Jenny
The day before school starts
The house had unravelled with summer. Sundresses, shorts, beach towels, thongs and goggles were strewn across furniture in each of their bedrooms. A game of Exploding Kittens lay dormant on the kitchen table, Monopoly on the lounge-room rug. Chance cards had fanned into a gradient, and money piles had blurred into nests. Christmas-cracker landfill collected on the sideboard, its usefulness in a sort of probation, while outside, bathers drying on the line had been pulled off and flung straight back on, having skipped the washing process for epochs now.
The O’Donnell family had hosted a trail of countless barbecue guests on a conveyor belt, along with the necessary menus: vegetarian sausages, gluten-free burgers, vegan patties. The salad of perpetuity was simply bolstered with another can of chickpeas or a new bag of rocket. Bedtimes had been erased, and the night before they’d found Val asleep with the lights on, hugging his football, and Charlotte with a book on her face.
Jenny and Angus fell into each other at night, waking with glasses of undrunk wine next to them (Angus had finally given up suggesting that they have a night off the wine, thank god). They’d reawakened a morning sex pattern, too. That morning when the sun pierced their shutter blades, they rediscovered the point of kissing. Softly, slowly, in a gear change, re-emerging in the touch of each other. She wanted him to relax. Wanted his full attention. She pressed herself into him as though squeezing into a memory of them before kids. He was hard in seconds.
Angus slipped out of the bedroom. When he returned, he edged the chair against the door. ‘It’s Bluey time,’ he said with raised eyebrows, as he crept back into bed. This meant that the kids were occupied.
She was single-minded. She pulled off his boxers and used her lips to bring him close. Then, on top, she had his complete focus. She came first, then…
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