The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan Read Free Book Online Page B

are times when I look in your eyes and realize you mean it. We’ve lost track of the game. We’re communicating in earnest now, all the things we’d never say.

T
    tableau , n.
    We go to visit two friends who’ve been together for ten years now, five times longer than we have. I look at the ease with which they sit together on the couch. They joke with each other, get annoyed with each other, curl into each other like apostrophes within a quotation mark as they talk. I realize that two years is not a long time. I realize that even ten years is not a long time. But when it seems insurmountable, I need reminders like this that you can get used to it. That it can take on the comfort of the right choice. That lasting things do, in fact, last.

taciturn , adj.
    There are days you come home silent. You say words, but you’re still silent. I used to bombard you with conversational crowbars, but now I simply let the apartment fall mute. I hear you in the room — turning on music, typing on the keys, getting up for a drink, shifting in your chair. I try to have my conversation with those sounds.

tenet , n.
    At the end of the French movie, the lover sings, “Love me less, but love me for a long time.”

transient , adj.
    In school, the year was the marker. Fifth grade. Senior year of high school. Sophomore year of college. Then after, the jobs were the marker. That office. This desk. But now that school is over and I’ve been working at the same place in the same office at the same desk for longer than I can truly believe, I realize: You have become the marker. This is your era. And it’s only if it goes on and on that I will have to look for other ways to identify the time.

traverse , v.
    You started to cry, and I quickly said, “No — I mean this part is over. We have to get to the next part.”
    And you said, “I’m not sure we can.”
    Without even having to think about it, I replied, “Of course we can.”
    “How can you be so sure?” you asked.
    And I said, “I’m sure. Isn’t that enough?”

trenchant , adj.
    You never let things go unanswered for too long. Emails. Phone calls. Questions. As if you know the waiting is the hardest part for me.

U
    ubiquitous , adj.
    When it’s going well, the fact of it is everywhere. It’s there in the song that shuffles into your ears. It’s there in the book you’re reading. It’s there on the shelves of the store as you reach for a towel and forget about the towel. It’s there as you open the door. As you stare off on the subway, it’s what you’re looking at. You wear it on the inside of your hat. It lines your pockets. It’s the temperature.
    The hitch, of course, is that when it’s going badly, it’s in all the same places.

unabashedly , adv.
    We were walking home late from a bar — and the term walking is used loosely here, because you were doing something between a skip and a stumble — and suddenly you started singing out your love for me. My name and everything, loud enough to reach the top floors of all the buildings. I should have told you to stop, but I didn’t want you to stop. I didn’t mind if your love for me woke people up. I didn’t mind if it somehow sneaked into their sleep.
    You grabbed my hand and twirled me around, two sidewalk sweethearts. Then, very earnestly, you stopped, leaned over, and whispered, “You know, I’d get a tattoo with your name on it. Only, I want you to have the freedom to change your name if you want to.”
    I thanked you, and you resumed your song.

V
    vagary , n.
    The mistake is thinking there can be an antidote to the uncertainty.

vestige , n.
    The night after we decided to move in together, we stayed over at my apartment. I looked at the things on my walls — the unframed posters from MoMA, the Doisneau kiss that had followed me from college, the album covers with push pins pressing into their corners. I had never had any desire to change anything, but suddenly I knew it was all going to change. I knew