Layla thought they were on their way to have a late lunch the day Liam dragged her to the open house in a newly constructed, gated neighborhood that was all the rage. They were still living in their loft, and the suburbs had been beckoning for some time, especially for Liam. She’d be lying if she said she didn’t long for a yard and to not share walls with other homeowners, but they could afford the loft, and buying a house would bring all kinds of additional costs along with a higher monthly payment. They’d have to buy lawn-care equipment and a snowblower and Liam would undoubtedly want to landscape the yard and finish the basement. They had watched their friends do these things and they’d listened to them brag about how it was all so horribly expensive but totally worth it in the end.
Layla might not have argued about going to the open house, but she was only going through the motions. She declined the fact sheet the Realtor offered her, and she followed Liam silently from room to room, showing little enthusiasm.
“Look at these cabinets,” Liam said in the expansive gourmet kitchen, opening and closing them like he was a game-show host enticing the contestants about what was up for grabs.
“They look pretty solid,” she said.
“This island is massive,” he said. “I bet you could get seven stools around it.”
“Probably.”
“Layla, you’ve got to see this,” Liam yelled. She had fallen behind as the Realtor described the features of the home for a rapt Liam. She caught up with them in the sprawling living room in the back of the house, with soaring twenty-foot ceilings and a whole wall of windows looking out onto a golf course.
Liam loved to golf.
Liam made all kinds of deals on the golf course.
Ten bucks said he was going to claim that this house would practically pay for itself.
“Isn’t it gorgeous?” the Realtor asked.
“How often do golf balls hit the windows?” Layla asked, and it must have been the wrong answer to the question, because Liam looked disappointed.
“Not very often,” the Realtor said.
* * *
She and Liam finally made it to lunch. He studied the fact sheet as the waitress took their orders. “The basement is plumbed for a wet bar,” he said. “We could also put another bedroom down there.”
“I don’t even want to know what the payment would be on a house like that,” Layla said.
“You didn’t like it?” he asked, and he looked at Layla like the possibility of that flabbergasted him.
“I didn’t say that. It’s a beautiful house, but I can’t imagine we could afford it.”
“We can. I’ve already run the numbers.”
“You’ve already run the numbers?”
“That’s what I just said.”
“I would need to see those numbers,” she said.
The waitress appeared and set down their meals. Liam picked up his fork and stabbed at his pasta. “It feels like you’re trying to tell me what I can and can’t spend my money on,” he said, his voice growing more frustrated with each word.
“I work too, Liam.”
“I never said you didn’t.” She saw the look on his face—fleeting—but she saw it. It was the look that said, Yes, you work, but we both know I’m the real breadwinner.
You could leave him, she thought. You really could.
Things had been calm for a good long stretch by then, and Layla didn’t have the energy to rock the boat. She told herself that all marriages had land mines—the topics you avoided because you didn’t want to spoil what was otherwise a drama-free afternoon: the borderline alcoholic who was loving and gregarious as long as you kept the bar tab open but didn’t let them get too wasted, or the obsessive flirt who rode the line between acceptable and nonacceptable a smidge too hard at the neighborhood block party.
“We’ve got a ton of equity in the loft. I’ll get the financing in place. I’ll show you exactly how we can afford it.”
Instead of arguing, she took a bite of her sandwich, because Liam was going to do exactly what he wanted, anyway.
In the weeks that followed, somewhere off in the periphery, she knew that Liam had talked to a mortgage broker and that he’d asked the Realtor to write up an offer. She had run the numbers herself and, technically, they could afford the payment. But it would strain their budget, and the payment was not something Layla could carry on her own if it ever came to that. Soon, paperwork would be forthcoming, and just the thought of the battle that would likely ensue if she were to draw her line in the sand made Layla’s temples throb.
Liam came to the dinner table a few nights later looking like someone had taken the wind out of his sails. “What’s wrong?” Layla asked.
“Nothing,” he said. They ate in silence for a few minutes and then he said, “The mortgage company wants us to put more money down. Twenty grand more.”
Layla knew exactly how much they had in their savings account, and forty-two hundred wasn’t going to cut it. “I’m sorry,” she said, although it certainly wasn’t her fault.
He looked so utterly forlorn that Layla could feel his pain. “Now would be a good time to tell me about that winning lottery ticket you were waiting to surprise me with.” He mustered a sad smile despite the crushing defeat he wasn’t at all accustomed to.
She thought of the yearly monetary gifts she received from her parents and how hard they’d worked their entire lives as she looked down at her plate instead of at Liam. “No lottery ticket,” she said, and the issue of whether they could afford the house suddenly evaporated, leaving Layla feeling as light as Liam was heavy.
And then a week later the universe rubbed salt in his wound and Liam lost his job.
A company merged with the one Liam worked for, and in the space of twenty-four hours he found himself out on his ass along with ten other sales reps. Liam had become a pro at job-hopping for a better opportunity, but this was the first time he’d been on the other side of it, and he ranted endlessly about the horrible company that had had the audacity to let him go.
Layla took the news in stride. This was why she never stopped giving those music lessons. This was why she would never leave her job. This was exactly why she didn’t want to buy that big beautiful house.
Liam spent the first few days of his unemployment moping around the house in his bathrobe with his coffee cup in the morning and a glass of whiskey in the evening. He locked himself in the spare bedroom that they used for his home office, and Layla could hear him on the phone talking to headhunters. Commiserating with his former coworkers.