Love and Other Words

I stand outside the entrance to Nopalito on Ninth, and without having to look too deeply inside, I know Elliot is already in there. I know this because it’s ten minutes past eight. We agreed to meet at eight, and Elliot never runs behind schedule. Something tells me that hasn’t changed.

Pushing inside, I spot him immediately. His napkin slides to the floor and his thighs awkwardly collide with the table in his rush to stand. I notice two things: one, he’s wearing a dress jacket, nice jeans, and a pair of black dress shoes that look newly polished. Two, he got a haircut.

It’s still longish on top, but cut very short at the sides. It makes him somehow a little less highbrow literary hipster and more . . . skater hot. It’s amazing that a look he would never have even attempted in adolescence is one he can absolutely rock at twenty-nine. That said, I’m sure he has only his stylist to thank. The boy I grew up with would give more thought to which type of pen he used to write a grocery list than what he looked like on any given day.

Fondness clutches me.

I make my way to him, trying to breathe through the hum of electricity surging in my bloodstream. Maybe it’s the benefit of having had time to get ready tonight—and that I’m not in my scrubs—but this time, I feel the way his eyes move from my hair to my shoes and back up.

He’s visibly shaken when I step closer and stretch to give him a quick hug. “Hi.”

Swallowing, he lets out a strangled “Hi” and then pulls my chair out for me. “Your hair is . . . you look . . . beautiful.”

“Thanks. Happy birthday, Elliot.”

Friends. Not a date, I repeat, like a prayer. I’m just here to make up for breakfast, and to clear the air.

I attempt to brand it into my brain and my heart.

“Thank you.” Elliot clears his throat, smiling without teeth, eyes tight. And really: where to start?

The waiter pours water into my glass and slides my napkin onto my lap for me. The entire time, Elliot is staring down at me as if I’ve come back from the grave. Is that what it feels like for him? At what point would he have given up on getting in touch with me, or would the answer be never?

“How was work today?” he asks, starting somewhere safe.

“It was busy.”

He nods, sipping his water and then putting it down, letting his fingers trace drops of condensation as they flow from the lip to the base. “You’re in pediatrics.”

“Yes.”

“And did you know as soon as you started med school that you wanted to work in that?”

I shrug. “Pretty much.”

An exasperated smile quirks his mouth. “Give a little, Mace.”

This makes me laugh. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be weird.” After a deep inhale and long, shaking exhale, I admit, “I guess I’m nervous.”

Not that it’s a date.

I mean, of course it isn’t. I told Sean I was meeting an old friend for dinner tonight, and promised myself I would give him the whole story when I got home—which I still intend to do. But he was preoccupied with setting up his new TV and didn’t really seem to notice when I stepped out, anyway.

“I’m nervous, too,” Elliot says.

“It’s been a long time.”

“It has,” he says, “but I’m glad you called. Or texted, rather.”

“You replied so quickly,” I say, thinking of his old flip-phone again. “I wasn’t prepared for that.”

He beams with mock pride. “I have an iPhone now.”

“Let me guess: Nick Jr.’s hand-me-down?”

Elliot scowls. “As if.” He takes another sip of water and adds, “I mean, Andreas updates his phone way more often.”

Our laughter dies down but the eye contact remains. “Well, in case you were wondering,” I say, “the score is even at one–one. Liz gave me your number. Though I probably should have remembered it. It’s the same one you always had.”

He nods and my eyes flicker down reflexively when he lick-bites his bottom lip. “Liz is great.”

“I can tell,” I say. “I like her.” Clearing my throat, I add quietly, “Speaking of . . . sorry about how I left at breakfast.”

“I get it,” he answers quickly. “It’s a lot to process.”

It’s almost laughable; an ocean of information separates us, and there are an infinite number of places to begin. Start at the beginning and work forward. Start now, and work backward. Jump in somewhere in the middle.

“I honestly don’t even know where to begin,” I admit.

“Maybe,” he says hesitantly, “maybe we check out the menu, order some wine, and then catch up? You know, like people do over dinner?”

I nod, relieved that he seems as mentally sturdy as ever, and lift the menu to scan it, but it feels like the words on the page are trumped by all the questions in my head.

Where does he live in Berkeley?

What is his novel about?

What about him has changed? What stayed the same?

But the petty, traitorous thought that lurks in the guilty shadows of my brain is the bravery it took him to end a relationship after seeing me for less than two minutes. I mean, unless it wasn’t very established.

Or was already on its way out.

Is this the worst place to start? Am I a complete maniac? I mean, at the very least it was the last real thing we talked about yesterday, right?

“Is everything okay with . . . with . . . ?” I ask, wincing.

He looks up from his menu and maybe it’s my slightly anxious expression that clues him in. “With Rachel?”

I nod, but her name triggers a defensive reaction in me: he should be with someone named Rachel, who reads with relish every issue of the New Yorker, and works in nonprofit, and composts all her eggshells and beet peelings so she can grow her own produce. Meanwhile, I’m a mess, with never-ending med school loans, mommy issues, daddy issues, Elliot issues, and a shameful subscription to US Weekly.

“Things are okay, actually,” he says. “I think. I hope eventually we can be friends again. In hindsight, it couldn’t ever have been more.”

This sentiment slips into my bloodstream, warm and electric. “Elliot.”

“I heard what you said,” he says earnestly. “You’re engaged, I get it. But it will be hard for me to just be your friend, Macy. It’s not in my DNA.” He meets my eyes and puts the menu back down near his arm. “I’ll try, but I already know this about myself.”

I feel his disarming honesty chipping away at the resilient shell around me. I wonder how many times he could tell me he loved me before I melted into a puddle at his feet.

“Then I think some ground rules are in order,” I say.

“Ground rules,” he repeats, nodding slowly. “As in, no expectations?” I nod. “And, maybe . . . anything you want to know, I’ll tell you, and vice versa?”

If this is quid pro quo, I’m going to have to put on my big girl pants and get through it. Although everything inside me is rioting in panic, I agree.

“So,” he says, easing into a smile, “I don’t know what you’d like to know about Rachel. We were friends first. For years, in grad school and after.”

The idea of him being friends with another female for years is a knife pushed slowly into my sternum. Taking a sip of water, I manage an easy follow-up. “Grad school?”

“MFA from NYU,” he says, smiling. Rubbing a hand over his hair as if he’s not quite used to the feel of it yet, he adds, “Looking back, it seems a little like when we hit twenty-eight, we defaulted into a relationship.”

I know what he means. I turned twenty-eight and defaulted to Sean.

He’s a mind reader: “Tell me about this guy you’re going to marry.”

This is a minefield, but I may as well put it all right up front and be honest, too.

“We met at a dinner welcoming all of the incoming residents,” I say, and he doesn’t need me to do the math for him, but I do: “in May.”

His brows slowly inch up beneath his shaggy mop of hair. “Oh.”

“We hit it off right away.”

Elliot nods, watching me intensely. “I assume you’d have to.”

I blink down to the table, clearing my throat and trying not to respond defensively. Elliot has always been brutally honest, but it never came out sharply at me before. To me, his words were always gentle and adoring. Now my heart is pounding so hard, I feel it swooshing between us, and it makes me wonder whether our individual heartaches are silently duking this out from inside our bodies.

“Sorry,” Elliot mumbles, reaching across the table before thinking better of touching me. “I didn’t mean it to come out like that. It’s just fast, that’s all.”

I look up and give him a weak smile. “I know. It did move fast.”

“What’s he like?”

“Mellow. Nice.” I twist my napkin in my lap, wishing I could come up with better adjectives to describe the man I plan to marry. “He has a daughter.”

Elliot listens, nearly unblinking.

“He’s a benefactor for the hospital,” I say. “Well, in a sense. He’s an artist. His work is . . .” I sense that I’m beginning to brag, and I don’t know why it leaves me feeling unsettled. “It’s pretty popular right now. He donates a lot of the newer art installations over at Benioff Mission Bay.”

Elliot leans in. “Sean Chen?”

“Yeah. You’ve heard of him?”

“Books and art run in similar circles around here,” he explains, nodding. “I’ve heard he’s a good guy. His art is stunning.”

Pride swells, warm in my chest. “He is. It is, yeah.” And another truth rolls out of me before I can catch it: “And he’s the first guy I’ve been with who . . .”

Shit.

I try to think of a better way to end this sentence than the bald truth, but my mind is completely blank but for Elliot’s earnest expression and the gentle way his hands are cupping his water glass. He unravels me.

He waits, and finally asks, “Who what, Mace?”

Goddammit. “Who didn’t feel like some sort of betrayal to . . .”

Elliot picks up my unfinished sentence with a gentle “Oh. Yeah.”

I meet his eyes.

“I’ve never had one of those,” he adds quietly.

Actually, this is a minefield. Blinking down to the table, with my heart in my windpipe, I barrel on: “So that’s why I said yes when he proposed, impulsively. I’d always told myself the first man I was with and didn’t feel wrong about, I would marry.”

“That seems like . . . some sturdy criteria.”

“It felt right.”

“But really,” Elliot says, drawing a finger through a drop of water that’s made its way to the tabletop, “according to that criteria, technically wouldn’t that person be me?”

The waiter is my new favorite human because he approaches, intent on taking our order just after Elliot says this, preventing me from the awkward dance of a non-answer.

Glancing at the menu, I say, “I’ll have tacos dorados and the citrus salad.” Looking up, I add, “I’ll let him pick the wine.”

As I probably could have guessed, Elliot orders the caldo tlalpeño—he always loved spicy food—and a bottle of the Horse & Plow sauvignon blanc before handing his menu to the waiter with quiet thanks.

Turning back to me, he says, “I knew exactly what you were going to order. Citrus salad? It’s like Macy’s food dream.”

My thoughts trip over one another at this, at how easy it is, at how in sync we still are right out of the gate. It’s too easy, really, and it feels unfaithful in a really surreal and backward way to the man who’s a couple of miles away, installing a television in the small home we share. I sit up, working to infuse some emotional distance into my posture.

“And she retreats . . .” Elliot says, studying me.

“I’m sorry,” I say. He reads every tiny move I make. I can’t fault him for it; I do the same thing. “It started feeling a little too familiar.”

“Because of the fiancé,” he says, tilting his head back, indicating elsewhere. “When’s the wedding?”

“My schedule is pretty nuts, so we haven’t set a date yet.” It’s partly the truth.

Elliot’s posture tells me he likes this answer—however disingenuous it may be—and it stirs the anxiety in my belly.

“But, we’re thinking next fall,” I add quickly, straying even further from the truth now. Sean and I haven’t discussed dates at all. Elliot narrows his eyes. “Though if it’s left to me, it will happen in whatever we’re wearing at the courthouse. I am apparently really uninterested in planning a wedding.”

Elliot doesn’t say much for a few loaded seconds, just lets my words reverberate around us. Then he gives me a simple “Ah.”

I clear my throat awkwardly. “So, tell me what you’ve been doing?”

He’s interrupted only briefly when the waiter returns with our wine, displaying the label for Elliot, opening it tableside, and offering a taste. There are ways in which Elliot’s confidence throws me, and this is one. He grew up in the heart of California wine country, so he must be comfortable with this, but I’ve never seen him taste wine at the table. We were so young . . .

“It’s great,” he tells the waiter, then turns back to me while he pours, clearly dismissing the man from his thoughts. “How far back should I go?”

“How about start with now?”

Elliot leans into his chair, thinking for a few moments before he seems to figure out where to begin. And then it all rolls out of him, easy and detailed. He tells me that his parents are still in Healdsburg (“We couldn’t pay Dad to retire.”); that Nick Jr. is the district attorney for Sonoma County (“The way he dresses is straight out of some bad crime show and I’d only say that in this safe space, but no one should wear sharkskin.”); Alex is in high school and an avid dancer (“I can’t even blame my gushing on brotherly pride, Mace. She’s really good.”); George—as I know—is married to Liz and living in San Francisco (“He’s a suit, in an office. I honestly can never really remember what his job title is.”); and Andreas is living in Santa Rosa, teaching fifth grade math, getting married later this year (“Of all of us to end up working with kids, he would have been the least likely, but turns out, he’s the best at it.”).

The whole time he updates me, all I can think is that I’m getting the cream, skimmed from the top. Beneath it is still so much. Volumes of tiny details I’ve missed.

The food comes, and it’s so good but I eat it without giving it any attention, because I can’t seem to get enough information, and neither can he. College years are outlined in the monochromatic ways of hindsight, graduate school horror stories are exchanged with the knowing laugh of someone who has also suffered and seen the other side. But we don’t talk about falling in love with someone else and where that leaves us now, and no matter how much it’s with us in every breath, and every word, we don’t talk about what happened the last time I saw him, eleven years ago.