“You got this, Kelsey!” I shouted toward the TV.
“Shh!” Cassie shushed and slapped one hand to my arm. “She needs to focus, Thatcher.”
Instantly, sarcasm sat heavy on my tongue. For one, Kelsey couldn’t hear me. And two? This rerun was over a year old.
But again, being the dutiful, understanding, compassionate, and self-preserving-of-my-own-life husband that I was, I filled my mouth with Chipotle instead of mockery.
“Eu-dae-monic,” Kelsey repeated. Sweat dripped off my brow and into my cheesy rice with anticipation—both for Kelsey’s answer and the upcoming effects of this meal on my Tex-Mex-burned-out-rawhide-intestines—and then, finally, she began to spell. “E-U-D-E-A-M-O-N-I-C.”
Uh oh. Reflexively, my fingers clenched into the tortilla of my burrito, shooting cheese and rice and meat up and out of the top and onto the surface of my plate. It was on the tip of my tongue to make a joke about blowing my load unexpectedly, but Cass’s devastation at the little girl’s failure cast a pall over the room that I knew not to mess with.
“No, Kelsey!” Cass shouted at the television. “No! You fluffed it up! You fluffing fluffed it up! What are your parents going to do with all that tuition money now? Start an underground casino? You’re from Hillsdale, Iowa, for sneakers’ sake. There’s no way it’s going to be successful! Gah!”
“I’m sorry, Kelsey, but that is incorrect,” the spelling bee pronouncer stated, and Kelsey’s little shoulders sagged forward.
“Poor kid,” I said softly, not knowing how my sympathetic approach would be received by my pregnant and hormonal company, and I watched as Kelsey walked past her now-empty chair and off the stage. “She was so close.”
Turning back to my burrito, I waited patiently as the next kid stepped onto the stage, but when the sounds of whimpering filled my ears, I looked to my side and found Cassie’s lip quivering and tears filling her eyes.
“Cass? Honey? You okay?”
She shook her head but didn’t say anything else.
Fuck.
I dropped my burrito, wiped my fingers off on my napkin, and reached out and placed my hand gently on her shoulder. “Baby, what’s wrong? Are you not feeling well?”
When she didn’t say anything, I started to get worried. I mean, this was my wife and she was pregnant and with the way her face was scrunching up with tears, she looked like she was in pain.
“Cass, honey,” I said, my voice tender. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“I’m just so sad.” She sniffled and swiped the tears off her face. “She tried so hard, Thatch!”
Huh? I tilted my head to the side. “Who tried so hard?”
“Fluffing Kelsey! She tried so hard!”
When I realized she was crying over the kid who just got booted off Spelling Bee Island, I glanced around the room in serious confusion.
I mean, we watched these shows all the time, and she had never lost it like this. Not to mention, not a full minute ago, she was riding little Kelsey like a boarding school enforcer.
“Are you related to this kid or something?” I asked dumbly, and without warning, she burst into tears.
“Why would you ask that?” she screamed and buried her face into my chest. I wasn’t entirely sure if that was an answer or not, or if I should be hiring a private investigator to establish contact with her potential long-lost cousin. So I did the only thing I could do. I wrapped my arms around her and tried to comfort her with tales of familial stability. Whether they were family or not, I really needed to sell the fact that I was pretty sure the little pigtail-wearer had a good one.
“I know it’s hard, honey, but I’m sure Kelsey is okay. Her parents probably got her ice cream after that, and I bet she’s currently gearing up for this year’s big spelling bee. She’ll be back. Don’t you worry. She’ll be back.”
“You think so?” Cass asked and sat back up to meet my eyes.
I reached out to swipe a few rogue tears from her cheeks. “Definitely. She’s a smart kid. I know she’ll come back even stronger this year.”
Frankly, I didn’t know that kid and she could’ve hit rock-fluffing-bottom after misspelling that word, but I sure as shit wasn’t going to tell my emotional wife that.
Thankfully, my words had the intended effect, and Cassie nodded, swiped at her face one more time, and turned back toward her burrito and the TV.
Another kid was already standing at the front of the stage, the name of the screen reading Arnie Callahan. I could only imagine what catastrophe might befall our penthouse if this little fucker bit the dust, so my hype jumped to an eleven on a scale of ten.
“C’mon, Arnie! You got this!” I cheered him on, but when Cass didn’t chime in like she usually did, I glanced to my right to find her staring down at her food, her Chipotle burrito completely unwrapped and the contents spilling out all over the plate.
“Cass?”
“Half white rice. Fajita veggies. Pinto beans.” She started randomly repeating her order, pointing at each item in her burrito. “Chicken. Mild, medium, and corn salsa.”
She looked at me.
“Okay…is there something wrong?”
“Is there something wrong?” she echoed my question back to me. Based on her tone, I’d say there was definitely something wrong. Honestly, if this were a horror movie, the intense music would be nearing its crescendo. “Pretty sure you should be able to spot the motherfluffing problem, Thatcher!”
“Uh…” I paused and took inventory of her burrito, shuffling through the components quickly. It was hard to be sure under this level of pressure, but fuck, I really thought I’d gotten it right. I’d been ordering the same thing for the past handful of days. I met her eyes again. “Cass, I’m not sure…?”
“Cheese, T-bag!” she shouted so loud it startled me. “This burrito has cheese!”
Uh oh…
“Do you even love me?” she continued and, no joke, picked up her plate and tossed it off the fucking coffee table. The plate and burrito hit the ground with a crash, and food splattered all over the hardwood floor.
Philmore heard the disturbance from where he was sleeping in our bedroom and came trotting out on his little piggy hooves. He was snorting that burrito up in no time. I definitely understood the meal would have some serious consequences on his bowels, but with the way my wife was staring at me, I knew I shouldn’t make any sudden moves. Right now, my biggest problem wasn’t a potential event of explosive diarrhea from a pig. No. I really didn’t want to see what my intestinal tract would look like after Cassie came at it with a set of kitchen scissors.
“Do you love me, Thatcher?” she asked. “I mean, do you really love me?”
“O-of course, I do. I love you more than anything in the world.”
“Then why did you get cheese on my burrito?!”
“It was an honest mistake, honey. Promise. I ordered the fluff out of that thing. But the kid making the order did look a little hazy. M-maybe he was having a bad day.”
“An honest mistake? Making a mistake like this when you know how much it means to me just shows how you really feel about me.”
Oh, sweet mother of mercy, what is happening right now?