The Birthday Hike

It was my twenty-ninth birthday, and I woke up in a tent at a campground three hours from home, which was exactly where I wanted to be.

Gabe had the coffee going when I crawled out. He was sitting at the picnic table in his flannel, hair mashed sideways from sleeping, and he'd set my mug on my side of the table already. That's the kind of guy he is. Married five years now, together seven total, and he still does the small stuff without being asked.

"Happy birthday, babe." He leaned over and kissed my temple. "How's it feel to be twenty-nine?"

"Weird," I said, sitting down. "Last year of my twenties. Feels sorta like a door closing somewhere."

"Well, we got all day in the park, so open it slow." He poured himself coffee and sat across from me. The morning was clear and cold, that autumn cold where the air smells like pine needles. Fog was still burning off the trees.

I wrapped both hands around my mug and took a breath. I'd been rehearsing this in the car yesterday, and again in the tent at about midnight while he snored next to me. Rehearsing it one more time now.

"Gabe." I looked at him over the rim of my mug. "I want you to do something for me today."

He set his mug down, immediately suspicious in the way husbands get when wives lead with a sentence like that. "Okay. What kind of something?"

"The kind where you don't interrupt me."

"I make no promises."

"Gabriel." I used the full name. That always works. "I'm serious. This is a birthday ask, and I get one of those, we agreed, remember? Last year we said we'd each get one big honest ask a year, no judging."

He remembered. He'd used his already, back in the spring, when he asked me to teach him to cut hair like I do at the salon, which was adorable and also a disaster. Fair was fair.

"Okay," he said slowly. "Big honest ask. No judging. Lay it on me."

I took a sip of coffee because my mouth had gone dry. "I want you to, um. Okay. I want you to touch yourself. Outside. Today, on our hike, somewhere off the trail. While I watch. And then I want to take you in my mouth. In the open air. That's the whole ask."

The silence went on so long that a jay landed on the table and looked at both of us before flying off again.

"You want me to..." He made a vague gesture that could have meant anything. "At the campsite? Because there's people at the site next door, hon."

"No, not here. That's why we're doing the hike. I picked the trail already. Berry Glen. It's quiet, barely anybody uses it this time of year. There'll be a spot, I know there will."

"You've been planning this."

"Since July." I set my mug down and reached across the table and took his hand. His fingers were cold from holding the mug. "Listen. I've been thinking about this for months. Not just the, you know, the sex part of it. The part where you let me watch you and you can't hide anything and I can't hide anything either. We've been married five years and I still get shy about certain stuff and I'm tired of it. Twenty-nine feels like a door closing and I wanna walk through it wide awake."

He was looking at our hands, not at me. I gave him a second.

"And there's rules," I added, before he could ask. "My rules, since it's my birthday. You don't talk. Not one word, the whole time. You don't touch me, not until it's over and I say so. You just do it and let me look at you. That's it."

"No talking." He said it like he was testing how it fit in his mouth. "That's gonna be hard for me. You know I talk when I'm nervous. I narrate, Iz. I'm like a tour guide."

"I know, honey. That's kind of the point. I want you with no words for once. Just you."

He chewed on his lip for a while. A guy at the site next door started his truck and it rumbled off toward the road, and after that it was just quiet.

"Can I ask one question back?" he finally said. "Not a no. A question."

"Shoot."

"What happens if somebody walks up? On the trail, I mean. Hiker comes around a bend and there I am with my, uh."

"Then you cover up and we say good morning and we keep hiking until we find another spot." I shrugged. "It's a big park, babe. It's a risk. That's sort of the whole flavor of it. I want it to feel a little dangerous. Not actually dangerous. Just, like, crack the window dangerous."

He laughed at that. Then he got quiet again and I watched him work through it, because I know all his faces after seven years. There's the face where he's genuinely worried, and the face where he's worried but also a little excited and won't admit it. This was the second one.

"Okay," he said. "Yeah. Okay. Happy birthday, you weirdo."

"Is that a yes?"

"That's a yes." He pointed at me with his whole hand, dead serious. "But I'm holding you to the no-touching rule too. If I'm out there doing my thing and you reach for me, I'm gonna lose it in like thirty seconds and then you'll have gotten a thirty-second birthday present."

"That would be a bad present."

"A historically bad present." He stood up and started gathering our packs off the ground, and I could tell he was trying to be casual about it and failing, because he packed the same water bottle twice and left the tent stakes sitting on the table until I reminded him.

We got the site locked up and drove the short way over to the trailhead. Berry Glen is this narrow little path that cuts through the trees, soft underfoot, the kind of trail where your footsteps stop making sound after a while. Gabe was quiet the whole first mile, which for him is basically a medical event.

"You okay back there?" I asked, glancing over my shoulder.

"I'm mentally rehearsing not talking," he said. "Which is itself a kind of talking. It's a paradox."

"You're gonna be fine."

"I know." He caught up and walked beside me and put his arm around my shoulders for a few steps. "It's just, seven years, and you still find new stuff. It's a little humbling, is all. Good humbling."

That made me feel warm all the way down, honestly. Better than any card.

I led after that. The trail climbed a little, curved around a stand of the big trees, and then I saw it, just past a bend, exactly the kind of place I'd been picturing since July. A small clearing with ferns all around the edges and one huge fallen log lying across it like a bench somebody forgot. Sun came through the canopy in long stripes. Nobody in either direction.

I stopped at the edge of the clearing and turned around.

"This one," I said.

Gabe looked past me at the ferns and the log and the light, and then he looked at me, and he took a breath and let it out slow.

"Okay," he said quietly. "No talking, no touching. Your rules."

"My rules." I set my pack down against the log and looked at him, and my heart was loud in my ears, but in the good way. "So. Whenever you're ready, birthday boy's wife gets her present. Take your time. I'm just gonna watch."

I sat down on the log and crossed my ankles like I was at a matinee.

Gabe stood in the middle of the clearing for a second, hands on his hips, looking around one more time at the ferns and the trees like he was memorizing the witnesses. Then he looked at me.

"Not one word," I reminded him, and I tapped my own lips with one finger so he knew I meant it.

He nodded. He pressed his lips together, actually, like he was physically locking the door, and I almost laughed, because that's such a him move. Seven years of this man narrating everything from which trail marker we passed to what he thinks the squirrels are plotting, and now I was asking him for total silence, and he was going to try, I could tell, with his whole body.

He started with his flannel. He unbuttoned it slow, and the sun was coming through in those long stripes, and one of them landed right across his chest when he pulled the shirt open. I'd seen that chest a thousand times. I'd slept on that chest. But this was different, because he was doing it for me, on display, no words, and the cold air made him shiver a little right at the end of the shiver his stomach did anyway when he's nervous.

"Good," I said softly. "Keep going."

He let his belt out of its loops slowly, and I watched his hands, and okay, full honesty, his hands were trembling a little. Not shaking. Just a fine tremble, the kind you get when it's forty-something degrees and you're standing still in the open with your wife watching. He got the belt loose and then the button of his jeans, and he paused there, and his eyes came up to mine, and he raised his eyebrows in a question without making a sound.

"Yeah. You're doing great," I told him. "This is exactly what I wanted for my birthday, in case you were wondering."

He huffed something that was almost a laugh but had no sound, smart man, and pushed his jeans and boxers down past his hips in one motion, and there he was, my husband of five years, standing in a clearing in Redwood National Park with his pants around his thighs and the morning air doing whatever it was doing to him.

He was not fully hard yet. I want to note that, because it matters to the memory. He was halfway there, and the cold wasn't helping, and he wrapped one hand around himself anyway, and I watched him just breathe for a second.

I didn't say anything for a while. I just watched.

This is the part I'd been picturing since July, and the real version was better, and I think it's because of his face. Because when he touched himself at home in the dark, or in the shower, I'm never watching his face. And out here his face was doing all this quiet stuff. His jaw set. His eyes went somewhere past me and then came back and found mine and stayed there. His breathing changed before anything else did.

He stroked himself slow. Long, lazy, starting-over strokes, the kind you do at the very beginning, and I watched the head of his cock disappear into his fist and come back out, over and over, and the sun stripe moved across his hip while he did it.

I don't know how long we stayed like that. Five minutes? It felt long in the best way. Time does that when you're not filling it with anything.

"You're so handsome," I said at some point, just to watch his ears go pink. They did. "You know that? You get self-conscious and I never get to watch you long enough to say it properly. Look at you. Out here in the woods. For me."

His hand kept going. His cock was fully hard now, red at the tip, and his fist moved a little faster, and he was still not making a sound, not even breath noise, which had to be costing him everything, because Gabe is a gasper. Gabe is a comment-leaver. I could see the comments building up behind his teeth and dying there, one after another.

I slid forward on the log a little. I didn't get up. I didn't touch him. I just moved closer, and I let my knees fall open, and I watched his eyes flick down to them and then snap back up like he'd been caught.

"That's right, keep your eyes up here," I said. "You can look wherever you want, actually.