Psycho-gal Part III

With my heart doing its Olympic run once again, I turned on the phone, and this time, it stayed on. My brain kept screaming at me. STOP! STOP! THIS IS INSANE AND SO WRONG! Unfortunately, my brain was on its own this time. The rest of my body just couldn't hear it. And so I went straight to the inbox, taking a deep breath, and expecting the worst. All messages I saw were from the same number (all calls received and made from his phone were nameless numbers, and a quick look at the address book revealed 3 names). So there was the same one I'd read before. The one before that said "I love you". Looking at the outgoing messages, his last message was "I love you too".

Unfortunately, there weren't that many messages in the first place (5 inbox, 4 outbox) and for some strange reason, I was disappointed. What was I expecting? Definitely something a lot worse. Besides, the messages were sent the month before I met him. All the same, I became suspicious; after all, he'd told me he broke up with his last girlfriend last November. Maybe it wasn't a girlfriend but a cousin. I have cousins like that, the kind who text just to say "I love you". If he didn't know they were my cousins when he read my messages, he would probably think I was cheating.

I looked at the call history again, and this time, something was different. There was a call made the day before, after all these months. I thought it strange that he used that phone to make the call, especially since he had another phone that worked perfectly fine. I filed this piece of info away. For no good reason, I memorized the number from which the text messages were sent, in case I spotted it again on his current phone. I then used the phone to dial mine and realized that it was a totally different number. Why on earth did he have two functional lines? Actually, he had two other phones that he never used, why the many phones? All of them almost new? In a different lifetime, I could easily have been a detective (or crook)...

I was sure to erase the call I made to my phone. Then ensured that the phone actually died. Then once again, went into panic mode. What was I doing exactly? Never in my life had I done anything so outrightly stupid and insane. In fact, I'd never cared much to even look at any of my ex-boyfriends' phones, even when they left me with their phones for hours. So then, why was I obsessed with Steve's? What exactly did I want? Reassurance that there really was no other girl in the picture? That was absurd. I trusted him 100%, more than I'd ever trusted any other guy. So what was the problem? Is this what love does to you?

How the hell was I gonna return his phone? It was Thursday morning and I wasn't gonna see him over the weekend coz I had family coming from out of town and would be busy. By the end of the weekend, I was pretty sure he would notice his phone was missing. I called my girl, Dee. It was confession time. I had to tell someone what I'd done, or else I would die. Over lunch at our fav Italian restaurant, I recounted the crazy story. The entire time, all she said was "Oh my God!" and "I can't believe you did that" followed by bouts of laughter expressing shock. She gave me the advice I knew she would: return the phone without being caught and don't say anything.

Steve called me later in the day, and we chitchatted for awhile, trying to avoid any mention of my little visit to his house the previous night. Since we were both at work, we did our usual "how's your day going" and hang up. Later that night, I called him to apologize for showing up at his house unannounced. He sounded so sweet over the phone. I could picture him lying on his couch, probably playing his stupid video games and half listening to what I was saying. Then I spilled the beans.

"Honey, I have your phone."

A puzzled moment of silence. I held my breath, anticipating his next question.

"What do you mean you have my phone?"

"Well, umm...last night...you see, well, last night when I was on my way out...." Then I totally freaked out and started blabbering about...well, I don't know what gibberish I was saying coz the next thing I heard was "slow down, baby, you need to take a deep breath and relax. What happened?"

With that, I had a total melt down. I have never felt so guilty in my whole entire life. When I was done telling him what I'd done (minus my trip to Sprint store to buy a charger; it's enough for him to know I took his phone but it was dead. It's already scary without saying the truly psychotic part), I held my breath. Was he gonna hang up? Yell at me? Curse me out? Break up with me right there and then?....To be Continued...