has made me realize it.” We stop on a tiny, slippery bridge in the middle of the woods, looking at each other. “You make me feel so many things,” I admit in a hush.
He reaches up, gently pulling my ponytail through his fist. “Me too. That was always true.” Shifting his hand to smooth a palm over the front of my hair, he murmurs, “I wasn’t trying to talk you into staying with Sean, by the way. I just think you’re being too hard on yourself.”
My eyes narrow in skepticism. “Me?”
Nodding, he says, “I think you’re beating yourself up for being with Sean. It’s why I asked about Phoebe and . . .”
“Ashley?”
“Yeah. Ashley.” He uses the tip of his index finger to push his glasses up, and stares out at the thick trees in front of us. “You act like you’re with him only because it’s easy. But in some ways, he’s your dad in this scenario, and you’re the woman who came after your mom. Sean doesn’t have as much to give, but you understand why. After all, you wouldn’t want to try to replace anyone.”
I stare up at him in shock. In only a few sentences, Elliot has just explained why it makes sense for me to be with Sean, while simultaneously proving that he—Elliot—is the only person who truly understands a thing about me. I didn’t even see this truth until now.
“Why are you so good to me? After everything?”
Elliot tilts his head as he looks back at me. Of course he doesn’t see it skewed this way. He only knows his betrayal, not mine. “Because I love you?”
Emotion clogs my throat, and I have to swallow a few times to get the words out. “I don’t think I really noticed before how numb I’ve been. Or cared, maybe.”
I see the way this hits him, physically. “Mace . . .”
I laugh darkly at this, at how fucking horrible it sounds. “That’s awful, isn’t it?”
He steps forward abruptly, pulling me into his chest. One hand cups the back of my head, the other wraps around my shoulders, and it feels like I haven’t really cried in ten years.
then
saturday, june 3
eleven years ago
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.