She was excited to be given a present.

First dates don't often command that kind of generosity- and though she'd expected him to be a short off-the-wall, the neatly wrapped box, 8 by 8 cm, sat on the tabular array between them in the bar where they'd met. It was covered in patched newspaper and, it had a small bow on it.

They'd been chatting for sidereal day. Not long as far as history's greatest romances go, but there'd been something about the back and forth of the telephone exchange which had piqued her interest. Not quite arrogance.

OK, arrogance. A kind of brusque, charming offhanded manner that on one day left her wondering exactly how a great deal he'd wanted her, then the side by side day was acute, manoeuver, piercing and irritatingly close to the truth, when he'd asked her questions about herself.

Always close to the os. Precise. Incisive. Rude.

‘ I'm not telling you ’, came the answer when she asked, understandably enough, what was inside.

‘ But here's the thing ’, he continued. ‘ You can leave it wrapped, and select it abode with you. But : I promise ; I promise you, you will never use it with me. Ever.'

‘ Or, you can give it here at the tabular array, read the instructions, and we'll use it together, when you're ready. But then you need to open it here .'

'Understand ?'

He smiles.

She bites her lip, optic : down.

‘ No ? You don't want it ?'

He goes to grab the neat packet. She moves quicker than him and slit it, instinctively ; a stab of gall at the small remnant of his smile flicker-sneering over his eyes.

‘ You do. OK.'

‘ So. Decide. What's it to be ? Open it here ? Or never with me ?'

outset date.

It's. A. First. Fucking. Date.

Ultimatums ?

Every bone in her trunk is aching to just get up and pull up stakes, and let him sit on his own, with his smug fucking face slowly realising that his biz's backfired.

Fuck. Arrogance doesn't even begin to cover it.

And yet.

He looks calm. Laconic, even. He's not even shifted in his chair. Sipping wine. Eyes : assessing.

She moves the box closer.

What could be so fucking shameful that she'd need to have this variety of decision, now ?

She rips off the paper. The waiting staff seem at once to loom over her, and early diners appear to sustain turned themselves to see. The still in the eatery becomes deafening.

But of form cypher cares. They're all wrapped up in their own sprightliness to look at a pretty charwoman, opening a box.

The box is leather, dark blue. A clasp closes it with a individual boldness button. It makes a trenchant pop as she presses it open with her thumb.

The content is obscured by a diminished while of newspaper, which she moves out of the way, to discover a bullet-shaped plug. Chrome. About 4cm spacious at the wide-cut part, and shaped like a tear, extending to a effervesce jewel at the other end.

She immediately snaps the box shut.

parentage rushes, involuntarily and inexorably to her look. She can feel the burning sensation banquet from her neck, down her chest, through her gut and endorse up her spine.

She can barely talk- someone must have seen- it's a nookie butt fireplug. In a eating house. He's got no fucking shame. She realises her oculus haven't moved off the box- and that now her nerve is flushed, and the smallest beads of fret are forming on her brow.

‘ Don't you like it ?'

She can't looking at him.

Cunt.

She'd entirely forgotten that he was there at all.

‘ nobody's watching. I promise. Don't you like it ?'

She looks around. He's right.

People are oblivious to the psychological war going on at the mesa tucked away in the corner. brace continue their inane chin wagging. waiter desperately ignore patronising conversation from idiotic men trying to show they know something about wine-coloured to their disinterested dates.

nobody gives a nooky that a very pretty firearm of jewellery has changed hands at the table in the corner. Nobody's looking at the woman staring at the table, with her left hand on a small box, and her redress manus holding an even small square of Elwyn Brooks White paper.

And then, with a sudden movement, she's stood up, turned, and gone.

Over 45 irregular his eyes change from smiling confidence, to furrowed confusion. He's pushed her too far.

Fuck.

Always playing these games.

screw. ass. Fuck.

Always pushing his luck, trading her discomfort and embarrassment for the arousal that he normally judges much, so very much unspoiled. annoying creeps over him, and he downs his wine, pays the bank bill, and starts idly, petulantly casting about the restaurant for interesting hoi polloi to look at.

zip. He grabs his headphone, and starts purposelessly clicking.

‘ You coming then ?'

He looks up. She looks like a different charwoman. Tall, with her coating on, his breather collar in his pharynx. Her eyes have a sharpness to them. A purpose. He pauses to film the image in- her perfume now assaulting his mind, and distracting him further. He's been briefly upstaged. Flanked. Blind-sided.

She leans over and whispers into his ear ‘ Get up .'

'Get up off your can, and recover us a taxi in the next 45 bit, or I am going for a drink by myself… ’. With that, she precision-places the humble square of paper on the table in front of him, turns, and pass off.

On the paper is a oily vivid-reddish smear where she's blotted her backtalk, and a individual Logos, written by him : ‘ spit'.