It’s all I have to say.
Get the fuck out of my house.
Then she’ll leave, and I still won’t have a goddamn phone and I still won’t have food and I still won’t have the ability to get around my house on my own.
Even if I take over her bedroom, I have to get up and down the steps.
And then I’ll have put a pregnant woman in the awful position of having to find a new place to live if she doesn’t want to move in with her parents.
I’m the asshole.
I am completely the asshole here.
I scowl less viciously at her.
“I was going to apologize for yelling at you last night,” she says, “but I don’t think either one of us is ready for that this morning.”
Dammit.
She’s extending an olive branch.
Or maybe just a leaf off the olive branch.
Where the fuck did that saying even come from? And why do I care that I don’t like that she’s being the bigger person? “Give me your phone.”
The crankier I get, the less wary she gets.
Maybe she doesn’t like to apologize any more than I do, and she’s glad she doesn’t have to because I don’t deserve it.
“Men on crutches shouldn’t make demands of women they’ve seen take down two-legged men with nothing but bodily fluids. Pro tip: you’ll get a lot farther if you say things likegood morning, Ziggy. Sorry to startle you last night. Could I please borrow your phone?”
There’s a scratch at the back door.
Ziggy opens it, and Jessica trots back in.
The dog spots me and matches my energy, growling while she bares her teeth and paws the ground.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Ziggy says to her. “He seems like he’s in the kind of mood where he’d smack you with one of his crutches. Thatwouldbe a faster way of getting to go with me whenever I leave, but it would hurt, and that would make me sad.”
“I’m not going to fucking beat her with my crutch.”
The mashed potatoes explode one last time as the microwave beeps and turns off.
Ziggy looks at the microwave.
Then at me.
Then she heaves a sigh that I feel in the pit of my gut. “Do you have pain medication you’re supposed to take?”
“Yes.”
“Have you taken it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Food.”
