my room?” I hear myself saying.
Our eyes lock and I smile at him with the timeless mystery of a Venetian courtesan. A cortigiana onesta. At least that’s what I’m going for. For all I know, I probably exude the persona of a pariah dog in heat.
A faint smile passes over his face. “Sure,” he acquiesces.
I’m lying on my bed, pushed up on one elbow, watching Mika flip through my high school yearbook. My yearbook is scribbled with soppy sayings like: May your life be arithmetic. Joys added, Sorrows subtracted, Friends multiplied, Love undivided.
And I distinctly recall the naughty line that Garrett Jennsen penned in. Garrett is now a professional skateboarder, and I had the biggest crush on him my senior year. This is what he scrawled between the cracks of my yearbook, now riddled with a thousand creases: Cows moo, ducks quack, but I am the first to sign your crack.
Mika jerks his head up. “Who’s Garrett Jensen?” he asks in a sort of proprietorial tone.
“No one special,” I say simply.
“Humph,” he grunts and flips the page.
I cringe when he finds my picture.
Oh God. I look like the chief of the Nerd Herd.
Like most high school yearbooks, there’s a designated spot for departing seniors to endow underclassmen with random nuggets of wisdom.
Mika reads the caption beneath my picture, “High school is like a lollipop; it sucks until it is gone.”
Smiling knowingly, he leafs through the pages. He stops when he arrives at the ‘Most Likely To’ page. I bury my head in my pillow. Oh no. He’s about to come across my embarrassing nomination. Peeking through my fingers, I quietly observe him.
His eyes skim the page, and they suddenly light up. He reads my blurb out loud, “Madison Lee, aka Word Girl—Most likely to be published.” A slow grin breaks over his face. “You were Word Girl?”
I burn with shame. “I know, doesn’t that spell geek all over? I’ll never live that one down.”
“I think it’s cute,” he says. “Okay, Word Girl, I have a question for you.”
I sit up straight. “Shoot.”
“Who versus whom? I’m never sure which word to use.”
I twist my lips. “Well, that’s a bit of a tricky one, since they’re both pronouns, but—”
“Well is it who do you love or whom do you love?”
“The Rolling Stones and Bo Diddley got it wrong. This may come as a surprise, but it’s whom do you love.”
He sidles closer until we’re just inches apart. Gazing into my eyes, he draws an imaginary line over my nose, traces my lips and looks at me as though memorizing my every feature. Touching his forehead to mine, he says in a low and intimate voice, “You.”
You...just one simple word, yet the tenderness in his voice is so overwhelming that I’m moved by his utter conviction.
Before I can react, he threads his fingers through my hair and pulls me into a warm and sensuous kiss.
Mmmm. Mika is such a good kisser. His lips are soft yet firm, and he varies the intensity and pressure…hungrily then gently, passionately then sweetly.
Somehow, some way, we manage to grope our way across my bed and slide under the cold sheets. He dips his head and seeks my lips, but I find myself yawning appallingly—long, drawn out yawns. Gosh. This is so embarrassing. As widespread lore has it, something in turkey induces sleepiness, and thanks to the hefty portions of bird I gobbled up at dinner time, my eyelids feel so heavy…
Exhaustion washes over and claims me.
I’m in the midst of another heavy yawn when Mika smiles and strokes my hair. “It’s okay…let’s just rest,” he says lovingly and drops a kiss on my forehead.
Lazily, I rest in the crook of his arm, snuggled under his chin. And for a long while I do not move, reveling in the joy of being close to him.
While the weather outside is soupy, we lie in my twin sized bed, our arms and limbs entwined. I listen to his deep and even breathing, feeling incredibly sated and content. Drowsy with love and drowsy with food, I succumb to a deep and delicious sleep.
Twenty Six
“It’s furr-reeeeeeezing,” I mutter under my frosty breath as the wind slams into my face. I can barely breathe.
It’s so cold that my eyes are watering and my nose won’t stop running. Another gust of wind whips into my face and my tears and snot freeze into icicles.
Winters here are notorious for being harsh. I hate the cold.
I’d take a summer scorcher over any wintery day.
This is Hell