His son has his eyes, he thinks fondly as he watches the kid's yellow eyes that are so full of life and looked like a setting sun. Corbin also has his hair, short curly hair that was growing into a short afro, and brown skin. He's only 6 years old now and his wife Sophie always tells him that he is the spitting image of him.
Elliot is happy looking at his kid, his kid looks just like him. He's happy, but at the same time he isn't, looking at Corbin was like a constant reminder that he really is locked in for life.
But he can keep up appearances, he rubs on his head as he listens to the boy giggle and tickles his stomach.
"He just finished eating, so make sure he doesn't get sick, cause he's eaten his load for the day." A sharp warning came from the side, watching carefully with dark scrutinizing eyes.
Elliot watches her in slight annoyance, and another part in fading intrigue. Most of the time, his wife is level-headed. She never used to scream or snap at him too often. But ever since Corbin was born, she's been so... tiresome.
A little cough was let out, Corbin had caught the fever but he fought it off quickly a few days ago.
Elliot sigh's.
"Corbin," she was at the edge of the stairs with her hand out at her side motioning for him to grab a hold of it. "Let's get you to bed."
"Awh..." Corbin whined but he quickly stumbled up on his feet and ran to grab a hold of his mother's hand.
"Good night Dad..."
"Good night bud," Elliot says as he cartoonishly waves him off. He then thinks of what he remembers his friend telling him when he told her that his kid is sick. "Oh, and Sophie, make sure he's not too bundled up in blankets. Ava says—"
"I don't care what Ava says!" She spins on him and spat out, Elliot realizes that he made another mistake by bringing up a name that isn't allowed in this household. He wants to correct himself and the rampage has started. "I'm Corbin's mother. Not Ava!"
He holds up his arms in surrender while keeping a smile on his face and keeping the reaction of his son's in his periphery.
"Okay. Calm down! My mistake."
Her eyes narrow and she looks like she is about to say something but Corbin clenched her hand a little tighter which seemed to relax her so she decided against it. Elliot sighs in relief. He watches her as she storms up the stairs into Corbin's room. He doesn't plan on following.
He doesn't really know what to do in situations like that, he never had a dad but he and his mother never had arguments like what he and his wife have. And sadly, his mother isn't here to offer any guidance.
All he does know is that it isn't a good thing for Corbin to constantly have to hear and witness. The kid is already finding his own ways to stop it or remove himself from the situation.
He sits on the couch.
Corbin shouldn't grow up in an environment where his parents are constantly at each other's throats. And Elliot feels he doesn't deserve the ridicule and scrutiny that he ends up receiving. He sometimes wishes he never got married to her, he wishes he didn't get her pregnant. He wishes...
He stops thinking. He gets angry when he thinks too much.
'It was my fault anyway. I already know how she feels about Ava. I shouldn't have brought her up.'
He hasn't hung out with her in a long time now. He's only seen her in passing, it stings. Another surge of bitterness passes through him.
It all came from his wife.
Elliot wishes he saw the signs before. She was alone and miserable. She had no contact with her parents and forbade Elliot from searching, which he could do anyway, or even visiting if he came upon them.
Elliot wanted for Ava, his long-time childhood friend and now midwife, to be the one to deliver his baby. He had prepared everything. But when his wife found out, she threw a fit and then plates at him.
She ended up leaving him and renting a hotel for herself for days.
When Corbin was born it was only the two of them, more than that, Elliot didn't even tell his friends, he just let the news trickle down the grapevine.
Supposedly though, his wife did have friends, back where she was from in France. Elliot hears her speaking to them sometimes, he doesn't understand what they say nor does he care too.
"I left them for you!" she would scream whenever he would bring up some news about one of his old friends, or events they had invited them too where they could all meet up. "I'm here all by myself, locked in this house, with nobody and you don't even care."
Bullshit.
Of course he cares. He wants her to have more friends. He encourages it. He wants her out of the house for more than just a Pilates class. He wants her to be friends with his friends.
Ava was like a sister to him and he had envisioned her and his wife being best friends, doing girly things, going to her classes with her, allowing their children to play together and doing other girly stuff.
Although, from what some of his other friends would say, his guy friends. It was never meant to be a thing. Wives and female best friends. They weren't something that meshed well.
When he tried introducing her to his other friends' wives, they would come back home and she would have something bad to say about them.
"The blonde one's a whore."
"The short one is way too small to be eating the way she does."
"The tall one acts like she's still in middle school with all her sexual jokes."
Her opinions on his friends didn't end just at the women. And it just kept on going and Elliot lost his temper with her, and that was because she would say it unprovoked and loudly with the intention of them hearing it.
She'd cry, and he would calm down. It didn't take him too long to realize that this was her way of winning their fights.
She didn't like anyone. Elliot had come to that conclusion. She claimed she didn't want to be alone but she didn't want to make the effort of finding kinship with others. She was comfortable in her toxic bubble.
There was nothing he could do about that, so he just let it pass.