|12| - "Who's the girl?" - 

He didn't message.

At first, I worried something had happened to him, but I knew that was unlikely. He could look after himself, and I'd have heard by now if he'd got into trouble.

So then I was just pissed off. It was bad enough that we weren't messaging as much recently, but to not send me one simple message, after I'd explicitly asked him to, just demonstrated either a total state of inebriation to the extent where he didn't know what he was doing, or a total lack of consideration for me. I didn't actually know which I'd prefer.

"You alright?" Jasmine asked when I sat down for breakfast. "You look troubled."

I nodded. "Yeah, fine. It's nothing."

"Did Nathan get in touch?" she then asked, correctly assuming this was the source of my distress.

"No, but I'm sure it's fine. His phone probably ran out of battery or something..."

This was the first time that Nathan had gone on a real night out without me, which might have seemed strange had it not been for the reason that all the nights out he'd attended recently had been at my university. His work friends rarely went out—this was the first time—and that was exactly why I needed to be cool about this. I knew he wouldn't have done anything stupid, but I also knew it was unlikely for his phone to run out of battery.

"Have you messaged him?" she asked with a frown.

"Yeah, just to ask if he had a good night...but we're an hour ahead, aren't we? He's probably still in bed."

"Hm," she murmured in contemplation. "I hope he's okay."

My stomach squirmed in discomfort. I'd talked myself out of that particular worry, but of course it was in the back of my mind. I knew they were just natural thoughts, spurred by the strangeness of the situation, but jumping to conclusions wouldn't do me any good. Nathan was sensible. There would be a perfectly logical explanation.

☼

Just after eleven o'clock, as I was scrolling through Facebook in an attempt to distract myself, I came across several photos that Nathan had been tagged in. My curiosity piqued and I clicked on them. Most were pretty bad shots, taken inside where it was dark and not much was visible. It was the ones taken outside that made me feel most uncomfortable.

"Oh, God..." I groaned to myself.

Jasmine's ears pricked up. She'd been painting her nails but looked over when she heard me exhale.

"What's up?"

"These photos of Nathan." I twisted my laptop to face her.

She squinted as she looked at the screen and misinterpreted my concern.

"Who's the girl?" she asked.

I twisted the screen back into my vision to see who she was referring to. "Oh, her? I dunno, just a colleague. Think she's called Marie. But I don't really care that he's talking to her or anything. Look what he's holding."

Her eyes widened upon realisation. "Oh."

I sighed and pressed the home button on my phone to wake the screen; there was still no reply from Nathan.

"So...what does that mean?" she asked slowly and carefully.

"I'm not gonna be the girl who freaks out over Facebook photos."

"Izzy," she stated in a matter-of-fact tone. "There's nothing wrong with freaking out, okay? It's a natural reaction. I know you want to be the best girlfriend possible during this year abroad, but that doesn't mean letting him get away with things that upset you. You said you hated doing that with your ex."

"But Nathan isn't Matt," I said. "Nathan's a good guy and I can't forget that."

"That doesn't mean it's a free pass. Be honest; how does seeing him smoke make you feel?"

I sighed to myself. My head hurt, though I didn't doubt that Nathan's would be worse this morning.

"I don't know. He was probably drunk and took a cigarette when offered. It doesn't necessarily mean anything, I guess."

"Yet It's upsetting you."

"I'm just exhausted from all the worrying."

"You told me he gave up smoking because you didn't like it," Jasmine continued. "Is that why it's bothering you? Because he cared enough about you to give it up but now he's doing it again?"

I shrugged. "Partly, but not in the sense that I feel as if he doesn't care as much anymore. At the time, it felt symbolic, like he'd changed something in his life for my benefit, if that makes sense. I'd never had that before. It'd made me feel special."

"So, I guess it's more the principle, right?"

"Yeah, I don't know. It's probably not even worth worrying about. One cigarette on a night out when he's smoked far more in his whole lifetime."

"You're doing it again."

"Doing what?"

"Trying to convince yourself that you're being irrational."

"Well, maybe I am being irrational."

"That doesn't matter. What matters is that you're upset by it and you should therefore talk to him. If it is just one cigarette and you decide that it genuinely doesn't bother you, then great. But don't bottle it up and pretend you're cool if you're not. Otherwise, one day you'll just explode and everything that's ever bothered you will flood out and cause an even bigger issue than if they were brought up separately at the time."

"It'd help if you didn't make so much sense, you know," I murmured, sulking as I absentmindedly zoomed in and out of the photo.

"Somebody needs to be the voice of reason around here. You sure as hell aren't."

I smiled at her blunt insult. In the midst of my feelings around Nathan, it was reassuring to know that Jasmine and I had reached a point in our friendship where we weren't treading on eggshells around one another.

"Okay, if I think about it properly, maybe it's not just the cigarette. The cigarette is just the icing on the cake. The main issue is the growing lack of communication. It makes me feel like he's not thinking of me as much as I'm thinking of him. Put the cigarette thing on top of that, and it becomes more significant."

She smiled, but it was one of pride rather than happiness. "See, now you're being reasonable."

☼

It was two in the afternoon, my time, when Nathan finally got in touch. Not that his blasé message did much to appease me, but at least it was a reply.

- Yeah it was really good thanks. How are you?

I took a few deep breaths and decided not to bite his head off with the fact he'd not addressed his lack of message last night. After all, I'd asked him how his night was—he'd just responded.

It didn't help, however, that after I'd replied, he was slow with his message back.

Maybe I did feel like I was being irrational at times, but the recurring issues didn't help. It wasn't just in my head. I did have a right to feel this way. There were two people in this relationship, and one of us was making more effort than the other.

Whilst waiting for him, I went to revisit the photo, deciding that I would bring it up after all. Strangely, however, I couldn't find it. I flicked through all the photos three times, in case I was being daft, but it definitely wasn't there.

Jasmine had warned me that I'd combust, and I could feel the bubbling anger rising to the surface as I hit the arrow key with increasing force.

Not bothering to wait for him any longer, I sent him another message. I didn't want to play games, so got straight to the point.

- Have you been deleting tags of yourself on Facebook?

I wasn't sure it made sense, but he'd know what I meant—especially since he'd obviously done exactly that.

His reply was surprisingly fast, which pissed me off more. Clearly he still had his phone with him, then.

- Yeah, there were some unflattering ones of me on there! Need to make sure you're remembering me in the best possible light since you're not seeing me every day 😉

"You bastard," I muttered to myself.

Maybe I'd have fallen for it if I hadn't already seen the photos and known the real reason why he'd deleted the tags. It made me feel slightly nauseous inside; Nathan had never made me feel this way, like he could so easily pull the wool over my eyes without me realising.

- Don't bullshit me. I've already seen the ones you've deleted.

Just like that, his defensiveness kicked in.

- Looking out for them were you? I deleted them pretty quick so you obviously didn't trust me if you were monitoring facebook like that.

I was already furious, so his attempt to turn the tables didn't faze me. If anything, it re-enforced that I was right to be worried.

- Don't turn this on me. You shouldn't be trying to hide things.

- Honestly, it's not a big deal.

- It may not seem like a big deal to you but it is to me.

- I was drunk, not thinking straight

Of course, the classic I was drunk therefore what I did doesn't matter excuse. I might have believed it several years ago, but I'd grown a lot since then. You might make different choices when drunk, but you still decided to make them. I remembered my conversation with Jasmine, and took a deep breath to calm myself before sending the next message.

- It's the principle

- It really didn't mean anything

- So why delete the tag then?

- I knew you'd see it and read into it too much

My fingers were flying across the keyboard, my mind conjuring up a comeback for every defence he threw at me. I couldn't remember the last time we'd had an argument over text, but that was the joy of a long-distance relationship: we couldn't do it face-to-face.

- What's there to read into? It's right there to see and you obviously feel guilty

- Of course I feel guilty. I'd never want to hurt you. But it had no significance at the time

- Makes me wonder what else you're doing and keeping quiet about

- I know I should have told you but the photo makes it look worse than it was. It captured a bad moment.

Unless he was holding the cigarette for someone else, how could it capture a bad moment?

- What do you mean?

- She wasn't like that all night. She's just feeling vulnerable and wanted some comfort. I know it was stupid but I was drunk and not thinking straight. As soon as it got too intimate, I backed off.

We might not be face-to-face, but I felt like he'd punched me in the stomach. With a horrifying realisation, it became apparent that we were not talking about the same photo. I scrolled back up through the messages, noticing that I'd made a typo, inadvertently giving the impression that I'd seen multiple incriminating photos, and not just the one. It was an easy mistake to make, but had set off a chain of messages where Nathan had believed I'd seen a set of photos different to the single one I had actually seen.

When I replied to ask him what he was talking about, there was a long pause, suggesting he'd realised, too, that we were talking about different things. The smoking photo had only disappeared recently, maybe deleted as a second thought? Perhaps Nathan had seen photos that went up much earlier, ones that he'd already deleted before I'd gone on Facebook, hence the accusation that I'd been waiting around and looking out for them. He'd deleted them as a priority. Maybe even before he'd gone to bed, like he'd been expecting them.

His response confirmed my fears.

- Marie. What are you talking about?

- Smoking.

Another long pause. And then:

- Can we Skype?

☼☼☼

Thank you for reading :) xx