Control + Z

Carly had told Adam to leave her alone.

It was not that she did not love him. She did. She had always loved him and always would. That was why she had married him. But the big rule of marriage was that you had to work things out with your spouse. You had to compromise, and Adam was not doing that with her.

The dynamics of their marriage had changed. She could not say that it had not. Carly really had believed that their vows were strong enough to have managed to get through anything together, but they were not.

They had always worked from home; they both were game developers. Adam was the star of the family because he was the stud game developer between the two of them. But Carly had worked jointly with him on one of his projects and ended up getting a project from that collaboration to work on a game that she had always dreamed of making. It was a combination of The Sims and the pick your own ending relationship games that were so popular that she loved to play herself on her phone and tablet. Her job was to develop killer plots and images for her game and make sure the images were not watered down on mobile devices. Gamy was the working name for her game because there were many relationship options open for the players to choose their adventures with.

She and Adam had decided to open up their relationship, and then the pandemic happened, and they were together twenty-four hours a day. Online dating was pretty disparaging for both of them, so they were on a timeout at the moment. Both of them had been ghosted presenting as a couple or by themselves on various apps.

Working together in their apartment, which had been a pleasure before, was now becoming something of torture because she had to be honest — she had become a workaholic. The pandemic forcing the necessity to work from home made Adam think she was just there all of the time, and he did not seem to think she was there to do her own work like he was. When he was free, he expected her to be right there for him.

Carly had always respected his time and had never bothered him when he was on a big project. It was true she should not have invited her MacBook to their bed, but she was on a deadline — self-imposed but still a deadline — and she needed to get things done.

“Adam, I know it is a lot right now, but I need the time.”

“But you know how sexy you are with those tortoise cat eyes frames. You know what that does to me, Carly…”

“Adam,” she said admonishingly. “Self-control!”

He touched her thigh, and she looked at him out of the corner of her eyes as his fingers walked up her skin. She pressed something on her keyboard, and then Adam was on her screen! He pounded from the other side of the screen, and Carly took off her glasses to really look at him and make sure she saw him there. She caressed the screen.

“I am not sure how you got there, but maybe you can help me test run the game?” she said before she would have realized that was not the thing to say to her trapped husband.

“Carly, get me out of here! What did you press? Press Control +Z!!!”

“I already pressed other buttons. It is too late.”

It was too late to undo.

This is the first story in a series.

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