The Winner

This little story belongs in the heart-shaped box sitting in the second drawer of my desk, along with a gold watch, an antique fishing lure, a flask of Glenmorangie, and my future book. But the box didn’t start in the drawer. After I finished the chocolates, I stuck it on the shelf in my shop along with tins and canisters for stray nails and screws, below a battered trusty toolbox and above my drills. Good with my hands, I may not be a wordsmith, but I can chin wag about anything you want – where the eagles nest, and how to run a railyard, turn a bowl, and scratch mother earth under a 20-ton excavator. A fatherless farm boy, and built like a brick house, I learned to work hard and play hard. That’s me according to me. 

When she rolled into town, I was still coddling my ego after finding out my wife had been cheating on me with my best friend - yes, it happened to me, it’s not just a cliché or the plot of a Danielle Steel novel. You want to see a grown man whimper and scrape bottom for scraps of dignity, peek in my shop window back then. It wasn’t pretty. 

She showed up at a party. We met after midnight, had a dance, and since then, as my heart started a wrestling match with my head, the words started flying onto the page. I’m submitting this epistle, brother, I’m in the writing game. 

She’s petite, moves like a ballerina and talks like a librarian. She’s fine, oh she’s fine in the true sense. Aristocratic profile, wears her hair up in a chignon, cleans up good, knows about things I’ve never heard of, and cares about saving the goddamn planet. She’s travelled so long and so far away, she’s not sure where to call home. Two more different people were never so unlikely destined to meet and fall in love. 

In fact, this story could be about ‘The Dance’, but I’ll stick to the assignment. I didn’t know I had aims to write until the moment she tucked into my arms in that first dance, and tickled my cockles. Ignoring the thump in my chest, I said: “You can tell a lot about a person by the way they dance.” She looked up, bulls-eye right through my loins and heart and said: “Yes, you can.” We smouldered. 

The song ended, as did the party, but the problem just got started. The pinch point, brother, is that I was haunted, shattered and broken. Cheating is a destructive prick. It watches as the truth invades a man, and then, having bided its time, while breaking his heart, stews him in pools of shame and blind rage – an ugly soup. My ex’s actions ruled my thoughts and smashed my trust to smithereens. 

But the dance with her was a sunrise to the dark night of the soul. It competed with the ghost of my ex and spurred me to get my ass back in the saddle. On February 14, I grabbed my phone and texted her: Happy Valentines day. Hope yer havin a good one. 

And son of a gun, she invited me over that afternoon, the day she gave me the heart-shaped box. I went to her place dressed in jeans and that old faded flannel shirt missing the bottom button with every intention of kissing her. 

She opened the door, and I stepped back before I barrelled in. It was her smile and her sparkling eyes that opened the drawbridge to a rush of heat through my chest. I followed her into the house. I was a gonner, brother.

The heart-shaped box of chocolates was on the kitchen island. “I hope you like chocolate,” she said. “I know it’s cheesy but I couldn’t resist,”. “I hope you won’t resist,” I said, with a wink. She chuckled, so the visit was unfolding like the universe should. The music was on, she poured us each a tea and a shot of rum, and invited me to sit beside her at the island, so we’d both have a view of the lake, which was stunning, but I wasn’t there for the view. Wanderlust, by Duke Ellington came on and she tapped my arm, asking if I would dance.

Clumsy fool that I am, as I got up, my elbow knocked the heart-shaped box off the island and the chocolates rolled out onto the floor, so we missed the first few beats of the dance cleaning that up, crouched together, me growling at my bull-in-a-china-shop act, she laughing and declaring the 30-second rule about food on the floor. 

We stood up. She placed her glasses on the island, and in one heart-shaped moment, slid into my arms, fitting her perfect little form around my belly, draping her arm over my shoulder, her hand in my hand, as we caught each other’s eye in a knowing way. It was a moment to seize, so I kissed her. Sometimes I don’t know my own strength and I pressed into her lips so deeply her head rebounded when I pulled away. She opened her eyes and said: “Ooh.” I didn’t know what she meant but let’s just say I was not deterred. 

Now there’s something fluid about being belly to belly with her, like the same pulse throbs through us both, like our separate bodies open up and then close into one. You feel it like a hot river slowly inviting all surfaces and appendages to entwine. As the February daylight waned, the dance continued on the living room rug. 

This story could also be about ‘The Kiss’, but, no, I’ll not stray from the requirements. We kissed and in our kisses were conversations. I absorbed her wanderings, her burdens, her hopes, her soul, and she discovered my fears, my loneliness, my boyishness, my dreams. Her kiss opened my cracks and found the colours of my past beyond this lifetime. My kiss led into her rooms that led to rooms on and on, each worthy of a hundred hours of devotion. The more we found inside the kiss, the more we wanted. She wrapped her leg through mine, to settle our bodies nearer. Our hands clasped for a moment and that simple gesture flooded us both with flames. Her sigh carried a faint murmur, and mine, a primal tone, our voices both coming from deep within us. We squeezed each other, until our faces, chests, groins, and legs were fused like two trees grown into one. 

We ate most of the chocolates in the heart-shaped box that night, and I ate the rest the next day. It stayed in the shop for a year and became so familiar there it blended into the organized mess of a man’s workshop. Then one day, searching for the right nail, I emptied it and brought it into the house, where it sat on the dresser for a couple of years, holding spare change. 

Now, tucked away inside the drawer, her love poems occupy it, a treasure in the bureau where I put pen to paper. This story is short – only 1274 words – but our story continues. She saw and found the gem buried under my gruff unexamined ways, and raised me up so I could love and witness love through words. I saw the joy that her wanderings and waywardness could not conceal, and gave her soul its home. We found our true north in each other and the world is a better place for it. 

That’s the heart-shaped box story. I’m ready to submit. It’s a winner.