Three nights later, it still felt bruised when she breathed. Even though he had not laid a hand on her, the words hurled in each other's directions would have shattered vases, broken bones, ripped out hearts if they had made physical contact.

***

The fight had been over something stupid (weren't they all?), but what had made it significant was that it was without precedent. It was first. First. Stupid, each of them shouting pain from outside shitty events at one another. Why? Even as she blamed him out loud, the words curling and striking as if her tongue were a viper, she had known that everything she was saying was bullshit. As was the shower of sharp invective that rained down on her, its spray aimed at her from behind his guitar. 

The guitar he played that made her wet just listening. She wanted to be the guitar, to be the strings that he plucked and stroked, held down in combinations to draw forth from them those magical sounds. 

No magic now. Maleficence, like smoke, wafted in the air, brought into the house by a door left too long open. 

The fight had ended when she had retreated to a bedroom, sobbed, taken long breaths, and prepared herself to leave. She couldn't stay now. They had had 18 months of perfection--nary a cross word between them--and in 15 minutes, they had stabbed it to death. She knew because her blood scalded her, and she swore it spilled from the wound in her chest. 

She left the room, pulling the roughly planed door shut behind her. With no way to do that quietly, he had plenty of warning that she was coming back into the living room. He was lying on his back, his glasses off, his hand over his eyes. 

"If you really believe those things that you just said, then I'm going to leave," she said, the crying hiccoughs interrupting the flow of her speech. God she hated when that happened. Her dad used to make her cry so hard she would hiccough for hours afterward. And hiccoughing in front of him, now, made her feel five years old. She had to get out of here before she turned to salt. 

He said nothing, and the two tears that dripped down her cheeks both hurt. The salt was chapping her cheeks, and she imagined that crimson streaks marked the flow of water. 

He waved her over. "Come here," he said in such a low voice that she guessed, rather than heard, exactly what he had said. 

She stood still. "Please come here," he said. She walked over and he pulled her down on top of him. She pushed her face into the crook of his shoulder and tried to explain that if they were going to break up in the future about the things that she did that bothered him, she'd rather do it now. "It's going to hurt like hell right now," she said, "but if we wait until I'm even more in love with you, it'll kill me." She grabbed a tissue and blew wads of snot into it. He handed her another one. They both laughed. "Not that I could be any more in love with you. It's not humanly possible," she said.

And then he began to talk. She couldn't remember everything he had said, really, she just remembered the tone. Soothing. He stroked her back and her hair as he talked, and she grew aware that he was taking full responsibility for the fight they had just had. All of it, he said, was his fault. No one, no man she had ever dealt with --from her father to her ex-husband--had ever told her that it was all his fault. He wasn't telling her that she was crazy, or difficult, or selfish. He acknowledged what she had tried to get him to admit: today, an anniversary day, was extra-difficult, and he had taken it out on her. 

It still hurt like hell. But she had been wrong. It was possible to love him more. Heat flooded her chest, hot chocolate warmth, as she realized she didn't have to leave him. Not tonight anyway. 

****

to be continued....