Love Lettering

The doctor leaning in to take one final look at Reid’s eyebrow has the efficient, slightly impatient demeanor of a woman who has seen a whole lot worse, and who probably has a whole lot worse waiting for her out in the lobby of this urgent care. She reaches up a latex-gloved hand and touches her index finger to the lump forming around the cut on Reid’s brow, and I see his jaw clench tightly against the pressure she’s put there.

“Sorry, big guy,” she says, lowering her hand and leaning back, pulling off her gloves. “The good news is, I don’t think you’re concussed.”

“I told you I wasn’t,” Reid says, sullenly.

“Yes, that was helpful. To have your expert medical opinion.” She looks over at me and rolls her eyes.

I really love this doctor.

She moves over to the tablet on the pale-green laminate counter, tapping in a few notes from her exam, and I realize that it’s the first time in at least a couple of hours that I’ve taken a deep, relieved breath. All through the cab ride here, my big bag basically a clown car for the steady stream of tissues (clean! I’m not an animal, or your grandma) I’d handed over to Reid to press against his gushing cut, my body and brain had felt electrified, all my thoughts and actions a new, supercharged kind of Meg-Bot mechanical:

Noise, crowd, push, punch.

Blood, door, outside, cab, doctor.

Reid. Fight. Bar fight.

Swine, as it turned out, had lived entirely up to its name when it came to the majority of its patrons, who rudely interrupted the most romantic confrontation of my life by starting a brawl over a game of air hockey. It’d started somewhere in the back, some mysterious place where the pastel-shirt guys and the beard guys apparently met, deadlocked in their angry, competitive feelings toward each other over various table games and probably also their relative success levels at late capitalism. Maybe if my eyeballs hadn’t been turning into giant red hearts I would’ve noticed how that rising tide of noise was being matched with a new press of people making their way to the front.

Instead, I’d only noticed when one of the pastel-shirt guys, courtesy of one of the bearded guys, had landed like a projectile into the back of Reid’s stool.

And that’s when I learned that Reid Sutherland—despite his stoicism, despite his civility, despite his slight inebriation—absolutely knows how to fight.

His reflexes had been superhero-fast, one hundred percent not-intoxicated fast. He’d stood from his stool, all his height blocking me from the encroaching crowd, and for one brief, mindless second, I’d done the thing I’ve been wanting to do for weeks: I’d pressed my body close to his.

In the seconds after—it must’ve only been seconds, though it’d felt much longer—the chaos had been overwhelming, somehow managing to be both an in- and out-of-body experience. I’d felt it when a cold splash of beer had landed on the back of my dress, and I’d heard my own brief yelp of surprise as I’d jumped away from Reid’s body in shock. I’d felt it when his body had then briefly knocked into mine, the force of the stray elbow to his brow that’s brought us here, and I’d heard his grunting exhalation of pain.

And then I’d seen something change in the line of his back—a broadening, a stiffening.

A preparation.

But had I really felt it when he’d turned and grabbed me by the wrist? When he’d tucked my body close to his, when he’d put an arm around my shoulders and started to shove his way through the crowd of angry, sloppy patrons? Had I really seen it right, when one of those patrons threw a lazy, misdirected punch in our direction? Had I truly heard Reid—quite late Reid!—mutter a quiet, frustrated “Fuck” through clenched teeth before he’d moved me out of the way? Had that been real, him ducking that punch, him pulling back his arm and making a fist as the guy started coming again?

Could I actually have felt the force of that ham-fisted, sloppy-drunk guy thudding to the ground at my feet?

“What about his hand?” I say now, in the firm, no-nonsense voice I seem to have had since we walked in here, and the truth is, I’m still surprised to hear it. A literal fight, and I feel stronger than I have in ages. In the lobby my hand had been rock-steady as I’d filled out Reid’s paperwork, quietly but quickly asking him questions that he would answer stiffly, his voice muffled from the fresh, icy-cold compress the check-in nurse gave him.

“I’m okay, Meg,” Reid says, his voice low and soothing. For a split second some of my newfound strength falters. I like you so much, Meg, he’d said, but he’s been quiet ever since, and if I look at him now—if I see that bruised, bloody brow, the one he got for me—I may not be able to stay focused on the most important thing, which is making sure he’s okay.

I keep my eyes on the doctor, waiting for her answer.

“In this case, the patient and I agree. His hand looks fine.” She directs her next comment to him. “Someone must’ve taught you to make the right kind of fist.”

Reid gives a bored shrug worthy of pastel-shirt guy. This slight air of sullenness is the only lingering symptom of his former inebriation. He has looked stone-cold sober from the moment that man hit his stool, though the energy bar I forced him to eat (another gem from my bag) and the ten tiny cups of water I made him drink out in the lobby probably helped.

“I’m going to grab an NP who’s got a steadier hand than me to stitch you up, okay?” Then she turns to me again, speaking as though Reid isn’t in the room. “Keep an eye on him tonight. If he seems disoriented, or has light sensitivity, or complains of nausea, give us a call.”

“She’s not—” Reid begins, but I cut him off. Reid may have punched a guy in the face (better than pistols at dawn, I am now assured) before I could get clocked by an errant fist, but I’m ending this night as rescuer-in-chief. I got him to this urgent care, and I’m going to be the one who wakes him up every hour to shine a light in his eyeballs, though that is probably not what this doctor means about checking for light sensitivity.

“I will,” I say. “He’s staying at my place.”

In my periphery, I see Reid turn his head sharply toward me.

“Great,” says the doctor, snapping the cover closed on her tablet. “You all have a good night, and try to stay out of trouble.” The door shuts behind her with a decisive click.

And then Reid and I are alone—truly alone—for the first time in a week.

“Meg, you don’t have to—”

This time, it’s me who turns sharply, and I finally let myself take in the full force of his bruised face. My heart clutches, but I don’t wince. Somehow I know—as though I’ve been practicing for a lot longer with Reid than I realized—that if I show pity toward him right now, he’ll fight me so much harder.

“You’re staying with me. You don’t even have your phone.”

“I have my MetroCard. And my feet.”

“You’re about to get stitches.” I cross my arms over my chest, and I register how strange it feels to do it. I don’t think I’ve ever stood this way in my whole life. It’s weirdly satisfying. “Where did you learn to punch like that, anyway?”

I don’t ask so much because I care, but because I’m trying to distract him from arguing with me about staying over tonight.

He blinks down at his hand. “My older brothers. To help me at school.” He pauses, then looks up at me with an expression of such naked embarrassment that I immediately uncross my arms.

“Please don’t think I do that often,” he says.

“I don’t,” I say quickly, feeling some of the fight drain out of me. “Of course I don’t.”

“Or . . . drink that way. It’s rare. And I hadn’t eaten all day. I only had—”

“Reid, it’s fine.”

Oh, man, the sad eyes. Forget it, I’ll never win this argument. Maybe I can pay one of these nurses to go home with him, if the thought of staying with me is so awful.

“You—” He shifts on the bench, the paper covering the vinyl crinkling beneath him. “You’ve barely looked at me since we got out of there. If I scared you, or if the things I said—”

That fast, my own reflexes take over, some protective instinct I have for him, and I cross the tiny space, putting myself right in front of him. I wait until he raises his eyes to mine again, then reach out my hand—oh, it’s shaky now—and set it on top of his.

I see his chest expand with the breath he takes.

“You didn’t scare me. None of it scared me.”

It’s not all the way true, of course. It was scary, but not in the way he means. It was scary to see him again, to confront him again. It was scary to remember parts of our fight, to feel the hurt feelings that still exist between us. But I stayed, and if I can make him stay tonight—

“None of it?” he asks, looking down at our hands.

I know what he’s asking. I like you so much, Meg.

“None of it.”

He moves, turning his wrist so our palms press together, so his fingers link with mine. I swallow reflexively. Holding hands with Reid, I think, routes through the city unrolling in my head like a map on a table. What if I never want to walk any other way?

“But I think we should come back to this tomorrow,” I say. “When you’re feeling better.”

For once, it doesn’t feel like I’m avoiding anything. It feels like Reid is coming home with me tonight to sleep on my couch and to get annoyed with my nocturnal nursing efforts, and it feels like we’ll wake up tomorrow and practice at this in the clear, completely sober light of day.

“Did she move out yet?” he asks quietly.

I feel my brows lower in confusion. “Sibby?”

He tips his downturned head in a small nod.

“No, but usually on Fridays she stays with—”

I don’t finish before his shoulders slump in relief, his head dropping forward even more. With him sitting on the table, and me standing here, the top of his bent head is right at the level of my chin.

I realize what he must be worried about.

“She wouldn’t care, anyway. We’ve lived together a long time. Both of us have had . . . uh, overnight guests before.”

Reid’s hand squeezes mine gently. He’s holding my hand as though I belong to him. As though we belong to each other.

“A few more weeks,” I say, and for the first time since I got the call about Reid I think about Sibby moving out, about the other fight I have waiting for me, and I take a breath through my nose. “I think the official date is on a—”

“I was worried,” he says, interrupting me. He lifts our joined hands, holding them in the space between our bodies, and oh. His breath tickles the back of my hand. My sensitive, sensitive hand. Where all my talent and all my most secret thoughts come from. It’s like having clinging, confining bandages removed.

“Worried?”

“I kept thinking,” he says, his voice lower now—either my closeness or maybe the fatigue finally setting in. I take a step forward and shift our hands, making a small, inadequate pillow out of the back of mine for his brow. He takes the hint, letting the uninjured side of his forehead rest, warm and heavy, against my knuckles.

How must this look, this picture of us? A knight bowing in service to his lady. I see my name in an illuminated, medieval-manuscript style.

MARGARET THE BRAVE

“I kept thinking,” he says again, “it’d be hard for you, her leaving. And what if I missed it?”

“You didn’t.” My voice has lost all its steadiness, but it doesn’t much bother me now. The hand that’s not clutched to his—it lifts, seemingly of its own accord. I reach out and stroke my fingers through his thick mass of red-blond hair, and I think his whole body shivers. I think mine does, too.

“I’m so sorry I didn’t call.”

Reid the Repentant.

“It’s all right,” I say, stroking again. “Tomorrow, okay?”

“Tomorrow,” he agrees, and then—as if to seal it—Reid lifts his head the smallest amount. Enough to press his lips against the back of my hand.

And that’s how Reid and I rest after the fight, waiting to get stitched all the way back together.

It’s a bold move, going back to the park.

We don’t so much plan it as we do walk our way to it, one of the many mutual, unspoken agreements we’ve come to over the course of last night and this morning. The promise we made to each other in that tiny treatment room—Tomorrow—has lived between us through every interaction we’ve had, something we both seem to be keeping sacred for full daylight, for full sobriety, for full assurance of no head injury. Inside the low-light, hushed quiet of my apartment, Reid had been polite, careful, helpful, a houseguest unsure of his welcome: Your place is nice. I don’t want to get blood on your couch. I can put the sheets down.

In response, I’d tried to be easy and unbothered, nearly professional in my hangover-preventing, concussion-checking, of-course-you’re-welcome-here care. Advil and a full glass of water to keep future headaches at a minimum. Quiet, hourly, tiptoed walks out into the living room to see his big, still-clothed body sprawled on my couch, half-covered by the blanket that I usually keep at the foot of my bed, his breathing soft and even. An extra towel and toothbrush in the bathroom, a fresh bar of soap in our tiny shower stall, a large T-shirt I got last year for free at the Northside Festival folded neatly on the counter.

All of it had gone a long way to establishing some way through for those awkward, sometimes charged moments in the early morning as we both woke and took turns showering and dressing in the incomplete privacy of the small space. When I’d emerged from my room, my hair still damp, the ends darkening the shoulders of my simple, gray cotton dress, Reid had looked up from where he waited for me on the couch, the stitched cut bisecting his brow, his jawline tight and shaded with scruff, his shoulders a few inches too broad for that borrowed T-shirt.

I thought if I let him look at me that way for too long, our Tomorrow promise to each other wouldn’t involve all that much talking. It would involve that couch and Reid’s scruff and the smell of my shampoo and our mouths and our hands and also, under the Saturday morning circumstances, Sibby probably walking in at a very inconvenient time.

I’d reached for my jacket and Reid had stood and reached for his own, and we’d made our way outside into the crisp, clear morning, the back of my hand still tingling from the feel of his lips on my skin.

“It’s nice out today,” Reid says, shifting his weight on the bench we sat on to finish our breakfasts—bagels from my favorite shop, coffee for me, tea for him, both of our to-go cups set carefully by our feet, as though they’re weapons we’ve laid down. It’s early enough still that the park is pretty quiet, no one else on the benches around us, most passersby either biking or jogging or on the kind of determined, headphone-accompanied walk that takes no interest in its surroundings.

“That’s my line,” I say, and he smiles softly.

“Meg, listen, I—”

“No, wait,” I interrupt, because in between those tiptoed walks to check on him last night, I’d thought a lot about this morning, about how to finish this fight. I’d thought about everything Lachelle had said to me, and I’d thought about the things I have to say to make it so that Reid and I both try to stay. I practiced.

“I want to go first.”

He nods, but I see the way he sets his jaw, a bulwark against what I think is some lingering embarrassment. I take a deep breath.

“The most important thing is that I’m sorry about last week. About the fight we had, and about how mad I got. What I said to you—it was really unfair.”

“It wasn’t unfair. It’s like I said last night”—he clears his throat, lowering his eyes—“I’m well aware of my faults, especially the one you mentioned.”

“It’s not a fault,” I say quickly, and he gives me a look I’ve never seen on his face, a cock of his head that looks a lot like sarcasm—a look that somehow telegraphs all the small moments where Reid’s bluntness got the best of him: calling me a shopgirl. Scolding me for not having an umbrella. Asking me about my health insurance.

You know it is, that look says.

“Or at least it’s no worse a fault than my own, which is . . . well, I guess it’s one you already know about.”

Reid waits, and for a couple of seconds, I do, too. I think about my parents and about Sibby, about how my fight with Reid pressed up against everything about my life that hurt before I came to New York, and about everything that hurts about it now.

“I hide things. My feelings about things in my life, or in the lives of people I care about. I hide them in my letters, and I hide them when I’m talking about the weather or Frisbee or whatever other thing I fill up the space with—”

“I like everything you talk about.”

You know you don’t, my look back to him says, and then I take a breath before I speak again.

“Last week,” I begin, “I was really . . . I was trying so hard to hide, I guess. I was upset about this thing at work, and some things from my past it reminded me of, but instead of telling you that, I tried to distract you.” I swallow. “That’s something I’m realizing I do too much, to keep me—”

“I never meant you to feel unprotected,” Reid says, his eyes full of regret. “I wouldn’t ever want to make you feel that way.”

“You punched a guy in the face for me last night,” I say, my mouth curving into a teasing smile. “I feel pretty protected.”

Reid ducks his head, his hair falling forward, skimming his stitched-up brow. “I only wanted you to—”

“Be honest,” I finish for him. “Say what I mean.”

His lips press together, which I take to mean agreement.

“I want to try that,” I say. “Being honest. Talking about the things that are difficult. When I hide them—they seem to come out in other ways, anyway.”

He moves, his body turning on the bench so we’re facing each other more. He looks between us, where my hands have been idly toying with the strap of my bag.

And then he reaches out and takes one, pressing our palms together and linking our fingers, the same as he did last night. I close my eyes at the feel of it.

He’ll protect you.

“Okay,” he says.

“I have three points.” I wince at how it sounds, this first attempt at saying what I mean. A little loud and slightly stiff, as though I’m about to start up a slideshow titled “Difficult Relationship Factors We Need to Address.” Practicing for this in the mirror wouldn’t have been the worst thing, if only six-foot-something of the man I’m trying to talk to hadn’t been sleeping on my couch all night.

Reid smiles crookedly. “Three, huh?”

I smile back. “Three. This is a numbers game, Sutherland.”

“Oh,” he says softly, still smiling that swoonsh. “My specialty.”

My specialty today. I’ve thought and thought about them, as if they were letters on a page: the order in which I’d say them. How I could make them strong enough, special enough, straightforward enough for Reid.

“One,” I say, knowing his smile is about to disappear. “What you said last night, about your skin—”

He tries to preempt me. “I’m not embarrassed by it. I’ve had it for a long time. Obviously I’d prefer if I didn’t, and I’d certainly prefer if you didn’t find it un—”

“I don’t find it anything except part of you. It’s only number one because you said it gets worse when you’re stressed, and your job—it always seems stressful to you. I see how you get, whenever it comes up. And if that’s part of why things were so off with us last week, then I want to know about it.”

Reid looks up from where our hands are joined, his eyes out on the wide expanse of park green as he answers me.

“My work is . . . stressful. Especially lately. When I came to see you last week, I’d had a particularly terrible day. When I looked back at it, afterward . . . I realized I should’ve passed on your invitation, gone home alone.” He looks back at me, rubs his thumb over the back of my hand in a way that makes me shift on the bench, an inconvenient pulse of feeling between my legs.

“But I wanted to be around you. You’re the only person here who doesn’t treat me like I’m a calculator. When I’m around you, I don’t think about numbers. It’s a relief.”

“And here I am with my numbers game,” I tease, but I also use my own thumb to stroke his hand back, sorry for the stress he feels about his job. Honored that I’m as much a relief to him as he’s been for me.

He smiles down at our hands. “I don’t mind this one. What’s two?”

Two is a hard one. I swallow.

“Two is—Avery. You, and Avery, and the wedding program.” I watch his face, search for some grimace or sadness, something that’ll give me an indication of how this one will go. “If you still hold it against me, Reid, it doesn’t matter how much you may like me now. It doesn’t matter how much we like each other. If you don’t forgive me for those letters, and if you still have feelings for her—”

“I don’t. I mean that I don’t hold it against you. And I don’t still have feelings for her. Please, let me make this clear to you.”

“Okay,” I say, because that is not going to be enough. I remember the way he’s looked, sometimes, when she comes up. I remember the way he’d said she was beautiful, and powerful. “Make it clear.”

He clears his throat. “Avery’s father arranged for us to meet after she had been through a difficult time. A breakup with someone she’d been with since college, who had some problems with . . . ah, substances.”

“Oh.”

“I think he thought I’d be a good choice. Stable. Boring, probably.” Reid gives a lift of one shoulder. “I thought being with her would help me find my way here, in some way. And I think she thought being with me would be easier. Undemanding, and . . . calm. But we were a terrible match, and we both knew it. For much longer than either of us was willing to admit.”

“But you bought her that ring,” I say, which is ridiculous. But it’s the first time since he came back to the shop that Reid and I have had any meaningful conversation about him and Avery, about what happened between them. My memories of her, of them together, are shaped by that ring, by what it represented.

“That was not the ring I bought her, actually.”

“What?”

“A week after we got engaged she came to a dinner we had planned with the new one. A gift for the two of us, from her father. An upgrade.”

“Ouch,” I say, grimacing, and he chuckles softly.

“She’s a good person. I care about her, as a friend. But she’s from another world, I guess. I thought, for a while, that I might try to fit into it, but we weren’t for each other. You knew it as well as we both did.” He pauses, strokes my hand, takes a breath. “As for your letters . . . well. Maybe I am glad to hear you’re reconsidering the things you sometimes hide, but my frustration last week, it was not about you. It was about—”

“New York,” I finish for him. “That’s three.”

He looks down at our joined hands. “New York,” he repeats. For the first time in this numbers game, Reid looks well and truly unsure. I’m leaving New York, he’d said to me once, and I don’t think all the games in the world could make him stay.

“This is home for me. This is where I built a life. And you’re leaving.”

There’s a long pause, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t holding my breath. I’d be lying if I said my heart didn’t dip in disappointment at what he says when he speaks again.

“I’m here now.”

It’s an incomplete answer, a thing that won’t be fully resolved between us—not today, and probably not ever. He may be here now, but what he means is that he’s leaving later.

“I don’t want to stop seeing you,” he adds. “I’d see you any way you wanted. Only the walks, if that’s all I can have.”

It’s not all you can have. The thought is immediate, but I say nothing, not yet. This will hurt, after all; I can tell already. I can have gone through all this work to make it so both of us stay—last night, this morning, anything that happens from this moment on—but in the end, he’ll still leave.

“It’ll probably never work,” I say quietly, but I also desperately, desperately want him to convince me. “We’re total opposites.”

The hand that’s not holding mine reaches out, and Reid sets a gentle finger to one of the buttons on my jacket.

“Letters, numbers,” he says, a familiar beat to the words, as though he’s saying po-tay-to, po-tah-to. “They’re not so different.”

I raise my eyes to his, and I’m not sure when we managed to get so close. Close enough that I can see the red-blond stubble along his jaw, close enough that I can smell my soap on his skin.

“Both codes,” he adds. Then he moves his finger, tucking it under the edge of the button, tugging gently. The movement exerts no pressure, but I still lean closer to him.

“That’s true,” I whisper, and when I raise my eyes to his I can see the heat there. I want that heat. I want it, and right now, it doesn’t matter to me if it’ll hurt someday soon. It doesn’t matter if this ends up being the fight of my life.

“We could do it on the count of three,” I say, and he smiles, close-up and perfect and so, so sexy.

“This is your game.” He leans in, but he doesn’t kiss me. He puts his mouth right against my temple. “Picture it,” he says, and somehow, I know exactly what he means. A code between us, the way we first talked to each other, even before we knew each other. My letters, and his ability to read them.

“One,” he says.

And I see it, o-n-e, the o shaped in that space of skin between my hairline and the outer edge of my eyebrow, a looping, upward curve connection to the script n I’m imagining over the arch of that brow, which is where the feather-light touch of Reid’s lips has moved. The e at the bridge of my nose, a slim, delicate, terminal curve that fades away rather than ending.

My breath shudders between my parted lips.

“Two.”

He shifts, lets his lips rest softly against my cheekbone, and instead of pressing them there, he rubs them back and forth once, as light as a strand of my own hair in the wind, and I see that word, too, drawn in the same pink that’s the color of my natural blush, the pink I turn when I’m warm or embarrassed or aroused. The t, the w, the o, all of them a heavily sloped italic. All of them on the way to somewhere.

“Reid,” I whisper, and he moves his head back, traces his eyes over the spots where he kissed before looking into mine.

“May I?” he whispers back, and I let my eyes slide closed at this—the mannered, magnetic, Masterpiece Theatre perfection of it.

I nod.

“Three,” he says, but I don’t see any of those letters. I only feel the press of Reid’s perfect lips against mine, and as soon as it happens, I know. I know that I could have my eyes closed this way and I’d still know Reid’s kiss anywhere, because Reid’s kiss is everything I like about Reid—firm and direct, with a sweetness you have to know to truly recognize. He sets one of his big, warm hands to the side of my neck, his palm pressing against the network of veins where the blood rushes to the surface for him, but with his thumb he lightly strokes the line of my jaw. His lips on mine tell me he wants more than a chaste, closemouthed kiss, but he waits until my tongue slips over his bottom lip to give me his own, and once he does, he makes that soft groan I’ve heard him make before, but this, this is the perfect version of it, the one I’ll hear in my dreams for days and days.

I scoot toward him, moving to wrap my arms around his neck, and I’m barely thinking—barely thinking that we’re in the park, that we’re in public, that at any second some disgruntled jogger might shout a well-deserved Get a room! I kiss him and kiss him, my body growing desperate to get closer to him.

“This is the best game,” I breathe between kisses, my chest rising and falling quickly. I’m practically panting out here, but I don’t care. I want to keep his lips on mine; I want our tongues tangling; I want to press my whole self against him, and—unlike last night—I want to really feel it this time.

“Meg,” he says, his forehead resting against mine, his own breaths coming faster now. “I have a number four.”

I stiffen, worried we’ll have to stop now, worried there’s something I’ve forgotten.

But Reid keeps me close, kisses me once before he speaks again.

“Come home with me.”