'Licked' by Kelly Daniel

She completed the last stroke and watched the ridges of the paint flatten and smooth.  She stood back, wrists on hips and breathed in the scent; it made her gag. Perfect. She had seen this colour on the wall of a show house in one of those glossy magazines that portrays life as it should be. She had bought it and gone to work.  It was a stylish sage colour.  The duck egg blue that was now smothered had only been two weeks old. He had smiled sleepily at that colour when he'd returned home, his suit crumpled from a day's wear, his eyes bleak, but then, you see, the smell of freshly laundered sheets had been on him.

She wondered how he would react to the sage.

When she heard the foot-fall and the fumbled key in the lock, she leant over the back of the settee and peered through the door into the hallway. She wanted to catch his expression as he came in.  She saw the top lip raise and sides of his mouth turn down.  She turned back happily and flicked to the next page in her magazine.  It was a keeper.