Love and Other Words
Page 37

“No.”
“Yes.”
“Not a chance.”
“It’s okay if you’re embarrassed by it,” he said, returning to his book. “I won’t push.”
I was intensely embarrassed by it. But, at the same time, I was thrilled by it, and vexed by it. It was sexual, but so impersonal. I wanted to infuse it with more feeling. His hands became Elliot’s. Her hands became mine. I imagined emotion there that wasn’t on the page. I wondered if it was the same for Elliot when he read it, and whether he noticed how… distant it all seemed.
I inhaled a shaky breath and read, “‘So was Venus born of the sea with this little kernel of salty honey in her, which only caresses could bring out of the darker recesses of her body.’”
Elliot stared at his book, eyebrows knitted together as he nodded sagely. His voice came out a little hoarse: “That’s a good line.”
“‘A good line’?” I repeated, incredulously. “It’s…”
Actually, I didn’t have an ending to the sentence. It was a level of thinking I didn’t really have the capacity or experience to articulate, but something about it felt familiar, in an ancient kind of way.
“I know,” he murmured. “Do you like the rest of it?”
“It’s okay.” I flipped back through the pages. “It’s a little impersonal and… some of the stories are kind of sad.”
Elliot laughed and I gaped at him. “What?” I asked.
“Did you read the foreword, Macy?”
I scowled. “Who reads the foreword to erotica?”
He laughed again and shook his head. “No, you should. The stories were commissioned by a wealthy man. He just wanted sex. No feelings, no emotion.”
“Oh,” I said, looking down at the book that suddenly made so much more sense. “Yeah, no. I don’t like it. Not like that.”
He nodded, adjusting the beanbag beneath him.
“You read this?” I asked.
He hummed an affirmative noise.
“Did you like it?”
“I had the same reaction you did, I think.” With a tiny grunt, he stretched his legs out, putting his hands behind his head. I didn’t look at the buttons on his jeans. Certainly not twice. “It’s sexy, but distant, too.”
“Why did you read it?”
“Why?” he repeated incredulously as he lifted his head to look at me. “I don’t know. Because I love to read? I love that you can use words to convince people, or anger people, or entertain people. But you can use them to…” He shrugged, blushing a little. “Arouse people, too.”
I looked back down to the book, unsure what else to say.
“I haven’t seen you since April,” he said. “Whatever happened with spring formal?”
Laughing, I told him, “Nikki went with Ravesh.”
“Of course she did. Drama always settles with the dullest outcome possible. But I meant you.”
“Oh.” I dropped the book and lifted a hand to chew on my fingernail. “Yeah, I just stayed at home.”
I could feel him watching me, and he pushed up onto an elbow. “I would have come, you know.”
Looking at him, I tried to show him with my eyes that I really hadn’t wanted to go. “I know.”
“You don’t want me to meet your friends?” he asked, and his tone was playful, but at the distant edge was a sincere worry.
Quickly, I shook my head. “It’s not that.” I looked at him – at his face that was nearly in perfect proportion now, his expressive eyes, full mouth, angled jaw. “Okay, I guess it’s partly that. I want you to meet them, but I don’t really want them to meet you.”
He scrunched his nose. “Okay?”
“I mean,” I said, wanting to diffuse the insult I saw on his face, “I didn’t really trust Nikki and Elyse at the time, and I felt like if they met you they might flirt with you – especially at that dance – and I would have been a ball of rage.”
His brows lifted skyward in understanding. “Oh.”
“And also…” I glanced back down again, finding it easier to say these things to my lap. “This is sort of our little bubble.” I gestured vaguely around the room. “And when I met Emma, it changed that for me. Before, she was just a name, and I could pretend that you didn’t have more time with her every week than you had with me.”
“But I don’t, Mace —”
“I’m just using that example,” I explained, looking back up. “I wasn’t sure that you would really want to have a face to put with these names I’m spending time with.”
Some clarity washed over him. “Oh. I think I get it.”
I think he did.
“There’s a guy who likes you.”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“There’s a few guys. And they were at the dance. And you and I are a weird noncouple, and you weren’t sure how to…” He let the words trail off before saying, “You didn’t want me to end up feeling like the outsider.”
I pulled my legs under me on the futon. “Yeah. I just think it could have been weird. You’re not my outside, you’re my every side. But in the moment, you might not have seen it that way, or believed me.” I looked up at him, hastily adding, “Just… speaking from my experience with the Emma thing.”
“Okay,” he murmured.
“I want you in my whole life,” I said carefully, stepping a toe out into the vast landscape of More. “I think all the time about how my real fear isn’t other girls, it’s losing you. I’m terrified of what it would feel like if you weren’t in my life anymore.”
His eyes grew tight, his voice reverent: “That won’t ever happen.”
“And if we started… and it somehow went wrong…” I had to swallow a few times after saying this, tamping down the storm that happened inside me at the prospect of this. “Anyway. I don’t think the dance was the first place to do that. To bring this life into that one. It would have been too much off the bat.”
“I get that.” He stood, walking over to the futon and sitting down next to me. “I told you already, Mace. I want to be your boyfriend.”
Reaching out, he coaxed me to him, until I was leaning against him, and finally laying my head in his lap. He picked his book back up, and I had mine, and I listened to the even rhythm of his breathing.
“You know,” I said, staring up at the ceiling, while he had one hand slowly dragging again and again through my hair, “these books were sort of the perfect gift.”
“How’s that?”
“Number forty-seven on Mom’s list is to tell me not to have sex until I can talk about sex.”
Beneath me, Elliot went very still. “Yeah?”
“I just think that’s good advice, I guess. Like, if you can’t talk about it, you shouldn’t be doing it.”
A tiny, nervous laugh burst out of him. “Do you want to talk about sex today?”
Giggling, I gently punched him in the thigh, and he feigned pain.
I wanted him to be my boyfriend, too. But I knew even then that I needed baby steps. I wanted the slow transition. I didn’t want to lose a single precious bit of him.
now
wednesday, november 8
S
ean is on the couch waiting for me when I come home after midnight. Other than my hike with Elliot, I had a crap day. Knowing what I had to do but avoiding it anyway, I went into work around three in the afternoon – a terrible decision. I ended up delivering two terminal prognoses and halting chemo on a third because the little girl couldn’t tolerate another dose (even though her cancer could). I’m in a mental place where I know I’m doing Good but it just doesn’t feel like it, and seeing Sean on the couch intensifies the self-flagellation.