Chapter 12
Despite thirty-odd years spent believing the opposite, I’m not sure I have a natural talent for pottery.
A love for it, yes. A talent? Alex and I end up at two wheels next to each other in the back of a class with eight other people.
We’re a couple minutes late, but the teacher, Jeanette, is nice about it and helps us set up.
From that point on, everything takes me just a little bit longer to understand than it takes everyone else.
Alex, in particular, picks everything up with uncanny ease.
It’s infuriating.
When Jeanette has us press the clay into the wheel to make sure it doesn’t come off, I don’t press hard enough. Then I press too hard. It takes me an embarrassingly long time to figure out what exactly she means when she tells us, “Push down. Don’t push laterally.”
Multiple times, Jeanette walks up to me and sweetly chides, “Give your clay room to go where you want it to go.”
I didn’t even know “sweet chiding” could be a thing, but it’s eerily similar to the voice my Two-Dimensional Design instructor, Professor Higgins, uses when she critiques our drawings. Must be an art thing.
It all culminates about a quarter of the way through the class when, despite Jeanette’s constant warnings not to “break a pull,” I…
well, break my pull. Which means that I pull the clay too hard upward, making the walls of my…
thing—I’m not really sure what I was going for—so thin that it collapses in on itself.
I stare at my catastrophe in shock. I don’t miss the distinct sound of laughter coming from my right.
“Oh, that’s funny to you?” I ask, glaring at Alex and his unnervingly perfect bowl.
I should explain that part of my frustration lies in the fact that we’re supposed to be able to make up to six pieces in this two-hour class, and Alex is nearly done with his second piece, but I was still working on my—now destroyed—first.
He shrugs, eyes widened in innocence, and says, “We can still fire it up. It’ll be abstract.”
Before I can come up with a clever retort—and it would have been very clever, I’m sure—Jeanette walks over, face contorted in a sympathetic frown.
The thing about Jeanette is that I’m pretty sure she’s my age. I mean, she’s the age I was, once upon a time. But when she looks at me, she doesn’t see her equal—she sees a teenage girl. And the voice she uses with me is so patronizing.
“Oh no,” she says, her tone pitched up, not unlike the voice I used when talking to my cat, Ruthie. She stares down at the pile of collapsed clay in front of me with pity and continues, “It happens at least once every class. Not to worry, I’ll grab you another ball of clay.”
I shoot her a small, tight smile and sit there, useless, waiting for her to return with the clay. I thank her as she hands it to me and makes a joke about using a gentler touch this time.
“Oh, this is so good, Alex,” Jeanette says, leaning over him to get a closer look at the bowl he’s working on. I feel my eyes roll to just about the back of my head.
“You are doing a great job of keeping a firm pressure. There’s no way this is your first time,” she continues, and though her words are innocuous, the way she says them just screams innuendo.
Alex, I should point out, does not get a patronizing voice.
There is no sweet chiding. It’s more like husky praising.
She places her hand on his shoulder, and it’s like a beacon calling my attention.
What in the actual fuck?
Is this thirty-year-old woman hitting on my eighteen-year-old date?
And, sure, okay, yeah, I’m a thirty-year-old woman, in a way, but no one knows that.
If I were actually eighteen right now and had even a fraction of the insecurities I remember having at this age, I would probably sit here silently, worrying about whether Alex wished I were a sexy art type like Jeanette.
I’d worry about him wanting an older, confident woman who could control her voice to the degree that she knows how to huskily praise a guy.
I’m about to say something—I haven’t figured out what, probably something to the effect of Get your own date—when Alex leans away from her touch and says, “I’m doing all right. I think someone up front just did the same thing as Joey. Might want to help them.”
His tone is so dismissive that she actually, physically, reels back in surprise, but she collects herself quickly and goes to help the guy who, sure enough, broke his pull. And maybe it’s mean of me, but I feel so relieved that someone else did it too.
Alex fixes his gaze on me, and I wonder what he sees. Can he tell I got jealous?
His eyes take on a determined glint, as if he’s making a decision. He says nothing as he stands, pulls his stool nearer to my wheel, and leans in close.
“Mind if I join you?”
The thing about pottery spinning is that it requires a pretty awkward posture, your legs spread wide around the pottery wheel.
Alex, with his long limbs, takes up a good amount of space, and he’s decided the most comfortable position is with his left leg spread out flush against my right one, his knee at my hip, my knee only inches from his…
Ahem.
“What are you doing?” I ask, my voice just a bit too breathy.
“Helping you,” he says, pointing out the obvious. He dips his hands in my water, then puts them over my own on my lump of clay, adding gentle pressure as I try to remember what the hell Jeanette’s instructions were about beginning my piece.
“Is this you trying to reenact Ghost?” I joke.
“If I were reenacting Ghost, I’d be over there.” He jerks his head toward the space behind me. “Why, you trying to give me direction? I’m happy to move.”
I don’t reply. It’s too much. Far too much contact when I’m already awaiting the moment we’re on our own so I can kiss him again. It’s downright indecent, actually. We are in public.
I try to ignore it. This is fine. Normal date stuff. He’s being cute, and if I could just get over how turned on I’m becoming in reaction to absolutely nothing, I’d probably appreciate that he’s trying to save me from walking away from this date without any pieces I like.
He starts to add a little more pressure, holding my hands ever so slightly in place as he says, “You’re moving too fast. You’ll end up with uneven walls.”
Frowning, I ask, “Have you done this before? You sound like you’ve done this before.”
Alex shrugs and keeps working the clay. For a moment, I think he’s not going to answer me, but then he admits, “I watched a few YouTube tutorials, just to be safe.”
I’m so amused—and flattered—by how much effort he’s put into this date that I stop protesting and allow myself to enjoy working with him.
We spend the rest of class pressed against each other, him murmuring small tidbits of advice as we work, our hands constantly brushing. The smile doesn’t fade from my face the entire time, and even though I know he did most of the work, I come away feeling really proud.
Alex’s favorite restaurant in LA, it turns out, is a small diner in Van Nuys called Beeps.
It’s got a… presence, might be the right word for it, with a pink-and-teal exterior and a big lit-up sign.
The dining room is cozy, with 1950s- and 1960s-themed pictures lining the walls: James Dean, Marlon Brando, Marilyn Monroe, Grace Kelly, the Beatles.
It’s also packed. I catch a few people’s attention on me, and I can’t blame them. Despite having worn an apron the entire class, I have bits of dried clay all over myself. Even after attempting to clean up, I look like I just got done mud wrestling.
Alex, of course, looks flawless, not a speck of clay on him.
“What’s good?” I ask, staring up above the cash register at what might be the most extensive menu I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m overwhelmed by the sheer wealth of options.
“Everything’s good,” he replies. I level him with a glare because not helpful. “No, seriously. Everything’s good. You can’t go wrong.”
“You can’t possibly have tried everything. What do you get?”
“Breakfast,” he says, like duh. “It’s a diner.”
“It’s nine p.m.”
“Time doesn’t exist inside a diner,” he says seriously, as if the words are gospel.
We’re up. I wave him ahead.
“Anything else?” the cashier asks once he’s ordered.
“Whatever she’s getting,” he says, then steps aside. They both look at me expectantly, but when he notices my expression, Alex asks, “What?”
“Did you just get a Coke float with breakfast?” I ask, not judging him but, rather, in awe of his gall, his daring. His brilliance. I would never think to get a Coke float with breakfast.
“It’s nine p.m.,” he says defensively.
“I thought time didn’t exist inside a diner,” I throw back at him; then I turn to the cashier, smile, and say, “I’ll have exactly what he’s having.”
Alex pays. I don’t protest because right as I’m about to, I remember that I sunk all my money into Bitcoin.
God, I really need to get a job.
I follow Alex to one of the tables in the back of the dining area. We sit down, and I watch as Alex pulls out a Jolly Rancher and pops it into his mouth. I feel my jaw drop at the bizarreness of the act. Treating candy, of all things, like an appetizer.
Through laughter, I ask, “Did you seriously just pull a candy out right before we eat dinner? In a restaurant?”
“I did. Sure you don’t want one?”
“Pass,” I tell him, then laugh again. “What is it with you and watermelon?”
Seriously. It’s the weirdest thing in the world.
I’ve seen Alex vape a lot over the years, and it was always—always—watermelon-scented.
It was pretty annoying in 2019 when Harry Styles came out with “Watermelon Sugar” just a few months after the incident, and I had to train myself not to think of Alex, and all the associated shame and guilt that came as a package deal, every time the song came on the radio.
That’s the worst thing about men—their ability to ruin the things you love by tainting them with bad memories.
He shrugs. “I like watermelon.”