I took famous99's advice, and took a break from my studying to write. Originally this was going to be a one-shot, but it got a little long, so I think it's going to be a two-shot. Anyway, review please and tell me what you think! Thanks!
Disclaimer: Right, I don't own the characters.
Need to know
If you're letting go
It's alright, it's alright
Didn't know
I was hurting you so
It's alright, it's alright
This is just one of those lonely nights
The good times gonna come- Aqualung
"Kirsten…please," Sandy said as she threw things into a suitcase haphazardly. "Please don't go. Can't we just…can't we just talk? Sit down and talk to me." Kirsten shook her head, and continued to toss shirts and pants and skirts, without looking if they were a match or not. She counted silently the amount of underwear that she was tossing in, and then paused and grabbed a handful. Who knew how long she was going to be gone?
"Sandy…I can't…" She moved into the bathroom. This massive bathroom that was about half of the size of her and Sandy's bedroom at their house in Berkeley.
Berkeley. God. Sometimes she missed Berkeley. Right then was one of those times. Things seemed simpler at Berkeley.
"Where are you going?" Sandy asked as he followed her into their bathroom and watched her gather up things in her arms and dump them unceremoniously into her suitcase. Kirsten made one more stop into her closet and scooped up some shoes, making sure that she had tennis shoes and some heels, before closing up the suitcase. "Damn it Kirsten. Talk to me! You can't just leave!" Kirsten ignored him as she moved past him into the hallway and down the stairs.
"Seth sweetie?" Kirsten called. Her energetic six-year-old bounced out of the living room where he had been playing some new video game that she had bought him because she felt so guilty that they had been in Newport for a year and he still had no friends. And then she felt guilty that she was buying him things to replace friends. Lately Kirsten had felt like the world's worst mother. Seth was clearly unhappy, and she was at a loss as to what to do to fix it. "Why don't you come upstairs with me and tell me what you want to take with you?"
"Where are we going Mommy?" Seth asked bouncing from foot to foot.
"Just a little trip, baby," Kirsten replied, running a hand through his curls and taking his hand and leading him up to his bedroom. Sandy followed behind, and caught the curious looks that Seth was sending him as he glanced over his shoulder.
"Is Daddy coming?" Seth asked.
"No, it's just me and you this time, honey," Kirsten said as she opened up his closet. Sandy stepped in at this point and put his hand on the closet door and pushed it close.
"You can't do this," he said in a low voice, painfully aware that Seth was standing there, witnessing his parents' actions. "You can't take Seth, and just go."
"We're not going to be gone forever," Kirsten replied angrily yanking the closet door open again. "Seth, what clothes do you want to take?" Seth looked from his father to his mother and then back at his father again and slowly moved towards the closet.
"Then how long are you going to be gone?" Sandy hissed.
"I don't know," Kirsten snapped. "As long as it takes for me to think things over."
"What do you need to think over?" Sandy's voice was getting louder and Seth kept glancing his parents as he pulled out his green Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles shirt and handed it to his mother.
"Jesus, Sandy, like you don't know!" Kirsten yelled. And she was right, he knew exactly what she had to think about. He knew exactly why she was taking Seth with her and leaving.
Her mother had died two months before. That had been why they had moved back here to Newport. Sandy had jokingly dubbed it "the Devil's playground," a nickname that his wife didn't find all that amusing. They moved so that Kirsten could spend as much time with her mother as she could before Kathryn died. So that Seth could get to know his grandmother, and so that his grandmother could be with her daughter and grandson in her final months.
Sandy hadn't known that Kirsten would get sucked in. He hadn't known that the simple suggestion from her father that she come work in his company would turn into the cause of the biggest argument of their marriage. But they had worked through it. The last thing that Kirsten had needed on top of her mother's illness, and running after a hyperactive Seth, was to worry about her husband and the state of their marriage. So Sandy had complied, and let her go to work with her father, and Kirsten, it turned out, despite her degree in Art History, had a natural talent for the family business.
And Kathryn died, and Sandy thought, mistakenly, that they would stay a few more months to tie up some loose ends, and then head back to Berkeley. They hadn't even sold their house there. Newport was supposed to be a temporary thing. A year, two tops. And it had been a year, and now it was time to go home.
Sandy had not expected the reaction from Kirsten that he got when he suggested that they pack up and head north again.
"Are you kidding? We can't," Kirsten had said.
"Why not? We never intended to stay here!"
"Because Seth is in school here…"
"He hates it here. Besides, he was in school in Berkeley and we just yanked him out."
"That's not the point Sandy! The point is that we've already pulled him out of school; we can't do it twice in less than two years. And besides, I have my job, you have a job. We have lives here now."
"We had lives there too!"
"And it's been a year," Kirsten retorted. "We can't just go back after a year and expect our lives to resume as normal. I love my job, Sandy, I'm good at it."
"I know you are…"
"And I like being by my dad, and Hailey. My mother just died, Sandy, I want to be by my family," Kirsten's voice began to get a little higher with every word.
"And it's all about what you want isn't it?" Sandy yelled back. Kirsten shrank back for a moment, Sandy rarely yelled at her. Sandy was tired of being in Newport. He was tired of feeling like he didn't belong. It was easy for her, she belonged here. These people weren't like him, and they didn't want him here anymore than he wanted to be here. He wanted to go home to their little house. He wanted to be with just his wife and his son without anyone or anything else getting in the way.
"No! I'm thinking about what's best for all of us! Here, in Newport where Seth can get to know some of his family, where I can be by my family, where Seth can have every opportunity in the world…" Kirsten started listing off the reasons on her fingers.
"This is about money, right? Seth can have every opportunity in the world, because here he would have money, right? God, sometimes you know, I suddenly remember that you were born and raised in Newport."
"What does that mean?" Kirsten asked placing her hands on her slender hips and glaring at Sandy.
"It means sometimes you act like the spoiled brat you are," Sandy yelled. He realized as soon as the words were out of his mouth that he had gone too far. Kirsten's face had gone pale and she had begun to shake with fury.
"If that's what you think about me, then what are we doing?" Kirsten asked in a biting voice. "If I'm such a spoiled brat, then why are you married to me?" Sandy knew he should apologize, he knew that he should tell her that he was wrong and make it up to her, but for some reason, he couldn't get the message across to his mouth.
"Sometimes I wonder," he had said. Kirsten had gasped and stormed out of the kitchen, and he had found her twenty minutes later packing things in a bag.
Sandy knew that he had done this, and now he was scrambling to fix it. He had apologized to her. He had told her that he loved her and he never had any doubts about them or their marriage, but Kirsten had tuned him out.
Kirsten put another pair of underwear in Seth's little suitcase just in case, and then told him to grab some toys.
"Daddy?" Seth said as Kirsten went into Seth's bathroom to grab his toothbrush and toothpaste. "If you want to keep Captain Oats here with you…so that you don't get lonely while me and Mommy are gone, you can." Seth handed his father his beloved plastic horse, and Sandy took it in his hands and then gathered Seth in his arms.
"Thanks buddy," he said placing a kiss on the top of Seth's head. Kirsten reappeared in the door and frowned slightly. She didn't want to leave. But she was too angry with him, with what he had said and the fact that she thought he might mean it, to stay there. She needed some time to think things over. She needed some space from her husband.
"Come on Sethy," she said softly. "You ready kiddo?" Seth pulled away from his father and nodded. Kirsten leaned down to pick up the suitcase, and Sandy reached for it instead.
"I got it," he said quietly. She nodded and took Seth's hand and they went back downstairs. Picking up her own suitcase, and grabbing her purse, they walked out to Kirsten's new car and she popped the trunk and while Sandy placed the suitcases in there, she got Seth buckled in.
"I'll miss you buddy," Sandy said as he leaned into the car to give Seth a hug and a kiss.
"I'll see you later alligator," Seth said smiling at his dad.
"After while crocodile," Sandy replied giving his son one last kiss on the top of his head. "Be good for your mother." Seth nodded seriously, and Sandy ducked back out of the car and turned to face his wife. She had a few tears already rolling down her face from behind her sunglasses, and he wanted to hold her and whisper that he was sorry until she believed him, but she placed her arms around her stomach and hugged herself, and then opened the driver's side door.
"Be careful," Sandy told her. Kirsten nodded. "I love you."
"We'll call you," Kirsten said climbing in. Sandy shut her door for her and couldn't help but lean in and give her a kiss on the cheek. Kirsten started the car and backed down the driveway, and Sandy stood there, waving to Seth until he couldn't see them anymore.
Kirsten and Seth had been gone only a few hours, and already Sandy didn't know what he was going to do without them. He tripped over a toy of Seth's that was in the living room, and found Kirsten's coffee cup on the counter, and he wanted to be with them so badly that it hurt.
He had tried to watch some television, only to find that he could care less about the characters in the show. He then got some work and tried to concentrate on that, but he kept replaying their argument in his head.
"Then why are you married to me?"
"Sometimes I wonder."
Sandy sighed and threw the paper across the room. He knew that Kirsten leaving wasn't just because of the fight today, he knew that that had been the straw that broke the camel's back. He knew that they were in a rut lately. He knew that she was stressed out, and his snide remarks about Newport and her father weren't helping. He knew that she was worried about Seth. He knew that he had gone too far, and he knew that he should try to do something to make it up to her, he should have tried harder to stop her from leaving.
The phone rang and he grabbed it immediately.
"Hello? Kirsten?"
"Hi Sandy," his wife sounded tired and Sandy's heart hurt. "We're at my dad's cabin." Her dad's cabin was about two and a half hours away. It wasn't so much a cabin but a resort. It was massive, and he knew that Seth loved it there. There was plenty of privacy and it was right on the lake. And Seth loved having his mother all to himself.
"How long are you going to be there?" Sandy asked. "Seth has school."
"I know that. I just needed a couple days away," Kirsten said, and Sandy wondered why he had gone on the defensive. He was trying to make her less angry, not more.
"Take as much time as you need," Sandy suddenly said. "Just as long as you come home." It was silent on Kirsten's end for a moment.
"Seth's in his room playing, do you want me to get him?"
"No, let him play. I'll talk to you later, I love you."
"Okay, goodbye," Kirsten hung up the phone and Sandy realized that it was the first time that she had ended a conversation without repeating back to him that she loved him.
The rest of the day he spent listlessly in front of the television watching some dumb movie, Seth called to say goodnight to him, and Sandy finally went to bed.
It was strange not to have Kirsten in the bed next to him. They had been together now for nine years. Nine years of sleeping next to her. The bed seemed too big. The room was too big. The house was too big.
God. Why hadn't he listened to that little voice who told him to stop antagonizing Kirsten during their argument? She was right, her mother had only been dead a little over two months. Sandy couldn't blame her for not wanting to move back to Berkeley yet. But not moving back to Berkeley was unacceptable. Kirsten had said herself that she didn't want the move to Newport to be permanent. And here they were. Fighting about whether to stay or not.
Sandy knew he should have been the bigger person in the whole thing. Did it really matter where they lived as long as he had her? He did like his job in Chino, even if the commute was a little longer than he had had in Berkeley. And Kirsten seemed to love hers. Would it be fair to ask her to give that up?
But would it be fair to ask him to give up Berkeley? The house that they had bought and loved and were working together on fixing up. Their friends, and Seth's friends.
No matter what, someone was going to have to sacrifice something, and Sandy wasn't sure how it would play out.
He tossed in bed and wondered if Kirsten was having as shitty of a night as he was.
Kirsten had allowed Seth to sleep in her bed with her. Usually she and Sandy tried to dissuade Seth from sleeping in their bed with them, allowing it only if he had nightmares or if it was storming. But she had been the one to ask him if he wanted to sleep in the big bed with Mommy.
"Sure!" Seth had said excitedly, and Kirsten had gotten him ready for bed and grabbed a book for her, and she was sitting up reading, running an absent-minded hand through Seth's hair as he slept. She envied his ability to just fall asleep at the drop of a hat. She knew that she was going to get very little sleep that night. If only she could turn off her brain and stop thinking about Sandy and their fight, and the things that he had said to her.
"The spoiled brat you are."
Kirsten knew that she was admittedly a little spoiled, and that meant that she did expect things to go her way. But couldn't Sandy see how much it would mean to her to be able to stay in Newport? For a little while longer at the very least. She liked her job. She was good at it. Really, really good at it.
Kirsten sighed and leaned her head against the backboard. She had read the same page five times. She placed her bookmark to save her page and slipped down into the covers next to Seth.
She missed her mother.
She missed her husband.
Turning slightly as to not wake up Seth, Kirsten buried her head in her pillow and cried herself to sleep.