Page 127 of Family Bonds: Coy & Angel

She laughed. “See, you know that without even seeing me.”

“Is it Coy?”

“Right on the first try.”

“Let it all out,” her mother said. “You’ll feel better.”

“I doubt it,” she said. “But here goes. He’s babying me. I mean worse than Dad and Spencer ever did. He knows how much I hate it and he’s doing it.”

“He’s worried,” her mother said.

“Mom,” she said. “He doesn’t let me doanything. He pays for everything.”

“Don’t go there again, Angel. You know that isn’t going to change and you have to accept it. Most women would love that situation. That they can use their salary for whatever they want.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m not like most women. But fine, I won’t say that again. He cooks more than me and we had this conversation already. I get it, he likes things a certain way.”

“Did you tell him what I told you about showing you how he likes them?” her mother asked.

“I did. He did show me how he liked his scrubs folded and I do that now. I even picked on him that it wasn’t so hard to do and he agreed. But now I can’t carry a grocery bag in. Tonight, he grabbed my laptop before I could get it and then went to take our pizza out of my hands. I told him I was going to dump it on him if he did it again.”

“He’s trying to be helpful,” her mother said.

“Mom. I don’t need you defending him. He’s treating me like a doll. A porcelain one at that. If that isn’t bad enough, Abby found out I was pregnant and went around telling everyone in the office before even asking if it was true.”

She told her mother how it all went down this morning.

“You two kept it quiet longer than I thought you would.”

“That’s not the point,” she said. “As if it wasn’t bad enough that she did that, everyone could easily figure out the timing.”

“A moot point, Angel, let it go.”

“I’m trying to. But what I thought was going to happen did. I saw Coy listening to Abby talking to Emma and gossiping about how we had to get married and wondered whose idea it was. He wanted to march in and take care of it and I told him not to. That it would only fuel things more.”

“I agree with you,” her mother said. “But I also think he should have said something to her a long time ago.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “Because after I told him not to do it, he did it anyway by the end of the day. He thinks I don’t know, but everything gets back to me.”

“It’s his practice,” her mother said.

“I know. I get that. But the least he could have done was wait a few days. Or maybe tell her when he caught her doing it about another person. But to tell her to keep her attention on her job and out of others’ lives on the day that I was the topic of her remarks makes it seem as if I can’t handle it on my own.”

“You’ve got a good point. Would you have said anything?”

“That’s the thing,” she said, throwing her arms around. She was pacing in the room now. “I was going to say something, but I wanted to work it out in my head. He didn’t even ask me or talk to me about it. Just decided he was going to be the man and deal with it.”

“Not the perfect man you thought he was going to be for years, is he?”

“No,” she said, sitting in a chair by the glass doors.

“But do you love him?”

“Of course I do,” she said. “I’m still allowed to be pissed off at him though.”

“You are,” her mother said. “This is only the beginning. You haven’t even had your son yet and can start to figure out discipline and schedules.”

“Urgh! I just can’t. I want to get through the rest of this pregnancy without feeling like he’s afraid I’m going to break. Mom, I’m already scared and he’s not making it any better.”

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