She caught me looking through her phone

She had been texting nonstop for the past one week. Curiosity was killing me, not because of her texting, (she was always texting on her phone) but because of the look that came on her face every time she picked up her phone to text.
No, this was not her usual texting with her innumerable Whatsapp contacts and groups. No, this was not her girls she was texting.
This was a new entity, an intruder in my already crowded space. And I had a feeling that this intruder was not the curvy kind, but rather a bearded human being, a competitor. I could have asked her outright who that was, and she would have told me something, ‘this is Mike, I met him last week’.
That was her level of frankness, it was sometimes too harsh. So I only resorted to direct questions as my last resort, when everything else failed. Besides, I wanted details that I was sure she would not give me, at least not without raising too much suspicion about my exact nature of inquiry. If she wanted to tell me, she would. She was too independent minded, one had to trend quite professionally with her.
Snooping on her phone was out of the question. First, we had agreed to respect the other’s privacy and we took that agreement extremely seriously. In fact, I think our whole relationship was hinged on this privacy agreement, also reason why she felt that free to carry out her fling with me right there with her, not even concerned that I might do extreme things out of being desperate.
Extremes such as doing the undoable; taking a quick peek into her messages while she was in the shower. And for a long time, I resisted this temptation. Until I could no longer humanly do so. I mean, my mind was running wild with imagination over who it could be that was inciting such passion in my girl. I doubted I had that effect on her, and I resented whoever it was making her that mellow. So, one day while she was out hanging up the laundry, I succumbed. The thing had been blinking nonstop, messages were coming one after the other, and of all the people I knew she chatted with, I could only focus on just one; that guy (oh yes, I was now sure it was a guy. Definitely!). The phone does not even have a screen lock, and even if it did, I would have memorised it by now anyway. Quickly, I got to her texts.
Yes, there were quite a number, and I quickly scanned for anything that might look suspicious. I saw a number of guys’ names, but their texts seemed harmless. I was looking for incriminating evidence, it had to be incriminating. When a cursory look didn’t reveal anything incriminating, I considered reading the texts.

But that would not only take me ages, it would also inform her that I had been through her messages. Which would consequently mark the end of our dear relationship. With a heavy heart, full of shame and feeling like the world’s greatest embarrassment, I put her phone down, taking care to place it exactly where I had found it.

Then I rose up. I had been squatting. Half-way up, I saw her looking at me through the window. Oh yes, she had been watching me the entire time. I wonder if she had noticed the shame on my face because she shook her head, in that way that made me feel even more pathetic than I already felt.

Then she laughed. That evening, she explained everything; there was no mysterious guy, it was a stupid girls’ group planning a surprise engagement party for one of their friends. Fewer times have I felt more of an idiot than then.