Read LoveLines for Free Online Page A

now!” Reece exclaimed, looking over his shoulder. “Shouldn’t you buy me a drink first?”
    “I’m so sorry!” Bailey replied, gripping the pens in her sweat-slicked hand.
    “I mean, not that I’m not flattered or anything,” Reece went on.
    She cracked a smile.
    “I could have just handed them to you.”
    She didn’t think about that.
    “You needed all of your pens this instant?” he asked.
    She grimaced. Her mind split in two—two voices demanding polar opposites. Her OCD voice wanted those pens lined up. Her reasonable voice begged her to let it go. The OCD voice was stronger, louder, and it compelled her to place the pens on her desk, each end lined up perfectly with the edge of the table. Red, blue, black, green, purple. Evenly spaced. Just so. She had a sudden urge to listen to Radiohead’s “Everything In Its Right Place.”
    She kept her eyes glued to her desk, particularly the red pen that screamed at her to get back to work. She was on a schedule. She wrote out a list, and she had to complete her tasks before she could leave for the day. And she had to— had to —leave the office at exactly 6:00 P.M.
    You’re a jerk, Bailey!
    She looked up at Reece. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”
    “My ass is all right,” he replied.
    “No no. What I said about your name. It was so . . . flippant.”
    “It’s okay. I hear it all the time. I’m used to it,” Reece replied.
    “No,” Bailey said. “I don’t care what other people say. I care what I said to you. And I’m sorry. You should never change your name. People . . . people should never change, never change who they . . . I meant they should never change their names,” she finished. It was the clumsiest thing she’d ever said.
    Reece studied her for a moment. “Okay. I see where you’re going with that.”
    She nodded solemnly.
    “But what if their name was Shithead?”
    Bailey laughed all over again. “Point taken.”
    “The phablet,” Reece said suddenly, remembering his reason for popping by her cubicle.
    She tried to compose herself. “Yes?”
    “You corr ected the spelling of ‘fablous.’”
    “Because it was misspelled,” she explained.
    The side of his mouth quirked up. “It was supposed to be.”
    She blinked.
    “’The phablet. It’s fablous,’” he quoted.
    She thought for a moment, and then she grinned. How did she miss that? “That’s cute.”
    He nodded. “Thanks.”
    “Doesn’t really translate on the page, though.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “It just looks like yo u misspelled ‘fabulous,’” she said. “Look.” She pulled a clean sheet of notebook paper from the second drawer of her desk and wrote out Reece’s slogan. “See?”
    He nodded.
    “Now, if you spelled ‘fablous’ with a ‘ph’ instead, it would mirror ‘phablet’ and make more sense. And you should capitalize ‘Phablous.’ An even better mirror.”
    “But wouldn’t that be too hard for people to read?” He plucked the pen from her hand and wrote out his slogan with the new spelling: “The Phablet. It’s Phablous.”
    Bailey chewed her bottom lip while she considered the altered spelling. She grabbed another pen and underlined the “ Phab” in each word.
    “But see how clever that is? The letters are the same at the beginnings of each word. A mirror. Look how sharp and clean that appears on the page. Two words per fragment. Same number of syllables. The ‘P’ capitalized in both words. Visually, it’s perfect.” And then she added softly, “Stunning, really.”
    He turned in her direction and watched her stare at the page.
    “It’s so clever. So funny. Who wouldn’t get it?” she asked.
    “You’d be surprised,” he muttered.
    “Well, maybe this can be a smart campaign for smart people,” she suggested.
    He chuckled. “The goal is to advertise to the largest number of people possible: smart and dumb.”
    “ Makes sense,” Bailey said.
    Reece grunted. “I’ll show this to the team. See what they think.