I’m not sure how long I’d been sitting there when a cop appeared and tapped on the plastic driver’s-side window. Instead of unzipping it, I opened the door and spilled out of the car. “She’s sleeping with someone else,” I cried as I stumbled into the policeman. “And I’m falling in love with her.” He collected me in his arms as I thrashed against his chest, tipsy passersby stopping to view the spectacle. I imagined that in fear, if not compassion, he dropped the charge from a DUI to underage possession. He called a cab and sent me home.

I didn’t see Kate until the following night. I took the campus bus back to the dorms after my shift, and as it approached my stop I was dreading the sight of her, knowing she’d spent the entire night having sex with someone else, while also desperately hoping that she’d be home. When I got to our room she was sitting on the couch, eating a bowl of Easy Mac. “Hey,” she said. “Where’ve you been?”

I told her about what happened after she left the bar. “I still have to pay a fine,” I said. “For the dumpster.”

Kate didn’t respond. “Did you hear me?” I asked.

She stood up and threw the bowl at my head, something I’d only seen my mother do. Was I now my passive-aggressive father? It shattered against the wall as I dodged out of the way; orange elbow noodles splattered across the wall. “You think it’s my fault!” she yelled. “Don’t you? You think it’s my fault this happened to you?”

At that moment I knew: her guilt, encouraged by my immediate surrender and lack of resistance, would eventually destroy us. At the same time, it would be my only weapon against her.

I apologized and assured her that of course it wasn’t her fault that I’d crashed into that dumpster, it was mine. I cleaned up the mess and brought her a new bowl of pasta. I made sure to get a little smudge of orange sauce on my T-shirt, so she wouldn’t forget what she’d done. We watched a movie and I held her while she dropped little kisses on my cheeks and said it made her sad to imagine me hurting. “I hate when we fight like that,” she told me.

I pulled her closer and ran my fingers through her hair. “Let’s never again.”

When she smashed another dish the following year I slit my wrist with a piece of it. Blood dripped all over the linoleum. She took me to get stitches and didn’t leave my side for a week.