been with Peter.

"When I catch her on the phone, she's like a deer caught in headlights and ends the call like she's got something to hide," Derek said, and Trystan could not allege him of lying. She did tell Peter she had to go and hung up swiftly when Derek would arrive, but that was only because she felt she could not speak to other men in a friendly way with Derek around.

She told Dr. Robert's this, and she asked her, "Did you and this Peter fellow ever have a romantic relationship in the past?"

It was a shocking question, but not unfair. "No," Trystan answered automatically, and she could not tell what Derek's expression was in her peripheral. "We've always been just friends." She looked at her partner then, reiterating for the umpteenth time that there was nothing going on between she and Peter, as there honestly was not.

Ever since the morning he had spent with she and Raina, they would speak on the phone to discuss business affiliations, and both naturally and unintentionally, would their conversations trail off into things unrelated to their work. Derek just happened to walk in on the moments where Trystan found something that Peter said funny, and made up his mind to believe they were doing something immoral.

"I can't have friends?" she asked Derek, and he sighed, aggravated.

"That's not what I'm saying, Trys," he ensured. "It's just that since we've been together, you haven't talked on the phone with another man like that, giggling and probably telling him things you don't even talk about with me. What if I were doing that with another woman?"

You probably do, Trystan wanted to say, but kept the thought to herself. She knew that if she continuously walked in on Derek doing the same thing, she would think something was going on, too, but she felt there was nothing she could do to persuade him that she and Peter's relationship was nothing but innocent unless she stopped talking to him all together, which she did not plan on doing. Their conversations were harmless.