In all seriousness, I didn't get to spend a dime. Jacob heard me on the phone with Mark making some plans and he preempted them with an offer to take me out and get me a new swimsuit, since mine was worn to pieces on the camping trip. And even though we spent the last week or so bickering constantly and needling each other, I knew it might be a fun way to break the ice between us.
Jacob has always loved watching me try on swimsuits, I have taken him with me for years as an impartial judge and he makes jokes about the sticker inserts and asks me if I've always had those weirdly-shaped knees and perhaps I would have better luck in my size in the girls' department. I would put on the barest of string bikinis and watch him try to keep his composure. He rarely could. I know, I was a total attention whore back then.
Little has changed.
Yesterday was no exception. We pretty much had the store to ourselves, and he knows the owners, it's a large sporting goods store where he gets his climbing and running gear, so he came back and sat outside the dressing room and I would peek out and show him a shoulder or a leg. Then I got stuck in the cutest bikini, I tied the neck string in a knot and couldn't get out of it and I asked him to come in and untie it because I couldn't see to do it. He came in and closed the door and untied it and I turned around to say thanks and he kissed me, backing me into the corner and sliding me up the wall, because we can slide up as easily as we seem to slide down. He pulled off the rest of that bikini and flashed his dimples. The flash I know well that says he's done being difficult and wants forgiveness and forgives everything besides.
Sold.
I put my arms around his neck and he had my head in one hand and my hips in the other and we defiled their dressing room. He put his thumb on my lips so I wouldn't make any noise and he smiled like he was up to no good, because he was, and we made short work of a stolen opportunity and came out of the room fully dressed (and completely forgiven) about eight minutes later.
Of course I bought the green bikini he peeled off me mid-ravage because he proclaimed it the hottest one.
When we walked back to the truck he wove his fingers into mine, kissing the top of my head and sighing a contented sigh. Make-up sex is the best in the world, even if it took place in possibly the very last place I would ever have imagined.
So don 't tell anybody. Geez.
We came home with our packages and had a snack with the kids and then they wanted to beat August at Guitar Hero so we took off again, Jacob wanting to be present because my plans with my friend Mark were fast approaching.
Mark is a tattoo artist at a shop here in the city, and I was making an appointment to have my nipples pierced (oh hush, you). Because mostly, that's the kind of thing that happens when you tell Bridget to go "do something for herself". I don't head for the spa or the hair salon first, I head for the tattoo parlour.
Mark's face plummeted when he saw Jacob enter the shop behind me but they both sucked it up and shook hands and Mark asked Jacob if he wanted anything done today too. Jacob laughed and said no thanks.
The actual piercing was nerve-wracking. Mark doesn't do it, there's a professional piercer there and so we went to a back room and I took off my shirt and we were off and running. I wasn't nervous but after the first one was through I tried to chicken out. Mark came in, which shocked Jacob, who was there sitting in a room with me with my shirt off carrying on a nervous-chattery conversation with two other men. But they were professional and kind, Mark has always been a very good friend, even if I don't have all my ink from him, and finally he left again after I agreed to do the second one with a bribe from Jacob. If I finished and had both done, he'd get a piercing too, today.
Oh, it's on.
It's so on.
I held up my end. It wasn't so bad after all, adrenaline kicked in and finished off the nerves for me and I barely felt the needle the second time. I left with two very snug and cute barbells, horizontally embedded in my nipples. I love being decorated. Especially subtly, as most of my mods can be easily covered with any outfit. That's half the fun for me.
Now it was Jacob's turn and the piercer left to get another round of supplies. Jacob looked at me with a barely nervous smile.
You know, I've often thought I should do this. (Even though it took him 35 years to get his first tattoo.)
He has the courage of twenty men, the only time I have ever seen him truly nervous was just as he proposed to me because he had somehow convinced himself I would say no. Then I was told to leave the room. Huh? Grand central station as I'm there shirtless and now I have to leave while he gets his ears pierced? What the fuck?
I went out and talked with the receptionist for about ten minutes and then Mark called me back to see Jacob and told me our piercings today were on him. I thanked Mark and followed him into the room where Jacob was lying on the table. I looked at his ears and saw nothing and then I realized his pants were on the chair.
He got an...ahem...an apadravya.
A freaking apadravya.
And this time the smile was all mine. We went back to the car and Jacob seemed to need reassurance. He asked me to confirm that the make-up sex was good, that I had enjoyed myself. I said I did. It was exactly what we needed, some hushed, desperate love exactly when we wanted it. He said good, because it might be a while before we have sex again.
He spent the rest of the day with an ice pack on his lap. I'm so proud of him. The boys now call him Reverend Hardcore.
