Chapter 11
NIK
I headed to a pottery studio in North Knox. Originally, I’d found out about it from the bulletin board at the Collective when I was desperate for a place that had nothing to do with support groups, therapy sessions, or work.
The first time I’d stepped into the place was wild. I’d half expected some fancy place that let people paint by numbers on some bowls. But it wasn’t like that at all. Once upon a time, it’d been an auto repair shop, and the owners kept the building very similar to what the previous owners had, with its high ceilings and cement floors that were now constantly covered in a thick layer of dust.
Jesus, if I’d told twenty-year-old Nik that I’d be clean and throwing pottery, he would’ve looked at me like I’d been possessed.
Tonight was a limited-seat class. The table had a colored clay pot on top of a towel, and there was a row of hammers in the middle. People were already seated at tonight’s class table, and I recognized a lot of them from other classes I’d taken with them.
I didn’t recognize the woman running the class. Her long, curly hair was in a bandana, and I almost couldn’t see the chair she was sitting on because her skirt was so long. She was working with that hippie chic that was in, and it should’ve looked ridiculous, but she made it look elegant.
She picked up a stack of small boxes and handed them out as she introduced herself. “Today we’re doing a Japanese style of pottery called kintsugi. Follow my lead.”
She wrapped her bowl with the towel, grabbed the hammer, and hit the bowl. The crack of clay made me wince, a sound no one wanted to hear in this place.
“The philosophy behind kintsugi is finding beauty in the cracks of imperfection. The cracks are held together with gold dust and lacquer, with the purpose of showing every line that was mended.” She unwrapped the bowl, which was broken into several pieces. A grin stretched across her heart-shaped face. The woman waved an open palm to us and grinned. “Now you do it.”
We all waited to see who would go first. I ran my fingertip along the smooth edge. It was pretty, glazed in deep blue, perfectly spun into an even shape.
Perfection was a scam. If I learned anything in my life, it was that ain’t no one getting out of this alive without falling apart a few times. This time, it wasn’t my family or friends or me. It was a forgettable piece of ceramic.
I wrapped the towel around the bowl and cracked the hammer on top of it.
Everyone else joined after me, the tinny sound of ceramic splitting in half weirdly mesmerizing.
The boxes had all the supplies we needed to glue the bowls back together again, and we were instructed on how to mix the epoxy and gold mica powder and how to apply it to the broken pieces.
It took a helluva lot of coordination that I had none of. The brush was thin, and the epoxy had a short window to work with, so I had to think fast. A couple of times, I didn’t hold on to the pieces long enough because I got carried away with trying to get to the end.
“This process isn’t just about repairing. It’s an art. It requires patience and constant attention,” the teacher said as she walked around to check on us. “It’s an evolution of beauty. Take a moment to hold on to that. Give it the time and attention it deserves.”
Well, it wasn’t like I was getting anywhere with this, so I might as well do as the lady said. I stared at the gold lines that bound the bowl in my hands, cupped the weight of the ceramic in my palms. I gave it the attention it deserved and the love it didn’t know it needed.
I made it whole again.
We took our finished products to the storage shelves so they could settle overnight. I stared at mine, a knot in my throat. When I came into this place tonight, I didn’t expect to nearly be in tears, but here I was.
The instructor walked toward me. “You have a gift for it.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Are you kidding? The thing fell apart on me three times.”
The woman bobbed her head back and forth in consideration. “You didn’t force it back into what it was before. You accepted its imperfections. Few people can do that.” She pulled a sheet off a stack of papers behind a nearby desk and handed it to me, her dark eyes tender. “I have an advanced class coming up that involves breaking something you’ve already made. If you have something, sign up for it.”
I took the paper, folded it up, and shoved it into my shoulder bag. “Thanks.”
Most of the people who recognized me didn’t know about my fucked-up past, and I could let loose and just be... here. No one thought of me as a person in recovery. I was just a normal dude to them.
Being with Micah was like that too. Like I was a normal guy who was just fucking a dude who was mind-blowing in bed.
I hadn’t seen him in almost two weeks, and it felt like it’d been an eternity. I’d wake up in the morning to check my phone for messages from him, and when I found one, it was impossible to not notice the way my heart jumped into my throat.
I missed him.
Scrubbing my hand over my face, I picked up my pace to my car. If I didn’t get a hold of myself, I was going to turn into some kind of stage five clinger.
But I couldn’t argue that the thought of Micah’s mouth and what it could do lived rent-free in my mind, and that was an itch I needed to scratch. I got my phone out of my bag and pulled up my texts with Micah.
What you getting into right now?
Hopefully you
I rolled my eyes, but the flutter in my throat was back again, and I swallowed it down, focusing back on the text.
Meet at mine?
Sounds good
When I got to my house, Micah was already leaning on his elbow against the car, typing away on his phone. His face was half in shadow, and it took several more steps for me to see that he’d pulled his hair back into a ponytail.
Micah lifted his head when he heard me come closer, his lips still bunched in a pout that showed off his cupid’s bow. He pushed himself upward, tucking back a bit of hair that fell into his face, and as he stepped closer toward me, his sharp blue eyes glowed under the streetlight.
Damn, no matter how many times I saw him, Micah made my heart wild. Ain’t no way I’d have ever been able to ignore him or what he did to me. We walked to the front door together, and I pulled my keys out of my messenger bag. “How long you been waiting?”
“Not long,” he said, following me inside and bumping the door closed. He squatted to take off his combat boots, then stayed there, slowly tilting his head up. He flicked his eyebrows and hummed in approval.
“You look good.”
Confused, I spread my arms and looked at the raggedy-ass clothes I wore to pottery—an old coaching T-shirt from the Collective and a pair of basketball shorts that had seen better days. “These clothes are trash.”
Micah’s hand cupped my ankle and ran his palm up the side of my leg, eyes locked on me as he slowly stood until we were face-to-face. He placed his hands on my hips and dipped toward me. My lips parted as I waited for his kiss, my heart hammering in my chest.
I closed my eyes, shuddering at the heat of his breath over my mouth. But his lips never touched mine, instead grazing over my jaw, stopping at my ear. He tugged my hips until our chests bumped into each other, holding me tight, fingertips digging into my skin.
“I’m not talking about the clothes,” Micah whispered before taking my earlobe into his mouth and pulling it between his teeth. A sudden moan punched out of my throat, and Micah hummed like he was agreeing to a comment in a conversation.
He slid a hand into my shorts, took hold of my already growing erection, and gave it a firm squeeze from the base to the tip, running the tip of his tongue along the base of my neck.
The fact Micah had paid attention to what this did to me, kept it stashed away somewhere inside of his head, made me want to go feral on him.
I grabbed a fistful of his hair and jerked his head back, getting a dazed smile in return. He poked the tip of his tongue into the corner of his mouth, a husky laugh rumbling out of him.
“What do you want?”
I dove toward him in a hungry kiss, pressing my tongue between his lips and running it along the top of his mouth, which got me that high whine I loved pulling out of him. He cupped the back of my neck, his thumbs running along my jaw, taking the kiss down several notches. I practically melted into the floor.
This dude got me fucked up real bad.
“Jesus, you fuck me up,” Micah said against my lips, like he’d just read my mind.
A sudden flutter circled around my rib cage, leaving a warming glow in its wake.
Huh. That was new.
Not the time for that. I ran my hands over Micah’s firm back and down his ass, rolling my hips along his erection, giving closed-mouth kisses up his jaw and licking around the shell of his ear.
Micah ducked his head to kiss me, but I pulled back just before he could find my lips again. I ran my fingers over his crotch, which was enough fuel for him to push my shoulders and walk me back to the couch.
I lay down on my back, pulled Micah on top of me, and wrapped a leg around his hip. Micah braced himself on one elbow, lip caught between his teeth as I grabbed onto his ass and rolled my hips against his.
The sensation of Micah’s cock growing hard against my own left little warm shocks of heat over my arms, buzzing up toward the nape up my neck. He started making these small little noises like he was trying to hold back a groan, and that wasn’t gonna work.
Lifting my head up, my nose bumped against his, urging him to give me his mouth. He did it without a fight, his tongue winding around my own. The moans came freely now, and I tasted each one, loving how it felt going down my throat.
Hands bumped against each other, our nails catching on skin as we raced to get our pants off. Micah barely had his over his ass before I got my hand on his cock, grimacing at the lack of slickness. I let go and spit into my palm, working his cock into my fist.
“Fuck yeah,” Micah said, his voice wrecked. He adjusted a little to his side to get room enough to press our cocks together. Our hands twisted together, thumbs wiggling and knuckles bumping. It was the hottest thing I’d ever done.
Years of drug use made it hard for me to get off sometimes, but it never took long to come with Micah. I tried to hold back, but when I felt the jerk of his hips and a curse punched out of him, I had to let go.
Afterward, we sprawled next to each other on the couch, touching from shoulder to wrist, sweat cooling on our skin. I was completely wrecked. wondered if he was into topping because knowing how good he was with his hands and mouth, I needed to know what it was like having him inside of me. I’d have to discuss that later, though, because I’d be down for the count for a hot minute.
Micah rolled on his side and placed a hand on my stomach. “Hey, do you like music festivals?”
I had an impressive resume of festivals I’d been to, but those memories were a blurry, cobbled mess at best, shuffled in with several reckless sexual encounters. I’d cut off from the group I used to run with after I got out of rehab, and the thought of ever going to one again made me want to throw up.
Swallowing through the tightness in my throat, I forced myself to shrug. “Sure, but it’s been a hot minute since I’ve been to one.”
Micah played with the raised edge of a couch cushion, his foot tapping rapidly on the floor. It took me a sec to realize that he was anxious. Without thinking, I reached out and turned his hand over and placed mine on top of his.
Without missing a beat, Micah’s fingers twined with mine. I liked it far more than I wanted to admit.
“So, my friend Dakota and his friends are going to Astral Motion next weekend. They’re going to camp there the whole time, but they have a couple day passes that need to be used. I’m going on Saturday. Wanna go?”
That was the weekend Duncan and Chance were rolling out of town. Duncan had given me the weekend off too, and I figured out later when he refused to listen to my protests that he was doing it in apology. But if I went, it’d be stepping into a war zone of drugs, and there wasn’t any doubt I’d be able to spot them from a mile away.
“Here, check out who’s playing this year.” Micah squeezed my hand and grabbed his phone from where it fell on the floor. After a minute, he handed me his phone with a photo showing all the artists how were playing this weekend.
And of course it was on point.
“Hey, there’s a good chance the whole thing is an absolute shit show, and if that happens, we can just leave,” Micah said, taking my hesitant silence for something else. “But free tickets to one of the biggest music festivals with this lineup? It’ll be amazing.”
To my surprise, I wanted to go with him. If it’d been anyone else, I would’ve come up with an excuse, but I couldn’t think of one for Micah. How was this dude so good at making me leave my comfort zone?
I looked at Micah, spread out on the couch, shirtless, his pants and underwear still tucked under his ass. Despite looking like a walking version of sex, the hopeful look in his eyes was why I had a fuzzy warmth in my stomach.
“Yeah, I’ll go,” I said, handing Micah back his phone. “Just text me the details.”
The bright grin I got in return made me forget my worries. This wasn’t the smirk he used when he hit on me or the lazy smile that showed up after he came. This was new, and it felt like I was being warmed by the sun or some shit.
It’d been five years. What were the chances of seeing any of the people I used to hang with? Most of them were dead or off-the-grid. Everything would be okay.
At least I hoped it would be.
“I’m starving,” I said, standing up and putting my underwear back on. “I don’t have anything fancy to heat up, but I can make a pretty good grilled cheese. You cool with that?”
“Grilled cheese, and I don’t have to make it? Say less,” Micah said, getting up and putting his pants back on.
I didn’t know it’d fun to make something as easy as grilled cheese, but I’d long accepted Micah was an exception. When he kept giving me shit about how I buttered the bread on both sides, I caged him against the counter and kissed him just to get him to shut up.
The sandwiches ended up getting a little burned, but Micah said nothing about it, only taking a big bite and groaning happily before saying, “Best grilled cheese ever.”
My face heated, and I had to turn away so that he didn’t see the goofy smile on my face. My heart fluttered in a way I’d never felt before. It was nothing big, just a tiny wink of a possibility, and I pushed it down, too scared to acknowledge that I’d caught feelings.
’Cause catching feelings meant that I’d eventually have to tell him about my past, and I wasn’t entirely sure I was ready for that. So I turned on the TV, put on some mindless show, and ate my grilled cheese, ignoring the sinking feeling that one day, this could all go away.