It was 10am on a Saturday morning. My boyfriend Bryn was living in Becket Court (where my friend Soppygit currently lives) and he, my friend Ibid and myself were in his room, talking. It was a lot bigger than the typical Becket Court room, and the bed was in front of the window.
The conversation progressed in such a way that Bryn confessed to cheating on me while he was at Carmenden, the previous term. I assumed this was somewhere he’d spent a weekend, re-enacting. I asked for the details. He’d spent two nights with the girl in question. He gave me a half-baked excuse as to why it had happened the first night. I kept slapping him, but it didn’t look like it was working. Someone began knocking loudly on a door. Not his door, but he, Ibid and I went into the corridor anyway to speak to whoever was responsible.
It was a foreign-looking guy, wanting to find someone who wasn’t in. Bryn spoke to him in fluent Spanish. I was surprised he was capable of doing so. Ibid spoke in Spanish too. This surprised me even more. I tried to remember some Spanish, but all I could think of “Hasta La Vista”, so when he said farewell, I said, “Hasta.”
Bryn, Ibid and I went back into his room, and I asked him about the second night. “It just happened, ok?” he said, sounding tired. The honesty of the confession took me back, and my anger subsided a little.
We were in my kitchen at home, which was down to flights of steps from the corridor his room was on. I tried to express how I felt: “I’m not going to forget it, but . . . no, I’m not going to forgive you either, but I don’t want to lose you over it.” But every time I looked at him, I felt like hurting him. The slapping didn’t seem to have worked, so I punched him in the eye. He fell over backwards, and his face turned grey. I was surprised by the power of the blow.
He got up and returned to his room. It occurred to me that if he’d cheated before we’d officially got together, I wouldn’t mind so much, so I went upstairs to ask him. To get into his room, I now had to walk through that of some guy. “You know,” he said to me, as I walked through. “I used to have a photo of Bryn’s Dad in my room, but now I’ll have to get rid of it, thanks to you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. (I apologise for the complete non-sequitur there.)
I progressed to Bryn’s room, where he was standing in a loose circle of people. He was holding a really large jumper, which he wanted to put on, but couldn’t due to his eye injury. But a few people helped him put it on. It came down to his ankles, and was very wide. It was a comical sight.
(“Did I do anything strange while I was asleep last night?” I asked Bryn, when he woke up. Fortunately I’d just been holding his little finger (which would account for dream #2).)
