I nodded mindlessly as he released me. “Yeah, see you for dinner.”
He pointed at me as he backtracked toward the door. “Don’t worry about cooking. I’ll bring something home. Surprise dinner?”
“You know what I like.”
He winked at me. “Oh, I sure do. Love you. See you after work!”
I waved at him as he rushed out the front door. “Love you, too.”
As I listened to him whistling as he rushed out to his pick-up truck, I thought about the moment I had first laid eyes on him. We were in high school, and when he plucked that book out of my hands in the library only to sit down in front of me and hand me his favorite one he had gotten from the shelf, I had been hooked. I mean, who would’ve thought that the captain of the lacrosse team read books!
I had been his from the moment he introduced me to ‘choose your own ending’ books.
“What happened to us?” I whispered to myself.
As I turned around and stared into our massive kitchen that rarely ever got used, I recoiled at the marble countertops. Things I had once deemed important for us to have no longer held the flair of adventure and excitement they once did. The herbs growing out of control that hung in the kitchen window made me heave a heavy sigh before I looked down at my engagement ring, and as the diamond glistened against my finger, the weight felt heavier than ever before.
What happened to us?
“Oh, sweetheart?”
I perked up and whipped back around to find my fiancée poking his head through the front door. “You forget something, handsome?”
He grinned. “I love it when you call me that. I forgot to mention: I booked our venue for next summer. Our wedding is gonna be a blast.”
I found it hard to breathe. “You—you what?”
He snorted, as if he were proud of himself. “I know you kept talking about how picking a venue was stressing you out, so I found one that you’re going to love. So, take that off your plate, all right?”
“Wait, wait, wait, wait,” I said as I rushed toward him, “you actually booked it?”
He beamed with pride. “Yeah, I actually did.”
“Wh-wh—where? Where did—did you book it?”
The smile slowly faded from his face. “What now?”
I felt another fight coming on, but I didn’t have the energy to stomach it. “Nothing. It’s just—I’d like to go look at it. You know, get a sense of where everything’s going t--.”
He wagged his finger at me. “Oh, no you don’t. I’ve known you for too long, Naomi. I know when you’re pissed. You’re actually upset with me, aren’t you?”
I sighed heavily. “I just wish you would have involved me with--.”
“Are you kidding me right now?”
“Gordon, please, I just--.”
He threw his hands into the air. “You mean to tell me that I have to listen to you bitch day in and day out about me not stepping up and me not making decisions and me not being spontaneous any longer, and then when I go and do that exact same thing—all the while solving an issue you’ve been having for damn near a year—and I’m somehow still the bad guy?”
My face melted into one of cold stone. “All I want is to be involved in your decision-making process. That’s all I’m asking here. You make plans without ever consulting me, and then it’s somehow my fault when I don’t step up to the plate last minute!”
“Well now you know how I’ve fucking felt these last few years!”
“Then why the fuck are we even engaged since you’re obviously so damn miserable!?”
“I don’t know, you tell me!” he bellowed.
I stood there, panting, in an effort to catch my breath. Did he really not understand? Did he really not get it?
