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’t love it,” 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 only like being with Reid, I tell myself. I only like the time we spend together, walking and talking and eating and making lov—like. I only like the 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 only like the 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 only like the 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 says Meg when I tighten my inner muscles around him, pushing him to an edge he doesn’t want to go over yet.