Chapter 5: Naughty Boy

Andrea's words had proven almost prophetic as Martin had spent most of the breakfast trying to stop himself from intervening whenever Andrea struggled with something. It was unnerving to see her blush in embarrassment whenever something went wrong. Her first attempt at pouring coffee had resulted in more of the liquid ending up on the saucer than in the actual cup and an attempt at finding the strawberry jam ended with her sticking three fingers into the sweet substance.

Whenever she blushed a dark shade of crimson, he rubbed along her calves with his foot to soothe her, often eliciting an abashed smile. Two years sounded like such a long time, but considering that a week of trying had not been enough for him to learn the complex art of brushing his teeth without making an utter mess in the bathroom, it put Andrea's progress into a much more realistic perspective.

"Stop, darling," he interrupted her as she felt along the centre line in search of another small bowl of jam. "You were looking for honey weren't you?"

Andrea nodded.

"Well, I'm afraid you mislabelled that one or the store clerk gave you a wrong glass, because your label says honey, but it's actually pineapple jam."

She gasped. "You can read Braille?"

"Unlike brushing my teeth it's actually easy to learn," he chuckled. "1-to-1 transliteration is easy, but longwinded. It's the shorthand code that throws me at times. I think Mrs. Korsch was laughing for two minutes flat when I was utterly stumped by a two symbol word 'h and'. I was sitting there going like '

'H and what?'"

Andrea was laughing out loud.

"It took me ages to realize that it was supposed to mean 'hand'."

"Welcome to the club," she giggled. "It's second nature now, but it took me a year to get there. How can you learn that so quickly? You've only taken doggy training for a week and Braille isn't even part of that."

"Well, as for learning it quickly. That's the easier part. Remembering a few dozen symbols isn't really hard, I have a knack for such things. I know all ASCII codes up to 127 by heart, the periodic system, every station between Hannover and Cologne. I learned Morse code in two days. I'm genius, remember?"

"And sooo humble," Andrea added theatrically. They both cackled. "So how many cupboards have you memorized already?"

"All of them," he replied dryly.

"What?" she gasped. "Okay, teddy bear: Cinnamon?"

"Upper left cupboard, third glass from the left, label is at the bottom of the glass."

"Green tea?"

"Second cupboard on the left side, right next to the one with all the spices, third box from the right between Earl Grey and Chamomile. You misspelled Grey by the way, it's written with E."

"Okay, I retract my statement and claim the opposite. You are a genius."

"No I'm not," Martin chuckled. "I can memorize things quickly, but I still haven't managed to brush my teeth without leaving an utter mess behind."

"Why would you try that in the first place?" Andrea asked, confusion evident in her voice.

"Darling, if I ever hope to get an insight into how you experience the world around you, I need to try it myself. It would be easy to think the mishaps during breakfast shouldn't happen anymore after two years of training until you've tried something as trivial as your morning hygiene. Since trying that I've started to understand just how much autonomy you've reached in that time. Accidentally dipping your finger in the jam bowl isn't going to take away from that."

Andrea sighed, her eyes becoming moist. "Sometimes I fear the door will open and someone comes in, laughing at me. 'April's Fool! You didn't really think such a sweet and considerate guy exists, did you?'"

Martin snorted with amusement. "Darling, I'm not the least bit better than the next guy. Let's talk again after I've left the toilet lid open a few times too often. And this morning when you sat naked on the bed, you could have worn a horse mask and I wouldn't have noticed, because my eyes were glued to your boobs. Don't put me on a pedestal I don't belong on."

"The next guy didn't give me the time of day for the last two years. Don't sell yourself short teddy bear. I'm still painfully insecure, but you have no idea how happy you make me. Have you any idea how amazing it feels to know that I won't come home from school to an empty apartment?"

"I'm not going anywhere, darling, I promise."

He should have been concerned about how quick things had gone between his daughter and the young man who'd burst into her life just over a week ago. Never since before the accident had he heard such a joy in Andrea's voice as during the phone call they had just finished. Either those two youngsters had found their perfect match on the first attempt or they were setting each other up for a nasty fall. He made a mental note to call Martin the next day, preferably around lunch-time when he would be at his own school without Andrea being around. Bernd's mind was still trying to digest Andrea's blunt announcement that unless Martin would be strongly opposed to the idea, she would not return for the weekend as his little girl, but as a woman. There were no points for guessing what she implied with that.

Even if it was a bank holiday, they still had to do homework. Especially Martin had to catch up as he had been falling behind plan due to his stadium announcement and his return journey to Hannover. He was calculating energy outputs of chucking a chunk of Rubidium into a bowl of water for his chemistry assignment. It would certainly be a very interesting, if not even spectacular experiment if it wasn't for the fact that not much of the school would still be standing afterwards.

He looked over at Andrea, who was researching something on the internet using the Braille output on her computer. Her angry muttering was becoming a distraction and the vernacular had become increasingly un-lady-like over the last fifteen minutes.

He walked over to her chair and standing behind her, he gently started to massage her shoulders.

"What's wrong, darling? You're really upset about something."

"It's that damn braille output," she complained. "What kind of genius thought blind people like to read websites only two lines at a time? How hard can it be to make something the size of an A4 sheet of paper to give us a whole screen to read without having to scroll down after every twentieth word."

"Would you want me to invent something for you, beautiful," he whispered into her ear suggestively and slowly ran his hand up her leg under the oversized shirt in an attempt to lighten up her mood.

Andrea leaned her head back against his chest. "If you pull that one off, teddy bear, you'll never forget the night that follows, and knowing you, the gears in your genius brain are already grinding, my shy but incredibly naughty boy, you."

"Busted," Martin cackled in mock surrender. That did the trick and she snickered along with him, her frustration forgotten for the moment.

In one aspect she'd been right. His brain had already hatched a plan and since the company of her father was doing business with Infineon, he even had an idea how he could help himself to that promised night he would never forget. But then, this being Andrea, another unforgettable night was probably just a few hours ago. She had spent most of the day building up a charged sexual tension and there weren't too many ways to resolve that.

They sat cuddled up on the couch, watching an old black-and-white Agatha Christie flick on niche channel 'Bavaria Alpha', which regularly broadcasted movies with Audio description overlays for the blind. In the right hand corner was a circular overlay with a woman providing sign-language translations for the deaf. Andrea was wearing a headset listening to the audio descriptions.

However, right at this moment he could just as well have watched an Azerbaijani documentary about the influence of sunlight on the love-life of neglected red-bricks with Tamil subtitles, because his focus wasn't exactly on what was happening on screen anyway.

Still not very familiar with the concept of subtlety, Andrea had grabbed his right wrist and put his hand bang smack in between her legs. He was idly running his fingers through the incredibly soft fur that covered her womanhood. Granted, the only pubic hair he could compare it to was his own (before he had shaved it off, that was), but in comparison to the tacked on wire brush in his own nether region, Andrea's hair felt more like fluffy down. And she certainly enjoyed the gentle caress of her pleasure spot.