MICHAEL
I scramble up from my place on the couch the second that I hear Kate's key scraping in the lock. The door slams with more force than it can handle and her footsteps are fast and heavy on the wooden floor of the hallway.
"What the hell were you thinking?" Her voice rips through three octaves as she stops short in the doorway of the living room.
I'd spent the last hour preparing what I was going to say to her when she asked that question, but in the stress of the moment I can feel myself forgetting every single answer I came up with.
"Umm. Okay, listen. Kate, I—"
"Seriously Michael, are you kidding me?"
"But I—"
"I can't believe you." She cuts me off.
"Kate, please just—"
"Are you serious right now?"
"I haven't even said anything! Jesus Christ! Will you let me talk?"
Kate crosses her arms over her chest and stamps her foot with a huff, glaring at me with an expectant expression. It seems as if that's the closest thing I'll get to an invitation to talk, so I seize the chance.
"I tried to tell you before you left," I begin. "But you were rushing, and I didn't know how to stop you, and I wasn't sure how to tell you something like that because I knew you would be mad at me."
"Michael," Kate sighs, rubbing her temples. "If you were so sure that I would be mad, that should have been your first clue that you shouldn't have done it." Her voice sounds tired, but at least she isn't yelling anymore.
"Well I'm not sorry for it." I cross my arms over my chest, but take a step closer to her in an attempt to start closing the distance between us. "You're supposed to be in school, Kate. You belong there."
"Maybe. But this is the kind of thing you need to talk to me about. You can't just go dropping five thousand dollars on me without asking me first! How am I supposed to react to that?"
"It wasn't even four thousand," I mumble, staring down at the floor.
"It doesn't matter! I don't have that money, Michael. It will take me years to pay you back for that!"
"You don't have to—"
"Don't you dare finish that sentence, I swear to God."
"Okay! Fine! You can pay me back if you want to. And you can take however long you need."
"No. I'm going to take out a loan through financial aid, and you'll be reimbursed as soon as it goes through."
"But then you'll have to pay that back with interest after you graduate."
"I don't care."
"Kate."
"What?" She hisses.
"I'm trying to help you."
"Well you should have—"
"What? I should have what? If I had asked you first, you would have shot me down in a heartbeat, and then where would you be?"
"I would be in the financial aid office getting a loan," she says coldly.
I sigh, my shoulders slumping forward as I cover my face with my hands. "It would have been too late. You could have gotten a loan, but it wouldn't have gone through in time for you to keep your classes. You would have ended up taking a semester off and I wasn't going to let that happen."
