Breaths fell evenly past Art's lips whilst he worked the metallic tweezers through his blond fringe, plucking out gray hairs with a clenched jaw and a wince.

It was humiliating to be this age and still be unable to see past his vanity but he couldn't help it. A tennis player visibly aging was akin to a horse with a lame leg but with tennis players instead of getting the mercy of being put down they got retired—something far, far worse.

All his old now retired colleagues coming together every week on the Tennis Channel to say he should've retired at thirty-three was bad enough but falling apart visually whilst falling apart on the court was just pathetic. He was better than that.

Art was far from delusional, he knew it was best to retire and put the old workhorse down. However the same could not be said for his wife, she still thought she could squeeze a few good years from that workhorse and to keep the missus happy he let her.

A yawn broke behind him, Art's gaze followed the sound through the mirror to the girl standing behind him, a girl decidedly not his wife. "Well, well, well." Art put the tweezers down, attempting to hide his embarrassment. "Guess sleeping beauty decided to finally grace me with her presence."

It wasn't long before he felt your arms loop around his waist, cheek smushed against his back, he placed his hands over yours. An affair with a much younger girl was a sure sign of a midlife crisis, he knew that, but he needed something, anything to keep him going, that just happened to be you.

Tashi's knack for looking the other way was honestly commendable, it wasn't as if he was going out of his way to hide you, he was sure she knew but never said anything—his wife was a lot of things but a hypocrite wasn't one of them.

A groggy inquiry into what he was doing had heat rising in his cheeks and his stomach turning in embarrassment. "I'm plucking grays." Admitting that made him feel a certain amount of dread like you'd suddenly see you were wasting your youth on an old man.