Love Is Blind (5 page)

The taxi dropped Chris and me off near the biggest park in the city.  I linked my arm through his and began to lead him across the street and through the park’s stately wrought iron metal gates.  People were milling around with lawn chairs and blankets, all trying to get good spots for the firework display.

“Wait,” he said, stopping and cocking his head to the side as though trying to stir up an old memory. 
“The fountain’s over there,” he said aloud, as though trying to get his bearings.  He pulled me in the direction of the trickling water. 

“Chris,” I said as we walked past the fountain where a few kids were splashing
and giggling.  “We’re going the wrong way.”  He was walking with such certainty that I almost hated to correct him.  Part of me just wanted to let him lead me and see where we ended up.

“I know,” he assured me.  “But there should be a dirt bike path up ahead, just to the left of the footpath.  Can you see it?”

The light was beginning to fade, but I could faintly make it out.  “Yeah, it’s there.” 

“Okay.  We’re going to follow it until we come to a hill,” he said, marching along with purpose.

Sure enough, just as Chris said, we arrived at the bottom of a grass covered hill.  We climbed up to the top just as the first firework went off.  I turned around and looked up at the sky just in time to see it exploding in a brilliant rainbow of gold and crimson. 

“Is this a good spot?” Chris asked.

“It’s perfect!” I exclaimed.  “How did you know about this place?  I’ve been to this park tons of times and had no idea this hill was back here.  By the looks of it, not too many other people know about it, either.”  I could see a few people off in the distance but for the most part, Chris and I were alone.

Chris sat down in the lush green grass with a self-satisfied smile on his face.  “
I found this place when I was a kid playing hide and seek with my sister.  After that she and I came here every year to watch the fireworks,” he said.  “Back before I decided I was ‘too cool’ to hang out with her, that is.”  I could hear the regret in his voice.

“It sounds like you two were close.”

“We were.”

Above us, the sky erupted with colorful bursts of blue, silver and fuchsia. 

“That sounded like a good one,” Chris said after the pops of the fireworks had died down.

“It was beautiful,” I breathed, leaning back on my hands so I could gaze up at the darkened sky.  “I wish…”

“What?”

“I wish you could see it,” I said sadly. 

Chris wrapped his arm around my shoulders and gave me a squeeze.  “Don’t be sad,” he murmured in my ear, his voice quiet and authoritative.  “I want to hear you smiling – I can hear it in your voice, you know.  If you don’t smile for me, I’ll have no choice but to tickle you.”

“Oh is that so?” I asked, smiling despite myself. 

“You’re not smiling hard enough.”

“I’m not?”

“Nope, sorry…must tickle now!” 

Chris still had his arm around me.  He tightened it, holding me in place.  He slid his other hand up my arm and then began to tickle me.  I laughed and struggled in vain to get away, kicking off one of my sandals in the process.

Since I couldn’t get away, I did the only other reasonable thing possible:  I tickled him back.

Pretty soon Chris and I were both laughing hard.  My stomach hurt and I could barely catch my breath.  He was doubled over and I could see tears streaming down his face each time a firework went off, illuminating everything around us in bursts of gold and silver.

“Ok, ok,” Chris finally relented, letting go of me and holding his hands up in surrender.  “I think I might pee myself if you keep tickling me and that would be super embarrassing, so…truce?”

I loved that about him.  He had no qualms whatsoever about cracking stupid and sometimes even self-derogatory jokes just to make me smile.  He was the carefree, silly person I’d always wished I could be.  It was pretty remarkable, considering what he was up against, not to mention all he’d lost. 

He’d probably had it easy before his accident – he was tall and good looking and, I imagined, had the world at his fingertips.  But now it would be so easy for him to be bitter and angry.  Instead, he was just…Chris.

I don’t know what came over me, but
once our laughter died down I leaned over and wrapped my arms around his waist.  It totally wasn’t like me to be so forward but there was something about that night that seemed magical, and if you can’t do something uncharacteristic on a magical night then when can you?

I leaned my head against Chris’s chest.  It felt safe and warm there, like I was sheltered from the cruel, ugly world.  I could hear his heart beating.  I closed my eyes and breathed him in, feeling my own heart race as well. 

“Hey.” 

His voice was gentle. 
His fingertip was under my chin, gently prompting me to lift my head.  I did and then Chris lowered his.  Our lips met and for me, anyway, time stood still.  No one had ever kissed me before – no one had wanted to. 

Chris had probably kissed millions of girls before his accident (okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a little) because he was good at it.  He was
really
good at it.

I felt myself come alive under his touch.  Though I was apprehensive at first, afraid I might do something wrong, he was gentle and insistent.  His lips caressed mine as his hand found its way into my
long, dark hair.  I gave into him, surrendering completely to the intimate act.

How could I not? 

It was perfect.

It was everything I’d dreamed about my first kiss being…not even the romance novel heroes had anything on Chris.  There wasn’t anyone I’d have rather had my first kiss with.  Nobody made my heart pound and my stomach somersault the way he did.
  He woke up the butterflies in my stomach.

I was sad when the kiss was over, but also giddy with excitement.  I’d never dreamed this would happen.  I’d always resigned myself to the fact that I was hideous and unlovable because that was pretty much the message I’d gotten from the bullies at school year after year. 

“I guess the fireworks are over,” Chris said, nodding in the direction of the now quiet sky.

I looked around.  The
horizon was black and starless, devoid of the fireworks that had, moments earlier, lit it up with brilliant flashes of color and light.  The crowd had cleared out.  Even the few people at the bottom of the hill had left. 

“Oh,” I replied, feeling
warm and flustered.  “I hadn’t noticed.”

The morning after my very first kiss was a difficult one. 

When I’d come home after the fireworks, I’d been walking on air.  I guess I’d had a big cheesy grin plastered on my face, too, because my mother had looked at me rather curiously before asking “What’s with you?”

It was rare for me to be out late given
that I’d never had much of a social life.  As sad as it sounds, it was probably just as rare for her to see me smiling.  At some point I’d become a sullen, withdrawn grouch who kept to herself, preferring to hide in her room or at the library between the pages of a romance novel than face the world. 

It seemed like only Chris could snap me out of my
years-long funk.

My mother
hadn’t looked at me the same since the incident in the parking lot.  She’d been furious with me for losing control the way I had.  When she’d met me at the police station that day, the very first thing she’d hissed at me was, “I taught you better than this!”  And she was right – she had. 

I
knew better than to instigate violence, but in that moment I just hadn’t been able to help myself.  I was like a caged animal that had been taunted with a stick one too many times.  I’d snapped.  Looking back, I felt bad about it, but not
too
bad.  After all, those guys had been attacking me with words for years…was what I’d done really so different? 

Apparently the law thought so.  It didn’t matter that the bullies’ physical injuries would heal a lot quicker and easier than my emotional scars.  I don’t mean to be melodramatic about it but that’s
honestly the way it felt.  Sometimes I wondered if I was damaged goods because, thanks to the years of abuse, I looked at the world with suspicion.

But I couldn’t complain too much about the community service I’d been ordered to complete.  After all, it was thanks to my candy striper job at the hospital that I’d met Chris.
  In a strange and maybe slightly ironic way, the worst thing to ever happen to me had also been the best.

After our kiss beneath the fireworks
I’d gone to bed feeling like I was on top of the world. 

But by morning, my perspective had
shifted.

I scrutinized my reflection in the bathroo
m mirror with disdain.  My green eyes stared back at me warily, as though they knew I was about to rip myself apart.  My long brown hair was a little messy, shrouding my face like a veil.  I pushed it aside and there it was in all its ugliness:  the huge red birthmark that took up nearly the entire left side of my face.

It didn’t hurt but it looked awful
, discolored and bumpy. 

On my first day of school some kids had stared
at me in horror and asked if I’d been burned.  Of course, even at that young age they’d known better than to say anything within earshot of the teacher.  What’s the world coming to when even angelic looking five year olds instinctively know how to rip one of their own to shreds without being caught?

I’d tried to comb my hair in a side part to attempt to h
ide the left side of my face.  But then a few kids started daring each other to run past me and yank it out of the way, exposing my embarrassing deformation for everyone to gawk at. 

Others made up a nasty rumor that I had some kind of deadly, contagious disease and warned everyone to keep their distance. 
And that’s how I came to eat my lunch alone in a deserted bathroom every single day until I finished high school.

I haven’t mentioned the spit balls
thrown at the back of my head or the mean notes taped to my locker on a regular basis.  Then there were the nicknames:  Pizza Face, Zombie Girl, you name it, really.  School was hell.  My childhood and adolescence were hell.  There were good parts too, mind you, but looking back it feels like everything else was overshadowed by the bullying.  In retrospect, it makes me feel cheated.

I could have told my teachers or
mother about it, but I didn’t.  I was embarrassed, so I pretended it wasn’t happening.  It was easier to do that than deal with all the unwanted attention I knew I’d get if I got my bullies in trouble.  Surely that would have only increased my humiliation…and quite possibly made the bullying worse, too.

As I glowered at my reflection in the mirror, hateful tears welled up in my eyes.  I’d fooled a blind guy into kissing me – how pathetic is that? 

I hadn’t deliberately kept the deformity a secret from Chris, but then again I hadn’t exactly been in any hurry to tell him about it.  Why would I be?  He was the only person who didn’t see my ugly red birthmark and immediately judge me because of it.  He probably had some unrealistic idea in his mind of what I looked like, whether he realized it or not.  He probably thought I was beautiful or something.

Last night when he’d kissed me for a moment I’d actually
felt
beautiful.  I’d felt like what I imagine a normal nineteen – almost twenty – year old girl feels like.  I wasn’t wracked with self-doubt or plagued by insecurity.  I was just an ordinary girl kissing a fantastic guy who made her swoon.

It had been easy, sitting there in the
blackness, to momentarily pretend I
was
just a normal girl.  Under the cover of darkness, I’d been able to forget about the birthmark for a few precious moments.  It had been liberating.

But now, standing under the
harsh florescent light in the cramped bathroom, staring in the mirror, reality had set back in.

I felt foolish for even allowing myself to think I might have something with Chris.  Yeah he was
legally blind, but when it really came down to it,
I
was the disabled one.  It sounds trite when I say it but I was the one crippled by a stupid little problem whereas he refused to let his misfortune drag him down.

He was way out of my league
in every single way.

Even if he couldn’t see it, everyone else could.
I
could.  I was ashamed that I’d ever deluded myself into thinking otherwise. 

There was a voicemail from Chris
on my phone that day asking to meet up but I didn’t call him back.  In fact, I didn’t even finish listening to his message before I abruptly hung up the phone.  I would listen to it in its entirety eventually, but first I needed some time to figure out what on earth I was going to do.

How could I tell him I wanted us to go back to just being friends
when that was a blatant lie?