Love at First

by Kate Clayborn

  Praise for Love at First and Kate Clayborn

  “Kate Clayborn’s writing is a study in syntax and rhythm; her storytelling is a perfect example of patience and pacing. With her trademark eye to detail of setting and scene, she has built a pitch-perfect love story, in a precious world-within-the-world setting, and honest-to-god the most delightful cast of characters I’ve met in ages. Tonally perfect, deeply romantic, and exquisitely crafted, Clayborn delivers a modern romance masterpiece.”

  —New York Times bestseller Christina Lauren

  “Kate Clayborn’s luminously beautiful Love at First is playful, heartbreaking, wise, and wonderful. I adored this story about two souls finding their way out of loss and grief and forging their own paths to true love.”

  —Ruby Lang, author of Playing House

  “A novel of lush complexity, one bursting with humor, a tender melancholy, and meditations on love, friendship, and life any reader can find solace and inspiration in. It’s lyrical and engrossing, a novel that possesses all the colors, idiosyncrasies, and range of the alphabet. Like the pages Meg designs, Love Lettering is a novel bursting with hidden messages essential to discover—so long as we open our hearts to analyze the codes.”

  —Entertainment Weekly, A+

  “The romance between Kit, a no-nonsense scientist who dreams of her first real home, and Ben, a recruiter and builder (I promise, it works) is emotional and real. Plus, I adored Kit’s strong relationship with her two best friends.”

  —O, The Oprah Magazine, Best Romances of the Year,

  on Beginner’s Luck

  “A warm and lively romance.”

  —The New York Times on Luck of the Draw

  “Breathtaking . . . easily one of the best I have ever read.”

  —BookPage on Best of Luck

  “Clayborn’s characters are bright and nuanced, her dialogue quick and clever, and the world she builds warm and welcoming.”

  —The Washington Post, 5 Best Romances of the Year

  on Luck of the Draw

  Also by Kate Clayborn

  Love Lettering

  The Chance of a Lifetime series

  Beginner’s Luck

  Luck of the Draw

  Best of Luck

  And a novella

  Missing Christmas in A Snowy Little Christmas

  Love at First

  kate clayborn

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Praise

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Teaser chapter

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2021 by Kate Clayborn

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

  The K logo is a trademark of Kensington Publishing Corp.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4967-2520-2 (ebook)

  ISBN-10: 1-4967-2520-4 (ebook)

  ISBN: 978-1-4967-2519-6

  For Noni

  You were so loved.

  You are so missed.

  You (and your Romeo) are so alive in our memories.

  Prologue

  The first time Will Sterling saw Nora Clarke, he could barely see at all.

  In the cool shade of the large maple tree he leaned against on that bright summer day, the whole world looked blurry to him—the leaves above him green but shapeless, the patio furniture to his left dull black but soft-edged, the building in front of him tall and sand-colored, the back doors for each apartment little more than dark, smudgy rectangles leading out to wood-built balconies whose slats looked wavy unless he squinted.

  He’d gotten used to it, the blurriness, or maybe he’d never really had to get used to it. He couldn’t quite remember a time when he didn’t have to narrow his eyes to bring things into focus, though he knew it’d been getting worse. He knew that sitting in the second row of most of his classes didn’t cut it anymore; he knew that last year he sometimes left third period—AP Lit, his only class with Caitlin, who liked to sit way in the back—with a thudding headache. He knew the dull white leather of the baseball had become the most important thing about it, that he saw it best against the bright blue of a clear sky, that he was more likely to get chewed out by Coach on cloudy days.

  He knew he couldn’t always tell anymore, unless he was really up close to her, whether his mother was smiling.

  But . . . glasses? Will Sterling in glasses? Out on the field, in those huge, sweaty-looking sports goggles Brandon Tenney wore?

  He couldn’t come around to the idea, not yet. So all last year, he’d dodged the school nurse when she did eye exams, took notes off the person next to him instead of from the board or the projector screen, always asking—politely, he hoped charmingly—first. He crossed his fingers for sunny days.

  He let his unreliable eyes drift back to the smudgy black rectangle he’d been trying his best to watch most closely, the one from which he’d made his unceremonious exit barely twenty minutes ago.

  “Wait outside,” his mother had said in a sharp, unfamiliar voice, once it’d been clear that things weren’t going according to whatever plan she’d had when the day started. A two-anda-half-hour drive into Chicago, a city Will had never been to before, a promise not to tell his father, and not a single word of preparation for that moment when they’d stood in the dim first-floor hallway of this apartment building and she’d knocked on the door with a determined insistence that had almost felt rude.

  “This is your uncle,” his mother had told him when a short, barrel-chested, wholly unfamiliar man answered. Will was close enough, eye level enough, to see the way the man’s mouth had dropped open slightly and briefly before he’d closed it and set his jaw against them both.

  “My brother,” she’d added softly, a crack of emotion in her voice.

  You have a brother? he’d thought, confused, blurry in his head, too, but still he’d stuck out his hand for the man—his uncle—to shake.

  “I’m Will,” he’d said automatically, politely, glad that his own voice had mostly stopped cracking over the last few months since he’d turned fifteen. It came out, to his own ears, sounding more grown-up and unsurprised than he felt inside.

  But the man—his uncle, his uncle he’d never heard of—hadn’t taken his hand. Hadn’t looked at him at all. Instead, he’d stared at Will’s mother like she was a ghost, or maybe like she was alive, but
back from the dead.

  Inside the apartment, which smelled like cigarettes and the same furniture polish his mother used at home, no one had moved to sit down; no one had spoken. His uncle—Donny, his mother had finally supplied, since the man himself had shown no interest in further introductions—stood beside a brown recliner (lumpy but undefined, to Will’s unreliable eyes), his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his jeans. His mother had stayed near the door, and so had Will. She’d been waiting, he thought, to be well and truly invited in.

  But even Will could see that wasn’t going to happen.

  “I won’t do this with your kid here,” Donny had said finally, the first words Will ever heard him say.

  Your kid, Will had repeated in his mind. He’d always been a good listener, at least, and he got the message. Maybe this guy Donny was Will’s uncle, but he sure didn’t intend to be any kind of family, and Will tried to tell himself that was fine by him anyway. After all, he was an only child, and up until this moment he’d thought his parents were only children, too. Other kids in his school had grandparents, cousins, big gatherings at the holidays. But the Sterling household, it was a small unit. Just the three of them. Not even a dog or a cat or a goldfish to complicate things.

  Still, Will had felt a flush creep up his neck, a hot fire in his stomach, a tightness in the muscles of his arms. He was quick-tempered lately, easily angered. When he wasn’t preoccupied with thoughts of girls—Caitlin, mostly, but if he was honest he had a real wandering eye—he could be moody and distractible and sullen. If all the stuff his health teacher said in class was right, it was all part of growing up, but right then, he felt like there was a purpose to all his confusing, quick-fire emotions. Maybe he was only fifteen, but he was already taller than this Donny person, and he lifted weights for baseball. He didn’t like anyone speaking to his mother so sharply.

  But that’s when she’d given her Wait outside directive, and he’d been so surprised to be directed that way, to be . . . almost disciplined that way. At home his parents had always been loose, accommodating, a little absentminded, and if Will thought it was less about a parenting style than it was about wanting some time for the two of them and their constant, sometimes exhausting affection for each other, well . . . at least he got to stay out later than other kids; at least he didn’t have to ask permission for everything, or to show anyone his homework at the end of the night, or to call when he’d be late coming home from practice.

  So in his shock—from that moment, from all the moments that had led up to it—he’d gone. Out the back door instead of the front, the same smudgy black rectangle he watched now. He couldn’t rely on his eyes or on the bright July sunlight enough to count on being able to see if anything went wrong in there, so he’d left the glass door open behind him when he’d gone, only shutting the screen. He’d turned to the left on the rickety wood beneath his feet and taken the few short, also-rickety steps down from the first-floor balcony. He’d crossed a stretch of sunbaked grass to a leafy, too-large-for-the-yard tree.

  And he’d waited.

  Tried to focus his eyes and his mind.

  What did it mean that he had an uncle he’d never heard of? What did it mean that his mom had come here—and brought Will along—without telling his dad? Come to think of it, what did it mean that things had been quiet at home lately, that his mom and dad sometimes seemed to have sullen moods to match his own, that they seemed to retreat even more often than usual into each other, closing their bedroom door and shutting him out, brushing off his questions when they’d finally emerge?

  Maybe someone else would say divorce. A lot of Will’s teammates had divorced parents, one of them with a real messy situation that involved court appearances and social workers, the mom and dad constantly trying to out-parent each other, even from the bleachers on game days. But Will knew better than to think his own parents would split. The Sterlings were devoted to each other, devoted enough that in all their secret, usually smiling looks for each other, in the way they sat close all the time, in their touches and kisses and whispers, Will sometimes felt like a complication himself. Like an unwanted dog or cat or goldfish.

  An interruption.

  “Hey!” interrupted a voice from above.

  A girl’s voice.

  A perfect voice, somehow, even from that short, everyday word. It sounded like a laugh at liftoff.

  He turned his head up toward it—on instinct, in anticipation.

  And then . . . a laugh that did lift off. It burst into the air above him, then trailed down from one of those balconies above like ivy, making his whole body go still, making his adolescent heart stutter-stop in his chest in a way it never had before. Later, much later, when he allowed himself to think about this day, this day on which almost every single thing in his life had changed, he’d remember that the girl’s laugh had been the only thing that had felt familiar to him in that strange backyard, with his never-before-seen uncle inside, with his mother secretive and sad and angry and scared. It’d felt familiar enough, welcome enough, that he’d forgotten—for that short space of time—everything else that was confusing about that day. He’d certainly forgotten, however shameful it was, about Caitlin.

  “Hey,” she repeated, louder this time, another laugh following, and he pushed off the trunk of the tree, took a step forward to the edge of the canopy so that he could see her, or see what he could of her.

  Be cool, he told himself, pushing his hair back from his forehead. He hadn’t known anyone on those upper floors would be able to see him where he’d been standing, but clearly—

  “Get away from there!” she called, right as he stepped from the shade, and he stilled again. Disciplined twice in one day? That was certainly unusual, and this time he was even more confused about what he could’ve done wrong.

  But then.

  Then, he saw her.

  Third floor, right side. She was blurry—of course she was blurry—but the sky was bright blue behind her, and the blurriness seemed as much about her movement as it was about his eyes. Arms waving in front of her, her long, straight ponytail a light brown rope that swung forward over a shoulder covered with a bright white T-shirt. The balcony slats prevented him from seeing anything of her lower half, but he knew it when she jumped up and down—saw her ponytail swing again, heard her feet thud on the wood beneath her feet.

  “Get, get!” she yelled, and he almost took a step back, feeling his breath leave his body in shock and disappointment at having been so . . . dismissed. By her, specifically. But when he saw two brown, furry shapes—bushy, curving tails trailing behind—leap from the balcony and onto a power line that crossed the yard, scurrying away, he realized, with relief and happiness, that she hadn’t been yelling at him at all.

  She’d been yelling at—

  “Squirrels, Nonna!” she called over her shoulder, toward the smudgy black rectangle behind her, and he wrinkled his brow, curious at that second word, one he’d never heard before. He took another cautious step forward. He narrowed his eyes, saw that her face was like an oval. Saw her set her hands to her hips, saw her turn her body toward the retreating squirrels, as though to ensure they were really leaving. If his heart stutter-stopped before, now it took on a quick, desperate rhythm.

  It wasn’t how he felt when he saw Caitlin; it wasn’t how he felt when he saw any of the many crushes he’d had over the last couple of years. Something felt so different. Different in his head and in his heart.

  She made a noise of frustration, a gusty sigh-groan, dropping her hands from her hips and bending forward to look at something. For the first time, Will paid attention to what surrounded her on her balcony, more indistinct greenery peeking out between the slats and above the top railing. He lost sight of her behind it all, cursed it as well as his vision. Would he even know if she looked down toward him? Was it possible she could see him now, through all that wood and all those plants? He should absolutely think of something to say to her. Should he bring up the squirrels? Shou
ld he ask her what nonna meant? Could he think of anything that didn’t make him sound like a backyard creeper, which is probably exactly what he was at the moment?

  He cleared his throat softly, insurance against any rogue voice cracks, right at the moment she straightened herself again.

  Maybe if he just said hello. That wouldn’t be creepy, would it?

  He opened his mouth to speak, but then something . . . pelted him. Right on top of his head. Even as he reached up, another pelt, and then another. Not painful, not forceful. Like the first big drops of a thunderstorm. Bouncing off him and onto the grass.

  Was she throwing things at him?

  Pelt, pelt, pelt. In his hair, he felt something warm and wet. For the first time since he heard her voice, he looked toward the ground. At his feet, he saw small, bright red globes, and he crouched to pick one up. Perfectly ripe cherry tomatoes, marred by the bites of two intrepid squirrels who’d been chased away by the girl on the balcony. He smiled for the first time in what felt like hours. He gathered a few of them up in his hands, even as she continued to rain half-eaten ones into the yard. He stood, his cupped hands held at his waist, and looked up to see that her face wasn’t turned anywhere near his direction. She was throwing these homegrown, city-grown, balcony-grown tomatoes over the railing without even looking, and for some reason, that made him want to meet her, to talk to her, even more now.

  He crossed the yard again, back the way he came. He didn’t climb the few steps back to his uncle’s balcony, but he stood beside it, thinking she might be able to see him better from there, thinking he might be able to see her better from there. He’d call up to her. He’d say, Hey, just like she’d said not to him. He’d say, Did you drop something? and he’d smile and hold up his hands. He hoped her vision was sharp enough to see the tomato seeds he was sure were still in his hair.