Love and Other Words

by Christina Lauren

  And she’s right. There is no rush. We’ve only been together for a few months. It’s just that Sean is the first man I’ve met in more than ten years who I can be with and not feel like I’m holding back somehow. He’s easy, and calm, and when his six-year-old daughter Phoebe asked when we were getting married, it seemed to switch something over in him, propelling him to ask me himself, later.

  “I swear,” I tell her, “I have no interesting updates. Wait – no. I have a dentist appointment next week.” Sabrina laughs. “That’s what we’ve come to, that’s the only thing other than you that will break up the monotony for the foreseeable future. Work, sleep, repeat.”

  Sabrina sees this as the invitation it is to talk freely about her new family of three, and she unrolls a list of accomplishments: the first smile, the first belly laugh, and just yesterday, a tiny fist shooting out with accuracy and firmly grabbing her mama’s finger.

  I listen, loving each normal detail acknowledged for what it really is: a miracle. I wish I got to hear all of her “normal details” every day. I love what I do, but I miss just… talking.

  I’m scheduled today for noon, and will probably be on the unit until the middle of the night. I’ll come home and sleep for a few hours, and do it all over again tomorrow. Even after coffee with Sabrina and Viv, the rest of this day will bleed into the next and – unless something truly awful happens on the unit – I won’t remember a single thing about it.

  So as she talks, I try to absorb as much of this outside world as I can. I pull in the scent of coffee and toast, the sound of music rumbling beneath the bustle of the customers. When Sabrina bends down to pull a pacifier out of her diaper bag, I glance up to the counter, scanning the woman with the pink dreadlocks, the shorter man with a neck tattoo taking coffee orders, and, in front of them, the long masculine torso that slaps me into acute awareness.

  His hair is nearly black. It’s thick and messy, falling over the tops of his ears. His collar is folded under on one side, his shirttails untucked from a pair of worn black jeans. His Vans are slip-on and faded old-school check print. A well-used messenger bag is slung across one shoulder and rests against the opposite hip.

  With his back to me, he looks like a thousand other men in Berkeley, but I know exactly which man this is.

  It’s the heavy, dog-eared book tucked under his arm that gives it away: there’s only one person I know who rereads Ivanhoe every October. Ritually, and with absolute adoration.

  Unable to look away, I’m locked in anticipation of the moment he turns and I can see what nearly eleven years have done to him. I barely give thought to my own appearance: mint-green scrubs, practical sneakers, hair in a messy ponytail. Then again, it never occurred to either of us to consider our own faces or degree of put-togetherness before. We were always too busy memorizing each other.

  Sabrina pulls my attention away while the ghost of my past is paying for his order.

  “Mace?”

  I blink to her. “Sorry. I. Sorry. The… what?”

  “I was just babbling about diaper rash. I’m more interested in what’s got you so…” She turns to follow where I’d been looking. “Oh.”

  Her “oh” doesn’t contain understanding yet. Her “oh” is purely about how the man looks from behind. He’s tall – that happened suddenly, when he turned fifteen. And his shoulders are broad – that happened suddenly, too, but later. I remember noticing it the first time he hovered above me in the closet, his jeans at his knees, his broad form blocking out the weak overhead light. His hair is thick – but that’s always been true. His jeans rest low on his hips and his ass looks amazing. I… have no idea when that happened.

  Basically, he looks exactly like the kind of guy we would ogle silently before turning to each other to share the wordless I know, right? face. It’s one of the most surreal realizations of my life: he’s grown into the kind of stranger I would dreamily admire.

  It’s strange enough to see him from the back, and I’m watching him with such intensity that for a second, I convince myself that it’s not him after all.

  Maybe it could be anyone – and after a decade apart, how well do I really know his body, anyway?

  But then he turns, and I feel all the air get sucked out of the room. It’s if I’ve been punched in the solar plexus, my diaphragm momentarily paralyzed.

  Sabrina hears the creaking, dusty sound coming from me and turns back around. I sense her starting to rise from her chair. “Mace?”

  I pull in a breath, but it’s shallow and sour somehow, making my eyes burn.

  His face is narrower, jaw sharper, morning stubble thicker. He’s still wearing the same style of thick-rimmed glasses, but they no longer dwarf his face. His bright hazel eyes are still magnified by the thick lenses. His nose is the same – but it’s no longer too big for his face. And his mouth is the same, too – straight, smooth, capable of the world’s most perfectly sardonic grin.

  I can’t even imagine what expression he would make if he saw me here. It might be one I’ve never seen him make before.

  “Mace?” Sabrina reaches with a free hand, grabbing my forearm. “Honey, you okay?”

  I swallow, and close my eyes to break my own trance. “Yeah.”

  She sounds unconvinced: “You sure?”

  “I mean…” Swallowing again, I open my eyes and intend to look at her, but my gaze is drawn back over her shoulder again. “That guy over there… It’s Elliot.”

  This time, her “Oh” is meaningful.

  then

  friday, august 9

  fifteen years ago

  I

  first saw Elliot at the open house.

  The cabin was empty; unlike the meticulously staged real estate “products” in the Bay Area, this funky house for sale in Healdsburg was left completely unfurnished. Although as an adult I would learn to appreciate the potential in undecorated spaces, to my adolescent eyes, the emptiness felt cold and hollow. Our house in Berkeley was unselfconsciously cluttered. While she was alive, Mom’s sentimental tendencies overrode Dad’s Danish minimalism, and after she died he clearly couldn’t find it in himself to dial back the decor.

  Here, the walls had darker patches where old paintings had hung for years. A path was worn into the carpet, revealing the preferred route of the previous inhabitants: from the front door to the kitchen. The upstairs was open to the entryway, the hallway looking over the first floor with only an old wooden railing at the edge. Upstairs, the doors to the rooms were all closed, giving the long hallway a mildly haunted feeling.

  “At the end,” Dad said, lifting his chin to indicate where he meant for me to go. He had looked at the house online, and knew a bit more than I did what to expect. “Your room could be that one down there.”

  I climbed the dark stairs, passing the master bedroom and bath, and continued on to the end of the deep, narrow hallway. I could see a pale green light coming from beneath the door – what I would soon know to be the result of spring-green paint illuminated by late-afternoon sun. The crystal knob was cold but unclouded, and it turned with a rusty whine. The door stuck, edges misshapen from the chronic dampness. I pushed with my shoulder, determined to get in, and nearly tumbled into the warm, bright room.

  It was longer than it was wide, maybe even doubled. A huge window took up most of the long wall, looking out onto a hillside dense with moss-covered trees. Like a patient butler, a tall, skinny window sat at the far end, on the narrow wall, overlooking the Russian River in the distance.

  If the downstairs was unimpressive, the bedrooms, at least, held promise.

  Feeling uplifted, I turned back to go find Dad.

  “Did you see the closet in there, Mace?” he asked just as I stepped out. “I thought we could make it into a library for you.” He was emerging from the master suite. I heard one of the agents call for him, and instead of coming to me, he made his way back downstairs.

  I returned to the bedroom, walked to the back. The door to the closet opened without any pr
otest. The knob was even warm in my hand.

  Like every other space in the house, it was undecorated. But it wasn’t empty.

  Confusion and mild panic set my heart pounding.

  Sitting in the deep space was a boy. He had been reading, tucked into the far corner, back and neck curled into a C to fit himself into the lowest point beneath the sloped ceiling.

  He couldn’t have been much older than thirteen, same as me. Skinny, with thick dark hair that badly needed to see scissors, enormous hazel eyes behind substantial glasses. His nose was too big for his face, teeth too big for his mouth, and presence entirely too big for a room that was meant to be empty.

  The question erupted from me, edged with unease: “Who are you?”

  He stared at me, wide-eyed in surprise. “I didn’t realize anyone would actually come see this place.”

  My heart was still hammering. And something about his gaze – so unblinking, eyes huge behind the lenses – made me feel oddly exposed. “We’re thinking of buying it.”

  The boy stood, dusting off his clothes, revealing that the widest part of each leg was at the knee. His shoes were brown polished leather, his shirt ironed and tucked into khaki shorts. He looked completely harmless… but as soon as he took a step forward, my heart tripped in panic, and I blurted: “My dad has a black belt.”

  He looked a mixture of scared and skeptical. “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  His brows drew together. “In what?”

  I dropped my fists from where they’d rested at my hips. “Okay, no black belt. But he’s huge.”

  This he seemed to believe, and he looked past me anxiously.

  “What are you doing in here anyway?” I asked, glancing around. The space was enormous for a closet. A perfect square, at least twelve feet on each side, with a high ceiling that sloped dramatically at the back of the room, where it was probably only three feet high. I could imagine sitting in here, on a couch, with pillows and books, and spending the perfect Saturday afternoon.

  “I like to read in here.” He shrugged, and something dormant woke inside me at the mental symmetry, a buzz I hadn’t felt in years. “My mom had a key when the Hanson family owned the place, and they were never here.”

  “Are your parents going to buy this house?”

  He looked confused. “No. I live next door.”

  “So aren’t you trespassing?”

  He shook his head. “It’s an open house, remember?”

  I looked him over again. His book was thick, with a dragon on the cover. He was tall, and angled at every possible location – all sharp elbows and pointy shoulders. Hair was shaggy but combed. Fingernails were trimmed.

  “So you just hang out here?”

  “Sometimes,” he said. “It’s been empty for a couple years.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Are you sure you’re supposed to be in here? You look out of breath, like you’re nervous.”

  He shrugged, one pointy shoulder lifted to the sky. “Maybe I just came back from running a marathon.”

  “You don’t look like you could run to the corner.”

  He paused for a breath, and then burst out laughing. It sounded like a laugh that wasn’t given freely very often, and something inside me bloomed.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “Elliot. What’s yours?”

  “Macy.”

  Elliot stared at me, pushing his glasses up with his finger, but they immediately slid down again. “You know, if you buy this house I won’t just come over and read in here.”

  There was a challenge there, some choice offered. Friend or foe?

  I could really use a friend.

  I exhaled, giving him a begrudging smile. “If we buy this house you can come over and read if you want.”

  He grinned, so wide I could count his teeth. “Maybe all this time I was just getting it warmed up for you.”

  now

  tuesday, october 3

  E

  lliot still hasn’t seen me.

  He waits near the espresso bar for his drink with his head ducked as he looks down. In a sea of people connecting to the world via the isolation of their smartphones, Elliot is reading a book.

  Does he even have a phone? For anyone else, it would be an absurd question. Not for him. Eleven years ago he did, but it was a hand-me-down from his father and the kind of flip-phone that required him to hit the 5 key three times if he wanted to type an L. He rarely used it as anything other than a paperweight.

  “When was the last time you saw him?” Sabrina asks.

  I blink over to her, brows drawn. I know she knows the answer to this question, at least generally. But my expression relaxes when I understand there’s nothing else she can do right now but make conversation; I’ve turned into a mute maniac.

  “My senior year in high school. New Year’s.”

  She gives a full, bared-teeth wince. “Right.”

  Some instinct kicks in, some self-preservationist energy propelling me up and out of my chair.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, looking down at Sabrina and Viv. “I’m going to head out.”

  “Of course. Yeah. Totally.”

  “I’ll call this weekend? Maybe we can do Golden Gate Park.”

  She’s still nodding as if my robotic suggestion is even a remote possibility. We both know I haven’t had a weekend off since before I started my residency in July.

  Trying to move as inconspicuously as possible, I pull my bag over my shoulder and bend to kiss Sabrina’s cheek.

  “I love you,” I say, standing, and wishing I could take her with me. She smells like baby, too.

  Sabrina nods, returning the sentiment, and then, while I gaze at Viv and her chubby little fist, she glances back over her shoulder and freezes.

  From her posture, I know Elliot has seen me.

  “Um…” she says, turning back and lifting her chin as if I should probably take a look. “He’s coming.”

  I dig into my bag, working to appear extremely busy and distracted. “I’m gonna jet,” I mumble.

  “Mace?”

  I freeze, one hand on the strap of my bag, my eyes on the floor. A nostalgic pang resonates through me as soon as I hear his voice. It had been high and squeaky until it broke. He got endless shit about how nasal and whiny he was, and then, one day, the universe had the last laugh, giving Elliot a voice like warm, rich honey.

  He says my name again – no nickname, this time, but quieter: “Macy Lea?”

  I look up, and – in an impulse I’m sure I will be laughing about until I die – I lift my hand and wave limply, offering a bright “Elliot! Hey!”

  As if we’re casual acquaintances from freshman orientation.

  You know, as if we met once on the train from Santa Barbara.

  Just as he pushes his thick hair out of his eyes in a gesture of disbelief I’ve seen him make a million times, I turn and press through the crowd and out onto the sidewalk. I’m jogging in the wrong direction before catching my mistake halfway down the block and whipping around. Two long strides back the other way, with my head down, heart hammering, and I slam right into a broad chest.

  “Oh! I’m sorry!” I blurt before I look up and realize what I’ve done.

  Elliot’s hands come around my upper arms, holding me steady only a few inches away from him. I know he’s looking at my face, waiting for me to meet his gaze, but my eyes are stuck on the sight of his Adam’s apple, and my thoughts are stuck remembering how I used to stare at his neck, covertly, on and off for hours while we were reading together in the closet.

  “Macy. Seriously?” he says quietly, meaning a thousand things.

  Seriously, is it you?

  Seriously, why did you just run off?

  Seriously, where have you been for the past decade?

  Part of me wishes I could be the kind of person to just push past and run away and pretend this never happened. I could get back on BART, hop on the Muni to the hospital, and delve into a busy workday man
aging emotions that, honestly, are much bigger and more deserving than these.

  But another part of me has been expecting this exact moment for the past eleven years. Relief and anguish pulse heavily in my blood. I’ve wanted to see him every day. But also, I never wanted to see him again.

  “Hi.” I finally look up at him. I’m trying to figure out what to say here; my head is full of senseless words. It’s a storm of black and white.

  “Are you…?” he starts breathlessly. He still hasn’t let go of me. “Did you move back here?”