17. Finn
FINN
T he block of clay collapsed beneath my hands as I pressed my frustrations from the workday into the chunk, smoothing it out repeatedly until it softened, becoming warm and pliable under my touch.
I’d gotten my first taste for pottery in high school and taken several classes over the years, and though I enjoyed using a pottery wheel from time to time, I preferred hand-building for the sheer physicality of it—the way I couldn’t think about anything else while I concentrated on it.
My sculpting was the closest thing I had to meditation.
When I was creating, nothing else mattered.
Only the process of creation—not the final result. I always smashed a piece when it was finished. Always. They were too much of a mess for me to want to keep them intact. I was no artist—far from it. I just liked the process.
“Knock, knock.” Sierra’s voice cut through the silence, and I froze, mid-motion, as she stepped into the room. My heart skipped a beat, as she glanced around my private studio, her eyes widening in surprise .
I’d made a mistake when I mentioned pottery to her this morning and I glossed over it thankful that she didn’t press. Now here she stood in my private space. I knew she’d never seen this room of the condo before.
Because I’d never invited her and because I usually kept it locked. Her standing there, staring at me, left me horribly exposed. Lord Meowington went racing beneath one of the shelves, unnerved by the new addition to the room.
“What are you doing in here?” I jumped to my feet, instinctively wiping my hands on my pants.
The remnants of soft, warm clay against my palms now felt too messy, too revealing.
This was the one space I never let anyone else see, except for the blessedly discreet housekeeper who carted off the trash bin of smashed sculptures, because this was one thing—one personal thing—I’d never intended to share.
“Sorry,” she said, taking in the clay I’d been free-forming on my bench. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I was just looking for a place with a big enough table to work on.” She held up what I assumed was to be the corset of a burlesque costume and a container full of rhinestones.
“I’ve got a lot of bedazzling to do, and the kitchen island is covered in paperwork.” She stepped toward a shelf of sculptures, some of them half-finished, some of them complete but in the process of drying. Smashing them was so much more satisfying when they were dried. “Did you make all these?”
“Yes,” I said through my teeth. Why hadn’t I remembered to lock the damn door?
“I didn’t know you were into sculpting,” she replied with a tone of awe. “You mentioned pottery this morning, but you also said you did it to avoid going home. These are amazing, Finn. ”
Well, that’s clearly bullshit , I thought to myself. She didn’t need to blow smoke up my ass.
“It’s just a stress reliever,” I grumbled, heat prickling at the back of my neck. The longer she looked, the more intense the flame got, until I was tugging at the collar of my T-shirt.
“What do you do with all your pieces?” Sierra wondered, bent over to examine a small vase.
“Nothing,” I said. “When they’re done, I smash them, and the housekeeper carts off the pieces.”
“You smash them?” she said, whirling around and frowning. “Why would you do that with something you’ve worked so hard on?”
“I work on a piece when I have a lot on my mind,” I explained.
“It helps me put things in order. I don’t actually need any of these to see the light of day.
” They were messy and imperfect and the kinds of things I didn’t want out in the world.
I only wanted the best of myself out there.
That was the guy who succeeded. “It’s mainly just the process I enjoy. ”
She worried her bottom lip in that way that made me want to taste her. To smooth away the red mark she left behind. The way I’d wanted to earlier this morning, during our real fake breakfast date at Le Café du Soleil.
I turned away briefly, to stop myself from staring at her, and washed my hands.
As far as real fake dates went, this one had gone nearly perfectly.
We still had to work on Sierra’s stilted awkwardness when she knew there was a camera on her, but we’d largely managed to execute the script, except for one tiny detail.
The kiss.
The thought beat against my skull like a drum .
The kiss that never was.
When we reached the end of the meal, I’d leaned in to put on a good show for the cameras, and Sierra had turned her head so that my lips collided with her cheek instead.
I’d played off the entire thing with a smile, wrapping my arm around her waist and tugging her into my side for the benefit of the photographers Jillian had hired.
No one seemed unhappy with how it had turned out. Jillian had actually complimented us on doing so much better this time compared to our interview. But it still nagged at me, the way she’d turned away.
When I turned around, I caught Sierra looking me up and down. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing, I just…” She glanced away quickly, her cheeks pinking at being caught. “I guess you do own more than starchy business suits.”
“Excuse me,” I said, crossing my arms against my chest. “Nothing about my suits is starchy. Some of those are made from Merino wool.”
She smirked, catching my eye again, her deep blue gaze locked with mine. “Well, you certainly look more casual. It’s nice to know you’re not always perfectly buttoned up in some luxury brand.”
Standing there in front of her in my T-shirt and one of the few pairs of sweatpants I owned, I felt naked, but I knew if I looked away first, it would mean something, so I summoned a charming grin. “Don’t worry, darling. The sweats are still Gucci, so I’m not giving up my luxury.”
“Of course they are.” Sierra’s eyes narrowed playfully. “And I told you not to call me that.”
“I think they make women’s as well. We might have to invest in some for you. That’s a very coupley thing, isn’t it—matching sweats? ”
“Don’t even run that past Jillian. She’ll probably love it too much.” She bit her lip again and cocked her head, hugging that burlesque costume to her chest as her eyes danced over me. Was she undressing me with her eyes? I sort of wished it was with more than just her eyes.
Christ !
I’d been thinking about her too much already. About taking her hand across the table as we sat at the café, about her smile as I’d offered her a bite of my pancakes, about the delicious smell of her skin as my lips had collided with her cheek—peach blossoms and strawberries.
I needed to stop thinking about her. That’s why I was in here, to work those thoughts from my mind, and yet here she was, infiltrating my space with her presence, infecting my air with more of that sweet moisturizer. How was I supposed to think of anything else?
Her gaze dropped from mine, landing on the clay on the bench behind me. “What were you working on just now?”
My chest tightened as we returned to the sculptures. Why couldn’t I just keep teasing her with nicknames? That was easy. This was…harder. “Nothing, really. I was just kneading the clay to remove the air bubbles.”
“You didn’t have to stop,” she said.
I did. I really, really did. “I can finish later.”
“Have you ever thought about giving any of your pieces away?”
I snorted. “When people display art, they want it to be beautiful. Perfect. My pieces are anything but, so why would anyone want one of them?”
“I guess for the same reason I keep wondering when you’ll give Finn ‘The Face’ Lockhart a rest,” she said, wandering past me to examine some of the larger sculptures I’d left on a tall metal shelf to air dry. “Because people like things that are a little imperfect.”
I scowled after her. “That’s not true.”
“Sure it is,” she insisted, delicately running her hand around the rim of a large pot. “Imperfect things have character. They’re relatable.”
“They’re flawed,” I said.
“That doesn’t make them any less valuable.” A spiral of uncomfortable heat shot through me. She looked over her shoulder, and I froze with confusion, because once again, it sounded like she was saying she’d rather spend time with me—the real me—than with the guy who impressed everyone else.
“Sounds like something you got out of a fortune cookie,” I said, trying to shrug off her words.
Sierra chuckled. “Actually, it’s something my mother used to tell me back when I was just starting out in the costume world.
When I’d mess up on a costume and have to rip stitches or look back on my work and find nothing but flaws, she’d remind me of how much I’d learned from those pieces.
How much I’d grown as a person over the course of the project.
And I’d start to find meaning in all those little mistakes. ”
I swallowed hard and glanced back at the formless mound of clay on the bench, her words settling in a place that felt dusty and hollow inside me. Unused. “Hard to imagine you ever making a bad costume.”
“Tell that to fourteen-year-old Sierra who made the costumes for the school play,” she said, chuckling. “Peter Pan looked way more like the Jolly Green Giant than he should have. What’s this?”
I turned back. She’d wandered to the corner of the room where an old polaroid had been framed on a shelf .
Sierra picked it up without waiting for an answer.
I surged after her, prepared to yank it from her hands, to tell her to be careful because it was the only picture of my parents together that I had, but she was holding the frame carefully by the corners to avoid getting her fingerprints on the glass.
Her head tilted as she turned to me, and her eyes lit up. “Is this Cathleen?”
“Uh, yes.”
“And the man…” she said, her eyebrows pinching together. “I’m guessing he’s your father?”