“Are you sure? You’re cute when you babble.”
I laughed.
She added, “And now you’re blushing.”
“Okay, I’m not going to talk anymore.”
“Bet you will.”
“Bet you’re wrong.”
“See? I win.”
I laughed again. “All right. So…you live in Uguisudani?”
“About half a kilometer from the hotel. Why?”
“I was just wondering. I mean, do you really never go far from there?”
She sighed. “No, not really. Sometimes I tell myself I should. But it’s scary not to know what I’m going to find. I’ve gotten in trouble a few times and it’s just…it’s unpleasant. To be helpless and to have to rely on the kindness of strangers. It can be…humiliating. So over time, I’ve gotten in the habit of staying where I know the layout. Where I’m comfortable.”
“So you really must have trusted me to come out with me tonight.” It was just a neutral statement, but I think there was a little wonderment in my tone.
She looked at me. “You want to know what did it?”
I nodded. “Sure.”
“It’s when you told me you thought of me as the girl at the hotel.”
I tried to puzzle that out, and couldn’t. “I don’t get it.”
She laughed. “You see? You’re doing it now, stupid. The girl at the hotel. Not the girl in the wheelchair. It’s like you don’t even notice it.”
I leaned over as though to get a better view. “You’re in a wheelchair?”
She laughed and punched my shoulder. I caught her fingers in mine. Without thinking, I brought her hand to my mouth and kissed it.
She looked down. “I don’t know, Jun.”
“You don’t want me to kiss you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, we could just try, and if it’s not good, we could stop.”
She laughed again, softly.
I kissed her hand again and leaned closer. She was still looking down. I let go of her hand and touched her chin. Very gently, I raised her face toward mine. She looked in my eyes.
“You really are beautiful,” I said.
She shook her head and said nothing. I liked being so near to her. I leaned closer and kissed her as softly as I could. She didn’t exactly kiss me back, but she didn’t pull away, either.
I pulled back a fraction, feeling happy and dopey. “Was it horrible?”
She shook her head again. “No, not too horrible.”
“Okay, then I’m going to do it again.” Her mouth was slightly open, and this time I kissed just her bottom lip, lingering there for a moment before I eased away.
“Still okay?” I said.
“I just…I don’t know what you want with me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, look at me. What do you want with me?”
Maybe she didn’t mean it literally, but I took a long look. I liked what I saw. Her breasts were small and beautifully shaped, her neck was long and slender, and her shoulders and arms, her whole upper body looked strong and fit and graceful. Her skin was pale and smooth. And her lips…God, it had been nice to kiss her, even though it had been so soft it barely qualified.
“I’d answer that, but I think you’d slap me.”
She laughed softly. “I just don’t get it.”
“You mean, because of the wheelchair?”
“Yeah.”
I took her hand again. “I don’t know. I just like being with you. I liked kissing you just now. I wouldn’t mind doing it again.”
She laughed again. “I really don’t get you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t think it’s your fault, exactly. You know, I don’t even…I don’t even know if I can…you know. I don’t know if I would feel anything.”
“You mean, you never…”
She shook her head. “No, never. Not even before the accident.”
“Oh. Well, maybe we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves, right? I mean, I haven’t even thought about that. Well not not thought about it. But I haven’t thought a lot about it. Not constantly, anyway. Sometimes I find myself thinking about something else for a few minutes before it comes back, that’s what I mean.”
She laughed. I realized I really liked making her laugh. I’d never been the funniest guy in the world, and I was envious of people who had a talent for that kind of thing, but there was something about her that brought it out in me.
“It’s not just that,” she said. “I haven’t even kissed someone since I was a teenager.”
“Why? Did you not want to?”
“I don’t know. Most guys who want to date a girl in a wheelchair…either they pity me, or they think they’re doing something noble, or they think they can get whatever they want because I must be desperate, or some combination of those things. It’s just never made me feel good about myself. So after a while, I stopped trying.”
“I don’t know why anyone would think any of that about you. Desperate is about the last thing you seem to me.”
She nodded. “Thanks.”
“Don’t thank me. I’m just trying to think of something that’ll make you want to kiss me again.”
She smiled, and then her eyes welled up. It caught me by surprise, and apparently it did her, too, because she gave a startled little laugh and turned away to hide it.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I was just trying to make a joke.”
She shook her head and wiped her eyes, her face still averted.
I felt bad. I realized I’d been treating her more or less the way I would have treated any girl I liked, and while on the one hand she clearly responded to that, on the other hand she had wounds inside her I knew nothing about, no more than she knew about mine.
“You know,” I said, “if it makes you feel any better, I’ve only been with one girl myself.”
She laughed and wiped her eyes. “Liar. With those little ears, they must be throwing themselves at you.”
I laughed too. “No, it’s true, there’s only been one.” This wasn’t technically true, as I couldn’t claim to have eschewed all professional companionship during the war, but other than that, Deirdre Calhoun had been my first, and to that point my only. “She was my high school girlfriend,” I went on, “and I told her I was going to marry her when I got back from the war. But the marriage part never happened.”
“Why?”
I blew out a long breath. “I was gone for longer than I’d first been thinking. And war changes you. We were both different people when I got back. Everything was different.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. It just didn’t work out. But I’m here now.”
She looked down. “It’s just hard for me.”
“I think I understand. At least some of it.”
“I mean, if I wanted to go home right now — and I don’t, but if I wanted to — I couldn’t just leave. I have to rely on you. I hate being helpless like that. I hate it.”
“I get it. I’d hate it, too. What do you think we should do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, while you try to figure it out, I’m going to kiss you again, okay?”
She looked in my eyes. Then she whispered, “Okay.”
So we kissed again. And this time, I didn’t pull back. I reached out and brushed her cheek with the backs of my fingers, and she opened her mouth and I touched her teeth with my tongue a little, just to let her know I wanted more, was ready for more if she was, and then I felt her tongue and we were really kissing, and I cupped her face in my hands and she leaned forward and did the same to me and she opened her mouth wider and put her tongue inside mine, and she made the most beautiful sound, I can’t even describe it but it was a sound of pure pleasure, the sound someone would make if she tasted something unexpectedly delicious and was nearly shocked by it. We kissed and kissed and touched each other’s faces and hair and she ran her fingers along my ears and we were laughing and holding each other and it went on and on and on. And it was the best kiss I’d ever had.