Roseanne
The model home is cute but generic. To listen to Jaehyun, however, you'd think we were in Versailles. He fell in love the moment we pulled up. And once he saw the huge back yard, he was ready to put a ring on it.
"Think how awesome that yard would be for kids," he says. "It'll be just like how we grew up. Room to roam."
There's an unhappy little twist in my chest. Lisa's question yesterday comes to my head—do you want this more than a degree? And the answer is still no, I absolutely do not. I'm not even sure I want it without the degree. I don't want what I grew up with. I want the city. I want to be able to order Thai food at midnight, walk places, be anonymous occasionally.
The agent gives us a tour and then suggests going to his office to look at pricing. Jaehyun is all in while I stand back. "Can we have a moment?" I ask the agent, who nods while Jaehyun's eyes dart impatiently between us.
"I think we need to discuss this," I say, after the agent walks away.
"It won't hurt to look at it," he argues. "We could write a check for the deposit today. We have forty-eight hours to change our minds."
I feel a tiny spark of anger. Has Jaehyun always pushed this hard for what he wants? Because I've made it pretty clear I'm not interested, and yet here he is using his hackneyed sales techniques on me, his future wife.
But maybe he's never needed to push this hard, because until now I've always just rolled over when he wanted something I did not. I'm not sure why it's taken me this long to see it.
"I've actually been thinking about going back to Georgetown," I venture quietly. My hands begin to sweat as I say these words aloud to him, far more directly than I have in years.
His face goes blank, uncomprehending. "As a student?"
I look up, rubbing my palms over my shorts. "Yes. I want to finish my degree."
"Roseanne...Jesus. Are you serious? You...can't. Do you have any idea how much that will cost?"
Is he really asking me this, like I'm some naïve little girl who has no idea how much tuition would be? I'm the one who went there for Christ's sake. "Of course I do. But I've got that money from my dad, and I think that's how he'd have wanted me to use it."
"On some overpriced degree you're never going to use? Are you kidding me?" Jaehyun asks, rolling his eyes. "He'd roll over in his grave."
My jaw drops. "Are you actually trying to say you know better than I do what my father would have wanted for me?"
He digs his hands in his hair, then pulls me around the corner, away from the raised eyebrows of other people touring the model. "I don't understand what's going on. We've been talking about buying a house for years, and now, when we're finally about to pull the trigger, you think you want to go to school? I mean, is the brain tumor...I don't know, influencing you? Because it's coming out of nowhere."
Blood pounds in my ears so loud I can barely think. I can't believe he's trying to blame the brain tumor. I've been talking about school on and off since we first got together, and he just conveniently managed not to hear me. But before I can levy the accusation, he sinks into the stupid wing chair some designer has placed in the model home's mudroom and buries his head in his hands. "I shouldn't have said that. I'm sorry. I'm just under a lot of stress at work right now, so your timing isn't great."
I feel sympathy welling, and I resent it. I don't want to feel sympathy for him right now—it's an emotion that always ends with me giving something up. "What's going on at work?"
