Seven times out of ten whoever pulled in the driveway at the top of the hill hit the curb.
Fisk’s right front tire hit the curb.
Julia winced. They had lived in the house twenty years this month, she had heard the noise thousands of times, run over the curb herself at least a thousand.
Fisk’s cousin’s cement company screwed up the angle on the driveway and they never fixed it.
Twenty years.
It wasn’t the noise of tire meeting cement.
It wasn’t the only problem they hadn’t fixed in twenty years.
Julia winced simply because the noise signaled Fisk was home.
Her serenity, her solitude, her peace was over for the evening.
Maybe it was time…
Fisk slid his laptop case onto the breakfast table.
Pushed so hard it almost slid off the other end.
You said you were gonna work on things, Fisk, Julia said to herself silently, because silently was by far the best option.
Fisk wasn’t violent. Just loud, temperamental, adamant he was always right, selfish.
Those qualities were some of the reasons that they were well to do, and Julia knew that. Hated that she accepted it in the ways that she did.
“I missed a golden opportunity today.”
Not bringing work home is one of the things you told the therapist you’d work on, Fisk, Julia said to herself in the same practiced silence.
“Right…”
Fisk popped a gold cufflink and put it in the breast pocket of his white dress shirt.
“In…”
He popped the other cufflink and tossed it in the air.
“Front…”
Fisk caught the cufflink and put it in the pocket with the other. Sweat stains showed around his armpits. If he had BO, his heavy cologne was masking it.
“Of my stupid face.”
Julia sucked in a quick breath. The pejorative was new. Fisk didn’t beat himself up, Fisk logic danced around his shortcomings, so much so sometimes Julia wished she could hand him maracas.
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