At turns hilarious and gut-wrenching, this is a tremendously fun slow burn

This is how it starts. This is how the friendship goes from perfect and best friend ever to nothing but
weird, dirty looks across the yard.
I sat in the closet alone for an hour, staring at the pages of whatever book I’d slid from the big bookcase
and not reading a single word.
I would count to one thousand, and then I would go to his house and apologize.
One… two… three…
Twenty-eight… twenty-nine…
Two hundred thirteen…
“What are you reading?” His voice came from the doorway, but instead of walking in and flopping down
next to me, he lingered there, leaning against the frame.
“Hi!” I said too brightly, eyes looking anywhere but at his. I noticed he had changed his clothes. My face
flamed hot and I looked down, staring at the book in my hands. The letters of the title slowly swam into a
single word and I pointed at it lamely. “Um, I started Ivanhoe. No d.”
When I looked up, confusion flickered across his face like a blink, and he stepped inside. “Really?”
“Yeah,” I said slowly, watching him stalk into the room. His lip turned up in a half-teasing smile. “Why do
you say it like that? You’ve read this about fifty times.”

---

“It’s just that it looks like you’re already about halfway through it.” Scratching his temple, he added
quietly, “That’s impressive.”
I blinked down to the page I’d randomly opened. “Oh.”
It was tense and thick between us and it made my chest hurt. I wanted to ask him if I embarrassed him
or… crap. Did I hurt him?
“Macy…” he started, and I knew that voice. That voice was a let-me-down-easy voice.
I tried to laugh but it came out as a gasp, going for casual but missing by about a mile. “I am so
mortified, Elliot, seriously. I’m so sorry. Let’s not talk about it.”
Elliot nodded, his eyes on the floor. “Sure.”
“I’m sorry I did that, okay?” I whispered to my lap.
“What? Macy, no —”
“It will never happen again, I swear. I was just playing around. I know I’ve been all ‘let’s not be together
because that could ruin things’ and then I went and did that. I’m so sorry.”
He pulled a book off the shelf and I returned to Ivanhoe – starting from the beginning now – and read for
two hours, but hardly understood a word. I blamed it on my state of mind. The idea that I might have hurt
him, or embarrassed him, or made him angry ate at me like a drop of acid in my gut. It grew and gnawed at
me and eventually had me so twisted inside that I felt like I might be sick.
“Ell?”
He looked up, eyes softening immediately. “Yeah?”
“Did I hurt you?”
A corner of his lip pulled up in a smile as he fought a laugh. “No.”
I exhaled for what felt like the first time in a few hours. “Okay, good.” I opened my mouth and closed it
again, not sure what else to say.
He put his book down and moved closer. “You didn’t hurt me.” He searched my eyes, waiting. “Do you
get what I’m telling you?”
I watched as his eyebrows slowly lifted, and then he smiled that sneaky, sexy smile…
“You mean you…” I made a circular motion with my hand, and he laughed.
“Yeah. I…” He mimicked the motion, eyes teasing.
My heart became a victorious monster in my chest, thrashing to climb out.
I had made him come.
“I was trying to make sure you went first,” he admitted in a low voice, “but the sound you made… when
you asked me to move faster…” He swallowed, lifting a shoulder in a silent Oh well.
“Oh.” I stared up at him, watching him fight the heated blush. “I’m sorry.”
“Macy, don’t be sorry. I’m telling you it was sexy.” He looked at my lips, and his expression grew serious
again. “It’s hard for me sometimes that we aren’t together. I never know where the lines are. I want to
cross them all the time. We’ve kissed and touched, but then we’ll go back to being just friends and it’s
confusing. What we did today? It didn’t even feel like enough for me.” He held his hands up, eyes wide. “I
don’t mean you should do more. Just that I want it all with you. I think about it all the time.”
I thought about how much I wanted that, too. And how, earlier, I wanted so much more than his body
over mine, our clothes between us. I would have given him everything today. And still, the words that came
out were “But I would die without your friendship.”
He smiled and leaned over to kiss my cheek. “I would, too.”

---

E
now
thursday, november 23
lliot’s building is narrow, a faded turquoise stucco, and must have once been a beautiful Victorian before
it was sloppily chopped up into four cramped apartments.
The front door opens to a narrow hall on the right and a steep flight of steps leading to the upstairs
apartments. Elliot lives in number four. Upstairs and to the right, he said. Each stair squeaks beneath my
boots.
His front door is flat brown, and before it is a thin doormat with the Dickinson quote The soul should