Billy struggled to open one eye as the alarm flashed 7 A.M. He knew he had overdone it the night before because his eyelid hurt. Slapping at the snooze alarm, he muttered a curse.

Jenna rolled to her side and kissed his sharply-stubbled cheek. Stinking of beer and cigarettes, he expected her to make some kind of sarcastic comment. Instead, she asked if he had fun, adding, "It was about three when you got in."

"Ughumph." He tried opening his other eye, but it seemed glued shut. "Am I dead?" He reached under the covers and felt her naked body. "Are you an angel? I feel like hell. Is this a message from a bi-polar God?"

Jenna smiled. "You need coffee. And a shower." She slipped out of bed. In the early morning shadows, Billy watched her naked ass twitch as she made her way to the kitchen.

She knew he was watching her, Billy thought. He would have smiled, but his face felt like it might crack if he did. The alarm buzzed again.

He pulled the covers down and swung his legs to the floor. Holding up his limp penis between his thumb and index finger, he said, "My God, they killed you, too."

"Honey," Jenna called. "Did you say something?"

"Uh-uh." Sitting up, he felt as if his head were full of rocks and they were slipping, one at a time, down the back of his throat to the pit of his stomach. "Just checking for permanent damage."

---

Jenna ground whole coffee beans fresh every morning. That way she could slowly add decaf to her husband's morning brew. She had reached the 50/50 level without his suspecting what she was doing. But this morning she understood he would need high octane. She didn't like undoing the progress she had made, but it seemed cruel to go with decaf.

When she and Bill had married two years earlier, she knew he was a good man, solid and loyal. "A good provider," her father said. He was also funny and gentle, and she loved the way he hadn't lost all his little boy charm. He still thought of himself as Billy.

But she told her best friend, Marlene, she considered him a fixer-upper with a lot of potential.

"You’ve been selling real estate too long," Marlene said.

"No, I've been dating too long. I'm almost thirty. It's time for me to find a house I can grow comfortable in. Not wait for one that's perfect as is."

She began working on his diet, introducing him to baked chicken breast and broiled salmon, vegetable stir fries and salads. He chose on his own to quit smoking when his father, only sixty-one, suffered a heart attack. The doctor told his father to quit or plan on dying young. A chain smoker, his father took it as a sign of pride to have snuck smokes while still in the hospital. Billy thought it was a selfish choice. "As long as I have you," Jenna recalled his saying, "I want to take care of myself."

She found it easy getting him to exercise more. She simply challenged him to a two mile run and began at a faster pace than she knew he could tolerate. When he gave out midway, holding his side, while she finished the two miles and ran the track for a cool-down lap, his competitive spirit wouldn't let that stand. Three months later, he was running two to three miles most every morning.

There'd be no morning run for him today. Not after boys' night out, his homage to his youth. She hated that he felt so miserable the next day, but she thought it kind of cute the way he and his friends held on so tight to their adolescence. Marlene assured her it couldn't last much longer.

While he showered, she put on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, but decided not to go for her run until he left for work. She didn't have to be in the office until ten.