Chapter 4
Operation Bring Some Fun into Jared’s Life begins the next day.
Sunday night isn’t exactly brimming with fun activity options, but I find a beginner’s pottery class at this little studio in Ponsonby that promises “therapeutic creativity” and “no experience necessary.”
Perfect for someone who needs to loosen up and get their hands dirty in a completely non-medical way.
I’m practically vibrating with anticipation when I see Jared returning home from his shift. I give him exactly three minutes to dump his bag before I’m knocking on his door with my best “I’m about to improve your life” smile.
Except when he opens the door, my smile falters.
He looks…deflated. Like someone let all the air out of him and he’s just going through the motions of being person-shaped. His shoulders are slumped, and there’s a tightness around his eyes that I haven’t seen before.
“Hey,” I say softly. “Rough shift?”
He runs a hand through his hair, making it stick up in a way that would be adorable if he didn’t look so exhausted. “Yeah. You could say that.”
I follow him into his apartment without invitation because, apparently, that’s what I do now.
“Want to talk about it?” I ask, settling onto his couch.
He drops beside me, closer than necessary, but that’s definitely something I don’t mind. “Seventeen-year-old girl. Motorcycle versus truck.” He draws a shaky breath. “She was conscious the whole time. Kept asking if she was going to be okay.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That she was doing great. That she was so strong. That we were taking good care of her.” His voice cracks slightly. “When we made it to hospital, she was rushed straight into surgery, but I don’t think the outlook is good.”
My hand finds his before I even realize I’m moving. His fingers close around mine, and he grips them tight.
“She was the same age Sophie was when Mum died,” he says quietly. “Same dark hair, same… God, same everything. It just…”
“Hit different,” I finish.
“Yeah.”
We sit in silence for a moment. I want so much to take some of his pain away. The emotional intensity of that desire surprises me. Jared and I are just getting to know each other. Why does comforting him matter so much to me?
Maybe it’s because of how much time I spent in a hospital bed thinking about my rescuer in the dark, comparing him to the parade of medical staff who treated my body like a puzzle to solve.
Jared had definitely seen me as a person first, patient second. Now here he is, carrying the weight of all the people he tries to save.
I squeeze his hand, noticing the warmth of his palm.
He’s just such a natural caretaker. I’ve seen him with Sophie and Emmy. I’ve experienced it being his patient.
But who looks after him?
“What normally helps you decompress after a shift like this?” I ask.
He lifts a shoulder. “I don’t know. Distraction, I guess?”
I bite my lip. “Well, I actually had this whole thing planned for tonight. But if you need to just stay here and process, we can absolutely do that instead.”
He looks at me. “What thing?”
“Remember when I talked about the training process for being my friend?” I say. “Well, this is training for you to master another skill.”
“What kind of skill?” he asks suspiciously.
“The kind that involves getting messy and playing with mud like we’re five years old.”
The frown on his forehead doesn’t fade, so I stumble on. “It’s just a pottery class. But seriously, only if you’re up for it. No pressure.”
He’s quiet, considering for a moment. “You know what? Getting out of my head might be exactly what I need.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. But I’m warning you, I have zero artistic ability.”
“Perfect. Neither do I. We can be disasters together.”
That gets a tiny smile, barely a quirk of his lips, but I count it as a victory.
The pottery studio is exactly what I hoped for—small, cozy, and run by a woman named Sage who wears so many crystals she clinks when she walks. It smells like a weird combination of wet earth and lavender incense.
There are only four other people in the class, coupled up, which makes me extremely conscious of how close Jared and I have to sit at our shared workstation next to our pottery wheel.
“Welcome to Clay and Chaos!” Sage announces. “Tonight, we’re going to learn the basics of throwing on the wheel. Don’t worry about making anything perfect. This is about the journey, not the destination.”
“The journey of clay,” I murmur to Jared, and see him struggling to hold back a smile.
Sage demonstrates the technique on her wheel at the front of the class, making it look effortless as she transforms a lump of clay into a perfectly centered cylinder. “Remember, it’s all about steady pressure and keeping everything wet.”
I can’t hide the smirk that wants to climb up my face at that because I’m twelve years old, apparently. I determinedly don’t look at Jared.
“All right, beautiful souls!” Sage claps her hands, sending crystals tinkling. “Time to get intimate with your clay. Remember, it’s all about the connection between you and the earth.”
Jared gestures to our wheel. “Do you want to go first?”
“Sure,” I say. “Though I feel like someone should document this for insurance purposes.”
I plop down at the wheel. The clay feels weird under my hands—cold and slimy and absolutely nothing like the Play-Doh of my youth.
“Okay, so first you have to center it,” I say, repeating Sage’s instructions as I promptly fail to center anything. The clay wobbles violently under my hands like it’s trying to escape.
“You’re fighting it,” Jared says, leaning closer. “You need to be more gentle.”
“Story of my life,” I mutter, and he laughs—a real laugh that makes the failure worth it.
“Here,” he says, and suddenly, he’s behind me, his arms coming around to cover my hands with his. “Like this.”
Every nerve ending in my body goes on high alert. Jared’s warm and solid against my back, his breath tickling my ear as he guides my hands. The clay mysteriously starts behaving itself.
“See? Gentle pressure,” he says, and his voice does things to my insides that pottery class definitely shouldn’t inspire.
“Since when do you know about pottery?” I manage to ask, proud that my voice sounds mostly normal.
“I don’t. But I know about pressure and being gentle with things.” His hands are still over mine, steady and sure.
The clay is forming something bowl-like now, rising under our joined hands. I’m trying very hard to focus on the pottery and not on how Jared’s chest presses against my back every time he breathes.
“I’m going to let go now,” he says. “You’ve got it.”
He pulls away, and I immediately miss the warmth. The clay, sensing weakness, promptly collapses into a sad, lopsided mess.
“Or not.” I stare at my creation. “I think I invented a new shape. I call it ‘abstract disappointment.’”
“Modern art,” Jared agrees solemnly.
We switch places, and it’s his turn at our shared wheel. Watching Jared at the pottery wheel should not be as attractive as it is. The wheels make this rhythmic humming that’s almost hypnotic, broken only by the occasional squelch of someone’s clay rebellion.
Jared’s rolled up his sleeves, and there’s something about his forearms, the concentration on his face, the way his hands shape the clay with the same careful precision he probably uses to start IVs.
There’s a smudge of clay on his collarbone where his shirt has pulled aside, and I have to physically turn away to stop staring.
Then I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror on the far wall.
Shit. I look terrible. There’s clay in my hair and streaked across my face.
But there’s freedom in no longer being beautiful.
I hadn’t realized that until now. Old Felix would have been horrified. I would have been checking my reflection in every shiny surface, would have been worried about fixing my hair, concerned about not looking perfect because I was always surrounded by people who judged me based on appearances.
New Felix doesn’t give a damn.
I’m never going to be beautiful now, so who gives a shit if my hair is sticking up all over the place or that I’ve got a streak of clay on my face? I’m not scurrying to find a restroom so I can clean myself up. Instead, I’m just relaxing and having fun.
Jared’s bowl is immediately better than mine. Because of course it is.
“Show-off,” I mutter.
“You want help?” he asks, glancing up at me with a grin.
“I’m good. My disaster bowl has character. Besides, this is all about making sure you have sufficient pottery skills to be friends with me, remember?”
He raises an eyebrow. “I take it I’m passing?”
“Yep, I’m now reassured that if we’re ever stranded on a desert island and stumble across a pottery studio and some clay, you’ll be able to make me a bowl.”
His mouth looks like it’s wrestling with a grin. “I can understand why that’s such an important part of your friendship requirements.”
“Listen, when the zombie apocalypse hits and society collapses, you’ll thank me for having such specific friendship criteria. We’ll be the only ones with handmade bowls while everyone else is eating out of their hands like savages.”
Jared’s smile splits open his face, and for a few moments, we just grin at each other.
A spectacular crash from across the room makes us both jump—the guy at the next wheel has somehow managed to fling his entire clay creation onto the floor, where it lands with a wet splat.
I blink and try to regain my composure, looking back down at my own lump of clay.
We work in comfortable silence, taking turns at the wheel, occasionally laughing at our increasingly ridiculous attempts at functional pottery.
Jared’s perfect bowl is marred when he accidentally puts his thumb through the side of it.
I mock him about inventing the world’s worst colander, while he points out that my bowl has developed what looks like a beak on one side, which makes it look like a ceramic platypus.
“Thank you for this,” Jared says suddenly. “It’s exactly what I needed tonight.”
“No worries.” I glance up at him. “Anytime you want distraction, I’m your man.” Then I replay those words in my head and realize how they might sound.
“I mean, distraction in the form of things like ridiculous adventures and a partner for TV-watching,” I hasten to add because I don’t want Jared thinking I’m overstepping the friends thing and hinting at other forms of distraction we could be doing together.
Jared’s eyes are deep as they meet mine. “That’s good to know.”
“And if there’s any time you want to talk about stuff…I am actually more than a pretty face.” I say the last word ironically because we both know “pretty face” isn’t exactly the go-to phrase people use when they see me anymore. More like “brave for leaving the house.”
Jared’s face does this complicated thing where his eyebrows pull together and his jaw tightens before he takes a slow breath through his nose.
“I know you are more than that,” he says softly. Then he swallows, staring down at the clay.
“My job can be overwhelming sometimes. It’s hard to remain detached from people’s suffering,” he continues in the same quiet voice.
“I can imagine. I feel the same way about animals when they’re in pain. I can imagine it’s ten times more difficult with people.”
“Yeah, there are a lot of aspects of my job that are difficult. And when I first started out, it was hard not to see potential accidents everywhere. Every corner became a potential crash site. Every ladder was someone’s future spinal injury.
I couldn’t watch kids on bikes without imagining the worst.” He rolls his shoulders back before he meets my gaze directly, and there’s something vulnerable in his eyes.
Down the tomo, Jared comforted me when I was terrified I was going to die, telling me I’d be okay, probably the same lies he told that girl today. Beautiful, necessary lies. Now I want to be the one holding his hand, telling him that carrying this pain makes him extraordinary, not damaged.
But I don’t know how to say any of that without sounding trite. How do you tell someone their pain is noble without diminishing it? That their scars—the invisible ones—make them more human, not less? So I do what I do best: deflect with humor.
“Oh, I totally get that,” I say. “You should see how I drive now after my crash. The other day, I got overtaken by someone on a mobility scooter.”
But then I realize that I want to be honest with Jared.
He deserves that. I don’t lift my gaze from my disaster of a bowl as I say my next words.
“I actually started seeing someone about it. A therapist, I mean. Figured I should probably deal with the whole almost-dying thing before it dealt with me.”
There’s a pause. Shit, have I overshared?
Maybe Jared doesn’t want to know I’m broken inside as well as on the outside.
But before I can start spiraling too much, Jared says in a quiet voice, “That’s brave of you.
Took me three years to admit I needed help after my first bad pediatric call.
The department has counselors, but admitting you need one felt like admitting you can’t handle the job. ”
I relax. Because Jared understands. How lucky am I to have found a friend who actually understands? And who can maybe help me with his own experiences and perspective.
“Look at us. Two guys with therapists making terrible pottery,” I say.
“Living the dream,” he agrees, and we smile at each other.
Then we continue to work in silence. But it’s the kind of silence that feels full rather than empty.
And when it’s time to go, we leave our creations to be fired. My abstract disappointment and Jared’s thumb-punctured bowl sit side by side on the shelf like mismatched soulmates.