Beginner's Luck

by Kate Clayborn

  Before I think to do anything—clear my throat, knock on the open door, offer up a hello—he raises his eyes to where I stand, and there’s a brief second when he doesn’t do anything at all. He only stares, his eyes a little unfocused from the screen of his computer. And then just as quickly he stands, jolts from his desk, really, and the motion yanks the laptop up from the desk, the earbuds out of his ears. “Shit,” he says, saving the laptop from a dive off the ledge, untangling the earbud cord from where it’s gotten stuck in his belt loop.

  “I’m sorry!” I say, too loud in this quiet office, and holy crap, is this awkward. I grip the handle of Zoe’s briefcase tighter even than I had before, when my knuckles were already white with it. “I’m—I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “What are you wearing?” he asks, his brow furrowed.

  “What?” I say, though I’ve heard him perfectly. I just don’t know how to start the conversation from this point.

  He waves a hand in my direction, a gesture that encompasses everything from the neck down—my fitted, black blazer, the silky, dove-grey camisole underneath, the knee-length pencil skirt that matches. “A suit?” he says, that brow still slammed down across his eyes.

  “Oh. Well, it’s Zoe’s. I know it’s not really my—”

  “You look beautiful. I don’t care what you’re wearing. You’re a sight for sore eyes.” It’s so honest, how he says it, but he stays right where he is, behind his desk. He’s tucked his hands in his pockets, his fingers clenching into fists beneath the fabric.

  “I met with Jasper today,” I say, rushing it out. I just want those hands out of his pockets. I want them on me. “To hear his pitch.”

  I can see the surprise on his face, the confusion. He looks up past my shoulder, maybe looking for Jasper, or someone who can explain this to him, but it’s only me here. “But you said no. Singh called and said no.”

  “Right, yes. But I decided I should give it a fairer hearing, from an—an unbiased party. And you know, from a place where I wasn’t so—reactionary. Where I could listen.”

  He looks at me, down at his desk, back up at me. “I don’t—”

  “I’m still not taking it,” I say, and watch as his shoulders slouch a little. Is that—is he disappointed, or relieved? It doesn’t matter. I still need to get through this. “It’s not right for me. It’s not the kind of work that’s right for me. Something else might be, somewhere down the line, but it’s not this. But with you, I started to get all mixed up about it. Whenever you talked about the job, or about Texas, after a while, I didn’t know whether you were talking about work or about us, and I got—I got scared. About risking everything I’d worked for.”

  “Kit,” he begins, but I stop him with a shake of my head.

  “I know my own mind on this. And I choose to be where I am for now.”

  “All right,” he says, and before he can say anything else, I walk farther into the office, set my briefcase on the chair in front of me, reaching in and pulling out the portfolio I brought along, the one I’d spent the last week preparing. I open it, remove its most important contents—a manila envelope, no marks on the outside, nothing to give it away. I set it down on his desk, then push it toward him with my index finger.

  “I brought this for you.” At the moment I’d like to back right out of here and find the nearest closet or bathroom stall or, I don’t know, under a desk would do in a pinch, because I am so, so nervous about this. I hadn’t known, not for sure, whether I’d use these—when I’d come here, I’d promised myself I wouldn’t make the final call until I listened, really listened, to what Jasper had to say.

  But I’d hoped I’d get to use them.

  Ben looks down at the envelope, then up at me, his eyebrow quirking. “Should I—?” Everything is still so tentative with us. I hope so hard that it’s not this way much longer.

  “Yes, please. Open it.”

  He takes his hands from his pockets, sits down again, and scoots forward to pick up the envelope. It feels as if it takes him forever to pinch up those little metal tabs, to slide his finger along the flap, to pull out the stack of photographs enclosed. “Alex took them,” I say, to fill up the silence. “He—ah—I asked him to spend the day in town.”

  I know every photo in that envelope. I spent hours choosing each one from the set Alex took at each place. I study Ben’s face as he goes through them.

  The first, a picture of the hardware bins at the salvage yard, taken from below. Alex had done this one lying on his back, like the photo in my living room, and the effect was to make the wall look enormous, endless.

  Second, also from the yard, a picture of the lighting room. I’d chosen one that was a little blurry, ethereal, orbs around each lit bulb.

  Third, River, cheeky in black and white (his choice), holding a brick and looking right at the camera, unsmiling but not angry, a look of challenge in his eyes.

  Next, Henry, bent over the pieces of an antique clock, his face a mask of concentration. Sharon, camera shy, a blurry form behind him.

  Fifth, a crowd shot: Betty’s on a full night, Zoe’s outline barely visible at the bottom of the frame as she throws a dart, and Betty’s tattoos a bright mural in the center as she carries a tray.

  Sixth, the front porch of my house, now newly painted, two white wood rockers facing the street.

  Seven through fifteen—a few more of my house, that exposed brick wall, the begonias I’ve planted in a pot that sits on the back stoop. Some of the city, including one I took of Alex getting a hot dog at the Wiener Cart. Another of the elaborate doorway to the Crestwood hotel.

  And finally, me.

  I’m on my front stoop, a picture Alex took while standing above me. It’s close, tight on my face. My hair catches at the edges of the print, my eyes look right up at the camera—through my glasses, and through the goggles I’m wearing over them.

  Ben smiles. I can see his dimple peeking out, but he keeps his head determinedly down.

  The silence is so heavy I can hear my pulse thrum. Still looking down, his voice ragged, a little choked, he finally says, “Have you come to recruit me?”

  He looks up at my silence. My throat is too tight to answer, so I nod. He gets up from his seat, but gathers up all the pictures first, holding onto them at the edges like he’s not ready to let go yet. Then he comes around his desk and stands in front of me, one hand coming up to my neck, his thumb touching under my chin, so he can tip my face up to his. “Kit,” he says. “I was coming to you.”

  “What?”

  “I guess Jasper didn’t say. I’m leaving Beaumont. I’m giving up my partnership with Jasper.”

  “Your partnership…?”

  “I didn’t tell you about that before, but I should have, and I will. I’ll tell you all about that. I did everything wrong before, with you. I went too fast, and I’m sorry about that. But I’m doing it right this time, Kit,” he says, and in spite of what he’s saying about too fast, he’s talking faster than I’ve ever heard him talk, messy and disorganized and it’s so, so perfect. It’s Ben without anything in between us. It’s not Ben being charming or funny or anything else but honest, and this time, he’s not stopping himself or backing off. “I put in my notice here, but I’m tying up all my loose ends, and I’m working with Jasper on an exit strategy for him, and our colleague Kristen too. That’s going to take some time, but they—they’re going to do well. They deserve to do well. I’m going to work at the yard—well, if my dad will have me. I haven’t told him yet, but I’ve thought about it a lot, and it’s what I really want to do, to be in the business with my dad. Or I’ll do something else if that doesn’t work, or if I need to make more money, whatever I need to do. I’ve got a couple of places I’ve been checking out, apartments not too far from the university—I mean not because I wanted to bother you or anything, just because it’s a good location. I was going to come to
you, ask you if you wanted to go out sometime…”

  “Ben,” I say, setting my palms on his chest, stilling him, my heart squeezing at the deep breath he has to take after that haphazard speech. “You didn’t go too fast. I love you. I want to be with you. I want you to come back and be with me, and if you didn’t want to do that, I was going to try and sell you, but if it didn’t work, I was willing to negotiate…”

  “You don’t have to sell me,” he says, setting the pictures down and tugging me to him, wrapping his arms so tight around me, lifting me so that he can bury his face against my neck. “You never have to sell me. Holy fuck, I’m so—I’m so happy you’re here.” He kisses me then, my shoulder, my neck, the spot behind my ear that gives me goose bumps, working his way to my mouth, as he talks to me, telling me how he’s missed me, how I smell so good, how he’s thought of me every second. When he kisses me, it’s perfect—it’s us, hot and sweet and the way it always is between us. Ben is tugging at the buttons of my blazer, moving me so he can back me against the desk, lift me onto it, and I want that, want to spread my legs so he can step between them, but Jesus, this pencil skirt. It is really tight. Nothing is going to happen unless I scoot this sucker up to my waist and put my bare ass on this desk. I mean, I am really turned on, but let’s be honest, not enough to keep myself from picturing the prints my butt would leave on glass.

  “Ben,” I whisper against his mouth. “I don’t think we should do this here.”

  He pulls back, rests his forehead against mine, and breathes out. “I’m sorry. Too fast, I know. We should talk more, and figure things out.”

  “No, I mean—we should go somewhere where I could get this suit off.”

  He exhales on a laugh. I feel the air of it on my chest, ruffling the delicate fabric of my camisole. It feels like happiness, a new beginning. “Kit,” he says, almost a whisper. He’s not looking at me. He’s kept his head down, and I’d make a joke about him peeking at what little cleavage I have on offer in this top, but I can sense something about Ben, in the way his fingers flutter against the backs of my knees, in the way his breaths are a little reedy. So I wait for him, stroke my hands up and down his arms, relishing the feel of him again after all these weeks apart. “Thanks for coming to get me.”

  “Anytime,” I say, my throat tight again with emotion.

  “I’m going to mess up, I’m sure. I’ve never done this before. I’ll do things that are going to make you really mad or annoyed.”

  “Ben,” I say, squeezing his forearms, once, twice, until he looks up at me. “Anytime, okay?” Ben is part of what home means to me now—he’s not everything, but he might be the biggest thing, and he’s going to change every careful arrangement I had set up in my life, but for once I’m so excited about that prospect. I can’t wait to see what’ll happen.

  “I’m so lucky,” he says, almost a whisper.

  “Nah,” I say, pulling him toward me for a quick, hard kiss. “But you’re about to be.”

  Epilogue

  Ben

  One Year Later

  “Rain is good luck for weddings, though,” Greer says, looking out from the dining room into the backyard, which is puddled and muddy, sheets of rain still falling from the sky, streaming down the windows.

  “Tell it to the bride,” says Zoe, and I snicker, checking my watch.

  Forty-five minutes until this thing gets underway, and the storm isn’t quitting, so I’m guessing we’re all going to have to cram into the living room. It’s a good thing it’s a small group, and I wave River over so that he and I can start pushing furniture out to the sides of the room. He’s wearing ripped jeans and Converse, a blazer his mother bought him at the Salvation Army, and a vintage-looking Tucker’s Salvage t-shirt underneath, which he’d designed sometime last year in spite of my father’s repeated protests that we’d never sold anything new at the yard, ever. He’s brought a date to this—a quiet, pale-faced girl named Amy who has a streak of her mostly white-blonde hair dyed hot pink—and I can tell, when he moves to the other side of the couch to heft it up, that he’s trying to impress her. Greer lights candles on the mantel. That’s where we’ll have the minister stand, and Zoe takes the big basket of rose petals that were planned for post-vows tossing and scatters them from the bottom of the staircase to the fireplace, a makeshift aisle that I’ll have to sweep up later.

  It’s not perfect, but it’ll be fine. With the candles and rose petals, it at least looks the part of a place you could get married. I check my watch again, and Zoe nudges me. “She’ll be here,” she says.

  “I know,” I mutter, but I’m nervous, sweaty and tense under my suit, which feels heavy and unnatural on my body these days. I’m not quite used to Kit’s travel schedule yet. When she’s gone, I sleep with my phone turned up on high next to the bed, and I check flight plans, making sure her connections run smoothly. She teases me about how I’d made my living traveling all over the world and now get “fussy” when she does even a short trip up the eastern seaboard for the private consulting she’s been doing for the last six months. It’d been her idea, the consulting, and I’d at first thought she’d meant the kind of work I was most familiar with—visiting corporate labs, lending her expertise on various materials or equipment. But Kit, I don’t think, will ever be interested in that kind of science. Instead, with Jasper’s help, she’d taken half time at the university and has been doing educational rep work for the manufacturers who make the microscopes themselves—running training sessions, reconfiguring the way they operate their schedulers, maximizing experimental time for faculty and graduate students, offering suggestions for undergraduate education on experimental equipment. She’d gone back and forth a bit, before those first few trips—maybe I shouldn’t do this, I don’t even like travel—and I’d listened patiently, every time.

  Because every time, Kit got on the plane, and made the best of it. Kit was trying, with her work and with me, not to be afraid anymore, not to cling so hard to the familiar, to let herself explore different parts of herself without worrying that something would be taken away. She’s talked, over the last couple of months, about wanting to teach, about how she might make that a reality. But she’s as committed as ever to this place, her hometown, she’s started to call it. Last weekend she made me spend two hours with her filling out some kind of survey for a local paper about our favorite spots.

  I check my watch a third time. Maybe we shouldn’t have planned this for this weekend. The schedule is too tight now that there’d been a flight delay that had kept Kit away an extra night, and despite her new willingness to get out there and make a different path for herself, she relishes coming home. Sometimes, we spend whole weekends without leaving here, eating and talking and puttering around with various house projects, making love late into the night, early in the mornings before falling asleep again.

  I’ve never been so happy in my life.

  “Ben!” my dad hollers from upstairs, and I turn to hustle up, finding him in the guest room standing in front of the full-length mirror there. “Tie this,” he barks at me, holding out the pale yellow necktie he has for today, the one that’s supposed to match Sharon’s pantsuit, though since she hasn’t let us see it, we’d only made our best guess at the department store this week.

  “Relax, Dad,” I say, taking the tie from him and looping it around my own neck to make a loose knot that I can pass over his head.

  “Relax? You try getting married at my age! I haven’t had this much flop sweat since I saw you come out of your mother’s…”

  “Dad. No,” I say, contemplating self-strangulation for a brief moment.

  “I fainted then, you know. Do you think I’m going to faint down there?”

  “You won’t faint,” I say. “Sharon’ll hold you up, anyway.”

  Sharon had proposed to Dad three weeks after I’d moved back from Houston—“all business-like,” Dad had told me, but she’d
also told him that she was never going to have him go in the hospital again and not be his next of kin, and anyways, she loved him and it was about time they made it official. The day after, Dad and I drove to an auction in Pennsylvania to buy her a ring. Since so far, they were both keeping their houses—“I said I wanted to marry him, not clean up after him!” Sharon said, but Dad thought she’d change her mind—Kit had offered ours as a neutral spot for the wedding, an idea that had seemed to hold more appeal for Dad and Sharon than something at city hall.

  “You got the rings?” Dad asks, as I tug the tie over his head, tightening it around his neck.

  “Yeah,” I say, touching my pocket. Two wedding rings in there, and one that I’ve been holding onto, since that auction in Pennsylvania—a dark green emerald, surrounded on all sides by tiny diamonds of varying cuts, marquise, round, tapered baguettes—a starburst around a verdant planet. I’d never seen anything like it, and had decided right then it was the ring I want to give Kit, sometime, when the time is right.

  “Jeez,” Dad says, wiping his brow. “How much longer?”

  “Seventeen years and now you’re in a hurry!” shouts Sharon, from our bedroom next door, where she’s getting ready. My mom is helping her. She brought a makeup bag the size of my toolbox, and as weird as this whole situation is, somehow, it feels right that my mom’s in there, helping out with this day. Richard is downstairs too, having spent the last hour trying to talk Zoe into joining his firm, and while I’ve been getting along with him better these days, I have no problem admitting that I thoroughly enjoyed watching her turn him down flat.

  “Ears like a bat, that one,” Dad says, smiling.

  “I’m happy for you, Dad,” I say, setting my hand on his shoulder, looking at both of our reflections in the mirror. He puts his arm around me too, squeezing my shoulder back.

  “You’re my best friend in the world, kid,” he says, looking into my reflected eyes. “And I’m real glad you’ll be standing up with me today.”