Lasting Love Part 2

Fight to End All Fights?

Justin's POV:
"Yes, Jen, our children are alive.  I'm not as idiotic and irresponsible as you think!"

"Well maybe you should start freaking acting like it then!"

I hang up the phone annoyed with her.  She keeps complaining about filming, but I have it 10 times worse here.  All the kids are doing is yelling at each other and me.  They all want their friends over and all they do when they're here is fight and destroy the house.  I get yelled at for all of this at the end of the day.  Apparently they're like this because I've "never acted like a parent", but that's just Jen's opinion.

"Kids!"  I yell up the steps "You're mom's going to be home soon!  Come clean up your mess!"  I get this weird feeling in the side of my stomach along with a wave of nausea.  I pass it off as the start of the stomach bug.

I get a bunch of "nos" and "laters" as responses.  They keep doing this, and it's starting to piss me off a little.  I go up to their rooms, tell all their friends that it's time for them to go home, and tell them that they have 5 minutes to get downstairs.

When they don't come down, I turn the WIFI off. Seconds later, all 3 kids are down in the living room pissed at me and complaining.

"You guys gotta start cleaning up."  I walk out of the room just in time to see a very angry looking Jen standing in the kitchen.

"What the hell is this?..."  She walks in towards the kids.  For a minute I think she isn't totally pissed at me, but that changes after she's done yelling at them.

"You're supposed to be in charge here!  Stop acting like an idiot and make them do what they're supposed to!  You let them get away with everything!"  She screams.  I get another pain in my side, but choose not to tell her. "You're so immature!" She continues  "I go to work all day and all I want is to come home to see my nice family, but I can't even do that anymore."

"You don't think I tried?" I ask rhetorically "They don't listen!  They were told multiple times to clean up their shit!  They aren't used to having to do this stuff because you always did it for them!  You baby them too much!"

"Now you're trying to make it my fault?!  How does the house look like when you get home from work? Or going out? Or even when you sleep in forever and I'm up with them?!?"  She starts slamming things on the table to put the food that I made out "They aren't fucking 2 anymore!  There is no reason for me to come home to this mess!"

The kids walk out into the kitchen silently.  They take their seats without saying a single word and start to eat.  Jen and I sit as far away from each other as possible.  All we've been doing lately is fighting over dumb things, but so far this has been the worst.  We've been arguing over the phone since Jen left for work this morning.  I think our recent arguments are effecting them too.  I don't eat too much because I'm still feeling a little nauseous and have an uncomfortable feeling.

"So what did you guys do all day?" Jen asks the kids while ignoring me.

"We were in the pool most of the day." Ben says and the girls agree.

"So that's all your father's mess?" She quizzes them.

"Well, we came inside eventually..." Kay adds shyly.

"And we forgot about the mess." Lexie finishes for her.

"Well I want it cleaned up." She looks around at them sternly. 

"Okay." They all mutter.  I kinda feel bad for them, but they're also the ones that didn't clean up their messes.

"I'm going to do the dishes." Jen gets up after she's done.  She grabs mine from its spot before I can hand it to her and walks over to the sink.  I grab other random things off the table and place them on the counter.  Apparently this makes her even more mad at me.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?!?" She follows me as I walk back to the table "You think you can get out of helping that easily?  I work all day, come home to this disaster, and you hand me more dishes to wash because you don't want to?  You're such an asshole, Justin!"

"I put them there to help you!  You never let me help with the dishes other times!  Why would I expect you to let me today?"  I grab everything else off the table "I was going to clean this off to help you!  I'm trying to be nice, but I guess that's not possible here.  I'm just some waste of space asshole!"

I walk through the living room that the kids are cleaning and straight up to our room.  I hear dishes being slammed around for a few minutes before Jen runs up the steps.  She flings our door open and seconds later it's slammed shut.

"Maybe.  Just maybe if you were more responsible we wouldn't be arguing like this!"  She stands right in front of me raging with anger "The past week I have gone to work and dealt with mindlessly annoying people only to come home to see that you're completely unreliable!  Every freaking day there is a new mess that has taken over our house!  The kids don't listen to you because you're always doing dumb things with them!  How are they supposed to know when you're actually being serious?!?"

"I'm their father.  If I tell them that they need to do something it should be done!"  I start to feel my blood boiling and know that I'm about to over react "They should listen to me!  I should not need to go as far as taking things to get them to clean up after themselves, but apparently that's what it takes!  Maybe if you didn't have it stuck in their heads that I'm not a "real parent" it wouldn't be like this!  Obviously I'm never going to be good enough for you."

"What are you doing?"  She asks as I pack up a bag with some of my things "See?  This is the irresponsible part!  You need to stay and make sure they clean up their mess!  Not just leave so they think they don't have to!  This isn't going to help anything!"

"Well, it's going to get me out of this hell for few days."

It's only after I'm out of our room that I notice the kids heard the whole thing.  They're all standing around looking like the most guilty people in the whole world.

"We're sorry, dad!" They follow me towards the door "We'll listen to you more.  We don't wanna be the reason you guys keep fighting."

"Look at me," I pull them all closer "It's not you're fault.  You guys do need to listen better, but really, mom and I just need a little break.  I'll be back soon.  I promise."

I walk out the back door and leave.  The pain in my side gets worse as I drive away.

There are only a few parts left of this story, so I'm probably going to be posting them daily!  Thanks so much everyone for reading!! I really appreciate it :)