Love and Other Words
Page 17

He’s a mind reader: “Tell me about this guy you’re going to marry.”
This is a minefield, but I may as well put it all right up front and be honest, too.
“We met at a dinner welcoming all of the incoming residents,” I say, and he doesn’t need me to do the math for him, but I do: “in May.”
His brows slowly inch up beneath his shaggy mop of hair. “Oh.”
“We hit it off right away.”
Elliot nods, watching me intensely. “I assume you’d have to.”
I blink down to the table, clearing my throat and trying not to respond defensively. Elliot has always been brutally honest, but it never came out sharply at me before. To me, his words were always gentle and adoring. Now my heart is pounding so hard, I feel it swooshing between us, and it makes me wonder whether our individual heartaches are silently duking this out from inside our bodies.
“Sorry,” Elliot mumbles, reaching across the table before thinking better of touching me. “I didn’t mean it to come out like that. It’s just fast, that’s all.”
I look up and give him a weak smile. “I know. It did move fast.”
“What’s he like?”
“Mellow. Nice.” I twist my napkin in my lap, wishing I could come up with better adjectives to describe the man I plan to marry. “He has a daughter.”
Elliot listens, nearly unblinking.
“He’s a benefactor for the hospital,” I say. “Well, in a sense. He’s an artist. His work is…” I sense that I’m beginning to brag, and I don’t know why it leaves me feeling unsettled. “It’s pretty popular right now. He donates a lot of the newer art installations over at Benioff Mission Bay.”
Elliot leans in. “Sean Chen?”
“Yeah. You’ve heard of him?”
“Books and art run in similar circles around here,” he explains, nodding. “I’ve heard he’s a good guy. His art is stunning.”
Pride swells, warm in my chest. “He is. It is, yeah.” And another truth rolls out of me before I can catch it: “And he’s the first guy I’ve been with who…”
Shit.
I try to think of a better way to end this sentence than the bald truth, but my mind is completely blank but for Elliot’s earnest expression and the gentle way his hands are cupping his water glass. He unravels me.
He waits, and finally asks, “Who what, Mace?”
Goddammit. “Who didn’t feel like some sort of betrayal to…”
Elliot picks up my unfinished sentence with a gentle “Oh. Yeah.”
I meet his eyes.
“I’ve never had one of those,” he adds quietly.
Actually, this is a minefield. Blinking down to the table, with my heart in my windpipe, I barrel on: “So that’s why I said yes when he proposed, impulsively. I’d always told myself the first man I was with and didn’t feel wrong about, I would marry.”
“That seems like… some sturdy criteria.”
“It felt right.”
“But really,” Elliot says, drawing a finger through a drop of water that’s made its way to the tabletop, “according to that criteria, technically wouldn’t that person be me?”
The waiter is my new favorite human because he approaches, intent on taking our order just after Elliot says this, preventing me from the awkward dance of a non-answer.
Glancing at the menu, I say, “I’ll have tacos dorados and the citrus salad.” Looking up, I add, “I’ll let him pick the wine.”
As I probably could have guessed, Elliot orders the caldo tlalpeño – he always loved spicy food – and a bottle of the Horse & Plow sauvignon blanc before handing his menu to the waiter with quiet thanks.
Turning back to me, he says, “I knew exactly what you were going to order. Citrus salad? It’s like Macy’s food dream.”
My thoughts trip over one another at this, at how easy it is, at how in sync we still are right out of the gate. It’s too easy, really, and it feels unfaithful in a really surreal and backward way to the man who’s a couple of miles away, installing a television in the small home we share. I sit up, working to infuse some emotional distance into my posture.
“And she retreats…” Elliot says, studying me.
“I’m sorry,” I say. He reads every tiny move I make. I can’t fault him for it; I do the same thing. “It started feeling a little too familiar.”
“Because of the fiancé,” he says, tilting his head back, indicating elsewhere. “When’s the wedding?”
“My schedule is pretty nuts, so we haven’t set a date yet.” It’s partly the truth.
Elliot’s posture tells me he likes this answer – however disingenuous it may be – and it stirs the anxiety in my belly.
“But, we’re thinking next fall,” I add quickly, straying even further from the truth now. Sean and I haven’t discussed dates at all. Elliot narrows his eyes. “Though if it’s left to me, it will happen in whatever we’re wearing at the courthouse. I am apparently really uninterested in planning a wedding.”
Elliot doesn’t say much for a few loaded seconds, just lets my words reverberate around us. Then he gives me a simple “Ah.”
I clear my throat awkwardly. “So, tell me what you’ve been doing?”
He’s interrupted only briefly when the waiter returns with our wine, displaying the label for Elliot, opening it tableside, and offering a taste. There are ways in which Elliot’s confidence throws me, and this is one. He grew up in the heart of California wine country, so he must be comfortable with this, but I’ve never seen him taste wine at the table. We were so young…
“It’s great,” he tells the waiter, then turns back to me while he pours, clearly dismissing the man from his thoughts. “How far back should I go?”
“How about start with now?”
Elliot leans into his chair, thinking for a few moments before he seems to figure out where to begin. And then it all rolls out of him, easy and detailed. He tells me that his parents are still in Healdsburg (“We couldn’t pay Dad to retire.”); that Nick Jr. is the district attorney for Sonoma County (“The way he dresses is straight out of some bad crime show and I’d only say that in this safe space, but no one should wear sharkskin.”); Alex is in high school and an avid dancer (“I can’t even blame my gushing on brotherly pride, Mace. She’s really good.”); George – as I know – is married to Liz and living in San Francisco (“He’s a suit, in an office. I honestly can never really remember what his job title is.”); and Andreas is living in Santa Rosa, teaching fifth grade math, getting married later this year (“Of all of us to end up working with kids, he would have been the least likely, but turns out, he’s the best at it.”).
The whole time he updates me, all I can think is that I’m getting the cream, skimmed from the top. Beneath it is still so much. Volumes of tiny details I’ve missed.
The food comes, and it’s so good but I eat it without giving it any attention, because I can’t seem to get enough information, and neither can he. College years are outlined in the monochromatic ways of hindsight, graduate school horror stories are exchanged with the knowing laugh of someone who has also suffered and seen the other side. But we don’t talk about falling in love with someone else and where that leaves us now, and no matter how much it’s with us in every breath, and every word, we don’t talk about what happened the last time I saw him, eleven years ago.