CHAPTER 7 - EXPLAINING

Worry appeared to be the most dominant color across his features, but there was also a shade of surprise, maybe apprehension. Definitely a hue of… Excitement?

"What's the matter, Liv?" Elliot asked, but I didn't say anything, and the silence was slightly awkward as this man who could usually read me like an open book just stared at me like I was written in a completely different language that night. Maybe I was. Then, it all went away, and recognition took over when he seemed to recall something. "Oh, I forgot."

He disappeared into the room for a moment, and I had no idea what he was doing or what he expected me to do; was that an invitation to follow him in? My time for speculation was cut short though, because just as those questions started to bounce back and forth in my head, he materialized at the door again.

"Here, thank you," he said, sounding a bit rushed and offering something that took me a couple of seconds of paralyzed silence to recognize as the dark blue scarf I had lent him earlier, that whole pathetic bar exchange ago. "I'll buy one tomorrow."

I stared at the wool in his hands, stupefied. What was it that I was supposed to do there again? My mind went blank. Oh, the anger. What was it I was supposed to be so angry about? The haze of the beer and the light in his eyes were too confusing.

"A-actually," I babbled, a very embarrassed hand through my hair and a sheepish shrug. "I… I was gonna say you can keep it. I brought others, and you really shouldn't walk around without one, especially at night."

Elliot seemed surprised. Well, can you blame him? "Okay," he eventually said with a smile, eyebrows knit in a sign that he wasn't entirely sure he believed that was what I had really knocked on his door for.

Well, now he seemed to be able to read me again. Maybe he could explain it to me, because I had no clue. I wished I knew what he was thinking, what his suspicions were, but it didn't seem like he was about to share them; the fact that he wasn't demanding any answers told me he knew a lot more about what I was doing there than he'd be willing to admit. That was it: that was what my anger was all about, his unwillingness to acknowledge any of it.

Well, right in that moment, it was contagious, because I didn't want to admit to anything anymore either; I had nothing else to offer, so I didn't. It was pretty clear that the courage that my anger had boosted was completely gone, so there wasn't much left to do but flee.

"Good night," I said, rushing back to my room and feeling like the awkward, insecure teenager I had never been.

I woke up the next morning with no clear recollection of exactly how or when I'd gone to bed. Thinking about the previous night, I realized that my memories from the bar onwards were a bit obscure, which was certainly related to the considerable amount of beer I had consumed. I could recall what had happened, it was just the details that escaped me, and there was this aura of impossibility permeating everything, like those facts couldn't be proven beyond reasonable doubt.

I knew that I'd returned to the hotel with Elliot, and that, after that little act at the bar, we hadn't exchanged many words. I also knew that, for some reason, his silence had made me furious, so much so that I had gone after him, but I didn't remember saying much more than just officially giving him my dark blue scarf. I was almost completely sure I hadn't said much more than that.

Now, in the light of day, and sobriety, and wakefulness, I was able to gain some perspective over whatever had happened at the bar: it had been nothing more than an act. I had wanted to help him get rid of Kelly, and he had played along because, as I had suspected, he was, indeed, feeling annoyed. So our little act had made her back off, which had always been our only intention.

Okay, maybe we were a little flirty, like we had never been with each other. Yes, we were having far more physical contact than we were used to back at home, but it was only natural. Back in New York, we only saw each other at work, which is definitely not the place for physical contact or public displays of affection. Also, even though we were meeting new people, we only really knew each other there, so it was natural to turn to each other for a little human contact – people crave human contact.

Maybe we were both just trying not to be so uptight around each other – or about anything at all. I remembered what he had told me the day before, about not having to worry about being a cop or a husband and father here, and being able to just be himself. Maybe he was just enjoying this whole new experience of not doing exclusively whatever was expected of him. We weren't even partners here, there was no work to partner over. Here, we were just friends, close friends. We were just finding out how close close friends can be.

So that's all that was going on. I kicked myself for having read too much into Elliot's actions the day before, thinking that there might be something else going on there. Of course there wasn't. We were in a strange place, very far from home, but we had a date set to return home, and it would all be there waiting for us, including our work and our partnership, which I was sure he didn't want to jeopardize any more than I did.

So that was all, I kept repeating to myself. I just hoped that I really hadn't said or done anything about that stupid fit of anger that had taken over me. I didn't remember saying or doing anything, but then I didn't remember showering either, and I clearly had, which I could tell from my clothes thrown all over the floor leading to the bathroom and the natural waves in my hair from not having blow-dried it.

It was already nine when I got up, realizing I hadn't made any plans with Elliot, or anyone else for that matter. Gathering from the noises my stomach was making, I noticed I was starving, and figured I'd get dressed to go downstairs for breakfast – maybe Elliot would be there too.

At the restaurant, I didn't see him or any members of Allie's little clan. Maybe everybody was sleeping in, I had no idea how much longer they had all stayed at the bar the night before, or how much more they had drunk. A little anxious about not knowing where Elliot was, I focused on eating, even though I kept throwing slightly nervous glances towards the entrance in hopes to see him.

I was already standing with the intention of going up and knocking on his door when my cell phone buzzed once. I grinned, biting my lip as I flipped it open and faced his name, clicking to read the text message.

Meet me out front in 5. Bring your coat.

Rushing to the elevators, I felt my heart thrumming in my chest, wondering what he was up to that required me meeting him out front in five minutes. I considered texting back asking why or what for, but for some reason I decided I wanted to be surprised. Not that he would have prepared a surprise for me. Well, whatever it was he had planned, I didn't know about it: isn't that the definition of a surprise?

I just went up to grab my coat and my stuff (I had only brought the keycard with me downstairs to the restaurant) and came right back down, with only one minute to spare from the small window Elliot had given me. Still, not a whole minute had gone by when I saw a blue Ford SUV approaching and eventually pulling over. I leaned in to check who the driver was, and felt an involuntary smile forming on my lips when I saw Elliot, wearing sunglasses and a dark blue pullover and making my stomach flutter.

He rolled down the passenger window. "Get in!"

"Where did you get a car?" I asked, entering the SUV. "And where's your coat?"

He smiled. "There's a car rental at walking distance from here. And the coat is in the backseat, you might wanna take yours off before you put your seatbelt on, this air conditioning is really good, and so is the seat warmer."

"Okay, I figured where you got the car," I rolled my eyes as I moved awkwardly to do as he'd said, my coat now traveling along with his and the scarf I'd given him in the backseat – I was glad to find that he hadn't made good on his promise to buy one for himself, I liked that he was satisfied wearing mine. "What I meant is why do we need one?"

He waited for the click of my seatbelt to put the car in gear and start making his way out of the complex, but he was smiling the whole time. "Didn't you wanna go down to see the lake?"

It was an incredibly beautiful day, with such warm sunlight that it almost made up for the freezing wind. Elliot refused to give me any more information about where exactly we were going, and we bantered all the way there as I tried taking guesses from the little the car's GPS map showed while he tried to deflect my questions. I also picked on him about the music, because apparently he had chosen a gospel rock radio without noticing.

"It sounded like regular rock," he laughed. "I just thought it was weird I didn't recognize any of the songs."

"Don't you think it's a hell of a coincidence that all of these bands had religious experiences to write about?" I teased.

"Did you choose to say hell on purpose?" he gave me a sideways glance over his dark lenses before shrugging. "I wasn't paying a lot of attention to what they were saying, that's not exactly the point of music."

"Well, if it weren't the point, not even a little bit, then there would be no lyrics. Including lyrics in which the word hell is allowed."

He feigned annoyance, but I saw the stubborn corner of his mouth that would not go down. "Why don't you just change the station already?"

I smiled innocently. "Why? It's just rock. We just don't know any of these bands, but why not use this opportunity to get to know them?"

I was teasing him, but we really weren't paying attention to the music, because for most of the drive, we could see the lake, coming closer and closer as we went down the mountain, earning several wows from me and a few frustrated attempts to take pictures with Elliot's camera (he really did know more about trips than me: he had remembered to bring one).

We also talked a lot. Elliot told me a little about some road trips he used to take with Kathy and the kids, including to the Hudson Valley, where they were now spending their vacation. While he sounded a bit wistful at times, it sounded mostly like he was just sharing past experiences, there was no complaint in his tone.

"You weren't in charge of picking the music for those, were you?" I teased further, and he had to laugh, but I was mostly trying to brush off the fact that I didn't have any experiences like those to offer in return.

He eventually picked up on that. "So you never really did stuff like that with your mom, huh?"

When I spoke, I made an effort not to sound sad or regretful. To be honest, I had never really spent much time missing those things my mom hadn't given me: it was there, with him, surrounded by that breath-taking view and the Saturday-morning-esque sound of the radio mixed with the engine and the wind as we sped by that I was feeling nostalgic, hit with the sensation of finding out what I had been missing out on.

What I didn't want to dwell much further on was assessing how much that feeling was related to road trips or to spending time with him. My heart was warm and I was scared, already dreading the unrelenting, impending coldness that would inevitably follow.

But anyway, all of this was going through my head as I answered his question, again, trying not to break up the relaxed mood with my sad childhood. "Not really," I said. "She was always busy with her job at the University, and to be honest, I got a little nervous about getting in a car with her. I doubted she was ever completely sober, or at least sober enough to drive anyway."

I could see that he wanted to ask something, but contained the impulse. "What?" I insisted. I wanted him to know it was okay to talk about this. I was a big girl and I had already come to terms with the crappy aspects of my childhood. My fears were related to the adult aspects of life, believe me.

"I was just wondering if you never wanted to do this kind of thing with friends… Or boyfriends."

With someone meaningful, I recalled, but offered only a vague statement. "I guess the opportunity just never came up."

He didn't insist further, and a few minutes went by in silence, until I broke it; I checked my watch and realized we had already been driving for over forty-five minutes. "Are we going back home? We could have just changed our flight back, you know? If you hated it here so much... Did you get tired of Kelly?"

He smiled and I caught him biting his lower lip for a second. "Kelly again? She's not that bad, actually. Besides, she's been through some stuff."

I shut down. Seriously? Was he defending her? So she had told him her life's story, just as I had suspected, and it was a sad one, of course. Tailor-made for him to feel sorry for her. Damn it, I had no idea what she had told him, but I was already determined to believe it was a lie. Well, the endorsement from the girls the night before had done no favors for my default state of dislike of this woman.

"Why does she bother you so much, anyway?" Elliot asked, bringing me back from my thoughts.

He hadn't sounded playful, this wasn't us bantering about her anymore. He was really asking now. Maybe he had seen the places my mind had gone from the simple mention of her (which had been my fault, I know, don't think I didn't roll my eyes at myself for that), and now he wanted to know, seriously, what my problem with her was. Except that he knew what my problem with her was. Right?

"You really have to ask?" I blurted out, making my own heart beat faster as I earned an enigmatic look from him, but no comeback; I wondered if that meant I had stunned him with my reply. Or confused him? This warmth in my heart thing was a bit dangerous – there I was saying things without thinking.

"But we're not," he turned to look ahead through the windshield once again.

"You two are not what?" I blabbered suddenly, thinking he was still talking about Kelly.

"We're not," he corrected me with a chuckle. "We, you and me, are not going back home."

I couldn't contain a relieved sigh, but recovered quickly. "Ever?" I asked, and he just shook his head with another laugh. I was getting used to that sound, it seemed to ignite something in me, and I loved being the one to make it come out of him. "Where are we going then?"

He looked at his own watch, "You'll find out in about ten minutes."

And I did; about twelve minutes later, I saw the signs and found out we were driving into the Emerald Bay State Park. He parked the car and handed me a map that had been folded dozens of times to fit his back pocket as I got out of the passenger seat, as though I had finally earned the right to know where we were and why.

I unfolded the map, following the red sharpie line drawn from the Weller Northstar resort to Emerald Bay State Park. It was a long line.

"I promised I'd take you down to see the lake," he said.

I was a bit taken aback by the lengths – and distances – he had gone to in order to comply with my request. "But this… Weren't there any nearer beaches?"

"Several, you saw them all as we drove. But everyone I asked told me that, hands down, this was the most beautiful place to see. Besides, we were a lot closer to it than we'd be in New York, right? A one-hour drive is nothing."

As I imagined him asking everyone about the best place to see the lake from, wondering if that was the content of his conversations the night before while sending looks in my direction, I let the smile creep up from my insides to my lips and override my worries. "When you put it this way…"

I involuntarily held by breath when he held out his hand. "Just come with me."

I'd come all this way. Giving him my hand wasn't a big deal, just like the one-hour drive hadn't been. Inside, I was going so much farther, giving so much more – he didn't know and neither did I, which was for the best. His hand wrapped, firm, around mine, the kind of grasp that makes you feel safe. It was too bad he needed both hands to pay for our tickets, cutting our contact shorter than I would've wanted it to be.

As he did that, I realized we were no longer inside the resort; he was paying for everything, including the car, the gas, the tickets, and I assumed he had lunch somewhere planned if we were an hour away from the hotel.

"Hey, let me chip in," I said, even though I remembered I hadn't brought actual money, just my credit card.

"We can share the cost of lunch," he said, and I reluctantly agreed.

We joined a group that was leaving for one of the several hikes they offered; this one was supposed to be forty minutes long, and it took us the rest of the way down to the beach. The guide was explaining many things about the place, the woods, the rocks, the bay itself, but to be honest, we weren't really listening.

Elliot and I were walking a bit far from the group, in an unspoken agreement to just take it all in, physically experiencing the moment instead of hearing or thinking about it mentally. We could read and learn about this place whenever we wanted, but being there was a completely different thing, and we didn't want to miss a second of it.

Before getting to the beach, we stopped at a few natural "observation decks" from which we could see the bay meeting the lake. I was bewildered, almost unable to believe such a beautiful place existed. There was also a silence that seemed to emanate from the trees and the water, even from the sky, as the birds provided the only music that seemed to be allowed in this place. It was as if nothing man-made was good enough to match the magnificence of nature here, and all there was left to do was surrender and watch, defeated.

We took some pictures from these rocks, including a few pictures of the two of us together that a couple that was part of the hike was nice enough to take in exchange for us taking a few of them as well.

"Are you guys on honeymoon?" The woman asked, out of the blue, when Elliot returned her camera.

I had no idea what to say; this wasn't the first time someone thought we were together here, but I could never come up with a quick, easy answer that explained exactly what we were and weren't to each other. So while my mouth rehearsed a few syllables without getting much out, Elliot simply smiled.

"Yes, we are," he said, looking at me with a mixture of smugness, amusement and something else I couldn't quite pinpoint as he slowly slid his hand across my back to land it on the crook of my waist, pulling me to his side. "What about you guys?"

"On vacation," the man said, taking the woman's hand in his and interlocking their fingers. "But we're still very much on honeymoon, too. Been married a year."

"I could tell you guys had the same energy," the woman added, as if to clarify the directness of her question.

Apparently, she wanted to found the Tahoe Honeymooners Club and was screening for members, and I was a bit shocked at my crankiness, not such a far echo from my anger the night before; I realized it bothered me to pretend we were together. Maybe because we actually weren't. But what did I care what everyone else thought? Was that really what was bothering me about this?

As they walked away, I wordlessly disentangled myself from Elliot's grasp and walked closer to the edge of the rocky ridge, staring out towards the water and listening to its faint sounds coming from the shore below. I stared for a few moments, letting the sun, the breeze, and the sounds of the birds and the water bring me back to the moment and get me out of that weird, momentary funk, putting me, however, right into another.

I had these moments sometimes during perfect situations like this one, where I seemed to be living a unique moment, something I would never be able to get back; it was a longing, a longing for this even before it was gone, a feeling of need, the need to make the most of this moment, the fear of missing something crucial about the experience.

"Wow, where did you just go?" Elliot asked softly, joining me, even if from a bit of a distance, seemingly sensing my discomfort from a few minutes earlier.

"Nowhere, just…" I started. "It's hard to explain… I guess I'm just… afraid of not making the most of this. Afraid of missing out on something and regretting it later." I chuckled without any amusement at myself. "And then I get worried about this and end up not savoring the moment, you know?"

He looked all around us, gesturing with his arm.

"Look at this place," he said, then looked back at me. "I think this is pretty fucking great, don't you think?"

I smiled. "Yes."

"Then just savor it, Liv. Just savor this moment, right now."

We walked the rest of the way down to the beach soon after that, and it was also quite breath-taking. We took a short stroll along the shore, and I wish it weren't so cold so I could actually take my shoes off and dip my feet into the water. Instead, I just watched it, hitting the sand in slow, soothing waves. Elliot walked beside me in silence, too, but at a certain point, he took my hand again, letting our fingers naturally wedge between each other, and I bitterly wondered if it was a show to keep our cover as honeymooners.

There I was, again, worrying instead of enjoying the moment. What did it matter why he was doing it? All that mattered was that it felt good to hold his hand. That I wanted to keep holding it. So I did.

He gave my hand a good, hard squeeze, making me look up to find him smiling lightly at me; we were just savoring the moment, I told myself. We were each other's meaningful person, here, anyway. Might as well make the most of it, huh? Pretty fucking great.

But still, there was something bothering me, and my hand tensed up, and it spread throughout my whole body. We stopped walking, both facing the water for a moment.

"Did that upset you back there?" he finally asked softly.

Had it? Damn it, how could this man just read my mind like that?

"I don't know…" I answered truthfully, then turned to look at him. "I'm not sure if upset is the right word."

He had taken his sunglasses off to see the view in all its glory, so I could actually look into his eyes; I felt better knowing he looked just as confused as me.

He took a step closer. "I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable."

"You didn't," I rushed to clarify, but I didn't even know if I was telling the truth or not.

We stared at each other for a long moment; this was Elliot. What could be so scary about this? We got along naturally. We knew our way around each other instinctively, we didn't need words. Maybe I didn't need to find the correct term for what I was feeling, because I had the impression that not only he knew, but he was actually trying to tell me he felt the same.

There was a hint of sadness in his eyes, and I figured it was mirroring mine. Was it sadness? Was that what I felt when someone thought we were a couple and he didn't tell them we weren't? I didn't want to feel sad: we were in a beautiful place, living a unique moment, and being sad was not the way to make the most of it.

I closed the distance between us and hugged him, and I couldn't help but notice just how well my upper arms fit his shoulders, the perfect angle of my elbows surrounding him, my face finding the perfect spot against his neck, the smell of soap and his soft aftershave, a smell of any given morning at home. With him.

"I'm fine," I said, with my hug and my words. "We're good. It's no big deal."

He rubbed my back with one of his hands, and the other slowly came up to cup the back of my head.

"Everyone just assumes we're together…" he said matter-of-factly. "I don't know about you, but I think it's easier to just let them think whatever they want than having to set them straight every time." As if to make a point, he tightened his grip around me.

And suddenly I knew what was bothering me; I pulled away just a little.

"What about setting each other straight?" I asked, staring long and hard into those blue eyes, a whole furious ocean inside each, my constant thrill of diving and dread of drowning.

I saw that he had no answer, not an easy one, anyway. I figured we were okay leaving it as an open question, like pretty much anything at that point, and as if to make my point, I cuddled closer to him, nuzzling my way into the junction between his neck and shoulder.

You could say I was challenging it all, but to be honest, I didn't want to lose my access. I liked my crook-of-his-neck, hand-in-his-hand privileges. I was most certainly not ready to give them up, and the possibility ran as a chill right up my spine to my own neck, fading away under his warm hand around my protected, defenseless nape.

"I guess it's the same," he said, lowering his voice, and I almost heard it more from his throat right next to my face than his mouth, all the way out there in the outside world. "Explaining is the most complicated part."

Oh yes, it was.