14. Bitsy
Bitsy
Now Chad had clearly implied I shouldn’t tell anyone. But it seemed to me like Mrs. Van Buren might appreciate knowing what chud behavior her husband was displaying.
I guessed I wouldn’t make a very good little housewife after all, because I went right to her house with a basket of pumpkin-cinnamon muffins and told her everything.
She had merely turned pink with rage and I couldn’t resist hopping into the golf cart and going along with her, as she muttered all the way about disobedient husbands who did not know their place.
And when we reached the Whispering Sycamores Golf Course, she blew right by the sign and onto the green.
“Framley!” she called in her lovely, musical voice, and there was a definite note of steel in it. “Framley Van Buren!”
But he was too absorbed in whatever he was saying to know what was going on. What an unpleasant little twerp.
Chad turned, just at the last minute, and if there hadn’t been a spark of amusement in his eyes, I think I would have divorced him on the spot, but luckily there was, and he was biting his lip and trying to stop smiling at what he knew was going to go down.
Now I swear to God if I’d known she’d never driven a golf cart before I wouldn’t have let her do it.
Probably.
“Ahh, hello, my darling,” Mr. Van Buren bleated, darting his eyes this way and that like the beady-eyed like menace he was.
“What have you been getting yourself into, Framley?” she barked, and stomped on the brake to stop the vehicle, but unfortunately for Mr. Van Buren it was actually the gas pedal, and with a sudden lurch she knocked him down and ran right over the top of his legs.
He howled in pain, but Mrs. Van Buren barely blinked.
“I’m sorry, I’m sure, but really you shouldn’t have been there. Very foolish place to stand.”
Glaring at his prone body, she began to lecture him very fiercely on his behavior, blistering his ass with such metaphorical power that it gave everyone listening absolutely no doubt about who wore the pants in that house.
Not only did Mrs. Van Buren wear the pants, but it appeared unlikely he was ever going to be allowed back into the house without a groveling apology.
“Ma’am, let me help you there,” Chad said politely, reaching out to help the two of us out of the golf cart, then he lifted it up so Mr. Van Buren could crawl out.
“I want you to tell these nice people you will immediately stop this misogynistic nonsense,” she was saying as Kyle, Zach, and all the other golfers stared open-mouthed.
But to my surprise, Chad only reached out his hand for me.
“Let’s go home.”
“But—your boss—” I asked. “I would’ve thought you’d be there ready with a Band-aid.”
Chad shook his head as he pulled me away.
“Nope. I quit. Sick of that place. It’s not for me.”
“You quit? What happened?” I asked. “I thought you’d just gotten that big promotion you’ve been working toward.”
He shrugged.
“That’s not the kind of man I want to be anymore. I should have realized that a long time ago. Before I fucked up the most important thing in my life.”
I squeezed his hand, and for the first time in a few weeks I knew we were going to make it through this.
“Did you really mean what you said? When you were defending me?”
“Of course I did! You’re the most important person in the world to me.
I’m really sorry I made you think otherwise.
I really fucked up by talking about you like that.
I love everything about you and I was an idiot to ever say what I did.
If the price of climbing the corporate ladder is being boring as hell and having to pretend like my wife is my servant, I don’t want it. ”