“Whatever you want. Or something you have trouble writing at work.”
“That would be everything. Even my own name.”
“So write that.”
He’s joking, he has to be. But I can’t think of anything else, so I scratch out the drug order I got in trouble for a few days ago, fighting with the odd angle of the gold nib. All with Tam watching over my shoulder, silent and still, his warmth seeping into me like a hug.
I love it.
I hate it.
I love it some more as I sign off with my name and he leans closer still. “That do you?”
“Write something else. A longer sentence.”
“Are you testing my grammar?”
“Fuck, no.”
“Thank the Lord.” I frown at the page and scrawl what’s on my mind.
Three words.
You smell nice.
Tam laughs. “Thanks.”
“It’s true. I thought it way back when I met you in the car park.”
“That’s funny. I thought you looked like a fucking angel, until I saw the hospital ID. Then I thought the devil had come back for me.”
Tam speaks absently as he scrutinises the mess I’ve made on the pristine inside cover of the book. I hold my breath in case he says more.
He doesn’t. At least, not about that. He points to the first row of letters on the page. “Try tracing these.”
“Why?”
“I’m trying to see which part of configuring the words glitches for you.”
“My whole brain glitches.”
“No, it doesn’t. You do these combinations just fine. See here?” He points to the wordyou. “That’s pretty fucking perfect.”
“You have strange ideas of perfection.”
Tam says nothing. Just watches my cack-handed attempt to string letters together with a frown that should maybe feel critical, but doesn’t.
He reaches around me, his chest to my back, and grips my wrist, adjusting the angle of the nib, guiding me across the page. It takes a few lines. More than a few. Then something clicks and the pen seems steer itself, gliding over the paper like butter.
I find myself spellbound. And gobsmacked letters that neat came from my hand, even with Tam’s soft grip on my wrist. “Wow. That’s almost legible.”
Tam makes a sound low in his throat.
That’s it. No admonishment. No praise. Just a low rumble ofshut the fuck up and write.
So I do. I turn the pages and keep going, even after he lets go of my wrist and steps back. I keep writing until I get to a poem about Santa needing a new reindeer.
It makes me think of Rudy. I scan the room for him and find him on Tam’s shoulder, his sharp gaze trained on the gardenwhile Tam works, and it’s quite the view.Myidea of perfect. So I let myself stare and stare and stare, until I find myself drawn in by the casual dichotomy of Tam’s rough, tattooed hand and the elegant art that flows from it.
