Perfect Strangers

Heat rises up my neck. My ears begin to burn. “I’m so sorry if this is indelicate, but we’re adults, and I guess we just need to get this conversation out of the way.”

He looks at me in obvious confusion. I square my shoulders and take a deep breath.

“Do you have an STD?”

In the front of the cab, the driver snorts.

Deep furrows appear in James’s brow. “That’s the first thing you come up with when I tell you I haven’t been with anyone in a while? That I’m diseased?”

“Not the first thing, just the worst, because that’s how my brain works. I wasn’t sure if you were trying to find a way to tell me I’d have to buy a special latex body suit to wear or get some powerful antibiotics or something.”

When James simply sits there staring at me in wordless dismay, the cab driver says in heavily-accented English over his shoulder, “You’re right to ask. AIDS cases are on the rise.”

I turn and give him the stink eye. “Thank you for that enlightening kernel of unsolicited information. You’re a gem. Now go back to minding your own business, please.”

He shrugs, turning away.

I look back and find James still staring at me. I say, “So it’s a no on the STDs, then.”

“It’s an unequivocal no. You?”

“Also no.”

After a moment of awkward silence, he sighs heavily. All the electrifying need from a few moments ago drains out of him. Now he simply looks tired.

“I just…I can’t do small talk anymore. I can’t do fake. I don’t have the energy it takes to flirt and pretend to be interested in all the shallow, superficial shit I have to wade through before I actually get to know someone. Before I can tell if she’s worth my time. Because that’s…”

After a tense moment, he goes on more quietly, his voice almost lost under the sound of the tires moving over the road.

“It’s like you said, Olivia. Life’s too short to mince words. Our existence is measured in minutes. Seconds. Heartbeats. Time is the most valuable commodity we have, because it can never be replenished. Once it’s gone…it’s gone forever. And so are we.”

A powerful wave of emotion sweeps over me. That head-smack of recognition again, kicking me between the eyes.

I’m such a fool. He hasn’t been with anyone for the same reason I haven’t: desire is the first thing that grief kills, before it kills everything else.

I think of those portraits of his, all those lovingly detailed renderings of human anguish, and want to curl into a ball and cry.

Whatever happened to him, whatever toll life has forced him to pay, and has inspired his morbid obsession with immortalizing the faces of people grieving, and has drawn him straight into my arms like a moth to a flame, it’s just as terrible as what I’ve been through.

I exhale an unsteady breath and say in a tight voice, “I’m an asshole.”

He knows exactly what I mean. Shaking his head, he reaches for me. “No.”

“Yes. Oh God, I’m so sorry. I should’ve known you didn’t have an STD.”

“You couldn’t have known. It was a legitimate question. And stop apologizing, goddammit.”

He tucks me under his shoulder and winds his arms around me. I curl both my legs over his. Into his neck, I whisper, “Oh, James, I feel like such an idiot.”

“Why?”

“Because I sometimes forget that other people have had bad things happen to them, too. I forget I’m not the only one walking around with a hole in my chest where a heart used to be. I had no idea how self-centered I’d become…or how isolated. How I’d spend almost every waking moment feeling as if I’d been stranded on an alien planet and there was nothing left for me to do but take scientific notes about the hostile native life forms while I waited around to die.”

A sound breaks from his chest. A chuckle of amusement or a gentle snort of disbelief, I don’t know which. Then I feel his lips press against my hair and hear his sigh.

“God, you talk in long sentences. Hemingway wouldn’t approve.”

I nudge him with my elbow. “Shut up.”

“Make me.”

When I lift my head, he’s smiling. The heat is creeping back into his eyes.

“By the way,” he murmurs, pressing a soft kiss to my mouth, “that was a very personal speech you just delivered. You little rule breaker, you.”

I tuck my head into the crook between his neck and shoulder and close my eyes. “Last one. Scout’s honor.”

“You were a Girl Scout?”

I gently tease, “Hello, personal question.”

“Shit. You’re right. Strike that.”

Smiling, feeling safe in his arms, I say, “I was in the Girl Scouts…until they threw me out.”

When I’m silent too long, he says, “That’s evil. You can’t just dangle that out there and not expect a follow up question!”

“Let your imagination run wild.”

He growls. “Oh, I’ll let something run wild all right, but it won’t be my imagination.”

He grasps my jaw in his hand and crushes his mouth to mine.