When Kate came home, Jason had arranged his wallet, the phone and the remote neatly beside one another on the table. He’d stretched out on the couch and resigned himself to the last few minutes of yet another horrendous basketball game. Upstairs, he heard the loud crackling of paper bags. He turned onto his side.
“Hey,” he called out. “How was shopping?”
“It was good,” Kate shouted back. “Not too crowded.” Her voice lowered as she approached the head of the stairs. “What did you do all day?”
Jason shrugged. “Nothing. Watched a lot of TV.”
“I can’t believe you blew an entire Saturday afternoon watching sports.” She chuckled and moved off.
“Someone’s got to do it,” he called back.
“Listen, don’t come up here. Your present is in one of these bags. I need to hide it.”
He rolled over onto his back again. She was so cute, with her insistence on hiding presents so he could be surprised by what she had bought him. What could it be? Something small enough to fit in one of her shopping bags and light enough for her to carry. He chuckled. She’d given away so much information already, and he hadn’t even had to look at the bags.
Wait. What was her present going to look like? Margo had assured him that the packaging was discreet, which he expected from a pornographic shopping channel hidden in broad daylight on regular cable. But how big was the box for that swing set?
He’d have to make arrangements for it somehow. Surely when he got the shipping notification, he’d be able to meet the UPS man. Maybe maneuver it into the garage. No need to panic. He still had a little time.
More crackling paper sounds came from upstairs. She must be moving the bags away. Good. Once she got them out of the kitchen, he could go upstairs for a between-games beer. As the sound of her footsteps receded, he rolled off the couch and went up to the fridge.
He popped the cap off the next-to-last Heineken and went over to the kitchen trash can. Damn. One bag left, standing under the wall-mounted phone. The bag was made of plain brown paper. No clues there.
Not that he was looking for clues. He loved surprises. He loved the way Kate loved surprises.
The bag was practically next to the kitchen trash anyway. She hadn’t taken it with her. Ergo, it didn’t contain any presents. And hey, he wasn’t going to stand here with a bottle cap in his hand because he was afraid of a brown paper bag.
Still, he moved briskly over to the can and made his peek into the bag as quick as possible.
Spider Web Personal Suspension System.
“Hey!” called Kate.
Jason leapt to attention and found her standing at the other end of the hallway in the doorway to their guest room.
“What?” he said. “I’m throwing out this bottle cap!”
“Well, throw it out and move along, buddy! No looking in the bag!”
“I wasn’t!”
Bottle cap still in hand, he retreated back down the stairs. He sat gingerly on the edge of the couch, where he’d spent so much of the afternoon.
Had she gotten him a Spider Web?
Did she know about The Toy Box?
And…was there an actual brick-and-mortar store—with live demonstrations—for this stuff?
Jason flopped back onto the couch. He folded his hands on his stomach, pressing the bottle cap between them, and looked up at the ceiling. Somewhere up there, the woman he loved was trying to hide his Valentine’s Day present. Soon, they’d be up there together on the floor, surrounded by nuts and bolts and Allen wrenches and loads of moving parts.
But before that, he’d get to see the look on her face when she saw they had two swings. First, the surprise, all wide eyes and open mouth. And then she’d curl her lips together while she imagined what they could accomplish with two Spider Webs.
Beautiful. Just fucking beautiful.