“Yeah?”
“Yes,” he repeats, but this time it doesn’t sound plain or grim at all. He moves his hands from my hair so he can press them into my back, moving me closer to him. “Stay tonight?”
I lean in and kiss him, giving him my answer this way. When we finally break, long minutes later, he keeps only the barest space between our lips.
“You’re the best part of this city,” he whispers, and I close my eyes and kiss him again, lying to myself the whole time, telling myself I can keep this inl-i-k-eterritory, telling myself that other, unruly, warningwon’t slice right through my heart when he leaves.
Chapter 14
“Oh, I like this, Meg.”
In the back of the shop, Lachelle is peering down at my latest sketches for Make It Happyn, her expression serious, focused. This one, I’m excited about—Make It Happyn requires that one of my full-year treatments be a botanical, and it’s long been one of my particular blocks. Earlier this spring, steeped in March and April misery, every floral attempt I’d made had felt pedestrian, familiar, too similar to the jobs I’d been doing for my clients.
But one Sunday morning not even a full two weeks ago now—specifically, the morning after the first perfect day and night I’d spent in Reid’s bed—I’d woken up with a new idea. My botanical wouldn’t be floral; it would be arboreal. Twelve months inspired by the trees in Prospect Park—almost two hundred species, per the park’s website, and for days I’ve worked to study pictures, to reimagine their trunks and branches and leaves, to create whole new alphabets I could draw from for these monthly pages. It’s not quite there yet, but I can feel that I’m on to something.
“No one else will think to have done trees,” Lachelle says, and this is the kind of response I’ve come to expect from her since I finally, last week, told her and Cecelia about Make It Happyn. Cecelia had responded with thrilled, congratulatory delight, and Lachelle had, too, for about fifteen seconds. Then her competitive streak had taken over, and since then she has been devoted to talking strategy, to looking at all my sketches and determining their fitness for winning this thing. Two days ago, she texted me with the name of another hand-letterer from San Francisco she thinks is up for the job.she’d texted,
“Yep,” she says, nodding. “I like it a lot.”
“But you don’tloveit,” I say, and she slides her eyes my way, as though she’s suspicious of my emphasis.
And the truth is, maybe she should be.after all, is a word I’ve been turning over and over a lot in my head over these last two weeks, trying to absorb it into my being, trying to keep it from becoming something else.
I onlylikebeing with Reid, I tell myself. I onlylikethe time we spend together, walking and talking and eating and making lov—like. I onlylikethe soft ways he touches me—holding my hand in his while we walk, or pressing his own on my lower back while we wait in line at some restaurant counter, or running his fingers through my hair at night before we fall asleep. I onlylikethe rougher ways he touches me, too—gripping my hair or my hips when he’s inside of me, tugging my body close to his when he wakes sleepily, finding we’ve strayed from each other in the night. I onlylikethe secrets and sounds his body gives up to me when we’re together—a hitch in his breath when I stroke him. A small, groaning shudder of pleasure when he first pushes inside of me. The rough, slightly scolding way he saysMegwhen I tighten my inner muscles around him, pushing him to an edge he doesn’t want to go over yet.
And I onlylikethe funny habits and sweet details I’ve learned about him: that he is an absolute monster about his wake-up time on weekdays, never hitting the snooze button evenonce, but always pulling the covers back over me neatly and pressing a kiss to my hair before he leaves. That he has a favorite tea brand. That he’s never had a single library fine. That he will always call when he has to work too late for us to see each other, and that he will always sound frustrated and disappointed when that’s the case.
I tell myself, especially when any small reminder of his impermanence here asserts itself. A letter I spot on his refrigerator reminding him that he’s not renewed the lease on the apartment that was only ever a placeholder for him, anyway. An awkward silence that falls on a walk when we pass an interesting sign for an off-Broadway show opening in September. The curt response I overheard him give on a work call—he gets so many work calls, and he never wants to talk about any of them—earlier this week: “It isn’t going to be my problem, because I won’t be there.”
“What am I, getting married to it?” Lachelle says, interrupting my thoughts pointedly. She shrugs. “I think you need to do more with color.ThenI’ll probably love it.”
“Done,” I say, bending down to pencil in a reminder to myself in my notebook. When I straighten again, I give her a grateful smile before starting to gather up the pages. Cecelia and Lachelle are teaching a beginner’s calligraphy class in the shop in about an hour, so I need to clear out.
When I’m tucking the final stack away, Lachelle gives me a gentle nudge and says, “You’ve made so much progress. And still almost a month to go.”
“Yeah,” I say cheerfully, catching a slight falseness in my tone that I hope Lachelle doesn’t hear. The progress I’ve made on the job has, of course, been massive, especially compared to the weeks and weeks I spent completely blocked, and I’m definitely proud of it. I can sense that I’m not quite there—Lachelle is right; Idoneed to do more with color—but still, in my more confident moments, I wonder whether I might end up with more than three full treatments to choose from when it comes time for the pitch. For the first time since those early days after I’d gotten the call, I actually allow myself to imagine how it would be to get chosen for this, to have a line featuring these sketches in stores everywhere.
But with the exception of everything that happened with Reid, there hasn’t been much progress with theotherwork Lachelle encouraged me to do, because my opportunities to practice fighting—with Lark, with Sibby—have been nonexistent to minimal. Lark, for her part, is almost certainly trying to find a gentle way to fire me, because the e-mail I woke up to last Monday had asked if we could “press pause” on the project while she “made some other decisions about the house.”
My reply—asking if we could get together for a meeting anyway—had gone unanswered.
With Sibby, I deserve more responsibility—once for staying with Reid on a night she was almost certain to be at the apartment, and once for chickening out at starting the conversation when she’d come home with Elijah in tow rather than by herself, as I’d expected. But by the end of last week—the same night, incidentally, that I’d seen that lease renewal letter on Reid’s refrigerator—I’d felt a panicked sense of urgency about it all, chastising myself for dropping the ball. After all, Sibby was leaving soon, too. Sure, she’d be in the same city, but with the way things have been going lately, she might as well be whole states, whole countries away.
What was I doing, letting a summer romance with a leaving man I definitely onlylikeget in the way of fixing this massive problem with my best friend?
I’d called her right away, that lease letter hovering somewhere over my shoulder. I’d even left a voice mail. “Sib,” I’d said, my tone serious. “I need to talk to you. I’ll be at home all day and night tomorrow. Call me and we’ll find a time.”
But she hadn’t called me. She’d texted me back an hour later with the kind of polite, roommates-only text that’s been a hallmark of her communication to me lately:
I’d felt my shoulders slump in disappointment as I’d read it.
I straighten them now, hefting my portfolio and my bag, watching as Lachelle starts setting out supplies for the class.
“I’m headed home to work,” I say, determinedly, more to myself than to her. But Iamdetermined, because if Sibby’s coming back tomorrow, I’m going to be home to meet her. I’ve already told Reid I probably won’t be free until Sunday, and my plan tonight is to tidy the apartment while I practice what I want to say to her. A night alone, I figure, will be good preparation, and when she gets back, we’ll do this thing we’vebothbeen hiding from.
“Take it easy,” Lachelle says. “Rest your hands.”
“Yep,” I say, waving at her as I go, wishing that the work I had ahead of me was as easy as the work I’ve been doing with my hands lately.
