I called him the first night. Properly frustrated. The kind of restless that had been building for weeks while I was away and had nowhere to go. I needed my go-to. The one who knows how to shut the noise off without making it complicated. I kept the message light but clear. He replied that he could not until next week because he had the kid.
Fair enough. I asked about mid-week. No. He was busy, once he was back at work he would sort me out. I tried the sulk. The slight shortness, the quiet disappointment that usually gets a response out of most men. He ignored it completely. Just left the conversation where it was. That should have been my first warning that I was already on the back foot. So I was like fine, I can wait.
The next day I was talking to Lisa. Casual catch-up. She mentioned she was seeing him mid-week. I felt the heat rise straight up my neck. Turns out he has been putting her on the orgasm train the entire time I was away. My best mate. The one I specifically told she did not need my permission for. I remember the conversation clearly.
She asked, half-joking, half-serious, and I laughed and said what are you asking me for. It was nothing serious between him and me. We had never even slept together in the full sense. He was a reliable release, not a claim. I meant it at the time. I still know I was right to say it. That does not stop the jealousy sitting in my stomach like a stone.
I have no right to be angry. I keep repeating it to myself. I gave the green light. I was the one who treated it as casual and transferable. I was the one who went away and left the door open. And yet the second I found out she had been getting what I had been craving, I felt properly robbed. That was my find. My reliable option. The one I had been thinking about while I was climbing the walls in another country. I should have been first in the queue. The fact that I had no actual claim on him did not matter to the part of me that was suddenly furious.
What did I do?
Yes! he says, I have to and you know it. I don’t know anyone called Lisa. I pushed. I’m like look, just tell me if you are or not! (She could be just lying to me!), I don’t know anyone called Lisa, he says. I’m like aaaargh! We all want a guy that keeps us secret, but trust me, it’s no fun! It’s like you only exist to him, and sometimes, that sucks!
Really. REALLY. Now I’m convinced he is, because he said he don’t know her, my heads doing drunken gymnastics. I am priority! I’m proper blowing up. He stayed calm and confused and then simply hung up. No raised voice. No explanation. Just gone. That made it worse. I sat there with the wine talking louder than my sense and sent a proper shitty text.
Jealous, accusing, making a complete dick of myself in writing. The kind of message you can feel going wrong even as your thumb hits send. He replied that I had now earned a three-week wait. I, still in full wine-prick mode, came back with something about two thousand pounds to jump the queue and a cheeky emoji, as if money and attitude would fix the hole I had just dug. He answered with four weeks.
I sent an angry one back,
You aint all that you know! You’re normal! Take all that shit you do away and you’re an ignored message at best! That’s why everyone else but me ignores you! You’re un-likable! I know your worth. I’m the prettiest, sexiest and youngest you’ll ever get! You should be BEGGING me!
You know when you send something, it goes green, and you’re like, oh shit. That was one of those. He ignored it. I’m reading it now and I’m like, shit!
The Silent Fall Out
I read the whole exchange this morning with a clear head and wanted to fold myself into a very small space. Omg Emma you dick. There is no spin that makes those messages look anything other than insecure and entitled. I have spent years telling myself I do not do possessiveness over men who are not actually mine. I have written about it. I have believed it. Two days home and one conversation with my best mate and I behaved like the exact kind of woman I side-eye.
The jealousy does not make logical sense and that is what is doing my head in the most. I know they are not having sex, he’s the one guy on Earth that doesn’t need it, to him, it’s all about the woman’s pleasure. I suspect it’s it’s an orgasm kink or power play of some kind, which obviously makes it so unique and the prick knows it! but whatever. I do not even think he sees it as anything more than what it was with me. And still the idea of her getting the version of him that I had been counting on makes me feel edged out. I wanted my thing! I wanted the release I had been holding out for. Instead I got a closed door and the knowledge that someone else had been walking through it while I was gone. The fact that I handed her the key myself only makes the feeling more humiliating.
Surly I have some priority?
What makes it properly stupid is that his reaction is part of why I want him in the first place. Most men would have jumped at the chance the second I landed. They would have been available, flattered, keen to rearrange. He did not. He had the kid. He had work. He had other plans. He did not scramble. He did not soothe my sulk.
He simply stated his reality and left me to deal with it. That refusal to prioritise my sudden need is infuriating and, in the same breath, what keeps the pull intact. If he had folded immediately I suspect some of the heat would have gone out of it. The fact that he can take me or leave me, even when I am offering, is the exact quality that got under my skin months ago.
I have to un-fuck this today. There is no version where those messages age well. I will have to swallow the embarrassment, own the jealousy, and accept whatever timeline he now decides. Three weeks. Four weeks. Longer if he feels like teaching a proper lesson. I have no leverage and I burned the little goodwill I had in one drunken evening. The rational part of me knows I need to step back and let the temperature drop. The restless part of me is already calculating how to get around the wait without looking more desperate than I already do.
Two days. That is all it took. I came home missing my bed and my friends and the ability to sort myself out properly. I reached for the one person who has been reliable in that department and managed to turn it into a small dumpster fire before the week had even started. I am jealous of my best mate for something I gave her permission to take. I am angry at a man who never promised me exclusivity. I am embarrassed by my own texts. And underneath all of it I still just want the thing I called him for in the first place.
I do not know what the clean version of the next conversation looks like. I only know I have to have it without wine and without the entitled edge I showed last night. He does not owe me first place. He never did. The fact that I wanted it so badly I was willing to make a fool of myself is information about me, not about him. That is the part I have to sit with while I wait. The frustration is still there. The jealousy is still there. The knowledge that I made everything harder than it needed to be is sitting right on top of both.
Welcome home, Emma. You absolute dick.