Page 29 of Puck, Marry, Thrill

“I bought us a house and closed on it,” Kenneth said warily, looking at her. She didn’t blame him for that careful look – that twitch on her eyelid is getting stronger.

“You bought… bought… us a house without telling me?”

“Yeah.”

“Is it one of the ones we looked at with the realtor?”

“No. It just came on the market, and I snatched it right up.”

“Without talking to me…”

“I was in a hurry.”

“You seem to be in a lot of ‘hurries’ lately,” Jamie muttered under her breath and rubbed her forehead. It would not do to suck in her breath again because the way her nostril flapped shut wildly, resembled another bodily sound that should never be associated with the face. Nose farts were not pretty nor delicate – and her nose made a farty sound because she was trying not to lose her absolute cool.

Lord, if you are testing me, I quit. Just gimme my dunce cap because I’m failing this one.

“First it was the storage, and now…a house,” Jamie repeated slowly, not looking away from the ceiling where she was glaring now. “We talked about this. We discussed that if we were going to make this work, there needed to be communication between us – because even if it was small to you, it might be big to me. We needed to talk about things that affected us as a family… remember? Partners?”

“Jamie…”

“You know when people say that they’ve ‘hit the wall,’” she began in a quiet voice, feeling tears well up. She wasn’t a crier – unless she was angry – and when she started crying, that anger went from ‘upset’ to ‘nuclear’ in record time. “My proverbial wall is really close right now, Kenneth… and it might be stucco.”

She felt tears coming.

Kenneth stood there, nearby, and she got a glimpse of him rubbing his face almost in a nervous fashion— which meant there was more. Oh, she was getting sooo good at reading him and Zachary.

“What?”

“You have to meet the coach tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“I got you a job.”

*crack*

Something broke within her as she closed her eyes, face still turned upward to the ceiling, and she didn’t care if her nose made a farting sound or not. It was almost cartoonish the way she sucked in her breath – and her lungs were at capacity before it whooshed out of her.

“You got me… a job,” she repeated, almost like ‘I’m giving you a chance to change what you said so you don’t get injured’ warning. It might as well have been an alarm blaring.

“Yeah,” Kenneth began warily, watching her, and then moved slowly around her to shut the bedroom door, shouting quickly. “Zachary, watch cartoons. We’ll be out in a few.”

“A job…”

“Yeah, Jamie,” Kenneth began again carefully, looking like he knew just how far he’d pushed right now and was bracing himself. “They asked for someone to handle social media posts, someone outgoing, full of energy, and lively… and I thought of you.”

Okay – that was about the sweetest ‘I volunteered you’ that someone could ever have done, but it didn’t change things. He was continuing to do stuff for all of them without consulting her.

“You know I live here, and we’re married, right?”

“Yes.”

“And you know I’m an adult, capable of making choices… right?”

“Yessss…”

“And we speak the same language, right?”

---