Love and Other Words

by Christina Lauren

  But something irreparable has happened in my heart. This shaking of my conviction started with the sex I could barely have with Sean the other morning, and it continued ripping down the middle today with the two of them here. I know Sabrina notices the looks Elliot and I can’t seem to stop sharing. Maybe she notices, too, the way Sean and I barely interact.

  It’s hitting me at such an odd time that Elliot is here, he’s here. He’s back in front of me, accessible. I could reach out and touch him. I could crawl over to him, into his lap, feel the warmth of his arms around me.

  He could be mine, still.

  Why didn’t I have this reaction when I should have – two weeks ago?

  I reel back through all the things that have happened to me since our falling-out, and other than Dad dying, nothing else feels all that significant. It’s as if life was just on hold, I was moving along, getting things done, but not really living. Is that awful, or fantastic? I have no idea.

  Sabrina’s hand comes over mine on the picnic blanket, and I meet her eyes, wondering how much she reads on my face.

  “Okay there?” she asks, and I nod, forcing a smile and wishing like hell I believed it.

  then

  twelve years ago

  T

  he only reason I made it through freshman and most of sophomore year was because of Elliot – and Dad’s willingness to spend nearly every weekend up in Healdsburg. The weekends we were up there were spent reading, tromping through the forest, and on occasional outings to Santa Rosa. Once, Elliot and I even ventured together as far as a concert all the way down in Oakland. Elliot was more family than friend, but over time, he became more personal in some ways than family, too.

  But what all of this closeness meant was that whenever we missed a weekend at the cabin, the intervening weeks seemed interminable. We both did well in school, but I hated the social posturing and politics of high school friendships. Nikki and Danny felt the same about it, and were always zero drama – we spent lunch together every day as a group of outcasts-by-choice, sitting on a sloping patch of grass and watching most of the chaos unfold.

  But after school, Nikki went to spend time with her grandmother, Danny went home to skateboard with the kids on his street, and I carried out my weekday routine that felt nearly ritualistic: swim practice, homework, eat, shower, bed. That we did nothing together outside of school made it hard to form very tight emotional bonds with them, but all three of us seemed oddly fine with it.

  As spring of sophomore year wound down, I grew acutely aware of Elliot becoming… more. Not only intellectually, but physically, too. Seeing him only on weekends and during the summers made it feel like I was watching a time-lapse video of a tree growing, a flower blooming, a field sprouting across the year.

  “Favorite word.” He shifted on the pile of pillows, eyes moving over me. They were doing their own catch-up, apparently.

  It was May 14, and I hadn’t seen Elliot since my sixteenth birthday weekend in March – the longest we’d gone in nearly two years. He was… different. Bigger, somehow darker. He had new frames, thick black ones. His hair was too long, his shirt stretched tight across his chest. His jeans skimmed the tops of his black sneakers. New jeans, then, too.

  “Tremble,” I said. “You?”

  He swallowed and replied, “Acerbic.”

  “Ooh, good one. Update?” I settled in, picking up a book of Dickinson Dad had left on my bed.

  “I’m considering learning to skate.”

  I glanced up at him, eyes wide. “Like ice skate?”

  He glared at me. “No, Macy. Like skateboard.”

  I laughed at the emphasis he put on the word, but stopped when I took in his expression. In a pulse I wondered whether he was learning because he knew it was something Danny did… “Sorry, it’s just… maybe just say skateboard.”

  He nodded tightly. “Anyway. I saved up and am looking into boards.”

  I bit back a smile. The boy was so hopeless. “There has to be a website that has lingo or something.”

  He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes, annoyed.

  “Sorry. Go ahead.”

  “Also,” he said, staring down at his shirt as if engrossed with the hem, “I’m taking some of my classes next semester at Santa Rosa.”

  “What?” I gasped. “Santa Rosa as in college?”

  He nodded.

  “As a high school junior?” I knew Elliot was smart, but… he was still only a sophomore now, and already qualified for college courses?

  “Yeah, I know. Biology and…” He blinked away, suddenly fascinated with something in the corner of the room.

  “Biology and what, Elliot?”

  “Some math.”

  “‘Some math’?” I gaped at him. He’d finished advanced calc already? I mentally glared at my impending algebra course.

  “So the skateboarding is maybe to help me bond with some of the students in my grade.”

  The vulnerability in his voice made me feel like an enormous jerk. “But you’re with them every day at school. Right?”

  He was quiet, watching me. “Yeah, after school. At lunch.”

  “Wait. You’re not in classes with kids in your grade now?”

  “Only homeroom.” He swallowed and attempted a smile. “I’ve been working on my own at school but I’ll start this semester at SRJC.”

  I glanced down at the book in his hand. Franny and Zooey. It was dog-eared because we’d each read it several times.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were so special?”

  He laughed quietly at my question and then it transitioned into a full-on laugh attack.

  “Sorry,” he said, slowly catching his breath. “I don’t really think of it that way.”

  I stared at him, trying to figure out why he thought it was so funny.

  “It’s just been this semester,” he explained. “And, I don’t know.” He looked up and suddenly seemed years older. I had a preemptive pang for our lives in the future, wondering whether we’d be close like this forever. The possibility that we wouldn’t was revolting to me. “It didn’t seem like the right thing to include in an email because it seems sort of braggy.”

  “Well, I’m super proud of you.”

  He bit his lip through a smile. “Super?”

  “Yeah. Super.” I lifted my head, shifting my pillow. “What else is new?”

  “There’s a new ‘skate park’” – he made quotation marks with his fingers and a teasing little grin – “just past the Safeway, though I’ve been learning in the beat-up parking lot behind the laundromat. And, let’s see… Brandon and Christian are going hiking in Yellowstone for a month this summer with Brandon’s dad.”

  His two closest guy friends. “You’re not going?”

  He shook his head. “Nah. Christian is already talking about how much booze he’s going to hide in his suitcase, and it sounds like a mess.”

  I didn’t press. I couldn’t really see Elliot hiking in Yellowstone anyway.

  “Go on.”

  “Went to a prom,” he mumbled.

  The sound of tires screeching to a halt echoed through my head. Taking classes at a junior college seemed tiny compared to the magnitude of this omission.

  “A prom? But you’re a sophomore.”

  “I went with a junior.”

  “Was he cute?” I swallowed my more honest, bitter reaction.

  “Ha ha. She is fine looking. Her name is Emma.”

  I made a face. He ignored it. “‘Fine looking,’” I repeated. “What a roaring compliment.”

  “It was pretty boring. Dancing. Punch. Awkward silences.”

  I grinned. “Bummer.”

  He shrugged but grinned back. Not a half-hearted half smile – a full, eager one. But it slowly straightened as my expression darkened. I remembered the name Emma, and the cute, rosy-cheeked preteen in the photo on his bulletin board.

  “You mean the same Emma from that picture?”

  He gave a deliberately casual shr
ug. “Yeah. We’ve known each other forever.”

  Forever. My stomach twisted. “Did you get lucky?” I asked, keeping my tone light.

  His eyes narrowed and he shook his head. “No… I’m not sure I like her like that.”

  Not sure?

  “Does it matter for guys?”

  He continued to stare at me, confused.

  “Did you kiss her?”

  His cheeks pinked, and I had my answer.

  Elliot had kissed someone.

  Maybe he had kissed a lot of someones.

  I mean, of course he had. Not everyone was as picky and socially stunted at the romance game as I was. Elliot was turning seventeen in a matter of months. It seemed almost laughable that I imagined he was innocent in the way I was. I was sure he’d done a lot more than kissing. My blood seemed to sour inside my chest, and I let out a little growl at my lap.

  “Why are you so mad all of a sudden?” he asked quietly.

  I kept my head down. “I don’t know.”

  After all, Elliot was just my friend.

  My Everyfriend.

  “What’s your update?” he asked.

  I looked back up, eyes flashing. “I had my first orgasm.”

  His brows lifted, his face grew red, and his mouth formed about a hundred different shapes before he spoke. “What?”

  “Or. Gaz. Um.”

  “You’re… sixteen.” He seemed to realize at the same time I did that this wasn’t actually all that scandalous an age.

  “You mean it’s shameful to be so old?”

  He let out a nervous laugh.

  “Besides,” I said, looking up at him, “you’ve had one. Probably lots and lots, thinking about dragons.”

  His neck flushed bright red and he sat up, sliding his hands between his knees. “But… only by myself.”

  His words sent a cold flush of relief through me, but my temper was already off and running. “Well, what did you think I meant?”

  His eyes suddenly fixated on my hands. “Oh. So no one…”

  “Touched me?” I lifted my chin, struggling to not look away. “No.”

  “Oh.” He swallowed audibly. All around us, the blue walls seemed to close in.

  “Is that a weird update?” I asked.

  He shifted where he sat. “Sort of.”

  I felt mortified. The blush I’d been fighting seemed to explode beneath my skin, and I wanted to roll over, press my face back into my pillow. I’d been jealous, trying to get a rise out of him, and had basically just thrown his own honesty back in his face. “Sorry.”

  “No, it’s…” Elliot scratched his eyebrow, pushed his glasses up his nose, rallying. “It’s good you told me.”

  “You said you did it, too.”

  He cleared his throat, nodded sternly. “It’s normal for guys my age.”

  “So it’s not normal for girls?”

  With a cough, he managed, “Of course it is. I just meant —”

  “I’m joking.” I closed my eyes for a breath, working to get my own craziness back under control. What was with me?

  “What did you think about?” The last word of his came out sticky, caught in a slightly strangled voice.

  I stared at him. “I thought, ‘Holy hell, this is amazing.’”

  He laughed, but it was awkward and high-pitched. “No. Before. During.”

  I shrugged. “Being touched by someone else like that. Do you still think about dragons?”

  His eyes flickered over every part of me all at once. “No,” he said, not laughing at my joke even a little. “I think about… wrists and ears, and skin and legs. Girl parts. Girls.” His words all ran together and it took me a beat to separate them.

  Girls? My blood heated with jealousy.

  “Any girls in particular?”

  He opened a book, thumbed a page. He held still like he did when he omitted information. “Sometimes.”

  That was the end of the conversation. He didn’t ask me anything else and didn’t offer more.

  now

  saturday, october 14

  I

  ’m conscious that Elliot and I are in a bit of a social fishbowl, with Sabrina and Nikki clearly tracking how much time we spend orbiting each other. So, despite feeling constantly aware of him, I don’t really speak to Elliot much at the picnic and it makes me crazy, wondering what he’s thinking about all of this. He spends most of his time talking to Danny, while Nikki, Sabrina, Dave, and I catch up. I get the distinct impression that once Sabrina and Dave get time alone in the car on the way back they’re going to explode in exasperated agreement that Sean is Really The Most Boring.

  Based on my own observations, though, I can’t really blame them. Sean is tuned in to Phoebe, but is otherwise fucking around on his phone, or jumping into conversations only to add his thoughts before ducking back out again. I have this weird, bubbling awareness that I’ve never been in this situation with him before – sitting with a group of my friends, rather than a group of art enthusiasts or benefactors dying to get Sean Chen’s attention. And apparently, unless he’s being courted, he retreats, socially. I have a niggling fear that he’s always been this way, it’s just never come up, because we’ve never hung out with friends.

  Does Sean even have friends?

  Around four, the clouds roll in and it looks like it might rain. Because California is turning into a dustbowl, we clean up happily, as if we are a bunch of busybody relatives getting out of the way for some newlyweds staying over.

  Sean carries Phoebe on his shoulders toward the parking lot, and I follow just behind, with Sabrina, pushing Viv in the stroller.

  “You have to admit that’s pretty cute,” I tell her, lifting my chin to the duo in front of us. The stab of protectiveness I felt for him earlier has morphed into a strange sense of desperation. Sean and I are a great fit; we were before Elliot, and we are now. I’m hunting for evidence. My fondness for the sight of him and Phoebe is proof.

  My appreciation of his ass in those jeans is proof.

  She laughs. “He seems like a really great dad.”

  Sigh. “Message received.”

  Keeping her voice down so others can’t hear us, Sabrina says, “We need to have a serious conversation about this. An intervention.”

  “Don’t start.”

  “When have I ever talked you out of a relationship?” she say, eyes wide. “Doesn’t that carry some weight?”

  I open my mouth to answer when out of the corner of my eye I realize that Elliot is only a few paces behind us, and has probably heard every word.

  I give him a knowing look. “Hey.”

  He’s been studying something on his phone, but it’s all a ruse. Elliot is about as interested in dicking around on an iPhone as he is in sticking a spoon in his ear. He catches up with two long steps and comes between us, putting an arm around our shoulders. “Ladies.”

  “You heard every word of that, didn’t you?” I ask.

  He slants his eyes to me, shrugging. “Yes.”

  “Snooper.”

  This makes him laugh. “I was coming up to thank you for inviting me. It wasn’t like I was hoping to catch you discussing Sean.” In a quieter voice, laden with meaning, he mumbles, “Trust me.”

  “The honesty here is a little disarming,” Sabrina interjects. “I’m not sure if I should make an awkward getaway or stay and hear more.” She pauses. “I really want to hear more.”

  “It’s always been that way with us,” I tell her.

  “It’s true,” Elliot says. “We’ve never been very good at lying to each other. When I was fifteen, Macy told me to change my deodorant. She hinted that the old one might not be working anymore.”

  “Elliot pointed out the specific day he noticed I was getting boobs.”

  Sabrina stares at us.

  “I made Elliot bring Imodium with us when we went to see the Backstreet Boys, because I was having tummy troubles.”