Love and Other Words
Page 29

“Not the way you mean.”
I looked away, taking a minute to calm down. I realized it would have been dramatic, but I wanted to storm out and make him follow me and grovel for, like, an entire day.
“I fooled around with Emma because she’s here,” he said quietly. “You’re in Berkeley and we’re not together and I’m in this tiny Podunk town. Who else am I supposed to kiss?”
Something shifted in that exact moment, something that would never shift back.
Who else am I supposed to kiss?
I looked at his big hands and his Adam’s apple. I let my eyes linger on the muscular arms that used to be so thin and stringy, on legs that stretched, defined, beneath his torn jeans. I looked at the button-fly on the front of said jeans. I blinked away, up at the cabinets. Look anywhere but at those buttons. I wanted to touch those buttons, press my hand to them, and for the first time I realized I didn’t want anyone else touching them.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled.
“Then come over here,” he said in that same quiet voice. “You kiss me.”
My eyes flew to his. “What?”
“Kiss me.”
I thought he was calling my bluff, but I was worked up from the Emma situation and the way he looked, leaning against the counter, watching me. I was warm from the way his hands seemed so big now, and his jaw so angular… and the buttons on his jeans.
I walked around the center island and stood right in front of him. “Okay.”
He stared down at me, a smile playing on his lips, but it straightened when he realized I was serious.
I pressed my hands to his chest and moved closer. I was so close that I could hear every quickly accelerating inhale and exhale, could see his jaw twitch.
Fascinated, he moved a hand to my lips, pressing two fingers there and staring. Without thinking, I opened my mouth and let his index finger slip inside and against my teeth. When he grunted quietly, I ran my tongue over his fingertip. He tasted like jelly.
Elliot pulled it back sharply. He looked like he was going to devour me: eyes wild and searching, lips parted, pulse a hammering presence in his neck. And because I wanted to kiss him, I did. I stood on my toes, slid my hands into his hair, and pressed my mouth to his.
It was different than I would have guessed. Different than – I could admit to myself – I had imagined it would be. It was both softer and firmer, and definitely bolder. A short kiss, another, and then he tilted his head, covering my mouth with his. His tongue traced my bottom lip and it felt like instinct to let him in, to taste me.
I think that was probably his undoing. It was certainly mine. After that the moment dissolved for me into only sensation; everything else fell away. All the forbidden images of him, flesh and fantasy, secrets I kept even from myself, tore through my mind and I knew, somehow, that he was thinking the same thing: how good it felt to be this close… and everything else that touching like this could lead to.
One of his hands moved up my back and into my hair, and it was the weight of that touch, I think, that kept me from floating off the floor. But when his other hand slid up my side to my ribs and higher, I stepped back.
“Sorry,” he said immediately, instinctively. “Shit, Mace. That was too fast, I’m sorry.”
“No, it’s just…” I hesitated, my mouth suddenly crammed with words that I didn’t want to be thinking, let alone say out loud. “Doing that might not mean anything to Emma,” I said, touching my lips where they tingled. “But it means everything to me.”
now
saturday, october 14
S
ean drops his keys in the bowl near the door and kicks off his shoes, groaning happily.
“Hungry, Applejack?” he asks Phoebe, and the two of them disappear into the kitchen.
I put their shoes side by side on the little shelf near the door and hang our jackets up on the hooks. Their voices echo back to the hallway; Phoebe is doggedly working on her dad to get her a pet, any pet – frog, hamster, bird, fish.
I am honestly so unsure what to feel. Sean and I had such a whirlwind start, and we tumbled easily into a domestic routine, but that routine really only involves me sharing his bed and our schedules rotating around each other like well-oiled gears.
I moved whatever I needed over from the Berkeley house, but it’s still mostly full, and entirely uninhabited, while I’m shacked up here. Sean tells me he loves having me in his bed. Phoebe always seems happy to see me. But I realize, watching him today, that I don’t actually know him that well. He and Phoebe have their own thing going. But if I want to be a part of it, I need to make myself part of it.
“Want me to cook dinner?” I ask, coming in after them, and they both look up from where they’re digging into the fridge, staring at me blankly. “Pasta,” I say, feigning insult. “I think I can handle pasta.”
“Are you sure?” Phoebe remains unconvinced.
“I’m sure, you knucklehead,” I say, smooching her cheek.
She squeals, running from the room, and Sean moves to the pantry, grabbing a box of pasta and some jarred sauce for me. “Need help?”
“You can keep me company.” I nod to the breakfast bar, silently urging him to take a chair and talk to me. To help me assuage this feeling gnawing at my chest that he and I are never going to make it. We’ve never really had downtime together on weekends, and I have a clawing suspicion that this is why we’re essentially strangers outside of bed.
He sits, reading through emails on his phone while I get water boiling.
I want to marry this man; I want him to want to marry me.
I like being around him.
I like his ass in those jeans.
“Did you have fun today?” I ask, keeping my voice light.
“Sure.”
Scroll, scroll.
The jar of sauce opens with a satisfying pop, and marinara slops into the saucepan I’ve put on the stove. Sean looks up at the sound, mildly repulsed.
“Did you like meeting everyone?” I ask. “They really liked you.”
He blinks away from the stove and meets my eyes, smiling as if he knows I’m full of shit. “Sure, babe, they were great.”
His tone is so offhand, so uninterested, I want to crack him in the forehead with the empty jar. I want to beg him to meet me halfway. Instead, I rinse it out briefly and drop it into the recycling bin. Irritation with him prickles at my skin like an itch. “Try not to sound so enthusiastic.”
“What do you mean?” he asks, just the slightest bit sharp in defense. “It was fine, Mace, but they’re your friends, not mine.”
“Well, eventually they might become your friends, too,” I tell him. “Isn’t that what couples do? Share things? Blend their lives?”
I realize, in this moment, that we’ve never argued. I don’t even know how it looks to disagree. We overlap for a total of maybe one waking hour a day. How disastrous would it be to calculate the total number of hours we’ve spent together? Do we even care enough to argue?
My phone buzzes on the counter, and I pick it up, reading the text there from Sabrina.
I realize I shouldn’t be answering right now, but if I don’t take this tiny breather, I’m liable to say something to Sean I might regret. I inhale deeply and type out a reply.
She answers with a string of heart-eyed emojis and I realize her apology opener was really just a ruse to soften me up to more of the same conversation. Her timing is, as ever, impeccable. Putting my phone facedown on the counter, I look back at Sean, determined to salvage this, make plans, do something.