Love and Other Words

Des emerges from the bathroom, wiping his hands on his jeans as if he went in there for the usual reasons, and not to hide from the battle of the exes in the living room. He looks up with a bright smile that slowly melts as he realizes that Rachel is no longer with us.

“Seriously?” he asks Elliot, who shrugs helplessly.

“I don’t know what to tell her,” Elliot says. “She said it would be fine. But clearly it wasn’t.”

Elliot turns and heads into the kitchen. I can tell that it bothers him that Rachel bolted, and I want to think that it’s because he’s a tenderhearted person, and not because he’s worried he messed something up with her long-term.

But, Jesus—who couldn’t have seen that coming a mile away?

He stands at the small range, bending to check on the turkey, and then leans with both hands on the sides of the stove, taking a few deep breaths.

I meet Des’s eyes, and he lifts his chin, telling me to go in there. “He’s terrible at this shit.”

Which throws me. I’m sure Des is absolutely right here, but it’s a rewiring I have to do to really believe it: between the two of us, Elliot was always better at managing complicated emotions.

Even though it’s bright, with a huge window at one end, the kitchen feels tiny. I slide my hands up Elliot’s back, feeling the muscles tense, and to his shoulders, kneading.

The touch is so intimate, I know I can’t lie to him much longer about Sean without looking like a game-playing tease. He looks over his shoulder at me, questioning.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I feel like maybe I shouldn’t have come.”

He turns to face me, leaning back against the stove. “I really want you here. That you were invited wasn’t up for debate. She had the choice whether to come or not.”

“I know, but you’ve been friends with her a long time.”

Turning to the side, he stares out the window, his jaw tense as he thinks. His profile is so . . . grown-up. My brain still has an overwhelming number of young Elliot images. Looking at him now is like looking through a telescope into the future. It’s so weird to be so close to him and imagine all the moments he’s had without me.

“We really do need to talk, at some point,” he whispers.

“About Rachel?”

He scowls. “About all of it, Mace.”

I know I need to hear what he has to say—and God, I owe him my story, too—but today is definitely not the day for another woman to melt down in his apartment.

“So,” I say, just as quietly, mindful of Des in the next room, “let’s find some time. Maybe . . . after Andreas’s wedding?”

“What?” He turns back to me, brows low. “That’s a month away.”

“I think a month is good.” A shrill timer goes off on the counter, but we both ignore it.

Elliot shakes his head a little. “We’ve already had eleven years.”

“Timer,” Des calls from the living room.

“Since I have today off, I have to work on Christmas.” I look past him, at the fume hood above his stove. “I’m taking four days at New Year’s for the wedding, so I’m working almost every day between now and then, and I need . . .” I need time away from work to think how to unpack everything I have to tell him. About Sean, and the last night I saw Elliot eleven years ago, and everything that came after.

Des leans into the kitchen and yells at us before ducking out again: “Oi, something’s beeping!”

Elliot reaches over, roughly silencing the noise with a slap of his hand.

Returning to me, he ducks low, meeting my eyes, searching. “Macy, you know that I would make time any day for you. Any sliver of time I have is yours.”

This truth so easily given paralyzes my instincts to pace myself, to take a breather between the end of my engagement and diving right back into Elliot. My first admission slips out: “Sean and I broke up.”

I watch his pulse accelerate in his throat. “What?”

I’ve just dropped a bomb from a cloud. “It wasn’t—ever—what I really want—”

“You left Sean?”

I swallow down my urge to cry at the hope I see in his eyes. “I moved out, yeah.”

Elliot’s hand comes up to the front of my jeans, his index finger hooking just inside, sliding against my navel, and he uses the leverage to pull me closer. “Where?”

“I’m renting a room in the city.”

Blood rises to the surface of my skin, hungry for what I imagine is coming—his mouth lowering to mine, the overwhelming relief of it, the feel of his tongue sliding over my lip, the vibration of his sounds.

I close my eyes, and for a second I give in to the fantasy: the glide of his hands up my shirt along my waist, the way it would feel for him to lift me, put me on the counter, step between my legs and press closer.

So I move back, shaking with the restraint. “Remember what I said at Tilden,” I begin, “about feeling so much with you?”

He nods, his gaze fixed on my mouth, breathing jagged.

“I don’t want to rush into anything blindly.” I swallow, wincing. “Especially not with you. We messed this up once.”

Blinking up to my eyes, his expression clears a little. “We did.”

There’s an intensity between us that has always been there. It used to make me trust that he’s my person, and I’m his. And now, he’s left his girlfriend for it, I’ve left my fiancé, but in truth, we’ve been back in touch for a single month after eleven years in the wilderness. His best friend in the other room is a stranger to me, and the woman who just left knows more about Elliot’s heartbreak than I do. We are still so messy.

“Let’s eat some turkey,” I say, gently prying his finger from my jeans. “It’s going to take some work for me to put my words together, okay?”

Elliot slides his hand to my hip, murmuring, “Okay. Of course. Whatever you need.”

I allow myself one intimate touch and use it to press my hand over his wildly beating heart.