I snorted. “Bullshit. You would have given me so much crap had I not gotten you a present. Even if I’d thrown you a supersecret birthday party with all your friends and family, you’d have still bitched and moaned.”
“Yeah, I would have made your life a living hell until you bought me something,” he agreed. “But you haven’t given me a bad present yet. Well, except for that neck massager you bought that I thought was supposed to be anal beads. I don’t think I’ll get that look on your face out of my mind as long as I live.”
“You had it up your ass!”
“It vibrated,” he said smugly. “Where else was something like that supposed to go? Besides, you didn’t seem to mind when I pressed it against your balls.”
“You know there’s a homicidal hobo with hook hands jerking it to our conversation over there in the bushes.”
“I don’t think I’d touch my junk if I had hook hands,” he said.
“How would you jerk off if you only had hook hands?” I wondered aloud.
“Easy. I’d get a plain bagel, cover it with lube, then fuck it. I’d latch it into my hook hands and just go to fucking town on it.”
“We’re breaking up,” I told him quite seriously. “Then you can go fuck all the bagels you want, you weirdo. Keep your grossness away from me.”
He laughed. “Nah. You’re stuck with me, pretty much for forever.”
This caught me a little in the chest. “It’s real?”
He sat up, cradling my head in his lap. He bent over (for he was indeed as bendy as he had once claimed so very long ago) and kissed me deeply. “It’s real,” he mumbled against my lips. “Now give me my present.”
I sighed and reached into the pocket of my light coat and pulled out an envelope. I almost tore it to shreds right then, but he’d already snapped it out of my hands like a greedy little child, and I tried to hide my face against his stomach. I heard him rip open the envelope and pull out the paper inside and start to read.
I knew the moment he got it once his breathing almost stopped completely. “Paul,” he croaked out.
“Yeah?”
“Is this what I think it is?”
“What do you think it is?”
“An itinerary for three weeks in Asia next spring.”
“Then you’d be thinking right.”
He started sputtering. “I don’t… how did you… fucking sexy motherfucker… I will totally bone you… what is….”
“Wow,” I said. “That is kind of hot being on the other side of that.”
“Paul!”
“What!”
“How the fuck can you afford this? We work the same job!”
I shrugged, embarrassed. “I’ve been saving.” For a long time, though I didn’t know for what. Then he came along, and I figured out what it was for. He wanted it, and I’d given it to him. I’d give him everything if I could.
He dropped the paper to the ground and knocked me off his lap before he crawled on top of me, covering me with his body. It happened so fast that I didn’t have a chance to make a noise, much less to fight back. Our noses touched as he searched my eyes. “You did that for me?”
He was too close to be able to look away. I thought about closing my eyes, but he’d just make me open them again. “Yeah.”
“We’re going to Asia?”
“Parts of it, but yeah. You and me. Three whole weeks.”
“Do you think we could go see the fortune-cookie factories?”