"Don't worry Hun; I will be just fine. Go enjoy your retreat with your friends, I'll hold the fort down." I said to my wife as she stepped out of the front door of our boring two-story white suburban house. She struggled to get out the door as she had two huge designer bags clutched in one hand and the other hand gripping the handle of an overstuffed designer suitcase.
"Are you sure you can handle her? You two have never seen eye to eye on anything ever since she turned fourteen." My wife said with worry-stricken lines creasing her forehead.
"None-sense baby, we will be fine. I'll even bet that you will be shocked when you return after your weekend and find us bonding over a movie or something." I joked, stepping forward and gently kissing her forehead to try and make her feel slightly at ease. She had been looking forward to this trip for months, working overtime at her job to make sure she had extra spending money and getting a complete makeover the previous day so she could look her absolute best. After all that hard work, plus the months of trying to convince her to go on this trip to begin with, I would be damned if I was going to let our brat of a daughter ruin it for her.
"I doubt that babe, but okay just don't push her too hard. I don't want the cops called to our house again." My wife leaned forward and gave me a quick kiss on the lips, her bags and luggage making the normally sweet exchange quite difficult.
I stood in the doorway as she threw her things into the back of her Mazda before climbing into the driver's seat. She fiddled with several things on the dashboard, probably setting up the GPS and her music, before she waved goodbye, backed out of the driveway, and drove off down the street. The smile I had on my face turned to a frown the instant that I knew she could no longer see me in her rearview mirror. I let out a long and exasperated sigh as reality came crashing down on me and hung my head low, knowing that this weekend was going to be hell.
I stepped back inside our house, slamming the front door behind me in frustration and heading straight to the kitchen to make a strong drink. My wife was right, our daughter has become a royal pain in the ass over the last four years. When she was a kid, she was the sweetest and the most loveable person you could ever wish to meet, however, when she began to get into her teenage years that all changed. It seemed like every birthday she made a promise to herself to be more of a bitch to everyone than she was the year before, and God knows that she kept those promises. From yelling and screaming matches with myself and her mom to full-blown fist fights at school with boys, girls, and her teachers. In the three years she spent in high school she had been suspended fifteen times and expelled from her original high school. We had to bail her out of jail twice and take her to urgent care on numerous occasions when someone would finally stand up to her and put her in her place.
Now, before you get yourself worked up. No, I do not wish harm to my daughter, she is my kid, and I would still do anything I can to protect and help her. However, some days I wish I could just reach out and smack some sense into her thick skull and get her to open her eyes and realize what she is doing to the people around her. Alas, that is referred to as assault so I will not be doing that anytime soon. That being said, I would be lying to you if I said that I still had hope and patience for her and her ability to get herself onto the right path once again. It seems the days of my sweet little innocent angel are long gone and now I am left with an angry and violent version of her.
"She'll be home soon, might as well get a buzz going before the inevitable screaming match," I said as I slumped down on the couch with my glass of whiskey, a strong sense of tension in the air surrounding me. It had been a long week at work, almost seventy hours in five days, so I am genuinely looking forward to this weekend even if it is just myself and my daughter home. I cannot remember the last time my wife and I had been apart like this, usually, vacations were spent as a family, but I felt like this would do us some good.
Our daughters' rebellious attitude and violent outbursts have begun to take a toll on our marriage. We have been arguing more often, going days without speaking and even going as far as sleeping in separate rooms when we were unable to come to a solution with each other. I had really begun to hate how much our daughter was driving a wedge between us. I married my wife because I love her to death, and I mean that. I have never found someone who fits with me so perfectly while still pushing me to expand my comforts and grow. I had hoped that our daughter would inherit these qualities from her mother, but that did not happen. So, when I told my wife that she may be surprised to find us bonding when she returned, I was not lying. I had come up with a plan to correct my daughter's horrid behavior or I would be kicking her out by the end of the weekend. All I needed to do was wait for her to get home, which should be any minute now.
A rush of anxiety flooded my entire body when I heard the lock on the front door click and the neglected door hinges cry as the door opened into the house. There was a moment of stillness and silence that enveloped the house, the smell of freshly cut grass wafting in through the open door, before it was shattered by the sound of the solid wooden door slamming shut with enough force to shake the walls of the house. Anger began to replace the anxiety when the sound of dramatic stomping began to approach the living room where I was sitting, my fingers gripping the now empty whiskey glass with enough force to turn my knuckles white. I knew the flurry of swearing and screaming was coming straight for me, but this time I was not going to back down. Today was the worst day she could choose to start an argument. Her mom was not here to stop me from putting an end to her bitchy ways.
"Well look what we have here, Mom's only been gone for a couple hours and you're already into the whiskey. You're fucking pathetic." Marrisa said with a snappy tone as she walked by me, barely even bothering to look at me for longer than a couple seconds. Her black heels clicked on the hardwood floor as she stormed her way into the kitchen, her strong-scented perfume trailing in the air behind her. I watched as she yanked the fridge door open and bent down, her skintight black jeans hugging the curves of her body like they were painted on. However, my blood began to boil when she stood back up holding one of her mom's favorite boxes of chocolate in her hands.
"Please put the chocolates back, you know your mom buys those for herself and only herself." My teeth clenched together as I tried to hide the rage growing in my body, knowing that any anger I showed toward her would escalate the situation rapidly.
She used her left foot to close the fridge door behind her, leaving a deep scratch in the white paint as the pointed part of her heel scraped across it. Her eyes shifted from the open box and looked directly at me, a malicious smile stretching across her face. "But she's not home and you're not man enough to stop me," she said, her eyes burning into my soul as she brought the piece of chocolate to her lips and took a slow and deliberate bite. She chewed slowly, closing her eyes with satisfaction from the delicately sweet taste of the German chocolate.
I stood from the couch with anger prevalent in my eyes and body language. "I said put the fucking chocolate back Marrisa. That means now, not when you fucking please." I snapped, beginning to walk around the coffee table with the full intention of snatching the box from her hands. I know it sounds stupid, all of this over a box of chocolate that is easily replaceable but that is not the point. The fact that she thinks she runs this house, that she can defy her parents and do whatever she wants is what pisses me off the most. She may be eighteen, but she still needs to respect that she shares this home with other people whether we are her parents or not. That means there are rules she has to abide by and if she cannot even manage that then it is time that she finds a place of her own.
Her eyes snapped open in a split second, fire burning around her bright green irises, and set the box of chocolate down on the counter softly but continued to nibble on the piece she still had in her hand. "Or what? Are you going to ground me again? Lock me in my room until I learn my lesson? Or are you going to hit me to teach me a lesson?" She took another slow bite of the chocolate, making a show of how much she was enjoying it as she let out a fake moan-like sound. "These are really good by the way; you should try some." She picked the box back up from the counter and held it out towards me, daring me to join her.