Love Lettering

by Kate Clayborn

  When we’re finished, he pitches our trash and comes back to sit beside me, draping an arm along the back of the bench, his hand tucking under the messy length of my haphazard ponytail to rest on the nape of my neck. He makes a low hum of disapproval when he squeezes there, and maybe it’s wrong, out here in the open air, but I hear it as if it’s a bedroom sound.

  “Meg,” he says, his voice stern. Bedroom stern. “You need to stretch more.”

  A common refrain these last few weeks, when he finds me hunched over my sketches. I purse my lips and reach a hand out, stroking my thumb under the soft, darkened skin beneath one of his eyes.

  “You need to sleep more,” I say. I like this, how this is—it’s a real you two moment, two people taking care of each other, counting on each other.

  He lowers his hand a couple of inches, presses his fingers into some of the tightest muscles. I wish I could say I made a bedroom sound in response, but my grunt of pleasure-pain probably sounds more like I’m changing a tire.

  He chuckles.

  “Finish early tonight,” I say. “I’ll let you give me a massage. I’ll give you one back.”

  He looks over at me, his mouth crooking. “It’s tempting,” he says. But then he looks away from me, out into the crowd of people milling around. “I do have to go back, though.”

  I sigh, disappointed but understanding. I’ll go back to Brooklyn tonight; I’ll keep practicing my pitch. I’ll see Reid tomorrow, maybe, or this weekend, after the pitch is done. No matter how it goes, I want to celebrate it with him. After all, it’s his games that helped me get started on it in the first place.

  He leans in, presses a kiss to my mouth. “Soon,” he says, even though these days it all feels not soon enough.

  “Okay,” I say, standing and shaking out my dress. I set my hands on my hips and look back at him. “Well, at least let me get an ice-cream cone first.”

  The whole trip out here feels more than worth it to see Reid’s expression when I order something called a Salty Pimp, a caramel-vanilla soft serve dunked in chocolate. It’s a mess to eat, absolutely a disaster in the warmer weather, and every three licks or so, as we walk in the direction of his office, I hold it out to him and offer him a bite, even though I know he’s never going to take one.

  “Man, you’re missing out,” I say teasingly, delighting in his smiling refusal before taking another sloppy lick. We’re close to our destination now, and I’m pretty sure I have some chocolate at the corner of my mouth, but there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of point in getting it now. Best wait until the cone is finished, and anyway, however much Reid doesn’t eat sweets himself, he seems to love watching me have them, and I want to lighten his mood as much as possible before he has to go back to work. “After those spicy tacos? I can’t believe you—”

  I stop myself, feeling Reid’s posture change beside me, a straightening that puts a slice of space between us. I look up at him, notice that his face has lost all the softness of before as he looks straight ahead. He is Masterpiece Theatre Reid. Many-months-ago Reid.

  I follow his eyes.

  For a good five seconds—five this-feels-like-being-buried-alive seconds—not a single one of us in this terrible eye-contact triangle moves.

  Avery Coster looks exactly the way I remember her—beautiful and composed, but not cold or distant. Everything she’s wearing looks plain but also deeply expensive: a lightweight cream sweater, a pair of cropped, dove-gray pants, pale-pink slides that don’t—in spite of where she’s standing right this second—look like they’ve ever seen the surface of a New York City street. Either she just had a blowout or she has made a deal with a being from the underworld in exchange for her mortal soul.

  Reid clears his throat, and all of us take a step forward, as though we’ve all simply accepted that this isn’t allowed to be only an eye-contact meeting.

  “Meg,” Reid says. “You remember Avery.”

  I say nothing. I don’t even nod and smile. I am absolutely shocked; I feel as though I’ve walked into another dimension. In this particular dimension the hemline of your dress is wasted with city street dirt and you can’t remember when you washed your hair last and there’s a high-calorie dessert called a Salty Pimp running down your left hand when you run into—in a city of almost two million people!—the ex-fiancée of the man you’re currently sleeping with.

  This dimension is called Absolute Bullshit.

  “Hi!” I blurt, happy to at least have recovered my powers of speech. “Yes, of course I remember. Hi.”

  Not great powers, alas.

  “Meg,” Avery says politely, her eyes not once looking at my ice-cream cone. “It’s very nice to see you again.”

  It doesn’t sound chilly, or false. It sounds . . . nice. As though she doesn’t mind running into Reid at all. As though she doesn’t mind running into him with me, a woman who designed the invitation for her wedding—their wedding—that never happened. If she was uncomfortable or surprised at first, that seems to have entirely faded away.

  “Oh! Oh, same. It’s great to see you, too.”

  “Business is good?”

  “Yeah, it’s great. Thank you.”

  She gives me a genuine nod, a genuine smile. “That’s wonderful. So many of my friends were so disappointed that you got out of the wedding business before they had their big days. Please reach out if you’re ever back in it.”

  I blink in surprise, feel another trickle of cold soft serve slide between my fingers. Now that the initial shock has worn off, I’m relieved. Relieved and . . . reminded, I guess. This is awkward, but it’s not awful. I like Avery. I liked her when she was my client. I don’t have any reason not to like her now, and I don’t have any reason to have the kind of frantic, fight-or-flight response I’m trying to get better at ignoring whenever things get tense.

  “I will, absolutely.” But deep down, I know I won’t. I’m out of the wedding business. I know how good those sketches I’m going to present are. I know, somewhere in my bones, that I’m on the cusp of something brand new.

  Avery turns her head toward Reid now. “I wondered why you weren’t at the office,” she says, her voice friendly. “I stopped in to see my father.”

  There’s a too-long pause, and for the first time I shift my eyes to look up at him, too. I don’t know what I expect to see—maybe a version of the set, vacant mask he had before, the one he gets when he’s uncomfortable. Maybe something closer to her expression—something warm and unbothered, the face you’d expect to see on half of a couple who split amicably, mutually, in all the ways that Reid said.

  I don’t expect him to look so . . .

  So wrecked.

  My stomach swoops and turns. My eyes dart around the sidewalk, desperate for a trash can, where I can get rid of this Salty Pimp. It’s possible I’ll never eat an ice-cream cone again.

  Reid is still looking at Avery as though he’s seen a ghost.

  The most beautiful, powerful ghost.

  He blinks, clears his throat again. “I stepped out for a dinner break,” he says, as though he owes her an explanation.

  She smiles. “Good for you. You always had terrible work-life balance.”

  He still does! I want to say, but that, of course, is ridiculous. This isn’t a women-who’ve-dated-Reid street fair. I stay quiet, clutching my cone. I have never felt more out of place in my whole life, and given my personal history, that is really saying something.

  “I still do,” he says, his voice grim.

  Avery rolls her eyes. “That’s Daddy’s influence on you.”

  Reid’s Adam’s apple bobs with a heavy swallow.

  “Yes,” is all he says.

  Avery looks back and forth between us, entirely unbothered. “Well, good to see you both,” she says, stepping toward the curb, where a dark sedan I didn’t even see waits for her. She’s already half-hidden behind the door being held open for her when Reid manages to speak again.

  “Yes,” he repeats. “You as well.”


  I step away from him when the car pulls away, spotting a trash can where I can finally pitch the cursed ice-cream cone. My hand is still sticky and damp, and with my clean one I reach into my bag, digging for hand sanitizer. Give him a second, I think to myself. Of course he would feel uncomfortable. They were going to be married, after all. I think of Sibby’s cutting words, reminding me that not everything is some big scandal.

  Maybe I don’t press on this one. Maybe I give it time.

  “Meg,” he says, coming to stand beside me while I needlessly shake my tiny bottle of all-this-is-going-to-do-is-move-the-soft-serve- around-your-hands hand sanitizer.

  I give him a toothy, false smile. I’m so out of practice that it feels unfamiliar on my face, more of a grimace. He’s not even pretending. He looks as shocked, as upset as he looked only a few minutes ago.

  “Are you all right?” I ask him.

  “I’m fine.” But as with my grimace-smile, it’s not all that convincing. “I hadn’t expected to see her.”

  “Well,” I say brightly. “Her dad does work here.”

  I see him swallow again. “Yes.”

  Both of us step out of the way of a group of pedestrians. We are in the worst possible spot, doing the worst possible thing, blocking foot traffic. We’ve gotten so good at not doing that together, whenever we’re on our walks. Nothing feels fine. Least of all, Reid.

  “Hey. You want to walk some more? You seem—”

  “I’m fine,” Reid repeats. Then he looks down at me, his gaze softening. “It was a shock, that’s all. Perhaps she . . .” He trails off, reaches to tug at cuffs that aren’t rolled down. He looks even more bereft not to have found them at his wrists, where he expected them. “Perhaps she changed her hair.”

  I furrow my brow. Avery’s hair looked the same as always. Which is to say, it looked perfect.

  I have never seen Reid this lost. This indirect. This . . . dishonest.

  “Listen, Reid, I’m sure that was—”

  “I should get back in there.” He starts unrolling his cuffs, folding them back down over his taut forearms. “I probably—I should get back in.”

  “Sure, okay. But we can talk about this later, if you want. I can go back to your place, wait for you there? I brought work with me, and—”

  Reid clears his throat, buttons one of those cuffs. “I’ll be late.”

  “Okay.” I wait for a few seconds, watching him. Wondering if he’ll add something. If he’ll say, But yes, wait for me there.

  He doesn’t.

  “I’ll call you,” he says instead. Then he meets my eyes with his own, and with one blink he eliminates the sadness I know I saw there. Now he looks blank, entirely unmoved. “Do you want me to get you a car?”

  “No, I’ll be . . . um, fine.”

  I almost walk away. But before I go, Reid catches my hand, pulls me toward him. When he’s got me close he wraps his arm around my lower back, gathering me against him, something desperate in his hold, something reminiscent of that night in his old bedroom. He has to lean down to put his mouth close to my ear.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, so quiet that I have to strain to hear him. “Thank you for coming here. For having dinner with me.”

  I pull back, setting a hand against his cheek and looking into his eyes. They’re all mixed up now. Part sad, part sorry. I try to put a question in mine.

  “We’ll talk about it,” he says. “I promise. But I have to get back in there.”

  I nod and smile, press my mouth to his in a brief kiss. It should make me feel better, I guess, that he acknowledged it. I’m giving it time; he’s giving it time. It’s not a scandal. It’s only something uncomfortable, something he maybe needs to work through on his own. And he did promise to talk about it.

  But when I finally walk away, I have the most sinking, unpleasant feeling.

  I have the feeling that I can’t count on that promise at all.

  Chapter 18

  On Friday afternoon, I’m sitting on a cushy love seat outside of a rented conference room inside a huge, swanky Midtown hotel. Behind a set of double doors across from me, nine members of the Make It Happyn creative team are apparently settling back in after a long lunch they’ve taken, having heard two other pitches this morning. When I’d arrived fifteen minutes ago, checking in with the front desk per the e-mailed instructions I’d received last week, a hotel staffer had made a quick phone call, and within minutes I was being greeted by a young, energetic assistant named Daniel, who’d updated me on “the team’s” morning while escorting me to my waiting spot. Daniel had offered me coffee or tea or Pellegrino, as well as a sleek promotional booklet about Make It Happyn’s parent company, a Florida-based crafting retailer that mass-produces everything from yarn to scrapbooking tools to jewelry-making supplies. Daniel had called me “Miss Mackworth” three separate times and had also told me he was “rooting” for me, though something tells me he might’ve said the same thing to the other two artists who were apparently here before me.

  I take a deep breath, trying to ignore the nagging feeling that I don’t belong here, that something’s off.

  I should be feeling one hundred percent confident. In the portfolio resting beside me are my originals, ready to be displayed on the conference table, the same way I’d done yesterday during my practice run in the cozy familiarity of the shop. On top is my tablet and the adapter I purchased especially for this, ready for the projector I’d gotten an e-mail confirmation about two days ago from a Make It Happyn assistant (who was not Daniel). On my body is a trendy, dark denim A-line dress, accessorized with a sunny yellow belt and brushed-gold bangles on my wrist, hoops in my ears. And most importantly, in my head is the pitch itself, practiced and refined, praised by my small audience of friends in the shop.

  But something is off.

  Not for the first time today, I’m tempted to break a promise to myself, to pull out my phone and check my messages. But over the last two days, ever since South Street Seaport, all it’s been is a distraction, a preoccupation, almost a compulsion. I’ve been checking it too regularly, staring at the messages from one particular person, looking for something hidden in the bland, polite words that have come through.

  Each time I’ve gotten one, I’ve felt a creeping sense of dread, familiar to me from months of similar polite brush-offs from Sibby. I cling to the two phone calls Reid and I have had in between these messages—one yesterday afternoon right after my practice run, and one at 7:05 this morning, precisely five minutes after my alarm had gone off. During both, he’d told me how sorry he is for having to work. He’d told me he misses me. He’d asked if I was ready, if I was nervous, if I’d been stretching. He’d deflected when I’d asked him if he was all right. “Busy,” he’d said. “Tired.”

  Last night, when I’d been doing a final run-through alone in my apartment, my intercom had buzzed, and my heart had skipped a beat in hopeful excitement. But it’d only been a delivery—a dozen yellow roses, a card with unrecognizable handwriting. Meg, it had read, in the messy script of some flower shop employee. You’re ready for this. We’ll celebrate your pitch tomorrow, I promise.—Reid

  But I’m not reassured about that promise. We still haven’t gotten to the other one, after all.

  I’d tossed the card, kept the flowers.

  Nothing’s off, I reassure myself, plaiting my fingers in my lap. You are ready for this. You want this. Don’t get distracted. Don’t let yourself get blocked.

  I concentrate on my breathing, counting out my exhales. Briefly, I close my eyes, taking Cecelia’s suggestion from yesterday that I visualize myself in the room, presenting confidently.

  “Meg?” a woman’s voice says before I get all that far in my visualization.

  The dark-haired woman who’s come to get me introduces herself as Ivonne, my first contact with Make It Happyn, and she is as bold and vibrant in person as her voice was on the phone. Her summery dress is patterned all over with bright pink flowers; her high heels—
which add four inches to her petite frame—match. She seems thrilled to finally meet me, and I get a jolt of you-don’t-have-to-visualize-it confidence.

  And the mood in the conference room is similarly welcoming. I miss the natural light of the shop, miss being surrounded by my friends and the beautiful, comforting tools of my trade, but the team is talkative as I set up, all of them complimenting me on my work, my social media. Within minutes my originals are spread out on the table, each one covered with a matte black sheet of paper, which I’ll ask members of the team to reveal as I move through the presentation I’ll be projecting on the screen. The scans are good, but it’s not the same as seeing them on paper.

  And then I begin.

  I do it exactly as I rehearsed yesterday, introducing myself and my city walk-inspired pitch. I start with the vintage-inspired treatment, lettering for the headers like old signs, the colors muted and sometimes patchy, a faded effect that took forever to get exactly right. Then the trees—my lovely, gorgeous trees—branches and leaves growing across the pages, complemented by small, simple serifs that don’t steal the focus. The final reveal is my favorite, my most recent addition, designed and refined over the last two weeks or so, when Reid’s long hours had me longing for those not-too-warm spring days of walking. Each month a secret, subtle tribute to a different neighborhood we’d walked together, lettering inspired by its architecture or its attitude, lightly drawn lines linking one page to the next, as though they are train routes or street grids on a map. Maybe you’d see it if you knew New York, maybe you wouldn’t. But every page is unique, and each time you turn one, you feel as if you’ve genuinely moved. You’re in a whole new place, but somehow, you’re still in the same general space.

  When I did this pitch in front of Cecelia, Lachelle, and Lark, their faces had been a blend of pride and awe, big oohs and aahs when I’d change the slide, when I’d cue them to reveal a sketch. Cecelia, in particular, had wiped her eyes when I finished, had told me how proud she was of how much I’d grown, how much my art had developed.