There’s a long stretch of silence while Reid simply looks at me. I’m guessing my sense of organization is different from his, what with the days-of-the-week outfits and daily diary entries I have assigned to him, but for some reason—maybe for the same reason I felt that odd connection to him last week and last year, too—I have the sense he gets it. That he wants me to keep going.

We start walking again.

“I have this project. My deadline is in July, which is a long way away, but also not, because I’m . . .” I pause, a heavy swallow in my throat. Too blocked to even say the word out loud, which is I guess whatever the opposite of irony is. “Because I’ve been having some trouble focusing on my work lately,” I say instead.

“That seems hard to believe.”

“Why’s that?”

He looks out at one of the piers beneath us, where there’s some kind of kickball game going on, the occasional distant shout of celebration or objection filtering up to us. “Because you—the lettering projects, I mean. They’re very . . . creative.”

My lips press together in annoyance. Something about the way he’s said creative—as if he’s using air quotes around the word—makes it sound like I’m hobbying around, not serious. I tell myself to let it go, but then my mouth uncharacteristically trots ahead of my brain.

“You think creative people don’t have to focus?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“What I do, it’s a business, and—”

“I meant that it seems like it would be interesting, what you do. Lots of variation.”

“Oh.” I think about explaining all the Bloom Where You’re Planteds, everyone lately wanting the same kind of brush lettering—swooping, upright scripts with fat, washed-out downstrokes. But it’s probably petty to get into it. At least I’ve been switching up the color schemes.

“Is it not that way?” he asks, and the thing is, even though I don’t really know Reid at all, I once again get that sense about him, something essential. He never asks a question he doesn’t want to know the answer to. In a world of the standard, unthinking “How are you?” where the only real acceptable answer seems to be a neutral “Fine,” Reid’s attention feels special. Acute.

I shrug. “It’s the same as anything else, I suppose. It can get rote, or frustrating. When that happens, it’s easy to make a mistake.”

He coughs. Because I said mistake. I wonder if the dive into the river from here would kill me, or just maim me. I think my steps actually falter for a second, as though my body’s really considering it. It can’t be as dirty in there as everyone’s always saying.

“It’s okay,” he says, keeping his eyes ahead. “It’s a common word.”