Second Thoughts
Fiction
The Quotable Magazine

It’s not until the fourth or fifth time that I finally realize something’s wrong.

I walk through our front door and am immediately greeted by green walls. “Mint,” my wife says, knowing I wouldn’t identify the correct shade on my own. The walls had been blue when I left that morning. And lilac and grey and beige before that.

“What do you think?” she asks, kissing me on the cheek and beaming as her eyes bounce from me to her new project and back again. Maybe this is it, I think. She looks happy; maybe this is the last time.

“I love it,” I say. “It’s the best one yet, for sure.” I smile wide with my teeth to hide the fact that I’d say anything at this point to get her to stop. She smiles back.

“Oh, thank God!” she says. “I was worried you’d hate it. But I think it’ll go great with those yellow chairs.”

“Definitely. And now we can finally put all our frames up.”

By now she’s shuffling me over to the table where dinner is waiting. She dishes veggies onto my plate as she tells me about her trip to the hardware store in search of the perfect color to drench our new apartment in. I laugh when it’s appropriate, smile and nod and feign shock, but my eyes keep darting toward the very impressive pyramid of paint cans taking up residence on our balcony. One, two, three, four, I count. Five. Five cans of paint. Five different colors in just a week.

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