I think it’s probably a good idea if we just try to keep our heads down during the week. It’s going to be too hard, otherwise. I’m going crazy.
* * *
From: Macy Lea Sorensen
Date: September 1, 9:22 PM
To: Elliot P.
Subject: re: Miss you
Do you think this is a bad idea? Being together?
My phone rang in my hand, Elliot’s picture popping up on the screen. I had taken it only a week prior, when he was standing on a mossy rock in the woods behind our houses and staring up at the trees, trying to identify a bird he’d seen. In the photo, the sun caught him in profile, accentuating his jaw and the definition of his chest beneath his shirt.
My heart was pounding so hard, and when I answered, my voice came out thick. “Hello?”
“Macy, no,” he said immediately. “That’s not what I mean.”
I nodded, staring at my wall, and the glossy poster of a unicorn there, which I’d had since I was eight and never bothered to take down. “Okay.”
“I just mean,” he said quietly, “that we’ll drive ourselves nuts emailing every ten minutes every day of the week.”
I sat down on my bed, kicking off my sneakers. “You’re right, of course. It just feels different now. Scarier to be apart.”
“It’s not different.” He seemed out of breath, like he was jogging upstairs. “We’ve always felt this way. I’m here. You’re there. Just like before, we still belong to each other.”
“Okay.”
“And when you come up,” he said, and I heard a door close in the background, “we’ll spend as much time together as we can.”
I curled into my pillow, cupping the phone close. “I just want to kiss you tonight,” I whispered. “I just want you here, beside me, kissing me.”
He groaned and then went quiet, and my heart felt twisted inside my chest, aching.
“Mace,” he said. “It’s all I want to do, too.”
We fell into silence then, and I wondered if he would let me fall asleep with him on the phone, later. My hand slid beneath my shirt, feeling the warmth of my stomach, imagining his palm there.
“It’s only one more year that it has to be like this,” he said, finally. “Think about that. We’re graduating in the spring. Our lives won’t be separate anymore. It will go by so fast, and then we can be together, for real.”
now
sunday, december 31
I’m here.
I’ll be right out.
I step out of my room at the modest L&M Motel and into the sharp glare of the winter sun on asphalt. Shielding my eyes with a hand, I manage to see Elliot only ten feet away, leaning against the driver’s-side door and holding a small bouquet of scraggly wildflowers. I’m immediately reminded of every teen romance hero at the sight of him straightening, staring.
After thirty-seven days, my eyes are thirsty, too, chugging down every inch of what he looks like in a tux, his hair neatly combed, face smooth with a close shave.
We’ve texted a few times since Thanksgiving, and talked on the phone a little bit here and there when I had a question about the attire for the wedding, or when he wanted to check to see where to pick me up today, but I haven’t seen him since he bent to kiss my cheek at his front door, our bellies full of turkey and wine, and looked at me meaningfully for three quiet breaths.
“Give me a chance,” he’d said.
I’d promised I would. The question was whether he’d still want one, once he heard what I had to say.
I celebrated my Christmas on December 22 with Sabrina, Dave, and Viv. Just watching them from a kitchen stool, sipping my wine, it was easy to see their rituals taking shape: the Canadian Brass Christmas album played on a loop; Dave baked up a store’s worth of Christmas cookies; Sabrina went to the living room, stringing tiny white lights all around their enormous tree. It was just one more tiny stab of awareness like those I’d been having all month, listening to colleagues share what they’d planned to do in their off-hours: parties, reunions, baking, flights out of town.
After I lost Elliot, and—of course—after I lost Dad, I’d also lost every tether to tradition. I’m ravenous to get them back. I want to make blueberry muffins on Christmas morning and light the kalenderlys at night. I want aebleskivers and books on birthdays, and hot dogs on the beach on New Year’s.