Page 47 of Resilience

“I think we should try it,” she told him, ignoring the massive flock of butterflies that broke free in her belly.

“Try what?”

One thing about being tiny and deaf in a large, loud world: you couldn’t be a coward and have anything resembling a normal life. Athena was no coward. She rose to her knees, scooted over until she knelt directly before him. With her right hand flat, her fingers together, she touched her fingertips to her mouth and then to her cheek: “Kiss me.”

Sam stared at her, his lovely hazel eyes wide and active. “Athena?”

Athena used fingerspelling for her name only when she was meeting someone new or communicating with someone official. While Athena was her name, in her mind, A-T-H-E-N-A was not. Like most of the Deaf people she knew, she had a sign name, a unique sign that referred directly to her.

Her parents had given her the sign when she was two, after a severe bilateral ear infection had changed the ‘moderate’ deafness she’d been born with to ‘severe,’ and they’d known she would never be able to really hear. The sign they’d made for her was their version of the astrological symbol for Pallas Athena. The symbol was essentially a squared-off version of the symbol for Venus and for ‘female.’

To make her sign name, both hands formed an L; the tips of the thumbs touched, and the forefingers crossed at the top knuckle.

Perhaps, if her hearing parents had had more than a beginner’s understanding of ASL back then, they would not have given her a sign name that took both hands. But Athena had never changed it. It was how she knew herself. Her true name.

Sam had a sign name, too; Athena had given it to him long ago, when they were still children: the closed right fist of the letter S, held up and then tapped twice against the left shoulder. When they called each other Samwise and Frodo, they used the signs for the Tolkien characters.

They used their sign names all the time, of course, whenever they used their names. But when Sam used hers now, looking at her the way he was, with so much change crackling all around them, Athena felt that sign like a promise. He knew her, every corner and seam of who she was. He would never hurt her, never leave her. He loved her.

And she felt the same for him.

“Kiss me, Sam” she signed again. “I want to know if it’s real.”

He studied her for one more second, two more seconds. Then he reached out with both hands, framed her face with them, and leaned forward.

Just at the point where their lips would have touched, the strangeness of this moment overwhelmed them both, and, in unison, they turned their heads and laughed.

Athena caught his chin in her hand and drew him back to her. “Sorry,” she signed.

He grinned. “Me too. It’s weird, right?”

“Very. I still want to do it, though.”

“Me too.” With that, Sam returned his hands to her face and came in again.

His lips brushed hers only lightly at first, and then he stopped. He didn’t pull away; his mouth hovered a hairsbreadth from hers, just enough to let her decide if she wanted to back away or come forward for more.

Athena leaned forward and pressed her lips to his. Then they held like that, not moving, both studying every part of the sensation, the emotion.

She liked the feel of his beard on her cheeks, her mouth. His lips were warm and firm, dry in the right way. His hands were huge—how had she not realized that they were practically as big as her whole head?

Needing to know more, Athena slipped her hands up to hold his head like he held hers. Her hands were not as big as his head; she could barely cover his cheeks. But his beard felt good there, too.

He must have made a sound of some kind; she could feel the vibration under her palms, the exhalation across her mouth, her cheek, her nose. Somehow, a sound Athena could not hear gave her a good, deep flutter—and she knew what that feeling was: Desire. For Sam.

She opened her mouth and tasted his lips.

All at once, Sam deepened the kiss tremendously. He pulled her closer, opened his mouth and covered hers completely, pushed his tongue past her lips—and then, just as suddenly, he backed off.

Dazed by an onslaught of surprising thoughts and sensations, Athena opened her eyes and saw him staring at her, eyes wide, mouth open. By the stuttering heaves of his chest, the tempo of his breath on her face, she knew he was panting.

“I don’t want to do anything you don’t want,” he signed.

They’d been right.

All those girls who’d felt threatened by her, they’d known. And why, exactly, had Athena been so determined to see Sam as only a friend that she’d willingly allowed—hell, she’d encouraged—this amazing, wonderful, perfect human to find love with anyone but her? Sam was her person! How had she known that but not this?

I don’t want to do anything you don’t want, he’d told her.

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