Asked and Answered

There was a plain brown box on their doorstep when they came home from their walk. “Hey, are these the next pair of shoes?” he asked.

“Yeah, bring them in.”

He pulled his keys out of his pocket.

“No, don’t open it.”

“Oh, why not?”

“Into the closet,” she ordered. “No secret wanking before I’ve even tried them on.”

“I wasn’t!” he protested. He was the most transparent liar she’d ever met. Then he said, “Okay, but you can’t peek either. Let’s open it together on…is it Tuesday that your fertile window starts?”

“Chances start getting good on Tuesday,” she agreed. She hesitated. “Listen, I know we had fun the first time I put on the last pair.”

She had led him around on a leash. She had gouged bloody furrows across his back with her heels. He had thanked her after each one and begged for more.

He was smiling, maybe reliving the same memories. “Yeah,” he agreed.

“Well, these are a bit higher. I don’t know if I’ll be as, um, mobile right away.”

He, with his fetish for wildly impractical heels, had somehow married her, who owned a single pair of 1″ pumps for special occasions.

She loved how the right pair of shoes reduced him to mindless putty in her hands. She just couldn’t walk in them. Hence this little project of hers.

“I was going to try them on first,” she finished. “Do a little test run.”

“So you could be sure of putting on a good show for me?”

She shrugged and gave him a small smile.

“You don’t have to do that.” He was saying that a lot recently.

Men were weird. Say, Can’t tonight, I’d rather spend four hours in a ballet studio, even though I started about twenty years too late to get anywhere with that, and he was all, Sure, I’m so happy you’re pursuing your dreams.

But a few minutes a day learning to drive him crazy with lust? Suddenly it was You don’t have to do that, and They’re bad for your feet, and I’m not that into good sex anyway.

“I want to,” she said, in the tone she used for pushy salesmen.

“No, we’re in this together. We’ll open it together, and if you can’t walk, we’ll do something else. Okay?”

He picked the most inconvenient times to grow a spine. She smiled despite herself. “You’re sweet sometimes.”

“Maybe you should be nicer to me.”

She snuggled into him, putting one hand into his pocket to draw him against her. “But you get so excited when I’m mean,” she cooed, and rose to the balls of her feet to nip at his ear.

He did put the box in the closet, and they did both leave it there, although she caught him a few times over the following days staring thoughtfully at the closed closet door.

Once, she came upon him standing there utterly lost in thought, with a suspicious bulge in his pants. “Are you just standing in the hallway with a chubby?” she teased. He had an adorable way of stammering and ducking his head.

Instead he said, mildly, “For all that I try to talk you out of this project, and for all that I would be really, truly okay with it if you decided to stop…I love that you’re willing to do this for me.”

She hated how easily he could render her speechless like that. And she hated even more how he probably didn’t even think of it that way. He’d probably be genuinely hurt by the suggestion that he was one-upping her attempt to discomfit him.

So she didn’t say that. Instead, she smiled and said, gently, “Hey, I like sex too.” And she brushed by him before he could pull any more of this feelings shit.

She couldn’t help glancing at the closet herself as she passed, though. She felt the box tugging at her like a lodestone. She was constantly aware of it as she moved around the house.

The original shoes that had started all this were 5 inches. She couldn’t even stand in those without clutching his arm like a newborn foal.

2.5″ had been uncomfortable, but manageable, and over the last month she’d learned to clomp around the house for up to an hour without too much trouble.

These were 3.5″, higher than anything she’d ever worn. Did she really want to throw them on and hope for the best?

She chickened out, as usual. She blocked out some time on their shared calendar for “🐣”, their code word for mid-day sex. When the time came, she led him straight past the closet into the bedroom.

They whipped through their old routine: a towel in case she squirted, the pillow to elevate her hips, a few minutes for her with the vibrator, a few strokes for him with her hand, then wham bam thank you ma’am.

Twenty minutes later, she lay cradled in his arms reflecting on what far they had come. Was it only months ago that this was the mainstay of their sex lives?

It felt now like a nostalgic treat. A packet of instant noodles, dressed up with slices of mushroom and ribbons of cabbage. A poached egg to pop and stir into the salty broth. A swirl of sesame oil, a dash of pepper.

She buried her face in his neck and inhaled deeply, imagining herself cupping the bowl in her hands as the fragrant steam enveloped her face. Maybe not a peak experience, exactly, but familiar and comfortable and satisfying in all the right ways.

She asked for the shoes that night, at the least sexy time possible. At the end of their hour-long “commute” from their home office via the walking paths at the park. After a good half hour hashing out the details of their grocery list. While wearing sweat pants, sneakers, and a shapeless hoodie, fraying at the cuffs.

She got the box out of the closet herself.

He held his hands out.

After a moment, she let him have it.

He had picked up on her business-like mood. Their habit of late had been for him to crawl back to the bench by the door, kneel, and ask kiss her feet. Today he instead walked over, let her sit, and then squatted and stripped off her socks and shoes.

He did take a moment to admire the shoes, turning them over in his big calloused hands and letting the light play across the matte leather. These were probably getting close to the range that he fantasized about.

“No pressure,” he reminded her, standing up and offering her his hand.

She stuck her tongue out at him. Ignoring his hand, she stood up on her own. These were taller. Nevertheless, she managed to find her balance with only a little wobbling.

For a moment, she fantasized about striding defiantly away. Putting a little shimmy into her step and glancing back to watch him stare.

That was her pride, fucking with her again. She sighed and took his hand. “Let’s walk up and down the hall a few minutes.”

“Sure.” He moved her hand higher up his arm, into the classic position by his elbow. As if she were elderly and infirm and asking for help across the street. This was exactly why she hated heels.

She took a deep breath and shook it off. It was like anything else. Just had to put in the reps. One, two, three…

After five hundred steps, she switched to counting lengths of the hallway. Down and back was about fifty of the tiny steps she dared take in these shoes.

After ten hallways, she came back to the bench. “I think that’s enough for today,” she said.

He knelt in front of her. She opened her mouth to tell him she wasn’t in the mood, but he merely took the shoes off and put her house slippers on. “Come sit on the couch with me. I’ll rub your feet.”

“Yeah, okay.” She let him lead her into the living room.

“Remember when I used to do this for you?” he asked.

“When I was doing ballet.”

“Weird how it was never the pointe work that did it.”

“Yeah, pointe isn’t a muscular pain. Wasn’t for me, anyway.”

He worked in silence for a minute before speaking again. “It’s not about me any more, is it?”

“What?”

“Sorry, I played the tape forward in my head. I was going to say you didn’t have to do this. And you were going to say you wanted to do something nice for me.”

She pulled her foot away. This again?

He took it back onto his lap. Did something really good in her arch. Kept talking. “But I don’t think that really passes the sniff test. We’ve had some mind-blowing sex already. You don’t need a higher heel to drive me crazy, and you know it.”

Maybe she would need it later. Maybe he’d get tired of playing around with stuff teens wore to church. Maybe she was getting ahead of the curve, anticipating demand.

No, if she said that he’d merely look at her until she realized how dumb it sounded.

“I believe that’s how it started,” he said. “I believe you really wanted to do something nice for me. Now, though, now you’re just kind of…doing it, aren’t you? Like the mountain climber: because it’s there. And you’re here.”

He paused to hold up his fingers, two and a half inches apart.

“And this is what you do, you get from here to there, for whatever values of here and there you had available when you went looking for your next project.”

He knew better than to expect a reply. After a few seconds’ silence, he went back to her foot. “Okay. Let’s do it. I guess we’ll practice in the hallway for a while?”

Glad to move onto more practical matters, she said, “Maybe another day or two. Then I can start wearing them around the house.”

She scheduled them for mid-day quickies the rest of the week. No heels, no leashes, no blood, just his shampoo in her nose and then his body warm and welcoming against hers for a few minutes before they both went back to work.

The shoes stayed in the box, gracing her feet only when she practiced. Soon she was able to pace up and down the hallway alone, and then to putter around the house while he prepped dinner.

One day, she held up one hand as he came out of the closet with the shoebox. She tilted her head just so, glanced up from beneath her lashes, and smiled.

His smile slowly spread across his face.

She said, “You’re over-dressed, honey.”

“Yeah? How dressed should I be?”

“I’ll let you know.”

Slowly, holding her gaze, he took off his pants, then his shirt. His boxer briefs were tented in front.

She stopped him there. “Let’s not have any drips on the floor.”

He knelt before her. She let him change her socks for nylons and her sensible shoes for the pumps. She let her crossed leg hover just before his face.

“What do you want to do now, little boy?”