“Based on what?” she asked, clearly getting annoyed. “Location? Resources? Salary? Teaching load? How do you want me to weigh these things?”

I let my head fall back against the wall with a soft thunk. “Jesus Christ, Hanna. It’s like you are pathologically unable to approach this decision. You weigh them with me, one bit at a time.”

“It’s just complicated, Will. This isn’t a simple process. There are about a million factors at work here.”

“Are you really going to patronize me right now?” I growled, pushing off the wall again to pace the apartment. “I know what schools you’re visiting when you leave the house, and you generally tell me the specifics of your interview schedule when you get home, but do I get even a single opinion afterward? No! So yes, I realize it’s a complicated process, but you don’t seem to.”

“Maybe I’m just trying to remain open-minded.”

“Fuck open-minded!” I yelled. “Be open-minded when you’re doing the interview. Inside this marriage, tell me all the tiny gripes and fears and hopes. I don’t need the whitewashed version. I want the big and small, the ugly and the awesome. Right now, I know what questions you were asked in your job talks, how big your lab would be, what your start-up funds would be. But I don’t have a single clue what you like. And you haven’t asked me once where I would like to live, what I would like to do. I would follow you anywhere, Hanna. But I want to do so as your partner.”

She went very quiet, and for a few beats I wondered if she actually had the gall to hang up on me. But then I heard a tiny hiccup and realized she was crying.

“I’m not trying to be selfish,” she said. “You know that, right?”

“Of course I do,” I told her, softening. “But, look, you have to process this with me, as a unit. Your desire to remain open-minded means that you’re not letting yourself fall in love with any one place. And your inability to express a preference—no matter how preliminary—is making it totally fucking impossible for me to get engaged in this process.” I heard her blow her nose in the background. “And now, your unwillingness to deal with any sort of confrontation is going from naïve to thoughtless. I didn’t like the way you used to avoid dealing with things—it nearly ended us before we even began—and I really hate it now.”

She sniffed. “I just want to get off the phone.”

My heart stuttered. “Hanna. Come on.”

“You’re making me feel like a child. I’ll see you Friday night.”

The phone clicked and nothing but silence carried through the line. She’d hung up. I’d yelled at her, and she’d hung up. Well done, Will.