Heidi drops slowly to her knees in a move she hopes looks seductive but, judging by the click in her netball-ravaged patellas, probably looks anything but. She grabs him, Joe’s whole body tensing for an instant, and puts him in her mouth. His eyes roll back.
This is nice, she thinks or – more accurately – wills herself to believe. It has been a while. Probably not that long given their age (thirty) and marital status (not married, no kids), but enough to confirm her suspicion they’re drifting apart – something she thought would never happen, what with their bond forged from a relationship spanning the tail-end of high school (including two terror-inducing pregnancy scares), a gap year-and-a-half (in which they’d been exposed to the animal odours of their respective exotic virus-induced bowel movements) and this – the final stage before the inevitable home loan, wedding rings and children – honing their domestic routines in a tiny rented apartment and progressing their burgeoning careers, hers as a marketing coordinator for the state’s foremost art gallery, and his as a junior project officer for a small yet well-respected construction company on the outskirts of the city.
They settle into a rhythm, Joe thrusting slightly and Heidi offering opposing force, when he spots the new-ish smart watch on her slender wrist. He tries to push it from his mind – her recent obsession with habit and fitness, both a reminder of their still-a-while-off-but-definitely-there-on-the-horizon middle-age, and his own lack of discipline – but the sleek foreign gadget’s proximity to their naked, intimate act unsettles him in a way he can’t explain. Has she reached her steps goal today? It’s now the barometer of her mood.
“Come here,” he says, and she winces while rising to the bed where he waits on his back.
As she straddles him, his gaze moves from her face to her chest, a habit that strikes her as guilelessly adolescent. What must this be like, his pleasure inextricable from the visual? She remembers the unclosed tab she found in his phone last week, featuring a compilation of a dozen or so women, their smiles poor facsimiles of pleasure, receiving their partner’s hand-delivered orgasms to their faces.
He props himself up on his elbows and she knows from the way his lower jaw juts out that he’s close to coming, which is good, because she’s started bingeing a new series starring Kate Winslet – who’s knocking it out of the park – as a washed-up small-town detective. She tries to remember the last time he truly made her body quake, his mop of sandy hair between her thighs, but can only vaguely conjure the sensation. He can feel the boredom radiating from her, knows he should broach the subject, find a way to fix it, but he fears the conversation would be a harbinger of something painful. Terminal perhaps.
His eyes meet hers. They stay that way for a few seconds, which feels to him somehow more intense, more lewd, than anything they’ve done in years, before he looks away and concentrates on the wet ‘o’ of her mouth. They’ve talked about taking “the next step” in their relationship – the fact it can take years to get pregnant, so it might be worth possibly starting to “try” soon – but they haven’t yet formalised this decision, thrown caution to the wind. He considers swapping positions and finishing on her belly, but he’s too close now, and all he can think about is release.
He closes his eyes. Heidi, noticing this, wonders what he’s doing to her (or someone else entirely) in his mind, before she looks to see whether the remote is on his bedside table or hers. Joe, whose fleeting thoughts of fatherhood have staved off climax for a few more seconds, recalls an image of them, near sleep on the futon of a tatami hotel room in Tokyo (or maybe it was Kyoto?) after a serene day of walking and conversations with no destination in mind, her head on his bare chest, TV on low, the fading smell of sex, him wondering if could ever get any better. Joe comes. The image disappears.
Months later, they’ll try to recall this moment of their daughter’s conception. Try to imagine what they could’ve done differently. But the handful of nights and that one hungover morning blends into a compilation of lust and boredom, the only difference being what show was streaming in the background. What they will remember is the way, the moment after Joe finished, they both found themselves asking: who truly is this person? Is this all there is? And what would it take to start anew?
Joe’s groan fades to a breathy sigh. Heidi dismounts from his body, slicked with sweat, and places her foot on the floorboards. The single step elicits a celebratory buzz from her watch and, with it, a belated wave of pleasure in her chest.
