It wasn’t perfect, of course. Even though it was mid-year break, we were still wildly overworked. Sadie was still profoundly sad about her sister. Despite everything that had changed, we were still ourselves, and thus still had our arguments.
‘No!’ Sadie exclaimed, as we were going through the first round of peer review revisions on our old-married-couple article. ‘Absolutely not, Fisher. Do you want the journal to actually accept this article? Have you forgotten how badly we need these research points? We can’t just handwave away that query like that!’
But now we had a powerful new strategy for working through our disagreements. ‘I’m sorry for yelling,’ she purred later, unbuckling my belt, pushing me down in my desk chair and then going to her knees in front of me. ‘Reviewer 2 is the problem, not you.’
I didn’t subscribe to the idea that men hadneeds, sexually speaking. That was just something they said to excuse cheating ontheir partners. I had gone long stretches of time before with only my work and my hand as companions and I’d survived just fine.
If it were true, though, and there had been even the remotest chance of my eyes wandering, it would have been completely obliterated. Sadie looked after me and my needs like I was some prize vegetable she was growing in her garden.48
We were having so much sex.So muchsex.
It didn’t take us long to christen every room in our apartment.49Given it was mid-year break, we were already spending most of our time working from home, but we cut our campus time down to the absolute bare minimum, taking the Zoom option for meetings whenever we could. ‘Oh God, this is – oh! – so unprofessional,’ Sadie gasped into a pile of notes as I took her from behind, bent over her desk. ‘I’m supposed to dial into a love studies research network meeting in four minutes.’
‘Do you want me to stop?’
‘Don’t you fucking dare,’ she panted. ‘Maybe hurry up, though? Julia always – ah! – starts on time, and I need at least – oh God, there, there, there, that’s it, that’s so good – sixty seconds to fix my hair.’
I reached around and stroked her clit. She screamed into her notes. I got her to the meeting with a topknot that was only slightly listing, a love bite blooming on the side of her neck, and about ten seconds to spare.
Thursday nights, when we looked after the kids, were the hardest. Neither of us were particularly quiet in bed,50which should havemade us restrain ourselves, but we had fifteen years to catch up on – and just in case that stat about how couples had more sex in the first year of their marriage than in the rest of it combined was accurate, we needed to get our numbers up if we were going to balance out our late start.51
‘Did you know Uncle Jonah and Auntie Sadie like playing games?’ Georgia announced one night, when we were having dinner at Fiona’s.
‘Really, Georgie-girl?’ Fi said, cutting up some of her lasagne for her. ‘What games did you play?’
I was already beetroot-red. The blush was swiftly rushing towards Sadie’s face too. ‘Fi—’ I started.
‘We played Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza,’ Rosie said. ‘I won!’
‘Not that game!’ Georgia said. ‘They play games with each other. I had a bad dream the other night and I went into their room and Uncle Jonah was tied up because he was losing.’
I wanted the floor to open up and swallow us whole.
‘Poor Uncle Jonah.’ Fi was visibly shaking with how hard she was trying not to laugh. ‘Good for Auntie Sadie, though.’
Sadie’s blush deepened. My desire to fall into the molten heart of the earth intensified.
‘Does Daddy like to play games too?’ Rosie asked. ‘I heard Madison’s mum say that he played games with you.’
‘Different kinds of games, Rosie-girl,’ Fi said. ‘Eat your dinner.’ Lex snorted derisively. Fiona shot them a half-warning, half-pleading look. For a moment, the lines of exhaustion were carved deep on her face.
So yes, things weren’t perfect. Not even close.
But they were still better than they had ever been.
We’d had vague intentions to head into campus for the pre-Semester Two faculty town hall, feeling like it might be a chance to connect with some of the colleagues we still only barely knew. However, on the morning of the meeting, Sadie had made the complex and convoluted case that we could simply not do that (The school meeting next week is mandatory in-person. Why should everyone be blessed with our presence attwolong boring meetings?she’d said, an argument that would have been thoroughly convincing even if she wasn’t wearing one of my cardigans and nothing else), and so we sat curled together on the couch, her laptop on the coffee table, a slide with the Lyons University logo andthis meeting will commence shortlyon the screen.
I teased Sadie’s earlobe between my teeth. She made a satisfied sound, deep in her throat.
‘The video and audio are definitely off, right?’ I murmured. We were both fully clothed now, in a gesture towards professionalism, but we were also well aware that this meeting was probably going to be stultifyingly dull and that there were far better things we could be doing with our precious time.
‘Mm-hmm,’ Sadie said. ‘I checked. Four times.’
I slid my nose against her cheek. ‘I’ve always admired your rigour.’
I was making a solid start on demonstrating my admiration when the dean’s executive assistant popped up on the screen and introduced the dean, who called the meeting to order. ‘Here are the agenda items for today’s town hall,’ he announced.
I had my face nuzzled into Sadie’s neck, but she stiffened. ‘Shit, Jonah.’ She tapped me on the knee. ‘The last item. Look.’
