6Panic Prone
It Ends
Bennett
Four months later, things were at their worst. Nolan was disconnected and nearly mute. Scarlet, our beautiful little buffer, was in kindergarten, leaving Nolan and I to simmer in one another's presence when we encountered one another during the day. Scarlet slept beside me in the bed at night, while Nolan slept on the sofa. Nolan stopped cleaning up after himself, he stopped opening the shop on time, and he even stopped taking Scarlet to the park every Saturday. It was like he'd become a zombie. I couldn't incite him to anger, I couldn't draw him into bed, and I couldn't make him laugh. He was gone far before he left.
Nolan
I crushed the beer can and added it to the pile by my feet. The room warped as I attempted to move toward the exit, and I stopped to lean against the wall. Lori Hall's silver Honda was propped in the air, it's underbelly exposed to my searching, drunken eyes. There was nothing wrong with the vehicle. Nothing at all. What a waste of fucking time.
But my life had become a waste of time. I reached into the second drawer of my tool chest and unfolded the crumpled, grease-stained sheet of paper. It was my acceptance letter to one of the best law schools in the country, the one my father graduated from. If I went to law school, graduated, and became a lawyer, I would become the primary breadwinner for the family. Bennett could stay home with Scarlet, be my bitch instead of the other way around. I imagined him with an apron around his waist and a plate of cookies in his hands and laughed a drunken laugh.
It's worth a shot, I thought, and waited to sober up a little before climbing the connecting staircase to the apartment. Bennett was undressed, rubbing lotion over his arms and chest. A surge of lust grabbed me, and only the task at hand stopped me from ending our little freeze-out and fucking him silly. Wordlessly, I tossed the acceptance letter to the bed beside him.
"What's this?" he asked, brow raised. "It's filthy."
"Just fucking read," I muttered.
His eyes flew across the page. "When did you get this?"
"Before that day in the parking lot, when we got back together. I got the letter that morning, and decided to go after you instead."
His face turned to cool steel. "So what are you saying? You want to change your mind now?"
"No!" Fuck, I thought, I should've known he'd misunderstand. "I want to go to law school so that I can be a better provider for the family."
I could tell that he was gathering the reserves of his patience, taking deep breaths, and planning his next words. It pissed me off, for some reason. "Anyway, it's not your fucking decision. I'm going and that's that."
"Oh, that's that?" He stood, shrugging into a robe, hiding his naked self from me forever. "So am I expected to stay here with Scarlet while you go live in a dorm? What about the shop, Nolan? It's a source of revenue for us. We'd have to move to a cheaper apartment, sell the car!"
"I wouldn't live in a dorm! I'd live here. And who cares if we have to downgrade for a few years? Once I finish, we'll be rich."
"A few years? More like close to a decade. Law school takes a minimum of 4 years, right? Then you have to pass the exam to get your lawyering powers and be an unpaid intern somewhere for a few years, and then maybe get a job at a shitty firm down the street. It isn't a 'get rich quick' type of thing."
"You don't think I haven't thought of that? I'd finish in 4 years and go work for my dad."
"Oh, that just sounds like your dream job," he scoffed, turning away from me to pull down the blanket on the bed.
"So what if it is!?"
"You NEVER wanted to be a lawyer! You hated the idea!"
"Yeah, well, things change, Bennett!"
"What changed?" His eyes on me were grabbing for the truth. I felt it leaving my lips before I could stop it.
"I'm sick of being your fucking wife!"
The recoil in his eyes resounded in my chest. He was offended - no, beyond offended, and I could understand why. But the truth was out there. I couldn't seem to get past it; what if I never got past it?
"You don't like that I make more money."
It was a statement, yet I said, "Yes."
"You're not going to let this law school thing go, are you?"
A sigh. "No, I'm afraid not."
Bennett's jaw clenched. "OK."
Simple as that, he ended the conversation, crawled into bed, and slept. Within the month, we filed for divorce and I moved into the dorm my father and his father stayed in.
Micah
"I'll see you next week Mr. Sherman. I think we've made some headway today." I shook the hand of my oldest client, a balding middle-aged man with an unfortunate phobia of balloons. It took half an hour for me pluck the shards of popped balloon rubber from the shag carpet in my office. I was on my hands and knees, doing just that, when Bennett arrived.
"I see you're running this place now," he commented, leaning in the doorway and grinning slyly. Startled, my gaze shot up from the balloon-littered carpet.
"Bennett." My surprise eliminated any trace of humor from my disposition, and I groped madly for some comical phrase to convince Bennett that I wasn't in love with him again.
"Nolan and I split up," he said, interrupting my mental practice of a monologue about slave driving my secretary, Georgina.
"Woah." I sat my butt on the floor. "When did this happen?"
"Today." Bennett waved a stack of papers in the air, poorly concealed heartbreak in his eyes. "I'm a free man as of three hours ago. I figured we could celebrate."
"Sure," I muttered, thinking how very dangerous the situation had become. "How about a few beers at the bar down the street?"
Think about it this way. Would YOU be satisfied watching the kid all day and running a little mechanic shop for the rest of your life, especially if you're from a long line of successful lawyers?
No, probably not. Our boys should've anticipated this inevitability and made allowances for it BEFORE it ruined the relationship. We'll see if Nolan and Bennett truly are finished, what Bennett's prospects are, and how Micah will protect himself from becoming a hopeless rebound.