The Big "O": A Romantic Comedy Read Free Page A

his beautiful wife, the mother of his child.
    Normally Emily was the picture of the all-American girl-next-door natural beauty. But just now, as she had been for the last couple of years, she was a terribly super-tired, albeit still sexy, mommy. Their baby was finally asleep and Emily desperately wanted to sleep. Sleep. She craved it in the way that she imagined drug addicts craved a hit or a high. Just give me the damned sleep and nobody gets hurt, she thought to herself.
    She knew that her husband was saying something. She could see his lips moving.
    But the buzz of her intense fatigue made it hard for her to focus on anything but the fact that she could be sleeping, right now, except that her man was droning on about something that they could discuss in the morning. For the love of all that was holy, didn’t Max know that she had to get some sleep while she could? Apparently not.
    “Did they say exactly why they bumped us?” Max asked.
    Emily felt terrible that her husband was so upset about losing the late-night talk show spot but frankly she was so dead on her butt that she was too numb to feel too upset about getting kicked off of the show herself.
    In fact, she’d been almost happy not to have to get herself ready for the late night television show interview for which they had managed to score a guest spot. It had been a friend of a friend, who knew someone in production, who thought their book and business would be a fit.
    “It was a non-specific brush off,” Emily replied and tilted her head and listened.
    She'd heard a sound. Was that the baby? Thankfully, it was not.
    It was funny how her hearing had improved since having a child, or maybe it was her focus; the cry of a neighborhood cat or children playing outside in the distance always got her attention, too.
    Prior to having a child she was oblivious to the distant high-pitched cries of the world. Now, she sometimes heard what she thought was little Max crying, even when he wasn't.
    Max got up and paced in the small space of their bedroom. He rubbed his head and ran his fingers through his hair, and looked wildly around. He stopped suddenly, as if thunderstruck, and stared at the ceiling.
    “We fell down the list,” he said and snapped his fingers as if he had figured things out, that he was correct. Emily shrugged. Her blonde hair was shaggy and a bit grown out. She knew that she needed to get her hair trimmed but she barely had time to go to the bathroom by herself when the baby was home. During the brief hours he was at his preschool playgroup she was focused on work.
    She and Max had their own consulting business and were working on their second book. The financial stresses of modern life meant that, being self-employed, they either produced or went under. So, some of her self-care had fallen by the wayside.
    She looked at her stomach and frowned. What would it take to get her to stick with her diet and exercise plan? she silently asked herself. Then she fretted about what she would wear on TV if they got called in to do the late-night talk show later.
    All of her clothes, almost everything she owned, was too tight, too old and worn out, or out of date. Some of her clothes were baby-stained. Maybe she should donate or toss a lot of those things, she thought.
    She decided to ask Isis to help her with her wardrobe. Fashion was that fabulous chick's thing. She could clean and organize the house, maybe just for ten minutes each day, to try and make some progress, she thought, as she looked around her less than perfectly neat bedroom.
    Her days were spent in feeding the baby and herself and sometimes her husband, cleaning and organizing things, trying to find time to write their new book and market their business, and consult with current clients, either by herself or with Max.
    Max looked at her as if he had just asked her some vital and essential question, something mathematical or statistical, a question to which he still awaited the answer. Well? his