worth the wait

I stared at my watch. She was already an hour late and I was sitting in a fancy restaurant like an idiot who'd been ditched by his date. I hadnt even orderd in the hopes that she would come eventually. She was always running late, because she ran a big-ass billionaire company. 

As the time passed by, I got madder and madder.

After the waiter asked me the third time if I was expecting somebody, I snapped and got up. It was always like this, I would take time out of my job to meet her and she would just simply be late or cancel at the last minute. 

I stormed out of the restaurant and drove home. 

Emily didn't even come home for an hour. I imagined her sitting at the table, maybe for a change waiting for me. I mean, we were married. You can't just ditch your husband everyday for work, can you?

When the bell rung, I almost ran to the door. I opened the door already working on my 'I am pissed' expression.

Emily gave me a faint smile as she came in and prised her shoes off. 

"You wouldn't believe what happened at work today." She sighed as she threw herself on the couch.

Something in me melted as soon as I saw her face. It was a hard face to get mad at. When she smiles, I usually forget about most of my problems, and oh, those lips. They taste like cherries and her lipstick.

I waited but she didn't say anything about the date. She just went on and on about some spectacular thing that she did at work and how it improved the situation greatly. How she was so tired of working on that little issue the whole day. She concluded all of that by saying that she wanted to just get to bed and sleep. 

I clenched my jaw. She didn't say one word about how I was waiting for her for two freaking hours. This time even her face wasn't enough to calm me down. 

"You don't even remember, do you?" I asked, keeping my voice down.

"What?" she asked, pushing her long brown hair back. 

"You're telling me that you seriously don't remember the fact that your husband was sitting at a restaurant for two full hours waiting for you, at a place that you two decided to meet at two weeks ago!" My voice rose with every word and I got angrier than I already was, which was amazing, considering that I almost never got angry and lose control.

 She slapped her forehead."Shit! I completely forgot. I got caught up in work." 

"I am so sick and tired of you not showing up when you're supposed to."

" Okay. I said I'm sorry. Jeez." she said and got up like it was no big deal. Maybe for her it wasn't. She wasn't the one who was sitting at a restaurant like a loser. 

"You said you're sorry? Gee, that makes me feel so much better." I was so angry at her, I almost spat out the words.

"What else can I do? Go back in time and fix it? And I didn't even do anything that was so bad. I was working and something important came up so it got out of my mind. As my husband you shoudl understand that. If I wouldn't have fixed that problem. it would've cost me millions of dollars. James, you know how hard bussiness is. There is no reason to shout."

I scoffed. "No reason? Are you insane?"

"Okay, now you're just getting mean."

"Could you be more self absorbed? You know Emily other people have feelings too."

She got up. The most infuriating part about this was that she looked like she didnt even care. Her expression was just plain bored. "Can we do this later, sweetie I am really tired. I really want to sleep."

I ran my hand through my hair. "No, Emily. You see I'm not made of rock like you!"

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me. You think you are the only one who has to work? I run a law firm and I have to run it too. But if I have promised that I will do something or show up, I do! And remind whn you've had to wait at a restaurant looking like some looser whose date stood them up and they are so pathetic that they are still waiting for her. Do you know how embarrasing it was when i kept telling teh waiter that my wife was going to show up and I had to leave without you. The waiter was looking at me with pity. And later? Are you kidding me? Whenever we go out you are always late, or you cancel but not even caring about it enough to remember it, that's low even for you." 

"What's that supposed to mean? Would you stop being such a jerk, it wasnt a big deal. I was working! And you've canceled sometimes, Do you see me complaining like a teenage girl?"

"I- that was one time because the client was offering the firm five hundred thousand bucks, and you are so full of yourself." 

Now we were just shouting at each other. Screaming and cursing at each other and I wasn't stopping. 

You know that feeling when you are angry at someone about something so you go ahead and say stuff that you dont mean in thh heat of the moment and you later realise that those words hit like bullets and there is guilt coursing through your veins. That was exactly what the situation was. We ranted on and on about how we were sick of each other.

"SCREW YOU!" Emily screamed as I scoffed. 

"Really, cause you haven't found the time out of your stupid job to do that in five months."

"You are unbelievable.”

“I am so sick and tired of you waltzing in any time you want anywhere and not even being aware of the fact that the other person feels bad about it.”

“yeah? If you are so sick of me why don’t you just leave me?” Her voice broke.

“Yeah? Well, you know what? I need a break.”

“From what?”

“From you. I can’t- I can’t do this right now.” 

I raised my hands and pushed past that broken look on her face and grabbed a duffel bag, keeping some of my bare necessities I headed out. When I returned to the living room, Emily stood at the door with her arms crossed. “Don't forget your car.”

This was such a bad decision. Even I knew it. But then again I did it because I needed to get out and again, the heat of the moment.

I pulled the car out of the driveway and saw her slam the door in the mirror. I almost turned back to kiss her, but she needed to man up and apologise. I wasn’t going to do it every time we had a fight.

***

I entered the house and stood like a statue. Anger and grief pulsed through me whole body. Who the hell did he think he was? I was working and it wasn’t like I purposely ditched him or something. If he thought that I was going to apologise he was mistaken. 

I would’ve apologised if he hadn’t acted like an asshat. 

I headed off to bed but the sleep that was flooding through me an hour ago seemed to have dissipated and I was wide awake. 

With nothing better to do , I pulled out my laptop and checked reports but my mind wandered every few minutes and in the fear of making the tiniest mistake while I was distracted I shut it down. 

I tried to do something to distract myself from everything but when everything failed, I called Jenny, James’s sister. I want sure if she would pick up at two in the morning but she did. After cursing me for waking her up she asked me why I called in the dead of the night.

“ I think I really, really pissed your brother off, but it was kind of his fault.”

Jenny scoffed. “James doesn’t get pissed off easily, believe me. The guy has the temper of a priest or something. Did you maybe consider the fact that you did something to trigger him? Knowing you it’s very hard for you to admit that you’re wrong in any situation.”

That was exactly the thing that I didn’t want to hear, so I hung up and debated on whether to call my brother’s therapist girlfriend. I had jsyt met her a few months ago but she was an easy person to like. The only problem when I talked to her was she seemed to have the solution to almost anything nd everything that was going wrong and it was impossible to hide something from her. But there was nobody that I could call in the middle of the night who would pick up except her and Jenny and a few other people, so I called her.

Her face swam into view as she picked up. Her hair was all messed up and Eric’s arm was wrapped around her. She pushed his arm away and exited their room. 

“Is everything all right, Emily?” She said yawning. 

“Yes. I just couldn’t sleep.” I lied.

“Why do you even try? Come on, what’s bothering you?” Amy smiled.

I tried to wave her off but she just kept poking and priding until I told her everything.

“And god! I am so angry at him! He just, screamed at me and went out of the house. I am not going to apologise for something that wasn’t even my fault.” I ranted.

“Well, I agree with you. But keeping that aside, what does he normally do when you are late from work.”

“He..um..slips my shoes off and carried me to the room if my feet are hurting and, and he even rubs them for me sometimes. And he is really nice to asshole people at parties even though he doesn’t want to be just so I can seal a deal with them and this is the first time that he hasn’t apologised to me within an hour of a fight. And oh my god I am a terrible person. I have been cancelling on him for so long.”

Amy shifted in her seat. “Come on, can’t be that bad.”

I gave her a look. “We haven’t done it in five months.”

That was probably the first time that I had seen her look shocked. “Five months? And you guys live together? When Eric returned from a two-week long business trip we— you don’t wanna know what we did. But five months? You need to go and apologise like right now.”

I reluctantly agreed. It was still hard for me to admit that I was wrong. I have what people call a big ego. Prepping myself up I tracked his phone and took the car to the nearby hotel. I was surprised that he went there, because he hated that place, which meant that he must have been really, really mad. 

I asked the front desk manager where his room was, which he didn’t give at first, but then I told him who I was and he escorted me to the room. 

The perks of being rich.

I knocked on the door, biting my lip. 

He came to the door, eyebrows raised, hair dishevelled.

“Can I come in?” I asked.

He shifted to let me in and I sat on the bed still torturing myself.

“I came to … apologise.” I forced the words out of my mouth, as they left the bitter after taste of explaining myself. “I shouldn’t have forgotten about it and then acted like it was no big deal and I -.” He cut me off, with a kiss.

“What was that for?” I smiled.

“For coming here.” He pulled me closer to him and wrapped his arm around me. “And admitting it, I know how hard it is for you and I am sorry took I may have over reacted a little or a lot.”

we slept at that hotel that night, well, didn’t sleep very much but we did enjoy the night there.

***

I woke up in the middle of the night, when Emily moved a bit. She looked so adorable sleeping that regretted making her come to me and say that she was sorry. As far as she was concerned, waiting wasn’t so bad. With how much I loved her, I have to say that she is worth the wait, and always will be.