Nobody's smiling

                                    

                                          
2 days later...
                          
Gillis woke up to the sound of his wife yelling over the phone to someone in Portuguese while trying to force her feet into her peach stilettos. She was crouched in front of the dresser with her phone in between her ear and her shoulder and her left hand pressing against the wardrobe to keep her balanced.  
                          
"NO! NO! NO!" She yelled as she tucked her white top into her forest green skirt. 
                          
He sat up and watched her. He had noticed that she ever since her last trip to and back from Brazil she was always on the phone and she hardly ever stayed at home. She would go to work and return the next morning or she would just stay back at the office. 
                          
"Arghhh!" She growled throwing her phone into her bag. 
                          
"Good morning to you too," he said with a deep sleepy voice, startling her.
                          
She turned sharply to him as she wore her pearl earrings and necklace and smiled, "Hey," she grabbed a light brown coat from the wardrobe and said, "Did I wake you up?" 
                          
"Absolutely not," he said, "I could barely hear you talk." 
                          
She laughed at the sarcasm in his tone as she grabbed some files from her vanity table, "Aren't you going to work?" 
                          
"No," he said.
                          
"Okay, I gotta go. Bye," she said walking away. 
                          
As she slammed the door, he rose up to his feet. 
                          
While Jesica was always flying in and out of the house, he on the other hand was at home all day lazing about. His excuse being the fact that he couldn't summon the courage to face his colleagues. 
                          
I mean, what would he say? Sorry? Or that they should be strong? Or that such is life and they should just move on? 
                          
He had no words and for now cowardice was the best he could offer them. 
                          
He took a quick shower, went down to the kitchen and made himself a hot chocolate drink and walked back up to the study. He grabbed a sketch pad, some pencils and a few coloring items. Today, unlike other days, he was going to put himself to good use. 
                          
However after spending three hours staring down at the sketchpad, the HB pencil in his right hand hovering over the sketchpad casting a faint shadow on the paper, no idea was forthcoming.
He tried it three more times and achieved nothing so, he decided to go watch television but that too wasn't working for him.
                          
As he stood up from the couch, his eyes landed on a framed photo of Jessica in the parlor. It was an old photo of her on her convocation day, dressed in a black and yellow graduation gown and surrounded by her parents and siblings, all smiling broadly especially since she graduated as the schools valedictorian.
She looked so cute and lively and in his mind, he compared the lady in the photo to the women in his room earlier today fighting with her heels while yelling over the phone in Portuguese. They seemed like two different people and that made him genuinely smile.
                          
Then it hit him that best thing, he could do this time was really put a smile on his wife's face. 
                          
He rushed over to the kitchen, he grabbed a sheet of paper from the kitchen drawers and a pen. 
Then he scribbled down on the paper, 'OPERATION PROPERLY WELCOME HOME MY WIFE.' Now, he knew Terrence would have jeered at him and thrown tomatoes at him for the rather long and weird name of the exercise but he wasn't going to let that deter him.