Love and Other Words(63)

“I don’t want to interrupt the getting-ready process,” I say, pulling back, hesitating.

“Stop it.” He laughs. “You’re joking, right? If I come up there without you, they’ll just send me back down.”

A swarm of birds explodes into motion in my chest as I hear Mr. Nick yelling at George to go grab a suitcase from the car, Nick Jr. teasing Alex about something. I can hear Miss Dina’s full, round laugh, and her voice – still the same – telling Andreas he should let someone else tie his bow tie because it looks like a “limp Peter” around his neck.

We push the door open, creaking inside, and the entire room falls silent in a hush. Andreas turns from where he’d been futzing with his tie in the mirror. Nick Jr. and Alex straighten from where they appear to have been wrestling near the couch.

Miss Dina freezes with her hand on a pin in her hair.

“Macy!” she gasps. Her eyes immediately fill. She drops the pin, cupping her hands over her mouth.

I lift my hand in a shaking wave. Seeing their faces tunnels me back a decade, like I’m home for the first time in so long. “Hi, everyone.”

Elliot pulls me close to his side. “Doesn’t she look beautiful?”

I look up at him in shock, but his lazy grin tells me he’s not at all self-conscious under their scrutiny.

“Stunning,” Mr. Nick agrees.

Alex runs over, throwing her arms around my shoulders. “Do you remember me?”

I haven’t seen her since she was three, and couldn’t possibly tell her I’ve thought about her every day since then. Laughing, I wrap my arms around her long, willowy frame, asking, “Do you remember me?”

“Don’t,” Miss Dina says, shaking her head. “I’m going to cry.”

Nick Jr. glances at her and groans. “Ma, you’re already crying.”

Elliot lets me go but doesn’t move away as everyone comes over to hug me. When Andreas reaches me, he whispers a quiet “Thanks for coming,” and I answer with my own quiet “Congratulations, meathead.”

The scene explodes back into noise as Alex launches into a debate with her dad about why she should be allowed to wear her hair up, and George argues with Miss Dina about where he can find the suitcase. Elliot helps Andreas with his tie, and Liz walks in, carrying a tray of snacks for the wedding party. She’s wearing a shimmering blue dress – clearly she’s one of the bridesmaids.

“Hey, Macy!” she says, coming over to me. At the confused stare of the rest of Elliot’s family, she reminds them that we see each other every day at work, and the room explodes anew, as they all remember what this means – that little Macy is a doctor now! – and I’m hugged all over again.

Wine is poured, Alex’s hair is brushed down, and then up again to her father and older brothers’ dismay, and the whole time, Elliot is there, his arm pressed to my arm, my twin heartbeat, a comforting presence.

“Dad,” Elliot finally says, with a quiet, rumbling laugh. “She’s fourteen. She’s wearing a floor-length gown with sleeves. She’s not going to get pregnant if someone sees the back of her neck.”

Mr. Nick glares at Elliot for a few seconds and then shakes his head at his daughter and wife. “Put it up. I don’t care. It’s just a lot of skin.”

“It’s my neck!” Alex cries, frustrated. “Tell the guys not to look if it bothers them so much.”

“Amen,” I say, grinning at her. Her grateful smile is like a sunbeam cracking through the window.

As the argument picks up again, Elliot leans down and asks, quietly, right up against my ear, “Want to walk around the gardens?”

I nod, shivering at his proximity, and he guides me toward the door with his hand on my lower back before reaching for my fingers. I feel the attention of the entire room on our joined hands as we leave, and Alex’s confused “I thought she had a boyfriend?” followed by Miss Dina’s sharply hissed “Shhhh!” and Andreas’s “They broke up, remember?” in our wake.

Elliot looks down at me, grinning. “Is it just like you remembered?”

I lean into his shoulder. “Better.”

then

saturday, september 9
eleven years ago
T

he first trip after the summer – after our declaration that we were together, after that sweet, aching kiss – was in mid-September. The air was thick with the relentless heat of Indian summer, and I used it as an excuse to spend the entire weekend in my bikini.

Elliot… noticed.

Unfortunately, Dad noticed, too, and outright required us to spend our time reading downstairs or outside, and not in the closet.

That Saturday, we spread a blanket out on Elliot’s scraggly front lawn, beneath the enormous black oak, and gave our updates on friends, and school, and favorite words, but it had a different weight to it. We whispered it now, lying face-to-face on our sides, with Elliot’s fingers playing with the ends of my hair or brushing against my neck, his gaze dancing across the swell of my breasts.

According to rule number twenty-nine – When Macy is over sixteen and has her first serious boyfriend, make sure she is being safe – Dad put me on the pill almost immediately after that visit. I was still several months away from turning eighteen, and Dad told me he planned to call my “female doctor,” but only after giving me a stilted, awkward lecture that it wasn’t permission to have sex with Elliot, per se, but that he was trying to protect our futures.