Price Check On Monogamy

I love you, Tiger.

I know that the first time your dream guy tells you that he loves you it's supposed to be amazing and stuff-- like, doves fly out of the sunset and shit amazing-- but something must be wrong with me, because it was nothing like that. There were no birds-- and by 'no birds', I mean there wasn't only a lack of doves, there was a lack of any sort of winged creature anywhere near us. Our lives together for the next fifty years didn't flash through my head, punctuated by an image of the two of us smiling and dying together in bed holding hands. I didn't even think about how much I loved him, too, and the best, cheesiest way to tell him that. All I could think, in all honesty, was:

That was so not something I wanted to hear right now.

Tyler pulled away from me again, grinning. "I finally got the nerve to say it. I finally said it to you." And, apparently, saying it once meant to say it a million times. "I love you, Tiger. I love you." Tyler's forehead knit in confusion, though, after I... failed to say it back. "Tiger?"

I wet my lips and opened my mouth, but... nothing was coming out. "I..." I cleared my throat and tried to get the words out again, but it just wasn't happening. It was like choking on air; my throat was constricting, because my body didn't want me to lie, I guess.

Lie.

And suddenly, just like that, it hit me. It was a lie-- and not just the lie. The entire thing. My entire relationship with Tyler. Just like that, it hit me that, when I thought of my relationship with Tyler, I didn't think of fireworks-- but that was probably just because the relationship had never been fireworks. And there was nothing wrong with that. No, the wrongness of it all came into play when I thought about the look on his face when he realized he couldn't buy those guys at the party off, instead of all the days we spent at the park together. When I thought about the look on his face and how he'd backed away from me in the car like I was diseased at the therapist's office, instead of the dinners we'd had together at his house with his family. When I thought about the night that I'd woken up needing him to comfort me and he'd rushed me off the phone as fast as possible, instead of the hour long phone calls we'd had talking about nothing and laughing at everything.

But, most importantly:

When I realized that it wasn't Tyler's face I pictured when I thought about love. No, it wasn't icy blue eyes. It wasn't spiky black hair. It wasn't a tilted smile. It wasn't chapped lips. It wasn't a nervous, light touch. It wasn't an almost choked laugh I heard, and it most definitely wasn't England where I pictured finding it. It was... it was shaggy, sun bleached hair. It was golden eyes, a winner's smile, and a confident swagger. It was a cocky laugh that I heard, and it was in strong, protective arms that I wanted to find it.

It was Tandem.

"Tyler, I'm so sorry." I broke away from him and wrapped my arms around myself tight to keep him from grabbing me again. I fixed my eyes on the ground where I knew that, while I probably couldn't find courage there, I could definitely find nothing that would break what little courage I already had. "I can't do this."

"What... what do you mean?" And there was that voice that I hadn't factored in, breaking my courage. He sounded like he was about to start crying, like he was confused.

And it broke my heart-- but not enough for me to keep lying to him, to all my friends.
To myself.
To Tandem.

"I... I can't go to England with you. I can't keep seeing you. I'm so sorry. But I can't do this anymore."

"... it's another boy, isn't it?" There was a sort of resignation in his voice, a sort of voidness that made me... not flinch, but twitch a little. Like something was definitely wrong, but I couldn't figure out why. When I didn't answer right away, Tyler shouted, "Have you been whoring around on me?"

And that made me snap my head back up. When I looked into his eyes, he looked like he was about to cry, but there was a spark there, like a flame. Like he was determined to make me cry, too, if he had to walk away from this in tears.

And that pissed me the fuck off.

"You're fucking going to England!" I snapped. "Don't you ever accuse me of shit like that."

"You have!" Tyler had brought his voice down, but the venom had just doubled in it. A tear slid down his face but, strangely enough, instead of sympathy, I felt the overwhelming desire to knock him out. "You've been cheating on me, haven't you?"

I rolled my eyes and snorted. "Not even close. I've been an amazing girlfriend, Tyler. And by amazing, I mean fucking amazing. I've never once bitched at you about your need to avoid touchy subjects. Never once called you on the fact that, every time I have some sort of flaw, you run away from it. Never. Once."

"Because I wanted you to be perfect!" He almost screamed.

And that made me laugh. "Perfect? I'm not perfect, you asshole, no one is. And just because I'm not perfect, you're gonna avoid the topic and pretend it never happened?"

Tyler opened his mouth to shout more, probably, but closed it. He was crying by now, fully crying-- I'm pretty sure that was at least part of the reason why he was choosing to walk away and avoid looking even more like a fucking idiot. "No, you're not perfect. Not by a long shot." Shooting me once lost sneer, he said snidely, "The girls in England are prettier, anyway."

"And the men here are actually men, you fucking pussy," I called after him. He stopped dead in his tracks and turned, almost in slow motion, to face me. I smiled and waved. "Have a safe flight back to England, hope it doesn't crash and burn and kill you!"

"What did I see in you?" Tyler stalked over and literally backed me into my door. "What the hell is there in you that I actually liked?"

"My winning personality?" I said blandly, trying to fight down the panic that was building in my stomach. I wasn't going to back down to a bipolar asshole, but Tyler was at least four inches taller than me, and a lot bigger-- and, apparently, when he stopped liking me, he stopped liking my sarcasm, because he cocked his arm back--

-- and I kneed him straight in the nuts.

Falling to his knees and grabbing himself, Tyler glared up at me when I couldn't help but laugh. "I'm gonna go now, Tyler. Best wishes."

"No one's ever going to love you more than I did." I stopped with the door half open and turned to look down at him-- but, suddenly, I wasn't angry that he was such an asshole. I just felt sorry for him.

"Someone already does. And it's about time I find him and tell him I love him, too."