Right?

“Liv, are you going to come?” My friend, Jenny, had been telling me about some dinner that her mom was having because some family friends were coming to visit. I drowned her out after about three seconds.

Jenny and I have been best friends since the first day of freshman year in high school when we both were assigned as lab partners in science.

And now being freshly out of college, we were both able to get a job working in the same office. We file paperwork for a loan company. To say the very least, it's not exciting work. But it will help pay the bills.

Currently we were sitting in the break room finishing our lunch.

”Huh?”

“Uh, were you listening at all?” she moaned.

“Sure, your mom’s making dinner for some old people that you don’t want to be around and you want me to come rescue you.” I guessed.

“Not quite.” Jenny answered. She doesn’t like to repeat herself.

“Okay, I’m sorry, tell me one more time, please.” I fake pleaded. She hates my sarcasm too.

“Uh, my mom invited some family friends over, who I have not seen since I was like three and I don’t want to reunite with them alone. They are not old. It’s my mom’s friend from high school and her husband and children.”

“Oh, okay, well when is it?”

“It’s tomorrow night.” I thought about it for a minute. I really don’t know if Erik will like that idea.

Erik is my boyfriend. We have known each other for a while through mutual friends in college and we started dating three months ago.

“Well, I’ll have to see what Erik thinks.” As soon as I mentioned Erik, her face went from pleading to disgusted.

“What he thinks? You can think for yourself, can’t you?” her attitude was clear as she spoke. She never really liked Erik. She always said that he had an anger problem. I knew he had some issues but, who doesn’t, right?

“Look, I have to check with him. I’ll let you know tonight, okay?”

She sighed, “Fine, but I think you should be able to make your own decisions.”

****************

I was walking to get dinner at the cafe and I saw Erik waiting for me by the entrance.

“Hey Erik.” I smiled as I went to kiss him. He put his hand up to stop the kiss.

“Why were you late?” Oh, no.

“What do you mean? I came right from work. I didn’t have even stop for my usual bank run.” I am normally the one who had to bring a ton of paperwork to the bank after work but today, someone else volunteered for me.

I was nervous and confused. Erik would sometimes yell at me for random things. He had a lot that he was dealing with so, I understood his anger. But he almost never did it in public like this.

“You didn’t get here fast enough and now we have to wait in the long line.”

“I’m sorry, did you want me to run here?”

“Don’t give me your sarcasm, Olivia!” he lashed back. He's the only one I know who uses my full name. Everyone else just calls me Liv. He says that he will use the name I was given at birth, he's so passionate about it. His passion is cute though, right?

I could see that he was getting to the point where he might hit me. He has only done that a couple times before, but he was always so sorry afterwards.