I stand at the vanity, hands on each side of the sink, willing my jellied nerves to turn to steel. I shouldn’t be this nervous. I know the person on the other side of this door. My mind glosses over the first time I saw Isaac, tall and handsome and so clearly out of my league. One year later and I’m still unconvinced why he chose me. He’s everything I’m not; fearless, gorgeous, unyieldingly talented. Every time he looks at me my heart blooms with excitement, my insides a garden cultivated by his smile and touch.

These last four months have been anything but bliss. Tonight, I want to change that. If only I knew how.

Adjusting my shirt for the fifth time, I pull the tie out of my hair and shake out the dark waves. The sigh that escapes me is frustrated. I wish I were taller, curvier, someone worthy of standing next to a catch like Isaac. My cinnamon brown skin is clear and smooth, my features soft, but I’m hopelessly average and absurdly short. I stand an inch away from five feet tall, often times mistook for younger than my twenty-four years. If it weren’t for my chest and hips, I would live in a perpetual state of erroneous adolescence. It bothers me to no end, but Isaac doesn’t mind. He’s never once jested of my height, a courtesy I immensely cherish.

Deciding my reflection isn’t going to reflect what I want, I open the door.

Isaac is staring out the window, eyes so lifeless you’d think he was focused on a brick wall. Or his eyes are the wall, blank as a fresh sheet of sketch paper. I try not to let that unwind me.

“Hey.” He doesn’t acknowledge me. Only when I’m sitting beside him do I draw his attention.

“Hey.” His voice is as listless as his expression. We’re both quiet, and I know our minds have gone to the same place. I am tired of this place. I spend too much time thinking about how drastically our lives have changed. How his life has changed. My eyes roam his black hair, wide shoulders, hands that haven’t touched me enough lately, the somber set of his brows.

“Are you hungry?” I ask, avoiding what I really want to say. He shakes his head. “We can play a card game - watch a movie.”

“Whatever you want.” If he spoke any more subdued, he’d be dead. I can feel the emotion bubbling inside me, threatening to boil, first in my stomach, then in my chest. I try to simmer it with a deep breath.

Knowing no words will suffice, I decide on actions.

Leaning over, I set my face parallel with his, hand stroking the stubble along his jaw. It doesn’t fully pull him from the abyss he’s in, but it does bring him to the surface. When I press my lips to his, the lines of our mouths meeting, it almost feels foreign. I hadn’t realized until this particular moment that we’ve hardly kissed lately. I know a lot has been going on, but that aberrant fact makes my heart ache. We can’t possibly be drifting apart. Sometimes it feels like maybe we’re both drowning, but drifting? The thought makes me kiss him harder.

He responds, one hand reaching up to feel the soft peach fuzz at the base of my hairline, his fingers drawing out my chagrin. He has always had the ability to make me feel better, even now, after all this time.

When my mouth opens to allow him entrance, he shares my breath but doesn’t offer his tongue. Conductors as we are, the electric current is lost between us when our lips part. He’s pulling away from me, though our foreheads are still together, and I am disappointed again.

“Isaac-”

“I can’t do this, Nita.” His words are a baseball bat to my stomach, the sensation rippling through my bones.

“What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean,” he says, taking his hand away.

“No, I don’t,” I insist, or more, refuse.

“I can’t do this to you!” His reply is sharp, though he tries to keep his voice down.

“Isaac, we’ve been over this.”

“I know, again and again, but we both know why this has to end.”

“Isaac, please,” I beg, grasping at his hand. My adrenaline wells furiously, like whitewater rapids, threatening to burst from my numb body. My heart is rising so fast it’s practically in my throat, joining where my stomach already went.

He pulls his hand away, and I start shaking.

“I’m not going to let you do this.” I try to sound firm and not desperate.

“Nita-”

“Listen to me, Isaac,” I snap, my hard voice causing him pause. “I’m not going anywhere.

It’s been four months. If I were going to leave, I’d have left already.” The anger emanating from him propels more words to come from my mouth. “When are you going to understand, this isn’t out of pity.” The ‘P’ word makes his face twist. “I know things aren’t the same for you, and I can’t even begin to imagine what that’s like. But I’m here for you.”

“Don’t you get it?” he interjects, leaning forward in his chair. “You deserve more, Nita. More than I can give you.”

“You claim you don’t want pity, yet here you are; putting it all on yourself.”

“I know what I am!” he growls, and I shut my mouth like a timid mouse. We have yet to actually fight about this, but it’s happening now. Months worth of eggshell laden conversation spilling out of us.

“What happened - it’s done, and neither of us can change it. You shouldn’t be forced to make the choice to stay, so I’m making it for you.” Now I am angry.

“You don’t think I’m capable of making my own choices?” I whisper, and guilt touches his bitter expression. “I don’t need anyone making decisions on my behalf. Not even you.” I stand up, his dark eyes following. “Things did change. That’s what life is; change, a never-ending cycle of good and bad, but us - we are good, Isaac, and you know that. Despite what you think, I’m not giving up anything.” He is silent as he stares at me.

“You are what I want. You always will be. Do you understand?” I can feel the crease between my brows as I ask this question, the heat of his gaze as he contemplates pushing me away. I was always afraid he outweighed me, that he was so much more than me, but now I realize neither of us is above the other. He may feel that I outweigh him, but we are equal, and I need him to see that.

Isaac releases our locked eyes and looks down to his lap.

The air is so still a pin drop would rival the tone of an avalanche.

I watch the man of my dreams percolate in self-hate, marinate in unfair compromise, the life he once had seeming out of his reach. But it doesn’t have to be. He is still here, and so am I, and I have never wanted him to look at me more than I do right now.

Grabbing the hem of my shirt, I pull it over my head, brunette curls slipping out and framing my small shoulders. Isaac looks up. When I unbind the brass button on my jeans, his eyes go to my hands, watching. In mismatched bra and panties, I have never felt more confident. I unhook the black bra and cast it aside, tug the red satin down my legs, and bare myself completely - body and soul all for him.

He still doesn’t speak, eyes drinking me in as if I were a glass of ice water placed in the hell-like desert he’s been living.

I’ve never been physically outgoing. I don’t find myself suited for seduction, considering my body type one that doesn’t entice desire. Throughout our year-long relationship, I have been shy. The first time we slept together, I begged Isaac to turn the lights off. He slowly brought me out of my shell, has always called me beautiful, but I didn’t dare believe it.

Standing before him, there is no better way to show that I want to believe him now. When his eyes come back to my face, I walk toward him. Carefully, I set myself on his lap, and he immediately reaches out to hold me. Every bit the vixen I never was, I turn his face to mine and kiss him. It is long and slow, his hands reaching up my back to pull me closer.

“God, Nita,” he exhales, my bare breasts pressing onto his t-shirt. Beneath his reluctance there is desire, and I believe the longing in his sigh more than the words he nearly shouted. He doesn’t want me to leave, and I would do anything to stay.

My plan began on a foundation of want but is quickly building with need. It’s been much too long since we’ve done this, and we both need it.

Tugging on his shirt, Isaac helps me pull it over his head. I grip his densely muscled shoulders resembling the color of coffee, his wide hands roaming me with urgency. Fueled by his yearning, I slither down his body, kneeling on the floor. When my delicate hands touch his zipper, he stops me.

“Wait,” he says, hand on mine. Naked and on my knees, I look up and find him nervous. Normally I’m the apprehensive one. Seeing his masculine disposition unbarred, I have never felt closer to him. My confidence is unrivaled.

“It's okay,” I say, kissing his knuckles with deliberately sensual lips. “Let me.”

I don't know what he sees on my face, but it makes him comply. His Adam's apple bobs as he removes his hand, and I continue. Pants undone, my warm breath caresses his gaping jeans, and I see him grow beneath his boxers.

A sight so common for two lovers, the display of his arousal is so much more.

Peeking up under my lashes, Isaac’s hungry gaze makes my stomach wring. Inhibited no longer, I shamelessly reach into the material and free his straining appendage. Hard, solid, firm, thick - I never knew these words to be beautiful until now. They describe everything he is in reaction to me, a fact I never realized I took for granted.

With the will of a starving woman, I take his dark meat in my mouth, and the noise he lets out makes my skin prickle. I can see him gripping the arms of his chair as I work my way around him, tongue wetting every centimeter of his warm length.

“Holy shit, Nita,” he groans. I can feel his pleasant surprise hanging in the air the way humidity hangs in the south. “Baby - fuck,” he hisses, slipping his fingers into my hair. He amorously glides strands away from my face, watching my head bow in his lap, over and over.

I’ve given him head plenty of times, but never so ambitiously. I am hungry for him, famished for his pleasure, aching to make him feel better. My performance exhibits everything I want to express, that which there are no words for.

“Wow, Nita,” he marvels, and I hum, trying to unhinge my jaw so I can fit more of him in. He grunts every time my esophagus closes around his tip.

I suck him with avidity I’ve never known. Lips kissing his circumference as he moves into my throat, tongue massaging restlessly when I pull back, holding him tightly where my mouth can’t reach. He’s wonderfully thick, the weight of him all I could ever want.

“Baby,” Isaac warns. “You have to slow down.” I don’t. I can’t. It is the last thing I want. “Nita,” he breathes, weeks worth of waiting nearing an end. I suck impossibly harder, feeling his hands encompass my head, his breath inhaled and kept. When I pull up with a hard draw, he exhales loudly, pulling me off his dick.

“Come here, now,” he demands, and as I catch my breath, I start yanking off his pants. He lifts himself to help, and soon he’s as naked as me. Literally climbing onto his lap, I set my legs over each armrest of the chair, and with his guidance, begin to take him in.

We’re both open-mouthed as I am slowly impaled, his hands under my ass, carefully moving me down his girth. My bare flesh against his is a heaven I’ll never tire of.

“Isaac,” I moan as more of him is forced inside me. Me being so small, it’s a wonder how he fits at all. Isaac is a big guy, more than a foot taller than my miniscule size, his hard body twice my mass. Often I wished I had a stature that could match up to his, but today, I am glad to be tiny.

When I’ve gone as low as I can, his length threatening to enter my stomach, Isaac easily holds my weight, keeping me in a pleasurable position. He effortlessly moves me up as I cling to him, not using any muscle of my own except the tilt of my hips. When he lowers me again, it is with the pace of dripping molasses, so deliciously, deliriously slow we both vocally revel in it.

“I missed this,” Isaac says, brows knitted together with riveted attention. I nod.

“Me too.”

Up and down I knead him with my silky eyelet, molding to him like I was made for him. His strong arms maintain our unhurried cadence and every second that passes only intensifies. Having sex is one thing - an encounter produced by two people for the sake of sharing pleasure. We are beyond that, the vitality between us a feeling far greater than anything physical. This encounter is producing us. As he stares into my eyes, warm breath cascading with every heave of his chest, I couldn’t put what I’m feeling into words if I tried.

His eyes are on me, and I am the most beautiful thing in the world, albeit, the world has dwindled to nothing but us.

Isaac’s mouth reaches for mine, deepening the vortex we’ve succumbed to. My pinkness around him is alive with nerves, and each of them is caressing his flesh, the wetness making our friction heavenly. He doesn’t thrust up into me, merely moves me along his shaft, up and down, our tongues intertwined.

After a lifetime, he begins to move me faster. Fingers cradling the back of his neck, I moan aloud, my head rolling back. He takes my dainty nipple in his mouth as he steers me above him, sucking me, his large hands a shelf for me as I ride him. I mewl throatily, his actions contending my body for more pleasure.

“Isaac!” I groan, the beginnings of an orgasm teasing me.

“Nita,” he says my name, moving to my other nipple, and I hump him harder.

“Please!” My moan is delightfully tortured, and he reacts to it. One forearm coming beneath me as I bounce on him, his other hand prowls along my singing body, the slightly plump shape of my ass, the tiny dip of my waist, the fullness of my breast.

“Don’t ever leave me,” Isaac says into the hollow of my collarbones, and I am floored. Such a one-eighty from his earlier argument. “Promise me,” he respires urgently.

“I promise,” I moan, and in this moment, I know he’ll never push me away again. Roughly, lovingly forcing my weight above him, I scream with unruly gratification.

“Come with me,” I beg in soprano, and moments later we peak, matching one another in release. His warmth fills me, my nails on his dark skin, the huskiness of his groaning voice making my orgasm thrill. Our shared climax lasts another lifetime, a seamless stretch of infinity in itself.

When I’ve stopped twitching, he leans against my shoulder, our panting the only sounds penetrating the air. I rest my head atop his, brushing my cheek along his hair.

“I love you, Nita,” Isaac whispers. My arms go tighter around him, the ache in my heart oddly sweet.

“I love you.”

I knew I loved Isaac before tonight, but after the ardent moment we just shared, the idea of my life without him is unfathomable. He gave himself over to me, surrendered to what he can’t control and focused on what he can - like my body above his - and I love him more than I ever thought I could.

What happened four months ago changed us both, and while I would take it away in a heartbeat, I can’t deny the lessons that have come along with it.

You don’t grow stronger taking the path of least resistance. You want to know what you’re really made of? Weather the storm. The more difficult, the more you find out about yourself.

Isaac was put through hell, and I could have left, gotten out of the elements for the sake of convenience, but I didn’t. I chose not to leave him, to stay in this condemnation with him, and I have never once regretted it.

Isaac has shown me who I want to be. Because of him I know I am strong and beautiful. Because of him, I know I am capable.

After a while, he pulls his head up. Then he smiles at me. It is a smile I haven’t seen in far too long, and I return it tenfold, happiness nearly tangible.

With soft legs, I move off of him. Messy with the remnants of our lust, I hold out my hand.

“Shower with me?” I ask, and he nods, so I turn for the bathroom. Hands braced at each side of himself, Isaac rolls his wheelchair to follow me.

*

What if you woke up one day and found you’d gone blind? Or during your happiest moment, your hearing disappeared, fading into the background until you could only grasp the beating of your own heart and nothing else. Imagine you’re an artist, and through a freak turn of events, lost your hands, rendering you unable to do what you really, truly love.

Speculate all you want, but you’ll never honestly know how you’d feel unless it happened to you.

For me, I woke up one day without the use of my legs. I’d never been more scared in my life. One moment I was living, and seemingly the next, I wasn’t.

An accident on an ATV left me injured and unconscious, and when I roused again, occupying the center of a hospital bed, I found I couldn’t move on my own, everything from the waist down useless.

I could rant about the millions of people that are taking their lives for granted, but that story’s been told before. You don’t need to renounce your possessions and live like the less fortunate to understand how fortunate you are. It’s the insignificant things that ironically matter the most - the things people should appreciate. Talking to a family member, listening to soulful music, getting out of bed thirsty in the middle of the night and being able to walk to the damn refrigerator because you can.

I suppose I have a newfound peeve of listening to people bitch about innocuous things. Not that I have room to talk. I’m not abounded with wisdom from my forced lifestyle. I don’t want to be told I’m ‘inspirational’ because of what I went through. I was a normal person doing unextraordinary things and ended up confined to a chair. That isn’t inspirational, that’s life. It hit me hard and fast and put me in a position I never dreamed I’d be in.

I loved sports, any and every activity that got me out of the house, physically talented to a fault. Now, the most action I get is surveying basketball on t.v., seeing counter-level objects up close and personal, limited from entering places that don’t provide a ramp.

After what happened I was bitter, seeing everyone else go about their uninterrupted days as I sat daydreaming about taking a walk across town. The worst part was that I wasn’t alone.

When I woke up after what I now deem ‘The Crash’ -learning my life would never be the same- my girlfriend of eight months was beside me, her eyes so wide it made me want to shrink. We stared at each other as the doctor droned on about things I didn’t want to hear. The first day I was able to go home, I wanted to break everything my chair bumped against, and I’ve never been a very violent guy. Nita flitted around rearranging everything, trying to make my life ‘easier’.

I hated it.

We fell into a routine of handicapped parking spots and daily health regimes of pills and ointments, people awkward around me like I’m some sort of charity case or kids asking their parents if I’m a robot. As if being black isn’t hard enough. Nita has been more graceful about it than anyone, always her sweet and funny self, unbothered by all the extra steps in our day - no pun intended. My status doesn’t deter her, and that says a lot about her as a person.

I remember the first time I saw Nita on the grounds of our mutual college; a tiny Filipino girl, sun-tinted and beautiful, her dark hair richer than the world’s finest chocolate. She tried not to smile at me, shy from who-knows-what, and at that moment, I had to have her. She’s always been insecure, taking bashful to another level, but when it’s just us, her self-doubt fades away.

It didn’t take long to get her to loosen up with me. Nita was the finest girl I’d ever seen, and I told her so. Those first eight months, I would fuck her every chance I got, lifting her petite body every which-way, bending her over or making her ride me. I love that she’s so small, her curvy body my ideal size. What I wouldn’t give to be able to fuck her again, and I mean real, raw thrusting into her beautifully delicate body.

Shortly after The Crash, that was one of my biggest worries. Having sex seemed out of the question and out of my realm. I didn't even masturbate. My paralysis is classified as an incomplete, lower-level injury. They told me I may be able to get it up though it might not last, and even then having an orgasm wasn’t guaranteed. The thought of failing to have sex put me off it for a while.

I was cynical, angry, and sexually frustrated, projecting my self-hatred onto everyone else - even Nita. I feel awful for the way I treated her at first, often wondering why she bothered to stick around. I couldn’t bear to hold her back, to see her limiting herself because of me.

Four months after The Crash, I told her this.

I could see she didn’t want to let go. I tried convincing her what I already knew, that she would have a much better life with someone else. And then… she took her clothes off. That night when she shamelessly got on her knees in front of me - the first time we did anything remotely intimate since my physical prowess was taken from me - I hardly believed it. She had never been so brash, and I had never been more turned on by her. I was secretly afraid she wasn’t attracted to me anymore, but I was definitely wrong. What she did to me worked, and we fucked for the first time in months. It was the most normal I’d felt since The Crash. Also, the closest I’d ever felt to her.

Knowing Nita would stay with me through anything, that she didn’t care if I was in a wheelchair or poor or if my skin was fucking purple, I knew I couldn’t let her go. I had love for Nita before my accident, but that night, I fell in love with her. She has the heart of a lion in the body of a lamb, tougher than any person I’ve ever met. Even me.

After The Crash, she turned into another version of herself. Where once Nita was timid, she’s now fearless, outgoing, and oddly persuasive. I graduated with my degree before her, and finding myself without hobbies, she coerced me into parasports, getting me to shoot hoops again. Being three feet shorter than before was a challenge, but I was up for it, making baskets again in no time. I even made some friends, other guys like me trying to live normal lives.

Nita talked me into using my Bachelors to find a job, and while that comes with its own struggles, I haven’t given up.

She makes me want to be better.

I’ve been doing physical therapy for over a year now, tending sessions while Nita is finishing up her degree. I let her in on the progress I’m making, but I haven’t been entirely truthful…

All the nerves in my spine weren’t severed the day of The Crash, and over time I have slowly been building up strength, able to lift my legs some degree on my own. I may never walk again, and while that would be the miracle of a lifetime, that isn’t my goal at the moment. I just want to be able to get out of my chair and down on one knee - unassisted - in front of Nanita.

I’m going to ask that beautiful, strong, compassionate woman to marry me.

Nita has helped me realize I am not handicapped. I am capable.