Part One

Part One of a short story I am working on.....

The light shattered the darkness. Henry had flipped on the light, leaving his wife, Julie, to groggily reach around to find a pillow to smother her face.
Julie mumbled something unintelligible and Henry ignored her. He was upset and tromped through the room, rummaging around to find clean clothes.
"How many times has she said she would clean this room?" he wondered to himself. He spied his camo shorts that were peeking out from the suitcase laying on the bedroom floor - that had been there for 2 months. He couldn't even get to his guitars because of the mountain of clothes littering the floor on their room.
Henry kicked the bed, planning on lying to his wife that it was an accident. Instead of Julie's incessant nagging, she jumped up, startled, and ran to the bathroom. Her aging body had not quite gone as gracefully as she had hoped. After relieving herself, she washed her hands, stared at herself in the mirror, and began molding her body into forms where they used to be. All those years of denial finally catching up with her. Her crows feet were etched like so many cracks on an elephant's leg. Not to mention that her breasts had begun sagging in her mid 20's and now they were torpedoes when she bent over naked.
Henry walked in, catching her mid-mold and rolled his eyes. He took his aging better than she had - making peace with his middle aged physique and wished Julie would just deal with it and move on. Julie was waving her arms, as if waving for a pageant and grasping at the swinging fat of her underarms. She sighed, took one final look at her plump figure, and retreated back to the warmth and comfort of the bed.
Henry snorted out of derision as he watched Julie snuggle back into bed.
"Gotta go," Henry informed her.
She halfheartedly sat up, aimed for his lips and mainly kissed his chin. Henry patted her head and left the room. He packed his own lunch; something Julie used to do all the time. He checked the temperature of the house, seeing it was to his wife's liking and his fingers twitched. Henry contemplated changing the thermostat, so the temperature of the house would be uncomfortable enough to drag Julie out of bed to check what was wrong. He fingertip grazed the knob where it paused for a moment and then retreated back to his pocket.
"Nah," he thought to himself, "I don't want to run up another bill that she will forget to pay."
With that, he gathered up his belongings and left for his 14 hour work day, leaving Julie to sleep until noon.