Page 52 of Bad Husband

“No….”

Now I don’t feel so bad. She didn’t know either. “It’s a nuclear power plant that blew up. Killed something like 200 people.”

She’s horrified, sitting up straighter in the bed, her book falling to her lap. “And he wants to visit this place?”

“Apparently they started doing tours a few years back.”

“How is that safe?”

I point to my laptop. “Well, according to this website, you only receiveminordoses of gamma radiation.

She rolls her eyes and picks her book up again. “Oh, well if it’s minor, have a great time.”

“Are you serious?”

I receive a “Have you lost your goddamn mind?” look. “No, Ridley, I’mnotserious. You’re not taking him there.”

“Fine.” I close my laptop and set it on the nightstand. “But you tell him. I’m not breaking his heart.”

She laughs, shaking her head. “Pussy.”

I waggle my eyebrows suggestively and place my hand on her inner thigh. “I’d like to see your pussy.”

“And you’re gross.” She slaps my hand away. “Stop it.”

There’s a look on her face that tells me she’s not in the mood and I let it go because I don’t want to push her. Not after what her mother pulled today.

No matter how often I was trying to ignore what’s happening, her filing for divorce… our problems I’ve apparently ignored, I can certainly see the darkness creeping in, like smoke spreading and smothering everything in its path the way a fire could.

Take a candle burning for example, and then put a lid on it. The fire goes out pretty quickly. Without oxygen, everything dies. We need it.

Without oxygen, you’ll suffocate. Without oxygen, our communication, we were suffocating.

I’m not in the greatest mood Sunday morning. Mostly because nothing is going my way lately and my date with Madison is tonight. I’m scared. Honestly, I am. Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve taken my wife on a date and had to make it perfect?

A while.

Not only that, Callan has a soccer game they moved from yesterday to today. A Sunday. A day I’m trying to get a house at least close to the primer stage before Tuesday afternoon when the compliance inspector will be back.

I go over everything Madison said the other night about me not being around and not helping. My mind is clearly elsewhere as I move outside to the backyard where we’re installing an outdoor kitchen.

Pounding nails with a hammer into what will eventually be a pizza oven, my attention is elsewhere.

Brantley comes outside carrying a bag of nails and a caulking gun. “Hey, dude, what’s—”

And I turn my head to look at him, but it would have been smart not to. I'm sure you can guess what I did. If not, think about it.

A man driving nails into drywall turns his head and is still hammering.

Finger. Nail. Not friends.

It takes me a minute, maybe from shock and the pure white look on Brantley’s face before I understand, let alone feel what I’ve just done.

And when I do, it’s quite possibly the worst pain imaginable as far as I’m concerned. Worse than having your ball skin ripped off.

To make matters worse, I try to move my left hand that has a nail in my index finger. I’m pretty much the dumbest motherfucker alive for doing that.

The next ten minutes are full of a lot of screaming, blood and more screaming as Brantley has to take the nail out of my finger because how else was I going to have it stitched up?

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