Love and Other Words(46)

When she’s left again, my phone vibrates in my bag and I pull it out, laughing. It’s a message from Elliot, whom I haven’t spoken to since the picnic.

I turn my phone around, showing it to Sabrina, and she laughs, shaking her head. “Intervention complete.”

then

saturday, january 14
eleven years ago
E

lliot sprawled on the floor, pulling a new, furry pillow off the futon and tucking it beneath his head. It was nearly two p.m., and Dad and I had barely made it up here due to some terrifying dry rattling under the hood of the Volvo. While Dad and Mr. Nick had worked on Dad’s car, Elliot and I had devoured some cold leftover chicken on the front steps. Back in the warmth of the house, I was more likely to take a nap than read an entire chapter.

Elliot’s voice seemed deeper than it had even the weekend before: “Favorite word?”

I closed my eyes, thinking. “Excruciating.”

“Wow.” Elliot paused, and when I looked over at him, he was staring at me curiously. “That’s a zinger. Update?”

I kicked off my shoes and one of them barely missed the side of his head. We’d spent the past hour together, but something about being back in the closet, with the blue walls, and stars, and the warm bulk of Elliot’s body nearby, seemed to loosen everything inside me. Things had been hard in ninth and tenth grade, but eleventh? Definitely the worst.

“Girls suck. Girls gossip, and are petty, and suck,” I said.

Elliot marked his place in his book and closed it, placing it at his side. “Elaborate.”

“My friend Nikki?” I said. “She likes this guy Ravesh. But Ravesh asked me to spring formal and I said no because he’s just a friend, but Nikki is mad at me anyway, as if I could help that Ravesh asked me and not her. So she told our friend —”

“Breathe.”

I took a deep breath. “She told our friend Elyse that I told Ravesh’s friend Astrid that I wanted to go with Ravesh just so he would ask me, and then I turned him down. Elyse believed her and now neither Nikki nor Elyse are speaking to me.”

“Neither Nikki nor Elyse is speaking to you,” he corrected, and then, at my glare, apologized under his breath before adding, “Clearly Elyse and Nikki is bitches.”

I laughed, and then laughed harder. Everything felt so easy in the closet. Why couldn’t it always feel this way?

He scratched his jaw, watching me. “You should take me to your spring formal.”

“You would go? You hate that stuff.”

Elliot nodded and licked his lips distractingly. “I would go.”

“Everyone wants to meet you.” I found myself unable to look away from his mouth, imagining being tasted.

“Well, that is perfectly lopsided. I have no desire to meet everyone.” He grinned at me. “But I do want to see you in something other than pajamas, jeans, or shorts.”

“You would really go to spring formal with me?”

He tilted his head, brows drawn. “Is it so hard to accept that I want to be the only person you’d consider taking to a stupid formal?”

“Why?”

“Because you’re my best friend, Macy, and despite your ridiculous reticence —”

“Good alliteration.”

“— you are the girl I want. I want to be together.”

My stomach flipped in thrill and anxiety. “You kiss other girls.”

“Rarely.”

“Uh, ever.”

“Obviously I wouldn’t if I could kiss you.”

I sighed, chewed my lip, fidgeted. “Why can’t everyone be like you?”

“I can be enough of your world that it feels like everyone is.”

I smiled up at him, softly, pressing down the familiar bubble of need. It was getting harder and harder to ignore that I really, truly loved Elliot.

“What’s your favorite word?” I asked him.

He sucked on his lower lip for a moment, thinking. “Vex,” he said quietly.

now

wednesday, november 8

A

fter that one text during lunch with Sabrina, things with Elliot snowball and we’re doing something we didn’t do even in high school: talking nearly every day. Maybe only for a few minutes. Sometimes it’s just over text. But I feel his presence almost constantly, and no matter how much I want to talk myself out of it, I know the gentle hum of relief in my thoughts is because of him.

Perhaps relatedly, things with Sean are… weird, at best. We’ve had zero arguments. We’ve had zero conversations about what we’re doing. When I happen to catch them awake, Phoebe seems happy to see me, Sean seems happy to see me. I’m sure if I planned a big wedding tomorrow, Sean would still happily show up. I’m sure if I put off planning it indefinitely, Sean would never ask about it.

I’m also sure I could leave and he would be fine with that, too.

It’s the strangest thing I’ve ever been a part of, and yet, it could be so fucking easy. It requires nothing of me, requires no involvement from my heart, and I know without a doubt that he doesn’t need me. We could have a relationship that gives us both sex, financial security, a roof over our heads, and stimulating conversation at the dinner table, but otherwise live entirely separate lives.

But the critical truths – that we aren’t really in love, never have been, and its absence troubles me – don’t seem to come in little drops of awareness. They’re suddenly there, in stark black and white, shouting This Relationship Is So Very Over every time we smile politely as we shift around each other at the bathroom sink.