To The Bitter End

IV

Holly was sitting in front of her PC in absolute despair. She had to get this article done today and she was stuck. She had no idea where she was going with this point, but it was for the party newsletter and it had to be sent off to be printed tomorrow. She had been trying to focus on this and to make it a good article, but she also couldn't focus. Sam was sitting behind her, trying to show her things all the time and talk to her constantly. She had no idea why he was like that today.

"Look at this cool thing I found in my game!" he said to her. Holly turned around with an exasperated sigh.

"Show me. Quick." she replied.

"No. No, I won't show you, not if you're that annoyed with me." he answered. Holly took a deep breath.

"Fine by me. Can you maybe just let me do my thing? Like, I'm kind of busy right now."

"You're always busy with something."

"Yes. And you're always trying to show me things that have absolutely nothing to do with me or my life at that moment."

"I'm sorry for sharing my interests with you."

"Dude. Sam. Please. Can you just let me finish this and then you can show me whatever you want? Thank you." Holly replied and put her headphones back on. She needed to focus. No more distractions.

"Not like you'll care any more later..." she heard Sam mumbling. She almost wanted to turn around to him and tell him that that wasn't true, but she knew it was going to lead to another argument and she had neither the time nor the energy for that. It would be easier to pretend she hadn't heard it for now.

But she had heard it and while she was trying to focus on her work, it kept repeating over and over in her head. Did she really not care enough? But then again, she had things to do, why couldn't he understand that? She always let him play his games or whatever, when he wanted to. Why couldn't she have the same kind of luxury when it came to this? Maybe he just wanted to get rid of her. Sometimes Holly thought that might be better. She cared about him, of course, but he was driving her up the walls sometimes and she hated when he got like that.

It wasn't long after that she heard the door slamming shut behind her. He was probably gone to watch some TV or play games downstairs in the living room. She couldn't be bothered thinking about that now. She had to finish this thing. Except that focusing was getting way harder when she had no idea what the hell was going on with her husband. But maybe she should just get this done and talk to him afterwards. Surely, he would calm down by then, right?

The issue was that Sam rarely ever calmed down. He just got offended and insulted so easily, it was hard to keep up with him. And then he also tended to get pretty angry. Holly hated it. But it was what she had signed up for, wasn't it? And they had just bought a house together, so leaving was kind of out of the question. Housing was sparse enough already. So she had to stay and just deal with things. Not that she would leave Sam. No. But she did play with the thought of it at times.

Holly was trying to get her brain back to the task at hand. It was getting late and she had barely made any progress on this. And she had work in the morning and after work she had her branch meeting. She wanted to be awake for that, because it was likely that Matt would be there. Holly was pretty sure that she had developed a weird kind of crush on Matt, just from hearing about him.

It wasn't unusual for her to be doing something like that. She got attached to people pretty fast, but it also wore off pretty fast, usually. She was banking on this being the same this time around. She was hoping so, because she genuinely had no idea what she was going to do if she actually did fall hard. Mainly, it would be pretty embarrassing. But there was also a full other host of problems.

Either way, she had to finish her article. She had to finish it and then she would go and talk to Sam and hope that he wasn't going to be too difficult to deal with. As if that was ever going to happen.