Love and Other Words
Page 40

What had just happened?
Did he…? Or did he just realize what I’d started and freaked out? In the end, did Elliot really want to be my boyfriend, or was he wrong about it all?
I careened headlong into panic.
This is how it starts. This is how the friendship goes from perfect and best friend ever to nothing but weird, dirty looks across the yard.
I sat in the closet alone for an hour, staring at the pages of whatever book I’d slid from the big bookcase and not reading a single word.
I would count to one thousand, and then I would go to his house and apologize.
One… two… three…
Twenty-eight… twenty-nine…
Two hundred thirteen…
“What are you reading?” His voice came from the doorway, but instead of walking in and flopping down next to me, he lingered there, leaning against the frame.
“Hi!” I said too brightly, eyes looking anywhere but at his. I noticed he had changed his clothes. My face flamed hot and I looked down, staring at the book in my hands. The letters of the title slowly swam into a single word and I pointed at it lamely. “Um, I started Ivanhoe. No d.”
When I looked up, confusion flickered across his face like a blink, and he stepped inside. “Really?”
“Yeah,” I said slowly, watching him stalk into the room. His lip turned up in a half-teasing smile. “Why do you say it like that? You’ve read this about fifty times.”
“It’s just that it looks like you’re already about halfway through it.” Scratching his temple, he added quietly, “That’s impressive.”
I blinked down to the page I’d randomly opened. “Oh.”
It was tense and thick between us and it made my chest hurt. I wanted to ask him if I embarrassed him or… crap. Did I hurt him?
“Macy…” he started, and I knew that voice. That voice was a let-me-down-easy voice.
I tried to laugh but it came out as a gasp, going for casual but missing by about a mile. “I am so mortified, Elliot, seriously. I’m so sorry. Let’s not talk about it.”
Elliot nodded, his eyes on the floor. “Sure.”
“I’m sorry I did that, okay?” I whispered to my lap.
“What? Macy, no —”
“It will never happen again, I swear. I was just playing around. I know I’ve been all ‘let’s not be together because that could ruin things’ and then I went and did that. I’m so sorry.”
He pulled a book off the shelf and I returned to Ivanhoe – starting from the beginning now – and read for two hours, but hardly understood a word. I blamed it on my state of mind. The idea that I might have hurt him, or embarrassed him, or made him angry ate at me like a drop of acid in my gut. It grew and gnawed at me and eventually had me so twisted inside that I felt like I might be sick.
“Ell?”
He looked up, eyes softening immediately. “Yeah?”
“Did I hurt you?”
A corner of his lip pulled up in a smile as he fought a laugh. “No.”
I exhaled for what felt like the first time in a few hours. “Okay, good.” I opened my mouth and closed it again, not sure what else to say.
He put his book down and moved closer. “You didn’t hurt me.” He searched my eyes, waiting. “Do you get what I’m telling you?”
I watched as his eyebrows slowly lifted, and then he smiled that sneaky, sexy smile…
“You mean you…” I made a circular motion with my hand, and he laughed.
“Yeah. I…” He mimicked the motion, eyes teasing.
My heart became a victorious monster in my chest, thrashing to climb out.
I had made him come.
“I was trying to make sure you went first,” he admitted in a low voice, “but the sound you made… when you asked me to move faster…” He swallowed, lifting a shoulder in a silent Oh well.
“Oh.” I stared up at him, watching him fight the heated blush. “I’m sorry.”
“Macy, don’t be sorry. I’m telling you it was sexy.” He looked at my lips, and his expression grew serious again. “It’s hard for me sometimes that we aren’t together. I never know where the lines are. I want to cross them all the time. We’ve kissed and touched, but then we’ll go back to being just friends and it’s confusing. What we did today? It didn’t even feel like enough for me.” He held his hands up, eyes wide. “I don’t mean you should do more. Just that I want it all with you. I think about it all the time.”
I thought about how much I wanted that, too. And how, earlier, I wanted so much more than his body over mine, our clothes between us. I would have given him everything today. And still, the words that came out were “But I would die without your friendship.”
He smiled and leaned over to kiss my cheek. “I would, too.”
now
thursday, november 23
E
lliot’s building is narrow, a faded turquoise stucco, and must have once been a beautiful Victorian before it was sloppily chopped up into four cramped apartments.
The front door opens to a narrow hall on the right and a steep flight of steps leading to the upstairs apartments. Elliot lives in number four. Upstairs and to the right, he said. Each stair squeaks beneath my boots.
His front door is flat brown, and before it is a thin doormat with the Dickinson quote The soul should always stand ajar.
I lift my fist and knock.
Is it possible I recognize the weight of his footsteps and the rhythm of his walk? Or is it that I know he’s the only one inside – because I’m early? Either way, my pulse accelerates so that by the time he turns the knob and swings the door open, I feel light-headed.
Sometime in the past decade, Elliot figured out how to manage his hair and dress himself. He wears black jeans and a well-loved – either honestly or artificially – dark denim shirt rolled to his elbows. His feet are bare.
Bare feet. Elliot’s apartment. Inside there somewhere is Elliot’s bed.
If I’m not careful, I won’t even go home tonight.
Holy shit, I’m a mess.
“Macy,” he says, pulling me into a hug and drawing me inside with one arm around my shoulders. When he moves away, shutting the door behind me, the smile I see on his face could power a small city. “You’re here. You’re in my apartment!”
Bending, he kisses my cheek, chastely. “Your face is so cold!”
“I walked from BART. It’s chilly outside.” Heat radiates from the point where his lips pressed against my skin, and I put down the pie I brought so I can shrug out of my jacket.
He pulls back a little, surprised. “You didn’t drive?”
“I’m not a fan of cars,” I say, smiling.
He takes my coat, quiet at this. “I could have picked you up.”
Pressing a palm to his chest, I whisper, “You live six blocks from the station. I’m fine.”
“I’m sorry, I’m nervous.” He shakes his shoulders a little, as if loosening up. “I’m going to try to be cool about this – about tonight. I will probably fail.”
I laugh, handing him the pecan pie I bought this morning. “It’s not your mom’s recipe, sadly. Are they coming down?”
He shakes his head and then tilts it, beckoning me deeper inside. I follow him through a tiny living room into an even tinier kitchen. “They’re going over to Andreas’s future in-laws’ place up in Mendocino. We didn’t want the entire Petropoulos clan to descend on them; his fiancée, Else, is an only child and I don’t think they’d know what to do with all of us. It’s just Mom, Dad, Andreas, and Alex headed up there.”