What Men Want
Rachel threw her hair back seductively just like she’d been practising.
‘What do you think?’ she said, standing proudly in the doorway with nothing on except very expensive lingerie and a mischievous grin.
Silence.
‘Cat got your tongue?’ she teased with a voice verging on a purr, fluttering her eyelashes towards her husband in their dimly lit bedroom.
And then she heard it — the loudest snore her husband had ever managed to snort, and that was really saying something. Dan was out for the count, a million miles away from his wife and her new underwear.
Rachel scowled and folded her arms. ‘Typical!’
All the preening had been for nothing.
She could’ve thrown a pillow at him, of course, woken him up and demanded his undivided attention. But the moment had passed, and instead of a romantic tryst with her husband all she could think about now was strangling him.
She’d spent a fortune on that lingerie, more money than she’d ever dared hand over for any item of clothing in her life. And for what?
She found her dressing gown and wrapped it around herself furiously, pulling a knot so tight she might never be able to take it off again.
Good, she thought. That’ll teach him.
Peaks and troughs!’ her mother said over the phone the next evening. ‘Your father and I have had our fair share of dry patches over the years.’ ‘Mum…’
Something turned in Rachel’s stomach. She really didn’t want to know the ins and outs of her parents’ love life.
‘Oh, come on,’ she tutted. ‘You were hardly an immaculate conception. We put a lot of work into making you, I’ll have you know! You didn’t just land on our doorstep like an Argos catalogue.’
More groaning.
‘I know, but still…’
‘You’d be wise to listen to your mother! Hasn’t she been married for 35 years?’
Rachel conceded defeat. If anyone knew about the key to a long and happy
‘You’d be wise to listen to your mother! Hasn’t she been married for 35 years?’
marriage it was surely her own mother. She took a deep breath and braced herself.
‘Go on, then. Give me your best advice.’
‘Beer and football,’ she said, sharp and to the point.
Beer and football? This was not what Rachel had been expecting at all.
‘You know what men are like about football! Just sit down and watch a match with him and he’ll be putty in your hands. Get a few bottles of beer in too and he’ll be all over you like a rash,’ she said with the confidence of a woman who’d done it a million times before.
‘Dan is partial to a bit of the Aston Villa, I suppose,’
Rachel replied thoughtfully.
‘There you go then. They’re playing on Saturday afternoon. Big game against Leicester City, apparently.’ ‘How do you know that?’ ‘Your father likes them too — and it’s been a while for me as well. Let’s just say there’s never been this much beer in the fridge before!’
She gave the dirtiest cackle imaginable.
Rachel blushed, but instead of scolding her mum for oversharing again, she decided to heed her advice. She was willing to try anything by this stage. What harm could it do anyway?
‘You’ve never watched a football match in your life.’
Dan couldn’t have sounded more suspicious if he tried.
‘Well, a girl is allowed to change, isn’t she?’ ‘I suppose.’ He was still not buying it, but wasn’t going to question an afternoon watching his favourite team try to collect another three points. He was even more surprised to find the fridge stocked to the brim with the beer he always bought himself on special occasions and all sorts of nibbles laid out on the table ready for kick-off. Crisps, nuts, those savoury things that tasted a bit like Marmite. Everything he needed for his dream afternoon in front of the television.
‘Oh, come on!’ he scowled at the TV screen after a rather nasty tackle. ‘Can you believe that?’
Rachel just shook her head and feigned her own annoyance, not quite sure what she was watching and trying her best to keep up the façade.
There was at least another hour of the match left to endure, so she pushed the boredom away with another smile and a mighty swig out of her bottle of beer.
‘What a joke!’ Dan shouted, startling Rachel back into the room. ‘That ref shouldn’t be on the field without his guide dog!’
‘Tell me about it,’ she
Little does he know, she thought, smirking into her third bottle of beer
tutted in agreement. ‘Wouldn’t see the ball if it hit him in the face!’
That was enough to make her husband smile.
‘Look at my little pundit. Where has she been hiding all these years?’
‘I’m full of surprises.’
Little does he know, she thought, smirking into her third bottle of beer.
What a game,’ he beamed after Aston Villa had romped home with an impressive victory, still staring at the TV screen. ‘I haven’t enjoyed a match like that in a long time. Once the referee started using his two eyes anyway.’
He couldn’t wipe the grin off his face.
‘You wanna know what my favourite part was?’ he continued with a twinkle in his eye. ‘Watching it with my wife. There’s not many women in the world who’d sacrifice their Saturdays to sit down with a few beers and cheer her husband’s team on. That’s what real romance looks like.’
The feeling took him by surprise, something he hadn’t felt in a very long time.
He’d never stopped loving Rachel, of course not. But those long hours in the office had really started to take their toll, always exhausted by the time he reached the front door, ready for bed and nothing else.
But now, after spending the day with her and all the effort that she’d made, he wanted to wrap his arms around his wife and thank her in the only way he knew how.
‘What do you say we go upstairs for a while?’ he asked as he turned to face her, that twinkle in his eye growing brighter by the second.
But it was her turn to snore now. She hadn’t even made it to the end of the match.