I toss and turn. Enough to wake up my wife.

"Darian, will you just take some melatonin."

"I can't, Justine; if I do, I'll be half asleep tomorrow."

"We could always go again... That always helps you sleep", she says, touching my leg.

"We could, but it didn't work in the first place."

"Ok, let's go over the project one more time," she says.

"No, I have a better idea."

"You do?" She says, seductively.

"I'll write a project proposal."

She laughs. "You really have changed".

I look at her. "Justine, I can take care of you before I go."

"No, I was teasing you. Go. It's a great sign that Cassian picked you for this one. He knows you are always prepared."

"I know."

"Now, go write; let me sleep; I have a big day tomorrow too", my wife says.

She pulls her tongue out. I pull mine too. Like she said, we are married, but we are also lovers, and lovers should be childish.

I get into our kitchen, and I grab my laptop.

I wonder how I got into this life. It's not like I decided to become a project manager for the number one most wanted man in the FBI task force and to live in a nudist colony. Sorry, naturist resort.

Not that I complain about seeing my wife nude at home at all times, but I just never expected this life!

I was working as a project manager for a big corporation when they decided to become agile. This meant replacing my job with those of a product owner and a scrum master.

I started reading about it, but they laid me off anyway. What a bunch of bastards...

My wife worked at the same company. It's where I met her, and they laid her off a week later after selling their head office.

They would become tenants of their previous building, but that meant that they didn't need my wife anymore to do maintenance in the building. The new owners had their own team, and they underpaid them.

I tried everything. I even got my professional Scrum Master certifications. Likewise, I got product owner certified too. My wife got home cleaning gigs but no serious job offers. The problem is that in the residential field, the construction sector is very patriarchal.

And me? Nothing. I even tried to get hired as a construction project manager so I could help my wife get a job, but no one bit.

It's Sabrina who helped me out. I had dated her in high school, and we bumped into her at the supermarket.

The fridge starts its defrosting cycle and makes me jump. The house is so silent otherwise.

I think back. Justine had also known Sabrina, but we didn't know each other. That made for a nice catch-up.

The worst is, Justine met Sabrina late in high school and heard of me as her ex without ever realizing that this ex in question is the man she married!

We laughed, and Sabrina decided to exchange numbers with us, saying that her wife would love to meet me.

"Wife?" I say.

"Yeah. I guess I should apologize to you."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I'm gay. I kept complaining that you didn't do the right things, but as it turns out, you couldn't."

I looked at her. She wasn't my first girlfriend, but she was the only one I could never, well, make happy.

"That is greatly appreciated."

My wife invited her lost friend Sabrina to come with her wife to eat at our place, and the next Saturday, we were eating at the table when the bomb was dropped: they were naturists!

They invited us the following week, which we accepted, even knowing that we would need to be nude, but in truth, both of us were just being polite.

Neither of us actually planned to go.

"If you think I will let you see her bare breasts again, mister, you are so wrong", my wife told me when they left.

The next day, she asked me what I thought. "I have no intention of being naked in the presence of my ex and her wife."

That settled it!

I stand up. My heart is racing just thinking back to this. I get to the front door and slowly open it. I get outside, but I just sit on my porch, with my legs on the bottom step. It's a cloudless night, and the moon is waxing. I look around; I see no one. It's silent outside too.

I think back to that period of our lives. On Monday, Justine had spoken with one of her friends, who admitted that she enjoyed nude recreation. She "sold" the concept to my wife, and that evening, we got into a fight.

I maintained that since Sabrina was my ex, it was my prerogative to say no, and that didn't fly with Justine at all.

"We've never had a hierarchy between us. We never had one of us put their foot down. Remember what you asked for your birthday the first year? I was horrified, but did I say no? Hell no. We researched together, and we talked, and we tried, and I ended up liking it. Well, now, I am the one pushing."

She was right! I gave in, reluctantly, but that only pissed her off even more.

"I am the only one working tomorrow; you sleep on the couch." She had a few houses to clean for basically pocket change.

But I didn't end on the couch. We made up, we made out, and after getting closer, we both slept nude. It wasn't our first time, but it started a new routine.

The next day, I decided to study new paradigms and make new job applications at home, in the nude. I had to get used to it.

When Justine came home early, she saw me and, weirdly, exploded!

I guess I didn't understand that she had hoped we would try on Saturday, but now I was the one pushing her.

So we fought again. I decided to get dressed, but she banned me from it. "I had made my bed". It got ugly enough to eat separately.

I look around. I heard a voice. Not enough to make up who it is. Who can be awake at this ungodly hour? Maybe a compound guard is finishing his shift?

Where was I? I was still nude, but while I was cleaning my dishes, Justine left the bedroom and came to hug me from behind.

"I am an idiot, right?"

"Hell no, you are brilliant."

"I mean, I fought you for saying no to Saturday, and now I fought you for trying it on your own."

"Ah, yeah!"

She sighs and pulls back and then grabs my hand and pulls me to the kitchen.

"I don't know what I want, Darian."

"I realize that."

"I had a horrible day at work; I was borderline sexually harassed, so the idea of being nude in front of others horrifies me today, but on Sunday, I was excited about it, and the idea seduced me. I feel like a weather vane."

"What? You were sexually harassed?"

"Borderline. I was called "hot stuff," "cutie," and "doll" by the guys on the construction site next to the condos I was cleaning."

"That's horrible."

"Well, I guess I have thin skin when it comes to that."

"No, you don't. You were there to work, not to entertain them."

"I guess."

I finally spot the source of the voices: Henri and his wife. I wonder why they are awake. They are coming nearby. I wave at them, they wave back, and I smile like an idiot. She is pregnant. I knew she was. About 7 months now? The baby is bound to wake her up sometimes, and perhaps they want to walk it off. Maybe I should do the same.

They soon disappear from my view.

What did I tell Justine? Right.

"Listen to me, Justine. When you were doing maintenance and repairs, you were as good as them."

"Hell no."

That took me aback. "Huh? Since when are you not adequate?"

"Did I say that? I wasn't as good as them because they couldn't keep up with me."

I laugh. That's my wife.

We talked. In the end, she undressed, but we didn't manage to try naturism. Previously, we were nude together for one reason only, and well, after a fight, it's what we needed.

I smile on my porch.

The following day, I stayed dressed, but she undressed on arrival, so I followed suit, and when I tried to get closer to her, we fought again.

"How am I going to be ready for Saturday, Darian, if we get intimate every time I try to explore naturism? You heard them last weekend; it has nothing to do with sex."

But we calmed down and managed to have a decent enough evening that when it was time for bed, we finally let our passion take over.

The next day, another fight, this time because... well. I am not sure why we fought.

It's a little cold outside, and I have ideas for my project. I go back inside and take out my laptop.

All that matters is that we made up, and that Saturday, we went with a smile to eat with Sabrina and the probably autistic Tamara. She was nice, it was friendly, and we ended up in the heated pool with them after lunch, where we bumped into their boss, Cassian.

The conversation grew, and Cassian admitted needing builders and another project manager for construction mainly. And that the jobs would come with a house in this resort.

I learned that this was actually not a coincidence. That Sabrina had learned of our financial issues and mentioned us to Cassian.

This wasn't just a supper; it was a job interview. Well, a job meet and greet would be more appropriate.

We moved in the next week, but it took a while for us to really get in. I mainly worked on projects for the resort, and Justine implemented them.

I helped with a revamp of a car wash owned by people at the resort while Justine worked on a new house for new residents.

It was going along well until we were brought in to the bigger plan.

Oh, they had tested us. Random conversations in the hot tub tested if we agreed with society as it is and softly helped us accept that rebellion was the right solution.

We didn't know this was a test, but it was.

We were invited to the members-only community center for a special occasion. That's when we were then exposed to the true purpose of the resort.

They didn't mention Vexx. Of course they didn't. They focused on hacking big corporations to force them to invest in charity. They talked about thwarting mergers to prevent mass layoffs and about hacking government entities to disrupt the exploitation of corporate loopholes.

I was neutral, but Justine loved it. So Cassian spoke more about billionaires and how Reagan destroyed the middle class, and well, that was the right approach.

We were all in by the end of the discussion. It's only later, like days later, that we were asked what we thought of Vexx.

Of course we knew Vexx. The psychopath who robs museums, bombs factories, and does bank heists. The one who laughs like a maniac and professes a terrorist manifesto.

This time, we were reversed. Justine thought he should be shot on sight. I thought that, weirdly, many of his actual beliefs mirrored our own.

I was ignored; instead, Justine was interrogated until she realized that she knew nothing about Vexx. Only the fear newspapers put in us about him.

"But didn't he kill hostages a few years ago?"

"No", says Cassian. "He killed a vigilante who took out a gun during a bank heist. Usually, everyone comes out alive from one of his operations."

"Oh."

"And he never robs the clients. Only the bank."

"I guess he's not so bad. But how do you know all of this?"

"Because I am Vexx."

I think our jaws dropped.

He explained it all. That most bank heists are to get to safe-deposit boxes. That most bank attacks are actually via tunnels to reduce risks. He even explained that most operations do not involve Vexx at all.

In fact, I could help manage many of the "criminal" projects, but I could refuse to manage anything involving Vexx directly. He told me Vexx was the avatar of the organization, which does far more than violent actions.

Justine would work on the practice rooms. Recreating in our repetition center the halls of any target building so the good squad could train in them.

Weirdly, that's something that did excite her, even if the reason for their existence didn't please her much.

But mostly, I was impressed that had I decided not to break any laws, Cassian would have accommodated me. That was, well, the opposite of what the public perception of Vexx was.

I did coordinate a few illegal things, just non-violent ones. And I proved to Cassian my dedication to attaining our goals while breaking as few laws as I could.

But tonight, I am writing a proposal for our most ambitious project. The biggest one so far, the most far-reaching one.

And I had an idea, which no one would see coming.