Love Lettering

by Kate Clayborn

  He’s sitting on his couch, a low-to-the-ground, sharp-cornered, dark gray thing that looks absolutely terrible for naps or for sleeping off a night of drinking and fighting. His clothes look comfortable—a pair of light gray athletic pants, a white T-shirt, but he’s sitting stiffly, his phone in his hand, the thumb that so gently soothed the back of mine only hours ago now flicking impatiently, irritatedly over its screen.

  “Hi,” I say.

  Immediately his head raises, his thumb ceasing its movement. The soft relief in his eyes, the swoonsh he sends my way—it all goes a long way toward easing my mind about whether he wants me here still.

  “You should’ve woken me up,” I say, liking the way he watches me walk toward him, liking the way he reaches a hand out for mine and tugs me down next to him. The not-for-comfort couch is only improved by the way Reid pulls me so close to him, both of my legs hooking over one of his, absorbing his warmth, one of his arms lifting to come around me.

  “I got more sleep than you last night,” he says, leaning in to press a kiss against my temple, inhaling deeply, and there’s that lovely, -shaped tightening around my heart again at how good and natural and easy this feels.

  But then the phone he’s still holding pings in his hand, and his head falls back, his eyes closing in frustration.

  “You missed a lot yesterday, huh?” I say, and he barely nods, the lines of his face so stark and grim that I can’t help but reach out, trace the tip of my finger from his hairline down his forehead, over the strong slope of his nose and the soft rise of his lips. This face, I think, marveling at it all over again.

  He nods again, his jaw clenching.

  “It was a bad idea to be unreachable, I guess,” he says.

  I set the palm of my hand to his chest, stroking gently, feeling sorry. It’s hard to see this tension up close. In his T-shirt, the patches on Reid’s skin—the one I first saw last week, and another spot on his opposite elbow—are visible, and while it’s a nice gesture to our new closeness, that he’s not compelled to hide them from me, it’s also a stark reminder of what he told me in that bar last night, that his skin flares this way when he’s stressed, and that his job is the primary reason.

  “Your job is—” I say, pausing to clear my throat, to blink down at where my hand rests over the steady beat of his heart. “Your job is why you’re leaving New York?”

  I see, in my periphery, the way his hand clenches around his phone.

  “Yes,” he says, plainly. Grimly. After a long pause, he adds, “I’ve agreed to see something through there. But then—”

  “Then you’ll leave.”

  It’s not a question, and he doesn’t answer. There’s not really anything to say, not really anything to do but sit quietly for a moment, feeling the beat of his heart against my hand and forcing myself to imagine loosening those sneaky, surprising loops around my own.

  “I can go,” I say, after a few quiet seconds where Reid’s phone pings twice more. “If you have to catch up on work.”

  I don’t say it to be a martyr, or because I’m feeling sorry for myself. I say it because Reid really does seem to have work to do, and I don’t blame him for that. And anyway, I have work of my own to do—sketches to return to, a new stirring in my mind and in my hands, and also work I’m determined to do with Sibby, and with Lark, too. I’d be wise to remember all of it—to remember that Reid is a temporary fixture, and always has been, no matter what’s happened between us today.

  But then Reid moves, flicking a button on the side of his phone before setting it on the squared-off arm of the couch. With his now free hand he reaches for my thigh and pulls gently, maneuvering me so I’m straddling his lap, the T-shirt bunched around my waist.

  My hair falls forward, messy around my face, and Reid reaches up, pushing it back behind my shoulders, stroking it lightly in a way that makes my scalp tingle in pleasure.

  “It can wait,” he says, and I smile down at him, secretly pleased we don’t yet have to call it a day.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yes,” he repeats, but this time it doesn’t sound plain or grim at all. He moves his hands from my hair so he can press them into my back, moving me closer to him. “Stay tonight?”

  I lean in and kiss him, giving him my answer this way. When we finally break, long minutes later, he keeps only the barest space between our lips.

  “You’re the best part of this city,” he whispers, and I close my eyes and kiss him again, lying to myself the whole time, telling myself I can keep this in l-i-k-e territory, telling myself that other, unruly, warning won’t slice right through my heart when he leaves.

  Chapter 14

  “Oh, I like this, Meg.”

  In the back of the shop, Lachelle is peering down at my latest sketches for Make It Happyn, her expression serious, focused. This one, I’m excited about—Make It Happyn requires that one of my full-year treatments be a botanical, and it’s long been one of my particular blocks. Earlier this spring, steeped in March and April misery, every floral attempt I’d made had felt pedestrian, familiar, too similar to the jobs I’d been doing for my clients.

  But one Sunday morning not even a full two weeks ago now—specifically, the morning after the first perfect day and night I’d spent in Reid’s bed—I’d woken up with a new idea. My botanical wouldn’t be floral; it would be arboreal. Twelve months inspired by the trees in Prospect Park—almost two hundred species, per the park’s website, and for days I’ve worked to study pictures, to reimagine their trunks and branches and leaves, to create whole new alphabets I could draw from for these monthly pages. It’s not quite there yet, but I can feel that I’m on to something.

  “No one else will think to have done trees,” Lachelle says, and this is the kind of response I’ve come to expect from her since I finally, last week, told her and Cecelia about Make It Happyn. Cecelia had responded with thrilled, congratulatory delight, and Lachelle had, too, for about fifteen seconds. Then her competitive streak had taken over, and since then she has been devoted to talking strategy, to looking at all my sketches and determining their fitness for winning this thing. Two days ago, she texted me with the name of another hand-letterer from San Francisco she thinks is up for the job. she’d texted,

  “Yep,” she says, nodding. “I like it a lot.”

  “But you don’t love it,” I say, and she slides her eyes my way, as though she’s suspicious of my emphasis.

  And the truth is, maybe she should be. after all, is a word I’ve been turning over and over a lot in my head over these last two weeks, trying to absorb it into my being, trying to keep it from becoming something else.

  I only like being with Reid, I tell myself. I only like the time we spend together, walking and talking and eating and making lov—like. I only like the soft ways he touches me—holding my hand in his while we walk, or pressing his own on my lower back while we wait in line at some restaurant counter, or running his fingers through my hair at night before we fall asleep. I only like the rougher ways he touches me, too—gripping my hair or my hips when he’s inside of me, tugging my body close to his when he wakes sleepily, finding we’ve strayed from each other in the night. I only like the secrets and sounds his body gives up to me when we’re together—a hitch in his breath when I stroke him. A small, groaning shudder of pleasure when he first pushes inside of me. The rough, slightly scolding way he says Meg when I tighten my inner muscles around him, pushing him to an edge he doesn’t want to go over yet.

  And I only like the funny habits and sweet details I’ve learned about him: that he is an absolute monster about his wake-up time on weekdays, never hitting the snooze button even once, but always pulling the covers back over me neatly and pressing a kiss to my hair before he leaves. That he has a favorite tea brand. That he’s never had a single library fine. That he will always call when he has to work too late for us to see each other, and that he will always sound frustrated and disappointed when that’s the case.

  I tell myself, esp
ecially when any small reminder of his impermanence here asserts itself. A letter I spot on his refrigerator reminding him that he’s not renewed the lease on the apartment that was only ever a placeholder for him, anyway. An awkward silence that falls on a walk when we pass an interesting sign for an off-Broadway show opening in September. The curt response I overheard him give on a work call—he gets so many work calls, and he never wants to talk about any of them—earlier this week: “It isn’t going to be my problem, because I won’t be there.”

  “What am I, getting married to it?” Lachelle says, interrupting my thoughts pointedly. She shrugs. “I think you need to do more with color. Then I’ll probably love it.”

  “Done,” I say, bending down to pencil in a reminder to myself in my notebook. When I straighten again, I give her a grateful smile before starting to gather up the pages. Cecelia and Lachelle are teaching a beginner’s calligraphy class in the shop in about an hour, so I need to clear out.

  When I’m tucking the final stack away, Lachelle gives me a gentle nudge and says, “You’ve made so much progress. And still almost a month to go.”

  “Yeah,” I say cheerfully, catching a slight falseness in my tone that I hope Lachelle doesn’t hear. The progress I’ve made on the job has, of course, been massive, especially compared to the weeks and weeks I spent completely blocked, and I’m definitely proud of it. I can sense that I’m not quite there—Lachelle is right; I do need to do more with color—but still, in my more confident moments, I wonder whether I might end up with more than three full treatments to choose from when it comes time for the pitch. For the first time since those early days after I’d gotten the call, I actually allow myself to imagine how it would be to get chosen for this, to have a line featuring these sketches in stores everywhere.

  But with the exception of everything that happened with Reid, there hasn’t been much progress with the other work Lachelle encouraged me to do, because my opportunities to practice fighting—with Lark, with Sibby—have been nonexistent to minimal. Lark, for her part, is almost certainly trying to find a gentle way to fire me, because the e-mail I woke up to last Monday had asked if we could “press pause” on the project while she “made some other decisions about the house.”

  My reply—asking if we could get together for a meeting anyway—had gone unanswered.

  With Sibby, I deserve more responsibility—once for staying with Reid on a night she was almost certain to be at the apartment, and once for chickening out at starting the conversation when she’d come home with Elijah in tow rather than by herself, as I’d expected. But by the end of last week—the same night, incidentally, that I’d seen that lease renewal letter on Reid’s refrigerator—I’d felt a panicked sense of urgency about it all, chastising myself for dropping the ball. After all, Sibby was leaving soon, too. Sure, she’d be in the same city, but with the way things have been going lately, she might as well be whole states, whole countries away.

  What was I doing, letting a summer romance with a leaving man I definitely only like get in the way of fixing this massive problem with my best friend?

  I’d called her right away, that lease letter hovering somewhere over my shoulder. I’d even left a voice mail. “Sib,” I’d said, my tone serious. “I need to talk to you. I’ll be at home all day and night tomorrow. Call me and we’ll find a time.”

  But she hadn’t called me. She’d texted me back an hour later with the kind of polite, roommates-only text that’s been a hallmark of her communication to me lately:

  I’d felt my shoulders slump in disappointment as I’d read it.

  I straighten them now, hefting my portfolio and my bag, watching as Lachelle starts setting out supplies for the class.

  “I’m headed home to work,” I say, determinedly, more to myself than to her. But I am determined, because if Sibby’s coming back tomorrow, I’m going to be home to meet her. I’ve already told Reid I probably won’t be free until Sunday, and my plan tonight is to tidy the apartment while I practice what I want to say to her. A night alone, I figure, will be good preparation, and when she gets back, we’ll do this thing we’ve both been hiding from.

  “Take it easy,” Lachelle says. “Rest your hands.”

  “Yep,” I say, waving at her as I go, wishing that the work I had ahead of me was as easy as the work I’ve been doing with my hands lately.

  I make a quick stop off for groceries, indulging in an old best friend tradition of picking up a few of Sibby’s favorite things, too, because I figure she’ll appreciate that after being away. It’s Friday afternoon crowded, but Trina behind the counter still makes time to tell me she got rid of the infection in her belly button ring and celebrated by getting a new piercing “somewhere private.” Thankfully for me and everyone else in line behind me she does not offer to show it to me. When I get to my place, our post office guy has our bank of mailboxes open, so I sit on the steps and chat with him—he loves a good weather talk—while I wait for him to get to our apartment’s delivery.

  My phone pings when he’s finishing up and I check it as I’m waving goodbye to him, smiling as I see I have a new message from Reid.

  it says, because Reid texts direct, the same way he talks direct.

  You only like him, Meg, I tell myself as I stare down at it, that heart-tightening tugging again.

  I spell in my head.

  But right as I’m getting ready to respond, my screen flashes with a different four-letter L word, and not the one I’ve been trying not to feel.

  L-A-R-K, it reads, and that’s the first indication I get that my weekend is about to go a lot differently than I’d planned.

  Here’s the thing: It is not easy preparing your home for an unplanned visit from a princess.

  Lark’s voice on the phone had been soft, friendly, maybe even embarrassed—so different from the sharp way she’d spoken to me the last time I’d seen her. She was in the neighborhood, she’d said, and was hoping she could stop by the shop.

  “I’m at home now, but I could get back there quickly,” I’d told her. “But it’ll be a full house—there’s a class happening there right now. How about we meet at a—” I’d begun, then remembered her reluctance about pretty much everywhere else.

  “I could come to you,” she’d said, filling up the awkward silence, and two minutes later I’d been texting her my address, frantically running through a mental list of all the stuff I needed to pick up.

  I can’t do much about the boxes that fill up the corners of the space, but I do my best with everything else. A quick cleanup of the kitchen, a grab-and-dump-elsewhere strategy of dealing with the mail I’ve let stack up on our breakfast table over the last few days, a flustered attempt at tidying the coffee table and couch, which shamefully—because Reid came over here last night—involves me shoving one of my bras between the cushions. My face heats at the reminder of that particular interlude, which ended with me on my knees and Reid with his hands in my hair.

  When I buzz her up I use the last few seconds to look over the space (well, and to fan my hot face), acutely aware of how small and cluttered it’ll still probably look, given that townhouse-tower she’s used to.

  But when I open the door to her, I’m reminded: Lark isn’t really a princess, and her townhouse isn’t really a tower. She’s five foot two of regular person, with a self-conscious smile and—if I’m not mistaken—a sheepish look in her eyes, and seeing her stand there on the closest thing I’ve got to a front porch, I suspect she feels about as awkward as I did the last time we saw each other.

  “Come in,” I tell her, ushering her to my somewhat-sagging couch. I cheerfully list every type of beverage I have in my refrigerator, but really I know she’ll pass. I’m already bad-habitting my way through this, stalling away from the confrontation I remind myself I’m determined to have—even if it wasn’t the one I was planning on practicing for.

  “Thanks for letting me come by,” she says, when I’ve finally taken a seat on the other side of the couch. She h
as her hands clasped tightly on her lap, and her throat bobs with a swallow.

  Not for the first time, I think Lark and I probably have more in common than I would’ve ever thought.

  “Sorry I haven’t called,” she says breezily. “I got really busy working with this new decorator Jade hired, and we had a quick trip up to Toronto for a shoot Cam is doing, and there’s been so much shopping to—”

  “Lark,” I interrupt. Seeing her struggle through this performance—it somehow stops me cold from even attempting my own. “It’s okay. I get it.”

  She looks at me with a mute, embarrassed regret that makes me want to change the subject for her. Instead I say, “I know I spoke out of turn at our last meeting.”

  She blinks at me, then lowers her head for a minute, smoothing lint off her black jeans.

  “No,” she says finally, her chin raising. “He spoke out of turn. I was so embarrassed he acted that way in front of you. Not just . . . you know, what he said about me. But also his—” She breaks off, presses her lips together.

  “His really bad quote idea?” I supply, sending a smile her way.

  She raises a hand to her hairline, wincing and then breathing out an exasperated laugh. “I don’t know where he gets this stuff. Every time I get close to finalizing an idea for the house, he comes up with something so . . . so disruptive.”

  My own smile fades. He’s doing it to control you, I’m thinking. He’s doing it to make you feel unsure of yourself.

  “I hope you push back on that,” I say, and this time, I don’t put any cheer at all in my voice. “I hope you don’t think of yourself as a . . . a lightweight.”

  “I don’t,” she says, and the quickness and confidence of her answer reassure me somewhat. Then she lowers her head again, looks down at her clasped hands. “But I’m pretty lost here. In New York, I mean. The truth is, I’d really only just gotten used to LA.”