WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON'T LIKE AFTER HOURS?!

"I just don't! I've never liked it. I've always found it stressy and annoying! There, I've said it."

Mark couldn't believe what Samantha his partner of five years was suddenly telling him and paused the movie on the television screen with an emphatic click of the remote control half way through the film's running time almost breaking the rubber play/pause button with his thumb.  

"What?! I'm sorry. I haven't killed anyone here. It's just a stupid movie."

Pressing down the hair on his head as if he could somehow massage his over stressed brain, Mark looked genuinely mortified by his partner's sudden confession.

"I can't believe you're only just telling me now. This means you've sat through it all those many times together and secretly been hating it, and faking laughter just so I wouldn't notice."

"I was laughing cos I was mildly hysterical. It never came up before because you never thought to ask me what I thought. You just assumed I liked it. And if it's such a favourite film of yours why are you only bringing up the subject of me not liking it tonight? You pride yourself on your unrivalled powers of perception. How has this major detail alluded you for this long?"

It took him a second or two to think of an answer to her pointed question.

"Probably because you were so convincing in your deceit! Until tonight that is, when you clearly couldn't maintain the illusion of your liking it any longer."

Stepping outside the kitchen for her one cigarette of the entire week, Mark followed Samantha out onto the garden patio.

"Go on. What was it that made you crack tonight?"

Exhaling a plume of smoke through her nostrils like a fuming dragon, it was clear this was a big deal for Samantha.

"Tonight was the straw that broke the camel's back. Watching you laughing at the stupid scenes with the nut job sculptor as if it's the first time you've ever watched it drove me close to commiting actual homicide. I was actually contemplating whether I might get off on a voluntary manslaughter charge if I could prove that by you showing me the same film over and over is some form of abuse that drove me to kill you."

Struggling to process what she was telling him, Mark felt lost for a words in a way he rarely did. Was this the choice he now faced. Either stick with Samantha, his partner of five years, or spend the rest of his life watching his favourite movie on repeat whenever he liked without complaint from a third party.

"I just wish you had been honest with me. It would have been better to tell me early on in the relationship and then we wouldn't have all this pent up angst to now deal with," he reasoned as calmly as he could with her.

Snorting in derison at his somewhat patronising comments, Samantha lit her second cigarette of the week, exceeding her strict quota of one.

"I think it's clear you love the film more than me."

"Don't be stupid! That's an awful thing to say."

But when he considered her point secretly inside his head he realised she made a valid point. He truly did love that movie. He remembered the first time watching it on a trip to New York when he was just twenty one years old.

"You still haven't denied it."

"I have!"

He really hadn't and he knew it. It would be hard to say it out loud and know he was being insincere. She had a knack of seeing through him like she was a female Clark Kent with her own X-ray specs staring right through his soul.

"Well, what do we do now?"

"We agree to never watch the film together again would be a good start and if you are going to watch it, then do it when I'm not in the house."

"These are pretty strict demands. Is that what our relationship has come to? Terms and conditions? Whatever happened to unconditional love?"

Shaking her head in disbelief at his lack of compromise, Samantha was close to screaming but managed to answer as coolly as was possible under the circumstances.

"After Hours is what happened to unconditional love."

"So it really wasn't unconditional love as you've led me to believe."

And then, unable to stand it any longer, Samantha let out a blood curdling scream, flicking the cigarette butt up into the night sky where it rotated like a tiny catherine wheel with its sparks of orange ash falling across the uncut grass of their tiny garden.

"Don't say anything. Please! Just stop!"

Mark watched as she stormed off upstairs.

Retrieving the extinguished cigarette butt, he discarded it in the recycle food bin and stared up at the moon shining down on him, like the spotlight she had just shone on him.

Ten minutes later, Samantha returned with two suitcases and left Mark with an unceremonious slam of their front door.

Bewildered by the rapid acceleration of events, Mark sat for a moment or two contemplating what had just happened between them. It genuinely disturbed him that their argument had made him realise just how deep his feelings were for the movie that brought about their current acrimony. Surely if he was a grown man he shouldn't even be hesistating about making a comparison between his love of After Hours and his love for Samantha.

Pouring himself a large glass of red wine, he felt self conscious for a moment or two, almost as if she were still in the room watching him or outside the windows peering in to see if he would succumb to his one true love.

Making sure all the downstairs curtains were drawn, he then sat back down in his favourite 'movie' chair and hit play on the remote.

It was a minute or two before he found himself returned to his happy place.

His mind was clearly made up.

Perhaps these choices weren't so difficult after all.