His gaze burns through me with all his anger.
How does he flip from guilt to anger in the matter of seconds?
“Why are you avoiding my question?” he asks, shaking his head. “What are you hiding?”
My eyes narrow and I step closer to him. “What are you hiding? Accusing me of sleeping with someone else?” Heat surges through my body. I’m not sure if it’s from my anger or the heat of the shower swirling around us. Or both. “What were you doing in such an intimate place? Huh? Were you meeting someone there?”
“I was trying to do something nice for you and buy you a coffee after work.”
My face softens remembering the coffee he threw out before he walked out the door of the café. And now my mind is all over the place.
This took a completely different turn. Now I’m sitting here accusing him of cheating.
The tension still lingers between us. “You have a bad way of showing it,” I say under my breath.
“Showing what?” he yells.
“That you were doing something nice for me.”
His mouth drops. “I was buying you a coffee. How is that not nice?”
I force myself to swallow the knot in my throat, despite the fact that this is not how I had hoped the talk would go. My rage is increasing, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem tocalm down. I’ve tolerated his stress from work, hoping it would pass. But now my anger is all built up, with the resentment from the previous weeks reaching a boiling point. I’m exhausted from carrying this weight, and I can’t take it anymore.
“You can’t do something nice for me and then accuse me of cheating. That throws the nice thing out.” I say with air quotation marks.
He shakes his head. “I can’t believe you.”
I scoff. “What? You can’t believe me?” I say, pointing to myself. “I haven’t done anything. I had coffee with one of my best friends. You’re the one that’s been rude and having all these outbursts on me.”
“I know this,” he says sternly. “Why do you think I was trying to do something nice for you?” He turns his back toward me and shuts the shower off.
Beads of sweat are dripping from my hairline. I’m so angry, I don’t even know what to say anymore. My mind is blank from everything that happened from the time we were at the coffee shop to now.
“Fuck this. I’m going to bed,” he says and storms off.
I take a big breath, my chest rising and falling so hard I can’t catch a good breath. I sit down on my vanity chair, trying to calm down. What the hell is going on with us? I rest my hands on my knees, bending forward. The burning behind my eyes is making it hard to hold in my tears. It feels like my marriage took a turn for the worse. Something shifted between us, and I don’t know what it is. I’ve tried to understand him and be patient. But my patience is running thin when all he does is tell me half-assed excuse after excuse and now this. Accusing me of cheating on him with Ez.
I stand up and look at myself in the mirror, wiping away my tears, not even recognizing the person I was just now. This isn’tlike me. I hate heated arguments. I’ve always done my best to not yell like that. But right now, it got the best of me.
“Hey girl!” Cat says as she sits me down in her chair. She pumps the hydraulics on the chair, raising me up higher.
“Hey.” I say, almost mono-toned, exhausted from last night.
She narrows her gaze at me as she throws the cape around me. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m just tired,” I say with a slight smile.
She grabs a brush and gently brushes through my hair. The soft bristles glide over my scalp, causing goosebumps to run over my body. The brushing soothes some of the anxiousness I’ve had all night and morning. I wasn’t able to fall asleep last night. Who would after that argument?
Oh, right—Zayn.
He never came to bed, so I peeked downstairs as he, once again, slept like a baby on the couch. While I tossed and turned all night.
“So, are we only doing a move up for you?” she asks, still brushing my hair.
I nod. I’ve been getting beaded hair extensions in for a while now. But the cost of it all is something I’ve been wanting to cutback on. I’m so used to the fullness and length the extensions have been giving me that I haven’t been able to make the cut.
“So how have you been?” she asks, sectioning off my hair.
