Love at First

by Kate Clayborn

  There’s other things we do here and there, he remembered her saying. Probably projector-supported viewing of ball games counted. That sounded nice, sure, but he’d have to talk to her about continuing to use his balcony. He couldn’t imagine renters would like that. Maybe he’d find her now, before he went in for the night. Maybe—

  “Next up is number nine!” called Marian, interrupting his thoughts, and he figured he ought to take his chance to go now, before the next reader got started. He’d catch Nora some other time, could even try waiting for her out on his balcony early tomorrow morning, once he’d gotten some work done.

  But then he saw her rise from her seat, waving her scroll sheepishly. Number nine, then.

  “Darling Nora,” Marian said, welcoming her to the mic with an arm around her shoulders. “Nora read her first poem here when she was ten years old!”

  Everyone snapped for that, and even though he was far away, Will had the feeling that Nora was blushing. She lowered her head, pulling her braid over her shoulder, and smiled at Marian. When the older woman took her seat, Nora stepped up to the mic, using one hand to straighten the neckline of that pretty, bare-shouldered dress.

  She looks like summer, he thought, which meant he was probably full up on poetry shit for the night.

  Jonah made another one of those snorting noises. Either he had a mild upper-respiratory problem or he could read Will’s mind.

  “First one she’s done by herself in a while,” Jonah said.

  “What?”

  Jonah tipped his chin toward the mic. “Last few years she visited, she always read with Lidia. Her grandmother.”

  “Ah,” Will said, but now he watched Nora more closely—the way she fumbled a little with the ribbon on her scroll, the way the bottom edge of her dress fluttered erratically along the ground, as though her feet shuffled beneath it.

  She was nervous.

  He reached up, rubbed a hand across his chest. Shot a glance at Jonah when the man snorted again.

  “Let’s see,” Nora said into the microphone as she unrolled her page, her voice soft. “Oh.”

  There was a long pause, and Will looked over at Jonah, then at the back of Marian Goodnight’s head, way up in the front row. Did she usually take this long to get started?

  Nora cleared her throat, the sound too loud over the mic. “Whoops,” she said, and a few people snapped in encouragement.

  “Say pass,” Will muttered under his breath, then looked over at Jonah to make sure the old man hadn’t heard him.

  Nora looked up, and because he’d been watching her smile all night in this petty little game they’d been playing, he could tell something different about this one. He could tell it was brittle, a little wobbly at the edges. Say pass, he thought again, almost desperately, because he hated that smile on her face.

  “My poem is by Mary Oliver,” she said finally. “It’s called ‘The Summer Day.’”

  She started reading after taking a deep breath, and Will felt like he was holding his own. He may not have made a lick of sense of his own poem while he was up there, but when Nora read, he paid attention to every word; he listened to her read about watching a grasshopper, about kneeling in the grass and being idle, about everything dying at last, and too soon.

  When she finished, she gave that brittle smile again, did a funny little curtsy that made a few people laugh amid their snapping, and Will blew out a breath. She seemed fine, ushering Marian back to the mic, patting Emily’s shoulder, taking something from a tray Mrs. Salas handed to her.

  But she also didn’t go back to her seat.

  She stood off to the side for a few seconds, but she kept that same tense, fragile smile on her face. She seemed to be waiting for something, and when Marian started speaking again, announcing the changeover to the evening’s original compositions, he could tell what it was.

  She was waiting for everyone to have their attention diverted. She was waiting for the right moment to leave. When Marian called up the first poet for the night, Nora found her opportunity.

  And Will barely waited a minute before following her.

  She hadn’t gone far.

  He found her in the vestibule at the front of the building, where the small, silver mailboxes were dotted with glinting light from the too-low chandelier, where the wallpaper—he had to give it credit—looked more metallic than mustard at this time of night. She was looking out the front door, her back to him, her bare shoulders slightly slumped, and her flower crown off her head, held loosely at her side. But even in a posture that looked a little defeated, there was still something so vivid about her standing there—her dress summer green in this dull, old-fashioned vestibule, the flowers at her side an antidote to the musty smell.

  “Hey,” he said softly, not wanting to startle her.

  Her shoulders straightened immediately, one of her hands lifting, and he shifted his gaze to her reflection in the glass door, saw the dimmer, smaller version of her swipe gently beneath her eye.

  He took a step forward.

  But when she turned around to face him, she was all smiles again, raising her chin and swinging her flower crown softly by her side.

  He hated it. He’d had enough of smiling for one night, and he didn’t want to think too hard about how, with Nora, not smiling would’ve somehow felt like a truce.

  “Oh, hi!” she said, that same high, false note of cheer that’d been in her voice when he’d first shown up tonight. “I needed some air.”

  Will stayed silent, watching as she realized what she’d said: a pause, a blink . . . a minute, nearly undetectable cringe.

  “Uh, inside air, I meant.” She reached up, fidgeting again with that band holding her dress up. “Are you having fun?”

  Once again, he didn’t answer, because he didn’t really know how. He kind of had been having fun, until he saw her up there, looking small and smiling and fragile.

  She cleared her throat. “Okay, I can see you’re mad. But I didn’t tell Marian to call your number first, I promise.” She paused again, looking down. At some point, she’d slipped into a pair of sandals, and she shuffled her feet now, pulling the hem of her dress from beneath the sole of one. “That was a coincidence.”

  “I don’t care about the number. I did fine up there.”

  She swung her crown again, her lips pursing and pulling to the side, the dent in her cheek showing. “You were pretty good. Kind of a sad poem you got, though.”

  Now he was the one shifting in his shoes. Jesus, he was really going to have to read that poem later. Still, this was the first thing she’d said to him that didn’t feel like it was part of the show, and it was easy enough to bluff this one, given what had made him come after her in the first place.

  “Same for you, it seemed like.”

  She met his eyes briefly, then lowered her gaze again. Another fake, brittle smile, a shaky laugh. “Who knew so many poems about summer were sad?”

  “Nora.” He didn’t know why he said her name, especially like that. Like he was scolding her. Like he could see right through her.

  She waved a hand. “It’s silly.”

  “I doubt it.”

  She raised her head and her eyes met his, and like a punch right to his hiccupping heart, he could see that they were shiny, wet with a new rush of tears.

  “Nora,” he said again, but this time, it wasn’t a scold.

  “I don’t—I don’t want to talk about this.” She put up a hand, and that’s when he realized he’d stepped forward again. “Especially with you.”

  Ouch.

  He stepped back, clearing his throat, embarrassed. How many ways did he need to be shown that this woman did not want him here? Well, he should be grateful. What a good reminder. He needed to turn around and walk down the cherub-surveilled hallway and get back to fucking work.

  “No, wait,” she said, stopping him. “I’m sorry. I meant—um. Because of what you told me. About being an . . .” She trailed off, obviously uncomfortable saying the w
ord he’d basically grenaded at her the other night. She switched the flower crown to her other hand, shaking loose some of its petals in the process. “It’s not the same . . . losing a grandmother, I mean.”

  He stilled, relaxing his posture. So it wasn’t that she didn’t want him there, at least not for now. He still should go; he still should get back to work.

  But he didn’t go. He leaned a shoulder against the wall, right at one end of the line of mailboxes, and tucked his hands in his pockets. He thought about that tear he suspected she’d been wiping away, and he could not for the life of him bring himself to turn around and go back to Donny’s place.

  “I don’t really think grief cares so much about titles. It sounds like you were close.”

  She tipped her chin down in a nod. “She was ninety-two years old. It’s really . . . I’m fine, you know? She had a good, long life, and she wasn’t well, right there at the end. So it’s . . .”

  She trailed off again, and then she gave a shrug that was so, so familiar to him. He’d given that shrug to people for what had felt like his whole entire seventeenth year of life. He’d been sick for a while, he remembered saying to people. It’s good he doesn’t have to suffer anymore, he remembered people saying to him.

  “It’s still awful,” he said. “No matter what way it happens. No matter when.” He thought of the poem she’d read. Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

  Now that, he thought, was a sad poem.

  She nodded, and then she moved to the side, mimicking his posture—leaning a shoulder against the wall, right at the other end of the line of mailboxes. She didn’t smile, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Probably I shouldn’t have said ‘orphan,’ before,” he said, honoring this unsmiling honesty with an offering of his own. “My dad passed when I was seventeen, my mom about a year later. I was an adult by then.”

  She looked at him for a long time. “That’s not . . . really an adult.”

  What was there to do, except offer that trusty, shared shrug? “Adult enough,” he added, and then he promptly changed the subject. “Jonah said you and your grandmother used to read together at these things.”

  She hesitated before answering, her eyes on him soft and seeking, and for a second, he thought she might press him, might ask him what “adult enough” meant.

  But she must’ve seen something forbidding in his expression, because she eventually relented, rolling so that both her shoulders rested against the wall, her legs stretched out in front of her, one foot crossed over the other. The soft fabric of the loose, flowing part of her dress draped close over her front—her stomach, her thighs, the sharp line of her top shin—and everything in his body heated. Once he realized he’d been staring, he jerked his eyes back to her face, but she didn’t seem to be watching him, anyway. She was looking up toward the chandelier and all its dangling crystals.

  “It was strange tonight,” she said. “I kept feeling like—I don’t know. I guess I kept feeling like she was around. Not in a creepy way, but sort of a nice way. A watching-over way.”

  He thought of the moment he’d first arrived, Nora’s sharp interruption of Mrs. Salas. He reached up, touched the edge of his laurel wreath. “A discount-on-flower-crowns way?”

  She laughed—a quiet, breathy sound that for once didn’t go right to his heart. Somewhere else, sure—to all those heated-up places in his body—but with a little concentration he could deal with that. He inhaled through his nose, curled his fingers into his palms. Cooled himself.

  “Yeah, maybe. But also the weather, and everyone we called—” She stopped herself, looked at him from the side of her eyes, her expression stricken.

  Now it was his turn to laugh. “I figured it was a bigger-than-usual crowd,” he said. “For my benefit.” At the moment, alone with her in this weird, wallpapered vestibule, he couldn’t work up much anger about this whole charade, not if it gave her some comfort. He’d be up all night, making up for lost time, but he’d manage. “Maybe she got me called up to the mic first, too.”

  Nora smiled—a real one, this time. “I admit, I wondered.”

  She was quiet for a few seconds, lifting her crown, making small adjustments to cover some bare spots.

  “That Mary Oliver poem I read,” she said, when she finally spoke again. “That was one of her favorites.” He noticed that her expression had changed—her brow furrowed, her mouth set more firmly. “I guess it made me a little emotional, to read it.”

  “I don’t think anyone noticed, if you’re worried about it.”

  She looked over at him. “You noticed.”

  “Well,” he said, which was not an answer. But the real answer—that he noticed nearly everything about Nora Clarke—wouldn’t do him or her any good at all.

  “Do you ever feel like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the feeling I had tonight. Like Nonna was with me. Do you ever feel like that, about your parents?”

  “Not really. They weren’t all that with me when they were alive.”

  As soon as it was out of his mouth—loose, thoughtless, immediate—he regretted it. He clamped his mouth shut and ground his teeth together. He did not do this. He did not talk about his parents to anyone, not beyond the barest, shallowest facts. What they did for a living, when they’d died. Anything more ended up reflecting poorly on them, and probably on him, too. And now, to Nora—to a woman who, by virtue of her association with Donny, was already too close for comfort when it came to his messy family history—he’d made his mom and dad sound selfish or negligent or something worse. He’d made himself sound grudging, resentful, petty.

  Childish.

  Why hadn’t he said something blandly comforting, something vaguely commiserating? He did it all the time at work. He had all kinds of canned answers, stacked up inside him like they were on pantry shelves.

  But with Nora, it seemed like he could never quite reach for one when he needed to. With Nora, it seemed like he didn’t have those answers at all.

  She turned her shoulders again so she faced him, that look of gentle invitation in her eyes, and that’s when he realized that she hadn’t really agreed to the subject change after all. She’d simply found another way in. Part of him admired her for it, same as the way he admired her for this poetry reading, no matter that it was making his life damned inconvenient. It was sly and soft and strangely disarming.

  But another part of him wanted far, far away from it.

  Away from her, and the things she made him feel, and what those feelings made him fear.

  He should’ve never followed her in here.

  “Do you—” she began, but he cut her off.

  “I should go,” he said, maybe a bit more sharply than he intended. “I have a dumpster being delivered tomorrow.”

  She blinked. “A . . . dumpster?”

  He reached up, pulled the laurel wreath off his head. “Getting rid of some things,” he said. Most everything, he thought.

  This feeling, he thought.

  He held out the laurel wreath to her, and she looked down at it, then back up at him. This look, it was worse than any of the smiles he’d seen on her face tonight. It was part confusion, part embarrassment, and all disappointment. He almost wished he didn’t have his glasses on.

  He concentrated on keeping his hand steady while he waited for her to take the wreath from him, but eventually, it became clear she wouldn’t. Instead, she lifted her own crown of flowers back onto her head, smoothed the front of her summer green dress. When she met his eyes again, her own were perfectly, icily dry.

  “Keep it,” she finally said.

  And she didn’t smile as she moved past him.

  Chapter 7

  After poetry night, Nora made a decision.

  She didn’t need to see Will Sterling to sabotage him.

  She didn’t need to see his windswept hair or his terrific spectacles or the dark, watchful eyes behind them. She didn’t need to see his smile o
r his frown or the little furrow he got in his brow. She definitely did not need to see the way he moved his body—strolls and leans and hands-in-his-pockets postures—and she did not need to see how quickly he could move that body when he so clearly wanted to get away from her.

  No, Nora could do what she needed to do without interacting with Will Sterling at all, and she’d started by making it difficult for him to find a place to put that dumpster.

  It hadn’t been any sort of challenge, not really—a few calls to neighbors in the surrounding buildings, a few requests to park in pretty specific places. The good thing about being loyal—about being neighborly!—was that you could make requests like this, and you could always count on enough people to help you out. By 6:00 a.m. on dumpster day, there was a line of cars right out front, and every spot in the back alley parking was taken. If Will had been hoping for a short back-and-forth trip to trash poor Donny’s things, he’d show up to find those hopes well and truly dashed.

  Of course it’d ended up being more complicated than all that, since Will had either changed his mind or misrepresented what he’d meant by “dumpster.” What had actually shown up, in the end, was a charity service and a locally owned waste-and-recycling company, and according to Emily—truly, the ideal watchwoman, homebody that she was—the charity service had taken the lion’s share. That had definitely put a damper on Nora’s petty satisfaction over making things complicated, but also Emily and Mrs. Salas had both cried over seeing Donny’s recliner being taken away, and Marian had gone glumly, unusually quiet, so in general she still had a whole lot of anger to spare.

  Since not-really-a-dumpster day, Nora’s efforts had been mostly email-based, and she was working on an idea that she thought was somewhere between poetry night and Deepa’s dead-fish plot. So far, doing the outreach had meant some disruption to her daily schedule, and she was feeling more than a little guilty about how distracted she’d been during the hours she was supposed to be working on the continuing-to-be-a-nightmare eco-influencer site. But every once in a while, passing by a window or heading out to run an errand for herself or one of her neighbors, she’d get a glimpse of Will Sterling’s car. He was here and he was taking apart Donny’s apartment, and that meant she was running out of time.