Love and Other Words

Dad and I packed up our lives for a summer to be spent in Healdsburg. Nervous clawing took up residence in my stomach. Everything felt different this summer: We’d finished junior year and were on the cusp of being seniors. School seemed more interesting, friends seemed less dramatic. And although Elliot and I hadn’t gone to my spring formal together—I hadn’t gone at all, actually—summer always felt like when things between the two of us shifted monumentally.

I was seventeen. Elliot was nearly eighteen. Last summer, we had kissed. We’d admitted to feelings. And ever since, he’d looked at me differently, more like something to be devoured than something to be protected. As much as I tried to think we could stay the kind of friends we’d always been, I knew I also wanted more. He was already one of the two most important people in my life. Instead of worrying about losing him, I had to focus on how to keep him.

I was draped on the pillows in the corner when he stepped into the room the Saturday after our arrival.

“Hey, you,” he said.

At the sound of his voice, I jumped up and ran to him, flinging my arms around his neck. It was a different sort of hug; instead of creating the careful triangle-embrace we’d always managed—shoulders touching, nothing else—I pressed my front all along his, from my chest to my stomach to my hips. Of course I knew he was the same Elliot from only a few weeks ago, the last time we’d been to the house, but after all my nervous obsessing over what the summer might be like, I suddenly didn’t feel like the same Macy.

He froze for a moment and then reacted with this tiny, perfect grunt of relief. Bending, he wrapped his arms around me and exhaled a quiet “Hey” against the top of my head.

For a few breaths, everything went still, and my entire world was the feeling of Elliot’s heart beating against mine, and the way his hand spread across my lower back.

“I’m so excited it’s summer,” I said into his neck.

He stepped back, still smiling. “Me too.” There it was again—the breathless silence between us. And then he broke it, brandishing two books in his hand. “I brought you something to read.”

“Something for our library?”

He laughed dryly. “Not really. You may not want to leave these out.”

His words confused me until I looked at the covers: Delta of Venus by Anaïs Nin and Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller.

I was enough of a book nerd to know these were not books I would already find in my high school’s library.

“What are these?” I asked, seeking confirmation.

He shrugged. “Erotic literature.”

“When did you get them?”

“A couple of years ago. I read them in January.”

I swallowed thickly. After my revelation that things were definitely changing between me and Elliot, these books felt like blistering rocks in my hands.

Elliot flopped down on the futon. “You’re all curious about boys and sex, I thought you might want to read them.”

I felt my entire face heat and handed the books back, avoiding his eyes. “Oh, that’s okay.”

I was ready for a step forward. But the idea of sex, and Elliot, sent me into light-headed territory.

“ ‘That’s okay’?” he asked, incredulous.

“I’m not sure I’d like them.” My voice was thick; the lie didn’t want to roll off my tongue.

He smirked. “Cool. Well, I’m done with them anyway. If it’s okay, I’ll leave them here.”

A week into vacation and I caved. The nondescript book spines had been staring at me, daring. I’d put them on the shelf between The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance—in other words, squarely in Elliot territory, as a hint that he was welcome to take them home if he chose.

It’s not like I wasn’t curious. It’s not like I didn’t itch to pick them up. But with Elliot stretched out in front of me every day, absently reaching to scratch his stomach or crossing his legs at the ankle—the movement somehow redefining and emphasizing what existed beneath the buttons of his jeans . . . I wasn’t sure what I really needed was more erotica.

Alas, Delta of Venus was first. I started it at daybreak, hours—I reasoned—before Elliot would show up.

But as usual, it was like he knew.

“Oooh. What are you reading?” he asked from the doorway. The barest daylight weakly lit my bedroom behind him; he blocked most of it with the width of his shoulders.

I ignored the rising heat in my cheeks and turned back to the cover as if I needed to remind myself. “Oh. Just one of the books you got me.”

“Ah,” he said, and I heard the satisfied grin in his voice. “You’re up early, too. Which one?”

Unwilling to say the name, I simply held up the book and waved it at him, struggling to look casual even though I knew my face was a ripe, heated red.

“Mind if I join you in the closet?”

“Suit yourself.” I rolled onto my stomach and continued reading.

Whoa.

The words were almost too much even for the privacy of my thoughts. I’d always thought of sexual things in such abstract ways, not with language but with visuals. And even more intense? I realized while reading this . . . I always imagined Elliot. I would imagine him coming closer and touching me, what he might say or how he might look. But never had I thought words like quivering, and tormented with desire, and absorbed him until he came.

I could feel him watching me but worked to keep my expression neutral. “Hm,” I said thoughtfully. “Interesting.”

Elliot exhaled a laugh.

“What did you just read?” he asked a while later, voice teasing. “Your eyes are going to fall out of your head.”

“It’s erotic literature,” I said, shrugging. “Safe money says I read something erotic.”

“Share.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Not a chance.”

“It’s okay if you’re embarrassed by it,” he said, returning to his book. “I won’t push.”

I was intensely embarrassed by it. But, at the same time, I was thrilled by it, and vexed by it. It was sexual, but so impersonal. I wanted to infuse it with more feeling. His hands became Elliot’s. Her hands became mine. I imagined emotion there that wasn’t on the page. I wondered if it was the same for Elliot when he read it, and whether he noticed how . . . distant it all seemed.

I inhaled a shaky breath and read, “ ‘So was Venus born of the sea with this little kernel of salty honey in her, which only caresses could bring out of the darker recesses of her body.’ ”

Elliot stared at his book, eyebrows knitted together as he nodded sagely. His voice came out a little hoarse: “That’s a good line.”

“ ‘A good line’?” I repeated, incredulously. “It’s . . .”

Actually, I didn’t have an ending to the sentence. It was a level of thinking I didn’t really have the capacity or experience to articulate, but something about it felt familiar, in an ancient kind of way.

“I know,” he murmured. “Do you like the rest of it?”

“It’s okay.” I flipped back through the pages. “It’s a little impersonal and . . . some of the stories are kind of sad.”

Elliot laughed and I gaped at him. “What?” I asked.

“Did you read the foreword, Macy?”

I scowled. “Who reads the foreword to erotica?”

He laughed again and shook his head. “No, you should. The stories were commissioned by a wealthy man. He just wanted sex. No feelings, no emotion.”

“Oh,” I said, looking down at the book that suddenly made so much more sense. “Yeah, no. I don’t like it. Not like that.”

He nodded, adjusting the beanbag beneath him.

“You read this?” I asked.

He hummed an affirmative noise.

“Did you like it?”

“I had the same reaction you did, I think.” With a tiny grunt, he stretched his legs out, putting his hands behind his head. I didn’t look at the buttons on his jeans. Certainly not twice. “It’s sexy, but distant, too.”

“Why did you read it?”

“Why?” he repeated incredulously as he lifted his head to look at me. “I don’t know. Because I love to read? I love that you can use words to convince people, or anger people, or entertain people. But you can use them to . . .” He shrugged, blushing a little. “Arouse people, too.”

I looked back down to the book, unsure what else to say.

“I haven’t seen you since April,” he said. “Whatever happened with spring formal?”

Laughing, I told him, “Nikki went with Ravesh.”

“Of course she did. Drama always settles with the dullest outcome possible. But I meant you.”

“Oh.” I dropped the book and lifted a hand to chew on my fingernail. “Yeah, I just stayed at home.”

I could feel him watching me, and he pushed up onto an elbow. “I would have come, you know.”

Looking at him, I tried to show him with my eyes that I really hadn’t wanted to go. “I know.”

“You don’t want me to meet your friends?” he asked, and his tone was playful, but at the distant edge was a sincere worry.

Quickly, I shook my head. “It’s not that.” I looked at him—at his face that was nearly in perfect proportion now, his expressive eyes, full mouth, angled jaw. “Okay, I guess it’s partly that. I want you to meet them, but I don’t really want them to meet you.”

He scrunched his nose. “Okay?”

“I mean,” I said, wanting to diffuse the insult I saw on his face, “I didn’t really trust Nikki and Elyse at the time, and I felt like if they met you they might flirt with you—especially at that dance—and I would have been a ball of rage.”

His brows lifted skyward in understanding. “Oh.”

“And also . . .” I glanced back down again, finding it easier to say these things to my lap. “This is sort of our little bubble.” I gestured vaguely around the room. “And when I met Emma, it changed that for me. Before, she was just a name, and I could pretend that you didn’t have more time with her every week than you had with me.”

“But I don’t, Mace—”

“I’m just using that example,” I explained, looking back up. “I wasn’t sure that you would really want to have a face to put with these names I’m spending time with.”

Some clarity washed over him. “Oh. I think I get it.”

I think he did.

“There’s a guy who likes you.”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“There’s a few guys. And they were at the dance. And you and I are a weird noncouple, and you weren’t sure how to . . .” He let the words trail off before saying, “You didn’t want me to end up feeling like the outsider.”

I pulled my legs under me on the futon. “Yeah. I just think it could have been weird. You’re not my outside, you’re my every side. But in the moment, you might not have seen it that way, or believed me.” I looked up at him, hastily adding, “Just . . . speaking from my experience with the Emma thing.”

“Okay,” he murmured.

“I want you in my whole life,” I said carefully, stepping a toe out into the vast landscape of More. “I think all the time about how my real fear isn’t other girls, it’s losing you. I’m terrified of what it would feel like if you weren’t in my life anymore.”

His eyes grew tight, his voice reverent: “That won’t ever happen.”

“And if we started . . . and it somehow went wrong . . .” I had to swallow a few times after saying this, tamping down the storm that happened inside me at the prospect of this. “Anyway. I don’t think the dance was the first place to do that. To bring this life into that one. It would have been too much off the bat.”

“I get that.” He stood, walking over to the futon and sitting down next to me. “I told you already, Mace. I want to be your boyfriend.”

Reaching out, he coaxed me to him, until I was leaning against him, and finally laying my head in his lap. He picked his book back up, and I had mine, and I listened to the even rhythm of his breathing.

“You know,” I said, staring up at the ceiling, while he had one hand slowly dragging again and again through my hair, “these books were sort of the perfect gift.”

“How’s that?”

“Number forty-seven on Mom’s list is to tell me not to have sex until I can talk about sex.”

Beneath me, Elliot went very still. “Yeah?”

“I just think that’s good advice, I guess. Like, if you can’t talk about it, you shouldn’t be doing it.”

A tiny, nervous laugh burst out of him. “Do you want to talk about sex today?”

Giggling, I gently punched him in the thigh, and he feigned pain.

I wanted him to be my boyfriend, too. But I knew even then that I needed baby steps. I wanted the slow transition. I didn’t want to lose a single precious bit of him.