Better on our own - English

Dubious dealings

Attention, at the end they talk about the intention to commit suicide. If you can't handle it, you should stop reading soon enough. Everyone else I hope will enjoy it.

I had hesitantly entered the house last evening and sent Cody ahead because I was pretty sure Penny wouldn't shoot at him at least if she was still mad at all the men in the world.

She had been rather amused by my reticence and although she had teased me quite a bit about it, in the end she had revealed that the bang had not come from the gun we had heard, but from Davies, who was driving alongside her and had talked to her constantly to get her to forgive him or at least get on board. He was so careless that he drove straight into a wall on a curve.

She had something completely different in mind with the rifle, but she didn't tell me what it was, just said that I should be surprised.

Other than that, we actually got the house emptied - except for the furniture, which we were keeping and, according to Sarah, would be beautiful thanks to her uncle's upgrade - she definitely had more imagination than me when it came to that, but I decided to trust her more as when she first have had trust in me with the house.

Today I was able to pick up the floor grinding machine at the hardware store and tried it out straight away. Sarah had attempted the stairs with Mandy's help, armed with an angle grinder and sandpaper. We wanted to get everything messed up first before we started any fine work.

However, the girls were no longer in the mood by lunchtime, which meant that I would probably have to do the lower half of the stairs myself in the next few days.

The two ladies then preferred to tear down the wallpaper in the room that would become our bedroom. Well, it had to be done and I really didn't feel like fiddling around with what felt like a thousand scraps that had to be scraped off the wall and were still stuck after the old wallpaper was torn off.

I had given up sanding the floor in that room anyway. I made my first attempt there and completely ruined the floor because I didn't have a feeling for the grinding machine yet and so I created a huge, 2 centimeter deep hole in the wooden floor.

Sarah had quickly sent me downstairs with the device, laughing and saying that the rooms up here would be much more comfortable if we put carpet in them anyway. That's what I for once call a compromise that I would happily accept!

I was exhausted when we went home from the construction site and I looked like a wooden man from all the sanding. I decided to go to Bella's restaurant for something to eat and then straight to bed. Sarah had happily agreed to my plan, happy at the prospect of being able to enjoy a quiet evening. So I drove Mandy and her home and took a shower myself. What I didn't know was that Penny had just run a bath and stole most of the hot water from me. So halfway through my shower I had the pleasure of taking it cold. Well at least I was awake afterwards and certainly wasn't in danger of falling asleep at the wheel on the drive to Newtown.

Sarah and I were already sitting in the restaurant, having just started eating, while she was still showing me ideas for the interior design of various rooms on her cell phone that she had found on the Internet. Sam was actually right. Sarah was really into this modern country house style and as skeptical as I had been, when I looked at the pictures I had to admit that it looked damn cozy.

"Jason!" said a man who was passing us, half surprised and half confused, before he sat down at the table next to us. It was an exclamation that made you look over involuntarily, whether you wanted to or not - and I immediately choked on my cola. "Why so sad and alone on a Saturday evening? Things aren't going well with your loved one right now?", noted the man grinning as he sat down next to the mayor, who had just drank half a glass of beer in one go and looked rather grumpy.