How do you rekindle the flame in a relationship?
The eighteenth wedding anniversary of Nell and Daniel is approaching, and the cracks that have always existed are beginning to widen... and yet once upon a time, their relationship was a magical, erot...
Daniel could feel his heart in his mouth by this point, the bulk of it blocking his throat and pulsing through his head. He couldn't bear to look at Nell, terrified of what he might see there.
Revulsion? Horror? Worse, pity?
He should not have proposed to her.
Someone hammered on a door in the corridor outside the room, yelling at the occupant to get a move on if they were to make the gig at King Tut's on time. The door banged open and shut and the two people walked away, debating the merits of the grunge band they were going to see.
He sat on the mussed up bed, the one in which Nell had just spent half an hour teasing the most intense orgasm from him, wishing he could relive the previous five minutes. There would be no way to salvage the situation if she said no.
"But I'm twenty," Nell pointed. "And you're only twenty-two." She knelt, balancing on her heels, and rested her hands on his knees. "And we live in the 1990s, not the 1890s. Even my grandmother was older than I am now when she married."
Relief surged through his body. She hadn't said no.
He placed his hands on tops of hers, marvelling at how his engulfed them as he always did. "That'll make us a bit cool then. Not doin' what everyone else does. And you always say about me, that I know what I want and I dinnae like wasting time."
"Yes. You're very single-minded."
He wasn't sure if she meant it as a compliment or not.
"Aren't you supposed to live together before you get married?" she asked, her brow furrowed. The subject was a tricky one. Trish, Daniel's ultra-religious catholic mother, considered sex before marriage to be a mortal sin. Daniel's excuse for staying out all night—sleeping at Joe's house because Joe lived closer to Daniel's Hyndland shop—tickled her no end.
Trish had been welcoming and polite when Daniel first introduced her to his mother, but she had made her views clear from the outset, taking Nell to one side later that evening and adding that she expected Nell's views to differ because of her student lifestyle, but she would be extremely disappointed if Nell led her son astray...
"What if we move in together and find out the other person has terrible habits we hate?" she continued. "But by then, we're married and it's too late."
"I already know all your bad habits," he replied, as he squeezed her hands. The conversation may not have gone as planned, but a small smile played on Nell's lips.
The kind of smile a person might give if they were seriously considering a proposal.
"And you know mine," he continued, "I'm a workaholic who doesn't know any big words, so I can't have intellectual conversations with you like you do with your student mates. And you fart like fuck."
"Danny!" Her mouth widened in outrage. "I do not!"
Giggling, she wrenched her hands from his, launching herself at him and pummelling his chest as they fell back against the wall.
She clambered on top of him, bare flesh under the silk slip rubbing against his stomach and pinned his hands over his head. His cock stirred once more. "Take that back at once!"
"Only if you say yes!"
"Are you attempting to blackmail me into marrying you?"
"Aye!"
She wriggled down, freeing one of his hands so she could undo his jeans. He shoved them down and pushed into her, arching his back and closing his eyes, lost in the sensation of her grinding against his hips.
"You." Pants punctuated his words. "Squeeze your legs together more tightly. Ahhh, keep going... Do. Not Fart. Like Fuck. Will you... marry me?"
"Yes, yes, YES!"
The practicalities of getting married before saving enough money to put down a deposit on a house only dawned on a few days later, when he admitted that if he and Nell married in the spring of the following year, they would need to live with his parents until they had saved enough money.
"Honestly, it'll be fine, Nell," he said as he snuggled up against her. "My bedroom is bigger than this room and my mum and dad spend a lot of time out of the house—Mum's at church and church groups, Dad's in the pub or at the football, and my brothers and sister are at school or sports clubs."
An argument broke out in the communal kitchen, with one student accusing another of stealing. Who had stolen their milk and returned the empty container to the fridge?
"Living with my mum and dad will be much quieter than this place," he said as she chewed her bottom lip.
"Promise me it won't be long, though," she replied, and he nodded against her shoulder. The familiar contours of her body aligned with the bits of his and he drifted off to sleep, unaware that the prospect of living with Trish and Jack and Daniel's three younger brothers and sisters had nearly sent Nell racing off in the opposite direction.
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