750 Words words written every single day. One post a week, unedited.
If I write only crap, I’ll have to post crap.
This will end so very badly.
“They like you,” Daniel insisted, but his wife was beyond cheap words at this point. Cheap vodka, however, would do. Kennedy would throw that back and smile for the burn laced underneath.
“They like you,” she said, and it was only coherent because she’d told him so many times today already. “They like you and so of course they like me. But they don’t like me, you know?”
“Not even a little bit.”
“Well. What a surprise.”
“Are we fighting?” Daniel asked her. “Because if so, I’ve got a couple complaints. First, you’re drunk. Second, this is ridiculous. And third, you’re so fucking drunk.” He watched her carefully, waiting to see if the liquor imbibed was enough to douse this argument or fan its flames. “Besides,” he added, “I’d much rather take advantage of you in your current state in more fun ways than winning an argument. A pointless argument.”
“Not pointless! I don’t have any friends, Danny.”
So, he thought, that was a no on going into the bedroom and having sex right away. Instead they’d continue to face off across the dining table. Kennedy downing shots. Daniel pushing Advil.
“We have friends.”
“No, you have friends.”
“What about Juliet?”
“She was my friend. She’s yours now.”
“Christ’s sake, Kennedy. We’re a couple. My friends and your friends become our friends. That happens. Go back to kindergarten and learn to share a little.”
“What do I have that isn’t yours, huh? What!? What do I have that is Kennedy’s?”
“Do you hear yourself?”
“Stop looking at this as just me being ridiculous! I’m not angry because I’m drunk. Flip it around!”
He banged his head against the tabletop in pointed demonstration.
“Stop it. Just listen, ‘kay? Listen. I can’t go to Juliet with things anymore, because she’s just as much your friend as mine. So what kind of friend would I be if I put her in that position?”
Daniel lifted his head. “Well, I suppose that depends what you have to tell her. And I’m curious to know. What do you need to tell her that would put her in a ‘position’ between us? What do you have to say that would come between us?”
“That’s not the point.”
“That’s the point you just made!”
“Would you listen to me! I need someone that I can wholeheartedly trust to be there for me, Danny! Who’s on my side no matter what I’ve done.”
“Kennedy—”
“And maybe that’s selfish.”
“You—”
“I don’t really give a damn. It’s something I need, and I’m selfish enough to look after those, so—”
“HEY. KEN.”
“WHAT?”
He was going to kill this woman.
“That person your describing is supposed to be me.”
“What?”
“There for you no matter what? In good times and bad? Sickness and health? I think they kind of put that in my job description.”
“That’s not what I—”
“It’s what you should mean, and it scares me that you don’t. It scares me that I’m not giving you something.” His brow furrowed. “It worries me I didn’t even realize you were missing something.”
“I’m not trying to blame anything on you, Danny. I think this is a Kennedy thing.”
He tilted his head. “A drunk Kennedy thing?”
Yeah, maybe,” she acknowledged with a nod, a little shrug. “I just—
“I meant—”
She huffed. “I’ll call Juliet tomorrow. See if she wants to go to that new show Seventh Street is putting on.”
Daniel got up and pulled the coffee filters from the cabinet above the microwave. “Is that what this is about?” he asked, as he set to work brewing a pot of sobriety for his wife. “Would you like me to go to the play with you? You know I will. But you have to ask, Kennedy. You have to use your words.”
“Very funny,” she muttered, but she was looking out the dining room window, so very exhausted. Alcohol always left her system wrung-out.
He pushed the coffee toward her anyway. One cup before bed wouldn’t hurt, and she might thank him for it in the morning. “Take the Advil, too,” he demanded, and she stuck her tongue out at him, placed the little white pill on it. “And give me a kiss,” he added on to his list of commands, but his wife pursed her lips now.
“Give me a kiss, Ken, or we have to keep fighting.”
Kennedy swigged back the coffee black, with none of the cream or sugar she usually would have taken, and leaned over to kiss her husband.
