MB Saucy Side: Sunset (Featuring Kent) (Patreon)

You squint into the glare of the almost-but-not-quite sunset, surveying the vacant beach for a flat spot to place down the two collapsible chairs that Kent is holding. Those chairs must be almost thirty years old by this point (the once neon pink plastic faded to a pale coral) but they’re still comfortable with seats high enough that Kent’s knees don’t give out when standing back up. Kent and you have watched sunsets from those chairs ever since you purchased them from an enthusiastic street vendor in Mikonos during your twenty-fifth anniversary.

Kent doesn’t carry the chairs under one arm with with the thoughtless ease that he once did. His back bends under the chair weight and his balance falters on the sand as you both head towards a clearing next to the tidepools. The rusty hinges groan in protest as Kent unfolds them; Kent and you groan as well as you sit down. Your husband’s grey eyes, hidden behind a pair of prescription bifocal sunshades, remain affixed upon the setting sun as his hand reaches over the armrest to hold yours. Your fingers entwine together, the gesture so habitual that neither of you bothers to glance down.

“I love you,” Kent says.

You look over and see the same boy with whom you first fell in love: tall and shameless, standing at the front door with nothing but a towel slung over his lean hips. You don’t notice Kent’s silver hair (thinner than it used to be) or his waistline (thicker than it used to be). In every important way, he’s exactly the same. Better, because he’s no longer a mystery.

Kent raises your hand to his lips and places a gentle kiss upon its back. Five years ago, his kiss would’ve inspired you to crawl onto his lap and return the favor, but sex  can’t be spontaneous the way that it used to be. Intimacy now requires pills and lotions and the king-sized Tempur-pedic mattress back in your bedroom. Occasionally you miss the fervor of youth, but your spine can’t bend the way it used to.

You smile at Kent. “Remember Berlin?”

Even now, after over fifty years of marriage, you can still make Kent blush. Berlin happened a week after he proposed: you forget which DJ had been playing at that nightclub, long since closed down, but you remember in vivid detail Kent pulling you into a private booth and pressing you down onto the hard leather couch. His touch had been impatient and rough, his thrusts in tempo with the pulsating music beyond the door.

“It’s loud out there,” he’d whispered into your ear. “No one can hear you.”

Both of you had taken advantage of that fact.

. . . That urgency is a thing of the past. Your skin is softer than it used to be, more fragile, your wedding bands both resized to fit over arthritic knuckles. Kent kisses your hand again, his thin lips pressing against the wrinkles and sunspots that testify to your shared years together.

It’s been a good life.

The sky’s hazy blue intensifies to pink-streaked purple, a brilliant golden halo flaring in the center. You don’t avert your eyes: you’re too old to care about whether or not it’s safe to stare directly into the light. The sunset is beautiful, and you want to absorb it all.

“Telluride,” Kent says, and you realize that your husband still has the ability to make your cheeks heat as well.

Unlike most places on your and Kent’s completed bucket list, you hadn’t gone to Colorado for vacation. Kent and Sally had been assigned to investigate a suspicious ski resort that marketed itself as catering to the “mentally elite.” Eight days into the mission, Kent had broken out of the “resort” (which, unsurprisingly, had turned out to be a Ment supremist cult compound) at 2am and run over three miles . . . through snow.

All so that he could spend twenty minutes with you in the MIV van. His devotion had been desperate from having spent a week apart, and the van lacked adequate cushioning to compensate for his insistence. Your tailbone ended up bruised (awful, given that you’d spent another three days monitoring them from the van), and even a high turtleneck hadn’t fully been able to cover the marks you’d left upon Kent’s pale skin.

“Back in my day, we walked through the snow,” had quickly become an inside joke between you two after that, much to Glitch and Sally’s mystification.

“Chicago,” you say, chuckling at the memory. “Our retirement party.”

Kent smirks. “We celebrated properly.”

“In the best possible way.”

Perhaps it hadn’t been the most polite move to bail on your guests and family at a party held in your shared honor, but it had also been the last day you and Kent possessed access to the Aeon building. You should’ve known that Kent didn’t have a simple walk down memory lane in mind when he’d stolen you away from the UCRT headquarters where the party was being held and taken you down to the fourteenth floor.

“Room 1” had felt as small and cramped the day you’d first evaluated it decades prior, when your freshman mind whirled with silly ideas on how to entrap a yet unknown Ment within. In fact, the room felt smaller than you remembered, given that Kent’s tall body took up most of the space despite the shelves no longer lining the wall.

Thank goodness that the shelves had been removed, otherwise you and Kent might have ended up crushed beneath them. Granted, that moment hadn’t quite the energy level of Berlin or Telluride (neither of your twenties, after all), but it had served as an enthusiastic (and pleasurable) farewell to Aeon. Worth it, even if Sally had never quite forgiven you for missing her speech.

The sky is dimmer now, the sun almost completely vanished beyond the steadily lapping ocean waves. The sunset’s once vibrant colors fade to darkness, edges a lingering pastel pink that almost matches the shade of your and Kent’s old beach chairs.

“Should we head back home?” Kent asks.

“Just a little longer.” You squeeze Kent’s hand tighter, and he looks away from the sunset to smile at you tenderly.

“Of course,” he says.