The Cupid Touch

The Cupid Touch Bonus Chapter - The Risks of Being Happy

Joe tried to draw me to lean against him but I resisted, and settled for grabbing his hand and holding it tightly. He gave me a slow smile.

"Is Helena a little nervous?"

"Of course I am! How can you not be?"

He gave a one-shouldered shrug. "They're going to love me. Look at me. I'm every parent's dream son-in-law. I go to college, I work out, and I've totally thawed out their ice queen daughter. They're probably going to thank me for saving you from a lonely old age surrounded by cats and talking crazy. Hey, ow!"

I didn't stop prodding him hard in the side until he let go of my other hand and, laughing, trapped both of my arms between his hands.

"You did not thaw me out," I said, trying not to smile. "I'm still an ice queen. And I'll freeze your ass if you don't behave."

"Hmm," he said, considering. "Does that involve any more of what we did last night?"

I felt my face growing warm, a mixture of embarrassment that the cab driver could hear him and the very hot memory of a long night with little sleep. For a moment I was back in my bed, with Joe over me and inside me, his mouth and mine pressed together. It was so vivid that I could feel my abdomen and groin all tightening in anticipation.

"No, it does not," I said, but I grabbed another one of those kisses from him. The hot, soft, wet kind that is one of the sexiest things alive.

"OK," he said, afterwards, with a slight sigh. "I'll stop teasing you, because if I arrive at your parents' house with a hard-on, I don't think the Joe-Moe charm will work."

I gave him a triumphant smile, and then tried to think about things other than nerves or last night.

"Were you nervous yesterday?" I asked, after a moment of silence. "Before you took me to see your mom?"

"Not really," he said, considering. "I was worried you'd find it hard. Not because you wouldn't want to be there but... I know I get a little emotional sometimes at how different it is there from an ideal Christmas. You know?"

I did know. It had made me sad, even though I'd been totally happy at being trusted enough to be let into that final part of his life.

Joe had prepared me for the trip, but it had shaken me, driving West toward Albany and then diverging to a small, roadside town that probably only existed because of the hospital. The snow there had been piles of black-stained sludge on the sidewalk, and even the scenery was flat and depressing for a few square miles.

The hospital was gated, and I guessed that its occupants would be sitting out in the garden come summer. In winter, it was a bare, lifeless forecourt with a few spindly trees not doing enough to hide the utilitarian, 1970s hospital building behind.

Inside, it had smelled of bleach and old carpets. The nurse who showed us up to Mrs. Moritz's room was at least a little cheering. His chubby face smiled easily, and he exchanged jokes with a few residents on the way past.

I'd got to the doorway with Joe, and suddenly been scared to go in. I'd been afraid of the reality of Joe's Mom, who had been beaten into a drug-dependency, and gradually descended into psychosis. I was afraid of how this must hurt him.

But when he drew me inside, gently, I felt nothing but a rush of sympathy for the frail, once-blonde woman who was gazing at a small hanging Christmas star that was twisting left and right in front of the window, sending fractured gold light across the walls.