“Any idea about what?” I ask him.
Elliot shakes his head. “We aren’t doing this now.”
She answers, leaning against the doorway to the kitchen: “How much you fucked him up. How no one—”
“Rachel.” Elliot’s voice is a blade, cutting through the room. I’ve never, ever heard him use that tone before, and it sends goose bumps down my arms.
I continue to look at him, and it takes monumental effort to not fall apart thinking about what I’m missing here. I know what my life looked like after we split, but I couldn’t bear to think about his, too.
“I’m pretty sure we fucked each other up,” I say. “I think that’s what we’re trying to fix, isn’t it?” I look back to Rachel. “None of this is your business, though.”
“It was my business for five years,” she says. Five years. That’s how long I had, too. “And it was really my business for at least one.”
What the fuck does that mean?
Elliot reaches up, scrubbing his face. “Do we have to do this?”
“No.” Rachel looks at him, and then at me, and then moves across the room to pick up her purse, and walks out the door.
then
friday, august 25
eleven years ago
Summer vacation ended on a scorching day in August. Dad, Elliot, and I packed up the car, and then Elliot shuffled conspicuously to the side, waiting for our customary goodbyes.
This was the fourth time we’d done this—the parting of ways after a summer of long afternoons together—but it was by far the hardest. Everything had changed.
As it had always been with us—two steps forward, two steps back—we hadn’t kissed again, and we certainly hadn’t spent any more time grinding on the floor. But there was a new tenderness there. His hand would find mine while we read. I would doze off on his shoulder and wake with his fingers tangled in my hair and his body loose with sleep beside me, my leg thrown over his hip. It felt, finally, like we were together.
Dad seemed to sense it, too, and after closing the hatch to his new Audi wagon with a firm click, he smiled tightly at us and walked back into the house.
“We should talk about it,” Elliot said quietly. He didn’t really have to explain what he meant.
“Okay.”
He took my hand, leading me to the shade between our homes. There we sat, our backs to the side of the house and our hands interlocked, in a patch of grass beneath my dining room windows, out of view of anyone in either house.
“We fooled around,” he whispered. “And . . . we touch like . . . we’re more than friends.”
“I know.”
“We talk to each other and look at each other like we’re more than friends, too . . .” He trailed off and I looked up, catching the tenderness in his expression. “I don’t want you to go home and think I’m doing those things with anyone else.”
My mouth twisted, and I pulled up a long blade of grass. “I don’t want to think of you doing that with anyone else, either.”
“What are we going to do?”
I knew he was asking about more than just the obvious kissing-touching, boyfriend-girlfriend thing. He meant in a bigger sense, when our lives started existing more outside the closet or his roof, and when we had to satisfy ourselves with only one or two weekends a month together.
I traced the lines of the tendons on the back of his left hand. With his right, he ran a finger slowly up and down my leg, from my knee to the midpoint of my thigh.
“What’s your favorite word?” I asked without looking up.
“Ripe,” he answered, no hesitation, his voice low and hoarse.
My blush exploded across my skin, a scorching trail of red that I felt lingering on my cheeks long after he gave up trying to catch my eye.
“Yours?”
I looked up at him, his hazel eyes wide and curious, something wilder barely contained in the dark ring of black around his irises. Beneath the surface, layered under the word Yours? there was something hungrier: teeth on skin, fingernails, the sound of him growling my name. Elliot was sexy. What boy our age used the word ripe?
There was no one else in the world like him.
“Epiphany,” I said quietly.
He licked his lips, smiled. The something beneath the surface grew darker, more insistent. “That’s a good one, too.”
I stared down at his hand, smoothing the back with my thumb, and said, “I think we should stop pretending we aren’t together.”
When I looked back up, his smile grew. “I agree.”
“Good.”
“I’m going to kiss you goodbye,” he said.
I tilted my face to him, saying, “Good,” again as I felt his breath on my mouth, his hand cupping my jaw. My lips parted against his, and like before it seemed natural to suck at his mouth, to let his tongue touch mine, to taste his sounds. His fingers slid into my hair, both hands now cupping my head, mouth urgent.
And why did we do this out here, where we couldn’t lie back and kiss until our mouths were numb and our bodies on fire? Even with this tiny touch, I ached. I wanted him over me again, wanted that last reminder of his weight and the hard presence of his need for me pressing between my legs.
I let out a small, tight gasp and he pulled back, eyes flickering back and forth between mine.
“We’ll take it slow,” he said.
“I don’t want to take it slow.”
“That’s the only way to make sure we do it right.”
I nodded in his cupped hands, and he kissed me one more time. “I’ll see you in two weeks.”
now
thursday, november 23
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.