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Back Love Lettering Save as PDF
Chapters (30)
  1. Praise
  2. Also by
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright Page
  5. Dedication
  6. Chapter 1
  7. Chapter 2
  8. Chapter 3
  9. Chapter 4
  10. Chapter 5
  11. Chapter 6
  12. Chapter 7
  13. Chapter 8
  14. Chapter 9
  15. Chapter 10
  16. Chapter 11
  17. Chapter 12
  18. Chapter 13
  19. Chapter 14
  20. Chapter 15
  21. Chapter 16
  22. Chapter 17
  23. Chapter 18
  24. Chapter 19
  25. Chapter 20
  26. Chapter 21
  27. Chapter 22
  28. Epilogue
  29. Acknowledgments
  30. Teaser Chapter

“Shall I walk you to the train?” Those starchy, lovely manners. I wonder if he knows how unexpected he is. How unreal, in this city.

I smile up at him. My truest talent, this feigned lightness, no matter what this book of sketches resting underneath my hand contains. “I’m going to stick around. I’ll call for a Lyft in a while.”

He tips his head in a nod, but he seems disappointed. “I hope you”—he gestures at my notebook—“I hope your work goes well.”

“Thanks.” I still feel shaken, as if I’m the tower now, wobbly and uncertain. Game over, I see in my mind, blinking and computerized, not a hand-drawn letter in sight.

Then I think Reid takes a risk of his own.

“I had fun,” he says, as serious as ever, and I look up at him. The severity in the lines of his face now looks to me like sincerity. Hope.

“Me too,” I say honestly, the memory of all those photos on my phone a blinking, deleting cursor, backspacing over that Game over.

“Maybe we can play again sometime.”

Maybe, I’m repeating in my head, still wobbly. I tuck one of my fingers inside the notebook, feeling the indentations my sketches have left there, the slight grit of the graphite on my skin.

But he turns to go before I can answer.

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

“Yes. No, wait. No, I think. Or—I don’t know?”

Beside me, Lark is staring down at nine different sheets of paper, all of them covered in some of my most common lettering styles, the ones I seem to rotate through my various clients’ planners and wall calendars. It may be true that I have left out the most popular brush lettering, but it also may be true that if I have to do one more client project with that as the sole focus, I will find some way to break my own fingers, and where’s that going to leave me?

Nowhere, that’s where.

Nowhere, however, is also where this appointment is going, because Lark is having an incredibly difficult time making literally any decision. The question that has prompted this latest round of existential dread is whether she wants black accents. It’s Tuesday afternoon at three thirty and we’ve been here since shortly after noon, or, perhaps, since the actual birth of Christ. I raise my gritty eyes toward the front of the shop, where Lachelle is standing behind the front desk. Every once in a while she looks back here and gives me a sort of cringe of sympathy.