Fatherhood

When he and Lex finally had sex again -- two months and two weeks and four days after the baby was born -- it was not a success.

They had gotten married almost four years ago but had been together before that for almost as long. They had gone to the same university but hadn't met until the last half of senior year. In all that time, he had never been with anyone else.

Lex had never been truly beautiful, but she had once had a great body. He was reasonably certain she would never have that body again.

He used to enjoy having sex with her, even though she usually made him do most of the work. He didn't mind. In fact, he preferred it. He was indefatigable -- or at least that's how it had been before. But he wasn't imaginative. That was a problem, or it eventually became a part of the problem. He had liked pulling her hair when he was behind her, but she had cut her hair after the baby was born. The new style suited her, except when it didn't.

Their apartment was already small -- 503 sq ft -- but overnight had become smaller. There was only one bedroom and there wasn't a square inch of floor space for anything else in it, unless they wanted to get rid of their dresser, or their bed. He had cleared his drafting table out from the small breakfast nook he had previously used as a small office. He didn't know what they were going to do once the baby outgrew his Ikea crib.

He had never liked the name Lex had chosen, so he always -- at least in his head -- referred to him as "the baby."

In November they went on their first date night since September. Both of them needed to get out of the house. Both their parents lived too far away, so Lex got a recommendation for a sitter from her new mom's group. The next time she got a different one.

He was an architect. A junior architect, technically. He enjoyed the precision. He liked to design complex structures and then demolish them. The hours were long. When he was on he was on, fully, and when he was off he shut down.

It was not a success because Lex now needed him to be overly gentle. Her breasts were so much larger and fuller but also always tender and sore and had started to discernably lose their shape. Overnight, she had become discernably... flabbier. And now her cunt was too loose. He had tried to find another way to describe this, to himself, but couldn't. It was almost like having sex with a completely different woman, but one he wasn't sure he really wanted to have sex with.

The sitters were all girls, but there weren't a lot of them since money was tight. Lex had taken an additional (unpaid) month of maternity leave, to recover, she said. It was a lot. More dishes, more laundry (they didn't have a dishwasher, or a washing machine). The baby slept well enough once you got him to sleep but getting him there took time and energy neither of them had anymore. He found himself looking forward to these nights off, even if they just went to a movie and sat there, not talking. Lex was always dictating emails on her phone, and even now, even all these years later, he would overhear her sometimes and wonder if she was talking to him.

Each time a new girl was about to show up he would find himself secretly, guiltily, anticipating it. Mostly he was disappointed.

Date nights were now the only nights they had sex, or tried to. She had never called them "date nights" before. He had never really thought about it before but was realizing he might be a breast man.

Eight months passed. One night he was in bed, reviewing schematic designs, when Lex came in and lay down on her side of the bed.

"Can we talk?"

Whenever she said that it meant they were going to talk. He put his binder down.

"I have to go to Seattle," she was saying. The way she said it was like she was leaving him for another man.

"What?"

"For work," she explained.

"Oh. Ok. When?"

"In June -- and no, I don't have the exact dates yet." And then, before he could respond: "But it'll only be for two days. I know it's a lot right now. D'you think you can take any time off?"

"No. I've already used it all up, this year."

"Yeah, I figured." She sighed. Then: "I spoke with Gabby, she said she can help."

"Gabby? Which one's Gabby?" he wanted to know.

"You remember, she sat for us a few times last winter. She was great."

"So what happened?"

"She went back to school. It's in Boston, or something."

"Right." He vaguely remembered. He couldn't precisely recall how many days it had been. He hadn't really thought much of her, at the time. She had seemed pretty enough, she might have even been one of the prettiest -- olive skinned, Mediterranean, maybe Sephardic -- but her light grey sweatshirt and sweatpants were so baggy and shapeless they made her look like a very petite version of the Michelin Tire Man. The way her long brown hair was tied back - these stray strands haphazardly drifting over her forehead -- made him want to adjust it. She used words which he recognized but that for her apparently had different meanings. There was something about this, or her hair, or her eyes' impish expression, that told him she didn't take things seriously. He took everything seriously.

Meanwhile, "she's done this before," Lex was saying. "The family she used to work for used to have her stay with the kids when they went away for the weekend."

He had been in the middle of picking his binder back up when he put it down again. "Wait -- 'stay?' She can't stay here. There's nowhere for her to sleep."

"There's the couch. It's just for one night."

"I thought you said two?"

"Two days, but only one night." She sighed again, but in a way that told him the conversation was, for all intents and purposes, over. It wasn't that he felt anything, one way or the other, about being alone with this girl; it was about being alone with the baby. But he couldn't think of a good way to express this, and even if he could he knew it was no sort of objection.

"What about her school," he said lamely.

Lex snuggled against him, putting the side of her head on his shoulder. Through her new nightgown he could feel her new body. "It's summer break, silly."

---

Her flight left at dawn, so he heard her giving a final download over the phone the night before. As requested, Gabby arrived at the apartment before he left for work. She was eight minutes late. When he opened the door he did not even recognize her, at first. Her cut-off blue jeans had been cut short enough he could see their stitched pockets. It was hard to tell which part her black halter top was showing more, her midriff or her breasts. He stood there, unexpectedly stunned, but with his eyes darting everywhere. Her notched navel squinting back at him sideways.

"It's sweltry," Gabby said with a little acknowledging smile.

It was true -- or it must have been true, since she looked almost dewy. Her flesh was pure olive oil. It was pooled in notches and shadows, her collarbone, her cleavage; it was spread, swelling, in a firm filmy sheen.

He let her in, and offered her coffee, and made sure she had a spare set of keys. Then he went back into the bedroom to change his shirt. He was going to be late. When he returned, Gabby already had the baby in his stroller and was standing beside it, staring off and absently tugging at one of the white ropy strands hanging down from the ripped hem of her shorts, a signaling which could have been either self- or unconscious. When she saw him she stopped and, slinging the diaper bag over her shoulder, began roughly maneuvering the stroller around in the narrow entryway. There were more of her breasts than her midriff, he decided.

"I figured we should, like, do this now," she was saying. "Before it gets, you know, hotter."

"Sure." He held the front door for her and as she walked past she got close enough he could smell her. She stood five foot nothing, but had a body like a whip, or an eel. How had he missed this, before? He wondered, and not for the first time, if he might be starting to lose track of things. The frayed blue waistband was riding low on her hips like a lariat, the sleek curving slope of her belly ensnared but slipping free. Her cell phone had been so tightly shoved into her back pocket he could almost measure every tight side of its rectangle. When he finally looked up, he saw she was glancing back at him as she pushed the stroller down the hallway. "Have a good one," she called back facetiously, and flashing him one last look.

All morning that image of her sauntering away -- impossibly nubile -- obsessed him. Finally, he had to go to the men's room and rub one out, something he had never once done before, at work. When he got back to his desk there were new notifications in the group chat. Lex checking in, Gabby replying with just a video: the baby plopped in the sandbox at the park, flinging fistfuls of sand about, babbling, filthy, indescribably happy. He watched it all the way through, then rewound it and watched it again, as if expecting to find a new glimpse of her. He had never really paid much attention to porn until Lex had gotten pregnant. In his head, he was still picturing Gabby in a belly-dancer costume with her back to him. The sine wave she was making, and what the wave was revealing as it swung side to side. Oscillated.

It got more complex when he got back that evening. She wasn't in motion. She was sitting on the couch breastfeeding -- no, not breastfeeding, obviously, though he had done a literal doubletake -- but with half her halter top pulled down and the baby up on her shoulder, hiding that half of her chest, mostly. The baby was naked and damp and appeared to be sleeping.

"Oh shit," he started, "sorry..."

Gabby eyed him evenly, like when she had caught him before staring at her ass. He made an effort to keep his eyes fixed on her face. He had been so distracted before he hadn't registered that her hair was all out, roughly parted and haphazardly curling around her, that her shiny clear lip gloss was turning her plush lips into mirrors.

"We just had bathtime," her lips were explaining, then giving him that acknowledging smile again, impish, unserious, "and now it's skin to skin time. Lex asked me... but..." here her dark eyebrows knitted "... she didn't say, like, how she does it?"

In his head, he saw Gabby lounging back in the small tub with the baby wriggling over every inch of her gleaming wet body. "She doesn't do it like that..." he managed to say.

As if to confirm this, the baby let out a small, contented coo and turned his face over, burrowing into Gabby's neck. She was supporting his bare bum in the crook of her arm. Even though it was cool in the apartment he felt perceptibly warmer. Then she put down her phone, her expression changing, everything shifting. Brushing her hair back, she dropped her head, looking down at the baby as she nestled him closer. He was still standing in front of them, letting his eyes follow hers, down to the part the baby was still pressing against. He had gotten so big.

"I never really thought I wanted kids," he heard her say. "But I dunno, maybe I do now?"

"I was going to order pizza," he said stupidly.

"Slay." Then: "Could you, like, turn around? I should probably get a diaper on him..."

"Yeah. I've got to change too."

They ate on the couch with the cardboard box between them like a landmine. Gabby wanted sausage and pepperoni, so the pizza had arrived in two perfect half-circles, one plain, one overloaded with meat. He was watching baseball, not paying attention to it. She was working her phone with one hand while she distractedly nibbled at her drooping slice. The baby was on his back in the crib, softly talking to himself in his own baby language. The tense air had incrementally shifted, become sober, maybe even somber. At some point it occurred to him, for the first time all day, that two bodies can exert forces in opposite directions but with similar magnitudes. Up until now he had only been evaluating her impact. But when he had handed her a paper plate, earlier, he had caught her studying him like a math problem she wasn't sure she could solve. When she had gotten up earlier to check on the baby, she had bent so far into the crib that the ripped hem of her shorts had practically disappeared, leaving only a thick vertical denim cord straining between her like it was about to split her in half.

Now, on the couch, Gabby was saying to him. "I told my partner I wanna get pregnant."

"Partner?" This was new information. He wasn't sure how he felt about this information. "What did she say?"

She looked at him like he had suddenly sprouted a second head. Then: "My partner's a boy."

"Right, sorry, I just..."

Her expression was shifting around like she was still trying to figure it out. "You're kind of a weirdo, you know that? Like, what makes you think I'm into girls?"

"So how did your boyfriend take it?" he asked, hoping to change the subject.

"I don't think he knew I was kidding," she said, restlessly. "Well, maybe not kidding, but not now obviously." She went back to her phone. He went back to not watching the game. The baby sounded like he had fallen asleep. He heard Gabby make an irked sound as she tapped at her screen. She had shifted into a cross-legged position, the ragged white ropy strands spilling over her thighs. Her expression, or her eyes, seemed nonplused.

"Check it out." The air shifted again as she reached over the pizza box, showing him her phone. On it was a selfie, from before, but from a different angle. Her face nestling the baby's, both of them facing the camera. Gabby was flashing a fake radiant smile -- everyone had the same smile now -- and propping the baby by his bare bum as he snuggled up on her bare shoulder, his chubby bare arm around her bare bicep, the whole round bare side of her breast bulging firmly against his chubby bare tummy. His mouth had fallen open; he may have been drooling, in his sleep.

"He's so aesthetic," he heard her saying. "I see where he gets it..."

When Lex had been pregnant, someone had told him that you do what the baby does. If the baby wants to have dinner in late afternoon, that's when you eat. If the baby wants to go to sleep after that, you go to bed. He wondered what else he should do. He figured there was at least a 71% chance she was waiting for him to jump her.

But instead, because he couldn't be certain, and he liked to be certain, after he showed her how to unfold the couch, after he had given her a pillow and a blanket and an extra towel, he left her in the living room and went into the bedroom and closed the door. He considered the work he had brought home but knew there was no way he could focus on it now. He considered taking a shower so he could rub another one out, but that would mean walking past her to get to the bathroom, and if he was naked with her on the other side of the door there was no telling what might happen next. Before he met Lex, he had always slept naked. He put on the pajama bottoms she had gotten him for his birthday. When he threw himself face down on the empty bed it was still light out.

---

It wasn't a noise that woke him up, it was a presence. Somehow he had sensed it, in his turbulent sleep. He had sensed it from the moment he had opened the door, that morning. She was standing near the foot of the bed. He briefly wondered if he might still be dreaming. She wasn't wearing a belly-dancer costume. She was wearing the same clothes as before. The bedroom was so small she seemed very close to him. On the other side of the window it had turned into either late dusk or early dawn.

"What's wrong?" he asked her.

"Nothing."

"Where's the baby?"

"He's sleeping. He's fine." Standing there in the semi-darkness, her dark hair all around her, he couldn't read her hooded expression. She looked like a gypsy, or a djinn. Her voice sounded oddly, grimly, determined. "Lex is getting back tomorrow."

"Yeah, I know."

"I need a favor."

"Favor? What kind of favor?" But he already knew. Now he was certain. Even before he woke up, he had been completely erect.

"My partner's cheating on me. I just found out."

"When?" In a way he couldn't work out, it seemed important to know this. "When did you - "

But Gabby was talking over him, "nobody cheats on me," she was saying, and then she was apparently done talking since she was already wriggling out of her shorts, and then pouncing on him like a wolf on a piece of raw meat, using her teeth to help her tear everything off. As soon as his cock sprang free from his pajamas she caught it in her mouth and started devouring it like it was the one that had done something to her, sputtering, seething. Then abruptly pulled off, spat out a long strand of drool, worked it in with her fist. Still holding onto him, she swung over, waggling the tip of his head all around but she was so pent-up, so heedlessly hungry, she began jamming herself onto it, letting loose these low satisfied growls, and as she went on working herself down he could feel her cunt distending like damp rubber, incredibly snug as it snapped around him, into place. He was still groggy, half from sleep, half from lust, so he hadn't been able to sort it out yet. He wasn't sure if it mattered, now, because she had already rubbed herself glossy and moist, found her anchoring stroke, squatting on top of him like a catcher looking for a wild pitch in the dirt, knees out and head down and using his body to brace herself as she scooped it up with her cunt, and then kept on scooping it. The top of her head holding more or less steady but her hair hanging down in a long shivering curtain, and her breasts packed in her halter top bouncing wildly, with tension, with speed. She smelled feral, of dried sweat and new sweat and musky arousal, and like her mouth her cunt seemed to be trying to punish him, and he could feel his cock begin pulsing inside her like it had its own heartbeat. Crouched there, she kept driving herself down, hitching back, driving down again, and again, never once looking up, as if she too had become fascinated at the way his cock kept reappearing, disappearing. It went on like this for a while. It went on for so long -- he was still just lying there, letting her work -- he eventually realized he had lost track of time. He couldn't say exactly what finally stirred him. His head hadn't cleared yet, but the lust had overtaken the grogginess. Maybe he just needed to get his hands on her, finally. Or maybe he was even starting to get a bit bored, the same thing, over and over. Whatever it was, he was suddenly pushing himself up off the bed, and then pushing the rest of his body into hers. When he peeled her top off her sweaty breasts came bounding into his mouth, and he was sucking on them like he was expecting something else to come out of them, and from the way she had begun pushing back at him he knew she wanted to get him back down, like before, but he was bigger and stronger and had decided it was time to do something different. Flinging her off, he scrambled on top of her as she landed on her back, and before she could do anything else he had already jammed a hand between her legs, penetrating her with his ring and middle fingers together, leaving the other two hooked outside, working over her labia, and using the meaty part of his palm to batter her clit. At first she looked irritated, and then she looked lost, but soon -- he was still shaking her whole cunt like it was a can of spray-paint -- he was sensing a new feeling taking over, because her eyes were squeezing shut tighter and tighter as she began vibrating at different frequencies. Hips writhing around, breasts wobbling in tight crazy circles, her whole body whipping about until she threw herself so far back her forehead was pushing into the mattress, the cords in her neck bulging, features contorting as she started to howl like a banshee, and when it came it was like a burst pipe, hot jets squirting everywhere, all over his hand, and his arm, and her legs, and the sheet.