Love Lettering

by Kate Clayborn

  So it’s a good thing Reid does, in fact, have a game in mind. This time, we’ll each pick a color, and then we’ll try to get as many letters of the alphabet as we can in that one color over the course of an hour. No limits on type of letter or sign, but we know the game—or each other—well enough now to know we’re both going to try finding the more interesting stuff. The hand-lettered, the hand-painted, the stuff that’ll give me something to draw about.

  Reid offers me first pick and I choose blue, which gives me my first genuine smile of the afternoon because I absolutely know he was going to pick blue; I can tell by the look on his face when I say it. He chooses green, and I tell him that’s basically cheating because green is a version of blue, and he definitely does not like being called a cheater because he says, “Fine. I choose red, then.”

  For the first couple of blocks, I tease him about that, too, because red is obviously the easiest color for sign-watching. He does the swoonsh and keeps snapping his photos, while I grumble about being the more nuanced competitor. We both get a win on the old, cracked-paint C.O. Bigelow sign, tall and huge on the side of a brick building, though Reid gloats about how the red paint is holding up better than the pale blue. “Gloating” for Reid basically involves him stating a fact, but still.

  But we’re only a half hour in when I start to flag. That Advil I took must’ve been stale candy, because I’m pretty sure my uterus weighs thirty-five pounds and everything from my waistband down is uncomfortable. I am miserable and too far from home to do anything about it immediately. I definitely should’ve canceled, or at the very least picked red before Reid could and—

  “Meg?” I hear him say.

  I look up at him, realize I’ve missed something, and since Reid doesn’t talk much in general, it’s a real loss.

  “I’m sorry. I zoned out.”

  “We could stop.” Then he does that thing again, tugging down the sleeve of his unnecessary-for-the-weather jacket. Maybe the sleeve tugging is the same as Lark’s two fingers along her hairline, or maybe it’s the same as me wanting to lie down in the middle of this sidewalk to contemplate the various horrors and indignities of my childbearing years. “If this isn’t helping, I mean.”

  My shoulders slump in defeat. I’ve done such a bad job of pretending today, of being my normal, cheerful self, and even the ideas I’m getting from the signs can’t compensate for the way I feel.

  “It’s only that—” I break off, sigh heavily. He looks over at me, his brow wrinkled in that same way as it’d been when I’d gotten off the train. “I don’t feel very well today,” I admit.

  I barely have time to feel embarrassed, because Reid stops, sets a hand under my elbow—whoops, still an erogenous zone—and gently guides me to the edge of the sidewalk, out of the way of the pedestrians behind us.

  The move is so—immediate. So instinctive and concerned and direct, and so very Reid, and that gives me the three-seconds-from-crying feeling again. I lower my eyes, stare down at my shoes, which now feel more than a half size too small. He smells the same as he did last weekend—soap and that whisper of swimming pool—and if this turns into actual crying I don’t trust myself to resist the face-pressing instinct.

  “I knew it,” he says. “You’re sick?”

  “Not really.” Without thinking, I smooth a hand over my stomach, low where it aches.

  “You have—” He breaks off, puts his hands in the front pockets of his jeans. “Aha,” he says, softly.

  I can’t help but laugh. This is all very Masterpiece Theatre, like old-timey times when people couldn’t say the word leg or ankle because it was too morally disturbing. It feels as though he’s invited me—with all his serious, starchy caution—to say it out loud.

  “If that ‘aha,’ means ‘your period,’ then yes. You are correct.”

  He doesn’t clear his throat or set his jaw or get a wash of pink across his cheeks. He gives a skeptical glance to the small purse—a real miscalculation, I admit, since I can’t fit a military-grade heating pad inside of it—and says, “Do you have everything you need?” as though he’s planning to go into the nearest Duane Reade and buy me a bag of supplies.

  The funny thing is, I think he actually would. In which aisle would I find tampons? he would say, in that very serious voice.

  I tug on the hem of my favorite shirt, an old striped button-up that’s been washed so many times it’s as soft as the sheets on my bed. “I’m okay. I don’t want to quit yet. I’m just feeling . . . yuck.”

  I fully expect him to furrow at that description, but he only nods and looks up ahead, where there’s a small, tree-canopied enclosure, black wrought-iron gating separating it from the busy sidewalk and street.

  “Let’s go sit for a while. You can put your feet up.”

  I stare at him, and this time he actually does flush a little.

  “My sister always does that. When she feels . . .” He trails off.

  “Yuck?” I finish for him, smiling softly, less at the word than at what Reid has told me—something about his private life, something that’s not tied up with his broken engagement. “You have a sister?”

  Another nod while he keeps those blue eyes so focused on me, his fan-fucking-tastic face fixed in concern.

  “She’s younger. She still lives at home with my parents.”

  “Oh,” I say, but suddenly I have ten thousand questions, so many questions about Reid and his life that the weight of them distracts me from the extremely unpleasant weight in my abdomen. It would be nice to sit for a while, to put my feet up. I’ll rest and drink some water, and if it doesn’t help, I’ll make my way back to the train and go home to sleep it off, ask Reid if he can meet again in a couple of days.

  But for now, while I’m waiting it out—why not play a game of twenty questions?

  “There are seven of you?” I say, my voice high-pitched.

  Reid flattens his lips, but this is the kind of lip flattening that I now know means he’s hiding a smile.

  “There are.”

  I adjust my ass on the hard slats of the bench beneath me. It may not be all that comfortable in terms of furniture, but it’s lovely, this enclosure—small and shady and quiet, even though it’s only a few steps off the busy traffic on Sixth. Around the various landscaped beds are low, arched black fences, and while the landscaping is still sparse this early, most of the bushes are full and green, and the trees above us rustle with a light breeze.

  Best of all? There’re two signs that seemed to greet us when we came in, both on the same wall of the building that forms one edge of the park. They’re old, faded, and partially obscured by the trees, both advertising the same local pharmacy that’s no longer in business. One has white letters on a black background; the other, black letters on white. Sans serif fonts, sturdy and practical, more lovely for the wear and tear, and every time I ask Reid a question, he looks up at them.

  “Do you all look the same?” I ask now, my eyes wide. Seven Sutherland siblings, he’d told me. Six boys and one girl. After this I’m going to ask if they ever performed a concert in Austria, or had a series of romance novels written about them.

  It is ridiculous how much better I feel.

  Reid looks at the sign, his brow furrowed. “Some of us do, I suppose. Connor and Garrett and I, we all have this hair color, same as my dad.”

  Do they all have your jawline?! I want to ask.

  “But Owen and Ryan and Seth and Cady all have my mom’s dark hair.”

  “How do you remember all their names?” I’m only half-joking. A family that big—I can’t really imagine.

  He smiles over at me. “You don’t forget your siblings’ names. No matter how many of them there are.”

  “Yeah, of course.” I add an awkward laugh, but then I lower my eyes and press my hands into my thighs, rubbing at the aching that’s mostly dissipated now. When we got here, Reid insisted that I stretch my legs out in front of me along the bench’s slats, and then—a stroke of magic—he’d produ
ced a small blister pack of (not stale) ibuprofen from his jacket pocket. My first of the twenty questions had thus almost been Will you marry me? but instead I’d settled for asking whether he always has pocket-sized pain relief.

  “The occasional tension headache,” he’d said as he settled his tall, lean form right up against the bench’s other side, leaving me most of the space. Something had closed off in his face when he’d answered, an echo of that T-E-N-S-E, so I’d stayed on the sibling stuff he’d introduced with the mention of his sister.

  “Do you have any brothers or sisters?” Reid asks, and I guess it’s only fair, but I really preferred when this game of twenty questions was focused on him.

  “Uh, no.” It comes out more sharply than I intend. But not having siblings—it’s a sore spot in my family history, nearly as sore as my dad having a decade-long affair with Jennifer, and my mom knowing about it the whole time.

  “I always wondered what it’d be like, though,” I add, trying to soften the edge.

  “Crowded,” he says flatly. Then he looks over at me, his mouth curving upward, and I think it’s his own way of softening that edge.

  “Do you miss them? Living here, I mean?”

  “Yes,” he says immediately. He looks back at the signs. “But it’s a relief, sometimes. To live alone.”

  “I’ve never lived alone,” I admit, and in my surprise at having said it, I clutch tighter at the muscles of my thighs, kneading up and down. When I look up, I catch Reid watching the movement, and something in my middle warms pleasantly.

  But he seems to catch himself, and he raises his eyes, his blue gaze tangling with mine briefly. That warmth spreads out, seems to exist in the space between us.

  He clears his throat. “Never?”

  I shake my head. “I left my parents’ house to come here. And I’ve lived with Sibby”—I knead more aggressively—“ever since.”

  “Sibby is your . . . ?”

  I take a deep breath, struck by how quickly the conversation has turned. It’s strange, how sitting here in the quiet with Reid feels similar to walking out there in the loud beside him. A different kind of game, leading to a different kind of unblocking.

  But an unblocking all the same.

  “She’s my best friend. We grew up together.”

  “That must be nice. To have someone here from home. Someone you know so well.” There’s a melancholy note to his voice, and I wonder how much of Reid’s disdain for New York is about this—not having someone from that big, crowded family he misses here with him.

  “It has been. But . . . um, she’s moving out soon, into a place with her boyfriend.” I look out toward the park entrance. “To this neighborhood, actually. So I guess I’ll have that living alone experience, at least for a while.”

  For a second, all I can think of is the first apartment Sibby had, the one I came to after I left home. It was in Hell’s Kitchen (also an appropriate name for the feeling in my stomach at the time)—one room, longer than it was wide, with Sibby’s compact sofa pushed against the same wall as her twin-size bed. The first few nights, when she could hear me crying, she would only have to reach out from there to grab my hand. In the mornings I’d fold my blankets and we’d sit side by side, eating instant oats Sibby would make in the tiny microwave that sat on top of the mini-fridge. Usually my phone would ring, my mom or dad calling, and Sibby would say, “Want me to answer today?” but she never pressed me, no matter how many times I’d say no.

  “You’re not happy about it.” It’s less a question than a statement.

  I stop kneading, smooth my palms to a stop on my thighs, pretend to check the chipped, pale-green polish on my nails. “We’ve had some trouble recently. Not a fight or anything, but we’ve grown apart. Or . . . she’s grown apart from me, I guess. I’m not sure she wants to be my friend anymore.”

  It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud, to anyone. And surprisingly, it’s such a relief. It’s a bit like when I fessed up that I had my period and wanted to stop walking for a while, or like when we walked into this park to sit and my whole body had sagged in anticipation of the comfort.

  “I’m sorry,” Reid says, after a few seconds of quiet. “It must be difficult.”

  And that—that acknowledgment—has the same effect as that blister pack of pills, helping to chase the ache away.

  “Thanks.” I feel an inconvenient pendulum swing back to the crying feeling. I may be relieved to have said it, but I don’t want to go full catharsis out here in the open air, particularly since Reid probably doesn’t carry a vacuum hose and a bag of chocolate in that jacket.

  “You’ve never asked her?” Reid says. “Whether she wants to be your friend anymore?”

  When I look up at him, he’s watching me, as though he’s asked the easiest question. As though that would be the easiest question for me to ask of Sibby. As though when you ask people things—the really, really hard things—you don’t have anything to fear from their answer. You don’t have anything to fear from how you’ll react to it.

  “Not in so many words,” I say, and it’s terrible, the way my voice cracks. I blink back down at my legs, mortified.

  And then, after a long pause, Reid speaks again. “I don’t suppose I know how it is, with a friend like that. That you’ve had for so long, I mean. I had my siblings, but not really—not friends I grew up with, I guess.”

  I don’t know how to explain what happens in those few seconds after he finishes speaking, except to say that it’s as if a piece of my heart breaks off and leaves my body. It’s as if that tiny, vulnerable piece beats its way right across the bench and attaches itself to Reid.

  All because of this gentle confession, this effort at making me feel better.

  I clear my throat, watch as he looks back toward the signs.

  “No one from school?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “It’s my own fault. I was . . . difficult in school.”

  Difficult? I try to picture it: Reid launching spitballs, mouthing off to teachers, not doing his homework. I can’t see it, and something must show on my face, because when he looks over, he smiles briefly and speaks again.

  “I was bored. Always done with my work early. It frustrated my teachers, and obviously . . . ah, did not endear me to other students.”

  I can picture that better. Serious, studious Reid. Probably cracking whatever code they gave him, and getting no reward for it. Getting the kind of mystified, slightly put-off responses that’d make a kid feel small, embarrassed. That particular mouth-pulling on Reid’s little-boy face.

  Pendulum swing, firmly to the murder feeling. Basically for all of Reid’s former teachers and any kid that did not . . . feel endeared to him. I should probably be extremely worried about how fully endeared I am, except that I’m too invested in asking more questions. It’s not a game anymore; it’s not for inspiration. But it still feels so, so important.

  “But it must’ve been better,” I say. “When you went to college? Or—your graduate school?”

  Reid looks up at the signs again, waits a long moment. “I was fifteen when I went to college.”

  “Fifteen?! ” I still slept with a stuffed animal at fifteen, which I have the good sense not to say out loud.

  “Community college for the first semester. An extension program through my high school.”

  “Oh, sure,” I say, still processing my shock. “That makes it better!”

  He gives me the sad eyes. Those are the worst. They make my stomach feel like Hell’s Kitchen.

  “Not better. I only mean . . . it doesn’t make it any less surprising. Or less impressive. It’s—wow. You are smart, huh?”

  He swoonshes, and I’ll bet if I scooted closer, I could watch that blush spread across his cheekbones.

  “At math,” he says.

  “Well, you must be in hog heaven now, at your job. Surrounded by math people!”

  The swoonsh fades, his face closing off again. T-E-N-S-E.

  “Money p
eople. It’s different.”

  For a second he looks so drawn and hollow that all I can think about is making him feel better. Some blister pack of something to take that look away.

  And then I realize: Maybe I do have something in my metaphorical jacket pocket. Sitting here in this park, beside Reid, learning more about him, letting some of my own lowest feelings out into the open air—I don’t even have to pretend to feel cheerful and light. I can actually . . . be cheerful and light.

  My mouth curves into a smile, and I nudge him gently, teasingly, with my foot. I try to ignore the way touching him, even in this completely platonic way, doesn’t feel all that much like teasing to me.

  “Would you say . . . would you say that money is the . . . common denominator for your colleagues?”

  For a second, he says absolutely nothing, and I think, Nice job, Meg. It wasn’t the time to be light and cheerful. With a math joke.

  But then he looks over at me, blinks once, and he . . . he laughs. A real, full laugh. An in-person laugh.

  And it is the most gorgeous combination of sounds, the same sounds I heard him make when we walked together on the phone the other night: that groan, but this time at how utterly terrible my joke was. That warm, tight chuckle, a bit louder this time, then quieting and giving way to a sigh, a small exhalation of air. A sigh of relief.

  It’s the best sound I’ve ever heard. Nothing I could ever put in letters. I frolic right past another warning clutch in my heart.

  “Thank God you laughed! That’s one of maybe ten math terms I know. Want to hear the others?”

  He smiles, breathing out only the chuckle now.

  Let’s walk for blocks and blocks, I’m thinking. Let me make bad math jokes to you all day. Wait until you hear the one about stochastic calculus, which is basically me trying to pronounce it.

  “You feel better?” he asks.

  “I do.” I look over at the signs that have kept us company through this, our new not-game. “Anyway, these don’t have the colors we need.”

  I swing my legs off the bench, stand up, and smooth my shirt down before grabbing my purse, telling him with my body that I’m ready to keep going.