Love Lettering

by Kate Clayborn

  She’d trailed off then, pressing her lips together, and I think Sibby and I both had gotten the sense that Lark had her own choices in mind, too.

  “I’m good,” I tell them both now, keeping my voice firm, the same way it’d been when I’d answered them back in the apartment. When I’d told them how determined I was to do this.

  How certain I was.

  “Want us to go in with you?” Lark says hopefully. Now that we’ve taken this drive together, talking through it the whole way, they seem certain, too. As invested in this as I am.

  I stand, turning back to them with one hand on the open car door, ducking so I can see them both.

  “I love you guys for driving here with me, but I think I need to go in there alone.”

  They both look crestfallen, but Sibby says, “Understood. We’ll wait right here. We’ll come up with something to kill the time.”

  I smile. “Play a game,” I say, tossing her the keys. “There are signs everywhere around here. I’ll call you.”

  I hear them call Good luck! to me in unison as I head toward the entrance, my palms sweaty with nerves. No matter how certain I am about this, it’s still going to be a fight. Maybe to get to him, and maybe once I do get to him, too. And after—after, there are still so many fights to have, against all of the enemies that Reid’s amassed over the last forty-eight hours.

  The lobby is as bland as the exterior—mostly neutral, with those awful punctuations of standard hotel lobby maroon. In a small, clean, open dining room off to my right, a few guests sip coffee and read newspapers, and I can only hope all of them are completely skipping the financial section. I head over to the front desk, steeling myself.

  The man behind the counter is named Gregory—not Greg, a fact about which he will be clear if you slip up—and his attitude does not match his May I Help You? name tag. Still, I can’t say I blame him, what with how insistent I’m being.

  “Young lady,” he says, after we’ve already gone back and forth a few times. “I’ve told you, there’s no one here by that name.”

  “Old man,” I say, even though Gregory is maybe only a decade or so older than me. But he can try it again with this young lady shit. “I know there is.”

  Isn’t there? I keep my head held up, determined not to falter. I picture the numbers in my head. I know what they meant.

  “Ma’am,” a man’s voice says from behind me, and it is not a nice-sounding ma’am. It’s sort of a you’re-about-to-be-arrested ma’am, and for a second all the numbers fly out of my brain. I see those two a’s like a pair of handcuffs, that apostrophe transformed into a chain.

  Well, so be it. I’m in the news already.

  I turn to face the voice.

  “Yikes,” I say without thinking, my head tipping back to look at the massive man standing in front of me. He’s wearing a black suit, a dark tie, the same as the men on television who surrounded Reid. But unlike those men on television, he’s significantly older, maybe in his late fifties. He is cue-ball bald, but he has the thickest gray mustache I’ve ever seen in my life. I am almost certain he carries handcuffs.

  “Ma’am,” he says again, as though to remind me. “I’m going to need you to step away from this counter.”

  “I’m looking for a guest here. His name is Re—”

  “If you could come with me,” he cuts me off, turning on his heel and walking toward the lobby’s elevators. I follow him, but don’t resist the impulse to give Gregory a pretty smug look.

  When I catch up, he’s already pressed the button for the elevator.

  “Is this witness protection?” I say.

  He looks at me out of the side of his eyes. “Yes,” he says dully. “It’s this one hotel. The Witness Protection Hotel. For all the witnesses. Ever.”

  “You’re funny,” I say. “But I’m not getting on this elevator unless I see some identification.”

  God! I am so good at this. I wish Agent Tirmizi were here.

  The man sighs and takes out one of those leather folds and shows it to me.

  “Vic, huh?” I say. “Sounds fake.”

  His mustache twitches. “You want to see Mr. Sutherland or not?”

  “I do,” I say. Then I keep my mouth firmly shut for the entire elevator ride, though it is definitely a challenge not to bring up the weather.

  Down the long hallway I follow the massive width of Vic’s back, reaching into my back pocket to take out Reid’s letter. I’m holding it tightly in my hand when Vic stops in front of a door.

  When he reaches his huge fist up to knock, he pauses and gives me one last look, and the best way I can describe this look is to say it’s like having a raw piece of steak (with a mustache) judge you for being annoying while also asking whether you’re really sure you want to go through with this. I guess over the last few months I’ve learned not to judge people solely by the expressions they wear on their faces, but Vic here could really benefit from some gentle giant training.

  I swallow nervously.

  But I’m still as certain as I was a few hours ago, as certain as I was when I left Sibby and Lark in the car. So I nod once, the way I’ve seen Reid do a hundred times. A firm tip of my head.

  Vic thuds the side of his fist against the door.

  But it’s not Reid who answers. It’s just another random man in a suit. He’s rail-thin, a string bean to Vic’s slab of beef. He looks back and forth between us as though we are the worst room service team to ever show up to this door.

  “Sutherland has a visitor,” Vic says in a low voice.

  “How?” String Bean says.

  Vic shrugs.

  “I’ll take care of this, Micah,” says a woman’s voice I recognize, and the guy called Micah steps to the side. In my periphery I see Agent Tirmizi approach, but I don’t look to her.

  Because now I can see Reid.

  He’s standing with his back to the window, his white shirt untucked but buttoned at the wrists, his suit pants wrinkled, but his dress shoes on. He looks at me with that fixed, focused intensity I’ve missed so much, but he holds his body still and upright, his jaw set tight. Protecting himself.

  “Meg, nice to see you again,” Agent Tirmizi says. “Oh, let her in, Micah. Vic, take off for the night. Thanks for the heads-up about her. Sorry you got waylaid on your way out.”

  I tear my eyes from Reid, look up and give Vic what I hope is a look of thanks for rescuing me from Gregory’s extreme competence at keeping secrets. His mustache twitches, and I take that as a “you’re welcome” before stepping into the room, barely restraining myself from running over to Reid. But since there’s a lot of tension right now between Agent Tirmizi and this Micah person, I hold off.

  “Did you tell her to come here?” says Micah.

  Agent Tirmizi snorts. “Are you kidding?”

  “She didn’t,” I say. I carefully unfold the letter, shuffling pages until I get to the last one. “It was in—”

  Micah raises a hand to his brow. “You insisted on reading the letter,” he says to Agent Tirmizi, “but you let an address slip your notice?”

  “It wasn’t an address,” I say to them, but I make sure I’m looking at Reid. “It’s coordinates.”

  Lines and lines of lovely, loving code. The shop, where he first found me. The Promenade, where we first made our plan. The Garment Worker, and the awning where we hid from the rain. A tiny, always crowded restaurant in Nolita, a bright mural on Bowery. Off Sixth Avenue, the quiet refuge of Winston Churchill Square. A taco joint in the East Village. The broad, beautiful green of Prospect Park. A bar, an urgent care, my apartment building and his.

  More and more numbers, for every place in the city that means something to me and Reid.

  And then one row of them, approximately two hours out of place.

  The numbers that led me to this hotel.

  My eyes brim with tears again, and Reid’s jaw ticks with tension. His hands in his pockets look like they clench in frustration at the distance we’re being forced
to keep from each another.

  “Guess I missed it,” Agent Tirmizi says, but I don’t think she did. I think she’s a not-so-secret romantic. “Anyway, you’re his attorney,” she adds. “You should be protecting his interests. He’s allowed to see people.”

  Micah looks back and forth between Reid and me, and then Reid and Agent Tirmizi. He sighs. Obviously I’ve never met him before, but I can see signs of fatigue all over his face. I imagine he’s had a stressful few days, too.

  “I wanted to get through the rest of this stuff today,” he says apologetically, and for the first time I notice the setup of the room, the round, four-seat table that’s littered with documents. I don’t know what all of it is—statements or evidence or whatever Reid’s been stuck taking care of, but I know he absolutely should get a break.

  “Please,” Reid says, the first word he’s spoken since I came in this room. His voice is hoarse-sounding, and I think of the line from his letter, the one where he said he begged. I begged her. “Please, let me have a few minutes with her.”

  Agent Tirmizi moves over to the table, stacking papers. After a beat, Micah follows her, and for what feels like actual centuries Reid and I stand in our respective spots, our eyes on each other while we wait. The on my heart is fully unfurled into the word it’s always wanted to be.

  it beats.

  “You know where to find us,” Agent Tirmizi says as she heads to the door.

  Micah delays a beat, stops, and murmurs quietly to Reid, probably some reminder about what he can and can’t say. He gives me another apologetic look before he finally passes through the door Agent Tirmizi is holding open.

  And when it clicks shut behind them, Reid and I are finally alone.

  “Meg,” he says immediately. “Please don’t cry.”

  “Am I crying?” I say. “I hardly notice anymore.”

  He raises a hand through his hair. “I am so—”

  “Reid,” I interrupt him. I step farther into the room, pausing briefly to set the pages of his letter onto the bed. But then I move to him. I stand directly in front of him and look at his gorgeous, stern, triple-take face. His sad eyes. I reach out and circle my fingers around each of his wrists. I tug his hands loose from his pockets.

  “It’s okay,” I say.

  He lowers his head, his hair falling over his brow.

  “I have done so much damage,” he says, almost a whisper.

  “It’s okay,” I repeat, and I step into him more. I pull his wrists toward me and wrap them around my lower back.

  And then I put my arms around him.

  The best way to describe what happens to Reid’s body next is to say that he . . . slouches. As though he has been relieved of the most massive weight on those broad shoulders, he bends over me, his back curved, his head pressed into my hair, his arms holding me as though I’m the one thing in this whole entire world keeping him upright. Beneath my hands his back expands and contracts with great, heaving breaths, and I tighten my arms; I hold him together through whatever this is. I want to say, Reid, don’t cry, but also I want to tell him he can cry all he wants.

  I don’t know how long we stand this way. Long enough that Reid’s breathing regulates, long enough that I loosen my arms, switching from clutching him tight to rubbing my palms up and down the broad, tight muscles of his back, long enough that I’m sure we both grow stiff and achy, our height differential never more uncomfortable than when we stand like this. When he pulls back from me, he keeps his head tipped down, and I take his hands from my waist, pull him over to the bed. We sit beside each other, the pages of his letter between us.

  He clears his throat. “Thank you. For coming all this way.”

  “You told me to.”

  He still won’t raise his eyes to mine. “It was . . . an impulse,” he says, running a hand through his hair again.

  “It was a good one. I loved your letter.”

  His eyes flick upward, a question in them. Then he lowers them again. “Meg, I am sure I have made such a mess of your life. I’m afraid to ask what you’ve been through, these past couple of days.”

  “The worst of it was not knowing if you were okay. Everything else, I can handle.”

  Maybe I say this more confidently than I deserve to, given some of my lower moments over this past weekend.

  But right this second, Reid doesn’t need to know about those.

  Reid shakes his head. He idly toys with the buttons at his wrists, as though he’s considering undoing them. “There was this window,” he says quietly. “After they took my phone, I mean. I had to turn it over for a couple of days. Anyway, there was this short window of time where I could call you. And then I . . .”

  He trails off, stops with the buttons. His face flushes. “I couldn’t remember your phone number. In my phone, you’re the letters of your name. I’d never memorized the number.”

  He sounds so utterly stunned by this. I can imagine him somewhere, a phone clutched in his hand, his heart thudding in panic, numbers failing him.

  “And then it was chaos. For hours and hours.”

  “It must’ve been awful,” I say. I reach out, over the pages of the letter. I gently unbutton his cuffs for him, and he watches silently until I finish.

  “Once your name hit the news, I—well, I’m reasonably sure I threatened Vic. To let me go to you. It’s all something of a blur.”

  “Wow. I’ve seen you throw a punch, Hotshot, but I’m pretty sure you’re not a match for Vic.”

  For the first time since I’ve gotten here, I see the barest flicker of the swoonsh, but then it fades. “I can’t imagine what you thought.”

  I swallow. I could lie, but the pages between us are all about honesty. A contract, or rules for a game. And I’m not breaking them.

  “I didn’t know what to think, at first. I admit that I . . . I guess I felt some doubt. About what you’d told me, about you and Avery. About who you’d told about the program.”

  He looks up at me. “You have a lot of reason to doubt people,” he says. “You can’t know how sorry I am that I’m now another one of those people.”

  “Reid, I don’t doubt you. Not now.”

  But I can tell he doesn’t quite believe me. He looks down again, to his now-unbuttoned cuffs. I reach out, tug gently on one of them.

  “Reid,” I say again. “I know you. I know your heart. You were under so much stress, and maybe you made some mistakes. But I know you didn’t mean for this to happen.” I rest my hand on top of his letter. “I believe you.”

  “How, Meg?” His voice is low, raspy from the tears he’d shed against my body. “I hid so many things from you.”

  I shrug. “I hid things, too.”

  He looks up at me, his gaze dismissive. “The program is nothing, Meg. That’s over. You know I don’t—”

  “I didn’t mean the program.”

  He shakes his head. He’s still fighting me so hard. “You didn’t hide anything like this.” He gestures idly to the now-empty table.

  I don’t bother to look over at it. I keep my eyes fixed on him.

  “I hid that I’m in love with you. That I’ve been in love with you. For a long time.”

  I pick up the pages of his letter, move them to the other side of me. Then I shift, turning to the side, moving closer to him. I put my hand on his cheek, turn his face toward mine. I look into his sad, disbelieving eyes. His shoulders are still tight with tension. Stoic, stern, Masterpiece Theatre Reid. He never has been quite what he seemed on the outside, but I always knew that. I always saw something else inside him. From that very first day.

  “I love you,” I repeat, and he closes his eyes. I lean in and press a kiss to his temple, trail my lips over his scarred brow. One, I don’t say. I move to his cheek, brush my lips back and forth there. Two, I don’t say. I pause with my lips in front of his. Three, I’m begging him silently, but I don’t move.

  Then he whispers, “I love you, too.”

  And he kisses me.

 
; Every kiss I’ve ever had with Reid has meant something—lust, welcome, comfort, reassurance, even love. But this is the first kiss I’ve ever had with him that feels like a promise, a commitment. It’s soft and unhurried at first, and at one point, Reid has to reach up to gently swipe yet another tear from my cheek. But when he licks at my lips, it grows more intense, more desperate, all our fear and confusion from these last few days living between us as we cling together.

  We won’t be apart again, this kiss says.

  We stay.

  But eventually, I pull back. I’m not even sure if this is Reid’s hotel room, and something tells me Agent Tirmizi would not approve of us having sex on her bed, not to mention Reid’s lawyer. Also, I haven’t forgotten that two of my friends are tooling around New Jersey in a rental car, waiting for news from me.

  And anyway, I don’t think we can leave these promises at a kiss.

  Reid clutches both my hands in his. “I don’t know how, Meg,” he says, “but I promise you, I will fix it, whatever’s been done to your business because of this.”

  Wrong promise.

  “No, you won’t.” I make my voice as stern as his usually is.

  He looks at me, startled.

  “I’ll fix it myself,” I say. “I’m not taking the Make It Happyn job, but I—”

  “You got it?” he says, his eyes lighting with pride, with relief.

  “Sort of.” I briefly—as gently as possible, under Reid’s current guilt-ridden circumstances—explain their offer, the “hidden messages” concept.

  “You could do it, Meg,” he says quickly, before I’ve finished. “Please don’t—”

  “I’m not turning it down because of you. It’s not what I want. It’s not what I worked for, these past few months. It’s not what all those walks with you helped me see. About myself, and about what I’m capable of.”

  My heart swells when I see that curve in his cheek, another almost-there swoonsh.

  “I promise,” I tell him, “I’ve got a plan for my work, my business. Or at least the beginnings of one. You have to focus on what’s coming up for you, and—”