Didn't you?, he snapped, and she flinched again. Kate wasn't sure why it was so easy for her boyfriend to demonize her and why it was so difficult for her to demonize him. It seemed uneven. Starkly unfair. And, like she'd felt intensely in the last couple of months, that her feelings for him were just... stronger and purer. Kate was always reluctant to get into any kind of binding relationship, and perhaps this was why -- when she invested, she really invested. She gave it everything she had. While she hadn't really had many female friends, she knew it was like that with Ari, now. It was like that with Hefin, and with her sister Francesca, with her job, and undoubtedly with Charlie.
It was maddening that Kate didn't even ask for 50/50 or 60/40 and was still met with such... stubborn bitterness. What had she done to warrant that? Be there? Be present? Try to understand? If she'd been a complete doormat, would that have been more effective in getting him to communicate with her on a higher, more empathetic level? Or was it just that she put enough into their relationship, which had fallen apart mere weeks ago, that he felt secure enough she wouldn't leave? Something in her chest twanged sharply.
Kate waited, with her hands clenched into soft fists at her sides, for him to answer her. If he had to think about what he was going to say for this long, surely that wasn't a positive sign. She braced herself. Maybe he was going to leave her before she could leave him, if that was what this was all really going to come down to.
Even though I don't know was neither a yes or a no, she drew from her childhood experiences. Yes meant yes. No meant no. Maybe meant no. She looked at the floor, down at nothing, and nodded once, the slow pace punctuating a similar-paced deterioration snowballing inside of her chest and her brain. She felt sick. If he didn't see the same future she did, why was she even here? Had she wasted almost two years of her life on a man who didn't feel attached to her in any real way, enough to make a firm, verbal, no-questions-asked commitment? If he was this reluctant and she'd have agreed to such a thing in a heartbeat, Kate wondered even further how wide the divide was between them.
"...Okay," She choked out, her voice full of miniature peaks and valleys and potholes. "I'm going to go have a shower. Please feel free to eat the rest of the food, I'm not hungry anymore." Kate's eyes avoided his big brown ones as she turned on her heel to leave. She picked up the pace the closer she got to the bedroom -- her stomach was churning violently enough that heaving didn't seem far off.
