Page 16 of Resilience

“Hi, beautiful.” He reached her and slipped his arms around her waist. As he bent low to kiss her, she wrapped her arms around his neck.

Hunter was the only person she’d had sex with and only the fourth she’d kissed. It was possible that, when compared against every sexually active person in the world, he wasn’t a standout, but in her sliver of experience he was an excellent lover all around.

“Where is everybody?” he asked when their greeting was over.

“Sam and Lark went to town for some supplies. Nobody else will be here for a few hours yet.”

He nodded. His eyes were moving all around, taking in the property. This was the first time she’d asked him up here. Actually, no. She’d asked him up last year, for their twenty-first birthday blow-out, and he’d broken up with her instead.

But she wasn’t going to think about that. The point was, he’d never been here before.

“You want a tour?” she asked.

“Sure,” he answered and pulled her close for another kiss.

Deciding to start with the best parts, Athena led him down to the lake first, with Blanche walking between them.

She and Hunter rarely held hands, and never for very long. She didn’t know if it was a typical thing for Deaf people everywhere, but she and Hunter felt the same way about it, and so did those friends she’d asked: having their hand held was like being gagged.

Even if she wasn’t trying to communicate, she got anxious when her hand was held for more than a second or two, and if it went on longer than that, she started to get sweaty and nauseated. It was silly; she could sign well enough with one hand, and she’d need only pull her hand loose to be able to communicate normally, but the anxiety was still there.

Her recurring anxiety dream was losing her hands. The situation varied, from simply looking down and discovering that her hands had disappeared, to some kind of grievous injury, like having them sawed off or crushed. It was pretty fucked up. Her time in therapy predated the first instance of the dream, so she’d never talked to a professional about it, but she didn’t really have to, did she? Her hands were the way she could make herself understood, make herself known. They held her very identity. Of course she’d be terrified of losing them.

“It’s beautiful here,” Hunter signed when they stepped onto the dock.

Athena nodded and looked around. The lake was already busier than it had been when Sam and she had been goofing around in the water, and it would get busier still as the afternoon deepened, but yes, it was beautiful here. Anyway, she didn’t mind it when it got busy. She loved to watch the boats flying by, and the beautiful, foamy wakes they trailed.

“The boats are yours, too?” Hunter asked.

He meant the speedboat and the jet skis they’d pulled from the boathouse. “Not mine, the club’s. But they’re ours to use this weekend.”

“So I can take out a jet ski?”

“Have you ever ridden one before?” Jet skis, like motorcycles, were a little dicey for Deaf folks—certainly not impossible, but it was more dangerous than other forms of travel and took some preparation and precaution. A weekend like Labor Day, at a busy lake, was probably a bad time for anybody to learn to ride a jet ski, but it was for sure a terrible time for a Deaf person to learn.

Athena had only ever ridden tandem on motorcycle or jet ski, and it had nothing to do with her deafness (well, it had a little to do with it, in the form of anxious and overprotective parents). She was just too damn little to control the things well.

Happily, Hunter was nodding. “My folks used to rent them when we were kids. They’re fun.”

“Then we should totally go out! But not until Sam and Lark get back. Come on, I’ll show you the rest of the place.”

As she and Blanche headed back up the hill toward the cabin, Hunter grabbed her wrist and drew her back.

“Wait,” he signed, smiling. “Come here.” He pulled her close, held her face in his hands, and kissed her dizzy.

“Thank you for asking me up here,” he signed when he let her go. “I love you so much.”

Athena smiled. They were always at their best when it was just the two of them. Was it like that with all couples?

“I love you, too,” she told him without any internal conflict. She wasn’t always sure whether she loved him or not, but right now, she felt it. She gave him what she hoped was a saucy smirk and added, “They’ll be gone for at least another half hour. Want to see our bedroom?”

Hunter laughed and kissed her again.

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