The Summer of Our Discontent.

It's our wedding anniversary, and all I've got are leftovers, a six-pack of beer, and a date with my Netflix account.

This is for Hadley Hemingway. Because it's her birthday and because I love her. HH, you're amazing. A kindred spirit and a wonderful friend. I love you heaps.

The final bell rings and thirty pairs of eyes stay fixed on me. No one moves to stand, though I can see a couple of feet jiggling as the more energetic kids try to hang on to their self-restraint. I clearly haven't done a good job of keeping a lid on my foul mood and they're all wary of incurring my wrath.

"You may go." And it's like I've fired a starter's gun, as thirty fourteen-year-olds leap to their feet and rush for the door. They shove at each other, laughing and whooping, as they squeeze their way through the three foot gateway to their freedom.

"Take it easy, guys," I say. The last thing I need is to have to write up an Incident Report because someone's smashed their head into the door jamb.

I wipe down the already clean whiteboard, then gather up my markers and laptop. I loosen my tie on my way back to the staffroom.

"Have a good summer," Angela says.

"You, too." I grab my bag and my keys, check the fridge to make sure I haven't left any Tupperware behind, and then I'm out of there.

Summer holidays.

As soon as I get into the car, I pull off my tie and toss it onto the backseat. Six weeks without that noose around my neck.

It takes me three goes to get my piece of shit Barina to start. The radiator gauge thingie starts edging towards the red as soon as I pull out onto the main road, so I have to crank the heating to get it to cool down. No idea why that works, but it does. It should get me home without the fucking car conking out on me, anyway.

Sweat drips down my back. My shirt is absolutely soaked within minutes. I wind down the window and rest my forearm on the sill. The sun is scorching.

"Piece of shit." The car lurches beneath me. "Sorry, sorry." I wipe my wrist across my sweaty forehead. I need to get out of these clothes. I need a shower. I need a new fucking car.

Light glints off the ring on my left hand and I blow out a bitter breath. I also need to spend some time with my wife. It's been close to a month since we've had a conversation, even longer since we made love. I miss her.

We knew when we first got together that it was going to be hard work. She was doing her internship and the hours they expect student doctors to keep are fucking insane. It was hard, but what relationship isn't? So we made it work. We figured that once she finished her residency, we'd be past the worst.

But she's on the MRANZCOG track now, and the load hasn't seemed to lighten. When she's not working, she's studying, and when she's not studying, she's unconscious. For the last three weeks, all I've seen of her is that mass of tangled curls strewn across her pillow when my alarm goes off of a morning.

It's bullshit.

And today's our anniversary, which means I'm feeling particularly bitter about it all. I haven't bought her flowers or made us reservations in a five star hotel. I haven't even booked dinner and a show. Bella's working nights for three more days, so all I've got are leftovers, a six-pack of beer, and a date with my Netflix account.

The sky is blue. Cloudless. It's the kind of afternoon you're supposed to spend on the beach. There's not a breath of wind to rustle the eucalypts lining the road. The ocean would be flat, almost glassy, and the same colour as the sky. I contemplate blowing straight past our house. There's probably a pair of boardshorts in the back of the car. And if there's not… Well, I wear boxers.

But then I turn into our street and my pulse speeds. The blue Corolla is in our driveway. Bella's home.

Did I get the dates confused? No, she was definitely working until the 22nd. I remember thinking that it only gave us three days to get all our Christmas shopping done—unless I did it all online. Which I did, because Bella has about thirty-five cousins under the age of sixteen and it was either give them all iTunes vouchers or get organised.

Maybe she lied.

Maybe she did remember the date, and telling me she had to work was some kind of ruse.

I park behind her, wind the window up, and pretty much throw myself out of the car. I'm imagining black lace and red lipstick. Or two packed suitcases standing by the door. I'm imagining three days on the beach, Bella bikini-clad and smiling. "I can't believe you did this," I'll say. "I thought you forgot." And she'll kiss me and whisper, "How could I?"

I unlock the front door. No suitcases.

Bella's handbag is on the floor beside her joggers, which have her dirty socks tucked inside them.

A stay-cation would be awesome, too. Three days with the doors locked and no clothes allowed. Definitely an appropriate way to spend our anniversary.

"Bella?"

No answer.

Maybe I'm supposed to find her. A treasure hunt. I adjust myself with a groan, anticipating skin and lace and Bella's brown eyes sparking with lust.

I make a racket as I walk through the house, treading heavily and tapping my fingers against the walls as I check all the places I know I won't find her. The kitchen, the laundry. Her study, the living room. Her scrubs are on the bathroom floor. I pick them up and toss them into the hamper. My sweat-soaked shirt follows them in.

She must be in our bedroom.

I hesitate, my hand on the doorknob. My stomach is tied up in knots.

And then it bottoms out. My fantasies fall to the floor and shatter.

Because Bella is in our bed. In black, lacy underwear.

Crying.

Or she has been, anyway. Her cheeks are wet and her eyes look swollen. Her nose is a shiny red.

My eyes close and it feels like I'm swallowing the shards of my broken fantasies.

I drop to my knees. "Baby."

She opens her eyes but says nothing. She looks past me.

"Baby, what's happened?"

Working in obstetrics, most of Bella's days are good ones. Watching a woman do the toughest work she'll ever do, then seeing her face as her new baby is placed on her chest. She says it never gets old.

But the bad days… They're excruciating. Miscarriages and premature labour, stillbirths, haemorrhages. Custody battles that start the moment the child takes a breath. Domestic violence situations.

A million different possibilities whirl through my mind. "Bella, talk to me. Please. Did something…" I swallow. "Did something happen?"

She sniffles and finally looks up at me. "I got sent home." Her voice is a croak. "Nothing happened."

I'm missing something.

Strands of hair are stuck to Bella's face. I lift them away and tuck them behind her ears. "Baby, I don't understand. Can you tell me what's going on?"

She rolls onto her back and stares at the ceiling as she speaks. "I got sent home. I'm on stress leave for the next two weeks, and I have to have a psych. evaluation before I go back."

"Fucking hell." And she expects me to believe nothing has happened? You don't get sent on stress leave for no fucking reason. "Is this some bullshit, cover their arses situation? Did someone– Are you being sexually harassed?" With nothing to go on, I'm grasping at straws.

Bella shakes her head, a tiny frown creasing her forehead. "No."

I put my hand on her cheek and she complies with my silent request. She looks at me.

"Baby, I'm about this close–" I hold up my hand, finger and thumb an inch apart "–to losing my shit and calling McCarty to find out what the fuck is going on. I need you to talk to me, okay?" I have to work to soften my voice. "Whatever it is, I'm here and I've got your back. But I need you to tell me what's happened."

Bella is silent for so long that I start to think she's not going to answer. My knee bounces as I try to stay calm, and I feel a spurt of sympathy for some of the boys in my Year 9 class. Waiting sucks.

"I think…" She chokes on a sob. "I think I'm going to quit. I can't do this. I'm not cut out for it. The hours. The pressure. Never having a moment to just sit down by myself." She looks at me. "Never getting a moment with you."

If you listen to Bella's parents, they'll tell you that Bella has wanted to be an obstetrician since she was seven years old. (Apparently, she used to convince her sister, Jessica, to shove her dolls up her dress so that Bella could practice delivering them.) She's been busting her arse in pursuit of her goal for over twenty years. And now, with a little over four years until she summits that mountain, she's telling me she can't do it? It's just not computing.

I smooth the sheet over her shoulder and lick my lips. "I don't understand." I'm frustrated. And suddenly really tired. I want to crawl under the covers beside her and check out for a few hours.

Bella brings a hand to her temple. "I'm sorry."

Her broken apology pierces through the tornado of emotion swirling inside me. "Bella…"

"I just…" She starts slowly, but her explanation gathers speed to the point it's really hard work keeping up with her. "I had a bit of breakdown, I guess. I mean, one minute I'm doing a ventouse delivery, and the next I'm in the break room, crying my eyes out. I don't know. I guess everything just came crashing down on me. I'm not getting enough sleep and I'm not eating properly. The few hours I'm not at the hospital, I'm trying to study. And most of the time it feels like nothing is sinking in anyway. I haven't seen you for weeks. Did you know that? Weeks." There's a hysterical edge to her voice and fresh tears are slipping down her cheeks. "So what's the point? What's the point of working this hard if it means I literally don't have a single second to stop and just enjoy life? I yank a baby out of some poor woman's vagina, dump it on her, and then I have to bolt because I'm being paged to do an emergency C-section. And I just… Rose and Newton found me on the floor, and I guess I was a bit hysterical. And some dumb fuck somehow left a fucking scalpel lying around—I don't even know how the fuck that happens—and so they thought I was planning on using it on myself. So I have to go have a fucking evaluation to prove I'm not going to hurt myself before I'm allowed to resume work. And I was thinking, fuck it. I just won't go back. I hate it."

The most ridiculous thought pops into my brain: In thirty seconds, she's just sworn more than she has in the last four years.

"You don't hate it," I say.

It's apparently the wrong thing to say, because she starts crying harder. "I do. I hate it. I hate it and I don't want to go back."

I blow out a breath and try again. "Baby, no one's going to make you do anything you don't want to do."

She sniffles, watching me with red-rimmed eyes.

I glance at the framed picture on my bedside table. It's from our wedding. Not one of the posed, professional shots, but a picture Jess snapped on her phone at the reception.

Bella is sitting on my lap, her veil drawn over both our heads. It's transparent enough that you can see both of us are smiling like crazy as we look into each other's eyes. It's a private moment, one stolen in the middle of the two-hundred-guest dinner we were hosting.

"Do you remember the first time we met?" I ask.

Bella nods, her hair whispering against the pillow case. "I was a bit wasted."

I smile down at her. "More than a bit."

I was meeting some friends for a beer the afternoon I met Bella. It was my first year out of uni, and I hadn't managed to land a full-time position, so I was mostly casual teaching a few days a week at different schools around the region. I was running late, having gotten talking to a guy I went through uni with.

Wanting to give myself time to clear my head before I had to do the whole hang-out-with-loads-of-people thing, I parked a good five minute walk from the pub. Inside, I headed straight to the bar and ordered a drink, figuring my mates would've started without me.

The bartender sloshed a schooner of IPA onto the grubby carpet runner that lined the counter. "Seven-fifty, champ."

I reached into my pocket for my wallet and came up empty. I'd left the bloody thing in the car.

"Shit." I shook my head. "I left my wallet in the car. I'll be back in a bi–" I was cut off when a hand with purple-painted fingernails waved a twenty dollar note in front of me.

"My shout," a girl's voice said.

I looked up into brown eyes and a pretty smile. "I couldn't. I'll just–"

"Sure you can." She handed the money to the bartender. "It's no trouble."

I chewed the inside of my cheek for a moment. "Thanks," I said. "Really."

"No problem." She hadn't stopped smiling. "You should just, you know, pay it forward. Next time you see someone stammering at a counter somewhere."

I ignored the mention of my stammering and nodded. "Will do."

She offered me her hand. "I'm Bella."

"Edward."

I took a sip of my beer. And then made the mistake of asking for her number.

She grimaced. "Sorry," she said. "I don't really have time for anyone who doesn't have a vagina at the moment."

I almost spat my drink in her face. I swallowed and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. "Sorry," I said. "I didn't– I suppose I just assumed."

"Assumed what?"

"That you're, um, straight, I guess."

She frowned. "I am straight."

"But you just– You just said you were into girls?"

Bella swallowed her mouthful of beer. "Ohhhh. Sorry. I didn't mean that I have sex with girls. I just spend a lot of time poking around in their vaginas." She blinked. "I think I'm a bit drunk." She sounded completely surprised by that fact.

I pointed out that it was only four-thirty and she squinted at her watch.

"Well, that explains it. We started at eleven."

"That's, um, pretty early to get on the piss." I hoped that didn't sound too judgemental.

"Time is relative," she said. "I came off shift at ten." Her eyes rolled upwards as she tapped her finger in the air. Counting, I presumed. "I worked twenty-two hours straight. It's amazing I'm still conscious, really."

A few pieces of the Bella Puzzle fell into place. "You're a doctor?"

"Yeah." She smiled, apparently pleased with my guess. "Well. I'm doing my internship. Then it's just, oh, I don't know, another eight or nine years before I'm an OB-GYN."

Well, that explained the vaginas.

It turned out that someone Bella knew knew someone I knew, so our groups of friends congregated around us. As afternoon eased into evening, Bella and I kept chatting, the centre segment on our Venn diagram of friends.

When Bella's eyelids started to droop, I suggested I call her a taxi.

"That's so nice," she said. She was way past a bit drunk as we stood on the footpath, waiting for her cab. "You're so nice. I should give you my number."

"I'll tell you what." I put my hand out and she gave me her phone. "I'll give you mine. And if you still think I'm nice tomorrow, and you get a break between vaginas, you should call me."

She smiled. "Will do."

I hadn't really expected to hear from her. I mean, I hoped I would, but I figured my chances were pretty low. She had been pretty damn drunk, and there was the whole busy-being-a-doctor thing.

So I was pretty stoked when I got a text from an unknown number the next morning.

I'm not sure I still think you're nice, if you contributed in any way to this hangover.

Me? I wrote back. I didn't have my wallet, remember? I'm pretty sure I can't be held at all responsible.

I had just saved her number when her reply landed.

I'm pretty sure you can. I only stayed so long because of you.

I was smiling what was probably the goofiest-looking smile ever when she sent another text. Do you want to have coffee this weekend?

You sure you've got time between vaginas? I started second-guessing my response immediately. If she didn't remember that conversation, I was going to look like the biggest creep in the history of creeping.

Her reply was fast: Definitely. I could use a change of scenery. ;)

"You know, for so long, I didn't think we could make it work."

Bella's eyes widen as she looks up at me.

"I guess… I didn't ever want to get in the way of you achieving your dreams." I lean over and press a soft kiss to her cheek. I can taste the salt of her tears. "That first night you came back to my place… Well, afterwards, I couldn't sleep."

She sniffles. "Probably because I passed out at like, seven o'clock."

"It was closer to eight," I tease. "And I was lying there, thinking, this is crazy. There's this incredibly driven, intelligent, gorgeous woman in my bed. I don't deserve this."

"Edw–"

"Let me finish, yeah?" I wait for her nod. "And I told myself that I couldn't get in the way. We'd only been out a handful of times, but I knew it would be so easy to fall in love with you. But I could see how much becoming an obstetrician meant to you, and I sort of made a promise that I'd never let myself get in the way of that."

She frowns. "That's why…" She clears her throat. "That's why I had to ask you out, isn't it? You'd always tell me you'd had a such great time, but you never pushed me for another date. I always had to be the one to make a plan for the next one."

"It seems silly in hindsight, but I didn't– I guess I didn't want to put any pressure on you."

Bella opens her mouth, then closes it again. She looks terrified as she whispers, "Are you going to divorce me?"

I bark out a laugh before I realise she's genuinely worrying about this. "No, baby. No."

"But you said you wouldn't get in the way. And I'm not coping. And you– You're not going to make me choose, are you?"

"Bella…" I sigh. "No. I guess I didn't finish what I was saying, huh?" I reach for her hand and wrap my fingers around hers. "I told myself I couldn't get in the way of your career. And I kept waiting for the moment that you'd just be too busy for me. The moment I'd have to give you up." I squeeze her hand before she can interrupt. "But it never came. You never made me feel like I was in the way, or that I wasn't a priority. Sure, sometimes it's been hard. We've gone days, weeks, without seeing each other. But I've always known that I'm yours and you're mine, and that no matter how tough it got, we could get through it. Together."

"Until now." She uses the hand I'm not holding to wipe her cheeks. She scowls up at me. "I'm not letting you divorce me. I'll just quit."

"Baby." I sigh. "You're not going to quit. I mean, if you seriously wanted to– You can do whatever you want, and I'll support you in it. You know that. But I don't think you really want to quit."

She doesn't reply.

"I think you're doing it incredibly tough at the moment. We both are." I look at our clasped hands as I tell her I was feeling pretty crappy at the thought of coming home to an empty house again.

"I'm sorry." I want to tell her she doesn't need to be sorry, but I don't think she'll hear it. So I tell her that I'm sorry, too.

"Right now," I say. "It's hard. But this isn't going to last forever." I say it as much to assure myself as Bella. "A few more years, and you'll be able to start your clinic. And sure, there'll still be nights you get called into the hospital at some ungodly hour, but you'll be able to limit how many patients you take on. You'll have more control."

"But it's four more years."

"Only four," I say. "I remember when it was eight or nine. You're on the downhill run."

"I guess." Her eyes are still red and her cheeks are splotchy, but she seems a lot calmer now.

"And Bella… I know you're not going to hurt yourself. But I think talking to someone might be a good idea. I wouldn't be surprised if you were dealing with some kind of stress-related depression." It's telling that she doesn't argue.

"Can I…?" I tug the sheet and she nods. She scoots over to make room for me. I grab the remote for our little window-mounted air-conditioning unit and switch it on before I climb into bed with her.

We lie face to face, our fingers still tangled.

"I love you," I say.

Finally, I get a small smile out of her. "I love you, too."

"And you know what?"

"What?"

"There's a silver lining to this."

She looks sceptical. "There is?"

"You just scored two weeks off."

She rolls her eyes at me. "Two weeks of stress leave."

"It's still two weeks. At home. With me."

Another smile. A slightly wider one. "That's true."

Silence falls over us like a blanket, and I'm pretty close to falling asleep when Bella says, "Edward? Will you make love to me?"

Like I'm going to say no. I do check, though. "Are you sure?"

She nods. "I need– I want to be close to you. It's been so long."

As eager as I am to comply with my wife's wishes, there's something sort of paralysing about being told, "sex me up, now." I stroke her cheek and kiss her nose, but I'm suddenly really self-conscious about how to get started.

Bella must sense my hesitation, because she chews on her lip as she watches me, then says, "It's okay if you don't want to."

"I want to." I feel her hand move down my stomach until she finds the evidence supporting my claim. "It's just…" I feel like an idiot admitting it. "I just don't know where to start."

"It's not that hard." She smirks. "Well, it is. Maybe I should say, 'it's not that difficult.' It's just Tab A–" She gives a gentle squeeze that makes me grunt "–into Slot B."

I grab her wrist, because if she keeps doing that, Tab A isn't going to make it anywhere near Slot B.

"Do you remember the first time we did this?" she asks.

"You know I do."

"That's true," she says. "You've certainly remembered your lessons."

The first time Bella and I had sex, she gave me a very detailed anatomy lesson. You wouldn't think it would be especially sexy, me with my face between her thighs as she tossed out words like "vulva," "labia minora," "Skene ducts," and "Bartholin's glands." But in reality, her understanding of her own body, the way she knew what she needed and wasn't afraid to ask for it, proved an enormous turn-on. And the sounds she made as I learnt how to use just the right amount of pressure, or find exactly the right spot at exactly the right angle, were incredibly gratifying. For both of us, I gathered.

"It has been a while," I say. "I might've forgotten some things."

"I'm sorry," she says, and the way her lips curve down makes my heart squeeze painfully.

"Don't. It's okay." I put my finger to her lips and she sucks it into her mouth, which apparently gives her an idea, because she pushes me onto my back and disappears beneath the sheets.

That breaks the ice pretty effectively, and after that, it's not at all difficult to completely lose myself in my wife's body, in trying to coax as much pleasure from all those parts of her anatomy that contribute to the miracle that is her orgasm. Bella would say there's nothing miraculous about it, that it's just a normal, biological process, but she hasn't seen herself come.

I'm almost asleep, again, when Bella sits up, the sheet clutched to her chest. Her skin is flushed, her hair even wilder than usual.

"Where're you going?" I complain.

"Just wait." She rummages in the drawer of her bedside table, finally producing a small gift bag. She puts it on the pillow beside me. "Happy anniversary," she says.

I sit up and shove a pillow behind my back. I pull a similar-looking bag from my drawer and pass it to her. "Happy anniversary."

She looks between the two bags and she laughs. "No way."

"Well, it is our third anniversary," I say.

"Which calls for leather gifts."

"Right."

Unbelievably, we've even picked out the same design. Bella fastens mine and I return the favour, and when our matching leather cuff watches are in place, I grab the edge of the sheet and pull it over our heads. Bella smiles up at me. She still looks tired, but the worry has evaporated from her expression.

"I think we should stay here," I say. "For the next two weeks."

"It's Christmas in a few days," Bella says.

I trail kisses down her throat and across her chest. When my lips find her nipple she makes this cute little squeak. She's all breathy as she says, "You know what? Screw Christmas."

I grin against her stomach as she threads her fingers through my hair. She gives me a little push and I take the hint, moving lower and lower, teasing her with my lips and tongue until she's begging, "Edward, please."

"Shhh," I say, even though I don't really mean for her to be quiet because I love the noises she makes when I do this. "I think I need to do some more revision."

Thanks for reading! Shell x