Author's Note: I enjoyed stepping into the future with my last piece so much that I'm going to do it again, even a little farther this time. However, this story in *no way* connects to my last one. I'm starting from scratch in crafting these characters' futures. Oh the possibilities!

Chapter One

After twenty-five years of marriage, Julie can read Matt's signals as if he was an air traffic controller and she was a pilot. She's been circling for a while now, but he wants her to land. She's been in out of the master bathroom and the closet, brushing her hair and removing her makeup and putting on her night clothes and checking that she's got her best business suit laid out for tomorrow's big meeting with the search committee.

Obama University is looking for a new provost. The school opened its doors twenty years ago in Washington, D.C., and Julie's been its Assistant Provost for Undergraduate Education for three years, before which she was an English professor at Northwestern. She's inexperienced compared to most of the applicants, many former presidents of other colleges, but she hears from the Assistant Provost for Diversity and Inclusion that, after the debacle with Provost Hernandez, Obama U wants to hire from within. She also hears they specifically want a woman to assume the mantle. Of all the current assistant provosts, Julie's the only female.

She doesn't really want to rise to the top through some kind of politicking affirmative action, but Matt says not to look a gift horse in the mouth, to just get the hell up there and ride it so fast and so well that they kick themselves for not giving it to her sooner. Besides, he reminds her, the provost position would pay quite a bit more than her current position. They have one daughter finishing her last year of college and another they're helping through her second year of law school. (Lori and Anne are twins, but Lori took a "gap year" to backpack across Europe before college, while Anne went straight into a university with a full years' worth of National Placement Credit). Matt's not exactly raking in the cash. He's teaching art part-time to high school students. Sure, he sells an original painting or sculpture every now and then, but he has expenses too—supplies.

It took Matt a while to adapt to being the second bread winner. The first year Julie's income outstripped his, his ego took a pummeling, but Julie did her best to keep it well stroked. She went to her mother for hints and tips on how to best build-up a husband, because she knew her mom had a special gift for making Dad believe in himself and that Mom's salary also outstripped Dad's for a six-year period.

Julie systematically put her mother's advice into action, until Matt was so overwhelmed with tentative pride in her admiration that it was all he could do to keep the tears from pooling in his eyes. Their pay differential has rarely bothered him since, though he still sometimes feels deflated by the lack of recognition of his talent, however often she assures him that his day is coming and that, sooner or later, his greatness will be discovered. "Yeah," he grumbles, "when I'm dead."

Matt's sitting now with his back leaned against the pillow, which is leaned against the dark oak headboard of the king-size bed they bought when they moved to the District. They were able to buy all new furniture not only because her salary increased, but because they downsized and took a capital gain on the sale of their four-bedroom Chicago townhouse. Now that D.C. is the fifty-first state and its governor has made calculated efforts to attract business, the local economy has boomed and housing costs have declined dramatically. Also, with their daughters out of the nest, they didn't feel they needed more than a two-bedroom condo. Matt uses one of the bedrooms as a studio.

They can walk to the Mall from their complex, which replaced the old Cotton Annex. The condo development was, against much opposition, given permission by the new state government to rise almost as high as the Washington Monument. Matt initially protested the assault on aestheticism and tradition, until he saw with his own eyes how beautiful the interior was and how perfectly the lighting in the second bedroom would suit his artistic needs, and then he agreed to buy the place, money-hungry developers notwithstanding. Besides, Julie had fallen in love with the condo on the internet, and as Coach Taylor says, "It's damn near impossible to resist a Taylor woman once she gets a notion in her mind."

When Julie first saw the pictures of the place, she started screaming, "Matt! Matt! Come here!" until he ran out of the kitchen with the chili spoon still in his hand, dripping red and brown splots all over the carpet they'd just steam cleaned before putting their Chicago townhouse on the market, saying, "What's wrong? Are you okay?"

At the moment, Matt has just exhaled an impatient, put-upon sigh. He's wearing plaid boxers and a white T-shirt, and he's got his hands crossed over his stomach. It's Saturday, which is supposed to be a guaranteed sex night.

Julie's work schedule can get rather hectic, and they were having problems connecting the first year after they moved, so they agreed to establish this minimal Saturday guarantee, and then work in what additional pleasure they could whenever they could. In her twenties, or even in her thirties, Julie would have thought scheduling sex an absurd proposition, but now she's just grateful they both still want it and are committed to making time for it.

But sometimes she likes to irritate Matt, for reasons she can't quite explain, except that the fiery flash of annoyance in his blue-green eyes makes her tingle just a little. So she's been deliberately drawing out her "stages," which is what he calls her night-time process of getting ready for bed.

Matt sighs again, louder this time.