Envenom

envenom
verb, transitive. To make poisonous, to embitter.

She didn’t say anything for a long time. He forced himself to watch her; not to be distracted by the activity all around them in the café. It had taken him a long time to get up the courage to call her, then to meet her here. This time, he wasn’t going to give up until he had an answer.

When she finally spoke, it wasn’t an answer.

“Why did you come here?” she asked, her eyes still on her coffee mug. “What do you want?”

“I want to talk to you. I want you to tell me how you feel about me and why.” He swallowed, feeling the fear stab him in the stomach again. What he most wanted to do at that instant was leap from the spindly bentwood chair and run from the café and not look back, as if she was some vengeful fury who could pursue him through the air no matter how fast he fled. “I loved you. I still love you. I think we can put our relationship back together and go on; be stronger and better than before. But we have to be honest with each other before that can happen. I’ve done my part. Now, it’s your turn.”

She lifted her mug and took a sip. Her face twisted, as if his speech had envenomed the mug’s contents. She replaced it and put her hands into her lap. Still avoiding his eyes, she stated, “I cheated on you. I’m not sorry. We can’t go back to the way things were.”

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.