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Twenty
Two months before the divorce
“Ithought you’d be happy,” Jayson growled, equal parts confused and pissed off.
Making Gia happy was a target he couldn’t hit. God knew he’d tried. It made him feel like a failure when she was unhappy and lately that’d been more often than not.
“Happy?”she asked, her tone filled with accusation.
“Yes.” He glugged a few inches of champagne into her glass and then into his. “You had a problem. I fixed it.”
She threw her hands up. “Without talking to me!”
“What was there to talk about?”
She snatched the bottle from him, nearly knocking over her glass. He snatched the glass before it hit the newly installed ceramic tile, sloshing champagne onto his hand in the process.
“Unbelievable,” she grumbled, sliding the patio door aside and stomping outside.
With a sigh, he followed.
“You making a decision without me, on something as large as a vehicle parked in our shared garage does not make me happy. You should have asked my opinion.”
“All you do is complain about my truck!” He’d bought the exact Mercedes she’d cooed over when they saw it advertised the other day. “You wanted something classier. You said so yourself.”
“I didn’t mean I wanted you to go out and buy it for me!”
“Why? Because you can buy it for yourself? I am aware of the Knox family fortune you’re sitting on, Gia. You don’t have to rub my nose in it.”
She set the champagne bottle on the ground next to her and crossed her arms over her chest. “You’re never going to understand, Jay.”
He was beginning to think she was right.
“I love the car,” she said. Cryptically. “But I would rather you have included me in the decision to buy it. Stop assuming you know what I want and ask me.”
Blinded by anger, and embarrassment, he didn’t hear what she was really saying. So, of course, he continued to defend himself. “All I do is cater to what you want. It’d be nice if you appreciated it once in a while.”
“You want me to thank you for bypassing me and doing what you feel is best?”
He’d dug in then, a mistake, but he was too pissed off to change course. “That’d be a nice change of pace.”
Jayson sat next to her now on the lounge, the starry sky black above them, the water in the pool still and dark.
He hadn’t handled that night well. He hadn’t handled much well when they were married. He constantly felt insulted. Like a failure. He’d been trying to be her hero. How was a guy like him supposed to out-hero Jack and Brannon and Royce Knox, the three giants in her life?
He couldn’t.
And so, he’d attempted to prove himself over and over. But he hadn’t known what she’d wanted. Finally, he thought he knew what that was.
She wanted to be heard. To be considered.
That night’s argument wasn’t about the Mercedes. It was about her wanting to be included in the decisions and choices in their shared marriage. He saw that now. As crystal clear as the glassware they didn’t bother using.
“You’re thinking about the night you bought the car,” she said.
“Yes.”
“So am I.”
