Page 30 of Croc Food

But I shook my head. “I don’t command my wife at home. That’s bullshit, man. We’re a partnership. And I fucked up this partnership. But she’s her own person and if it means lying that she’s someone she isn’t fuck that and fuck you and fuck this job.”

“Well!” Mr. Van Buren said in a huff. “This was about to be a half a million dollar paycheck, boy, but I see I overestimated you. Perhaps you don’t have that killer instinct after all.”

But now that I had already quit my job I might as well fuck the whole thing up properly.

“I don’t like the way you run this business. Pitting us against each other. You claim to want a family-first business, but you have us working long hours, expect us to be on-call to answer your inane calls and emails all weekend long. That’s not family-first. And to you family-first just means wives should do a lot of damn work. Well, I’m done with all this bullshit.”

“Well, don’t expect to come crawling back, boy,” Mr. Van Buren said, puffing out his cheeks.

“There’s only one person in this world I will ever crawl to,” I said, with the last shreds of my dignity. “Goodbye.”

Just as I gripped my club and turned to leave, I saw a golf cart bouncing over the green hills, approaching us as a speed way too fast for the size of the Whispering Sycamores Golf Course.

CHAPTER 14

Bitsy

Now Chad had clearly implied I shouldn’t tell anyone. But it seemed to me like Mrs. Van Buren might appreciate knowing what chud behavior her husband was displaying.

I guessed I wouldn’t make a very good little housewife after all, because I went right to her house with a basket of pumpkin-cinnamon muffins and told her everything.

She had merely turned pink with rage and I couldn’t resist hopping into the golf cart and going along with her, as she muttered all the way about disobedient husbands who did not know their place.

And when we reached the Whispering Sycamores Golf Course, she blew right by the sign and onto the green.

“Framley!” she called in her lovely, musical voice, and there was a definite note of steel in it. “Framley Van Buren!”

But he was too absorbed in whatever he was saying to know what was going on. What an unpleasant little twerp.

Chad turned, just at the last minute, and if there hadn’t been a spark of amusement in his eyes, I think I would have divorced him on the spot, but luckily there was, and he was biting his lip and trying to stop smiling at what he knew was going to go down.

Now I swear to God if I’d known she’d never driven a golf cart before I wouldn’t have let her do it.

Probably.

“Ahh, hello, my darling,” Mr. Van Buren bleated, darting his eyes this way and that like the beady-eyed like menace he was.

“What have you been getting yourself into, Framley?” she barked, and stomped on the brake to stop the vehicle, but unfortunately for Mr. Van Buren it was actually the gas pedal, and with a sudden lurch she knocked him down and ran right over the top of his legs.

He howled in pain, but Mrs. Van Buren barely blinked.

“I’m sorry, I’m sure, but really you shouldn’t have been there. Very foolish place to stand.”

Glaring at his prone body, she began to lecture him very fiercely on his behavior, blistering his ass with such metaphorical power that it gave everyone listening absolutely no doubt about who wore the pants in that house.

Not only did Mrs. Van Buren wear the pants, but it appeared unlikely he was ever going to be allowed back into the house without a groveling apology.

“Ma’am, let me help you there,” Chad said politely, reaching out to help the two of us out of the golf cart, then he lifted it up so Mr. Van Buren could crawl out.

“I want you to tell these nice people you will immediately stop this misogynistic nonsense,” she was saying as Kyle, Zach, and all the other golfers stared open-mouthed.

But to my surprise, Chad only reached out his hand for me.

“Let’s go home.”

“But—your boss—” I asked. “I would’ve thought you’d be there ready with a Band-aid.”

Chad shook his head as he pulled me away.