“Do you mind telling me why you can't talk?” I asked Victor the following Tuesday.
We were sitting across from each other at his brand-new study table and doing homework together. Since I'd sent all my college applications off early, I had convinced my mother to let me rejoin art club, which met on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Luckily, I had never got around to officially signing back up for that extracurricular activity. And Victor and Byron only had basketball practice on Mondays and Thursdays. That meant on the Tuesdays when there weren’t any games, we could go back to Victor's place in Roppongi and spend time together outside of school without Byron.
Victor hesitated after I asked my question. Then he raised his hands over the table to give me a quick answer in ASL.
“Excuse me?” I signed in response. I was pretty sure I had misunderstood.
But he signed it again in his usual super precise ASL. “I don’t have a tongue.”
“You don’t have a tongue,” I repeated out loud, just to make sure I hadn’t botched up my signs.
“No, I don’t have a tongue.”
“You were born without a tongue? Like a birth defect?” I asked-signed, using the signs for BABY and BROKEN since I had no idea how to say birth defect—even in my native sign language.
“No. It was cut out when I was little.”
“Cancer?” I asked, my chest trembling with hope. I wouldn’t wish cancer on anyone, especially a child. But the alternative was just too terrible to consider.
“No,” Victor answered, with a firm clap of his index and middle finger against his thumb. His face was completely neutral like he was providing an answer to a problem in math class as he told me, “It was removed by one of my father’s enemies and sent to him as part of a hostage negotiation…”
He must have misread the utter horror in my expression because he made the last few signs again. “This means prisoner return conversation. Do you understand?”
I did. Too well. My stomach convulsed at the thought of Victor undergoing such torture when he was only a little kid. But I signed back that I understood while trying to think of something…anything to say.
Unfortunately, all I could come up with was, “I guess that explains why you haven’t tried to shove your tongue down my throat like I heard most boys would. I thought you were just being polite.”
I immediately regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth. Ugh, could I be more inappropriate?
But Victor regarded me with a sympathetic look. Like I was the one who had suffered a terrible life-altering butchering. Not him.
“No, I am not so polite. I would kiss you like the other boys if I could,” he answered with a slight smile.
But then, his smile faded. “Does this change things between us? Will you still kiss me?”
Would I still kiss him?
I didn’t let him wonder about that for one more second. Laughing, I threw myself across the table at him and pressed my mouth to his when he caught me.
“Tongue or no tongue, you’re still the best kisser on the planet,” I let him know a few minutes later when we finally came up for air.
Having taken a college statistics class since then, I’ll admit that the argument for my claim wasn’t exactly scientifically proven.
He was the only boy I’d ever kissed up to that point.
But even back then, I knew.
No one else would ever kiss me like he did. He was that Chaka Khan song, living and breathing. Nobody else would or could make me feel this way. Nobody but Victor.
I happily lied to my parents even more after that conversation, inventing hikes and outings with made-up girlfriends from school who suddenly wanted to hang with me on the weekends.
And miracle of all miracles, I actually got away with it.
After I sent off all my college applications, my mother didn’t care so much about me studying twenty-four seven. Plus, hiking was good exercise.
“Go have fun and lose some weight,” she encouraged me, her signs happy and light. “Then go to America and become a doctor.”
Byron helped out, too. He owed both of us. I had kept my mouth shut about Jake Nakamura—when it was good and when it turned bad. And Victor not only protected him from Jake, but he’d also given my brother someone cool to talk with at school. Byron was grateful and happy to assist us with any and all cover-up operations.
He often accompanied me to make my outings seem more legit. We went to festivals at Yoyogi Park, played a lot of glow-in-the-dark bowling, and hit up so many of Tokyo’s never-ending supply of arcades. For my birthday in early March, Victor even had Donny drive us down to Kamakura, a coastal town about an hour south of Tokyo, to actually take a hike.
It was a super nice time. I only felt like I would legit die once or twice while doing the trail hike between Kencho-ji Temple and Zuisen-ji Temple. And when we made it to our destination, Victor pulled me behind a tree to reward me for my endurance with many kisses.
It was the perfect day until Byron snapped a picture of us kissing behind the tree with his disposable camera.
“Byron!” I shouted, coming out the kiss to play the role of the annoyed older sister.
Victor simply signed to Byron, “May I see that camera?”
Byron handed it over with a laugh. “I was just joking around….”.
He trailed off when Victor dropped the camera to the ground and crushed it under his hiking boot.
And that kind of put a damper on the whole “let’s go on a fun birthday hike” mood.
“Are you embarrassed to be seen kissing me?” I asked Victor as we made our way back to Kencho-ji Temple.
“Not at all.” He smiled at me as if I was crazy to think that someone who came from a homogenous society where the beauty standard was firmly set on waif-thin would be embarrassed by his chubby half-black girlfriend.
“Pictures are not a good idea for me,” he explained.
I understood. But a dark shiver ran down my spine.
The danger that surrounded Victor had a way of creeping up like that. One moment I was a carefree girl on a birthday hike with her boyfriend. And the next, I was reminded that his father had the kind of enemies that would cut out a child’s tongue.
Victor stopped us walking and turned me to face him. “Dawn, I am very proud to be your boyfriend. It is not safe to take pictures, but maybe you can draw me one? Something I can look at when we’re apart?”
Just like that, my entire mood lifted. I gave him a cartoony sketch of us kissing in Zuisen-ji Temple’s famous gardens, and he acted like it was the best gift he’d ever gotten.
So, no more doubts, no more suspicions. The only thing I was afraid of, after giving Victor that drawing was how much I would miss him when I went off to college.
14
DAWN
Mostly, there was only beauty between us.
Other than that birthday hike, Victor and I were a J-Drama montage filled with dreamy scenes of good times, cozy lunches at school, and walking hand in hand down Tokyo city streets.
Winter became spring, and acceptances and rejections started to roll in—mostly rejections from my reach schools. A couple of Jersey state colleges let me in, but Wellesley said no way, as did Barnard and Smith.
By mid-March, my mother was acting snippier with me than usual, wondering out loud what kind of medical school would let me in without a prestigious college listed in my application. She started side-eyeing art club again as if that was the only explanation for my lack of acceptance letters from the schools she’d picked out for me.
But luck was on my side. The Monday before my usual Tuesday with Victor, a big white envelope from Mount Holyoke arrived, letting me (but mostly my mom) know I’d gotten in with a generous scholarship.
Victor was the first one I told after my family, texting him on the secret phone my dad didn’t know I was still using.
“I got into Mount Holyoke with a pretty good financial aid package!!!”
“Congratulations!!
! :)” he wrote back. “I have good news too. I will tell you tomorrow.”
The next day he congratulated me again with lots and lots of kisses during “art club.” Lying in bed while lazily smooching and signing Tuesday afternoons away had quickly become my favorite afterschool activity.
But eventually, I had to lean back to tell him, “One of my mom’s schools let me in. I still haven’t heard from RhIDS. Probably because my portfolio wasn’t good enough. I was reading online that there are kids who work on their portfolios for years. I slapped mine together over the winter break.”
He covered my hands with his so that I could no longer sign, shutting me up. Technically, he was the only one who needed to sign, but that was his way of stopping me from fretting—this wasn’t the first time I’d spiraled out about my RhIDS application.
“I know, I know. You’re right. There’s no use worrying about it until they tell me for sure,” I said, without even having to be told what he was thinking.
Then, I took my hands back to change the subject.
“What’s your good news?” I ask-signed. All in CSL, thank you. My Chinese Sign Language had improved dramatically since becoming Victor’s girlfriend.
To the point that I regretted not telling him how I felt even sooner. If I had, I probably could have put CSL on my college applications, and maybe that would have been a quirky enough skill to get me into more schools.
“I have also received a university acceptance letter,” he signed in perfect ASL.
“That’s great! Where?”
“I am not sure of the sign-word,” he answered. “But it is spelled T-U-F-T-S.”
I shot up in bed.
“T-U-F-T-S?” I nearly screeched while also spelling out the name of the prestigious university. “Like T-U-F-T-S in Boston?”
He sat up, too. “Yes, that T-U-F-T-S.” He hadn’t bothered to cut his hair since coming back from Hong Kong, and it now fell in messy waves past his ears.
It made him look like a freaking male supermodel if you asked me. But he didn’t appear smug or even confident as he signed. “I wanted to stay close to you. I hope this is O-K.”
“O-K?” I repeated, my heart soaring. “It’s more than okay!”
I’d been so worried that when the time came for me to leave Japan and go to college, I would never see him again. It had been like a doomsday timeclock hanging over our relationship. But now…. “You’ll be just a few hours away from me in Mount Holyoke. Even less time if I get into RhIDS, which is weirdly closer. New England geography—so weird, right? But, oh, my God! Oh, my God! This is so amazing!”
I jumped out of bed. “Let’s go celebrate. I’ll tell my parents that I’m going out with the girls from art club.”
Victor climbed out of bed, too. His body was as powerful as a jaguar’s underneath his school uniform. I still can’t figure out how he had the nerve to think I didn’t find him attractive when we first met.
I mean, yeah, I get that a lot of girls my age prefer the dainty, pretty guys in bands like SMAP and Kajani∞. He’s also probably self-conscious about being mute. But Victor is built like an Olympian god. I can’t believe he seriously thought there was a chance any girl in her right mind wouldn’t say yes to being his girlfriend.
Victor winced and signed, “I cannot stay out too late. I have a meeting later tonight. But I know an izakaya that will serve us quickly. We can go there.”
I raised my hands to take him up on his invitation. I’d never been to an izakaya before. And I was curious about Japan’s version of a tapas bar. But somehow, even that didn’t feel like a big enough celebration for us getting to extend our relationship into the fall.
An alternative plan popped into my head.
“Or, if you want…” I hesitated, self-conscious and shy. “We could…”
Ugh! Sign language. Most of the time, I loved that it was easy and direct. But sometimes, it forced me to say things way more plainly than I wanted to.
Like, if I were just speaking, I would have used a clever euphemism like “go all the way” or “smash.”
But for this particular conversation, my whole face burned as I made one of the very graphic signs for HAVE SEX.
Victor froze.
Then he raised his hands to slowly sign, “You want to have sex?”
Oh God, could this conversation be more embarrassing?
We’d made out. Man, we’d made out. Behind the school. In his Bentley. Against walls. On top of his bed. And we’d touched a little. My hands had found my way underneath his shirt a few times, and I’d thrilled at the feel of him, all hard muscle covered in taut skin. A few times, he’d settled a hand on my breast.
Some of our bed kisses had gotten pretty intense too. We’d crawled all over each other, and I could feel his hard length against my soft stomach. But he’d always backed off. He’d never asked for more.
But here I was, asking for more.
Kind of.
Look, I had zero experience. I could only push myself so far. So instead of admitting that yes, I was an eighteen-year-old girl with sexual wants and needs, I asked-signed back. “Do you want to have sex with me?”
He lowered both hands to his hips. Looked to the side. Then he raised them again to ask, “Have you done this before?”
I told him the truth with my heart beating in my throat, “No.”
He expelled a harsh breath. Looked at me. Looked to the side again. Finally, he signed, “Dawn…I love you. I don’t want to hurt you.”
My heart stopped beating. He loved me?
Cue all the gooey feelings. And suddenly, the conversation became easy.
“I love you too,” I spoke-signed back emphatically. “That’s why I want my first time to be with you.”
He responded to my heartfelt statement with a flutter of signs I only sort of understood. What he’d called “frustration words” that were “better for you not to know” when I asked him about them previously.
Then he turned his back on me. Like he was thinking of walking out.
Now, it was my turn to look at the floor, my cheeks burning with shame.
He’d said he loved me, but obviously, this conversation was upsetting him. Maybe he loved me but didn’t desire me like that? Maybe he didn’t want me like I wanted him.
“It’s okay,” I mumbled, still looking down. “We don’t have to do anything. Let’s just go to your izy—”
I cut off when he slammed into me like a train, taking my mouth like he was gulping me down. I thrilled at his all-consuming kiss and the feel of him hard and heavy against my stomach.
He came at me hard and fast, but took his time removing my clothes like he was unwrapping a present until I was in my underwear.
Some feminine instinct told me to take off my own bra. To treat it like a reveal. And I was immediately rewarded for my showmanship.
I swear I didn’t understand the point of big breasts until his entire face lit up at the sight of mine.
More hard and fast kisses and we tumbled back into his low Japanese-style bed.
Somewhere inside the kissing frenzy, he peeled away his shirt and shoved out of his pants. Clothes came off until we were both down to our socks and underwear.
Excitement buzzed in my stomach when I saw the way his dick was tenting inside his briefs. There was no doubt about it now. He wanted me. He really wanted me.
And I wanted him right back.
I wasn’t sure how the next part would go, but Victor was my ocean, and I was ready to dive in.
He pulled a condom out of the nightstand drawer. Sat with his back to the wall and beckoned me forward with a downward hand.
I crawled over to him like a puppet on a string, watching entranced as he put on the condom. There were two heavy lines carved into the bottom of his abs, and they both seemed to be pointing at his erection. Long and just thick enough for me to be intrigued, not scared.
It strained between his legs after he got the condom on, and he stroked it a few times as if
trying to keep it calm.
My throat dried with performance anxiety. Did it want to be touched? Maybe even sucked, like the girls on the internet?
I didn’t get a chance to find out. Victor pulled me in for another kiss as if that was way more important than what was happening between his legs.
Sometime during that kiss, my underwear went away too, and then there the both of us were. Naked except for the condom.
He leaned back to sign. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. Sure,” I answered immediately. My heart was bouncing up and down in my stomach like a basketball.
He kissed me again, soft this time, as he lowered me down.
I soon found out why he said he didn’t want to hurt me. It wasn’t just him being caring and romantic. Sex with Victor was an invasion.
He went slow, but pain pierced through me as he entered my tight space.
I tried to keep my discomfort silent. But I think he knew. When he was all the way in, he gripped my waist a little tighter and kissed my shoulder, like he was thanking me for a gift.
Then he leaned back and signed, “How bad was it?”
I let out a shaky breath. “Fine. I’m fine.”
His expression became very serious. “Don’t lie to me. Everything bad that’s ever happened to me has been because someone lied. Promise me.”
My heart contracted at his words. I’d never seen Victor feel sorry for himself. He was one of those rare rich kids who realized how good he had it and didn’t complain. Even when he’d told me about his tongue, his expression had remained matter of fact, like “them the breaks.”
Whatever memory was driving him to say this in the middle of first sex must have run deep.
“I promise,” I signed in CSL. Like I was making a vow. The sign for PROMISE slid off my fingers. Easily.
Then I added, “My words don’t cheat,” remembering how he used those signs to sub in for “I swear” the night of our first kiss.
Victor: Her Ruthless Crush Page 10
