Love and Other Words
Page 7

Chh.
Chh.
Chh.
He was asleep when I got home around two this morning. For once, I’m thankful for the long hours; I don’t know how I would have sat through dinner with him and Phoebe when all I could think about was Elliot showing up at Saul’s yesterday.
I had this momentary clench of guilt last night on the bus home, when the chaos of my shift was slowly ebbing from my thoughts and the run-in with Elliot pushed its way back in. In a panicked burst, I wondered how rude it was of me to not introduce Elliot to Sabrina.
So fucking quickly he comes back, front and center.
Sean wakes when I move to rub my face, rolling to me, pulling me close with his hand curled around my hip, but for the first time since he kissed me last May, I feel like I’m betraying something.
Groaning, I push away and sit up, propping my elbows on my knees at the side of the bed.
“You okay, babe?” he asks, moving close behind me and resting his chin on my shoulder.
Sean doesn’t even know about Elliot. Which is crazy, when I think about it, because if I’m marrying him, he should know every part of me, right? Even if we haven’t been together that long, the big things should be placed right up front, and for most of my adolescence, it doesn’t get much bigger than Elliot. Sean knows I grew up in Berkeley, spent many weekends up in the wine country of Healdsburg, and had some good friends there. But he has no idea that I met Elliot when I was thirteen, fell in love with him when I was fourteen, and pushed him out of my life only a few years later.
I nod. “I’m good. Just tired.”
I feel him turn his head beside me and glance at the clock, and I mimic his action. It’s only 6:40, and I don’t need to start rounds until 9:00. Sleep is a precious commodity. Why, brain, why?
He runs a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair.
“Of course you’re tired. Come back to bed.”
When he says this, I know he really means Lie back down and let’s have some of the sex before Phoebs is up.
The problem is, I can’t risk the chance that doing that with him will feel wrong now.
Fucking Elliot.
I just need a couple of days of distance from it, that’s all.
then
thursday, december 20
fifteen years ago
I’d never spent Christmas away from home before, but early December that first year at the cabin, Dad said we were going to have an adventure. To some parents, this might have meant a trip to Paris or a cruise to somewhere exotic. To my dad, it meant an old-fashioned holiday in our new house, lighting the Danish kalenderlys – a Christmas candle – and enjoying roast duck, cabbage, beetroot, and potatoes for Christmas dinner.
We arrived around dinnertime on the twentieth, our car bursting with packages and newly purchased decorations, followed closely by a man from town with a gold tooth, a wooden leg, and a trailer carrying our freshly cut Christmas tree.
I watched as they wrestled with the mammoth tree, wondering briefly if it would even fit through our front door. It was cold outside, and I shuffled my feet on the ground to keep warm. Without thinking, I looked over my shoulder at the Petropoulos house.
The windows glowed, some of them foggy with condensation. A steady stream of smoke rose from a crooked chimney, curling like ribbon before disappearing into blackness.
We’d been to the cabin three times since October, and during each visit Elliot had come to the door, knocked, and Dad let him upstairs. We would lie on the floor of my closet – slowly being converted into a tiny library – and read for hours.
But I’d yet to visit his house. I tried to guess which room was his, to imagine what he might be doing. I wondered what Christmas was like for them, in a house with a dad and a mom, four kids, and a dog who looked more horse than canine. I bet it smelled like cookies and freshly cut pine. I decided it was probably hard to find someplace quiet to read.
We had been there barely an hour when the old chiming doorbell rang. I opened it to find Elliot and Miss Dina, holding a paper plate laden with something heavy and covered in foil.
“We brought you cookies,” Elliot said, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. His mouth was newly crammed with braces. His face was covered by a metallic network of headgear.
I stared wide-eyed at him, and he glowered at me, cheeks growing pink. “Focus on the cookies, Macy.”
“Do we have guests, min lille blomst?” Dad asked from the kitchen. In his voice I heard the mild disapproval; the unspoken Can’t the boy wait until tomorrow?
“I’m not staying, Duncan,” Miss Dina called. “Just walked these cookies over, but you send Elliot home whenever you two are ready to eat, okay?”
“Dinner is almost ready,” Dad said in reply, his calm voice hiding any outward reaction to anyone who didn’t know him as well as I did.
I walked to the kitchen and slid the plate of cookies beside him on the island. A peace offering.
“We’re going to read,” I told him. “Okay?”
Dad looked at me, and then down at the cookies, and relented. “Thirty minutes.”
Elliot came willingly, following me past the hulking tree and up the stairs.
Christmas music filtered up the open landing from the kitchen, but it vanished as we stepped into the closet. In the time since we’d bought the house, Dad had lined the walls with shelves and added a beanbag chair in the corner, facing the small futon couch against the front wall. Pillows from home were scattered around, and it was starting to feel cozy, like the inside of a genie’s bottle.
I closed the door behind us.
“So what’s with the new hardware?” I asked, motioning to his face. He shrugged but said nothing. “Do you have to wear the mask all the time?”
“It’s headgear, Macy. Usually only when I sleep, but I decided I want these braces off sooner.”
“Why?”
He stared back blankly at me, and, yeah, I got it.
“Are they annoying?” I asked.
His face twisted into a sardonic grin. “Do they look comfortable?”
“No. They look painful and nerdy.”
“You’re painful and nerdy,” he teased.
I flopped down onto the beanbag chair with a book and watched him peruse the shelves.
“You’ve got all of the Anne of Green Gables books,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“I’ve never read them.” He pulled one from the lineup and curled onto the futon. “Favorite word?”
Already this ritual seemed to roll out of him and into the room. It didn’t even catch me off guard this time. Looking down at my book, I thought for a second before offering, “Hushed. You?”
“Persimmon.”
Without further conversation, we began to read.
“Is it hard?” Elliot asked suddenly, and I looked up to meet his eyes: amber and deep and anxious. He cleared his throat awkwardly, clarifying, “Holidays without your mom?”
I was so startled by the question that I quickly blinked away. Inside, I begged him not to ask more. Even three years after her death, my mom’s face swam continuously in my thoughts: dancing gray eyes, thick black hair, deep brown skin, her lopsided smile waking me up every morning until that first one she missed. Every time I looked in the mirror I saw her reflected back at me. So yeah, hard didn’t cover it. Hard was like describing a mountain as a lump, like describing the ocean as a puddle.
And neither of those things could contain my feelings about Christmas without her.