The Gift

Fiction(ish). A birthday* newsletter excerpt, from me to you.

He arrives at the restaurant umbrella first. She watches him turn, shaking the rain off it as she had with hers minutes before, simultaneously shaking the day off. He’s covered almost completely. The brim of his hat flirts with the back of the collar of his coat, turned up against the weather, scarf tucked into coat breast; her eyes follow broad shoulders down arms leading smoothly to cuffs and gloves. For a moment his profile floats there against the darkness of the doorway, a crescent, before he steps towards her and into the lamp lighting.

He reaches to remove hat and gloves. She is torn. She wants to see his hands, but there is something about the shape of them in their leather casing. Mostly she wants to suspend the moment when he takes them off. Finger by finger, the firm slide of glove over hand, one on and one off. She wants to feel his gloved hand on her bare skin, but she wants to trace the veins and lines and brush his knuckles with her thumb, press his bare palm to her mouth and feel the heat of his wrist against her jaw. She wants his hands clothed and unclothed. They are like a gift. As pleasurable in their wrapped potential as in their revealed familiarity.

She watches him take off his coat, scarf, hand them smoothly to the concierge. Makes a mental note of how he is layered, obstacles to her desire that she will delight in discarding when they arrive at the room later. Delayed gratification that she will try not to be distracted by while he checks the wine list. Her eyes will trace the borders between his shirt and his wrists, his throat. She will lean in, futilely trying to catch a glimpse of his chest between the buttons, the hair that she wishes her fingers were carding through; she is an impatient woman, and he knows it. 

This is what he does. He makes her wait.  She wants him all, and she wants no barriers between them. But he knows, too, how much she adores unwrapping her presents. 

Later, she steps backwards into the hallway, pulling him with her by the lapels of his coat. The urgency felt over dinner, the need and the frustration at all those layers between them has settled into a pulse, a rhythm of slower cadence. She has been forced only to think about all those layers, their quantity and quality, the thought he has put into them and she finds she cannot rush them now. Drawn close and inhaling the scent of his neck as her fingertips slide down and around and under those lapels to the buttons below. 

His coat hung and his scarf playfully draped around her bare neck. He steps in towards her so that she can stroke the knot of his tie. Later she will wear it and nothing else, the cursory ribbon half-tied around the already opened gift box. But now she is devoted to each button of his shirt. Between each of them there is an inch of fabric in which she can take a mile of time, the exposed flesh a new treat to taste. 

Shoes are merely an excuse to kneel in front of him, between his legs as he sits on the bed. Sliding the stiff leather off his heel, slipping a hand up his calves before hooking off the socks, eyes on the buckle of his belt. Impatience rears its head again. Hands must be busied, tracing up and over his thighs, softly and then pressing, not able to resist feeling the shape of them, their expanse. Ghosting a hand over the seam of his crotch. Could have been an accident, while reaching for his belt buckle, if not for the way she can’t help but linger and the way they both know she’s prone to temptation. 

This is the moment. The inhale of breath before the lid of the box is lifted, before the glee of the giftee, before the effusion of ‘thank you’s in all of their forms. The button undone, the zip, the promise. In this, they share their favourite moment. The giver and the receiver, in symbiosis. A moment to linger in, her grinning up at him, anticipatory, indulgence blooming in him, a swell and a rush.

He raises his hips, the final layer of wrapping slides off, and she opens. 

*latecomers to the party are always welcome- bearing gifts, of course.