We finished dinner, cleaned up, and then Mayra let me have a piece of the chocolate cake she had made, which was elaborately decorated with all kinds of frosting and read Congratulations, Graduate on it.
“I felt bad you didn’t get your diploma with the rest of us,” Mayra told me, “and the party was kind of a disaster. I thought we could finally celebrate our graduation a little.”
In all honesty, it hadn’t been important to me in the slightest. I didn’t care about walking across a stage with everyone else or even that I got my diploma in the mail instead of having it handed to me by Principal Monroe. I almost told her this, but then I realized she had gone to a lot of trouble to decorate the cake to celebrate with me. When I looked up at her face, I could see the smallest amount of worry there.
Celebrating is important to Mayra.
This realization, and the subsequent realization that Mayra wanted to celebrate my graduation, not just her own, shocked me and nearly made me have to sit down on the couch for a few minutes. It was as if something inside my head suddenly switched to the on position, and it sent a shiver of electricity down my backbone.
Even when my mother and father were alive and would do things for me, I never grasped the concept of wanting something on behalf of another person. I didn’t have the kinds of thoughts where you forgot about what was important to you and only focused on what was important to someone else. My doctors in the past had talked about it, but I never really understood what they meant. How could I feel like that about someone else?
But I did now. Now I understood. With wide eyes, I reached out and pulled Mayra against me, my mouth covering hers and molding against her lips softly.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “Thank you so much, Mayra…you have no idea what this means.”
“Matthew”—Mayra snickered and wound her fingers into my hair—“it’s just a cake.”
The sparkle in her eyes told me differently.
“No,” I said with a shake of my head, “it’s not. It’s not the cake. It’s you. It’s all you. You are everything to me and more. That doesn’t even make sense, but it’s true.”
The cascade of emotions that poured over me all at once wasn’t overwhelming like I might have expected. It was invigorating. Revitalizing. Exciting. Captivating.
Erotic.
They were the purest feelings I had ever experienced.
I reached down and lifted Mayra up into my arms, cradling her against my chest. I looked into her eyes and watched her look back at me. For once, there was no anxiety—no strangeness as our souls connected through our gaze. When she reached up and trailed her hand over my cheek, I didn’t move, tense, or flinch. I just stared into her eyes, wanting to figure out how I could possibly express to her what she meant to me.
“I love you,” I told her.
“I love you, too,” she replied.
Words weren’t enough. They weren’t even close. I shook my head slowly, still keeping my eyes on hers.
“I want to show you.”
“Show me?”
My mouth pressed to hers, and I used the tip of my tongue to reach out and touch her lip.
“I want to show you,” I said again. “I want to show you how much I love you.”
I couldn’t wait another second, so I carried her up to my room.
Mayra, lying down on her back in my bed, was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen. Her eyes were bright, and they never left mine as I leaned back long enough to pull my shirt over my head. Mayra reached up and ran the tips of her fingers over my chest and stomach before quickly unbuttoning her blouse and pulling it from her shoulders.
I knelt, straddling her with each of my knees lined up with her waist as Mayra reached behind her back and released the clasp of her bra. Before she could remove it completely, I touched the shoulder straps with my fingers. I trailed down her shoulders and brushed my fingertip over her fish-shaped birthmark and then leaned down to place my lips over it.
“Why do you do that?” Mayra asked quietly.
I looked at her and saw nothing but curiosity in her eyes. I blinked a couple of times as I tried to figure it out myself.
“It’s part of you,” I said, “a mark of your birth, which makes it important.”
Mayra raised an eyebrow.
“Also,” I said as I smiled sheepishly, “it is very, very distracting until I touch it.”