Page 132 of Fire for Effect

“I can’t do this!” I said, feeling the anxiety grip me by the throat.

My heart beat out of my chest, my eyes watered, and I sank to the ground.

“I can’t do this.” I pulled my hair from all the bobby pins, and they skittered around the floor.

“Oh shit,” Daria said, rolling her eyes as she pulled out a phone.

“I can’t,” I said, my heart breaking. “I can’t do this to him. I can’t ruin his life.”

I looked at my hands, at the ring, at the bracelet.

Snap it.

I placed a finger under my bracelet and tried to break it off. I really did. But there was no strength in me.

I had spent it all in the last week, in complete and total denial. I had gone through the motions. We had made love, moved the trailer to DC, and put my sparse belongings into his condo.

I had a bag in Top and Charlotte’s guesthouse, agreeing that when he was gone, I’d surround myself with people. He kept whining about how he didn’t want me alone for too long. He needed me to have people around at all times, to keep him sane.

But what was I going to do? Just be his housewife, moving from one residence to another, and moving my schedule around to suit him, and support him? Like I was an extra appendage to his life? An anchor? Because that’s what I would be.

He’d never become president with me. He’d never become much more than what he was.

I would drag him down to my level, and he’d hate me.

“I can’t do this!” I said, as my head pounded with rage. The panic growing and growing like a wave before it crashed onto the shore.

I had to get out of here. I had to leave. I had to run.

Then something hit my head. It was soft and flopped onto the ground.

Then another one. And another. And another.

“What the hell?” I said, looking up as another sock was tossed at my head. “Veder?”

Veder was in a button-down shirt. He’d shaved for the wedding but was still wearing jeans.

He waved the floppy bits of cloth in his hand.

“I got a dozen pairs of these,” he said, holding up a handful of fuzzy socks. “Goose has one too. So does Top, Charlotte.”

Daria leaned her forearm on the door frame, waving her own stack of socks.

“Look, I made them into bouquets!” she said, holding her bundle up, and it was, indeed, woven into a ball on a stick, each sock twisted into a fake flower bud.

“Yeah, you see,” Veder said, theatrically putting his finger to his chin, “The day Griff stormed into the barn, and got all pissy… By the way, you still owe me two hundred bucks for that one… I told him that he couldn’t cure your cold feet by smothering you.”

Veder chuckled, unspooling another sock from his “bouquet”.

“And you know what he said?” Veder’s sea green eyes glinted at me in amusement. “He said he’d get you socks.”

He’d told me the same thing.

I looked down at the enormous, fleece and wool socks on the floor in front of me.

“How you feeling, now?” Veder said, putting down his bouquet on the vanity beside him. “Don’t answer too fast. Really check in with yourself. What’s eating at you?”

“I’m not good enough for him. I’m still… I’m doing nothing but waiting around for a husband to come home, and… and…”

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