The Tailor
"Custom fitting. Precise measurements. She designs him something new."
The wedding was in three weeks.
Best man. Custom suit. The groom's mother insisted on her tailor—an old woman in the garment district who'd been making clothes for fifty years. "She's the best," Marcus said. "Trust me."
The shop was tiny, squeezed between a dry cleaner and a bodega. The sign said "Madame Beaumont - Bespoke Tailoring" in faded gold script.
Madame Beaumont herself was nothing like I expected.
Sixty-four years old. Easily two-sixty, maybe more. Her body was a monument to soft curves—enormous breasts barely contained by a vintage blouse, hips that required her to turn sideways through her own narrow doorways. Her hair was silver, elegantly styled. Her hands, when they reached for me, moved with the precision of a surgeon.
"You're the best man," she said. Not a question. "Take off your jacket. We have much work to do."
The measuring was intimate.
I'd been fitted for suits before—department store alterations, quick measurements by bored employees. This was different. Madame Beaumont's tape measure found every curve, every angle, every secret my body kept.
"Arms up." She circled me, measuring chest, shoulders, the span of my back. "You have good bones. But you dress like you're hiding."
"I'm not—"
"The jacket you came in wearing? Two sizes too large. The pants? Ill-fitting. You're a man afraid of being seen." She wrote numbers in a leather notebook. "Why?"
"I just prefer comfort—"
"Comfort is the excuse of men who don't believe they deserve beauty." She met my eyes. "Turn."
I turned. Her hands adjusted my posture—firm pressure on my shoulders, my hips, straightening what I'd let slouch.
"Better. A suit is not just fabric. It's architecture. It reveals what the body can be."
The fittings continued.
Once a week for three weeks, I stood in her shop while she draped and pinned and measured. Each session felt more intimate than the last. Her hands knew my body better than I did.
"You're different from other clients," she said during the second fitting.
"How so?"
"Most men hate this. The standing, the stillness. But you—" She adjusted a shoulder seam. "You lean into my hands."
I hadn't realized I was doing it. But she was right—every time she touched me, I found myself moving toward her instead of away.
"Sorry."
"Don't apologize." She pinned the lapel. "It's refreshing. Most people don't want to be touched anymore. They flinch from intimacy."
"You don't flinch from anything."
"When you've been fitting bodies for fifty years, you learn that flesh is just flesh. Nothing to fear." She smoothed the fabric across my chest. "The question is what you do with it."
The final fitting was supposed to be brief.
Just adjustments, hemming, a quick review before the wedding. But when I arrived, she had me undress completely—down to my underwear—and stand before a mirror.
"I want to see the foundation," she explained. "Before we cover it."
I stood there, nearly naked, while a sixty-four-year-old woman walked around me making notes. It should have been clinical. It wasn't.
"You've changed," she said.
"How?"
"Your posture. You're standing taller. Breathing deeper." She stopped in front of me. "Something has shifted."
"Maybe it's the suit."
"The suit doesn't exist yet. This—" She touched my chest, directly over my heart. "This is you. Changed."
Her hand was warm through my thin undershirt. I didn't move away.
"You're a dangerous woman," I said.
"I'm an old woman who makes clothes."
"You're a woman who sees people. Really sees them." I covered her hand with mine. "And I think you see me."
"What do you see?" she asked.
"I see someone I can't stop thinking about." The words came out before I could stop them. "I see hands that have touched me more carefully than anyone ever has. I see a body that fills this room—that fills every room—without apology."
"Tyler—"
"I know this is crazy. I know you're my tailor, and you're older, and none of this makes sense. But I don't care about sense anymore." I kept her hand pressed to my heart. "I care about this."
She was quiet for a long moment. Then she reached up, touched my face.
"You young men," she said softly. "You think old women don't feel desire anymore. That we've withered away."
"I don't think that."
"No." She smiled. "No, you don't."
She kissed me.
Her mouth was soft, tasting of the tea she kept brewing in the back.
I pulled her close—felt her body press against mine, soft everywhere, overwhelming in its presence. She gasped into my mouth, her hands finding my bare skin.
"Wait—" she breathed. "The workroom. More space."
We moved to the workroom. Fabric bolts lined the walls. A cutting table dominated the center—wide, padded, covered in muslin.
She looked at it. Looked at me.
"Help me up."
I helped her onto the table. She sat there—this massive, magnificent woman—and began unbuttoning her blouse.
"Undress me," she commanded. "Like I've been undressing you."
I undressed her like she was precious.
Her blouse fell away. Her bra—industrial, functional—came next. Her breasts spilled free, heavy and pale, nipples dark and wide. Her skirt followed, then her underwear, until she was naked on her own cutting table.
"Well?" she challenged. "This is what you've been looking at. Every fitting. Every measurement."
"It's more than I imagined."
"Flattery—"
"Truth." I knelt before the table, parted her thighs. "Let me show you."
I worshipped her with my mouth. She moaned, her hands gripping my hair, her thighs pressing against my ears. She tasted like salt and desire, and I drank her like fabric drinks dye—completely, permanently.
"Mon dieu—" she gasped. "Where did you—ah—"
"You taught me. Attention to detail. Precision." I looked up at her. "I learn from the best."
She pulled me up, onto the table with her.
The surface creaked under our combined weight—her mass and mine together. I covered her body, felt myself sink into her softness.
"Inside me," she said. "Now."
I pushed inside.
She was tight, hot, welcoming. Her body surrounded me—breasts against my chest, belly soft beneath mine, thighs gripping my hips. I moved slowly, watching her face transform.
"Harder—" she urged.
"I don't want to hurt—"
"You won't. I'm not fragile." She pulled me deeper. "Show me what you've been imagining."
I showed her.
I fucked her on her cutting table, surrounded by the tools of her trade, fabric bolts watching like silent witnesses. She moaned and gasped and eventually screamed, her body shaking with release.
I followed, spilling into her, and collapsed onto her vast, soft form.
"The suit," she said eventually.
"What about it?"
"It's finished. You should try it on."
I dressed in the suit she'd made—perfect fit, perfect lines, fabric that moved like a second skin. I looked in the mirror and saw someone I barely recognized.
"You look like a man who belongs in his body," she said, watching from the table.
"You made that."
"I revealed it. It was always there." She wrapped herself in a robe. "Come back after the wedding."
"For what?"
"For whatever comes next." She smiled—old, wise, satisfied. "I'll be here."
The wedding was perfect.
The suit was flawless. Everyone complimented it—asked where I'd gotten it, demanded the tailor's name.
"Madame Beaumont," I said. "The best in the city."
What I didn't say was that the best in the city was also the best lover I'd ever had. That I spent the reception counting minutes until I could return to her shop. That the fitting that had started as obligation had become something I couldn't live without.
"You came back," she said when I appeared at her door, still in the suit.
"I told you I would."
"Most men don't."
"I'm not most men."
"No." She pulled me inside. "No, you're not."
She undressed me with the same precision she'd used to dress me—layers coming off, revealing what was beneath.
"Now," she said. "Let me measure you again."
Her tape measure found new places this time.
Custom fit.
Perfect lines.
Tailored for life.