"How about her?" Jon said.

"What do you mean, what about her? I'm not shopping for a date!" Dylan answered in a murmur.

"We both know you need someone in your life. Why not her?"

"I've never even talked to her! I don't know her name, or.. or what her voice sounds like.."

"Even better, my dude. Perfect opportunity. Clean slate, no judging."

Dylan turned around to steal a look at her again. She was staring at him. He turned back instantly. "Maybe she's into girls, we shouldn't just assume that she dates guys, you know…"

"That is true." He turned around briefly. "But I mean, did she see you looking at her?"

"Um yeah, just now.."

Jon slapped his friend on the shoulder. "Ok, now do it again. But this time, engage the eye contact. Show her that you're interested."

And so he did. Instead of avoiding her stare, he confronted it. For the first few seconds, it was incredibly awkward. Like exchanging looks with a stranger on a bus. But then, she smirked. Jackpot, he thought. He lifted a hand to salute her, awaiting an answer that never came. She flicked her head to the side to send her hair back and kept staring too, both hands buried deep into the front pocket of her hoodie. There was something smug emanating from her, a suave confidence in her posture.

Her gaze switched back to the front of the class. The lesson had just ended. In the span of a second or two she and most other students had gotten up and started walking down the auditorium stairs. He panicked, stuffed his laptop in his duffle bag as fast as he could but by the time he looked up again, she was gone.

________

He caught up with her a few classrooms down the corridor. His heart raced inside his chest, both because of his sprint and the stress of the situation. He took a deep breath to gather his courage right as she turned around, seemingly sensing his presence.

He froze. They looked at each other again, this time his confidence melting like snow in the midday sun. The hype he and Jon had built during their class seemed like a distant memory to him. She raised her eyebrows, slightly annoyed.

"Hi." What an icebreaker, he thought sarcastically.

"Hey." She raised her chin towards him, like a guy crossing paths with a friend.

Another silence. He wished he could turn invisible to hide from his own awkwardness.

"I'm Dylan." His hand hovered between them. What was this, a job interview?

"Lizzie." She stayed put, not answering to his gesture.

He laughed, cleared his throat. "Okay…" He rubbed the back of his neck. "Well, um, I wondered if…"

She shrugged and interrupted him. "Yeah, why not. You really want this?"

He looked back at her dark brown eyes, at her black bangs brushing the top of her glasses, her dark purple lips halfway between a pout and a smirk. Somewhere in his stomach, a knot was tightening. "Absolutely."

"Okay!" She shrugged again, her hands still in her pocket, she turned around and called to him. "Follow me!"

They continued down the corridor for a minute, went down a flight of stairs, and towards the restroom area.

She stopped in front of one of the doors. "Get inside with me."

"E-e-excuse me??" Dylan stammered.

"Get in and lock the door behind you." Not knowing what else to say, he did as she asked. "Now, I want you to take my hoodie off."

"........you….."

"Come on." She stared back at him, sleeves tucked in her pocket. "I'm all sweaty and I have a spare shirt in my bag that you're gonna help me put on."

Dylan ogled her up and down. "Listen Lizzie I… you're sure about this? We don’t really know each other, we kind of just met.."

She rolled her eyes. "Oh my god YES! You wanna go on a date, right? That's what you and your friend were chatting about in class earlier?" He nodded, slightly ashamed. "Good, me too. Sooooooo please, take it off."

"Okay… I'm…" He laughed nervously. "I'm reaching under your shirt…"

"It's not a telenovela, Dylan." She flicked her head to the side to fix part of her bangs. "You don't have to narrate what you're doing for the people in the back."

He slowly slid his hands under her shirt, touching her skin, and let them rest on her waist. He expected her to lift her arms, yet she did nothing of the sort. Bundling the fabric in a roll, he lifted it ever higher, revealing more and more of her skin until it jammed under her breasts.

"Give it some passion, Dylan. They’re not made of glass." She winked at him.

Seeing her sleeves still tucked in her front pocket, he finally realized something was out of the ordinary. They crumpled and collapsed on themselves, completely empty, as if she had hidden her arms at her sides inside the shirt. Battling against his own embarrassment, he forced the shirt past her voluptuous breasts, which twisted the sleeves in an impossible angle. Now around her neck, he passed the collar over her head, tousling her hair and sending her glasses halfway across her face.

"Alright, that's what I'm talking about." She tilted her head to the side, lifted her left arm to bring her glasses back to their resting place. "I call this part make it or break it. What's it gonna be today?"

"Sorry, I should've realized earlier that something was wrong… I mean not wrong wrong, just different, but a good kind of different, you know. You’re really pretty nonetheless and.. and…"

It took all his strength to keep looking her in the eyes. Not only was her impressive cleavage on display, he was also more than intrigued by her arms, or rather, lack thereof.

Lizzie leaned sideways, rocked her hips to swing the bag that hung to her left towards him.

"Are you done rambling? Like I said, I need you to get the other long sleeve shirt in my bag." She pointed down with her chin. Her arms hung besides her breasts, rudimentary. "I could do it myself, but since we're trying to get something going I thought it would be a good test for you."

"Can we… um I'm sorry I'm just really surprised, I wasn't expect-... Did anything happ…"

"Yes. Or no, actually, depending on your question." He looked down from her stumps to study her figure. Her exposed chest, her black shorts and fishnet stockings, she was definitely a treat to look at, with just enough of everything at exactly the right place. "My eyes are up here, Dylan. Calm your testosterone for a moment and focus."

"Right, sorry." He reached inside her bag and pulled out the first thing that met his hand.

"No, that one is short sleeved. Take the other one." She jerked her left arm downwards, driving the movement through her shoulder.

The right one in hand, he held it high between them to make sense of its shape. Bringing down the improvised curtain, he was surprised to see Lizzie's face a lot closer from him now. She closed her smoky eyes halfway and bit down on her lower lip, sticking out her tongue to moisten her lips. Noticing that he wasn't making a move, she took a step forward to press Dylan, still frozen in surprise, between the bathroom door and her breasts. She tiptoed and craned her neck to kiss him.

He let the shirt slip out of his hand. Lizzie felt a reassuring hand on her lower back and let herself be guided closer to him.

"Finally." She spoke between two kisses.

She teased him with the tip of her tongue before going deep in his mouth, her piercing clicking against their teeth. He slid his hand up to her neck and pushed his fingers through her hair, grabbing a handful of dark locks, pushing her face against his even harder.

He felt her knee rubbing against his groin, having no trouble finding his erection. She lost some of her vigor when he massaged her scalp, leaning even harder against him. Satisfied by her reaction, he doubled down on it and drew concentric circles with his nails, messing up her hair but getting rewarded by a deep contented groan. He slowly retrieved his hands and set them on her shoulders where he hesitated. The seal broke between their lips and she snuggled her face in his neck.

"That felt nice." She whispered. Sensing his uneasiness, she repressed a discouraged sigh. "It's congenital, Dylan. I've never known anything else. For me, you cuddling my stumps is as precious as if you were holding my hands."

He chuckled. "Sorry, I didn't want to hurt you, I didn't know if they were sensitive, or.."

"Shuuushhhh.. You talk too much."

Lizzie nestled herself against him even more. Raising them as if to hug him, her arms didn't even reach past her chest. Deathly afraid of offending her yet encouraged by her words, he lowered his hands and caressed them softly, absentmindedly tracing and feeling their shape.

The one on her right barely articulated out of her shoulder. It was round and blunt, like someone had sanded her limb until nothing remained but a stub. It seemed to end right where it started, narrower even than her upper arm probably could have been. He felt it move between his fingers, Lizzie answering his caresses as best as she could. He cupped it in the palm of his hand and pressed it towards her shoulder.

The left one, while being a little longer, didn't have much to offer either. Wider than its counterpart, it felt stronger somehow, more useful. Dylan had noticed how, earlier, she used it to fix her glasses, being able to reach that high when craning her neck to the side. At the tip of it was her body’s last effort to lengthen her arm, a protrusion as wide as a finger but only half as long. When he felt it, she tensed her muscles and moved it from side to side.

"Impressed aren't you?" She detached herself and looked up at him, freeing her arms from his grasp. She lifted her left towards him and wiggled it again. "I call him Bobby. He’s either a finger, or the entirety of my forearm, and that's as much as he can move."

"I think it's cute. You're cute." He smiled at how proud she looked. They both knew the hardest part was behind them. "You know I don't… I don't mind.. Them.. this, I'm not sure how to address it."

"Good!" She said, "Because there's nothing you can do to fix them!" She sat on the toilet and slid her feet out of her sandals. She grabbed the shirt between her big and second toes and, balancing herself on her rump, raised both feet to flip it collarside up and offered it to him. "Pretty please? Now that you know why I needed help in the first place."

Lizzie crinkled her nose as he took off her glasses and set them beside the sink, fit her head through the collar and adjusted it around her waist. She wiggled her arms to fix the fabric around her shoulders before lifting her left arm, again, to adjust the position of her glasses. Her empty sleeves dangled to and fro along with her movements, he grabbed one in midair.

"What should I do with this?"

"Stick them in my back pockets." While he indulged her, she flicked her head to look back, sending her hair across her face. He walked around and cleared it for her. "Thank you, love. Okay, that's a lot better. Let's head back out before people try to imagine what's going on here."

He opened the door and she led the way. Now that he knew about her short arms, he couldn't help to look at her dangling sleeves, seeing hints of her stumps through the moving fabric. The rocking motion of her ass quickly became just as hypnotic, and war was well fought between the two for his attention. She turned 180° to face him, walking backwards.

"So, what'll it be?"

"I'm sorry?" He frowned and lowered his head, like trying to level with her to hear better.

"Beer? Coffee? Pizza? Nachos?"

"Lizzie what are you talking about?"

She sighed, stopped, and faced him properly. "Our date, Dylan. What'll it be? Where are we going?"

"Umm.." He looked into her brown eyes, seeing nothing but hope. She wasn't kidding. "Right now? Okay, yeah. Is there anything you either can't do or hate doing?"

"Can't, yes. Hate, also yes." She winked at him. "Anything that implies standing and doing something else I'm usually not fit for the job."

He dared try a joke about her physique. "So no bowling I figure?"

She burst out laughing, taking him by surprise. "Alright, I’ll take the lead. Follow me you dumb dumb. Let's get a drink."

Dylan felt dizzy, like he had been slapped across the face. He was so passive and clueless, yet Lizzie didn't seem to have noticed or to bother at all. She bossed him around like a ball of Play dough and he kind of liked it.

"There's a café nearby, the staff always pours my drinks in a tea-pot, all I need to do is sip from the spout." She turned to face the wind, clearing her neck and face of hair. "Do you mind walking for a bit?"

"Not if I'm stuck looking at that ass."

She smiled and reached for a kiss. Remembering what she had told him, he intentionally placed a hand on her left arm and held it tenderly, like he would've done with a hand. Her heart sank in her chest. She wagged her Bobby and smiled, feeling his grasp tighten around it.