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The Space Between,
The Choice Given

The day I died started with a conversation …

“We really are in the red, aren’twe?”

I was so negative that day. My wife and I were going over our budget, and I was begrudgingly scooping cereal into my mouth before heading out. My two-year-old son, James, was sitting at the table watching his tablet and eating a banana. He loved bananas in the morning. It’s great considering how affordable they were. Our three-month-old girl, Jane, was in her child seat staring up at me. She was stunning. Her big blue eyes look at me calmly, and I grinned despite mymood.

“Babe, I’m trying to have a serious conversationhere.”

Ah, right. The topic at hand. Money. My wife, Keely, stared at me waiting for a response. She was wearing a perplexed face, but even so, she was beautiful. We were both thirty, but she looked much younger. Not a day over nineteen. She slid me a cup of coffee as if to say, “you are clearly notawake.”

As an out-of-work digital artist, it had been over a year since my last job. At one point I tried my hand as an MMA fighter, but as I started a fight camp, Keeley told me she was pregnant. I had a bad premonition about continuing that path and abandoned thatpursuit.

I just kept working side jobs, but as of late, it’s my full-time work. I had not earned a degree or even followed a stable path, and the results of my lazy choices were starting to show. Iwas on a roll for a while with digital art. Riding a wave so to speak. But being an artist was like surfing. You can easily land back on the beach. We were now in a situation no one wanted to be in at thirty. We had two kids we were funding by running out of s