Love and Other Words(77)

“Talk to me, Mace,” he urges. “Please.”

Four…

Five…

“I want you,” he repeats, and his voice carries a strange distance. “But I’m realizing now that maybe I shouldn’t.”

Six…

Seven…

By the time I reach ten, my hands are no longer shaking when I lower them. But because I didn’t expect Elliot to leave, I never heard him walk away.

In the dark night, the reception on the outdoor porch is a beacon of tiny lights and stars thrown from candlelight traveling through glasses of champagne. Heat lamps placed at regular intervals are warm enough in the night chill to make the humid air warp around the slow-dancing couples.

I find George to the left of the dance floor, near the wedding cake, which has already been cut and shared. His cheeks are red, smile wide, eyes watery with happy inebriation.

“Mace!” he yells, pulling me into a lumbering hug. “Where’s my brother?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing.”

He reaches up, pulling a small twig from my hair and good God it only occurs to me now that I have no idea what I look like coming out of the gardens after fucking Elliot.

George grins. “I suspect you have a better idea than I do.”

Liz comes up beside him, grinning at her tipsy husband. “Macy! Whoa, you look…” Understanding comes into her eyes and she barks out a laugh. “Where’s Elliot?”

“The question of the hour,” George murmurs.

“I’m right here.”

We turn, finding him standing just to the side, holding a half-finished glass of champagne. The warm flush I felt on his cheek, against my lips, is gone. In its place is a pale stare, a slash of a frown. His tie is missing, shirt unbuttoned at the collar and smudged with both dirt and lipstick. Looking at him now, it is doubly obvious what we’ve been doing.

I smile at him, trying to communicate with my eyes that there’s more to discuss here, but he’s not looking at me anymore. Tilting the flute to his lips, he downs the rest, places it on the tray of a passing waiter, and then says, “Macy, did you need me to drop you off at your motel?”

Shock causes a cold wave to pass through me. George and Liz go quiet and then shuffle away under a haze of secondhand mortification. My heart takes off, a snare drum leading into a cymbal crash as I realize I’m being asked to leave.

“It’s fine,” I tell him, “I can grab a Lyft.”

He nods. “Cool.”

I take a step forward, reaching for him, and he stares at my hand on his arm with a frown, as if it’s caked in mud.

“Can we talk tomorrow?” I ask.

His face twists, and he picks up another glass of champagne, downing this one in the time it takes for the waiter to offer me one, and for me to decline. Elliot grabs another before the anxious waiter ducks away.

“Sure we can talk tomorrow,” he says, waving the glass. “We can talk about the weather. Maybe our favorite type of pie? Or – oh – we haven’t yet talked about the merits of a Crock-Pot versus a pressure cooker. We could do that?”

“I mean finish what we’ve started,” I whisper, realizing we’ve drawn the attention of a few family members. “We weren’t finished.”

Alex watches us at a distance with wide, worried eyes.

“Weren’t we? I thought we had the grand finale. You did what you’re best at,” he says, smiling grimly. “You shut down.”

“You walked away,” I retort.

He laughs harshly, shaking his head and echoing in a murmur, “I walked away.”

Softening, I say, “Tomorrow… I’ll come by.”

Elliot lifts the glass, swallowing four gulps and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Sure thing, Macy.”

At one in the morning, the sky feels haunted in its darkness. I climb the porch to my old summer home, skipping over the predictably broken step. Using the long-ignored key on my ring, I let myself inside, where it’s even colder than it is in the woods; the insulation keeps the chill stored within the dark plaster walls. I turn on lights as I go, and kneel to set a small fire in the wood-burning stove.

Obviously, if I’ve been here only once in the past ten years, I should remember the exact dates, but I don’t. I only know it was a week, maybe two, before I left for my sophomore year at Tufts, and we drove up at night to sift through our possessions and move all the cherished things into closets we could lock, to keep curious vacation renters from taking anything. The memory of that night feels like a blur of watery color streaking through fog.

Upstairs, I sift through the other keys on my ring, finding the smaller one, and slide it into the lock on Dad’s closet door. It enters in jagged steps, sticking halfway through, requiring a tiny wiggle before it clicks and turns with a rusty protest.

His closet opens with a whiff of musty air, and my stomach drops when the scent and realization merge: I’ll need to throw most of this out. He kept some shirts and pants up here. Hiking boots, a fly-fishing vest. There are photo albums on the shelf up top, a nativity diorama I made in fourth grade. Letters from Mom. And, at the back, the stack of questionable magazines.

My butt lands on the floor before I realize I’ve been sliding down the door frame. Beneath the smell of mildew, there is the unmistakable smell of him: the Danish cigarettes, his aftershave, the bright linen scent of laundry. I pull a shirt from a hanger – messily; the wire flies up off the rod and hits the door on the way down. Pressing the flannel to my face, I inhale, choking through a sob.