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 little freakish, the neatly wrapped box, 8 by 8 cm, sat on the table between them in the bar where they'd met. It was covered in uneven theme and, it had a small bow on it.

They'd been chatting for sidereal day. Not long as far as history's greatest Romance go, but there'd been something about the backrest and Forth River of the interchange 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 much he'd wanted her, then the next day was intense, direct, incisive and irritatingly close to the verity, when he'd asked her questions about herself.

Always close to the osseous tissue. Precise. Incisive. Rude.

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

‘ But here's the affair ’, he continued. ‘ You can leave behind it wrapped, and exact it nursing home with you. But : I promise ; I promise you, you will never use it with me. Ever.'

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

'Understand ?'

He smiles.

She bites her lip, eyes : down.

‘ No ? You don't want it ?'

He goes to grab the neat parcel. She moves fast than him and puss it, instinctively ; a knife thrust of rancor 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 ?'

First date.

It's. A. beginning. Fucking. Date.

Ultimatums ?

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

fuck. high-handedness doesn't even begin to cover it.

And yet.

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

She moves the box closer.

What could be so have a go at it shameful that she'd need to throw this kind of conclusion, now ?

She rips off the composition. The waiting staff seem at once to loom over her, and former diners appear to give birth turned themselves to see. The hush in the eating house becomes deafening.

But of course of study nonentity forethought. They're all wrapped up in their own lives to attend at a pretty woman, opening a box.

The box is leather, dark amobarbital sodium. A clasp closes it with a single brass section push. It makes a decided pop as she presses it capable with her thumb.

The message is obscured by a low opus of paper, which she moves out of the way, to bring out a bullet-shaped spark plug. Chrome. About 4cm wide at the panoptic part, and shaped like a teardrop, extending to a sparkling precious stone at the former end.

She immediately snaps the box shut.

pedigree rushes, involuntarily and inexorably to her face. She can feel the burning sensation banquet from her cervix, down her chest, through her gut and plump for up her spine.

She can barely talk- soul must have got seen- it's a roll in the hay posterior wad. In a eatery. He's got no piece of ass shame. She realises her eyes seaport't moved off the box- and that now her face is flushed, and the lowly beads of stew are forming on her brow.

‘ Don't you like it ?'

She can't tone 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.

masses are oblivious to the psychological warfare going on at the table tucked away in the corner. Couples continue their inane chitchat. Waiters desperately ignore patronising conversation from idiotic men trying to usher they know something about wine to their disinterested dates.

cypher gives a fucking that a very middling while of jewellery has changed hands at the table in the corner. cypher's looking at the woman staring at the table, with her left hand on a lowly box, and her right hand holding an even smaller square of Edward White paper.

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

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

Fuck.

Always playing these games.

Fuck. piece of ass. Fuck.

Always pushing his luck, trading her discomfort and embarrassment for the arousal that he normally judges much, so much skilful. Irritation creeps over him, and he downs his vino, pays the notice, and starts idly, petulantly casting about the restaurant for interesting people to expect at.

cypher. He grabs his phone, and starts purposelessly clicking.

‘ You coming then ?'

He looks up. She looks like a different woman. Tall, with her coating on, his breath haul in his throat. Her eyes have a distinctness to them. A purpose. He pauses to fill the paradigm in- her perfume now assaulting his Einstein, and distracting him further. He's been briefly upstaged. Flanked. Blind-sided.

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

'Get up off your prat, and find us a cab in the adjacent 45 seconds, or I am going for a drink by myself… ’. With that, she precision-places the little square of theme on the table in battlefront of him, turns, and walks off.

On the paper is a greasy vivid-reddish smear where she's blotted her lips, and a single word, written by him : ‘ expectoration'.