Even if I wanted sex in the afternoon, I know it wouldn’t happen. You’re always busy, doing god knows what at your desk, typing at people who aren’t me, regardless of the fact that it is supposedly me that you’re with. I can just imagine the conversation.

‘Baby.’

Then there will be no reply, of course, because there never is on the first try – I usually have to call you a few times before you emerge, tentatively, from the workaholic mist that envelops you as soon as you take your first breath in the morning, right before you sit up and grab your iPad (like a possessive lover) to look at the list of all the things you have to do today; ironically, I’m not one of them.

‘Baby…’

Now there is a grunt, a reward or an expression of mild irritation that you are being bothered from your all-important task list. Wasn’t I a fool to think that running your own company would mean more time for you and me, for us? Ati the fact that your office was ensconced in the corner of the house meant that I would see you and touch you more. That definitely didn’t happen. As it is, every morning, you wake up at 6 a.m. to look at emails (the business world never sleeps, darling, you can’t run a consultancy firm and then expect that it can run without you) – something you claim is in deference to me, because otherwise you would have been waking up at 4. Either way, I wake up with you, and try and tell you with my eyes that I don’t want you to leave, but you don’t see it, because of the dawn breaking. My silent pleas look like a shadow across my face, cast by your screen.

But the dawn would be so perfect for our skin to skin. Bathed in the glow of a rising sun with sleek bodies rubbing against each other, urgently, like the goal is world peace or a better paycheck. Nowadays when I watch movies where the girl is being hoisted up onto a counter as the guy grabs her derriere – not gently, please, never gently – , I feel like a voyeur who Hollywood is taking pity on because no one is grabbing mine. When she moans, I breathe a little quicker, focusing on the contour of her back arched against some cold metal surface which is never sanitized in real life but on a film set, anything, including a distinct lack of herpes and/or condoms, is possible.

‘Baby?’

‘Mm?’

‘Can I talk to you about something?’

You will look up, now, furtively, as if you feel trapped.

‘Right now? Does it have to be right now?’

I will shrug, having already lost the fight and tired of it. You will notice my resignation and know that I am just adding this to the long list of things you haven’t done for me, to me.

‘Ok, baby, tell me.’

‘Nothing.’

‘Baby.’

And I will think of how quickly I became wet the first time I met you, on a sticky sunny day that wasn’t supposed to happen. In the middle of a Nairobi afternoon at a concert I didn’t want to go to, when your friend was introducing me as someone I am not anymore. There was a slow, languorous pooling of liquid between my thighs. Slick. I felt it, and I knew it wasn’t going to drip, but I felt it nonetheless. So when you put out your hand, I didn’t stand to meet you. You thought I was rude and I didn’t care enough to correct you, because I was waiting for the slipperiness to tame. Slide. Sweet. Sex. It had been a while. I had forgotten what heat could do. Slide. Suck. Squeeze.

‘…saying?’

I shook my head. You were saying something. I wasn’t listening. I smiled a small smile that I thought was to myself, but something in your eyes responded to the flame in mine and it was lost from there. Later, in the dusky twilight, behind the dais, when you slipped your fingers into me and my bare thighs scraped against the wooden stand, it felt like the culmination of what I had been waiting for all afternoon. And it was. Slide. Sweet. Suck.

‘I want to have sex.’

I almost roll my eyes at how fast you come up with an excuse. ‘Baby…you know…this deal…’

I turn my back on you and you don’t follow, mostly because you can’t be bothered and in all likeliness I probably won’t leave you so there’s only so much work you have to do. You barely have to do anything, really.

I go to the bedroom and undress. I close the curtains and get into bed. I put a finger in my mouth, then two between my thighs and start to rub. Suck. There’s a loud car outside that I notice only because every other alarm in the parking lot is going off because of it. I think about that night on the wood behind the dais when the shards were scratching into my flesh. I breathe out. Then I take my other hand to play with my nipple, pretending it’s a tongue that wants to be here. When I feel the tightness in my belly, I rub slower. Yes. I don’t want this to end soon. I arch now, involuntarily and slip a finger inside myself to shudder around. Slide. Slick. Sweet.

‘Baby have you seen my notebook?’