He opens the door on the second knock, hair standing up in multiple directions like he’s been asleep, but he’s fully clothed. The TV is on in the living room, and my first thought is that he’s been waiting for me. He knew I would come.
Elliot steps aside as I walk into his apartment and I look around, comforted that everything is exactly the same as the last time I was there. Nothing drastic has occurred since the summer.
I turn to look at him, noting his glasses as he shoves them back into place and blinks a few times like he’s trying to make sure I’m real and not some weird dream he’s having.
“Count your fingers,” I say. “If you have five, it’s real life. If you have six, it’s a dream. I promise, you have five right now.”
He does as I say, and a smile appears on his face in place of the confused frown that was there before. “You got the game, then.”
“Of course, I did. You left it with Tessa. There’s no way it wouldn’t make it to me. Good job on the fedora threat, by the way. I was thoroughly intrigued and scared. Put the game in immediately for fear that Cline would show up within the hour.”
“He’s asleep,” Elliot says, leaning on the bar, his eyes still looking me over for signs of … something. Distress? I’m not quite sure.
Without asking, I move into the living room and plop down onto the couch, kick off my shoes, and turn sideways to look at him from across the room. “When did you have time to make it?”
“After I got the internship. With you gone, I had time on my hands.” He’s not nervous at all when he comes to sit by my legs. I scoot over to give him room, and the comfort of his closeness settles over me immediately.
I am levelheaded and focused when I speak again. “Do you think you love me, Elliot?”
His hand rests on my calf and he gazes down at his fingers while he thinks it over. “Do I think I love you? Or do I know I love you? I guess those are two very distinct questions, aren’t they? Thinking you love someone means you’re not really sure, and you want to test the waters. Knowing you do means you’d spend time with them, going through a bunch of states so they could find out about their mom. You’d stand in a dead tree covered in bugs and walk through cemeteries. Jump off a cliff. Risk being arrested for sleeping on the beach. You’d hold them until paramedics show up so they don’t die.” He looks at me then, his mouth set in a tight line and face deadly serious. “Do I think I love you? No. No, I don’t think I do. It’s pretty obvious to just about everybody that I know it.”
I sit up and curl my legs beneath me, never looking away from him as I do. “My therapist asked me what it was like. My depression. The anxiety. She asked for an accurate description of the feelings inside of me when it’s happening. There are so many ways to put it, but the best way I could describe it to her is that it’s like being underwater. I’m constantly drowning, no matter how hard I kick, how hard I fight to get to the surface, I am always under the water, trying to breathe. I can see people standing at the edge with their hands reaching out for me to help me up, but I can’t get to them. I’m like a raccoon with a shiny thing in my grasp. It’s closed, and I can’t get it to open no matter how hard I try to open my palm, I can’t. Both fists are closed so tight that I can’t get to the surface and take a hand for the help I need. I know that if I did, I would break the surface and breathe. I know there is air there.”
He’s watching my hands while I show him how tight my fists can squeeze. My knuckles are white, and the tendons are straining as I take a deep breath and exhale, unfurling them and leaning forward to touch his fingertips with my own.
“You’re that for me, Elliot. You help me breathe, and it scares the shit out of me. You uncurl my fists. You stop the tapping by holding my hand. You squeeze my fingers when they’re busy, and you see me … You see me do these things when other people would ignore it or think I was just weird. You have this way about you where you notice little things, and it makes you amazing, but it also scares me. If you see too much …”
“There’s nothing else that I could possibly see that would make me run away.” His hand is holding mine now and his grip is strong, a wordless promise.
“So, I guess I’m saying that I love you, too.”
His smile gets so big it looks like he might be giving himself an internal high five or something.
“You should know I don’t want kids,” I blurt out, suddenly.
He leans back and makes a face. “Kinda just wanted to start with calling you my girlfriend first, if that’s okay.”