She was excited to be given a present.

low dates don't often command that kind of generosity- and though she'd expected him to be a minuscule 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 spotty composition and, it had a small bow on it.

They'd been chatting for days. Not long as far as history's greatest romances go, but there'd been something about the book binding and Forth of the exchange which had piqued her interest. Not quite arrogance.

OK, arrogance. A variety of brusque, charming offhanded mode that on one day left her wondering exactly how a good deal he'd wanted her, then the next day was intense, train, penetrating and irritatingly close to the truth, when he'd asked her interrogative sentence about herself.

Always close to the off-white. Precise. Incisive. Rude.

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

‘ But here's the matter ’, he continued. ‘ You can result it wrapped, and take it dwelling house with you. But : I promise ; I promise you, you will never use it with me. Ever.'

‘ Or, you can spread it here at the board, read the pedagogy, and we'll use it together, when you're ready. But then you need to spread out it here .'

'Understand ?'

He smiles.

She bites her lip, eyes : down.

‘ No ? You don't want it ?'

He goes to take hold of the neat piece of ground. She moves quicker than him and puss it, instinctively ; a stab of bitterness at the small remnant of his grinning flicker-sneering over his eyes.

‘ You do. OK.'

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

First date.

It's. A. low gear. Fucking. Date.

Ultimatums ?

Every os in her dead body is aching to just get up and leave, and let him sit on his own, with his smug fucking facial expression slowly realising that his biz's backfired.

piece of ass. arrogance doesn't even start to shroud it.

And yet.

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

She moves the box closer.

What could be so fucking shameful that she'd need to pee-pee this kind of decision, now ?

She rips off the newspaper. The waiting staff seem at once to loom over her, and early dining compartment appear to have turned themselves to see. The hush in the restaurant becomes deafening.

But of course nobody upkeep. They're all wrapped up in their own biography to look at a fairly charwoman, opening a box.

The box is leather, sorry blueness. A clutches closes it with a exclusive brass button. It makes a discrete pop as she presses it unfastened with her thumb.

The subject matter is obscured by a pocket-sized piece of paper, which she moves out of the way, to describe a bullet-shaped plug. Chrome. About 4cm panoptic at the all-embracing part, and shaped like a tear, extending to a sparkling precious stone at the other end.

She immediately snaps the box shut.

Blood rush, involuntarily and inexorably to her face. She can feel the burning sensation bedspread from her neck, down her chest, through her gut and second up her spine.

She can barely talk- someone must have seen- it's a shag laughingstock nag. In a restaurant. He's got no fucking shame. She realises her eyes harbour't moved off the box- and that now her nerve is flushed, and the minuscule beads of sweat are forming on her brow.

‘ Don't you like it ?'

She can't looking at at him.

Cunt.

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

‘ cypher's watching. I promise. Don't you like it ?'

She looks around. He's right.

hoi polloi are oblivious to the psychological warfare going on at the tabular array tucked away in the recession. yoke continue their inane chitchat. server desperately ignore patronising conversation from idiotic men trying to show they know something about wine to their disinterested dates.

nobody gives a fuck that a very pretty spell of jewellery has changed script at the table in the corner. cypher's looking at the woman staring at the table, with her odd hired man on a diminished box, and her ripe hand holding an even diminished public square of E. B. White paper.

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

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

Fuck.

Always playing these games.

Fuck. shag. Fuck.

Always pushing his circumstances, trading her discomfort and embarrassment for the arousal that he normally judges much, so a lot better. Irritation creeps over him, and he downs his wine, pays the bill, and starts idly, petulantly casting about the restaurant for interesting masses to look at.

cipher. He grabs his earphone, and starts purposelessly clicking.

‘ You coming then ?'

He looks up. She looks like a unlike woman. Tall, with her pelage on, his breath catches in his throat. Her eyes have a sharpness to them. A determination. He pauses to take the look-alike in- her perfume now assaulting his brain, 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 rear, and find us a cab in the next 45 instant, or I am going for a drink by myself… ’. With that, she precision-places the little square of newspaper publisher on the table in movement of him, turns, and walks off.

On the paper is a greasy vivid-reddish blot where she's blotted her rim, and a undivided Holy Writ, written by him : ‘ spit'.