(Martin is narrating)
I smiled down at him. “It’s very nice.”
Rick made a slight smile. “It’s karaoke,” he whispered.
“Teach me the song, Rick.”
He sang the third and final set of verses through, then he sang all three verses again, and I sang them with him.
In mid song I released him to let him float. I was now the first person he ever trusted in his life. My heart went out to him so much, I made a silent oath I’d never let him down. Rick was straighter than a Zen arrow, but I desired him all the more for being so unattainable.
His face had a wide eyed beauty of blended innocence and unyielding will, making the wood in his soul’s arrow forever green. Sensei calls this moe (pronounced ‘moh eeh’). I looked down at Rick’s face, now turned vulnerable in his trust of me.
But I was not so innocent. I found the wood in my personal arrow begin straightening, so I was silently thankful I was covered up to the shoulders in several feet of water with my back to the shore.
“Three minutes is enough for your first time, Rick. Easy…” Easy is what I also had to tell myself! I was tempted to take advantage of the moment, but that would not have been right.
Rick shivered. “I’m freezing! Can we leave?”
I grimaced. “I think I need about another minute. The water here just doesn’t seem cold enough to me.” Rick stared up at me, clueless, so I guided his body back to a standing position in the lake.
Tomorrow, Sensei would drive me home, and Rick would return to New Jersey through a series of airlines.
We wasted our remaining night playing Risk, his favorite board game, that he brought in case he found a fellow geek like me to teach it to. I decided to take a risk with my feelings. As we set up the board, I challenged him to Truth or Dare.
Between rounds, I thus learned he graduated sixth grade and would start ninth in the fall. “Sugoy!” I breathed, wide eyed.
He shrugged. “My teacher saw me score two years ahead in the IOWA standard tests.” He steamrolled my forces in Africa. “Dare!”
“Close your eyes,” I instructed.
Panic appeared in his face. “What are you going to do to me?”
“I won’t hurt you.”
He sat still as I brushed his lips with mine. He made a face, spat, then wiped his mouth with his shirt sleeve. “Ick!”
My reaction was the opposite. Aside from the initial shock of Marge being grateful for my saving her from a pervert on the playground, I felt just as meh from being kissed by her as from tasting my dad’s coffee, Army issue black the way he fixes it.
If you really enjoyed this, buy the book?