Bed of Lies (ON HOLD)

XII

He's angry. I know it.

After unbolting its lock, throwing open the door gives me an unobstructed view of his rigid body as he stomps towards the house from his car. I can virtually see the rage radiating off him in waves—could even touch them if I dared reach out. I am well assured that I'm not scared, but I still feel my stomach clench in anticipation of the hell that is about to break loose.

"Welcome." I greet under my breath as he marches inside like a soldier on parade, his cologne stealing my breath and swelling my lungs.

I expect him to stop like he usually does, but he doesn't. Really, I'm almost on the verge of tearing my hair out of my head when he, thoroughly unbothered, clumps on towards the passageway that leads to the rooms without taking off his shoes.

They appear to be clean—his loafers—as they do not leave any stains behind. So, I hold myself back from saying anything and decide to only watch him go. When he finally and ultimately disappears from my view, I rise to close the door that he left ajar. I've jammed the solid panel of wood, which has a tinted glass lying on its half, into the position it fits in and begun to move the iron bar into its place when I hear him re-approach.

My fingers turn all thumbs as they continue to slip over and over on the sleek bolt. I try my best to grab it, but the only apparent result I get is the bar tripping out of my hands, for all my darned best efforts. I give up when he is close enough to breathe down the nape of my neck if he decided to do so.

"Tony..." I turn around then murmur silently, my heart palpitating most unhealthily to the extent that I feel it right in my gullet, drying all the saliva previously present in the pipe.

"We need to talk," he holds up an envelope and is about to say something else besides when his eyes stray to his feet. I watch him frown slightly; next, I hurtle out of his way as he bends to carefully take off the probably-insanely-expensive shoes that nonetheless fit him considerably well.

He smartly pushes them to the side so that they turn out to be properly arranged in a straight line on the mat I planted only a few days ago for our shoes. I would have swooned at the fact that he paid attention to the little change I had brought to effect if I wasn't so petrified and anxious about whatever he had to say.

"Alright." He eventually says with a satisfied bob of his head. "Now, I'll be honest and say that I'm quite heated. But I will try hard to stay calm and composed, so I can talk like a reasonable person who wants to be heard."

I gulp way too loudly. Tony very obviously hears as he raises an eyebrow and fixes me with a stupid stare. What I meant was... "Okay. I'm listening."

"First of all, your mother called me today at work."

"What?" I cry out, genuinely surprised that my mother still reached out to him even after imploring her not to do so in our previous conversations.

"Why are you pretending to be surprised?" He asks while he removes his suit jacket and starts to undo his cuffs unhurriedly. I am not in any way impressed by his question nor by the snarky undertone, which he is not at all making an attempt to camouflage.

"Pretending? What do you mean by that?" I ask in an exceptionally low tone that usually punctuates the periods before I ultimately embark on the journey leading to absolute annoyance.

"You know what the hell I mean, Isi. You talk to your mother quite often." That's because I have no one else to talk to. I want to say, but there's no use infuriating him further than he already is. Doing so would only incur his wrath and, in the long run, make me more miserable.

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Since you talk to her most of the time, that means you also tell her everything. Otherwise, what is it you are always discussing with her? Hm? No, tell me. What is it that you always have ready to share with her? Or do you think I'm blind and have not noticed the private meetings you always hold behind the closed doors of your room?"