Love and Other Words
Page 28

“Smooth, Ell,” Andreas said.
“Shut up.”
His feet came into view in front of my book and I pretended to be so engrossed that I didn’t even notice.
“Hey,” he said quietly. “Want to grab a snack?”
I continued pseudo-reading. “I’m good.”
He kneeled down close to me, ducked lower to catch my eye. I could see his apology written all over his face. “Come inside, it’s sweltering.”
In the kitchen, he pulled out a pitcher of lemonade and two glasses, and started making us sandwiches. Andreas hadn’t followed us inside and the house was cool, dark, and quiet.
“Emma seems lovely,” I said dryly, rolling a lemon across the countertop.
He shrugged.
“She’s the one you kissed at prom, right?”
He looked up at me and scrunched his glasses up his nose. “Yeah.”
“Do you still kiss her?”
Turning his attention back down to the sandwiches, he spread the peanut butter on the bread and added jelly before answering. “No.”
“Is that a lie by omission?”
When he met my gaze again, his eyes were tight. “I have kissed her on a few occasions, yes. I don’t still kiss her.”
His words hit my ears like bricks dropped from an airplane. “You kissed her other times besides prom last spring?”
He cleared his throat, turning a brilliant scarlet.
Jerk.
“Yeah.” He shifted his glasses up higher again. “Two other times.”
I felt like I’d swallowed a jagged ice cube; something cold and hard lodged in my chest. “But she’s not your girlfriend?”
He shook his head calmly. “No.”
“Do you have a girlfriend?” I wondered why I even had to ask this. Wouldn’t he tell me? Or spend time with her during the summer instead of me? He was always honest, but was he forthcoming?
He put down the knife and assembled the sandwiches before looking at me with a smirk. “No, Macy. I’ve been with you every day this summer. I wouldn’t do that if I had a girlfriend.”
I wanted to throw the lemon at his head. “Would you tell me if you had a girlfriend?”
Elliot gave this full consideration before answering, his eyes locked on mine. “I think so. But, I mean, to be honest, this is the one topic where I’m never sure how much to share with you.”
Even though a significant part of me knew what he meant, I still hated this answer. “Have you ever had a girlfriend?”
Blinking away, he returned his attention to the sandwiches. “No. Not technically.”
I rolled the lemon again and it fell onto the floor. He bent to pick it up and handed it back to me.
“Look, Macy. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I wouldn’t want to hear if you kissed someone if it didn’t mean anything, and kissing Emma didn’t mean anything to me. That’s why I never told you.”
“Did it mean anything to her?”
His shrug said everything his silence omitted.
“Maybe it isn’t my business,” I said, “but I do want to know those things. I feel weird that I didn’t know you have a thing with her.”
“We don’t have a thing.”
“You kissed her on three separate occasions!”
He accepted this with a nod. “Have you kissed anyone?”
“No.”
He froze with his sandwich midway to his lips. “No one?”
I shook my head, taking a bite and breaking eye contact. “I would have told you.”
“Really?” he said.
I nodded, face burning. I was sixteen and hadn’t been kissed. His No one? echoed inside my head, and I felt completely pathetic.
“What about Donny? Or… what’s his name?”
I looked up at him and stared meaningfully. He knew Danny’s name.
“Danny?”
He smiled, busted. “Yeah, Danny.”
“Nope. Not even Danny. Like I said, I would have told you. Because you’re my best friend – jerk.”
“Wow.”
He took a ginormous bite of sandwich and stared at me as he chewed.
I thought back to all the weekends we’d spent together, all the stories he’d told me about Christian being a maniac or Brandon having zero game with girls at school. I thought about his updates about his brothers and their girlfriends, and wondered why Elliot was always so tight-lipped about his own escapades. It threw me. It made me feel like maybe we weren’t as close as I thought we were.
“Have you kissed a lot of girls?”
He mumbled, “A couple.”
Something inside me was rioting. “Have you done more than kiss?”
He turned a new shade of red and finally nodded, taking another big bite so he wouldn’t have to elaborate.
My jaw slowly lowered to the floor. I waited until he was done chewing and had taken a sip of lemonade to ask, “How far?”
Countries were established, went to war, and split into smaller countries in the time it took for Elliot to answer.
“Elliot.”
“Shirts off.” He scratched his eyebrow and nudged his glasses up his nose again with the tip of his finger. Stalling. Avoiding eye contact. “Um… and with one girl – not Emma – hands in pants.”
“You have?” I felt my eyes bug out. “Who?”
“Emma was just shirts off. The rest was this other girl, Jill.”
I put my sandwich down, my appetite completely gone. The kitchen was on the darkest side of the house this time of day, and it suddenly felt too cold. I lifted my hands, rubbing my bare arms.
“Macy, don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad! Why would I be mad?” I took a shaky sip of lemonade, trying to calm down. “I’m not your girlfriend. I’m just your best friend who apparently knows nothing about you.”
He took a step around the kitchen island, and stopped. “Macy.”
“Am I overreacting?”
“No…” he said, and took another step closer. “I would definitely take issue if I knew some guy had his hand down your pants.”
“I think you’d also take issue if it happened and I never told you.”
He seemed to give this fair consideration. “Like I said, it depends. It would bug me, yeah, so I wouldn’t want to know about it unless you felt something more than… momentary attraction.”
“Is that what it was for you with Emma?” I asked. “‘Momentary attraction’?”
He nodded. “Absolutely.”
“When was the last time you fooled around with someone?”
He sighed and leaned a hip against the counter where he stood.
“If the situation was reversed, you would be giving me the Spanish Inquisition,” I pointed out. “Don’t sigh at me.”
“Emma and I fooled around in March, then went to prom in May, and kissed again the weekend after, but it was nothing. It was sort of…” He floundered a little, staring up at the ceiling. “If you haven’t kissed anyone, then it’s hard to say what I mean, but we were all at a park, and she came up to me, and it just sort of happened.”
I pulled a face at this and he laughed uncomfortably, shrugging. “Jill is Christian’s cousin. She was visiting last December and we made out once. I haven’t talked to her since.”
I dismissed Jill with a wave of my hand. “So you don’t like Emma, then?”