Comfortable

Billy was back by the time she woke up. Not that he needed to be absent for her to know he'd been out ratting the previous night. The spring in his step and the fire in his eyes meant that he'd seen someone that had taken his fancy and slept with her. The slightly apologetic way he smiled proved it just as well.

And she reacted the same way she always did, she smiled back in forgiveness over the cornflakes.

There was something amusing about it. She was a Playboy centrefold and yet she couldn't satisfy her man. But she didn't feel too inadequate, Billy himself admitted he was incapable of fidelity. He loved her, but sex was something they understood differently. To her, it was something you had to be in the mood for, to him, it was something fun, something to be done often, and something to attach as little significance to as shaking hands.

Admittedly she realised that if everyone found out they would expect her to get angry and leave him. When she first found out she had been angry, but she just couldn't muster enough hatred to throw him out. And after the first time it didn't seem to matter much. It was just a matter of asking him to be careful not to let people find out.

She realised that various girls on the roster who were staunch feminists would say she was letting the team down but since when had the whole girl power thing been about conforming to society's expectation of how a woman ought to act? She thought it was all about getting what you wanted out of life. And she wanted fun and she had fun with Billy. He cheered her up and made her laugh, that was worth more than sex to her.

It was Billy whose jokes got her through the bad days and whose ability to listen got her through the worst. He was comfortable to be with and she was pretty certain she couldn't get that with someone else. There weren't many people who would willingly listen to her complain about nail varnish and lollipops.

That was the thing, she knew from the tales the girls told that there weren't many men, in the business or outside, who could deal with their girl being a bigger star than they were. Billy dealt with it. Wasn't her fault, wasn't his.

Being in the business together also meant that home-life was easier. She could deal with the stringent diet he had to maintain, most days she ate the same rabbit food he did. In the same way he didn't expect her to look as good as she did on camera every single day; she was good-looking yes, but looking that good took hours of work and on their few days off she had better things to do than waste the time on glamour.

Did she want to risk all that just because he got laid by some other girl? She didn't think she did, and since it was her life she didn't.

Every time she forgave him, and let him tell her silly jokes over the cornflakes.
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