Love and Other Words

The Healdsburg summer had turned from the warm humid hum of bees, berries, and sunshine to the brittle creaking of drying up creeks and unremitting heat. As we passed through the days, it seemed like we started to move more slowly, too. Nowhere was cool enough, except for the river or the closet. But even our blue, starred sanctuary had started to feel claustrophobic. Elliot was so tall; he seemed to take up the entire length of it. And at nearly eighteen, he was vibrating with sexual intensity—I felt entirely too full of nervous energy trying not to touch him. We would spend the mornings roaming the woods near the houses, and the afternoons walking down the road or biking into town for ice cream . . . but we always ended up back in the closet anyway, lying on the floor, staring up at the painted stars.

“School’s starting soon,” I said, glancing over at him. “You excited?”

Elliot shrugged. “Sure.”

“You like your classes at Santa Rosa?”

He looked up at me, brows furrowed. “Why are you asking about this now?”

I’d just been thinking about it. About school starting in the fall, and getting closer to finishing high school. About what he and I would do when we were done, and if we’d end up living closer to each other.

Living with each other.

“Just thinking about it, that’s all,” I said.

“Yeah, I guess I’m excited to be that much closer to finishing,” he said. “And the classes at SRJC are fine. I wish I’d decided to come down to Cal for a few days a week instead.”

“You had that option?” I asked, shocked.

He shrugged. An obvious yes.

“Are you going to your fall formal with Emma?” I asked, returning to doodling in my notebook.

“Macy. What?” He looked bewildered and then laughed sharply. “No.”

“Good.”

“Do you want to go with me?” he asked.

“You want me to go to a school dance with you?”

“No? Yes? After all our talk of the right way to blend our weekend lives with our weekday lives, I’m not sure what the right answer is,” he said, wincing. “But if you don’t go with me, I probably won’t go.”

“Really?” I asked, heart pounding. “Because I don’t want to go and get the death glare from all the skanks who love you, but I don’t want you to go and get ogled without me to glare at them, either.”

He shook his head, laughing. “It’s not like that.”

“So Emma doesn’t email you all the time anymore?”

“Not really.”

“Lies.”

“She doesn’t.” He held my gaze, steadily. “I’m not into her, she figured it out.”

I gave him a coy flutter of my lashes. “It’s not that I’m jealous.”

“Of course not.”

Just then his phone buzzed and he looked at it, read a text, and then shoved it back in his pocket. He looked very guilty.

“That was from Emma,” I guessed.

“Yes.” He picked at nonexistent lint on his pants. “It’s like the universe wants me to look like a liar right now.”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing interesting.” He laughed at my skeptical expression. “I swear she never texts me.”

“If it’s not interesting, why won’t you tell me?”

He eyed me. “She just asked to hang out.”

“That’s it?”

“Yep.”

“Well, then hand me your phone. I’ll tell her you’re busy.”

He smirked. “Will you include the part where you’re acting insanely jealous?”

I rolled onto my back and closed my eyes. “Whatever.”

“Or we could take some pictures of your boobs and ‘accidentally’ text them to her.”

“Jesus Christ. Give me the phone.”

I reached for it but his long monkey arm kept it easily away from me and I ended up falling on top of him instead, my boobs completely in his face. He made a muffled happy sound and laughed out a string of unintelligible words, totally pushing his face into my chest.

I screamed, scrambling back and pushing at his chest to get away. “Pervert!”

Elliot grabbed my waist and flipped me over as he sat up, pulling me backward into his lap and tickling me with his crazy long fingers, digging into my ribs.

I gasped and cackled, squirmed as he tickled, and laughed and held his arm around my waist until he rolled over onto me.

He pinned me gently; his hips fit perfectly between my legs.

We both froze, out of breath, staring at each other.

I was seventeen, but I’d never felt something like this before. He was hard, pressing right up against me.

The mood was suddenly completely different from the wrestle-ticklefest of one minute before.

Elliot glanced down at my mouth, and then back up to my face. I wanted to say something, to joke about the wood in his pants, anything. But my throat felt tight, my face burning.

With one elbow propped by my head, he whispered a quiet “Sorry” and began to climb off me.

I trapped him with my leg around his thigh, and his eyes flew back to mine.

“Stay,” I whispered.

I think.

It might have been my subconscious saying it, because I really didn’t want him to get up. I was obsessed with what was under those buttons on his jeans, and more than that, I wanted to know if . . . well, I wanted to know what could happen.

He swallowed audibly. “Okay.”

I rolled my hips up, watching as his mouth fell open and his eyes fell closed.

Elliot shifted forward and back, pressing the solid length of himself against me, and did it again. And again. His breath was harder, puffing my hair off my neck, and then his hand gripped my leg and he held his breath and we started grinding in earnest . . . together. My body was all instinct, chasing something familiar, just in the distance.

Oh, my God, what were we doing?

I ran my hands down his back. If I overthought it, I would ruin it.

This was Elliot.

This was my Elliot.

I made fists around his T-shirt, thought about the weirdest things like how his weight felt over me, and that I wanted to kiss him but didn’t want to turn my attention away even a little from the feeling building inside me . . . and then I spun into a strange loop of wondering whether I was imagining this.

We were having sex with our clothes on.

He was so quiet, although I guess I was quiet, too, because I was listening so intently for any clue as to what he was thinking.

I needed more. I needed him. I’d never felt that sort of weighted heat before, not even when I was thinking about him by myself. It was a rush all over my skin and that heavy need low in my belly. The warmth of his mouth landing on my neck pulled a tiny, helpless sound from me. He wasn’t sucking or licking, just pressing his mouth there, putting his breath that much closer to my ear so I could hear his reaction in every sharp exhale.

He let out a low growling sound, and I pressed up into him, grinding, so close. I heard the sound I made—heard the tight plea for faster come tearing out of me.

With a strong grip, Elliot stopped me with a hand on my hip.

“Shit,” he said. “Wait. Shit.”

Suddenly he was pushing away, standing. I sat up, with fumbling words on my lips, but Elliot was already out the door.

What had just happened?

Did he . . . ? Or did he just realize what I’d started and freaked out? In the end, did Elliot really want to be my boyfriend, or was he wrong about it all?

I careened headlong into panic.

This is how it starts. This is how the friendship goes from perfect and best friend ever to nothing but weird, dirty looks across the yard.

I sat in the closet alone for an hour, staring at the pages of whatever book I’d slid from the big bookcase and not reading a single word.

I would count to one thousand, and then I would go to his house and apologize.

One . . . two . . . three . . .

Twenty-eight . . . twenty-nine . . .

Two hundred thirteen . . .

“What are you reading?” His voice came from the doorway, but instead of walking in and flopping down next to me, he lingered there, leaning against the frame.

“Hi!” I said too brightly, eyes looking anywhere but at his. I noticed he had changed his clothes. My face flamed hot and I looked down, staring at the book in my hands. The letters of the title slowly swam into a single word and I pointed at it lamely. “Um, I started Ivanhoe. No d.”

When I looked up, confusion flickered across his face like a blink, and he stepped inside. “Really?”

“Yeah,” I said slowly, watching him stalk into the room. His lip turned up in a half-teasing smile. “Why do you say it like that? You’ve read this about fifty times.”

“It’s just that it looks like you’re already about halfway through it.” Scratching his temple, he added quietly, “That’s impressive.”

I blinked down to the page I’d randomly opened. “Oh.”

It was tense and thick between us and it made my chest hurt. I wanted to ask him if I embarrassed him or . . . crap. Did I hurt him?

“Macy . . .” he started, and I knew that voice. That voice was a let-me-down-easy voice.

I tried to laugh but it came out as a gasp, going for casual but missing by about a mile. “I am so mortified, Elliot, seriously. I’m so sorry. Let’s not talk about it.”

Elliot nodded, his eyes on the floor. “Sure.”

“I’m sorry I did that, okay?” I whispered to my lap.

“What? Macy, no—”

“It will never happen again, I swear. I was just playing around. I know I’ve been all ‘let’s not be together because that could ruin things’ and then I went and did that. I’m so sorry.”

He pulled a book off the shelf and I returned to Ivanhoe—starting from the beginning now—and read for two hours, but hardly understood a word. I blamed it on my state of mind. The idea that I might have hurt him, or embarrassed him, or made him angry ate at me like a drop of acid in my gut. It grew and gnawed at me and eventually had me so twisted inside that I felt like I might be sick.

“Ell?”

He looked up, eyes softening immediately. “Yeah?”

“Did I hurt you?”

A corner of his lip pulled up in a smile as he fought a laugh. “No.”

I exhaled for what felt like the first time in a few hours. “Okay, good.” I opened my mouth and closed it again, not sure what else to say.

He put his book down and moved closer. “You didn’t hurt me.” He searched my eyes, waiting. “Do you get what I’m telling you?”

I watched as his eyebrows slowly lifted, and then he smiled that sneaky, sexy smile . . .

“You mean you . . .” I made a circular motion with my hand, and he laughed.

“Yeah. I . . .” He mimicked the motion, eyes teasing.

My heart became a victorious monster in my chest, thrashing to climb out.

I had made him come.

“I was trying to make sure you went first,” he admitted in a low voice, “but the sound you made . . . when you asked me to move faster . . .” He swallowed, lifting a shoulder in a silent Oh well.

“Oh.” I stared up at him, watching him fight the heated blush. “I’m sorry.”

“Macy, don’t be sorry. I’m telling you it was sexy.” He looked at my lips, and his expression grew serious again. “It’s hard for me sometimes that we aren’t together. I never know where the lines are. I want to cross them all the time. We’ve kissed and touched, but then we’ll go back to being just friends and it’s confusing. What we did today? It didn’t even feel like enough for me.” He held his hands up, eyes wide. “I don’t mean you should do more. Just that I want it all with you. I think about it all the time.”

I thought about how much I wanted that, too. And how, earlier, I wanted so much more than his body over mine, our clothes between us. I would have given him everything today. And still, the words that came out were “But I would die without your friendship.”

He smiled and leaned over to kiss my cheek. “I would, too.”