Love and Other Words

Elliot gives Macy copies of Delta of Venus by Anais Nin and Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller. These are erotic books. She says she doesn’t want to read them, but Elliot says he’ll leave them for her anyway. After a week she caves and starts reading. Elliot catches her. She reads Anais Nin and notices that the book describes sex without emotion. She says this to Elliot, and he laughs and tells her to read the Forward. In it, Nin explains that it was commissioned by a wealthy man who wanted stories written just that way.

Elliot asks why Macy didn’t invite him to the spring formal. Macy says that in the closet they have their own bubble, and she wasn’t sure she wants to burst it yet. At the dance, there would be people she already knows, and she worried he would feel like an outsider. She felt that way when she met Emma.

She admits that her real fear isn’t of other girls, it’s of losing him. He says that will never happen. She says #43 on her mom’s list was that Macy shouldn’t have sex until she can talk about sex.