Recipe for a Good Night

Rachel had never been a good sleeper. Since early childhood she had been prone to insomnia, spending nights willing herself to fall asleep NOW, but eventually giving up and reading, watching TV, or prowling through the house. In recent years, these sleepless-night activities had mostly been replaced by scrolling on her phone. This was allegedly one of the worst things you could do for your “sleep hygiene”, but it was an easy option that generally didn’t disturb bedmates.

As an adult, she timidly asked her doctor about sleeping pills and received a prescription for Somnislepe. It changed her life. For the first time in memory, she could go to bed without dreading the process of trying to fall asleep, assured of a quick journey into eight hours of oblivion. Although she often awoke with a foggy head, it usually cleared before she started work, and Rachel generally didn’t mind this trade-off.

Some nights, however, weren’t suitable for taking a pill. This was one of them. Rachel turned from her back to her side, observing the shadowy shape of the man beside her. She didn’t think that he was sleeping either. His breathing was too light, his body too tense.

His name was Steve and this was their fifth date. They had met on an online dating site, where his first message had appealed to her. It was long and detailed, describing his love of triathlons, his passion for playing the guitar, his job doing something mysterious with computers, and his life as a divorced father of two teenagers. He asked questions about things she had mentioned in her profile: her career, her itinerant history, her nine-year-old daughter. His note stood out against the flood of one-liners and copy-and-paste messages from men who obviously hadn’t bothered look at anything beyond her photo, which showed her serious but smiling, her dark brown curls flowing around her shoulders and her blue eyes looking into the camera. Steve’s photo showed a fit man with grey hair and a shy but dazzling smile. No toilets, cars, fish, or cut-off exes visible. Rachel clicked on Respond.

On their first date a couple of weeks ago they had taken a long walk and discovered a shared love of classic rock and nearly identical views on political and social issues. Rachel felt comfortable with him and they chatted easily together. At the end of that first date, Steve confessed, “I sometimes have trouble talking to people I don’t know. But it was really nice with you. I’d like to see you again.” Rachel appreciated his openness; she was not a fan of playing guessing games.

Despite all of this, Rachel was still on the fence about him: She usually went for complicated, bookish, bespectacled men. In his mid-fifties, Steve competed at least once a year in full triathlons. Before meeting Steve, Rachel had only been vaguely aware that such competitions even existed, but Steve was currently giving her a crash course on the disciplines, challenges and locations. Rachel unexpectedly found this fairly interesting, although her head spun with all of the numbers relating to times, paces and distances.

Although Rachel had listed tattoos as a turn-off in her profile, Steve had several on his upper arms. Rachel frequently pointed out and criticized particularly offensive tattoos to her daughter Ally, who usually rolled her eyes and pronounced her “judgy”. Rachel had tried to impress upon Ally that she should never get a tattoo because “it’s like wearing the same accessory every day for the rest your life … except that it gets wrinkly, saggy and faded.” She hoped her negative propaganda campaign was working. Would a tattooed boyfriend send the wrong signal to Ally?

Steve’s tattoos were animals from his own and his children’s zodiac signs. “Do you believe in that stuff?” she’d asked him, surprised. He’d already expressed his lack of interest in religion and spiritualism, a rejection which Rachel whole-heartedly shared. “Nah,” he answered. “I got the scorpion for myself in my twenties: It just seemed kinda cool. And then later I wanted something to represent my kids.” This response annoyed Rachel. Symbols were important to her. Had she ever gotten a tattoo, she would have spent months agonizing over the motif, the artwork, the colors, the size, the placement, and finding an excellent artist whose previous work best embodied the style she wanted.

Rachel loved visual beauty and she needed a minimalist environment to feel calm and focused. Grime made her nervous and triggered an impulse to start wiping and scrubbing. Clutter distracted her: Her spaces at work and at home always had to be neat and organized, everything put back in its place at the end of the day. Steve’s apartment, on the other hand, was a mess and it looked like it needed a deep clean. On her one visit to his apartment, Steve had gestured helplessly at the chaos. “I know I have to throw stuff away, but I really need someone to help me with it. I have a hard time getting rid of things.”

Glancing around, Rachel saw evidence of this inability. The walls were festooned with what was obviously artwork from his children’s kindergarten days. A dusty cardboard fortress was crammed into a corner. The shelves were filled with children’s books: Charlotte’s Web, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, Goodnight Moon. She was touched by his sentimentality about these artifacts from his children’s younger years … but at the same time she yearned to stuff them all into boxes and store them out of sight.

So, yes, she was still conflicted about him. Steve, however, seemed besotted, beaming with pleasure when he looked at her and sending misspelled, affectionate messages several times a day. They’d had sex together for the first time tonight. Rachel still couldn’t quite believe that Steve found her attractive. She knew that she looked young for her age (a little Botox and some fillers had helped) and that she was in good shape compared to many other women in their late forties. However, next to Steve’s compact, muscled body she felt soft and jiggly. Steve pronounced her beautiful and sexy; he praised everything from her face to toes, including the small breasts she had always found inadequate, and he claimed to have not even noticed the scar from her C-section.

Thoughts of her C-section reminded Rachel of her daughter, presumably still sleeping in her room down the hall. Rachel had quietly let Steve into the house after checking to make sure that Ally was sleeping soundly: head back, mouth open, eyes lightly closed. Ally hadn’t met Steve yet, didn’t even know that he existed. Rachel had been separated from her husband Will for two years, but didn’t want to introduce a new boyfriend to Ally until the relationship seemed stable. She felt slightly guilty about sneaking a man into the house while her daughter was home. It sounded irresponsible, neglectful, like something a woman addicted to drugs or sex would do. But dating as a single mother was hard: The effort and expense of finding and hiring a babysitter every time she went out was daunting. Ally would never know he had been here, Rachel told herself.

Steve turned to look at Rachel, confirming her suspicion that he was also still awake. “I can’t sleep,” he whispered in a voice that bore a trace of an old-school Boston accent. “I don’t want to keep you up. I’m going to sit on the patio downstairs.” Rachel marveled that he felt enough at home to wander around on his own but welcomed the opportunity to try to sleep without a semi-stranger in her bed.

Alone, she flipped her pillow, stuck her feet out from under the duvet and turned onto her other side. She hadn’t taken a sleeping pill tonight. Steve had arrived at around 11 p.m. The next day was her birthday and he had asked whether he could come over and be the first to congratulate her. She agreed, on the condition that he had to wait until Ally was asleep. She had led him upstairs to her bedroom and turned forty-nine with Steve inside her, smiling down at her while she clung to his strong shoulders.

After both of them had caught their breath again, Steve got up to retrieve an envelope from his backpack. It was a birthday card for her, containing two tickets to a concert of a singer whose music Rachel had recently recommended to Steve. “I hope you’ll take me as your date,” he said, looking a little embarrassed. A very thoughtful – and expensive – present. Rachel was moved; she also recognized it as an investment in their relationship and a sign that he intended to still be dating her when the concert took place in a few weeks. By the time they settled down, it was already past one in the morning, too late to take a sleeping pill and still be able to emerge from a drugged sleep in time to wake Ally for school.

On regular mornings, she could send Ally off to the school bus and, if necessary, head back to bed, getting in a few more hours of sleep before starting to work. This was one of the perks of being a self-employed jewelry designer: She worked from home, set her own hours, and rarely had urgent deadlines.

The coming morning, however, would be different. In a particularly sociable moment she had invited a small group of girlfriends to a birthday brunch. She had already set the table, measured out her ingredients and neatly arranged the recipes on the counter. Cinnamon rolls, chocolate chip muffins, Irish soda bread: They all still needed to be mixed, formed and baked.

Crap, Rachel thought. How am I going to manage all of that on a couple of hours of sleep? Propelled by worry, Rachel turned onto her left side and launched herself out of the bed. She pulled on a pair of cropped black leggings and a tight black T-shirt and crept downstairs to find Steve. He sensed her presence as she approached the terrace, and turned around. Rachel admired his physique in his close-fitting black boxer briefs. What is this gorgeous guy doing here? she wondered.

Steve looked at her, concern in his eyes. “I’m sorry! I was a little too jazzed up to sleep. Go back to bed. It’s the middle of the night. Don’t worry about me … I’ll come back up in a little while.”

“It’s fine,” said Rachel, moving to give him a hug. “Not your fault. I’m a bad sleeper. I’m going to bake a few things for my birthday brunch. Wanna help?”

Steve laughed. “It’s almost 3 a.m.! You’re going to start baking now?” He kissed her lightly on the forehead, still holding her close.

“Sure,” answered Rachel, wondering whether she seemed eccentric to him. “Why not? I can’t sleep … I might as well be productive.”

Steve gave her another kiss and started walking towards the kitchen. “OK, let’s go. What should I do?”

Rachel watched him move away from her. She hadn’t really expected him to help. He didn’t look much like a baker. But he was now standing in the middle of the kitchen, gazing at her prepared ingredients and recipes. “Let’s see,” she mused. “Can you get out the eggs, milk and butter?”

They worked quickly and efficiently together. Rachel soon discovered that Steve knew his way around a kitchen as he mixed ingredients and filled forms. Taking a breather from crumbling streusel on top of her muffins, she quietly observed him standing at the counter, intently spreading butter blended with cinnamon on top of the dough for the rolls. She hadn’t even had to tell him to do that: He’d obviously baked these before. Her eyes traveled from his broad, tanned shoulders down to his narrow waist and muscled thighs. She was pretty sure that Steve baking in his underwear was the sexiest thing she’d ever seen.

He turned, catching her staring, and smiled. “You look amazing,” he said. “That black stuff … I like it.”

Rachel let out a short, breathless laugh. “Let’s finish up and go upstairs,” she suggested. The soda bread came out of the oven and was replaced there by the muffins. While those baked, Rachel and Steve finished preparing the cinnamon rolls and put them in the refrigerator. Rachel would take them out while she prepared Ally’s breakfast, return them to room temperature, let them rise, and bake them later. It would be fine if they were still in the oven when her guests arrived: They’d enjoy them even more warm.

Rachel closed the door of the fridge and took Steve’s hand. She decided to ignore the sticky bowls and spilled ingredients on the counter: She could deal with them while the cinnamon rolls were baking. “Don’t forget to be quiet,” she reminded him. They padded up the stairs, past Ally’s room, and slipped back into bed, pulling the duvet around themselves. “It’s only 5:00,” Rachel said. “We can still sleep for two hours. I’ll throw you out before I wake Ally. Thanks for helping.”

“No problem,” murmured Steve. He stretched out his arm, and she moved to him, turning onto her side with her head on his shoulder, putting her arm across his chest. “I’ve never baked in middle of the night before.”

Rachel snuggled closer. “Happy birthday,” Steve whispered. Rachel closed her eyes, already drifting into sleep. It was going to be a glorious year.