DTPR - Defining the Previous Relationship

Christopher and I were sitting on the edge of the dock with our feet skimming the water. The sky outside was gray, matching the water and the distant islands like a muddy watercolor. In the last hour, we've sunk about a foot in height as the tide rushes back out to sea, exposing a group of barnacles on the posts flanking either side of us. Between us is a cooler of beer. In the last hour I've had at least 2 of them.

I took another sip. "So tell me about the girl that broke your heart," I tried. He never alluded there was one, but it would explain a lot of his closed-natured behavior.

"What girl?"

"You know, the one that broke your heart," I tried again.

He chuckled, "There is none. I don't let them."

I pointed at him with my beer in hand, "Ah, but there has to have been one for you not to let them. That's a lesson you learn the hard way."

He tells me some story about some girl in high school who, from what I could gather, cheated on him with his friend. And by cheating, I'm pretty sure we were talking kissing. He said it "sucked" but then he got his vengeance by starting to date some other hot girl, I think. I really wasn't paying attention. As soon as he finished, I voiced my thought.

"High school doesn't count."

Christopher insists that this could be the only girl to hurt him.

"All right. Well what about the last girl you were dating? Why did you two stop seeing each other?" I pried.

He smirked at my continuing attempt. "I can't remember," he paused. "Why do you want to know?"

"I dunno, Christopher. Might be mildly relevant."

"It's not."

I kicked a toe in the water, making a ripple in the otherwise silent ocean. I took another sip of beer and shrugged. "That's fine," I playfully teased. "I don't remember what happened in my last relationship either."

Christopher flashed his eyes at me and smiled, all of a sudden having an interest in this conversation. He took a long sip of beer. "I already know," he said as he looked back out on the water. It was dolphin-feeding time and we were on the watch for gray dorsal fins.

And then he said it. Or at least pretty close to it. Apparently I made one or two offhand comments over the past few months and it was enough for him to piece things together.

I should have known. This time around, he pays really close attention when I talk, and when I mention something revealing about myself that he didn't already know, he would slowly repeat it. I should have known he's been quiet while I've been talking, figuring me out.

So I told him. I refuse to tell him about the verbal or physical abuse, or about a lot of other things about that relationship, but I told him about the alcoholism.

Christopher, probably like most others, thought I was being dramatic with the term alcoholic, but then I filled him in on the DTs, the hallucinations, the foaming-of-the-mouth seizures, the trips to the emergency room for overdosing, the amount he would drink a day and when he would drink.

"That's bad," he said.

"So that's why I go to your fridge when you go to the bathroom and count your beer," I admitted.

"You do?" he asked, not upset.

"Old habit," I shrugged.

"And the time you yelled at me for saying I wanted a beer and you made me stick out my hands?"

"Checking for DTs," I said sheepishly.

Christopher was pretty non-reactionary, much like he is most of the time. He had told me before he doesn't really get upset, but that doesn't stop me from placing my fears on him.

"Are you mad?"

Christopher took another drink, "No. I told you I don't really get mad."

"I just didn't want to tell you because I didn't want to look bad." I broke eye-contact with the horizon and looked over at him, "I don't want to look bad, not to you."

"You don't look bad," he confirmed.

I go dorsal-fin hunting again and relapse back into my thoughts. "So that's why moving was so hard on me. I had to give up my apartment and independence to get away from him."

"You lived together?" he repeated.

"Yeah."

"How long were you together?" he asked.

"Two years."

"TWO YEARS?!" he repeated again.

I guess Christopher doesn't have me all figured out then.