Love and Other Words

by Christina Lauren

  Except we hadn’t landed yet. When we did, it was a bruising of the driver’s side against asphalt, a screaming twenty feet of sparking metal. We came to a stop on our sides. My forehead ended up near the steering wheel. My seat had crushed Dad’s, with him still in it.

  Later, I’d find out that the other driver was a student from Santa Rosa Junior College. His name was Curt Anderssen, and he walked away with a slight abrasion to his neck. Not from the seat belt – he wasn’t even wearing one – but from the fabric of the passenger seat, where he was launched when his car spun sideways through three lanes of traffic.

  Curt was unconscious at first, I think, and most of the activity focused on the far more gruesome reality of our car. I was already on the stretcher with a broken arm when Curt emerged, stoned out of his mind and laughing at his survival, until he was shocked into sobriety by the scene before him and the police with their handcuffs.

  I’ve heard people say that they don’t remember what happened immediately after being told of the death of a loved one, but I remember everything. I remember, acutely, the way my broken arm hung like a sack of bones at my side. I remember the feeling of wanting to claw my skin off, of wanting to run, because running would somehow undo what the paramedics told me.

  Yes, he’s gone.

  Sweetheart, I need you to calm down.

  I’m so sorry. We’re going to take you down to Sutter, honey. You need a doctor. You need to breathe.

  I remember asking over and over for them to take it back, to do more CPR, to let me try to revive him.

  “Wait.”

  “Macy, I need you to try to breathe. Can you breathe for me?”

  “Stop talking!” I screamed. “Everyone stop talking!”

  I have an idea: We can start over.

  Let’s get back in the car, go back to the house. I just need a second to think.

  We’ll stay there tonight.

  Or, no, let’s go back further.

  I won’t forget to call in the first place.

  I want to go back to that other heartbreak, not this one.

  Today wasn’t a good day to drive. If we drive today, I lose everyone.

  If we drive today, I won’t be a daughter anymore.

  One of the police officers caught up to me easily when I clumsily rolled off the stretcher, sprinting down the freeway – away from the lights and the noise and the horrible mess of my father in the car. I can still feel the way the policeman wrapped his arms around me from behind, mindful of my broken arm, curling his body over me as I crumpled. I still remember him saying over and over that he was sorry, he was so sorry, he lost his brother the same way, he was so sorry.

  Afterward, there was the intrusive numbness. Uncle Kennet came to Berkeley from Minnesota. He looked sour as we went over Dad’s will and estate. He patted my back and cleared his throat a lot. Aunt Britt cleaned the house while I sat on the couch and stared at her. She got on her hands and knees, dunking a sponge into a bucket bubbling with wood soap, and scrubbed the hardwood floors for hours. It didn’t feel like a loving gesture. It felt like she’d wanted to clean the house for years, and finally had the chance.

  My cousins didn’t come, not even for the funeral. They have school, Britt said. This will be too upsetting for them. They’re staying with my parents in Edina.

  I remember wishing I could find the cop who chased me down and cried with me, and bring him to the funeral, because he seemed to understand me better than anyone in my tiny remaining family did. But even that request felt impossible. The effort it took to eat and dress myself was already so intense, remembering a name, calling the police station was beyond my ability.

  Or calling Elliot.

  I was numb, but beneath it was a blistering anger, too. Even at the time, I knew it wasn’t quite right, I couldn’t quite connect the dots, but the tiny kernel of hurt over Elliot with Emma got all wrapped up in Dad and why he came to get me in the first place. I needed Elliot, wanted him there. I saw the first few of his frantic texts, his insistence that it was a mistake. But then I vacillated between wanting him to know that I’d been shattered, and wanting him to know that he’d been the one to lift the mallet. And then it felt better to think he wouldn’t know. He could have every other bit of my heart, but not this.

  Like I said, I remember how it felt, and it felt like insanity.

  Kennet and Britt took me back with them to Minnesota for four months. I picked at my cuticles until they bled. I cut off my hair with kitchen shears. I woke up at noon and counted the minutes until I could go back to bed. I didn’t argue when Kennet sent me to therapy, or when he and Britt sat at the dining room table, sifting through my college acceptance letters and weighing whether to send me to Tufts or Brown.

  I remember everything up to Britt’s decisive tapping of the papers, her double take when she saw me standing at the foot of the stairs, and her satisfied “We’ve got it all figured out, Macy.”

  After that, there is nothing. I don’t remember how they managed to secure my diploma. I don’t remember sleeping my way through the summer. I don’t remember packing for college.

  I have to believe the administration prepped Sabrina in some way, though she insists they didn’t. For sure they handpicked her: she’d lost her brother in a car accident two summers before.

  I also have to believe that leaving Berkeley saved me. By December, I could go minutes without thinking about Dad. And then an hour. And then long enough to take an exam. My coping mechanism was to wrap my thoughts – when they came – into a scrap of paper, then discard them like a piece of gum. Sabrina would let the ache tear through her. I would curl up and sleep until I was sure the thought could be wrapped up tight.

  Time. I knew well enough that time numbed certain things – even death.

  now

  monday, january 1

  E

  lliot sits back, eyes glassy, and stares out my bedroom window.

  I watch it all pass over him: the horror, the guilt, the confusion, the dawning realization that my dad died the day after Elliot cheated, that Dad was coming to get me because I’d been so upset and hadn’t called, that the last day I saw my dad was eleven years ago today… and for many years, I’ve blamed Elliot for it.

  His nostrils flare, and he blinks away, jaw tight. “Oh, my God.”

  “I know.”

  “This… explains.” Elliot shakes his head, digging a hand into the front of his hair. “Why you didn’t call me back.”

  Quietly, I tell him, “I wasn’t thinking very clearly – after – I wasn’t able to separate – you. And it.”

  I’m so bad at words.

  “Holy shit, Macy.” Catching himself, he turns and pulls me back into his arms, but it’s different.

  Stiffer.

  I’ve had more than a decade to deal with this; Elliot has had two minutes.

  “When you stopped me outside Saul’s,” I say into his shirt, “and asked how Duncan was?”

  He nods against me. “I had no idea.”

  “I thought you knew,” I told him. “I thought you would have heard… somehow.”

  “We didn’t have anyone else in common,” he says quietly. “It was like you disappeared.”

  I nod, and he tightens. Something seems to occur to him. “All this time you weren’t out there thinking that I intentionally slept with Emma, knew your dad died, and was fine with it, were you?”

  I try my best to explain the fogginess of my logic at the time. “I don’t think I really thought about it like that – that you were fine with it. I knew you were trying to call me. I knew, rationally, that you did love me. But I thought that maybe you and Emma had more of a thing going on than you ever told me. I was embarrassed and heartbroken…”

  “We didn’t have a thing,” he says urgently.

  “I think it was Christian who said you two hooked up sometimes —”

  “Macy,” Elliot says quietly, cupping my face so I’ll look at him. “Christian is an idiot. You knew everyt
hing that happened with me and Emma. There wasn’t some other secret layer to it.”

  I want to tell him that, in truth, this is all moot now, but I can see that to him, it isn’t. His intent means everything.

  He squints, still struggling to put this all together. “Andreas said he saw you, the next summer. Coming in here with your dad.”

  I shake my head, until I realize what he means. “That was my uncle Kennet.” I sniff, wiping my nose again. “We drove up to pack our things and put them away.” I look around us, at the familiar, now-drab paint on the walls, remembering how I didn’t actually want to move a single thing. I wanted it left exactly the way it was, a museum. “That was the last time I was here.”

  “I was home that summer,” he whispers. “All summer. I spent every day looking for you. I wondered how I could have possibly missed the moment you came by.”

  “We went in late. We kept the lights off.” Even now, it sounds utterly ridiculous how we snuck in like burglars, using flashlights to get what we needed. Kennet thought I’d lost it again. “I was worried I would see you.”

  Elliot pulls back, mouth turned down. I hate that this is opening old wounds, but I hate even more that it’s making fresh ones.

  “Maybe ‘worried’ is the wrong word,” I correct, though I know even in hindsight it isn’t – I had a panic attack the night before Kennet and I got in the car to drive here, and I couldn’t stand the thought of Elliot seeing me that way. “In the first year after Dad died, at Tufts, I had found this sort of quiet, calm place.” Humming, I say, “Maybe I would have run into your arms. But I worried I would be angry, or sad. It was just so much easier to feel nothing instead.”

  He bends, resting his elbows on his thighs, head in his hands. Reaching up, I rub his back, small circles between his shoulder blades.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  “No.” He turns and looks over his shoulder at me, giving me a wan smile to take the bite out of his answer, and then his face pales as he stares at me. I can see the realization wash over him again.

  “Mace.” His face falls. “How do I say I’m sorry? How do I ever —”

  “Elliot, no —”

  In a flash, he bolts up, sprinting out of the room. I stand to follow, but the bathroom door slams and it’s quickly followed by the sound of Elliot’s knees landing on the floor and him vomiting.

  I press my forehead to the door, hearing the flush, the tap running, his quiet groan.

  “Elliot?” My heart feels like it’s been squeezed inside a fist.

  “I just need a minute, Mace, I’m sorry, just give me a minute?”

  I slide down the wall, setting up vigil outside the bathroom, listening to him throwing up again.

  I wake up under the covers, on my bed, without any memory of how I got here. The only answer is that I fell asleep on the floor in the hall, and Elliot carried me to the bedroom, but the other side of the bed looks untouched, and he’s nowhere to be seen.

  A muffled cough comes from the closet, and relief flushes hot in my limbs. He’s still here. It’s cold, and I drag the comforter with me out of bed, peeking inside. Elliot is stretched out on the floor, hands behind his head, legs crossed at the ankle, staring up at the cracked, faded stars. He still stretches across the entire room. I haven’t been back in here in years, and it seems tiny. How it used to feel like an entire world, a planet inside, amazes me.

  “Hey, you,” he says, smiling over at me. His eyes are bloodshot, nose red.

  “Hey. You feeling better?”

  “I guess. Still reeling, though.” He pats the floor beside him. “Come here.” His voice is a quiet growl. “Come down here with me.”

  I lie down next to him, snuggling into his chest when he slides an arm around me, squeezing me close.

  “How long was I asleep?” I ask.

  “A couple hours.”

  I feel like I could sleep for another decade, but at the same time, I don’t want to waste a single second with him.

  “Is there anything else we need to cover?” I ask, looking up at him.

  “I’m sure there is,” he says, “but right now I’m just sort of… rewiring everything inside my head.”

  “I mean… that’s understandable. I’ve had eleven years to process it, you’ve had just a moment. I want you to know – it’s okay if you have some hurt here.” I rub my hand over his breastbone. “I know it’s not going to be this immediate clearing of the air.”

  He takes a few seconds before replying, and when he does, his voice is hoarse. “Losing you was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, and I still feel the echo of that – those were really hard years – but it helps, knowing. As terrible as it is, it helps to know.” He looks at me, and his eyes fill again. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there when Duncan died.”

  “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you. I’m sorry I just vanished.” I kiss his shoulder.

  He reaches up with his free hand, wiping a palm down his face. “Honey, you lost your mom at ten, and your dad at eighteen. It sucks that you disappeared, but it’s not like I don’t get it. Holy shit, your life just… crumbled that day.”

  I move my hand under his shirt, up over his stomach, coming to rest above his heart. “It was terrible.” I press my face to where his neck meets shoulder, trying to push away those memories and inhaling the familiar smell of him. “What were those years like for you?”

  He hums, thinking. “I focused on school. If you mean romantically, I had so much guilt that I didn’t really get involved with anyone until later.”

  My heart aches at this. “Alex said you didn’t bring anyone home until Rachel.”

  “Can we be clear about one thing?” he says, kissing my hair. “Definitively, and without question?”

  “What’s that?” I love the solid feel of him next to me. I don’t think I’ll ever get enough.

  “That I love you,” he whispers, tilting my chin so I’ll look up at him. “Okay?”

  “I love you, too.” Emotion fills my chest, making my words come out strangled. I will always miss my parents, but I have Elliot back. Together we were able to resurrect something.

  His lips press to my forehead. “Do you think we can do this?” he asks, keeping his lips there. “Do we get our chance now to be together together?”

  “We’ve certainly earned it.”

  He pulls back, looking at me. “I’ve just been lying here, thinking. In some ways, I should have figured it out. I should have wondered why Duncan never came back. I just assumed you were both so angry at me.”

  “Over time I let myself trust my memories more.” I reach up, brushing his hair out of his eyes. “I realized whether or not you had something casual and consistent with Emma, you did really love me.”

  “Of course I did.” He stares, eyes tight. “I hate that Duncan died thinking otherwise.”

  There’s not really anything I can say to this. I just squeeze him tighter, pressing my lips to the pulse point beneath his jaw.

  “I still love this room,” I whisper.

  Beside me, Elliot goes still. “It’s funny you say that… I love it, too. But I came in here to say goodbye.”

  My heart peeks over the cliff, falling off. “What does that mean?”

  He pushes up on an elbow, looking down at me. “It means I don’t think we belong in here anymore.”

  “Well, no, we won’t be in here all the time. But why not keep the cabin, and —”

  “I mean, look, obviously it’s yours, and you should do with it what you want.” He runs his fingertip below my lip and bends, kissing me once. When he pulls away, I chase his mouth, wanting more. “But I want us to move past this closet,” he says gently. “The closet isn’t why we fell in love. We made this room special, not the other way around.”

  I know my expression looks devastated, and I don’t know how to reel it back in. I love being in here with him. The best years of my life were in here, and I’ve never felt safer than I do in the closet.

&nb
sp; And that’s when I know Elliot is already two steps ahead of me.

  “I bet, the way you see it, everything fell apart when we tried to live outside,” he says, and leans down, kissing me again. “But that’s just shitty luck. It isn’t going to be that way this time.”