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This was written for Franks Downey's forum Christmas Festival.

Christmas Present

This was our 6th Christmas together. We'd met as freshmen at a Cristmas party at the College for the students who had remained on campus during the Holidays. Actually, I lived with my grandmother, who was a sociology professor. My parents... let's say my parents had left me long before I left home. They belonged to a church/sect that had progressively taken up their lives (and incomes). I'd stayed away from home as much as I could during my high school years. The parents of my best friends had known the score and had let me stay over more often than not, and my grandmother had taken over during the holidays. My parents hadn't cared.

Eve had been a scholarship student without a home to go back to, like a large part of the crowd at the party. The College had a large scholarship fund destined to overachievers from the State's CPS system. They were a strange bunch - people who'd tried to forget all the misery they lived in by hiding behind books, science and knowledge. Eve's family had been more than screwed up, and her life in foster homes afterwards had been no picnic either, but she had coped. She was not antisocial or shy, but diffident.

None of those present that evening were party animals, but they knew how to enjoy themselves. The music was at a reasonable level, the mulled cider had been spiked with vodka and the discussions were animated. As most would not get any presents, the organizers had asked that everyone bring a small stocking-filler, nothing worth more than 5 bucks, and gift-wrap it. When shopping for decorations with Ginny (I'd never been able to call my grandmother Grandma or Granny), I'd picked up a beautiful fake apple, finding its deep red varnish alluring. I loved that color.

We'd been given a number when we arrived at the party and now, well into the party, each had to pick a folded square of paper to know who their gift was for. That's how I met Eve: I picked her number. She was tall, thin, her hair pulled back in a bun so tight it made me cringe (I had long hair and I knew a tight ponytail gave me the mother of all headaches). She wore an oversize man's dress shirt and a floor length beige skirt. Despite her heigth, she was so skinny she looked lost in those wide clothes. She wore no make-up, no jewelry, no perfume that I could detect, except an apple-scented shampoo, I thought.

Her face was triangular, with huge brown eyes and a sprinkling of freckles across her nose and her prominent ckeekbones. She opened the package I offered her and grinned. The red appled dangling from her fingers and she asked with a gleam in her eye: "Are you a snake to offer me this? I'm Eve."

I chuckled: "No, actually, I'm Adam."

"I should have known. Anyway, thank you, I love that color."

And we started talking: she was a scholarship student, psych major with a sociology minor, and she had a class with Ginny, "the prof with the cookies". Ginny had this feed-the-world habit and would bring baked goods and assorted yummy stuff to her classes for everybody to dig in. I'd filled in quite a bit over the last few months with her cooking. Now that my gangly teenager frame was gone, I swam a few times a week to work off the extra calories.

-----

Eve and I became best friends almost instantly. We liked mostly the same things, with enough differences for friendly jabs at the other - she had no interest in baseball and I sneered at soccer - but we were otherwise totally compatible.

Until school started again, we met every day. I brought her back home for lunch a few times - Ginny was experimenting with Indian cuisine and wanted guinea pigs. She insisted that Eve spend Christmas day with us. Some of her sociology students would also drop in ocasionally and we'd talk into the wee hours of day, trying to change the world, munching on the snacks Ginny kept offering around while steering the debates.

From then on, whenever Eve and I had some free time, we'd spend it together. We studied together on weekends, went to the same places, had the same friends. Adam-and-Eve. I was totally in love and extatic. I knew enough of her background that I didn't ask for anything physical, though. Not that I didn't want more, but I had to let her take that step first. Ginny agreed with me. Long talks with my grandmother and even longer swims helped me remain patient.

Progressively, she started touching me. Ruffling my hair when I was a goof, taking my arm when we walked together. She'd massage my shoulders after a long study session. All those touches were both torture and a glimpse of Paradise. One day, she asked me to massage her shoulders. After the massage, I talked her into untying her hair. The tight bun hid a treasure of auburn curls. She pulled a brush out of her oversize purse. I put my hand over hers on the handle. "May I?", I asked softly. She looked into my eyes gravely and nodded. So I brushed her hair, slowly, lovingly. I watched the signs of tension disappear slowly from her face, replaced by a sensuous smile.

She opened her eyes, tilted her head back: "Adam, kiss me, please." I was happy to oblige.

I sat next to her on the couch, bent my head and found my Paradise. As our kisses deepened, our hands started to wander. I discovered her thin waist, her lovely breasts, and always my hands came back to bury themselves in the glory of her hair. Her hands were like fire, running over my back, my chest, my arms. We necked for a long time. When we came up for air, it was dark and we heard Ginny open the dor, returning from one of her classes.

"Tomorrow morning?", she asked, flushed and panting a bit. I nodded. Ginny would be out of town for the week-end, and Paradise would be mine. My grandmother, being the smart woman she was, guessed instantly what we had done, but said nothing. Instead, she proceeded to cook yet another sumptuous meal, with enough leftovers to feed a small army, or two lovers, for a weekend. After I walked Eve back to her dorm that night (and another long make-out session), I thought I wouldn't be able to close an eye. I had a long, hot shower, and took care of a part of my anatomy that woudn't go to rest, dreaming of Eve. I went to bed and, unexpectedly, fell asleep at once.

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Ginny woke me up before she left the next morning. "So, this is the big day?" I nodded and smiled. She patted my hand. "I left champagne and wine in the fridge. For the rest, I'll leave it to you. Don't forget to go to the drugstore if you don't have everything you need. I'll be back Sunday evening around nine." I blushed, grinned and nodded again. Ginny is the best. She hugged me and hurried out to catch her plane.

I got up, cleaned my room and changed the bedsheets, rushed to the drugstore and bought enough condoms for a weeklong orgy at a frat house. That got me a curious glance from the clerk at the cash register. I didn't care, Eve was coming.

I rushed back home, gobbled down some toast, showered, and waited for Eve to come. I knew she was coming. She was, wasn't she? I prowled around the living room for 15 unending minutes until the doorbell rang. When I opened the door, she rushed into my arms. "Oh Adam, I couldn't wait any longer." I kissed her, then picked her up and carried her upstairs. When se bit my neck, I almost dropped her.

We undressed in record time. We didn't need seduction, we just wanted to feel each other's skin. To kiss. To hold. We fell on the bed, ravenous. "Oh, Adam", she whispered, "it's never..." I put a finger on her lips. "Hush. This is now, this is us, Eve and Adam. We're beginning a new world in this bed. There is no past. Only the beauty of our future together. I love you, Eve."

"I love you, Adam." Tears glistened in her eyes, and in mine, I'm sure. I reached for the drawer of the bedstand and fished for a condom. She grabbed it from my hand, pushed me back and straddled me. She tore the packet with her teeth and rolled the rubber on me, a slow, deliberate torture. "Now, Eve, Please." She lifted her hips, set my cock in place, then brought us slowly home. That was it. We were home when we were together. We kissed, then we started to move, escalating to a frenzy. We couldn't wait. And together, we flew into Eden.

For that day and the next, we tried to wear each other out. When we went down to find something to eat later that day, we popped open the champagne. Seing Eve looking so radious, I couldn't wait. I sat her down on the counter, kneeled down and ate her, with the occasional mouthful of bubbly, until we thought the neighbours would mind. When we sat down to eat, she kneeled at my feet and blew me. When we went to shower, she grabbed a condom before we went to the bathroom and we made love while hot water rained on us.

When I think back of those two days, I get dizzy. On Sunday night, we were sated enough to clean-up the house, air the bedroom and change the linen before Ginny arrived. She looked at our exhausted faces and giggled. "Oh God, Adam. It's a good thing that my bedroom is on the other side of the house from yours. Otherwise, I'm not sure I'd be able to sleep when Eve spends the night." Eve and I blushed and giggled.

----

At Ginny's insistence, Eve moved in with us the next summer. "Eve, baby, you're here most of the time anyway. It's quieter than the dorms, and you have this big lug to keep you warm at night." And so, for the first time, Eve found a home and a mother.

As the years went by, we lived in perfect harmony. Ginny kept up with her culinary experiments and even made gourmet cooks out of us. Eve's figure went from painfully thin to curvaceous, and I loved her more than ever. And little by little, day after day, the walls she'd built around her heart crumbled. She'd let me and Ginny in, had started to believe that she was loved, and was now opening up to others. She shone with happiness, it seemed to me. She stopped choosing her clothes for their camouflage value. I didn't care: I had her, I had her love, I couldn't ask for more.

Of course, we still had classes and a lot of work, and both Eve and I kept a good GPA. But everything seemed to be easy because we were so much in love. We led a charmed life. Our present was so bright that the shadows of our pasts receded, as well as any worries for the future.

Every year, my Christmas gifts for her were the same red we both loved. A glass paperweight with swirls of red. A long velvet scarf. A mohair sweater. A silk négligé. An apple-shaped pendant with tiny rubies.

Last Christmas, Ginny announced she was retiring. She surprised me by giving me the house as well as a small trust fund that would see me through vet school and Eve through her PhD. "I want to travel, write and enjoy it. I won't be able to do it if I worry all the time about whether you have enough to eat." I couldn't help but laugh: Ginny and her nurturing instincts. She had left the following summer and had started to travel around the world for her next book, a study of the variations in Chinese cuisine in all the countries of the Pacific Rim. Again, so typically Ginny.

The house felt a bit empty without her, but not for long. Our friends kept visiting and the house remained a hotbed of radical sociology and creative cooking.

------

This year, we had decided to hold a costume party for Christmas for those of our friends who were still in town. We had spent the day getting the house ready, cooking, moving furniture. I had showered and changed into my costume - a Bethleem innkeeper - lit the fire in the fireplace, and started receiving our guests as they arrived.

The living-room filled-up with the expected assortment of Santas, Mrs Claus, elves, reindeers (the head-to-toe version as well as the abreviated, sexy one), the whole cast, or so it seemed, of Dickens's Christmas Carol, three kings (12 days early), a Christmas cracker, who looked very uncomfortable, two overgrown drummer boys, etc.

And then Eve appeared by the tree, untangling the tie of a shiny red ball from a branch. For once, her curly auburn hair was free, covering her shoulders and flowing down her back. She was wearing a skin-colored cat suit. A long garland of green and gold tinsel was wrapped like a snake, crawling from her left ankle up to her thigh, around her voluptuous waist, behind her back, over her right shoulder to end on her breast with a sequined snake-head. A strategically positioned tinsel star replaced the traditional fig-leaf. She crossed the room to join me in front of the fireplace. I coudn't breathe.

She held up her hand, and I realized that the tree decoration she had unhooked was the apple I'd given her when we'd first met. "Adam, my love, will you marry me?", asked my Christmas Eve.
 

Copyright (C) 2003 by Alienor, All rights reserved


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