Week 1 / Sunday

The next morning, they slept in, since it was a rest day, and then woke very hungry. Julian ordered breakfast, well, brunch, really, and then they entertained themselves in bed, finishing just before their food arrived. They sat at their table in the hotel robes and finished the brunch, and then Larissa sat on the hotel deck watching the planes coming and going and catching up on social media. She also wrote a summary of the day before, a few paragraphs and a couple of photos, and sent that off to her family chats – one for Julian’s family, and another that included Julian, Thomas, Jane, her mum and Mary. And also the project social chat, since they told her Julian would never remember to do that. And Fiona. Each included several photos, and her plan was that each day, she’d include a photo of her and Julian kissing. Today’s kissing photo was her and Julian kissing after he’d undone all the buttons on the dress, before it came off.

Their wedding photos had got plenty of attention on social media. Not quite viral, like their videos had gone, but lots of attention and comments. Wait until the video goes out with the dancing, she said to herself, glad that Steph would be handling the comments for that one. A fair few of the comments were the normal stupid insulting and misogynostic stuff from pansy boys hiding in their basements – Larissa ignored them; other people could worry about that. Probably most of them were Russian bot trolls anyway.

Anything she could find from her friends and family was all about how much fun their wedding was, and wishing them a happy honeymoon with plenty of ‘sleeping’. Yeah, well, not as much of that as she originally wanted – the working honeymoon had turned into more work and less honeymoon than she had initially expected. Oh well, she’d said she was all in on Julian’s project, so here she was.

Julian was at the desk, head down doing email and reading financial modelling, so she lay on the bed and read some more of her textbook, with a short break to go for a quick run around the airport area. By herself – Julian grimaced and promised to join her for the rest of the trip, but not this time; he was flat-stick preparing for the meetings the next day.

At four o’clock, they grabbed a cab to the Sky Tower, and met a bunch of tween fans and their families, and the girls excitedly showed them Auckland from the top of the tower, both places of general interest and in their own lives, which made it much more interesting. Then they shared a meal with the families in a restaurant at the bottom of the Sky Tower while the girls pumped both Julian and Larissa for information about the project, Layna, Larissa and Lacey, Layna’s boyfriend, being a vet, and more about what Layna was like. Poor Layna, Larissa said to herself, and she explained to the girls like they were all grown up about what it was like for Layna, and they promised not to go too far over the top when they finally would get to meet her. Whenever that was, given that New Zealand was now closed, though the dad who worked customs thought that the project could still get approval to come to New Zealand, though since they’d have to quarantine for two weeks ... no chance, Julian said.

Then they were back to their hotel room for an early night. They spent the next few hours in their luxury hotel room spa bath, talking through the wedding stories they’d heard from their many parents, and what they should learn from them. They wrote check lists for the health of their relationship, since Sal’s check lists had worked well for them. They had three check lists – one to do once a month, one once a year, and one to do at momentous occasions, such as changing jobs, or getting pregnant, whenever that happened.

While they were in the bath, they took turns getting each other off – a new experience for both of them; they’d never made love in a bath before. An experience that they’d definitely be repeating for sure. They were for sure very thoroughly clean before they finished, and then they packed ready for an early departure in the morning.

First rest day down. The next day wouldn’t be restful at all.