I put on a pair of cheetah-print pajama shorts and called my boyfriend on FaceTime. I’d found them while going through a bag where they’d been put away. I don’t wear them often, so showing him felt like a small, ordinary thing to do. He smiled when he saw them and asked where they came from.
I told him I’d had them for a while. Then I said I’d shown them to him before. I was sure I had.
He stopped smiling and stared at me. Then his camera went off. He kept saying versions of “Oh, no” and “Absolutely not,” while I tried to get him to explain what had happened. Finally, he cut in and told me he’d never seen those shorts before.
We’re both 18. We’ve been together for a month and a half, but we’ve known each other for a little over a year and talked for three months in 2025. There are earlier calls for me to remember. When I said he’d seen the shorts, I meant it.
He heard something else: that I’d shown another guy and confused the two of them. Suddenly, I was being accused of cheating, and I couldn’t work out how to prove that a memory belonged to the person I thought it did. I kept telling him I hadn’t been talking to anyone else while we were talking or together.
I understand how my comment could sound suspicious to him. That’s part of why I’m so panicked. I can see the misunderstanding without having anything new to say that will clear it up. Even if I’m mistaken about showing him, that doesn’t mean there was another guy.
Then he started saying he’d known it, that other things were adding up. I don’t know what things he means. I’m still trying to explain the shorts, and he seems to be connecting them to a whole story I haven’t heard.
This is happening while I’m trying to put it into words. I haven’t cheated. I thought I remembered a FaceTime call. Now I’m scared that saying so might cost me my relationship, and I don’t know what else I can say that he’ll believe.
