Love and Other Words

God, this book is amazing,” Elliot whispered, turning the page.

Inwardly, I gloated. Finally Mr. Snobby McClassicspants was reading Wally Lamb.

I rolled to my stomach, looking up at him on the futon. “I told you you’d love him.”

“You did,” he said. “And I do.”

We were finally allowed back in the closet together—door open—because it was too cold to send us outside, and Dad didn’t want to listen to us whispering downstairs all day long.

Senior year was already completely insane, and most weekends in November had been spent at home in Berkeley, preparing for college applications, SATs, and honors theses. We were trying to apply to schools in the same cities, if not the exact same colleges, and the intensity in our need to coordinate had us checking in with each other, constantly. This was the first weekend I’d actually been with Elliot in five weeks, and there was a forceful undercurrent, pushing us closer, and closer, and closer together, even with the door open.

“You should worship me,” I told him.

He looked at me over the rims of his glasses, brows raised. “I do.”

I grinned. “Or be my slave.”

“I would.” He closed the book, leaning his elbows on his long thighs. “I am.” I had his full attention now.

“Fan me with palm fronds and feed me tiny succulent grapes.”

It felt like the air stopped moving between us.

“Say that word again,” Elliot asked hoarsely.

“Fan.”

“No.”

“Tiny.”

He sighed, exasperated. “Macy.”

“Grapes.”

He turned back to his book, releasing a weary growl. “Pain in the ass.”

I grinned, licked my lips, and gave him what he wanted: “Succulent.”

He looked up, eyes dark.

Door open.

“Succulent,” I whispered again, and he crawled to the floor, leaning in to kiss up my neck, tickling. I squirmed, glancing at the door. “You are such a word nerd.”

His tongue followed the path of my throat and I heard his smile when he said, “Put your hand down my pants.”

I cackled, whispering sharply, “What? No. My dad is literally twenty feet away.”

Our eyes went wide in unison as, just then, the car engine started in the driveway, tires crunched down, down, down and then disappeared.

“Okay. I guess he’s more than twenty feet away,” I mumbled.

Elliot pulled back and stared at me, eyes dark and carnivorous, and it felt like a switch, bubbling something up inside me. I reached out and

finally

finally

put my hand over the buttons on his jeans, felt what I’d really really wanted to feel there.

“Now what?” I asked. This was happening. This was happening. I was touching. It. Him—it.

Elliot’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “You don’t know?”

“I’m not sure?” I said, left with no more questions when he growled out a smile and covered my mouth with his.

We fell back to the floor, legs and arms entangled, lips bruising against teeth, messy and desperate and completely perfect. After all the forced physical distance and discussions about everything we wanted to do to each other, and never knowing when or how we would get time alone, this tiny window felt like the Hope Diamond, dropped into our palms.

I had never known this feeling, this ache that bloomed in my stomach and spread, lower and hot, driving me past my senses and pinpointing my entire universe down to this one sensation, and then the next. And then wanting what came after.

My shirt came off. My pants were unzipped and peeled away. I pushed closer, afraid that even naked we wouldn’t be close enough to satisfy this new hunger.

He bent down, licking my neck, my breasts, and then returned to me, greedy lips sucking at mine and then back down over my chest. His hand pressed flat against my stomach and fingers teased at the hem of my underwear.

“Too fast?” he asked, breathing heavily, and I shook my head even though he couldn’t see me from where his mouth explored my breasts.

“No,” I said out loud. It was too slow. Not too fast—too slow. Fire crackled up and down every nerve ending and I wanted more, even if I didn’t know exactly what that was.

“Shit, Macy, I’m . . . this is insane. Good insane. You feel insane under me.”

I laughed because Elliot’s rare incoherence was strangely reassuring, and then his lips were on my mouth, swallowing my laugh and making it his, his tongue slipping over mine as his hand cupped my breast, squeezed, our sounds muffled by the way we could barely bring ourselves up for air.

His fingers went lower again, slipping over my ribs, across my navel, below the cotton to exactly where I needed them, and he made a strangled sound at the same time that I ground out something unintelligible. His hips shifted over me, seeking the same rhythm as his fingertips gliding across my skin.

In a flash he was moving down, tugging my underwear off, and kissing my belly, hips, and then lower, almost wild with the want that mirrored mine. He shook below me, between my thighs, shoulders trembling under my grip, and I missed his weight on top but whatever he had decided to do with his mouth distracted me from any other coherent thought. It was warm soft suction, hands on my legs, resisting the way they seemed to want to close around his head and the mad sensation of tongue and lips and his gasps of air. He was doing that thing I’d barely let myself imagine.

He moved back up when I started gasping, biting and kissing along my skin, wilder than I would have ever imagined, but then, in the moment, I realized it could never be any other way with us.

“Sorry,” he said. “I wanted to keep going but—” He closed his eyes, biting his bottom lip and groaning as if he was trying to keep himself together.

“It’s okay, come here.” I wanted his weight on me. I wanted to see him hovering over my body and then burn the image into my brain.

“I seriously thought I was going to come,” he added with a laugh against my lips, his mouth still wet from me, and with an urgency behind his touch that made me a little wild.

I pushed ineffectually at his belt and then my fingers remembered function, pulling through loops and undoing one fascinating button at a time, and then my hands felt the bare skin of his flat stomach, his narrow hips, the soft hair on the backs of his thighs as I worked his pants down around his knees.

He was heavy on me, hard and thick against my hip, and I arched to him, wanting to rub across him there.

“I want to,” I began, reaching for him and finding it. My mind turned to mush at the sound he made, at the feeling of him, so warm and hard in my hand. “Do you want to?”

“Have sex?” he asked, head bobbing in a frantic nod, eyes rapt. “Yes. Yes. I do. I do, I do, I do, Macy, but fuck, but I don’t have any protection.”

“Pill,” I gasped as he shifted and I felt him slide across my thigh. Smooth and soft skin over something not at all soft.

Elliot lifted his chin in surprise. “You’re on the pill?”

“It was one of Mom’s rules. Dad put me on in October.”

He reached between us and when he rubbed himself across me I was completely gone. I barely heard him ask, “You sure, Mace? Look at me.”

At the soft pulse of his voice, I moved my gaze from the fascinating place where he was about to be in me to his eyes, which were almost black with hunger but patient and waiting, too.

“Please,” I said. It felt so good. If he kept rubbing over me like that . . . “I’m sure.”

He looked down and guided himself to the right place before leaning over me and resting his elbows near my shoulders. This felt like the most natural thing in the world: my legs slid up and over his hips, his lips found mine. He moved forward, an inch. Not yet inside but there.

“This is not going to be a marathon,” he groaned. “I’m barely hanging on.”

“I just want to feel you.”

He pushed forward an inch more but stopped when I cried out at the commotion in my body, at the cohesion of sense and stimulation. His eyes were riveted to my face and then rolled back in his head as I used my leg curled around his thigh to pull him quickly—and roughly—all the way inside me.

I bit his shoulder at the sharp stab of pain, his body muffling my cry. Elliot’s hips shifted carefully back, and then in again, and I felt the tearing pleasure/pain of him, over and over as he started moving in earnest, pushing in and pulling out of me again, again, faster.

“You’re okay?” he gasped.

I managed a strangled “Yes.”

“Oh, God, I’m—”

I held him to me, with arms and legs banded around him, my eyes clenched against the tight pinching of it, my heart wanting to keep him inside more than my body needed him out.

“I’m coming,” he gasped, and then shook beneath my hands, his breath held high and tight in his shoulders as he fell.

I felt what it did to him. Felt every single shift inside me.

In an echo somewhere I heard sound, feet, a voice. Desire still echoed through me, ricocheting against the sharp pain between my legs.

Elliot’s touch was suddenly gone, the entire front of my body was cool without him over me, and I felt oddly, immediately hollow. With a foggy head, I realized he was scrambling back and pulling me up.

“Macy?” Dad called from downstairs. Or underwater, I couldn’t be sure.

Elliot’s face swam into focus above me, his brow damp, eyes wide, lips bright red and still wet from my kisses. “Get up, Mace.”

Jerked into realization, somehow I found my voice, pushing out a hoarse “Yeah, Dad?”

Elliot yanked his pants up and threw his shirt over his head as my own fumbling fingers struggled to jerk on my pants. I paused at the brilliant streak of blood on my thigh, blinking up to Elliot, whose eyes snared with mine as he buttoned his jeans.

“You okay?” he whispered. Footsteps echoed down the long upstairs hallway.

“Yeah.” I stood on weak, shaky legs to find my shirt, tug it on, and shove my bra under a pillow with my foot just as Dad walked in.

He paused in the doorway, taking in the scene. Elliot, having launched himself onto the pillows in the corner, was reading my worn copy of The Joy Luck Club without his glasses on. His face was red, his breathing uneven. I stood near the door, and realized I had no idea what my hair looked like, but I imagined it could not be good. Elliot had dug his fingers into it, pulled apart my braid, and slid his hands over and into my hair again and again.

My body bucked with the memory.

Dad looked me over and smirked.

“Hey,” I said.

And to his credit, he simply replied, “Hey, guys.”

“What’s up?” I asked, trying not to gasp for air.

“Mace, sweetheart, I’m sorry, but do you think you could be ready to go in an hour? I just had to run into town to get a fax, of all things. We need to get back tonight.” He looked genuinely apologetic.

We have two more nights here, I thought, but even as crushing disappointment spread through me, I nodded brightly. “No problem, Dad.”

He waved to Elliot, who waved back, and then left.

Slowly, I turned. Elliot’s eyes were closed, his hands over his face as he finally gasped for air, no longer needing to appear relaxed.

I moved to him, crawling into his lap, desperately wanting the feel of him against me.

“Holy shit, that was close,” he whispered.

I nodded. I didn’t want to leave. Adrenaline crashed through me, making my limbs shake. I wanted to curl up with him and talk about what we’d just done.

He turned his head, kissing my temple. “You were bleeding. I know it’s . . . normal, but I just want to be sure: Did I hurt you?”

I looked up at the ceiling, trying to find an answer that felt both true and reassuring. “Not more than I expected.”

His lips found mine. Slow, careful kisses dotted over my mouth, my chin, my cheeks.

“You need to pack,” he said reluctantly, pulling away.

“Yeah.”

He stood, lifting me with him and then put me down. “Email me tonight?”

I nodded. I was still shaking. Because of what we’d done . . . and because we almost just got caught doing it.

He cupped my face in both hands, searching my eyes. “Was it . . . okay?”

“Yeah.” I bit back a nervous laugh. “I mean . . . I definitely want to do it again.” The adrenaline was making me feel speedy and wired.

“Okay.” He nodded frantically. “Okay, so we’ll talk? You’re okay?”

“Yeah.” I smiled. “You?”

He blew out a controlled breath. “I’m going to go home and take a long shower and relive all but the minute your dad was standing there and I was still sort of hard.”

I leaned against him, my forehead to his chest. “I don’t want to go.”

His lips rested on the crown of my head. “I know.”

“Did we just have sex?” I asked quietly.

With his thumbs, he tilted my face so I’d look up at him. “Yeah. We did.”

He leaned forward, kissed me once, twice, softly on the lips and then a third, deep kiss. Finally he pulled away, kissed the tip of my nose, and ducked out of the closet.

And I thought, as I heard his footsteps jogging down the stairs, how strange and wonderful it was that we had never said I love you. And we hadn’t needed to.