Dave and Brittany are a couple in their twenties. They are about as cliché as you can get and quite old fashioned in some of their ideas. Being brought up in a very small country town will have that effect.
High school sweethearts since their early teens, they never had any time apart or any other partners, provided you don’t count those strange sleep-overs and interesting weekends with her best friend Lisa, and Brittany most certainly hadn't counted those in quite some time. Nor would she bring them up with Dave if she could help it. She had spoken to him about them before, during a particularly alcohol-fuelled release of sexual energy one evening. He wasn't unaware of them but they were adults now and Brittany was going to act the part. They were married at nineteen and had all the appearance of domestic bliss right down to the white picket fence surrounding their three-bedroom, weatherboard home.
Dave worked for his father who owned his own stone mason business and was steadily coming to be more involved in the business as his father spoke longingly of his retirement. Dave enjoyed the challenge and looked forward to being able to finally bring the business into the current century but there were times when he wished he could drop it all and pursue other ideas, but family is family and in a small country town sometimes tradition is what's most important. Brittany worked for the local art gallery. She did enjoy her work but it had never had the sense of permanence because she was only going to continue until they managed to get pregnant, then Brittany was going to stay home to raise their babies.
Their friends and family were all taken with their fairy tale life but there was a wound that was beginning to fester within their marriage. A distance had developed between them. It may have just been complacency or taking each other for granted as often happens in relationships, but it had gone past the point of being an annoyance, to something more now and it only seemed to be growing. Both of them could feel the tension and pretty soon something was going to give.
Dave came in from work dwelling on the fact that he was finding it harder and harder to get out of the car and walk into his home each evening. He had no idea why this was happening or even why he was feeling the way he was and it was really playing on his mind.
He loved his wife and with the exception of kids their life was all going to plan, well the plan that everyone else seemed to have for them. The problem was exactly that though, it seemed all so planned out and boring. It's not that he didn't want those things but he longed for more. He wanted adventure and excitement and he wanted Brittany to want that too. He missed the carefree days of his teenage years where he was mostly free of responsibility. He wanted to go on adventures with Brittany and see things they hadn't seen before and do things that were considered outrageous in this little town.
He knew Brittany was struggling with it too and that she was just as frustrated as he was but they had reached a point where they just didn’t discuss things anymore. Whenever they did it ended in an argument with their frustrations spilling out onto each other. Because they didn’t want to hurt each other anymore they stopped discussing these things but it was coming to a head and Dave could feel it the same way you can feel a large thunderstorm brewing over the horizon.
Brittany could sense Dave’s lack of enthusiasm but she had no idea what to do about it. She knew he wanted more adventure and excitement in life but that doesn't pay the bills and they weren't kids anymore, they had responsibilities now. She was beginning to suspect that Dave might be thinking about having an affair. She knew their lack of sexual experience was an issue and that because neither one of them had ever had another partner it made her nervous. She loved Dave and wanted nothing more than to make him happy but that was hard to do when she was living with guilt. She felt guilty that she hadn’t been able to provide a child for them but worse was the secret guilt that she held.
Lately, Brittany had done a couple of things that she hadn’t told Dave about. It started quite innocently. She was searching yet again for information about fertility online. Unlike the multitude of times, she had searched before though she discovered that there was a new fertility clinic opened in one of the hospitals not too far away. At first, she was excited but then she started to have doubts because it was in the city and Dave didn’t like Brittany going to the city alone. Being an old fashioned country boy he liked to be there to protect Brittany from whatever misfortune, real or imagined, could befall her. Mind you if you asked him what he was protecting her from he would not have been able to say. It was not that he was trying to be controlling he just worried far too much.
Because Brittany felt so guilty about not being able to conceive a child, which she was convinced was her fault, she wanted to go see this fertility clinic without the pressure of Dave there. Before she could chicken out she made the appointment then began concocting a way in which she could get there without him.
She knew that if she told him it was a doctor’s appointment he would insist on going so she deliberately made the appointment for when she knew was the busiest time at Dave’s job then organized her own day off. She was so convinced that it was her fault that she couldn't get pregnant she couldn't stand the thought of having that confirmed in front of him. She decided that she wouldn’t say anything at all to Dave until she came up with a good plan and until it was too late for him to get time off work.