Chapter Fourteen
Max, Now
I scan the colorful bar littered with tiki paraphernalia.
Wooden deity masks, fake palm fronds, license plates from Hawaii.
I’d heard about Mai Tai Hideaway growing up but was never old enough to go inside, and I’m appreciating the years away from Harlow—the break lets me experience the town for the first time.
“Well, I think they’re awful,” the mousy young woman to my right says with disdain. She’s an art theory instructor named Susan, and she and a few other people from the art department are discussing the new whiteboards. “They’ve got this thick layer on top, so it’s impossible to write on them.”
Nodding along, I half listen to her claims. I would go home, but after yet another fight this morning with my parents—this time for using the wrong setting on the dishwasher—I’m looking for any excuse not to sit around at their house.
Or think about Daisy. I wish I could forget yesterday.
Kissing her, feeling her—my hands tense, longing for her hips.
I wanted to taste more of that freckle below her lip, to lick the saltiness off her skin, to explore the peaks and valleys of her body.
Then, like a complete moron, I took us from heavy petting to shaking hands like some suits at a work lunch.
But if I want the job at Tate that Eleanor mentioned, I shouldn’t complicate our situation with kissing, or sex.
That thought sends a fever through me.
Tropical music swells, and the bartender comes around to check on us. I order another fruity concoction bursting with sweetness.
“Watch out.” Frank, the middle-aged man who teaches ceramics, points to my almost empty glass. “Those’re strong.”
“They’re delicious is what they are.” I run my thumb over the cup’s textured skulls and flowers.
In Dublin, I’d gotten so used to drinking pints of beer that this goes down like water.
“But, noted,” I add, uncomfortable under his gaze.
Frank is the only art teacher I had in high school who’s still around.
I did an intro to ceramics class one semester and made about twenty awful mugs before deciding that pottery wasn’t my thing.
Eight years later, we’re at happy hour together, bonding over tiki drinks.
“I’ll order some new markers for the team, but in the meantime, try this one out.” The head of the department, Regina, rummages through her bag. She produces a dry-erase marker and gifts it to Susan, who looks like she just won the lottery.
I sip the last of my saccharine-sweet drink, a mishmash of coconut, pineapple, and rum that punches its way through my system and leaves me wanting more. If I close my eyes, I picture other things I want more of, like Daisy straddling my lap and panting against my skin.
The bartender arrives with my next drink, pulling me back to the present.
“Do you know when we’ll hear about the fall semester?” Susan leans over the table.
Regina chuckles. “I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Ugh.” Susan’s face scrunches up. “I hate the waiting game.”
“The trial’s going well, though?” Frank asks.
“It is,” Regina replies, and Susan squeals. “Come September, we may be looking at our very own school.”
Regina hopes to get enough interest to launch an art school by the end of the year.
Students would have their core classes at their high school and two days a week dedicated to arts coursework.
Sort of like how some students go to trade schools alongside their high school curriculum, but for the visual arts.
“Congrats,” I say, holding out my fourth—maybe fifth?—drink of the night.
After we clink our glasses together, Susan leans forward again. “But when will we know?”
“Sweetheart,” Regina says, her voice smooth, “you’ll know when I know. Once the district sends approval, I’m bringing you all with me to the next semester, and the next one, and the one after that.”
“I’m not…” I grab my straw and stab at the clumps of ice in my drink. “Honestly, I don’t know if teaching’s for me.”
“Your classes are a hit.” Frank’s mouth drops open into a small O shape. “Is it the pay?”
“No, just—”
“All the kids are raving about your classes,” Regina says in an obvious attempt to reassure me. “They can be difficult, but trust me, they’ve really grown to like you.”
“I mean, sure, I’m fine at it. Shaping young minds.
” All of their eyes are on me as they wait for me to explain myself.
“I’ve got a kid sister, so relating to people younger than me comes naturally.
But I…” I sip on my Painkiller to find the right words, the dregs of the drink gurgling up the straw. “I want a career in art.”
“You’re teaching art,” Susan says.
“I mean in art. Not just teaching.”
“You…you realize, we’re all teachers here?” Frank asks, keeping his tone even.
Susan cocks her head to the side. “Teaching art is a career in art.”
The three of them eye me, and I regret the last ten seconds.
“There’s nothing wrong with teaching,” I say in a hurry to backtrack. “I don’t think it’s for me.”
“Oh. Okay.” Regina rests her elbows on the table and quirks a brow at me. “Well, what is for you?”
“Curating. I’m a curator for museums around the world. That’s what I do.”
They all nod their heads to a chorus of ohs.
“So you mean like…” Susan holds her water glass, sticking one pinky out as she uses her other hand to stroke a fake mustache. “Art.” She draws out the word with a long A-sound and a half-decent British accent. Frank and Regina crack up at this. “The hoity-toity stuff. Gotcha.”
“Like, let me tape a banana to the wall and call it a masterpiece?” Frank chuckles.
I laugh along with them because, at a certain level, art people can be pretentious. It doesn’t make me love the job any less, even if people take themselves a little too seriously sometimes.
“Okay, fine,” I interject. “But you all sort of seem to have a bias against what I do.”
“We could say the same about you,” Regina shoots back.
I gulp, aware I’m coming off like an asshole in front of my boss. “I mean, art on a global scale,” I go on. “Extraordinary pieces that people travel to see. To be moved by. Doesn’t that excite you?”
“But why is it extraordinary?” Susan asks.
“Because some crusty white guy said so? Like, did I cry when I saw The Execution of Lady Jane Grey in London? Sure. But I think the most fired up I get, and some of the best stuff I’ve made, is because a revelation hits me in the middle of teaching.
Then I stay up half the night painting.”
“People have bought plates off my Etsy shop from as far away as Tuvalu,” Frank says. “I didn’t even know Tuvalu existed.”
Their stories make me shrink in the booth.
“Art can, and should, be different for different people,” Regina says diplomatically. “Creating. Curating. What works for one of you might not for the other, right? If Harlow’s art scene isn’t for you, then it’s not.”
She changes the subject immediately to summer vacations, and I excuse myself to the bathroom.
My coworkers must think I’m a dick, putting their careers down like that.
As I wash my hands and examine my reflection, I admit I have been hard on this place.
Not just the school, but Harlow. Does everyone see me like Susan and Frank do—uptight and thinking I’m better than them?
Is this how Daisy sees me? I cringe. Daisy has always seen Harlow and found beauty in it, and isn’t that the job of a curator?
The last thing I want her to view me as is a stuck-up asshole who doesn’t respect her.
There’s not a person I admire more, and the possibility that she could think otherwise settles heavy in my chest.
I reach for my phone to dial her up and tell her, because I should have told her this every day I’ve known her—told her how incredible and amazing and gorgeous she is.
Or at least tell her I’m ready to give Harlow a real chance while I’m here, because she deserves that much from me.
I don’t get past the lock screen, and after a few failed attempts to unlock my cell, the display duplicates before my eyes, my vision splitting.
Frank was right—these drinks are strong.
“Max?” Frank asks. He’s materialized behind me.
“Hey, ’m I in your way?”
“No, you’re good. But you just tried to make a call using the calculator app. You okay?”
I look back at my reflection. No, I think. But hopefully, I will be.
“How ’bout I give you a ride home?” Frank asks.
Looking down at my phone again, I see three screens instead of one. “Yeah. That’s probably a smart idea.”
“Sorry I’m late.” I sigh and collapse onto Daisy’s couch. With everything this morning—oversleeping, a brutal hangover, a shouting match with my parents—I forgot our planning session. “I feel like shit.”
Daisy pops her head out of the kitchen. “Well, you look like an angel,” she says, biting back her mirth.
“Not in the mood, Daze.” My skull pulses. I have zero energy for jokes, especially at my expense.
“Sorry.”
“I brought this upon myself with four to six tiki drinks.”
“Six?”
“We’ve all done things we’re not proud of.”
Daisy laughs, and the sound resurrects me almost as much as the savory scent of sausage.
She disappears into the kitchen again as my nausea transforms into a stomach-twisting pang of hunger.
I close my eyes. Even Freddie pities me—he jumps onto the couch and curls into my side.
The stove clicks off, the faucet runs for a second, and food gets scraped onto plates.
“Hope you’re hungry,” Daisy says, resting the cool edge of a ceramic plate by my arm. I could cry at the kindness.
Daze sits cross-legged on the floor, apron still on, and hair in a bundle on top of her head.
I’d love to set my hand at the nape of her neck, pull her close, and kiss her again, but that’s just the hangover talking.
As much as I want to say a billion things and do a billion more, that’s a bad idea. An unprofessional idea.
“Crazy night?” she asks, her eyes on her plate.