Love and Other Words

The narrator flashes back to the first time she saw the weekend house her father bought. It felt cold. Their home in Berkeley was cluttered, and the new house feels empty in comparison. When she looks in the closet in her soon-to-be-room, she finds a boy reading. She learns the boy lives next door, and his mom has a key from the previous occupants of the house. He says he needs a friend, and she offers to let him come over to read after they buy the house.

They are in the coffee shop again. Elliot has not noticed Macy. She keeps staring at him. Macy reveals that she hasn’t seen Elliot since her senior year of high school. She tries to leave before he can spot her but fails. Elliot recognizes her, and she tries to run away, but he catches her. She says she’s been expecting to see him, but she didn’t want to see him. She can’t stop staring at his Adam’s apple. He says, “I called you […] Like a million times, and then that number changed” (17). She tries to excuse herself to go to work. He confronts her and says, “I can’t just run into you at Saul’s and be like ‘Hey, Macy, what’s up,’ and then you go to work, and I go to work, and we don’t talk for another ten fucking years” (17).

She tells him her dad has died. Elliot is emotional. He asks, “Macy, why didn’t you tell me?” (17). She reveals that Elliot is “probably the love of my life,” but “he tore a hole in me, and fate ripped it wide open” (17).

Macy flashes back to the day she moved into the weekend house. The entire Petropoulos family was waiting outside to greet them. They have four sons and a baby girl. The father is Nick. He tells Macy to call him “Mr. Nick.” She hasn’t called an adult by a first name. Mr. Nick says he was friends with the previous owners. He knows all about the house and says he can fix anything wrong with it. This pushes Duncan’s buttons.

Macy confesses that her only crush up to this point was on a boy named Jason in kindergarten. The boys help their new neighbors unload boxes. Elliot helps Macy with a box of books and realizes they’ve read the same book. Elliot reveals that he reads a book a day. They are both in eighth grade.

She says that her dad owns a company that imports ceramics “and art and stuff” (19). When he asks about her mom, she cuts him off. She says she likes talking with someone who doesn’t know her mom is dead. She worries that she won’t be anything to him but a girl whose mother had died. He surprises her by changing the subject to ask “What’s your favorite word?” (20). She says it is “Ranunculus,” the name of her mom’s favorite flower.

Macy is awake in the dark next to Sean. She says she feels like she’s torn open some emotional stitches. She realizes that she hasn’t told her fiancé anything about Elliot. When her fiancé suggests getting back into bed, she worries it will feel “wrong.”

Macy’s dad takes her to their weekend home for Christmas. A man with a gold tooth and a wooden leg brings their Christmas tree in. She reveals that she and Elliot turned the closet into a library, and they read there for hours. She has never been to his house. Elliot arrives with a plate of cookies. Macy’s dad hints that Elliot should go home, but Macy subtly convinces him to let Elliot stay so they can read.

Elliot asks Macy what her mother used to do around the holidays. Macy says, “You can’t just ask stuff like that” (23). Elliot responds with, “I’m sorry!” and Macy tries to assure him that she is okay, but she says internally, “Even just saying it backed up the emotional eighteen-wheeler. I felt the tears retreat down my throat” (23). Elliot has braces now. They read together. He asks if the holidays without her mom are hard. She opens up about her mother. She was a book buyer for a major retailer in the Bay Area but wanted to own her own store. She lost her parents when she was young, but everyone she knew “claimed her as their own” (23). She made blueberry muffins and fresh orange juice.

The narrator says that Sean is from central Texas. His last wife was an investment banker who had an addiction to cocaine and left him and their daughter. She hooked up with Sean one night and woke to find six-year-old Phoebe, who asked if she was “a new roommate” (25). After that, Macy kept sleeping over.

When she gets to work, Elliot is there. The receptionist, it turns out, is Liz Petropoulos, the wife of Elliot’s older brother George. She gave Elliot Macy’s work information. Elliot asks her to breakfast. She says she has an hour. He asks her to catch him up on the past 11 years of her life. He asks why she hasn’t called. She doesn’t answer. She realizes it is the day before his birthday. He graduated early from college and moved to Manhattan for a while. He said he didn’t love it and returned to work for a nonprofit literacy center.

He asks her if she moved back to be close to her father. She deflects and changes the subject to ask why he came back to Berkeley. He says he wanted to live near her and moved back to Berkley hoping it would improve his chances of seeing her again. The phone rings. Elliot ignores it. Macy asks who it is. Elliot admits it is the girlfriend he broke up with last night. He tells Macy she is the love of his life, and he can’t pretend to love another person. Then he tells her, “You can’t just continually run from this conversation. It’s been eleven years in the making. […] I know I messed up, but was it that bad? So bad you just vanished” (28). She reveals that she is getting married and that what was between them is over.