“Do you have your phone, or do you want to use mine?” Angeni asked.
Sitka took out her phone and started taking photos.
That night, Angeni, Erik, and Freya nestled together in the family bed—Angeni in the middle, the baby on her right side, Erik on her left. She’d decided that having the baby between them was too risky. Erik could roll on top of her. He was a typical man when it came to sleep—it took him approximately thirty seconds to fall into a deep slumber, and nothing short of a significant earthquake would wake him.
Angeni considered mothers to be like the orca whales that swam the waters around their island. They could selectively shut off one hemisphere of their brains to sleep, while the other hemisphere was awake and propelling their bodies through the ocean. The people who condemned co-sleeping were idiots. Mothers and babies had been sleeping together, body to body, since the beginning of time. It wasn’t dangerous—it was natural, beautiful. She would never roll on top of Freya, never suffocate her. It just wasn’t possible. Part of her maternal brain was always on watch.
Freya finished feeding from Angeni’s right breast, so Angeni rolled on her side to offer the left breast. As she did, Erik rolled, too, spooning her body with his own. He kissed her neck, her earlobe. She used to love when he kissed her earlobes. It always awakened desire, sent a pulse of energy down her body. Now, though, it felt strange and unwelcome, as if he were kissing some completely unerogenous area—her nostrils, her eyelids. She shrugged a shoulder up toward her ear so it came in contact with his face, nudging him away.
“I miss you,” he whispered.
“I know,” she said.
Instead of leaning back into him, just a bit, she leaned forward into their daughter, stroking Freya’s head as she suckled. As long as Freya was feeding, Angeni had reason to keep her husband at bay.
He wasn’t taking the hint, though. He moved closer to her again, and this time, she could feel his erection at her back. It was embarrassing how men’s needs were so obvious, soout there. It was infuriating that they felt no shame while women suppressed their every urge and desire in a never-ending quest to be seen as decent and good.
He kissed her neck, and she couldn’t help but laugh. It tickled.
“You’re laughing at me. That’s not a good sign,” he said. He sounded sad, but she could feel his lips part in a smile against her neck.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Do you miss me?” he asked.
It had been a while since they’d been intimate. How long exactly, she didn’t know. A month? Two? Whenever the last time was, it had been in the wee hours of the morning and obligatory. She was trying to be the woman she showed to the world—a woman who respected her husband’s masculinity, who encouraged him to be his full self. But the truth was that his full self was a burden. She didn’t have any parts of herself left to give. It wasn’t fair to him, but it wasn’t fair to her either.
“I’ve just been so busy with Freya and—”
He shushed her lovingly and kissed her neck again.
“You’re such a wonderful mother,” he said.
This was his version of foreplay now. Or a version he was trying out for her benefit.
“Sitka took some beautiful photos of us today—Freya and me,” Angeni said.
He kept kissing her neck. “Oh yeah?”
“We were both naked.”
“You and Sitka?”
She laughed, reached over her shoulder to playfully hit him in the head.
“Me and Freya.”
“Oh, I was gonna say.”
“I’ll post them tomorrow, the photos.”
“I can’t wait.”
“Did you want them to be of me and Sitka?” she asked, laughing to signal that she was joking, though she did wonder. Sitka was objectively gorgeous.
“I’d much prefer you and Freya, babe,” he said. “I can’t wait to see them.”
Freya pulled off Angeni’s nipple and tipped onto her back, eyes closed, sleeping. There was no real reason Angeni could not tend to her husband now.
