Love and Other Words

by Christina Lauren

  And weekends, whenever we had the smallest window, were a blur of kisses on the floor, our mouths moving together until our lips felt raw, our breaths shallow from the exertion of wanting.

  But that was it. We kissed. Clothes stayed on, hands stayed put.

  Until they didn’t.

  Late October. It was pouring rain and miserable outside. Dad took the car into town to get groceries, leaving me and Elliot alone in the house. It wasn’t premeditated. He didn’t even spare a glance back at us, reading in the living room by the wood-burning stove. He simply called out that we were out of milk, and he was getting stuff for dinner.

  The door closed with a quiet click.

  The car tires crunched on the gravel until the sound disappeared.

  I looked up at Elliot across the room, and my skin flushed hot.

  He was already crawling across the floor to me, and then he was hovering over me in the shadows of the flickering fire.

  I still remember the way he lifted my shirt, kissing a path from my belly button to my collarbone. I remember how – for the first time ever – he figured out the clasp of my bra, laughing into my mouth as his fingers fought with the elastic. I remember the reverence of his palm as it slid from the open fastening, around my ribs, beneath the underwire. His hand came over my bare breast, his thumb and finger closing over the peak. It seemed like light flowed out of me from every pore; the pleasure and need were nearly blinding. He followed with his tongue, wet, his lips closing over me, sucking, and I pulled his thigh between my legs, insane for the relief, rocking against him until I melted, coming in front of him for the first time.

  He stared down at me, pupils huge and black, mouth slack.

  “Did you…?”

  I nodded, smiling, drugged.

  The car tires crunched back up the gravel driveway, and Elliot let out a sharp, frustrated laugh, pulling away.

  “I should go home anyway.” He nodded down.

  I looked down, too, at the heel of his hand pressed to the front of his jeans, seeking relief.

  He started to stand, but stopped, still kneeling between my legs but now staring down at my bare chest. It was the first time he’d really looked, and the intensity of his gaze was like a match to the fuel in my veins. I reached for his free hand.

  The car door slammed shut.

  “Macy,” Elliot warned, but his eyes remained unblinking and his arm moved without resistance when I pulled his hand down to my skin.

  “He still has to get the groceries.” I put his fingers on my stomach, ran them up my body.

  The trunk slammed, too. Elliot jerked his arm away.

  Slowly, I sat up, fastening my bra and pulling my shirt down.

  Dad’s keys fit into the lock, and he let himself in, glancing at us in the living room. I was exactly where he’d left me. Elliot hovered near the other end of the sofa, hands deep in his pockets.

  “Hey, Dad,” I said.

  He stopped, arms loaded with groceries. “Everything okay?”

  Elliot nodded. “I was just waiting until you got back to head home.”

  I looked up at him, grinning. “That was sweet.”

  “Thanks, Elliot,” Dad said, smiling at him. “You’re welcome to join us for dinner.”

  Dad walked into the kitchen, and I looked down at Elliot’s button fly with a nearly obsessive need to feel him beneath the denim.

  He bent low, so that I had to look at his face. “I see where you’re looking,” he whispered. “You’re trouble.”

  I stretched, kissing him. “Soon,” I said quietly in return.

  now

  sunday, december 31

  T

  here are more than eight acres of grounds at Madrona Manor, and I swear we walked every single one of them. Two hours we spent strolling, catching up, talking idly about tiny things: our favorite delis, late-blooming obsessions with Castelvetrano olives, books we’ve loved and hated, political fears and hopes, dream vacation destinations.

  And still, the last New Year’s we knew each other feels like a chunk of radioactive meteor held in a jar in the palm of my hand. I feel it every second. I’m doing everything to avoid opening it until later.

  The afternoon sun dips behind the trees and a chill descends. Car tires crunch on the gravelly driveway in the distance, luring us back to the great lawn, which is decorated with flowered garlands and dotted with heat lamps, cocktail tables, and waitstaff circulating hors d’oeuvres before the ceremony.

  “I need to head upstairs to get ready. You okay?”

  I nod, and Elliot bends as he cups my face, kissing my forehead and then my cheek seemingly out of instinct. He doesn’t register what he’s done as he pulls away, smiling down at me. Not once on his journey to the house to meet up with the groomsmen does he turn back, eyes wide in realization that he’s just kissed me the way he did so many times when he was mine.

  Once he’s gone, I look around, realizing I don’t know anyone here. The entire Petropoulos family is inside, and although I’ve seen the cousins, aunts, and uncles on occasion, I don’t know any of them well enough to just walk up and break into conversation.

  Maybe this is why your circle is so small, Sabrina’s voice rings in my ear.

  A small circle is a quality circle, I snark back, reaching for a bacon-wrapped shrimp as it passes on a tray.

  I’m lifting it to my mouth when a hand comes around my elbow. Turning in surprise, I blurt, “Oh, sorry!” and begin to hand back the hors d’oeuvre until I realize it’s only Alex, and I’ve just dropped the shrimp into her hand.

  She stares down at it and then up at me before shrugging and popping it in her mouth. “Come with me,” she mumbles around the bite. “We’re sitting up front.”

  “What?” I say, resisting when she tugs me forward. “No, I —”

  “No argument,” she says, marching forward. “I have strict instructions from Mom: you’re family.”

  This catches in my throat – a ball of cottony emotion gets trapped in there. Pulling my wrap around my shoulders, I follow her to a seat on the groom’s side, in the very front row.

  Alex sits in the third seat in, pulling me down beside her in the fourth. “It’s starting soon,” she says. “Mom told me to go sit so people would make their way over. Are they?”

  I look behind her and see that, yes, people are beginning to make their way toward the ushers waiting at the entrance to the aisle. Seats are filling, the sun is setting, and the scene is breathtaking.

  “I’ve wanted to meet you for years,” Alex says, staring ahead at the altar – a small wooden arch decorated with flowers so lush I want to reach out and pinch a petal to see if it’s real. “Well – meet again.”

  “Me?” She was only three when Elliot and I had our falling-out.

  Falling-out.

  God, what a weird phrase. Other people have a falling-out. What we had felt like a rupture. But really, was it? A breach along the fault line, maybe. A mallet cracked against our weak spot. And fate went in with a jackhammer.

  Alex nods, turning to me. She looks so much like Elliot at fourteen that my breath is paralyzed for a second, like I’ve been punched in the solar plexus. Her eyes are hazel, wide behind her glasses. Her hair is thick and dark, barely tamed into submission by the flowers pinned around her oval face. Her neck is long, swanlike, hands delicate and bony. On Alex it looks graceful somehow; probably because she dances and she’s learned to use her slim build to her advantage. Elliot’s body always just seemed a little like a box full of tools: sharp angles, long bones, dangerous when clumsily wielded.

  “He loves you so much,” she says. “I swear he didn’t bring a girl home forever.”

  My heart slows.

  She nods. “Seriously. My parents thought he was gay. They were like, ‘Elliot, you know we love you no matter what. We just want you to be happy…’ and he’d be like, ‘I really appreciate that, guys,’ and then we’d all just stare at him, like, ‘So when are you going to bring your boyfriend h
ome?’”

  I laugh a little, not sure what to say. Haltingly, I murmur, “But he did eventually bring someone home. I’m sure they liked her?”

  She shrugs. “Rachel was nice.”

  My heart slows. Rachel was the first girlfriend he brought home? That was – what, a year ago?

  Alex looks back over her shoulder to check the progress of the seating. It’s filled up a bit, so she leans in closer as the guitarist and vocalist begin preparing to play the processional. “Mom called her ‘Macy’ like three times the first time she came for dinner.”

  “Oof,” I say, “awkward.” I’m additionally sympathetic now that I’ve met Rachel. A lot more things make sense about that first encounter.

  “Anyway,” Alex says, smiling at me, “he eventually admitted to us that he’s been in love with you since high school. I’m glad you’re back in his life.” Quickly she holds up her hands, adding, “Even if you’re just friends. Okay, I’ll shut up now.” She bites her lip and then adds in a rush, “And I’m really sorry about your dad, Macy. I don’t remember him, but Mom said he was a really nice man.”

  “Thank you, sweetie.” I reach around her shoulders, pulling her in for a hug. “I missed you all like crazy.”

  A hush overtakes the crowd as the guitarist begins, strumming a simple, aching prelude before the vocalist launches gently into Jeff Buckley’s version of “Hallelujah.” The first people down the aisle are an older couple, presumably Else’s grandparents. They sit in the section opposite us as Miss Dina and Mr. Nick come down the aisle with Andreas between them. Miss Dina’s smile is so brilliant, it traps my breath in my throat, and I feel the sting of tears across the surface of my eyes. It’s not just that it’s a wedding – though I always cry at weddings. It’s the song, it’s the setting, it’s being back in the arms of the people I love most in the whole world. It’s not feeling alone for the first time in as long as I can remember.

  Andreas stands at the head of the aisle, watching in anticipation of his bride. Miss Dina sits beside Alex but reaches over her lap, taking my hand and holding it so tight I feel her love and her confusion and – above it all – her relief in that single, trembling touch.

  Next is Nick Jr., with one of the bridesmaids. He’s filled out, barrel-chested like his father, tall like both of his parents. With a full beard, he looks more lumberjack than district attorney. I can’t really imagine him in sharkskin, if I’m being honest.

  Then it’s George and Liz, arm in arm, all easy smiles. They’re such a perfect combination of happy faces and confident strides that I catch myself grinning, eyes brimming.

  Alex hands me a tissue. “Two criers, on either side of me.”

  “Shh,” Miss Dina whispers. “Just wait. It’ll afflict you soon.”

  I’m not prepared for it, somehow – I’d forgotten that Elliot would be walking down the aisle – and the sight of him, with the petite blond maid of honor on his arm, his smile calm as he makes eye contact with the gathered guests, is a blow to the emotions wrapped tightly in my gut. Warmth bleeds free.

  He looks so good.

  Smiling, well over six feet tall now, easy in his skin. He looks at me after he leaves the maid of honor near the altar, and our eyes catch and hold.

  It’s been hours since I thought of my ex-fiancé, but seeing Elliot now – at the altar and in his tux – makes me realize how monumentally wrong everything felt with Sean. How wrong it would feel with anyone but Elliot.

  Stepping back, he files into position at the head of the groomsmen and manages to pull his eyes away from me as the music changes, and the guitar begins strumming the opening notes to Elvis Costello’s “She.”

  The crowd stands. I know I should be looking for the bride, but my head is the only one facing forward, unable to stop staring at Elliot.

  He can feel my attention, I’m sure, because he blinks away, turning his head just the slightest bit, meeting my eyes. There’s a question there in his, the playfully obvious What the hell is wrong with you?

  I don’t know what else to do, so I simply mouth the word Yes.

  Yes, I’m yours.

  Yes, I’m ready.

  Yes, I love you.

  then

  friday, december 8

  eleven years ago

  “

  G

  od, this book is amazing,” Elliot whispered, turning the page.

  Inwardly, I gloated. Finally Mr. Snobby McClassicspants was reading Wally Lamb.

  I rolled to my stomach, looking up at him on the futon. “I told you you’d love him.”

  “You did,” he said. “And I do.”

  We were finally allowed back in the closet together – door open – because it was too cold to send us outside, and Dad didn’t want to listen to us whispering downstairs all day long.

  Senior year was already completely insane, and most weekends in November had been spent at home in Berkeley, preparing for college applications, SATs, and honors theses. We were trying to apply to schools in the same cities, if not the exact same colleges, and the intensity in our need to coordinate had us checking in with each other, constantly. This was the first weekend I’d actually been with Elliot in five weeks, and there was a forceful undercurrent, pushing us closer, and closer, and closer together, even with the door open.

  “You should worship me,” I told him.

  He looked at me over the rims of his glasses, brows raised. “I do.”

  I grinned. “Or be my slave.”

  “I would.” He closed the book, leaning his elbows on his long thighs. “I am.” I had his full attention now.

  “Fan me with palm fronds and feed me tiny succulent grapes.”

  It felt like the air stopped moving between us.

  “Say that word again,” Elliot asked hoarsely.

  “Fan.”

  “No.”

  “Tiny.”

  He sighed, exasperated. “Macy.”

  “Grapes.”

  He turned back to his book, releasing a weary growl. “Pain in the ass.”

  I grinned, licked my lips, and gave him what he wanted: “Succulent.”

  He looked up, eyes dark.

  Door open.

  “Succulent,” I whispered again, and he crawled to the floor, leaning in to kiss up my neck, tickling. I squirmed, glancing at the door. “You are such a word nerd.”

  His tongue followed the path of my throat and I heard his smile when he said, “Put your hand down my pants.”

  I cackled, whispering sharply, “What? No. My dad is literally twenty feet away.”

  Our eyes went wide in unison as, just then, the car engine started in the driveway, tires crunched down, down, down and then disappeared.

  “Okay. I guess he’s more than twenty feet away,” I mumbled.

  Elliot pulled back and stared at me, eyes dark and carnivorous, and it felt like a switch, bubbling something up inside me. I reached out and

  finally

  finally

  put my hand over the buttons on his jeans, felt what I’d really really wanted to feel there.

  “Now what?” I asked. This was happening. This was happening. I was touching. It. Him – it.

  Elliot’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “You don’t know?”

  “I’m not sure?” I said, left with no more questions when he growled out a smile and covered my mouth with his.

  We fell back to the floor, legs and arms entangled, lips bruising against teeth, messy and desperate and completely perfect. After all the forced physical distance and discussions about everything we wanted to do to each other, and never knowing when or how we would get time alone, this tiny window felt like the Hope Diamond, dropped into our palms.

  I had never known this feeling, this ache that bloomed in my stomach and spread, lower and hot, driving me past my senses and pinpointing my entire universe down to this one sensation, and then the next. And then wanting what came after.

  My shirt came off. My pants were unzipped and peeled away.
I pushed closer, afraid that even naked we wouldn’t be close enough to satisfy this new hunger.