Love Lettering

by Kate Clayborn

  To that, I can definitely relate.

  “My mom always has tea after a meal,” Cady says to me now, by way of explanation. If Cady is a mystery to her parents, it’s clear she knows they might be a mystery to a guest, and since I’ve arrived, she’s made herself something of a guide to me, dropping in context at any possible moment of confusion. When Reid softly asks Cady about some paperwork related to her school, she proudly (and loudly) announces to me that Reid pays her tuition. When Thomas silently hands Reid a quarter-folded section of the newspaper, Cady rolls her eyes and explains that Thomas does a Challenger game in there every day, something Reid got him into a couple of years ago after a back injury.

  “Now I see where he gets it,” I say, smiling at Reid again as we all stand. I watch every Sutherland around this table stack and gather their two lunch plates and their three pieces of silverware in the exact same way, and I quietly mimic it, inwardly charmed by all the tiny signs being revealed to me, all the codes that seem to lead me right to the heart of Reid, the everyday habits that help make up who he is.

  It’s surprising, I guess, that I haven’t felt more nervous, more of an interloper here. But after last night—all my tearful revelations to Reid, all the trust I’d put in him—I get a strange sense about this visit. Maybe we both know it’s all too soon, but Reid has brought me here to give me something back, some comparable level of exposure to what I gave to him. The drive would have been enough to make me feel better, more stable about what had happened with Sibby—the snacks he stopped to get me after we picked up the rental car, the way he chuckled at my pop-song singing, the lines of his face when he wears a pair of sunglasses, the hand he kept on my thigh as we sped along the highway, finding signs. But the addition of this visit has been the most tender, vulnerable offering. Reid giving me something I didn’t even know I needed.

  We settle in the small living room, meticulous and symmetrical, for tea. On the wall across from where I sit is a gallery of Sutherland family photos—several that show the family’s growth over time, expanding by an order of small, chubby baby every other photo or so. The most recent ones are almost class-photo-like in their population—all of Reid’s siblings, but also various partners and children. None of them, I notice—with a not-small amount of relief—feature Avery.

  “Thomas and I both came from large families,” Cynthia says to me, when she catches me looking. “I know it seemed silly, to a lot of people, that we had so many children.” She hands me a cup of tea, her cheeks flushing in the exact same spot Reid’s do.

  “I don’t think it’s silly,” I say, even though I definitely want to get ten extra birth-control shots at the very thought of it. “I think it looks like it would’ve been fun.”

  “Fun,” Thomas says, deadpan.

  Reid swoonshes, hides it by taking a sip of his tea.

  “We always planned it,” Cynthia says, sending a warning—but somehow still loving and indulgent—glance Thomas’s way.

  “I mean,” Cady says, laughing, “I definitely wasn’t planned.” I smile over at her. “Me neither.”

  “You know, what you really want to see is this,” Cady says, leaning forward to pull a photo album from the lower shelf of the coffee table.

  “Cady,” Reid says.

  “This is payback. Recall your visit home on the weekend of my senior prom.”

  Reid’s face goes stern. “He needed a reminder,” is all he says, stern and protective, and I feel an inconvenient pulse of desire.

  Involuntarily, my eyes drift to his brow, unstitched now but still bisected by the tiny line of his mostly healed cut. He seems to notice, raising that eyebrow at me in gentle teasing, as though he can read my mind.

  I turn my focus to the photo album, my face heating. “Anyway,” Cady says, directing her mom to sit on the other side of me. Within seconds I’ve set my tea down—the truth is, it still has the taste of gardening to me—and I have the photo album in my lap, Cady and Cynthia providing commentary on the assembled pictures. I try to keep my mind only on the details they’re happily sharing with me, but really I’m distracted by the flush of warmth I feel at being included in this specific way, the way that says, Welcome to our family history.

  I spell to myself, just in case.

  But when Cady turns the page from the set of pictures featuring Reid as a baby, I feel my heart squeeze from the loops of that other, more-than-L-I-K-E I try so hard to ignore.

  “Oh,” I say softly, staring down at the photo in front of me.

  It’s Reid as a small, small boy, maybe at five or six. His cheeks are pink, his hair closer to red than the reddish-blond it is now. I can’t see the blue of his eyes because he has them squeezed tightly shut, and that’s because his smile is so, so big, his top and bottom baby teeth showing, bright white and even, slim spaces between them. He looks small and joyful, full of a feeling too big for his body, and in his hands he clutches a miniature chalkboard bearing his name.

  Written in bubble letters.

  “I did this for all the kids on their first day of school,” Cynthia says, pointing to it. “Not very expert, compared to what you do!”

  “No,” I say, transfixed by the image. “It’s wonderful.” I can’t help but laugh. “Bubble letters! It suits him.”

  I never would have thought it, only a couple of months ago—serious, sans serif Reid. But it does suit him. Here, he looks fair to bursting with happiness, the colorful straps of his little-boy backpack like banners of celebration.

  “He was so excited for school,” Cynthia says. “He couldn’t wait to start.”

  Across the room, Reid clears his throat, and I look up to see him turning his teacup one-quarter. I remember that day in the city, another time when Reid offered something else of himself to comfort me. I was difficult in school, he’d said. I lower my eyes back to the picture, feeling a pang for the way this little boy’s excitement was quashed by everyone who didn’t try to understand him.

  “He wanted to be a teacher,” Cady says. “Did he tell you that?”

  She doesn’t say it as if it’s a test, as if it’s somehow the way she’s going to see whether I ought to be taken seriously here as a possible girlfriend to Reid. Still, it feels important, a piece of Reid’s history I’ve been missing.

  So I look up at him, instead of answering her.

  “You wanted to be a teacher?”

  He shifts in his chair, that slight flush on his cheeks. “Yes.” He pauses, swallows. “Later, a . . . a professor.”

  I notice Thomas, sitting in a chair matching Reid’s, take a sip of his tea before turning his sharp-edged profile to the window. For a fleeting moment I feel a stretch of time collapse, and I’m back in that Nolita restaurant, seeing the look on Reid’s face when he’d first told me about John Horton Conway and his math-making games.

  “What changed?” I say.

  Thomas looks back at me, the corner of his mouth twitching. For the most part, he’s been polite but cautious with me today, a fact that felt, if not wholly comfortable, at least familiar. It figures that the first noticeably positive response I’d get out of him would be for asking such a direct question.

  No one even tries to answer for Reid. Thomas turns his teacup one-quarter, a tiny clink breaking the silence.

  “My math skills are better than my people skills,” Reid finally says. “I wasn’t very successful as a TA.”

  “Weren’t you”—I pause, because my counting skills aren’t any quicker from being in this house for a single afternoon—“nineteen when you started graduate school?”

  “Eighteen,” Thomas says, his voice clipped.

  “I finished college in three years,” Reid clarifies for me.

  “So . . . probably about the same age as the students you were teaching?”

  Reid shrugs. “I moved into research positions later. It was a better fit.”

  My eyes drift back down to the photo album in my lap, to little boy Reid and his too-big backpack and too-big smile. That b
ubble-lettered chalkboard clutched in his tiny hands.

  “I thought he should have kept trying,” says Thomas, and I look up again, noticing the stiff tension between the two of them.

  “I thought I should make money,” Reid replies.

  “You’ve been there for six years,” Thomas says. I think I catch something, some brief movement of his eyes down to Reid’s arms, to the skin there. “You’ve made enough money.”

  I look back and forth between them, some distant awareness that I’m too invested in this to be uncomfortable about it, to feel my usual apprehension over this kind of simmering conflict. Instead I’m thinking about how odd it is—to see Reid be so stalwart about his work, about making money. In the city, with me, his disdain for both has been so pointed, so consistent. And how odd it is that Thomas seems to know nothing about what Reid has been telling me since the very first day we got reacquainted: that his time in New York—because of his disdain for both of these things—is nearly up.

  Reid clears his throat again, and for a split second our gazes tangle, and I get that sense again. This is for you, his eyes tell me. This is because I trust you, the way you trusted me.

  Maybe it’s not a smiling moment, with all this tense energy in the air, but I send him a soft smile anyway. I don’t bother trying to ignore the or what it stands for.

  “Not this again,” says Cady, exasperated.

  “Gosh, really,” adds Cynthia, her voice all at once annoyed and amused.

  Thomas says nothing, but he does send an apologetic look Reid’s way, and with that, it’s over, this obviously recurring flare in their family. Nobody seems particularly bothered; nobody tries to leave the room or pick another fight. Nothing essential between them—their trust in each other, their love for each other—seems shaken, and I clutch this observation to myself, something else Reid and his family have given me today. Some knowledge, some hope that eventually, Sibby and I will be able to talk about this difficult thing between us again, and that it won’t spell the end of us, the end of our friendship, the end of our chosen family.

  I blink down at the photo album, collecting myself. Maybe my companions notice, but no one seems to mind. Cady simply turns the page, and Cynthia starts telling me about the next picture, and just like that, I somehow get the sense I’m now one of their number.

  “So, this is your bedroom.”

  “This is my old bedroom,” Reid says.

  We’re in the finished basement of the Sutherland house, a massive but low-ceilinged space that’s partitioned off into a laundry room, a storage closet, a half bathroom, and this larger space. It’s clear that it’s been transformed since Reid’s childhood years, now the kind of neutral guest room that seems cobbled together from old furniture and decor.

  “It used to be two sets of bunk beds,” he says. “A desk over there.” He points to the far wall, where there’s a simple dresser set beneath the one source of natural light in here, a narrow rectangle of glass block that’s now, this late at night, mostly a black ripple, twinkles of light from the dim bedside lamp like stars dotting its uneven surface.

  “Cozy,” I say, crossing to sit on the bed, propping myself on my palms as I gently push my way to the middle of it. I lean back on my hands, my feet crossed at the ankles, and study Reid, who’s still leaning in the doorway.

  “You’re okay,” he says, “that we’re staying?”

  It was only meant to be a day trip, this visit. But the afternoon had stretched on, in the most natural of ways, all of us forgetting to count the minutes during tea and conversation. When talk had turned to my work, Cady had begged for me to consider designing a business card for her, a request I’d told her I didn’t even need to consider, and two hours later, I’d sketched her three different treatments. I’d accepted her thrilled hug of thanks, but the real prize had been the way Reid—coming to look at the final product—had bent to press a kiss to my temple before whispering his gratitude in my ear. By then, it’d only seemed natural for Cynthia to ask us to stay for dinner, which had turned into after-dinner cleanup, which had turned into a game of gin rummy, apparently a long-held tradition in the Sutherland household.

  And then it’d been so late, and Cynthia had insisted.

  “Very,” I say, smiling. “I’ve had fun.”

  “Good.”

  That single word—every time I hear it in his low voice, I’m back in his bed, beneath him, and despite the fact that his parents and his sister are in bedrooms that are only a flight of stairs and a hallway away from us, I can’t help but shift restlessly now, suddenly feeling all the affectionate but chaste ways he’s touched me since we walked into this house.

  Something changes in Reid’s eyes—some flare of heat I recognize—as he looks at me.

  “You’re not coming in?” I say, innocently. But I am not being innocent.

  “Depends.”

  “On?”

  “On whether you make the very poor decision to change into a pair of my sister’s pajamas,” he says dryly, nodding toward the neatly folded shorts-and-top set Cady had given me, along with a small tote of extra toiletries.

  “Oh?” I reach out, lift up the shirt from the top of the stack. “But this tie-dye would match my eyes. Anybody’s eyes, really.”

  He crosses the threshold, pulling the door closed behind him before he comes to me and takes the shirt gently from my hand. Then he pauses and looks at the whole stack, and in a swift movement he pushes it off the side of the bed onto the floor, dropping the shirt on top of the now-messy pile. I look down at it, then up at him, my mouth agape.

  “I’ve never seen this side of you,” I tease. “Rebellious. Messy, even. I think you’re trying to seduce me.”

  He leans over me, his hands planted on either side of my hips, and gives me my favorite one two three kiss. When he pulls back and looks at me, his eyes dropping to my quickened pulse point, his smile is crooked, mischievous. It’s his game face.

  I shift again, pressing my legs together.

  “It must be because I’m breaking an old rule. No girls in our bedrooms.”

  “Your adolescence must’ve been a trial,” I say, leaning up to kiss his neck, sucking gently.

  He nudges along my jaw so I’ll tilt my head back, leaving my neck exposed to his warm kisses. “I did a lot of math in my head.”

  I laugh softly, my hands lifting to his sides, and for long, delicious minutes we kiss, Reid’s mouth on mine hungry, his hands growing restless, impatient. But when he lowers himself onto me farther, when our hips roll to meet each other’s in the rhythm we’ve perfected together, the bed protests, a squeak so loud it could absolutely wake the dead.

  I stiffen immediately. As though I am impersonating the dead.

  Game over.

  Reid groans again, this time right against the skin of my neck, his body tight with frustration, and I breathe out a quiet laugh, rubbing my hands over his back, trying desperately to ignore—to not rub against—the rock-hard, denim-covered length between his legs that is still resting against a very sensitive place between my own. I’m concentrating on slowing my panting breaths and my quick, aroused heartbeat when he speaks again, his voice low and gruff and desperate.

  “Christ, I wish we were home.”

  Before I can stop myself, I stiffen again, my hands on Reid’s back stutter-stopping in surprise before I move them again, trying to smooth over the thrill that had gone through me at his words.

  I wish we were home.

  In the city.

  Something in Reid’s body has changed, too, and I know he’s registered the shock of what he’s said. The mistake he’s made, calling New York home. After a second he moves away from me, rolling onto his back so we’re side by side on the bed. The small stretch of space between us feels like miles, like the distance we traveled only this morning, or like the distance Reid will travel—wherever he goes—when this summer is over.

  But then he reaches for my hand, linking our fingers together.

 
; We stay that way for a long time.

  “What my dad said before,” he says finally, and I turn my face to him, gaze at his profile. “That I should have kept trying.”

  “Reid,” I say, keeping my voice quiet to match his. “You were so young.”

  “I’m not anymore. I think about it, sometimes. Whether I should try again. When all this—when I finish with everything, at my job. I have money saved. I could afford it, to . . . try.”

  “Being a teacher?” I say.

  He nods.

  “I think you’d be a great teacher. You have the best ideas. You—”

  “In New York,” he interrupts, and I think my hand might jerk in his, an involuntary squeeze. Never, never has Reid said anything even close to this. Never has New York been an option for him beyond this summer. Somehow, the fact that he’s mentioning it now, here—in a home I know he misses—makes it seem so much more significant.

  I swallow.

  “You hate New York,” I say.

  “It’s growing on me.”

  It isn’t the most ringing of all endorsements, and he keeps his eyes up on the ceiling, his face set in concentration, as though he’s trying to work out the most difficult problem. As though it’s full of numbers up there, and he’s searching for an impossible solution.

  I turn my face up to that blank space, too. I think about walking with Reid in the city. He’s eased up, sure. He still loves the food and I think he’s come to appreciate the signs, too. But I haven’t forgotten the way his jaw clenches in the crowds, his irritation in the city’s loudest, brightest spaces.

  “You have to love it,” I say cautiously, not wanting to hope. Not wanting to push, not this time. Not about this. “I think you have to love it to stay.”

  I see my words float up to the place where we’re both staring. It wouldn’t be difficult at all, to hide something in them. It’s all there, after all, everything I’m not really saying, everything I’ve been trying not to let myself think.