Winter Warmer

So it's probably time I actually posted something here. On suggestion from Jentastic, I wrote up something I'd told her about (or what she'd demanded I tell her about), so that I might post it here. So here we go, the story of my 25th birthday.

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It was a cold Saturday night. It was coming up for six o’clock, but already people are heading out into town to begin their various nights out. In this town it usually means the middle-aged or older singletons crowd into the various pubs scattered about the place, while the younger people crowd into the expensive nightclubs and wait for the dancing to start at around ten. Looking at it this way, there’s almost no difference, is there?

But enough about that. That’s not why we’re here. Though I am close to one of the more expensive clubs at this point. But that’s not where I’m going. Cutting off the main street, I head down a passage that leads me to another road, which I also cross before heading down another short passage and onto the home stretch. Funnelled by the small space, a cold blast of air hits me, piercing right through my jacket and sending a shudder through me. Though I have to admit to having already been shivering a little in nervous excitement since I set foot off the bus.

Why? Well it’s simple enough. For the past three months I’d been seeing someone. Not something special to the casual observer, nor was the fact it had been a little over four years since my last relationship. But given how we’d gone from being complete strangers who just met in the street to serious in three weeks, I felt this was something different.

Coming out of the passage and crossing over a car park, I quicken my pace as I see the block of flats ahead of me, just across a road at the other side.

You see, it’s my birthday today. And for the past six weeks or so, Sarah, which is her name by the way, had been constantly asking me when my birthday was. Until the morning I scribbled a note and stuck it to her fridge door, that is. Not that I was any less guilty of asking all the time, myself. But how could I help asking her what she had in mind for my birthday when every time I did, all I got was a shake of the head, a giggle and that cute little toothy smile which I’ll always remember from the first night we slept together, when she told me it was “time for bed.”

Scurrying over the road, I fumbled the cold iron latch on the gate and pushed it open, shutting it behind me as I entered the little court at the back of her building and made straight for the buzzer. After a delay, my button pushing was answered by a ‘hello’ over the speaker.

“Hey, it’s me.”

A loud buzz answers as the door unlocks. I head inside and make for the stairs, keen to finally find out what was in store for me. It’s been about fifteen years, maybe more, since I last celebrated my birthday. So the fact that someone I’ve known for only a few months is willing to do something for me? What more reason did I need to get excited? All I’d been told was to come around for six and get my dinner.

The funny thing was, if someone had told me exactly what was going to happen, I doubt I would have believed them anyway.

I pressed the doorbell, hearing hushed footsteps approaching from the other side as the chiming faded out, the lock clicking as the door finally swung open.

“Hi!” With a warm greeting, she welcomed inside and shut the door. I’d barely unzipped my jacket before she took over and pulled it off before hanging it up for me. “Sooo? How does it feel to be twenty-five?”

“Almost like twenty-four, actually. Maybe a little dizzier too, what with going around the sun one more time.”

“Well, let’s hope it stays that way.” She gave me a hug and a kiss. Feeling how warm she me against me made me realise how cold I’d become in the time it took me to get there. “You know, I can feel your cold hands through my top, right? How long were you out there?”

“About five to ten minutes, maybe. Not long.”

“Well, I think it’s safe to say I made the right choice not arranging for us to go out tonight. And you say you’ve been out in weather like that for days at a time?”

“I think I’m used to it by now. Plus I wear more clothing when I do.” And now that I was in out of the cold, I could finally smell things properly, an inviting aroma wafting from the living room door. “Something smells nice.”

“That would be dinner. I’ve been working on it almost all afternoon. I’m glad I managed to get today off, or I wouldn’t have had the time for it.”

“So what’re we having?”

“Ah! Wait and see.” She playfully batted me on the chest. “Nice shirt, by the way. You should wear it more often. Oh, yeah. Are you wanting that other shirt back? I think I got some paint on it, but-”

“No, it’s okay. You keep it. It was actually getting too small for me, anyway.”

“Hmm. All that time at the gym paying off? I should probably go, some day. Remind me the next time I’ve got a day off.” She stoppped playing with my collar. “Wait. You’re not allergic to anything, are you? Food-wise.”

“Nope.”

“Great. I just…never thought about that. Heck of a way to ruin a birthday, if you were.”

“Do you need a hand with anything?”

“Nuh-uh. Not tonight, mister.” Stepping around behind me, I remember her clapping  her hands on my shoulders and walking me into the living room. “It’s your birthday. So you’re going to sit right here….” She eased me down onto the couch and headed for the kitchen. “…And I’ll get everything ready. It’ll be about ten more minutes.” Pulling an apron from its place on the wall by the door, she puts it on and starts working, a chorus of tinkling utensils, pots and pans spilling out of the room. I see her rushing past the door to snatch a crumpled piece of paper from the worktop before going back to the cooker. “So how was your day? Did you get up to much? How’s the drawing going?”

“I finished one a few days ago, actually. Just toying with what to do next.”

“Any luck with the job hunting yesterday?” She shouts back over the sound of something being tapped on a pot.

“Nothing in the papers or the jobcentre. Same as last week.” Speaking to her about job hunting and how it had been going for me always made me feel like I was slacking off as far as that went. Here I was, almost exactly one year out of work with just one interview under my belt, and here she was, three weeks after moving to this town and she already had a job working in a bank. She’s even doing a home study course to give herself some extra qualifications.

“How’s the Christmas thing at your voluntary job going? Goodwill, right?”

“It’s doing okay. We got a couple of nice donations from people on Thursday, but none of the volunteers showed up on Friday, so I had to do a load of packing myself.”

“Oh, poor you! Packing all those bags while some of us are slaving over hot stoves….” She peeks around the door and sticks her tongue out at me. “Just apply a bit of guilt, if you have to. That’ll get people to help.” She stops what she’s doing and comes back into the room to lay some place mats and cutlery on the table.

“So how’s work been?”

“Well I’d say hectic, but I got a text from Liz earlier telling me today was even worse. She says ‘happy birthday’, by the way.” I watch as she starts setting the table.

“All I seemed to get yesterday were the moaning sods who want you to fix all of their problems. Now I can understand it’s their money we’re talking about, but if you’re not going to take the time to read the small print, then it’s not my fault. Plus it’s really annoying when they keep staring at my chest while complaining. Makes me want to reach over the counter and slap them so hard sometimes….”

At this point I wasn’t sure if it would have been wise to make a remark about how she had a good chest anyway. Besides, she already knew that. And the last thing I wanted to do was get her in a bad mood when she’s already clearly busting her ass for me. “So…how about that other guy at work? The one who was hitting on you on your first day? I didn’t know it was him that time I met you for lunch, though it explains the shifty looks he was giving me.”

“He was actually really sorry for what happened. Said he’d never been more embarrassed in his life after I told him I was already taken. He told me after lunch that day that he was afraid you were going to have a go at him. Apparently he just about crapped himself when I told him I saw you coming.”

“Well, it was an honest mistake, I suppose. But at least he apologised, rather than try again. Then I might have done something.”

With a laugh, she headed back into the kitchen, returning with a little basket filled with bread before pulling a seat out from under the table. “Okay, park your bum here and I’ll get the first course.”

A couple of bowls of soup are brought through and put on the table.

“It’s carrot and coriander. Homemade, naturally. I wanted to try that bacon and broad bean soup you told me about a while ago, but I only found a recipe for it this morning and with everything I had to do today, I wasn’t sure if I’d have had time to soak the beans and make it. And that’s if I could find the beans in the first place. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Oh no. That’s fine. I’ve not had this one in a while, anyway.”

“And if you don’t want the parsley I stuck on top, just pick it out.”

“Ah yeah. I forgot…. I’m actually highly allergic to parsley.” At this point Sarah gave me a really weird look. “Ok, that was a bad joke. I’ll…stop now.”

She tore off a chunk of bread and drowned it in the soup. “I wonder if people can be allergic to that sort of thing…. I guess it’s out there somewhere.”

Ok, since there was little but small talk and such between the eating, let’s just skip ahead a bit. After soup came the next meal; a plate loaded with roast beef, some mixed vegetables, a ton of gravy and a pile of sliced red cabbage, something we apparently share the same love for. Seriously, try it. It’s awesome if done properly!

After all that, Sarah began clearing the dishes from the table. Amazingly, I was allowed to help this time. Not that we did much but pile them by the sink, anyway. “Right. This way.” Taking me by the hand, she led me back to the couch. “Sit. It’s time for cake.”

She went back to the kitchen and reappeared with a small box in one hand and a fork in the other. With a cheeky smile, she plonked herself on my lap and opened the box to show a small cake inside. “It’s just a small sponge with some frosting on top and vanilla icing with jam in it.”

“Why does it have ‘congratulations’ on it?”

“Yeah…I’d hoped we’d be celebrating you passing your entrance exam tonight. I should say I actually had this made for the occasion. But I suppose it’ll just have to be a ‘good luck on your test’ cake now. And…congratulations on reaching twenty-five?”

“I guess so. It’s a lot better than being fifteen…or five for that matter.”

She giggled and showed me that cute smile again. “You have a lot more fun at this age anyway.” A wink follows before she loops the arm holding the box around my neck. “And I know it might not help the nerves so much, but you’ll be fine on Monday, okay? Think of it as more of an idiot filter.” She cleared her throat before the smile came back. “Now, enough of that. Open wide, if you don’t mind.” Stabbing at the cake with the fork, she pulled a large chunk out. “Woops. Guess that’s a bit big. Oh well, open wider!”

Naturally I obeyed and had it shovelled in, the loose crumbs retrieve from my shirt and dropped in after the cake. The cake was actually quite nice. Though homemade is always better, since this one had been made for the occasion, it went down quite well; though I was glad I had Sarah to share it with. That was a lot of frosting, never mind everything else in it!

So the evening wore on, I got fed cake and watched as she took some for herself, often two bits one after another, batting my hand with the fork when I tried to take a piece from the box myself. We didn’t talk a whole lot at the time, what with one of us usually eating and being too polite to talk with a mouthful of cake.

At this point I barely remembered the world outside. The cold weather, the bi-monthly trips to the jobcentre, my impending test with the air force, everything that weighed on me, forgotten. Today I still wonder if this was why Sarah did all this for me. Always doing things for me, leaving me to keep up and return the favour each time. While there were times she clearly did things just for the sake of them, or on some bout of impulsiveness or insane happiness, this was something different. Here we were, only three months down the line from having first met and little over two months into our relationship proper, and here she was, taking the day off work to cook me dinner and now feeding me cake by hand on my birthday. As someone who will often do things for other people because I want to, can, feel they deserve it or even a combination of the three, I couldn’t tell what it was that drove her to do this. I didn’t care. Not at that moment, anyway. As a friend of mine said when I told them I was seeing someone, I deserved it. Self-entitlement isn’t something that’s encouraged a whole lot, and rightly so, but I knew I deserved this much. For now, everything was perfect.

The only snag was with Christmas about six weeks away, I was going to have some serious thinking to do. Because if this was anything to go by; I was going to need to come up with the goods.

“Aww. Looks like that’s the cake finished.” Scraping up the remains of the cake for herself, she set the box down on the couch beside us and cuddled into me. In a way, I was glad the cake was done, feeling her pressing on my stomach reminding me how full I was. If I had another meal, I think food would have started coming out of my ears.

Everything went so quiet from that point. We just sat there, keeping each other warm and enjoying our company. There was the occasional muffled sound from the flat below, but being in a top floor flat, we heard little else that intruded on our peace. I just remember hearing her breathing, more than anything. At one point she was so still I thought she was actually asleep, but didn’t move my head to look and see in case she actually was and I ended up waking her. Then again, as entitled as she would have been to a nap at this point, I knew she had more than enough energy to keep going. A whole lot more.

Turned out she wasn’t. She pecks me on the cheek before getting up and heading for the kitchen. “Think I’ll pop the kettle on. You want tea or coffee?”

I asked for tea, naturally, as some of my friends might say. The kettle rumbled as it began boiling the water. A look at my watch showed it was around half past nine, if I remember right. Three hours since I’d gotten there. How long had we just been sitting there?

I heard the fridge door shutting in the kitchen. “Uhh…hey, Andrew? Would you mind nipping to the shop and getting some milk? I’ve barely got a drop left.”

Wait, what?! “Me? At this time of night?”

“Could you? It might still be open. And I’d prefer to have some for tomorrow morning. Please?”

As strange as it seemed I was being asked to do this, I guess I at least saw her point. Plus I preferred it was me who went out there instead of her, gentlemanly and all that. “All right then. I’ll go. I guess it’ll only take five or ten minutes.” Taking some loose change she offered me, I grabbed my coat before heading outside, wishing I’d thought to bring a hat or scarf with me as the cold bit into me again.

The trip wasn’t far. Crossing the road, over the car park, another road and up the passageway took me to the street it was on. Excited and/or drunken screaming and shouting welcomed me. The night was still early, but people were already staggering about, absolutely plastered.

I almost jumped out of my skin when I heard someone repeatedly calling my name. While it could easily have been any other Andrew, I recognised this one and remember almost cringing when I turned to see someone from my college days staggering over to me, drunk out of her mind. I saw a couple of people who were obviously with her, watching us, and another on a cycle. She drunkenly threw her arms around me, and I could hear one of the others speaking. “Marie. Who is this guy?”

I shall make this part easy, save myself the need to type drunkenly. She starts going on about who I am and how I was apparently her boyfriend in college, something I flatly deny. Hell no I wasn’t! We sometimes hung out, but she already had a boyfriend of her own, who turned out to be the guy on the bike. Yay…. Telling your boyfriend you had another.

Surprisingly nothing happened. She admitted to being stone drunk, and was kind enough to fill me in on her life up to that point. How her boyfriend and she now had a kid and now she was trying to get him to give her money to support her. While drunk…. You know when someone’s in an abusive relationship with a drunken, unemployed moron that’s so painfully obvious to their own family and everyone else, and also hanging out with someone like me and being told by said family and friends that she should dump her boyfriend for me, that it’s probably best to drop them. Especially when, as a friend of mine told me, “you can do better than her.” And I had. I just wish it had been sooner.

When she asked me what I was doing out in town, I momentarily pondered whether to be truthful or not, in the end settling on “nothing. Absolutely nothing,” as my response. Her other friends, obviously trying to keep her from trouble like I tried to do once or twice, came along and urged her, practically having to drag her away with them, telling me she has to get going. I gladly let them take her away and hurried along the street to the shop, actually amazed to find it open for another half hour until ten. I let myself in and headed straight for the cold food aisle, grabbing a carton of milk and heading for the till, already wishing I could be back at the flat sharing a hug with Sarah, not helped by the meeting with Marie. Oh how cruel life can be to some. Yet given her scatterbrained tendencies, I got the feeling she was almost oblivious to how things were.

But I honestly didn’t care. Nope. A look at my watch showed me I had already been gone close to fifteen minutes, if not more. Pissed off that I’d turned a five minute trip into something much longer, and needing a couple more to get back to the flat, I hurried back, eager to beat the cold and hoping Sarah wouldn’t be worried I’d been gone too long.

I decided to rush up the stairs to the top floor, if anything but to warm myself up in the process but also to see what she had up her sleeve next. Getting to the door, I decided to try it before ringing the bell, assuming Sarah had left it unlocked, which it turned out she had.

Hanging my jacket up and pulling my shoes off, I head for the living room, realising how quiet it had suddenly become. Well, not exactly, since it was when I had left. But I was surprised to step into the kitchen to find she wasn’t there either. A faint smell wafted up my nose, and I recognised the smell of incense, probably being used to cover up the various smells of cooking in the kitchen and living room. Though if I’d been paying attention, I might have noticed the smell was strongest when I first came into the flat.

“Hey, Sarah. I’m back.” I pulled the fridge open and stuck the milk inside, hearing the hiss of a door being opened over carpet coming from the hall, the front door lock clicking shut as I stepped back into the living room. “Sorry it took so long.”

“Oh, no problem. It gave me more time to get ready.”

“Get ready for….”

That’s the sound of someone stopping dead in their tracks, like I did when I saw her standing in the doorway in an outfit I will never ever forget as long as I live. Okay, there was another, but that wasn’t for a while yet.

Leaning back against the door frame, I saw her casual clothing had been exchanged for an amazingly short black satin nightgown, while black stockings covered her (amazingly awesome!) legs, the tops of which I could just make out before she stood from the frame and turned to face me, letting me see the gown’s belt had been exchanged for a length of bright pink ribbon tied into a bow at the front. It certainly didn’t take me long to realise what she had in mind for the rest of the night after seeing that. The symbolism was all too clear.

My face must have been a picture, given the smile that spread across her face at that moment. I wanted to say so many things at once, so many reactions wanted to come out at that point as my eyes wandered aimlessly over her, even if the gown was pulled up close at the top. From shy blushing, to laughter and some other manner of excited noise. I think by that time all I’d managed was a hushed “Whoa. Holy shit.”

“So you’ve, um, changed.”

She cocked her head and began twirling her hair around her fingers. “You noticed the makeup?”

It wasn’t until then that I actually noticed the lipstick and mascara she’d put on. I couldn’t help but laugh a little. “I mean the gown. It’s…nice.”

“Oh...this.” She looked down at herself as if it had always been there and then back to me. “I got it just for your birthday, from that shop in South Street. Do you like it?”

“What’s with the ribbon?”

“Well it is your birthday, isn’t it? Presents sometimes come wrapped up. I bought this for you, so I thought a ribbon was only proper.” She crossed the room and came within kissing distance of me, letting me get a lungful of the perfume she had on.

“Do you want to pull the ribbon?” She asks me, her voice dropped to a quiet hush. “See what else I got for you?”

Do I want to pull the ribbon and take your nightgown off? Of course I do! You’d have to be insane not to want to do that at this point! I saw the small toothy smile appear as I reached for the bow and pulled the ends until it opened along with the gown, showing me the form-fitting basque she was hiding underneath, unashamedly holding her boobs up to make them look bigger, more ample, which is really the point, anyway.

She looked me in the eye, and I couldn’t help but just stare back. At that moment I remember thinking something along the lines of “So this is what they mean by the art of seduction….” And it was working. So many feelings welled up in me, that it was all I could do to keep them from going out of control, grabbing her and dragging her off to the bedroom. Or down to the floor, for that matter.

“So, um…you did this just for my birthday?”

“That’s right. I could never have done anything like this in my last relationship. My ex couldn’t even last five minutes. One time I think we didn’t even get to fuck before he blew his load all over the bed.”

“Right…him. Sure was an asshole….” Hey, I never said everything was perfect! Give her a break.

Sarah obviously realised what she was saying. “But forget him. He’s not the one who’s getting laid tonight.”

I remember how her smile broadened slightly, a quiet laugh coming through her teeth, her eyes half closing as I slid the gown from her shoulders, barely hearing it whisper as it slid from her arms and fluttered onto the floor at her feet.

She answered by looping her arms around my neck and bringing herself in to kiss me, playfully biting on my bottom lip before we finally did. It was the first time anyone had ever done it to me, and it just about drove me wild!

I don’t remember if we stood there for five minutes or five seconds, I just remember that we stopped when my hands finally found their way to the zipper on the back of her outfit. Sometimes I wish I had more hands. Sometimes I felt I could have just run them all over her for hours on end.

She stopped and broke our kiss, taking a small step back from me. She didn’t say anything, just smiling that wicked smile at me, a gleam in her eyes as she took me by the hand and led me off to the bedroom.

If I were a religious person, I would have been thanking God, or whatever deity, at that point. And looking back, I feel an apology would’ve been owed to the neighbour downstairs, whoever they were. Because the last thing I remember before going to sleep that night, after we were finally done, is that the clock read some time after 3am. And boy, were we loud that night. Not all the way through, but plenty enough….

Happy birthday? Yes indeed.