The Gift (first draft)

In the days since she ended their relationship, she had time to think rationally about things. She deserved better than he gave her. She had known this all along, but was resigned to actually live it, and all that went along with it, now.

The stupid boy, she would think. The little piss didn’t know what he had. Her range of emotions shifted back and forth from rage to sadness to guilt to depression. But, with time, a steady rift of vengeance began to cut into her.

She thought of all the wasted time. She stopped thinking of the sporadic romanticism peaked amongst valleys of complacency and shrugged togetherness. She ignored and forgot the occasional orgasm he delivered her amidst cold periods of celibacy and teenage awkwardness, their bodies slapping together in the absence of rhythm.

He had broken up with her twice. Crushed her spirit and walked away on two separate occasions over their nine months. Each of these two breakups ended with the two clutched in teary embrace mere hours from the respective incidents. They kissed each other back into their lives. On neither occasion could he really walk away. He was too scared to be alone and since she was too, she always took him back.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want him. She did. She just wanted a version of him that he wasn’t quite capable of being. He, on the other hand, didn’t really want her at all. He just wanted anything and was always frightened that he had to jump on the first opportunity presented to him for lack of chances.

She thought about these two times, each of the times she took him back after he walked out on her. Both times were in her apartment and both times she believed that this time was for real. That this time he changed, realized his mistakes, gained some sense, and would make it work.
But it was she who gained sense when she finally got rid of him, shut her phone off, and stopped speaking to him for twelve consecutive days, the twelve days before Christmas.

There was no more sadness. No more longing, except maybe for the orgasms, and only a shy, dull sense of pity for the “little piss” she let fuck with her life for nine months too long.

* * *

She walked out of the bright winter sun smiling as she began to dart through the aisles. She met the eyes of the shop owner on her walk in, a small, friendly, grey-haired, gentle spirit-of-a-woman. The two shared an instant cross-generational connection often linked between similar beings of the same sex. Their years separated them, but their sex and all its harrowing connected them.

The woman behind the counter swept up and fooled with the register in a passive way that only half-hid the fact that she was watching our girl with interest. She found her aisle easily, all the while with her smile fixed in place, pleased both with her actions and the beneficent presence of the elderly spirit guarding the store.

The woman reminded her of someone. Neither of her grandmothers seemed to fit, but something felt familiar about her. She admired the old woman’s cardigan and the sign hanging behind the register that read “Grandmothers are antique versions of little girls.”

After paying for her prize and walking out, our girl continued to smile and could even be heard to whistle as she swerved through the decorated streets, a behavior which she, on almost any other occasion, would deem dreadful.

* * *

“Hello!”

“Hey-Hey!” he shouted back. He could barely hear her over the sound of the music and conversation. And his greeting, which sounded more for a friend than a lover, was the product of too much booze.

“We just landed. Where are you?” She asked him this without a puzzling tone, but with an expectant one. She wanted to know where he was so that she could see him as soon as possible.

“Over at Randy’s. How was the flight? You get in okay?” He half-listened for a response and half-searched through the back of the fridge for another cold beer.

“Oh, you know, we got in okay. My sister is here to pick us up, thank god, but I wish it could have been you.”

To this he responded only with a loud yell then “Sorry, the Yanks just scored.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, I’m glad she made it in there for you. That was real nice of her. Randy’s is a lot of fun right now. You should definitely come by here.”

It wasn’t that his invite wasn’t genuine but she had told him repeatedly how out of it she would be when she got in. He must have known that she wouldn’t want to come. Having been traveling all day, she just wanted to drop her bags on her cozy apartment’s floor and relax.

“Well, couldn’t you come out to me? I really want to see you. I’d thought you’d come to me tonight.”

“I’m already over here, though,” he said. “And I’ve been drinking, so I can’t drive out to you. I’m pretty drunk.”

The unbelievable asshole.

“Oh, okay. Have fun, I guess.”

She hung up which caught him off guard but didn’t really surprise him. And though she didn’t want to, she texted his phone five minutes later, not even out of the airport parking lot yet.

“Aren’t you even excited to see me?” Send.

“What do you mean?” Send.

The unbelievable asshole.

Once home, she dropped her bags on her cozy apartment floor and relaxed just like she had wanted to after all the travel. But she didn’t get to see him like she wanted to. Later that night, she cried in bed. He passed out at Randy’s and spent the night on the couch, still trying to decode her text.

* * *

She made her way up his shoveled sidewalk. She negotiated the ice, laughing at the thought of him rushing out of his parents’ house one day, slipping, and landing on his skinny ass. Then she smiled thinking of the old woman and her cardigan and also in anticipation of what she was about to do. She smiled, but she didn’t look happy as much as she looked 100% pleased.

She knocked on his side entrance, hoping he’d answer so she didn’t have to go through the front and deal with his parents and baby brothers. For, as much as she was filled with the spirit to strike out with revenge upon the boyish heart of her ex-lover, she had to admit that she got along well with his mother and that she absolutely adored his two brothers, one two-years-old and the other four-years-old. Seeing any of them would alter her mood too much.

All conflict avoided, he answered the door. He was pleased to see her, it was clear. Her twelve-day-refusal of all his phone-calls and text-messages ate at him, for it shut him off completely from any shot at a getting-back-together-again. But this, her showing up in the cocoon of dripping icicles that was his doorway, his own personal entrance to the side of his parents’ home, on Christmas day no less, filled him with hopeful expectancy. Which was exactly what she wanted.

She played nice, knowing this was crucial to her gaining the entrance needed to carry out her plan. He saw that she had a gift with her and his eyes revealed how truly giddy this made him, but she remained calm.

As she walked further into his space, sifting through piles of crumpled wrapping paper and empty boxes left near the door, she said, both energetically and false-cheerily, “I got you a gift!”

His eyes sold him out now. They screamed “Hooray!” while his mouth said “Oh, and I didn’t even get you anything!” It was going perfectly.

She was half-hiding it. It was impossible to completely hide it, for how could one completely hide a fish bowl filled with water and a fish, but she did the best she could to maintain the illusion. So, she half-hid the gift off to the left side of her body, near her ass, cocked to the side.

She fought hard to maintain her performance, for she wanted everything to play out as she saw it run through in her mind. She kept an even smile, resisting the urge to laugh in his face with a triumphant “Ta! Ha! Asshole!” But the illusion was maintained and despite her outward sentiment of ladylike demure, inwardly she was absolutely delighted, enjoying every second of the experience.

Once she had backed him into the room enough and they had settled near the couch, she, carefully, handed him his gift. His excitement could hardly be contained as her couldn’t either. Hers was a different kind, and so she began to unwrap the gift herself. Like a chef cutting into her own broil, she unwrapped the paper around the bowl with a maniacal satisfaction.

She was unwrapping his gift and the situation was perfect for each. Neither would have changed a thing. And finally, she handed it to him, water sloshing, goldfish smiling.

“It’s a goldfish,” she said, adding “you’ll have to take care of it. That,” she said, already turning to leave, “or kill it.”

He stared, blinking into the water, the goldfish circling in its bowl. Then, he looked up, catching a glimpse of her back before the door slammed shut. He didn’t see her face as she left, but if he did, he would have seen the same smile that she worse in the pet store earlier that day.

“Merry Christmas!” he heard her yell to a neighbor de-icing his car. And she whistled down the street.