Because something would happen, and it would be your fault. Even if it wasn't you directly. Even if logically someone else was more culpable. It's still your fault. Somehow. "You did this," you'd think, and on some level you knew it was wrong, but you couldn't shake the sense that it felt right.

[He rotates his wrist slowly, spinning the wine in his glass.]

It's most egregious in the case of my colleague. I've abandoned him with no warning so many times, and now I have the audacity to be upset that he's done it once to me.