Monday morning. The soreness is there when I wake - interior, a tenderness that locates itself when I move. I lie there for a moment taking stock of it, and then I get up.

Downstairs Emily is at the sink, her back to me. She turns when she hears me and her face has something in it - a careful stillness, the effort of someone holding their expression steady over something else. The coffee is already made. She pours me a cup without speaking and then turns back to the sink and grips the edge of it with both hands and breathes slowly through her nose.

I set the cup down. "How bad."

"Not bad." A pause. "Manageable."

I look around the kitchen for something useful and land on the crackers in the cabinet, the plain ones, and put them on the counter beside her without saying anything. She looks at them for a moment and then takes one.

I take the ibuprofen from the drawer and shake two into my palm and swallow them dry and pour my coffee and we stand in the kitchen together, she with her cracker and I with my coffee, both of us dealing with our respective problems in silence. The morning light comes through the window over the sink. She exhales slowly and her grip on the edge of the counter loosens.

---

The Aldermere email arrives at ten. Sarah would like to schedule a call to discuss renewal terms. Thursday at two if available.

I forward it to Linda without comment. She appears at the cubicle entrance thirty seconds later.

"Thursday at two," she says.

"Thursday at two," I say.

She goes back to her desk. I sit with it for a moment - not renewed yet, not committed, but the relationship refreshed, the cycle beginning again. The deck did what it needed to do. Now comes the part where you show up and let the terms emerge.

I open the renewal framework and start building the Thursday prep.

---

Tuesday. The gym with Mark. Chest and back - bench press, rows, cable work, the upper body unchanged and reliable, the weight exactly where it should be. Mark spots me on the bench and counts the reps and says almost nothing and it's the best forty minutes of the week.

In the car after he says: "You seem better."

"Yeah," I say.

"Whatever it was," he says, "looks like it passed."

"Yeah. I think so."

He nods. That's the end of it.

---

Emily brings it up Tuesday night, matter-of-fact, the way she brings up things she's been thinking about for a while before she says them.

"Before the weekend," she says. "There's a place on Merchant Street."

I look at her.

"You don't have to," she says. "But I think it would be good to go in with options."

I think about the hotel. About Friday. About the weekend opening up in front of us like something neither of us has navigated before.

"Okay," I say.

She's sitting with a glass of water, not wine - she's been off wine since Jenny's, quietly, without making a point of it. I notice the water glass. I think about what her body is doing right now, the reorganization of it, what she's managing alongside everything else.

"Okay," I say, and she nods and goes back to her book.

---

Wednesday after work. The place on Merchant Street has a sign I don't let myself look at too long and a door that jingles when I push it open. Inside it's cleaner than I expected - organized, well-lit, the merchandise arranged with a retail logic I can follow. A woman at the register glances up. Mid-forties, unhurried.

I move toward the back of the store with the focused purposefulness of someone who knows what they're looking for, which I don't entirely, but the alternative is standing in the entrance looking lost.

The wall is comprehensive. I stand in front of it and take stock.

She appears beside me without rushing. "Help you find something?"

"Maybe," I say. "Harness situation."

She looks at me - a brief professional assessment, not unkind. "You fitting the harness or your partner?"

"Me."

She nods and moves along the wall with the efficiency of someone who has answered this question many times. She pulls a box and shows me the back - an adjustable harness, gender-neutral diagram, clear sizing instructions. "This one fits a range of builds. The O-ring is interchangeable so you're not locked into one size."

I look at it. "Okay."

"First time with this kind of thing?"

"Yeah."

She nods. "Standard dildo to start. You can add complexity later once you know what works." She pauses, considering me. "Though - depending on your situation - you might want to think about a double-ended now rather than coming back for it."

I look at her.

"For simultaneous use," she says. "Internal end for you, external for your partner. Some people find it changes the dynamic considerably." She moves two sections over and shows me something smaller than I expected - a curved shape with a flared base, the material with a slight give when she flexes it. "Shorter internal end so it's comfortable during use. Flexible enough to move with you."

I take it and try to think about it practically.

"Save yourself a second trip," she says.

"I'll take both," I say. "And lube."

"Water-based with silicone toys."

"Okay."

She leads me to the lube and I pick one and we go to the register and she rings it up with the same practiced efficiency she'd use for anything else. She puts everything in a plain black bag.

Then she slides a card across the counter. Small, cream-colored. Trans-friendly fitting service - by appointment.

I look at it.

"In case the harness sits wrong," she says. "Depending on build, sometimes the hip straps need adjustment. We do fittings."

I open my mouth.

"You'd be surprised," she says, before I can say anything. "It's a common thing." She taps the card once and goes back to her register.

---

The drive home. The bag on the passenger seat. I think about the card, the tap of her finger on the counter, the incuriosity of someone who has seen this before and made a professional practice of not making it a thing.

You'd be surprised.

I pull into the driveway and sit for a moment, then take the bag inside and put it in the bedroom closet and go make dinner.

Emily comes home at seven. She's been sick again today, I can tell from the careful way she takes her coat off, the way she doesn't ask what's for dinner. I made plain rice and roasted chicken, nothing heavy, the same reasoning she used when she made toast for me the first morning I had cramps. She looks at the plate when I set it down and something in her face relaxes slightly.

She glances toward the bedroom. I nod once. She takes a forkful of rice.

---

Thursday morning. Linda appears at my cubicle at eight-thirty with the prep folder annotated in the margins - the renewal terms flagged, three points Sarah is likely to push on underlined, one concession circled in red.

"The CPM on the branded content," she says. "Give her that one. It costs less than she thinks and it makes her feel like she won something."

"I know," I say.

"I know you know. Say it back to her like you're conceding. Don't make it easy."

She starts to go and I say: "Linda."

She turns.

"Thank you," I say. Just that.

She looks at me for a moment. "You're doing fine," she says. Then she goes.

---

The Thursday call runs forty-five minutes. Sarah pushes on the branded content CPM in the twenty-third minute exactly as Linda predicted. I give it to her the way Linda suggested - considered reluctance, a pause, a concession framed as partnership. Sarah accepts it without pressing further.

By the end the tone has shifted into next steps - timelines, deliverables, a follow-up call in two weeks to finalize terms. Not signed. Not committed. But the relationship refreshed, the account breathing again.

I end the call and sit back.

Linda appears in the cubicle entrance. She reads my face.

"Two weeks," I say.

"Two weeks is fine," she says. "Two weeks means yes."

---

Thursday evening. The gym without Mark - core and stretching, the week's accumulated desk posture needing to be undone. I forgot my sweatpants, they're in the wash. The workout shorts will have to do.

I know within ten minutes that the shorts are wrong. Not dramatically - just the fit, the way they fall, the silhouette from behind. I keep my back to the room where I can and face the mirror when I can't and work through the routine with the focused attention of someone who would like to be invisible.

The looks come anyway. Not many. Just the occasional glance that lingers a half-beat too long. I note them and keep moving.

I'm on my way to the stretching area when I notice a woman at the decline press bench - mid-forties, someone I've seen here before without ever speaking to. She's attempting a set alone, no spotter, and on the third rep her left arm starts to wobble. I move over and get my hands under the bar without being asked and she racks it.

"Thanks," she says, slightly breathless.

"You want help with a couple of sets?"

She looks at me. "If you don't mind."

I take position behind the bench. She goes again - better with the spot, the bar path cleaner, though the left shoulder is clearly the limiting factor. I call the reps and she racks after eight.

"Advertising," she says, between sets, apropos of nothing obvious. Then: "I recognize you from the IAB conference last year. I work at Meridian."

Small world. "Mike," I say.

"Kim." She settles back for the second set. "Small industry."

"Yeah."

She does the set. I count. She racks and sits up and reaches for her water bottle. We're doing the calculation people in adjacent companies do - useful to know, not useful right now, file for later.

On the third set I'm standing over her, her head between my feet, the bar at the bottom of the movement, and I'm watching the left arm when I become aware of the angle. From where she is at the bottom of the decline, looking up, the gap between the hem of my shorts and my inner thigh is directly in her sightline. The boxer briefs flat against the crotch, no visible bulge, the fabric lying against the skin the way it lies. She's at the bottom of a rep and then she's at the top and I watch her face and she racks the bar and her expression doesn't change, but there's a half-second where it would have if she were going to let it.

She towels off her face. "Good spot."

"Anytime."

I move to the stretching area and get my mat and start on the hip flexors. A few minutes later I'm aware of eyes from across the room - that half-beat too long - and I tug at the hem of the shorts without thinking about it, trying to get another inch of coverage that isn't there.

From across the room Kim picks up her bag to go to the locker room. She's not looking at me. But she was a moment ago. She gives me a brief nod on the way out, the kind that doesn't require anything back.

I lie on my mat and look at the ceiling for a moment.

Then I get up and change and drive home.

Emily is already in bed when I get in, lights off, her back to the door. I undress quietly and get in beside her and she shifts toward me in her sleep and I put my arm around her and lie there in the dark.

Her body is warm against mine. I think about what it's doing, what it's been doing since before either of us knew - the cells dividing in the dark the way bodies do things, without asking, without waiting for anyone to be ready. I put my hand flat against her abdomen, gently, not pressing.

She stirs. "You're back."

"Yeah."

She puts her hand over mine and goes back to sleep.

---

Friday. Half day. I close the laptop at noon and tell Dave I'm out until Monday.

He looks up from his spreadsheet. "Renewal's close."

"It's close," I say.

"Good trip," he says. Back to the spreadsheet.

I pick up my bag and walk out into the Friday afternoon. The spring air warm now, genuinely warm, the city doing its Friday thing. Emily is meeting me at the hotel at two.

I walk slowly and don't think about anything in particular and the afternoon opens up in front of me like something I haven't had in a long time.

---

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