Love and Other Words

“Favorite word?” he whispers.I don’t even hesitate: “You.”

“I never got to fall out of love. I just had to move on.”

“Why can’t everyone be like you?”“I can be enough of your world that it feels like everyone is.”

“I’ve been waiting for you to come home for eleven years. I’ll go anywhere you go.”

“Don’t spoil her with toys; spoil her with books.”

“Limerence.'There's no other word like it. The state of being infatuated with another person.”

“I like your kind of quiet. Your heart isn’t quiet.”

“You broke up with her last night?”He nods … “You’re the love of my life. I assumed I would get over you eventually, but seeing you yesterday?” He shakes his head. “I couldn’t go home to someone else and pretend to love her with everything I have.”

“Well, you’re more, too. You’re my best everything.”

“Treat your body carefully. Take care of it. Don’t let anyone abuse it, and don’t abuse it yourself. Every inch of your skin I made diligently; months I slaved over you. You are my masterpiece.”

“It never occurred to me that love could be anything other than all-consuming. Even as a child, I knew I never wanted anything less.”

“Tell her you love her. Girls need the words.”

“Sometimes it feels like I think about you every minute," he whispered.”

“Admissions make feelings intensify simply because they are given space to breathe. Admissions lead to love, and admitting love is like tying yourself to a train track.”

“I think of her everywhere. She is everywhere, in every moment, and also she’s in no one moment. She misses every single one of my moments and I’m not sure who that is harder for: me surviving here without her, or her without me, existing wherever she is.”

“I always knew that he would never fall in love again after Mom. In that way, my dad was always easy to understand. He was straightforward and quiet: he walked quietly, spoke quietly; even his anger was quiet. It was his love that was booming. His love was a roaring, vociferous bellow. And after he loved Mom with the strength of the sun, and after the cancer killed her with a gentle gasp, I figured he would be hoarse for the rest of his life and wouldn’t ever want another woman the way he’d wanted her.”

“I’ll take anything you give me. Is that pathetic?”

“Elliot was kind of my Everyfriend.”

“So maybe your best everything should be your boyfriend.” I stared at him and he stared at me. I spoke without thinking. “Maybe.” “Maybe,” he agreed in a whisper.”

“I'm not prepared for this," I admit quietly."Do you have to prepare for me?""If there's anyone I have to prepare for, it's you.”

“I loved you … You loved me, too, you know,” he says quietly. “It was everything.”I feel as though I’ve been shoved, and push away from the table a little, but he leans in. “Sorry. This is too intense. I’m just terrified of not getting a chance to say it.”

“I haven't been living without him. I've been merely surviving.”

“It’s a perfect description. I never got to fall out of love. I just had to move on.”

“In that case, I like living alone, but would rather live with you. I like sleeping alone, but would rather have you in my bed. I like having friends over for Thanksgiving, but would rather it just be the two of us, doing our first Thanksgiving as a couple, eating turkey off the bone, cuddling on the floor together.”

“I give myself three more seconds to look at him, and it’s like another punch to the gut. He’s my person. He’s always been my person. My best friend, my confidant, probably the love of my life. And I’ve spent the last eleven years being angry and self-righteous. But at the end of the day, he tore a hole in us, and fate ripped it wide open. “I’m going to go,” I”

“I give myself three more seconds to look at him and it's like another punch to the gut. He's my person. He's always been my person. My best friend, my confidant, probably the love of my life.”

“His arms became a set of parentheses bracketing the sweetest secret phrase.”

“I’m sorry I was so quiet tonight,” he said, haltingly.I met his eyes in the mirror. “I like your kind of quiet. Your heart isn’t quiet.”

“What’s your favorite word?”Startled, I looked up at him, unsure I’d heard him right. “My favorite word?”He nodded, slipping his glasses up his nose with a quick, practiced scrunch of his face that made him look angry and then surprised within a single second. “You have seven boxes of books up here. A wild guess tells me you like words.”I suppose I had never thought about having a favorite word, but now that he asked, I kind of liked the idea. I let my eyes lose focus as I thought.“Ranunculus,” I said after a moment.“What?”“Ranunculus. It’s a kind of flower. It’s such a weird word but the flowers are so pretty, I like how unexpected that is.”They were my Mom’s favorite, I didn’t say.“That’s a pretty girly answer.”“Well, I am a girl.”He kept his eyes on his feet but I knew I wasn’t imagining the gleam of interest I’d seen when I said ranunculus. I bet he had expected me to say unicorn or daisy or vampire.“What about you? What’s your favorite word? I bet it’s tungsten. Or, like, amphibian.”He quirked a smile, answering, “Regurgitate.”Scrunching my nose, I stared at him. “That is a gross word.”This made him smile even wider. “I like the hard consonant sounds in it. It kinda sounds like exactly what it means.”“An onomatopoeia?”I half expected trumpets to blast revelatory music from an invisible speaker in the wall from the way Elliot stared at me, lips parted and glasses slowly sliding down his nose.“Yeah,” he said.“I’m not a complete idiot, you know. You don’t have to look so surprised that I know some big words.”“I never thought you were an idiot,” he said quietly, looking toward the box and pulling out another book to hand to me.For a long time after we returned to our slow, inefficient method of unpacking the books, I could feel him looking up and watching me, tiny flashes of stolen glances.I pretended I didn’t notice.”

“It isn't accurate to say that my heart stops, because really I feel it's existence intensely, a phantom limb.”