Life with Tommy

I woke up the next morning and stumbled into the kitchen to make my morning coffee and saw Tommy asleep on the couch. Based on the awkward way he was sprawled across the cushions and the fact that he was still wearing his shoes, it was pretty obvious that he had come in sometime late last night and passed out. I decided not to wake him and took my coffee back into the bedroom. I knew that I was being childish, but at that point I didn’t care. My feelings were hurt and I didn’t want to see him.

About an hour later I heard him stumble down the hall to the bathroom. On the way back he stopped at the bedroom door. “Hey” was what he started with. It was kind of expressed more as an exhalation than anything else. I decided to be just as monosyllabic and responded with my own “Hey”. I pretended to be very occupied with my iPad and barely looked in his direction.

“So what are you pissed at me or something? Just because I missed some stupid dinner?”

At that point the carefully constructed damn holding back my anger began to crack. “So you listened to my messages and just chose not to answer your phone? Would it have been so hard to just send me a text saying you weren’t coming? I sat here waiting for you for hours Tommy!”

“And who asked you to do that?” he shouted angrily. “I didn’t ask you to make me dinner and to wait up for me like my goddamn mother!”

“I’m sorry if I wanted to do something nice for you and if I wanted to spend time with you after a long week. Next time I won’t bother!”

I didn’t know if I had gone too far but at this point I couldn’t hold back. My hurt feelings were now manifesting themselves as anger toward Tommy and I was going to be sure that he heard them.
I’d seen Tommy’s temper on display in the ring and directed toward a few jerks at the bar who had had a few too many, so I was prepared for an angry outburst. What I got was even worse. All he said was “whatever” and walked out of the apartment.