I stepped into Hope’s office and gave the back of her neck a quick, sweaty kiss.
“I’m taking a shower and a nap, as I have nothing until 4 this afternoon!”
“Lucky you, I’ve got to get this brief done in the next two hours”
I squeezed her right before I left the room. I was exhausted, an hour ago, I had turned in the final deliverable of a mad sprint project where our client had us do in three weeks what would normally take two months but at least they gave us three months worth of pay. My nieces and nephews are going to have a good Christmas (plus their 529s are going to grow rapidly but that is for my brother and sisters to care about, that is boring grown-up stuff from the point of view of an eight year old.) A heavy lifting session had cleared my head. I was exhausted.
Thirty minutes later, I was clean, dry, shaved and asleep in only a pair of boxer-briefs.