Payment

Brandon ran his fingers back through his hair, head supported by his elbows on the table, his eyes shut tight as he tried to will the headache away so he could think. It had been a stressful enough month as it was, and he did not need the pounding in his brain as he was trying to focus to make it any worse. It had been three weeks since he had been fired, and two weeks since his last paycheck. He had been searching tirelessly for a new job, but all of that effort did nothing to pay the dues, and his landlord didn't care about what Brandon was trying to do - he was just concerned about getting his rent payment. 

But his savings could only last for so long. He knew he could get by for a while on what he had saved away, but he had saved that money with the goal of being able to get his own house one day, and it had taken him a lot longer to build those savings than it would take to burn through them. There were a lot of things that he wanted to be able to do, and a lot of those things required money. On top of that, he had no way of knowing how long it would be until he had a job again. It didn't really matter how many applications he put out if he didn't get hired, after all. And there was no guarantee his pay at whatever place took him in would be as high as his last job.

He needed to figure out where he could cut his spending without losing too much. Eating out less often was an obvious one, but he'd never been much of a cook, and any food he didn't get around to using before it expired was effectively trashed cash. He could try to walk or bike places more often in order to cut down gas money, but there were only so many places he could reasonably reach that way, and he'd definitely still need to drive in order to get groceries. 

As he was thinking about it all, he felt a hand rest on his back, and he glanced up to see his wife, Rachel, standing over him with a soft smile on her face. He hadn't even heard her enter the room. "Still stressing over bills, sweetie?" she asked. "You know I still have a job, right?"

Brandon sighed, but couldn't help the small smile that crept onto his lips. Rachel just made him feel better by being around. "Of course I haven't," he replied. "But I don't expect you to carry all the financial weight on your shoulders. Nor do I want you to. And if I don't get a new job soon, we'll have to push back things even more. How long are we going to live in an apartment?"

Rachel shrugged with a hum. "As long as we have to, I suspect."

"That's not really a good answer."

Rachel chuckled and shook her head. "No," she said, "I suppose it's not. But it's the only answer I have for you." There was a pause between them for a moment, before Rachel smiled mischeviously, making Brandon lift an eyebrow. "I didn't marry you to share a house with you, you know."

Brandon couldn't help but chuckle at that. "Then what did you marry me for?"

Rachel hummed, playfully rolling her eyes to look away from her husband. "There was something else I wanted to share with you..."

"Oh? Like what?"

Rachel glanced back at him with a grin. "A bed."