A Mighty Pen

Gwyn and I continued to grow closer, spending whatever time we could together. And we couldn't have enough sex. I wasn't a virgin when we met, and she wasn't either, but I'd never had neither the quality nor the quality of the sex we enjoyed. And Gwyn initiated it as often as I did too. Safe to say we were both insatiable.

As a sign of our deepening relationship, we got our families to schedule the Christmas meals so that we could both attend each other's family feasts. My parents adored Gwyn, and her parents seemed happy with me as well. We talked vaguely about getting an apartment together after the new year, and neither family raised serious objections, so that's what we did.

Living together was an adjustment, and it was the first bump we had to negotiate together. Simple decisions about mundane things like organizing the kitchen and linen closets, the schedule for vacuuming and dusting the living room, and how to best clean the bathroom exposed differences we hadn't anticipated. Frustration at these little disconnects cropped up a lot during the first couple months, but we were committed to each other, and we worked through each little conflict with kindness for the most part. Our personalities continued to mesh well, and our love softened any hurt feelings, especially when we remembered to apologize for ill-considered comments or passive-aggressive pouting.

All of our friends were going through similar things, which helped a lot too. Seeing their struggles without the emotion that filtered our immediate experience helped us see new perspectives, which made some of our tiffs easier to resolve. Angie was living with her fiance, Leif and Billie were living together (platonically they said, but we weren't completely sold), Tony and Brian were roommates in a two-bedroom cottage in the country, and Mutt and Jeff were living the bachelor life in an apartment away from the family home. We still saw all of them a lot.

Angie's guy Tom was nice enough, but he was very late to our group, so he had a hard time finding a place to fit in with all of us. Jenny and Mutt had an on-again, off-again thing for a while, so we saw them the most. We could never tell how serious they were about each other, but like us they seemed well matched. I'd pump Mutt about his feelings, and Gwyn would ask Jenny, but neither was very forthcoming about their relationship. I'm not sure how much passion they had for each other, but they were affectionate and seemed very comfortable together. Tony, Brian, and Jeff still played the field, though Jeff seemed to have the most success. He was a decent-looking guy, but he could walk in anywhere and within five minutes he'd be talking to a table of the most attractive women in the place. He had the gift of gab, and he almost always left with someone. It didn't seem to matter what their relationship status was either -- single, engaged, married, or divorced were all fair game for Jeff. He said he always asked and never pressured, and I believed him. He got plenty of women just being himself. Tony had a few more scruples, but then he was looking for a relationship. Brian was good-looking and had more hits than strikeouts, but he was a bit of a man slut, never sticking with the same woman for more than one night. And he liked to talk about his conquests too, in far too much detail for my comfort.

Once Gwyn and I synched up the practical aspects of living together, our love flourished. We made love several times a week, and often more than once during each session. I couldn't get enough of her body, and her soul came along for the very active ride. We continued to initiate sex at an equal rate, and we experimented with new positions, with lingerie, with accessories, with light bondage, and we didn't constrain ourselves just to the bedroom either. We loved our sex life!

Our union wasn't just physical either. We talked about all kinds of things, from national politics (Democrats bad, Republicans worse) to business (Bezos and Musk brilliant, but dicks) to music (Babyface Ray too aggressive, John Legend too smooth, Lord Huron just right). We talked about colors to paint our apartment (she liked pastel oranges and yellows, I was partial to deep blues and greens). We both wanted kids (I wanted three girls and she wanted a boy and a girl). And of course we agreed on dogs, especially Australian shepherds.

* * * * *

We'd lived together for almost a year when I began applying to business schools. We'd been discussing marriage as a general concept for us, but until we knew more about my MBA situation we didn't want to commit. I really didn't want to be far away from Gwyn, but she was adamant that I get into the best school I could. I'm not a name-brand shopper, especially for something like school. It's not like there's some secret course Harvard or Duke teaches that my local Catholic university doesn't know about. So it's really about connections, with the businesses that ally with the school and the classmates you make as friends. And since I wanted to stay around the old hometown I was fine with the local Catholic university and the extension campus of the state school. Even if I got into Stanford or Rice, there wasn't going to be a lot of connections back to our little midwestern city of 60,000 people. So when St. Thomas accepted me for their full-time MBA program, I decided to go for it. But I still felt like I needed Gwyn onboard. So I broached it over dinner one night with a little bit of misdirection.

"Hon, I'm thinking maybe State is my best option for business school."

I got a frown. "Really? State? They're not even the best program in the city, let alone the country. I know you can do better. Much better."

"Yeah, I guess. But B-school isn't going to be cheap. They just don't give much in the way of scholarships, and I think I could graduate at the top of my class at State, which might help with job offers."

She scoffed, but in a loving way. "You're going to graduate at the top of the class regardless of the school you choose. I see how smart you are and how hard you work." Her smile faded and she looked me in the eye. "Please don't let me be the reason you settle for less than what you can do."

What can I say. Gwyn knows me. Really, really well. "But you're more important to me than a degree. I don't want to be away from you."

She melted and smiled like she always did when I professed my love for her. Which I did daily. "You are just the sweetest man. I love you so much, Pete. But I'm not going anywhere. And wherever you go there are planes and trains and buses to get us back to each other."

"That's an expensive solution to a problem we don't need to own. What's the best program in the area here?" I asked.

"Probably St. Thomas. I saw they moved up the national rankings last year, and they were already in the top ten in the Midwest."

"Maybe I should apply there. It's a well-regarded school, and we can still wake up together every morning."

Gwyn looked skeptical, but she didn't shoot the idea down. I was confident that the more she thought about it the more she'd like it. Or at least accept it. Which she did. So that's where I went.

Gwyn had always been a confident woman, but knowing that I'd sacrificed a little academic prestige for her seemed to cement our relationship. We'd always had a reciprocal relationship, but if you pressed me for an answer I'd have to say that I probably gave a little bit more to it than she did. She wasn't inattentive or distracted when she was with me, but she was a bit more likely to make plans with friends that didn't include me or to go for drinks with work friends. But after I enrolled in St. Thomas's MBA program she seemed more likely to come home instead of hanging with coworkers at the end of the work day, more likely to put aside her phone when she was with me, and just a little more present with me when we were together. I was the luckiest man in the world.

B-school went fine, just as Gwyn predicted it would. I decided to go full-time. I strongly believe in the efficiency of serial production vs. parallel production -- we get both better and faster outcomes when we concentrate on one thing instead of trying to accomplish too many things at once, like working and going to school. Not everyone has the choice, of course, but since I could afford to sit out a job for 21 months while going to school, I did. I was in the top cohort in my class with three others, and I was getting plenty of attention from the professors and my classmates, which boded well for job offers when I graduated. Even though my undergraduate degree was in Finance, I opted for a Finance concentration for my MBA as well. I just liked the quantitative side of things, and consulting firms liked people who could build models and projections.

* * * * *

I proposed to Gwyn at the beginning of my second year of business school.

We were on one of our favorite hikes, and it was a perfect fall day. The leaves were halfway turned, so there was as much yellow and red as there was green. The sun was out, but there were fluffy clouds too, and the air was cool enough to keep us comfortable while we hiked and warm enough that we could sit in the sun in t-shirts without feeling a chill. I thought it was a metaphor for our lives together, past, present, and future. Perfect.

Gwyn was sitting on a rock at our favorite vista point. I went to a knee, loosening my boot lace and then retying it. She was drinking from her water bottle and looking out over the forest that blanketed the hills.

"Gwyn, my love."

She took another quick pull of water and looked to me. "Hmm?"

"Would you marry me?" I held out the ring I'd purchased a few weeks before.

She looked stunned for a moment, and then her eyes filled with tears and her mouth spread into her most brilliant smile and she tackled me, wrapping her arms around my neck. We toppled over onto the ground, nose to nose, and she kissed me, over and over, until she just attached her lips to mine and held them with a firm caress.

"I love you so much, Pete," she said, tears spilling from her eyes. "I would love to spend the rest of my life with you."

I smiled, and my own tears pushed out. "I'm the luckiest man in the world. I love you more than I can ever say."

We made love on that perfect day on our favorite vista point. Gwyn is spontaneous, after all, and our emotions were running high.

Our wedding date was set for the next summer, late-June, after I graduated in mid-May. My parents held a graduation party for me, but we soft-pedaled it a bit, since we felt like we'd be asking our friends and family to double-dip on gifts. My folks sprung for a very nice leather set: a hand-tooled briefcase, portfolio, and business-card holder. And, of course, Gwyn found the perfect pen, though it took me a few months to realize it. Her card was simple -- and ultimately prophetic: "I hope this pen writes our whole future. Love always, Gwyn"

The wedding was like every wedding, and yet it was ours, so it was both incredible and indelible. The flowers arrived late, but that was the only hiccup. In front of most of our friends and almost all of our families, we entered, we solemnly repeated our vows of commitment, exchanged our wedding rings, then posed for photos. We dined on a choice of beef, chicken, or vegetarian entrees, and danced away the accumulated stress of planning and executing a wedding. Some of our friends got hammered, we did the obligatory garter and bouquet tosses, cut the cake, and then we exited to our hotel room where I carried Gwyn across the threshold. We showered together, then made love, gently, and only once, before drifting into sleep.

We had a late brunch with our immediate family members the next morning, then we left for our honeymoon, a week and a couple days in Vancouver and Banff. It was a glorious nine days, and not even the usual travel annoyances could dampen our celebration of love. Gwyn was everything I ever wanted in a partner, and she both told and showed me that she felt the same about me. We were, in short, completely happy with each other.

We returned home devoted and loving newlyweds, ready to embrace our marriage, our jobs, and everything that awaited us on our road together. Gwyn had moved into a sales role with an IT firm that sold hardware and contracted with software providers to offer customized solutions to local and regional firms. The learning curve was steep, but she mastered it with just a few mistakes, none too costly, and her boss was making noises about moving her into a sales manager role in a couple years. I joined a boutique consulting firm specializing in product expansions for consumer goods companies with a healthy sideline of valuations for M&A purposes, which is where I was slotted. I viewed it as a place to learn, with the upside of making myself an integral part of a growing part of the firm if it worked out that way. We were, in short, pretty happy with our jobs.

* * * * *

Because we'd lived together for three years before we married, we didn't really do the nesting thing that many young married couples do. We had an active social life with our friends. Parties at homes, dinner at restaurants, trivia nights at bars, overnight concerts in the big city, rec-league softball and soccer games -- we did what everyone else did. But our friend group started to striate along predictable lines: singles and couples. Jenny and Mutt still had an inscrutable relationship to the rest of us, so they straddled the line with Gwyn and me, Angie and her man Tom (who had married a few months before us), and Tony and his fiance Deb on the one side and Jeff and Brian and Brian's new roommate Noah on the other. The single guys were all about action, and while the rest of us were up for a pub crawl we reached our limit an hour or two before the single guys were ready to wrap it up, which usually led to some good-natured teasing between us.

"Leaving already? Oh, I guess it is after five -- no more senior specials tonight!"

"Happy hunting, fellas. We've bagged our companion for the night, so we're taking them home!"

"Gotta rush home to take your nightly meds?"

"Hope you guys are covered for tonight's round of STD roulette!"

"Hit your one-beer limit already?"

"Did you remember to polish up your beer goggles before you left home tonight?"

Not every time we went out to the bars, but often I could see that Gwyn wanted to stay longer than the rest of us coupled folks. She loved being out of the house, loved new situations, and her energy level was always ramped up when we were out with people. I was usually conscious of her pleasure when we made love, but on the nights when she'd been a little more quiet than usual on the drive home I'd lavish her with extra attention, giving her an extra orgasm with my mouth and tongue or entering her from behind while she was on her tummy, which was her favorite position and surprisingly intimate. And she appreciated my efforts.

Soon the trash-talking spilled over to our other activities too. It was always in good fun, but there was an undercurrent beneath it. We were moving in different circles, one with more commitments and one with fewer, but none of us knew the objective value of each, and we all have enough insecurity to nip at the corners of our minds wondering if we're in the circle we want to be in.

"Are you tired of his snoring yet?"

"How do you keep from yawning through the same first-date conversation every week?"

"Is the old man still using the same old positions? Let me know when you want something new!"

"Which Nobel Prize winner are you dating this week?"

"Did Gramps get his afternoon nap in today?"

"Hey, Trojan called. They wanted me to remind you that the rubber in your pocket expired three years ago."

* * * * *

We'd been married a couple years before we started talking about kids in earnest. Gwyn's company was getting serious about promoting her to sales manager. She wouldn't have the same income upside, but she'd have more regular hours and the management track had a lot more headroom to grown than her sales job. That would work better with pregnancy. My company's M&A valuation practice had been growing at a decent rate, and I was a central cog in it, so my future looked promising too. I did have to travel a couple times a month for 2-3 days each, which was a little disruptive but nothing that would get in the way of conceiving a baby and tending to a pregnant wife.

Gwyn was a little more hesitant than I was. Understandably so -- she was going to do all the heavy lifting. Still, she seemed more reluctant than I expected. We'd both talked often about how much we wanted children -- we'd even tossed around names for boys and girls. We were a couple years from thirty too, so it seemed like the time to get organized around this next step. But she resisted.

She didn't shut down, but she did deflect whenever I brought it up. I tried the direct approach around Thanksgiving.

"Hon, what are you thinking about children?"

"I want to have your babies, Pete. Let me think about it a bit more though first."

"Of course, my love. Anything you want to talk through with me?"

"No. I want to make sure I'm really ready is all. No take-backs on this one!"

I let the holidays go by, then tried a more roundabout path in early January.

"What do you think of Kate as a name for a girl, hon?"

"It's nice. Reminds me of Kate Rothstein though."

"Did you know her well?"

"Not really. Just came to mind when you said the name though."

I waited for her to share more, but that was it. So I stepped into the breach. "Have you thought any more about starting our family?"

"Not really. There's so much going on at work. And Mom's fifty-fifth birthday is coming up and Dad wants my help planning a party for her."

I took another run at it a month or so later.

"Hey, remember Will from work? We went to his wedding last summer."

"Of course. What's going on with him?"

"He told me today that he and Heather are expecting. She's a couple months along. He says she can't get enough peanut butter. Or melon."

"That's great news for them. I hope her pregnancy is uneventful."

"Let me know when you need me to lay in a supply of peanut butter."

"Okay."

And that was it. She didn't lose her temper or tell me not to broach the subject again. She just didn't engage with me about it. And I didn't resent her for it either. I just thought it a bit odd given our past discussions. The rest of our interactions went on as before. We relished our time together, we made love as often as ever, we went to work and did all the things we liked to do. We just didn't talk about children.

* * * * *

Summer came, right on time as always. We started going to the lake with either her family or mine when we had a free weekend, planned a vacation to the upper peninsula for August, and just kept doing what we had been doing. Life was good, but I was feeling a little restless. The kid thing was starting to bother me. I am a planner, and while I'm a patient guy it's not an infinite virtue.

This was also the first time I felt even a slight disconnect from Gwyn, and it seemed like the gap was growing a little wider every time there was some reference to children, even when it wasn't about us. Our parents were hinting about more grandchildren, and the teasing among our friends went in that direction once in a while too, and Gwyn just stayed above the fray.

For Independence Day, Mutt and Jeff offered a long weekend at their family's sizable lake cottage where Gwyn and I first met, and it looked like the whole gang was going to make it. We said we were in, Jenny was going to be there of course, Angie and Tom said yes, and Brian and Noah were also bringing dates. Only Tony and Deb, now married, were otherwise committed for the holiday, to her family in Ohio. We got our contributions sorted out and looked forward to several days of relaxing with good friends. We decided to drive up on Wednesday, then come back on Monday night.