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Rebecca has had a fucking awful day.
After somehow forgetting to set her alarm the night before and waking up over an hour later than usual, everything went downhill from there. Her tardy start meant she ended up playing catch-up for the whole day, desperately rushing important meetings with stakeholders and missing lunch to get through her hundreds of emails. To top it off, she’d managed to spill scalding coffee over her white blouse and, with no spare change of clothes in the office, just had to rock the stained look for the rest of the day.
Not to mention the absence of Ted, who is currently spending a week visiting Henry back in the States, means there had been no Biscuits with the Boss to ease her stress after a hectic morning.
The afternoon had gone from bad to worse when she’d learnt that Colin tore his hamstring in training and will likely miss the beginning of the new season. Then, when Rebecca was just about to head home and knock back a large glass of wine, an urgent email came through from the finance officer – some numbers don’t add up and HMRC are going to ask some very difficult questions if it doesn’t get sorted immediately.
Cue multiple frantic phone calls to work out where the problem lay, Rebecca’s stress levels skyrocketing with each call terminating with no one any the wiser.
Two hours later and finally, finally, one of the admins had spotted the error on a mistyped form that’d been submitted three weeks prior, and everyone can breathe easy again.
Exhausted, Rebecca heads home just after nine o’ clock, hoping that she can fall into bed as soon as she walks through the door.
Only, when her driver pulls up outside her home, she sees the lights are on inside. Frowning, she thanks Eustace and steps out of the car, wearily walking to her doorstep and turning the key in the lock. A waft of freshly baked biscuits invades her nostrils and Rebecca could almost cry in relief when she sees Ted, adorned in her pink Cath Kidston apron, appearing from the kitchen with a wide smile on his face.
“Surprise!” Ted cries, opening his arms. Rebecca doesn’t need telling twice as she falls into them, breathing in his familiar scent. Ted hadn’t been due back for another three days, but Rebecca’s not going to wonder how he somehow managed to book earlier flights from beneath her nose.
“You cunning bastard,” she says, voice muffled from burying her face so deeply into his shoulder. She feels him huff with laughter beneath her.
“I couldn’t resist, just to see that joy on your face. Did ya miss me?”
Rebecca tightens her arms around him. “Like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Aw, you’re makin’ me blush.”
They pull away and Rebecca presses a long, wistful kiss to his lips, relishing the moment after a week without him. She always finds it hard when Ted goes away, the house feels too empty, too quiet without him. Sometimes the silence wants to make her scream, the loneliness a bleak reminder of her life directly after her divorce. She knows it’s only temporary, that Ted will always return to her, but even the temporary distance puts her in a dark, unshifting mood that won’t lift until he’s back in her arms.
“Mm,” Ted hums as he pulls back and peppers her nose and cheeks with a few additional kisses, “you’re home late, by the way. Dinner’s in the oven, just needs heating up.”
There’s a dull ache in her stomach that she’s been ignoring for the better half of the day. She realises she hasn’t had a bite to eat today, her morning too rushed for breakfast, paired with skipping lunch is making her feel a bit faint.
“Oh, thank fuck. I’m starving.”
Over their meal, Rebecca learns that Ted’s already heard about the predicament with Colin from Beard, and his unwavering optimism doesn’t even falter as he discusses the potential in a few of the benched players who could take Colin’s place for the start of the season.
She chooses not to tell him about how awful the rest of her day had been, not wanting to spoil the lovely moment, instead just chewing quietly on her food and nodding in all the right places.
After dinner, Ted offers to wash up while she takes a long shower to unwind. Even though Ted has spent the whole day travelling, she’s too tired to protest. Instead, she sends him a grateful smile and heads upstairs, turning on the shower to full power until it’s almost scalding hot.
She stands under the heavy stream of water for a long time, pressing her forehead against the cool bathroom tiles and letting the water wash away the stress of the day. After a while, the tension in her body starts to dissipate, leaving her tired and exhausted and ready for bed.
By the time Rebecca reappears in the bedroom, wearing her cosiest pyjamas, hair still dripping wet, Ted is folding down the sheets and plumping up the pillows.
“There you are,” he says brightly, “thought you were never coming out.”
Ted gets dressed into his own pyjamas and they both clamber under the duvet. Rebecca groans in appreciation as she sinks into the mattress, cushioning her aching joints. She lies on her side, facing Ted, who is looking at her with such adoration that it makes her heart flutter.
“I’ve missed you so darn much,” he whispers, leaning in and kissing her.
Shuffling closer, Ted cups her cheek with his hand and deepens the kiss. His fingers move down to her shoulders and graze her arms and she shivers beneath his touch. It’s customary for them to enjoy a night of passion on Ted’s return, the distance usually making her wanton and eager for his touch, but tonight Rebecca’s heart isn’t really into it. She kisses him back, but her usual spark of lustful energy isn’t there.
Ted pulls away, a look of confusion in his eyes. “Hey, you okay?” he asks, his fingers now tracing light circles on her back.
Rebecca’s heart stutters and she nods quickly. “Yes, I’m fine. Just a bit tired, that’s all.” She goes in for another kiss, attempting to rile herself with a bit more enthusiasm to prevent any further questioning. Her fingers tug at the hem of Ted’s shirt but he stops her with gentle hands. She pulls back from the kiss, frowning.
There’s an odd look in Ted’s eye, one that she can’t put her finger on.
“What is it?” she asks, “Do you not want to…?”
“Sure I do,” Ted says, and Rebecca thinks he can see a flicker of hurt in his expression. A knot in her stomach starts to form as she frantically tries to think of what she’s done wrong. Seeing her panic, Ted abates it with a kiss to her forehead. “But I don’t think you want to tonight, do you?”
Fuck. Rebecca could kick herself. She’s usually so good at pretending, a trait that she thinks many women have probably perfected by her age. It had always been easy to fake interest with Rupert – on the rare occasions that he even looked at her for permission, she’d simply batted her eyelashes with a coy smile and moan in the right places when he did the deed.
In the later years of their marriage, when the times Rebecca hadn’t been in the mood had been more frequent than not, she’d tried telling him as such. He’d scoffed and promised she’d have a good time, coaxing her clothes from her skin and turning her over so that her face was buried into her pillow. Of course, it'd always been a lie — Rupert had never bothered pleasing her during sex, fucking her until his inevitable yet anti-climatic release and collapsing into bed immediately after. Rebecca used to curl onto her side, listening to Rupert’s loud snores whilst she lay sore and aching.
“I’m sorry,” Rebecca eventually utters, and she feels wrong-footed, unsure of how to gauge his reaction and only wanting to wipe the raw hurt from his face. She knows he’s not Rupert, but there’s still doubt in her mind that he’ll be disappointed, and the guilt is already eating away at her. “I do want this.”
There it is, the cloud of disappointment in his expression.
He pulls away from her and Rebecca’s heart thumps so loudly in her chest that she can barely hear herself think. Ted is sitting up now, resting his back against the headboard.
“Rebecca,” he says, voice careful and controlled, his accent sounding thicker than usual, “you gotta tell me when you don’t want sex. You don’t have to do something just ‘cos I want it.”
“I didn’t…” Rebecca doesn’t know what sort of excuse she’s even trying to say. She props herself up as well, unable to look at him as an embarrassed flush rises to her cheeks. She’s a fool.
“Sex ain’t just about me getting off, is it?” Ted asks, and Rebecca knows a rhetorical question when she’s given one. “It’s meant to be about showing how much we love each other, am I right?”
“Yes,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper, feeling like a child being scolded.
“Yeah.” Ted reaches out and takes her hand, making her startle. “I don’t expect our libidos to perfectly align, darling, we ain’t no spring chicken anymore.”
Rebecca laughs, although it comes out wet. Perhaps it’s the rising stress of the day that’s starting to take its toll, or the bone weary tiredness that makes every part of her body ache, but her laugh morphs more into a sob and suddenly she’s crying and she can’t stop. She covers her mouth to abate the blubbering, but with each breath she takes she only gets louder.
“Hey, now. C’mere.”
Ted gathers her up in his arms and she’s weeping into his chest, a damp patch blooming on his shirt.
“I don’t know why I’m crying,” Rebecca wheezes, voice raw.
He hushes her, pressing a firm kiss to her crown. “It ain’t right,” he says finally, “Pretending to want it to keep a guy happy. You know that, right?”
“It’s easier sometimes,” she says honestly.
“Why?”
Rebecca isn’t sure if Ted is just being naïve or whether she’s the one who's been played a fool.
“It’s easier to pretend than to get into an argument.”
His grip tightens on her. It’s unspoken that they’re talking about Rupert here, and yet Rebecca can’t bring herself to say his name. She's lost count of all the times he’d made it seem like she’d been the bitch for not wanting sex. At some point, Rebecca got tired of feigning a headache, tired of the hurtful quips and the way he’d made her feel guilty for not seeing to his needs, and so she made the choice to make her life easier by simply letting him do what he wanted to her.
In the end, it'd all been for nothing anyway. It hadn't saved their marriage.
When the multiple affairs came to light years later, he’d had the gall to blame her lack of interest for turning to other women, that he’d had needs, don’t you see? Even now, Rebecca thinks back on that moment and feels somewhat responsible for the breakdown in their marriage, and deep down it terrifies her that the same thing will happen with Ted. Granted, she knows Ted would never cheat, and that Rupert was an utter bastard, but that doesn’t abate her baseless fear that he could leave one day if she doesn’t see to his desires.
She hears him sigh. “Oh, darling.” He kisses her forehead, the bristles of his moustache tickling her skin. “You never need to pretend with me, okay? I'm not him.”
Rebecca nods, idly wondering if her marriage with Rupert broke something inside of her, that it rewired her brain and Ted's now been dealt the short straw of trying to unscramble it.
They lie together in quiet contemplation, until Rebecca’s tears dry up and she’s left with just a sniffly nose and reddened eyes. If anything, the crying has made her even more tired than before. Her eyelids feel heavy, barely able to stay open as she is lulled by the steady thumping of Ted’s heartbeat beneath her.
“Are we okay?” Rebecca asks with a scratchy throat, feeling foolish to even worry.
“’Course we are,” Ted’s voice rumbles, “I ain’t going nowhere, you hear me? No more pretending or I’m gonna go Oklahoma on your ass.”
Rebecca smiles. “Duly noted.”
With a final kiss into her hair, Ted switches off the bedside lamp and returns to wrapping his arms around her. Feeling sufficiently cocooned, Rebecca nestles against his chest, finally feeling relaxed for the first time in a week. They stay in their embrace for the rest of the night and, in the morning, Rebecca wakes to a perfectly-made mug of steaming tea and a pink box of biscuits on her bedside.
Today will be a better day, she thinks to herself as she takes a bite of the shortbread, and it feels an awful lot like home.