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“You can’t tell me you don’t love the life we’re living now. This feels good, Indy. We’re doing great, and I love knowing I’ve been able to give you all of this.”
Shooting him a look that I hoped told him how I really felt, I said, “I didn’t need six televisions, Travis.”
“But tell me you don’t love watching movies or your favorite shows on that eighty-five-inch television here in our bedroom or downstairs in the living room,” he said.
“Of course, it’s nice. But the spare bedrooms didn’t need huge televisions, especially when nobody is ever in them. Plus, I’d have been more than happy with something smaller. We don’t have to have the biggest and best of everything,” I reasoned.
“You deserve the best.”
This was how he always got me. He always made it about me and what he wanted to give me, what he believed I deserved.
I couldn’t allow that to continue, because I was realizing I needed something else that I wasn’t getting.
“If that’s the truth, then you’d want me to have some peace of mind,” I pointed out. “And I don’t have that right now. I’ve tried to be understanding, and I thought you’d have gotten it out of your system by now, but it’s not getting any better. I’m worried that we’ve made all of this money, and we haven’t saved a dime. There’s nothing here for a rainy day. And don’t get me started on the non-existent retirement.”
“Ah, we’re young. We’ve got plenty of time.”
We were young, but I didn’t think it was too early to start planning for a future. Sadly, if I couldn’t get him to see reason, it wasn’t even something I could manage to do on my own. Every dollar we pulled in each month went somewhere.
“Please,” I begged him. “I’m not saying this has to be forever, but I really need you to help me out here. Can we just try to pull it back for a few months, so I can set a few dollars aside? It would mean a lot for me to have that security.”
“You still have all that money you set aside when you were saving for photography classes. There’s a couple thousand there.”
“A couple thousand dollars won’t touch the expenses here for even a single month. You’ve got to rein in the spending,” I pleaded with him.
“Look, I’ve got to get going to meet up with Randy. We can talk about this later, but I think you’re making a bigger deal about this than you need to. We’re going to be fine. Everything is perfect.” Travis moved toward me and pressed a soft kiss to my cheek. “Stop worrying so much. I told you I’d take care of you.”
With that, he moved past me and toward the door to leave.
And I was left hoping things would just stay steady with the business, because I knew all the numbers. One small blip would be disastrous for us.
* * *
Six months later
It was astonishing just how fast things could change.
I couldn’t say it with absolute certainty six months ago, but there was no question about it now.
That had been the beginning of the downfall for us.
Or, I guess, the beginning of it had been three months prior when things started to level off in our business.
I tried. I tried so hard to convince Travis to listen to reason, to get on board with me and pull back on his spending.
He didn’t.
And the very next month, we saw our first dip in income since Travis had opened the dispensary.
I immediately panicked. My boyfriend didn’t think it was a big deal. He wholeheartedly believed it was just by chance it had happened.
When the next month passed, and we didn’t see just a dip but a huge drop in earnings, I knew.
Now, it had been six months since I’d begged and pleaded with him, and we were here.
“There’s nothing left,” I murmured, sitting at the table inside our too-big home we hadn’t paid the rent on for the last two months.
“We’ll sell some of the extras we have,” Travis returned, trying to find some options.
