Love and Other Words

by Christina Lauren

  It’s only been a few days, but I’m already wondering when you’re coming back.

  From: Macy Lea Sorensen

  Date: September 1, 8:07 PM

  To: Elliot P.

  Subject: re: Miss you

  I think this weekend. I went over to Nikki’s this afternoon, and Danny was there. They were playing video games, and were having so much fun, and all I could think was that I wanted you to be there.

  From: Macy Lea Sorensen

  Date: September 1, 8:12 PM

  To: Elliot P.

  Subject: re: Miss you

  Crap. Dad says we can’t this weekend, but maybe the weekend after. School starts on Tuesday and he wants to get a few things done here this weekend.

  From: Elliot P.

  Date: September 1, 9:18 PM

  To: Macy Lea Sorensen

  Subject: re: Miss you

  I think it’s probably a good idea if we just try to keep our heads down during the week. It’s going to be too hard, otherwise. I’m going crazy.

  From: Macy Lea Sorensen

  Date: September 1, 9:22 PM

  To: Elliot P.

  Subject: re: Miss you

  Do you think this is a bad idea? Being together?

  My phone rang in my hand, Elliot’s picture popping up on the screen. I had taken it only a week prior, when he was standing on a mossy rock in the woods behind our houses and staring up at the trees, trying to identify a bird he’d seen. In the photo, the sun caught him in profile, accentuating his jaw and the definition of his chest beneath his shirt.

  My heart was pounding so hard, and when I answered, my voice came out thick. “Hello?”

  “Macy, no,” he said immediately. “That’s not what I mean.”

  I nodded, staring at my wall, and the glossy poster of a unicorn there, which I’d had since I was eight and never bothered to take down. “Okay.”

  “I just mean,” he said quietly, “that we’ll drive ourselves nuts emailing every ten minutes every day of the week.”

  I sat down on my bed, kicking off my sneakers. “You’re right, of course. It just feels different now. Scarier to be apart.”

  “It’s not different.” He seemed out of breath, like he was jogging upstairs. “We’ve always felt this way. I’m here. You’re there. Just like before, we still belong to each other.”

  “Okay.”

  “And when you come up,” he said, and I heard a door close in the background, “we’ll spend as much time together as we can.”

  I curled into my pillow, cupping the phone close. “I just want to kiss you tonight,” I whispered. “I just want you here, beside me, kissing me.”

  He groaned and then went quiet, and my heart felt twisted inside my chest, aching.

  “Mace,” he said. “It’s all I want to do, too.”

  We fell into silence then, and I wondered if he would let me fall asleep with him on the phone, later. My hand slid beneath my shirt, feeling the warmth of my stomach, imagining his palm there.

  “It’s only one more year that it has to be like this,” he said, finally. “Think about that. We’re graduating in the spring. Our lives won’t be separate anymore. It will go by so fast, and then we can be together, for real.”

  now

  sunday, december 31

  I

  step out of my room at the modest L&M Motel and into the sharp glare of the winter sun on asphalt. Shielding my eyes with a hand, I manage to see Elliot only ten feet away, leaning against the driver’s-side door and holding a small bouquet of scraggly wildflowers. I’m immediately reminded of every teen romance hero at the sight of him straightening, staring.

  After thirty-seven days, my eyes are thirsty, too, chugging down every inch of what he looks like in a tux, his hair neatly combed, face smooth with a close shave.

  We’ve texted a few times since Thanksgiving, and talked on the phone a little bit here and there when I had a question about the attire for the wedding, or when he wanted to check to see where to pick me up today, but I haven’t seen him since he bent to kiss my cheek at his front door, our bellies full of turkey and wine, and looked at me meaningfully for three quiet breaths.

  “Give me a chance,” he’d said.

  I’d promised I would. The question was whether he’d still want one, once he heard what I had to say.

  I celebrated my Christmas on December 22 with Sabrina, Dave, and Viv. Just watching them from a kitchen stool, sipping my wine, it was easy to see their rituals taking shape: the Canadian Brass Christmas album played on a loop; Dave baked up a store’s worth of Christmas cookies; Sabrina went to the living room, stringing tiny white lights all around their enormous tree. It was just one more tiny stab of awareness like those I’d been having all month, listening to colleagues share what they’d planned to do in their off-hours: parties, reunions, baking, flights out of town.

  After I lost Elliot, and – of course – after I lost Dad, I’d also lost every tether to tradition. I’m ravenous to get them back. I want to make blueberry muffins on Christmas morning and light the kalenderlys at night. I want aebleskivers and books on birthdays, and hot dogs on the beach on New Year’s. But I also want Thanksgiving to be the day Elliot and I sit on the floor, just the two of us in our underwear, eating turkey off the bone. I want to celebrate an anniversary in bed all day, having conversations with our mouths only an inch apart.

  I’m ready.

  So, I step out onto the cracked parking lot, unsteady in heels, trying to walk gracefully toward him. What I really want to do is jump into his arms, but I manage to keep it together, coming to a stop a foot away. He smells so good, and when he pushes his sunglasses up, his eyes seem nearly amber in the sun. The opening words I’ve been rehearsing over and over for the past month – When I left Christian’s house, I went to the cabin. I fell asleep on the floor, and that’s where Dad found me – fade away into a distant echo.

  Elliot presses the flowers into my hand and bends, kissing me just below my jaw, right where my pulse is the wildest.

  I bend and inhale the flowers – they don’t actually smell like anything, but they are so brightly colored, they’re nearly fluorescent. “Flowers. Aren’t you the perfect wedding date?”

  “I picked them over there,” he admits, nodding to a small patch of unruly weeds at the edge of the property. When he turns back and grins, he looks eighteen again. “Mom wouldn’t let me take a rose from the suite.”

  He looks me over, his gaze heated as it moves up my chest, my neck, my face. I’m wearing a new dress, and I admit I feel pretty awesome. It’s fitted crushed silk – a blaze of orange and red with small, beaded spaghetti straps. It makes my brown skin seem golden.

  Our eyes meet, and I feel my smile explode across my face. We’re going to unload everything later. The anticipation of the burden being lifted makes me feel weightless.

  “Ready?” he asks.

  “Ready.”

  Elliot puts the car in park in front of the enormous Victorian estate, and the engine ticks in the resulting silence. Turning to me, he asks quietly, “You okay?”

  It was a ten-minute drive; there’s no chance he missed my death grip on the door handle the entire time.

  “I’m good.”

  “Okay,” he says now on an exhale, and stops me from getting out with a hand on my bare leg, just above my knee. The touch feels loaded, and he seems to realize it at the same time I do, dragging his fingers away. “Let me.”

  He hops out, jogs around the front of his beat-up Civic, and opens my door with a chivalrous flourish.

  Behind him, Madrona Manor rises up like something from a fairy tale, with wide sweeping lawns framing the expansive estate. It’s a distant cry from the L&M Motel. Obviously, I could have stayed in the Healdsburg house I actually own – there
aren’t any vacationers currently renting – but although we’re unburdening ourselves later, the idea of staying there alone, without Dad, seemed mildly depressing.

  Elliot stands, waiting for me to climb out and finally reaching a hand forward. “Are you stuck?”

  No, just silently melting at the sight of you.

  I push up, letting him take my hand once I’m standing. “I’m good. Just… it’s beautiful here.”

  Because it’s chilly out, I’m wearing a wrap around my shoulders, and Elliot takes one step forward, adjusting it where it’s slipped down my arm.

  “There.” He runs a thumb over the curve of my shoulder beneath the wrap. His skin is lighter against mine, and the contrast in color looks perfect. “Are you going to be warm enough?”

  I nod, hooking my arm through his as we make our way toward the main building. It’s midday, and the sun shimmers over the tops of the trees, leaving the edges honeyed and gold. Nestled in the hills above Sonoma County, Madrona Manor is surrounded by acres and acres of wooded property and overlooks vast fields of grapevines. Garden grounds seem to spread in every direction. In truth, I should be more curious about this hallowed place, but being near Elliot after taking a month to think about everything, having his body pressed right up against mine and knowing at any second I could stop him, turn to him, kiss him… I feel like I’m peeking over the lip of a canyon and at the bottom is a giant ball pit; I just want to dive in and play.

  Inside the manor, the hall extends straight forward, with rooms coming off the main entrance. Elliot plans to go upstairs and check on Andreas in the groom’s room. I told Elliot I was driving up from Berkeley last night, when in fact I booked a town car, took a Xanax, and slept the entire ride. I arrived at the motel, stumbled into my room, and slept until my body’s alarm clock roused me exactly at six this morning.

  What all of this means, really, is I still haven’t seen any of his family, and admittedly, I’m a little anxious about it. But although I’m happy to explore the grounds alone, leaving the Petropoulos clan to themselves before the ceremony, Elliot won’t have it.

  “Come with me,” he says, heading toward the wide staircase. The holidays have yet to be banished to boxes and locked up until next December, and garlands remain wrapped festively around the banister. A small golden Christmas tree brightens the landing at the top. “They’re up here.”

  “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.

  Not that he had to worry. Despite seeing each other every weekend throughout October, Elliot and I never came that close to sex. Not since that day on the floor of the closet, his body over mine, working on instinct. And Elliot
was the one taking things slow, not me. He kept telling me it was because every tiny step was a first, everything we did together we would only do for the first time, with this one person, our whole lives.

  It seemed a foregone conclusion that we’d be together forever. We hadn’t said love yet. We hadn’t made promises. But it was as impossible to imagine falling out of love with Elliot as it was to imagine holding my breath for an hour.

  So, we were winding our way carefully through exploration. Kissing for hours. Swimming together in the river: my legs slippery and cold around his waist, my stomach covered in goose bumps, sensitive to the feel of his bare torso pressed against me.

  Weekdays back at school became infused with this desperate anticipation. We agreed to Skype once a week – Wednesdays – which made it painful to sit through classes that day. Those nights, he would look at me through his camera, eyes wide. I’d think about kissing him. I’d even tell him what I was thinking, and he’d groan and change the subject. Afterward, I’d climb into bed and imagine my fingers were his, knowing he was doing the same.