Page 13 of Butterflies and Hazel Eyes
“Are those the Apostle Islands?” I asked.
“They are, and they are so worth seeing in person,” he said. “There are twenty-one islands, many with old-world lighthouses. The lighthouses are automated now, but they still shine over the lake like sentries to protect the sailors. Lake Superior is more treacherous than the ocean. The waves can swamp a boat the size of a cruise ship without a second thought, and the cold water means it doesn’t take long for sailors in the water to die of hypothermia.”
I raised a brow. “My, someone is Mr. Doom and Gloom this morning. ‘Hey, Charity,’” I said, lowering my voice, “‘check out this beautiful view while I tell you all about how you can die out there.’”
His laughter this time was more of a giggle when he held up his hand. “Okay, you’re right. My point was, the islands are beautiful and even though the lighthouses are automated, they’re worth seeing.”
“Okay, so how do you get out there?” I asked. “Ferry?”
“Ferries run to some of them, but you also have leisure cruises, private boat rentals, and kayaks.”
I gave him a side-eye stare of disbelief. “I’ve never kayaked, and I don’t think the first place I want to do it is Lake Superior.”
He leaned back in his chair to relax. “Oh dear, sweet, naive Charity, how wrong you are. Lake Superior is the only place you should do it.”
I smiled against my will at the man next to me. He had such energy for life and was determined to share his knowledge and excitement with everyone around him. I wasn’t used to that. I was used to doing my thing and everyone else doing theirs. The contact I had with people was minimal, both when I was working and when I wasn’t. I didn’t think giving my order to a waitress at a diner on the side of the road counted as contact with people either. In two days, I’d spent more time with the people in this town than I had spent with anyone over the last year. That was depressing to admit but still the truth. I lacked a personal connection with anyone, and nothing made that more obvious than the town of Plentiful.
I shook off those thoughts and glanced up at him. “Would you teach me how?” I asked. “I don’t think I’d be great at kayaking. I’m ridiculously short, and my arms are shorter.”
He eyed me up and down for longer than necessary, but I didn’t mind. His perusal wasn’t creepy or sneering, but rather caring and interested. “You are ridiculously short,” he said, his voice filled with laughter.
I punched him lightly in the arm, laughing with him. “Watch it, buster. I work hard on this figure,” I said, running my hands down my body seductively. “Not everyone can pull off being a little person.”
His eyes widened in embarrassment immediately, and his fingers tenderly grasped my wrist. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were an actual little person.”
“An actual little person? Versus a fictitious little person?” I asked, amused by his wording.
When he grimaced, even that was adorable. He was adorable in general, but his facial expressions offered me insight into his inner emotions every time. “No, I meant, you know, the word you aren’t supposed to use for little people because it’s not politically correct.”
“Oh,” I said, suddenly understanding why he was uncomfortable. “Do you mean dwarf?”
His gaze darted around the balcony, for what reason I didn’t know since we were alone. “Um, yeah.”
He said nothing more, so I decided he was just waiting for me to answer. “I guess it comes down to each individual person and what they prefer to be called,” I explained. “Dwarfism is the medical term for short stature, but movies and TV gave it such a negative connotation that people tend to avoid it. It’s technically correct in a medical sense, but we prefer to use little person or person of short stature.”
His fingers rubbed at his forehead for a few minutes while he held my gaze. “Right. I get it, I do. It’s not as if my legs are exactly easy for people to pin a name on either.”
My heart ached for him. His words held great sadness and pain, which told me more than anything else he could ever tell me about those legs. Tiny as my hand was, I gripped his shoulder for a moment to show him someone understood. He needed to know someone cared, even if that someone didn’t plan to stick around to be part of his life for more than a few weeks. When I got to know someone, I wanted to get to know who they were under the surface. I wanted to know the things they didn’t show everyone else. I wanted to see their vulnerabilities as well as their strengths. If you didn’t take the time to do that, you couldn’t say you really knew a person. I moved my hand over to rub his neck for a moment. It was all I could do not to smooth my palm over his cheek. “In my opinion, we’re more than the attributes of our physical bodies, right?”
His shoulder tipped up, but it took a long time to go down again. “Supposedly, but in this day and age, our bodies carry a lot of weight when people form opinions about us.”
I blew out a breath of acknowledgment and understanding. “You’re absolutely right. I would imagine it’s even harder for you. By all the medical definitions, I’m a little person, but my dwarfism is proportionate, which makes it easier for me to get through life. I don’t suffer from any of the disabling conditions that some others with short stature do. I can’t relate, nor would I ever claim to relate to those who truly suffer from the conditions that go along with dwarfism. I’m the size of a nine-year-old, and while that’s often an inconvenience, as of right now, that’s all it is.”
“What about your arm?” he asked, his warm hand cradling my deformed right elbow. His thumb stroked the skin over the bones, and a shiver ran through me. No one had ever touched me the way he touched me, and I didn’t want him to stop. “I know little people have problems with their arms, but this one looks far worse than your left one,” he observed.
I glanced down, and the difference was obvious. The right elbow was large and bulbous while the forearm was deformed with a hump in the middle, making my hand hang at a funny angle at rest. I had far less range of motion at the elbow in the right than I did in the left one as well. “I broke it when I was seven. It was a messy compound fracture and they did surgery, but my dad wasn’t great about getting me to the doctor appointments, much less therapy. Eventually it healed, but it was never right again. For that reason, I had to learn how to do everything left-handed. Fortunately, I was young when it happened, so that made it easier.”
“Have you seen a doctor for it now that you’re an adult?” he asked, caressing the elbow while we talked.
“I did and they talked about doing surgery, but it would have been extensive, and they couldn’t say for sure that it would help. In fact, they were afraid because of my dwarfism, that they’d make it worse. Since I was functional with the arm and wasn’t in pain, we decided it was better to leave it alone than make it worse. Sometimes you have to make those decisions.”
His sarcastic laughter wasn’t aimed at me, I could tell. It was aimed at himself. “Do I ever know that one,” he said, his eyes rolling to the sky while his head shook. He recovered and when his eyes met mine again, he pointed out to the campground. “I have to ask then. How do you drive a gigantic motor home? How do you turn the steering wheel with your arms the size they are? I know you certainly can’t reach those pedals either.”
I chuckled, and my whole body shook. Gulliver often said things to tickle me all the way to my toes, and it had been years since anyone was able to do that as naturally as he did. “I have pedal extensions. Myrtle isn’t gigantic at only twenty feet long, so the cab is just like driving a truck. I also have a spinner knob on the wheel, which makes it easier for my little arms. You’re right, though. Anything bigger and I’d have serious issues. I think a Smart Car would be more up my alley, but what’s the fun in that?”
Deep, rich laughter filled the balcony then, and he patted my back, his hand covering my entire shoulder. My skin tingled under his touch again, reminding me it had been too long since I’d been touched by a man.
“Now all I can picture is you zipping around in a little car with Mojo stuffed in the passenger seat and hanging his head out the window.”
