Love and Other Words(39)

“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?”

“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.