Chapter 16: YARON

Three days later, we celebrated my birthday at my house with my family and Vee.

I had previously spoken with my family, and they agreed to a truce. They accepted my relationship with Vee, although they never made any attempts to include her in our family life. They had hoped our love story would end when I went to college.

It was the only gift I asked them for. Of course, I received many presents from my parents, sisters, and friends. But the best gift was the kind way everyone treated Vee.

Once everyone had gone home, I snuck out of my house to meet Vee at our special place in her back yard.

She was waiting for me under a blanket.

“Welcome, birthday boy. I have my present for you right here. But you have to unwrap it yourself.”

I knelt at her side and undressed Vee with shaking hands. I removed her clothes, one by one, very slowly. I admired every inch of her bare skin, placing a kiss here and there, each time a new part of her body was revealed.

Then, she undressed me, and we lay naked on the bedspread, looking at each other.

“You’re shaking,” I said, resting my hand on her belly button.

“It’s just the desire.”

I laughed, but it wasn’t a lie. I wasn’t nervous. I was completely at ease with Vee.

I moved closer slowly and kissed her lips, as I had done so many times before. I lost myself in the kiss. It always happened to me. I closed my eyes, and everything disappeared. A bright, warm light enveloped us, a place free from Jewish parental demands or a gray and uncertain future without Vee.

A bright place where there were only two people— Vee and me.

I caressed every inch of her skin with the tips of my fingers, barely touching her.

Vee moaned.

“Is this okay?” I asked.

“Very,” she sighed, happily.

She turned her face into my chest and whispered, “I need you inside me, Yaron.”

The first time I entered Vee, I knew that nothing could ever top it. And I’m not talking about pleasure. I’m talking about how when Vee and I had first made love, I had discovered that this is home. Two become one, as the Torah says.

We smiled like two fools in love, who had found their partner for life.

When Vee fell asleep with her head on my chest, I thought about the promises we had made to each other. We had made them too lightly, often without realizing it.

Love ... Forever ... My head analyzed the words. They were powerful. They contained much more than what met the eye.

Two hours later, when I quietly slipped away so as not to wake her, and returned to my house, a new insecurity had settled inside me. Because I could give Vee all the emotions she wanted, but what would happen when I left for Harvard? Who would provide her with the constant vertigo she needed?

What would happen when Vee would leave to pursue her dreams in Los Angeles? What would she choose when she had to make decisions?

Not me. I was positive about that. Her dreams would always come first. And even though I didn’t know when that moment would come, I was already starting to go crazy.

Dreaming was free and easy, people spent their lives doing it. A house, a family, a great job, and a fairytale love that ended up being reciprocated.

I dreamed about Vee and me, despite having her by my side. Because, although we were in a bubble hidden from real life, I knew that the future would catch up with us and would make us different. Perhaps, we wouldn’t fit together anymore.

Things were happening too fast, and the countdown in my head kept ticking.

Tick-tock.

Tick-tock.