The Seasons

Winter - Part Four

Time for the final part of Winter! Then we move onto Spring. I hope you've enjoyed it - please do leave a comment!

- Cam x

"And then after the second time, we kissed for a while," I finished. "Then he fell asleep, then I fell asleep, and when we woke up we just went right back to it. He rimmed me for twenty minutes and I basically passed out. If I'm totally honest with you, I'm surprised I'm still somewhat conscious."

Ruby and Shi listened to my graphically detailed sex story with wide eyes, happily taking in every single detail. "There," I said. "Was that quite graphic enough for you, Ruby?"

"Just about," she said, and then sighed happily. "You know, if I liked men in any way, I would be so turned on right now."

"I am so turned on right now," Shi said, crossing her legs and clearing her throat. "So you and Dylan have now slept together, and if I am correct he asked you to spend some of Christmas with him?"

"Yeah, he said we might as well see each other the second he gets back to the country, and that's Christmas Day, so he invited me and Ruby round to have Christmas dinner," I nodded. "But he said it's no big deal, like it's basically a huge party."

Shi laughed. "Oh, sure, not a big deal. His mother will be there, though."

Suddenly the happiness of the previous night drained from me as I remembered the big problem of 'Dylan's mother'. I sighed. "She's going to hate me, isn't she?"

"Oh yeah," Shi nodded. "But that's okay. We are going to get you looking pretty for the dinner and I'm going to teach you more about being... well, suitable. You're great but you weren't taught half the stuff we were taught about etiquette and all that. Therefore, I'm going to teach you."

"In two weeks?" Ruby asked sceptically.

Shi looked at her, looked at me, and then said, "Well, I'm going to try and teach you anyway."

"Gee, thanks guys," I said heavily. "I'm really feeling the faith that you can Cinderella-story me."

Shi, unfortunately, was not joking. For the next two weeks, once I had closed the shop and sorted the tills, Shi would appear on my doorstep and whisk me and Ruby away to somewhere new. At first, it was wine tasting, to refine our palettes. Next, it was clothes shopping, to show me how to dress myself more appropriately for that particular circle of people. This one wasn't applicable to Ruby, who had a closet that took up half of her apartment. Then, it was dancing lessons, because apparently there would be dancing and Ruby's 'style' wasn't quite up to it. After that, she took us to ridiculous restaurants to demonstrate how to get through silver service dinners.

After ten days, I was absolutely exhausted. Christmas was approaching so the shop was much busier with customers shopping for novelty gifts. Ruby was barely visiting due to her shop suffering the 'Cute Christmas Cupcake Conundrum', as she had dubbed it. I had lost two kilos from the stress of becoming a 'perfect partner', which included memorising names and facts about everyone that would be at the party.

"Her," Shi pointed at a woman in the booklet.

"The aptly named Mrs Robinson," I answered. "She's the wife of a company CEO, but they're in an unhappy marriage and she gets incredibly inappropriate towards the young male staff members once she's had a few. We keep her as far away from the wine as possible."

"Good," Shi replied, and then smiled. "I think you've got all of them down. Your dancing isn't amazing, but it's come a long way considering you didn't know a thing about it beforehand. You've got silver service down, and I think I'll continue to help you on wardrobe because that takes some skill before you can go it alone. You're certainly not 'one of us', at least in his mother's eyes, but you might pass for a 'decent enough for the moment' - and we can work on it more in the future."