And Then There Were Five

SIX: Carter

Carter Ford
June 5, 2018

Carter had been working all day and was exhausted, as usual. Each day he was in a different town or city for work; his job took him all over the place. Most evenings he was stuck in traffic, right in the middle of rush hour. By the time he made it home that day, it was almost seven o'clock. He didn't have the energy, nor the motivation, to walk to the kitchen and prepare a meal, so he grabbed his phone and ordered a pizza.

            Emmalyn came over later that night. She was ecstatic, telling him that the interview she had earlier that day went well and that they offered her the job. Now she'd be working at the Child Youth Center, which if you asked Carter, was not suited for her at all. But he didn't dare say that aloud. Anyone that disagreed or interfered with Emmalyn's thoughts and ambitions was immediately blacklisted.

            "Let's do something," she said suddenly, rolling over on his bed so that she was on her stomach, chin in palms.
             Carter grabbed another slice of pizza and took a bite. "We are doing something."
             "I mean like, go out and do something."
             He stared at her, chewing his food. "It's a Tuesday."
             "So?"
             "So, we both have work in the morning. And I'm exhausted."
             "We don't have to go out for long. We could just go to Madison's or something."
             "I'm really not feeling up to it, Em. You could ask Noelle?"
             She glared at him. "I don't want to go with Noelle. I want to go with you."
             "And I just finished telling you that I can't."
             "Did I do something?" she asked, staring at him.
             "What?"
             "You seem mad. Or are you just in another mood?"
             "I'm not in a fucking mood, Emmalyn. I'm tired and overworked and just wanted to have a chill night in with you. Why do you always have to go and overcomplicate things?"
             "How am I overcomplicating things?" she sat up, sitting crossed-legged in front of him. "I asked you to go out. What's the big deal?"
             "The big deal is that you keep fucking nagging me after I've already told you no. What part of that don't you understand?"
             "You can be such an asshole sometimes, you know that?"
             "Here we go again."
             "Stop doing that!" she said. "Stop making me seem like the bad guy!"
             "I'm not making you the bad guy. You're doing that all on your own."
             "You know what, Carter? I'll just leave, okay? You can stay here and have your little 'night-in' all on your own." She stood.
             "Alright."
             She stared at him. "Alright? That's all you have to say?"
             "What else do you want me to say?"
             "You are useless!" she said, exasperated, and stormed out of his room, slamming the door behind her.

            Carter watched her leave, then closed the pizza box and tossed it on his dresser. She always did this. Always started a fight and then pinpointed the source of the problem to Carter. And their fights were not a rare occurrence. They had been in so many arguments and disagreements over the past three months that Carter had lost count. He recalled their first fight, which occurred only two short weeks after he first met her.

            It was as though they skipped the honeymoon phase completely and jumped head-first into Old Married Couple mode. Try as he might, he could never please her. They were always bickering and complaining about something or other. Perhaps it was because they spent nearly every waking second together. They clearly had chemistry between them, yet they went about it in all the wrong ways. That's what you get when you put two headstrong, dominant personalities together. The perfect storm.

Their first fight wasn't even arbitrary. Emmalyn had done something wrong – not necessarily deliberately, but still wrong – and it had pissed Carter off. It happened at a party they were attending. They had only been seeing each other for two weeks at this point. Emmalyn had left Carter's side and went off with some random guys to drink. (Another problem of Emmalyn's: she drank too much.) When Carter tracked her down later that night and questioned her about it, she told him point-blank that she could do whatever she pleased. Carter was awestruck by her clear lack of understanding of the situation. So he yelled, and then she yelled, and there it was: their first fight.

Emmalyn never saw the error of her ways. It was always Carter who was at fault. And whenever she did something wrong and he questioned her, he was the bad guy.

            Yes, she was independent and self-sufficient. It was something he admired about her. But often times, she was a loose cannon, free to do whatever she wanted. She made bad decisions and couldn't own up to it. She had this innate need to always be right. So when Carter opposed her way of thinking, she couldn't accept it.

            But he liked her. He really liked her. He guessed that in order to reap the good, he had to put up with the bad.