Midnight Picnic

The Fireman’s jealousy after The Foursome That Wasn’t was, quite frankly, off the charts… and in turn, that ramped up mine, too. To say that our relationship had been ruined completely would be an understatement. We were horrible to each other after that. Truly awful. On/off would also be an understatement.

Soundtrack: My Immortal by Evanescence. 

Fireman had started to go out drinking without me. Deliberately. And he’d tell me, plainly, that he didn’t want me to be there. He had more fun without me.

What did I do? I stayed at home and waited for him. I did housework, got our work clothes ready, did the dishes… like the good little wifey that I so desperately wanted to be for him. More than that, though, I felt like I owed him that. Hadn’t I already cheated? Hadn’t I already been bad and horrible to him? Wasn’t it right that I made things up to him?

He’d come home late every single time. It wasn’t long before, once again, rumours started to fly. There was one girl – one blonde haired, blue eyed, skinny girl, just like me – that he’d apparently spend most of his nights with. Asking him about it just made him angry, so I never really got an answer as to whether or not he’d actually cheated. I didn’t think he was capable of it, but he’d started to do a lot of things that I didn’t think he was capable of. One time, he shoved me in the kitchen, right as his mother walked through the door. She, thankfully, gave him the bollocking that he so rightly deserved, but still, The Fireman was being very, very un-The-Fireman like. He was a completely different person now.

Had I done that to him?!

I didn’t know it then, but it was the beginning of the long, argumentative, and nasty end.

Silly little me, though? I was convinced that we could be saved. So, I invited The Fireman on a midnight picnic, packed with all of his favourite snacks, with the intention of straightening everything out.

At 11:30, on the dot, I left my house, armed with a rucksack full of picnic stuff, and headed for our favourite park – one that we had gotten drunk in, fucked in, and argued in, more than once.

I had everything placed perfectly within ten minutes of being there: the snacks, the bottles of Smirnoff Ice, the picnic blanket on the daisy-covered grass. The Fireman was late. He was never late. It was a deliberate act of rebellion, but once again, I didn’t realise that.

Eventually, at eighteen minutes past midnight, he arrived. “What do you want to talk about, then?”

“Do you have somewhere else to be?” I asked. “Because it’s okay if you do. You can go and do that instead.”

So patient, so naïve, so fucking stupid.

“I’m here now,” he said, sitting down on the blanket. “Let’s just get on with things.”

My feelings were hurt already. He was so impatient, so eager to get things over and done with already. I was no longer convinced that we could work things out, but I joined him on the picnic blanket and told him all the things I had to say anyway.

I don’t want another man. I just want him. No, I haven’t cheated since that time with Goth Boy. No, I haven’t snogged anyone else. No, I don’t want us to break up. Yes, I do think that there’s a chance for us.

Fireman shook his head. “I don’t think there’s a chance for us.”

“You’re lying to me.”

“I’m not lying.” He reached across the picnic blanket for my hand. “I really think we should break up for good this time. You’ve got the Navy thing coming up… I’m not sure I want to deal with all of that.”

Fuck. He’d said the thing. The big thing. The elephant in the room. We’d made our respective stances clear before I’d even walked into the sign-up office: the slightest whiff of I-can’t-do-this, and we call it quits. We didn’t want to ruin each other’s careers like that.

So, we finished the picnic and went our respective ways, but I couldn’t help but think that he was just trying to make a statement, or make me feel bad for a little longer. I didn’t believe that he truly meant that. He couldn’t. Surely?

Less than a week later, I found myself at his front door, an empty bag thrown over my shoulder to collect all of my belongings.

If he was making a statement, he was doing it in a very big way.

The next blog post in the dating timeline is this one: Number 8: Sailor Boy.