Chapter 31
HE’S ALL THAT
Ginny
I’m in the kitchen setting out the cheese platter that arrives Tuesday afternoon when Declan texts.
Can I come in?
I smile at the accompanying picture of Flow staring forlornly at the front door, and then I text back.
Only if you promise not to drool on the floor. We just cleaned it.
A rusty laugh drifts in from the window above the sink, and I smile bigger at Declan’s response.
Flow won’t. But I can’t make any promises for myself. What are you wearing?
Only good boys who don’t drool on the floor can let themselves in to see, I text back.
The front door clicks, and a moment later, Flow rushes me.
“Hello, my good girl.” I bend and rub her fur and take kisses while her back end wags, ignoring the reminder voice in the back of my head that she’ll be leaving when Declan leaves.
He hasn’t said when, but we have all of this year’s harvest fermenting.
We’re shifting into more active business and strategy planning, but wine production itself is hitting a lull.
There’s no reason for Declan to stay and film much longer.
And that hits me harder than the idea of Flow leaving.
I like him.
I like him a lot.
“Ooh, cheese.” He slips an arm around my waist and kisses my temple. “That raspberry Stilton’s almost as pretty as you are.”
I laugh.
Can’t help it.
Not when those warm brown eyes are crinkling at me.
“Adelaide sent a cheese basket to thank us.”
“She left?”
“She left. On to bigger and better things. And she said thank you.” I rub his chest, then squint up at him. “You have a date?”
He’s dressed in a soft maroon button-up tucked into his jeans, and his hair looks freshly trimmed.
“I do. With a pottery wheel.”
“What?”
“Foxy got an invitation to go there.” He shrugs. “So I’ll be out tonight.”
I goggle at him, and he cracks a grin. “Oh. Wait. Did you want to come? I thought you were washing your hair or something.”
“You are such a dick.”
He grins wider, then threads his fingers through my hair and kisses my forehead. “I really am. Wanna come? I have to get some footage, but I don’t have to film the whole time.”
“Do I want to come?”
“I used to always want to come, but then menopause happened, and now I’m not as horny,” Pip says as she joins us from the hallway. “Oh, who cut the cheese?”
She cackles, grabs the block of aged white cheddar, then disappears into the mudroom. The back door clicks a moment later.
Declan stares after her.
Flow whimpers.
“Do you actually get used to that?” he asks me.
“I’ll consider answering if you tell me if I get to make something if I come with you.”
He brushes my hair back from my face, smiling softly, and I feel the featherlight knowledge deep inside me of something even scarier than liking this man.
Something I refuse to put into words.
“You can make as much as you want tonight,” he murmurs.
He doesn’t need to say it.
I know I’m welcome just as much as I know he wouldn’t tease me with a pottery night and not follow through with making sure that I get to enjoy every bit of it as long as I want.
Not that I’d take advantage and overstay my welcome.
But he’d make sure I could if I wanted to.
He’s a good one.
A good one who’s mine.
Temporarily.
“When do we leave?” I ask.
“No specific timeline. You tell me when you’re ready.”
“I’m ready.”
His smile widens, the twin dimples making their rare appearance. “Right now? You don’t need to eat dinner? Finish the cheese? Put shoes on?”
“Nope.”
“Ask Mabel for permission?”
“Don’t be a dick,” Mabel calls from the hallway.
“This sounds like something Cricket would like too,” Declan says. “Should we invite her?”
“Flow and I are about to go without you,” I tell him.
He laughs. “You’ll probably both be better at this than I am.”
“She’s coming?”
“I’ll get more views if she helps.”
He’s not wrong.
“You don’t need to change?” he asks me.
I shake my head. “Let’s go.”
“Take a snack,” Mabel calls.
“Already packed,” Declan calls back.
I slip my shoes on and join him in his SUV, where he does, indeed, have a bag of snacks waiting in a soft-sided travel cooler.
There are clementines and string cheese and little snack packs of assorted nuts, along with hummus packs and baby carrots.
Flow sprawls across the back seat as Declan takes us around the town of Foxwood and out to a cute little stucco cottage off a dirt road where a short woman with tight, curly black hair and warm brown eyes greets us with a smile.
“Ah, your friend could make it. Wonderful,” she says to Declan.
“She’ll make me look bad, but I can take it,” he replies with a smile. “Ginny, meet Verona. Verona, this is Ginny. And this is Flow, who promises she’ll stay out of the clay.”
Flow smiles and wags her back end while Verona greets me with a hug.
Friends.
I like friends.
“It’s good to meet you, Ginny,” Verona says. “Come. I’m ready for both of you.”
She leads us behind the house to a pink stucco shed hung with a sign announcing we’re entering Verona’s playhouse.
Shelves line the walls, some piled with bowls and cups and plates in all stages of completion, some holding bags of unshaped clay and buckets of glaze.
There’s a large workbench splattered with a rainbow of colors and topped with pottery tools in homemade mugs, and six pottery wheels set in a circle.
It's organized chaos in a colorful setting, and I love it.
“You give classes?” I ask her.
“That’s the goal.” She inclines her head toward Declan. “Mutually beneficial arrangement. He gets footage, I get my first student. Do you remember your way around clay?”
I smile so broadly my eyes water. “I do.”
“Make yourself at home then.”
I hesitate only a moment before buzzing through the studio, prepping a wheel and cutting a chunk of clay off of one of the large blocks while Declan gets his phone and travel ring light set up to record.
Flow settles beside my chair as I get reacquainted with the feel of clay in my hands, playing more than I’m intentionally trying to make anything, while Declan and Verona get started with his lesson.
“Why do we do this?” he asks as Verona guides him through throwing the clay.
“We’re making sure there aren’t any air bubbles inside that would expand and make your creations explode in the kiln.”
I stay quiet, but I also occasionally chuck a ball of clay at him, which earns me a warm smile every time.
Verona declares his clay good enough for spinning, and he settles at the wheel across from me after moving his phone setup.
“What do you want to make?” Verona asks him.
He glances past his camera at me, where my hands are covered in wet clay as I work my own creation.
“A mug,” he tells Verona. “For my mom.”
My heart melts a little more.
“She wouldn’t want a bowl?” Verona asks.
He grins. “She already has those. My brother and I made them at art camp when we were kids.”
“A mug it is then.” She takes a seat next to him and demonstrates how much water to use and how to begin shaping the clay, and he presses the pedal to make his own wheel spin as he mimics her movements.
I pause my own wheel, watching as he cups the clay with his hands and pulls it upward, a mixture of concentration and a smirk on his face as he makes a tall, elongated shape rise out of the clay.
“Are dicks a prerequisite to mugs?” he asks Verona.
“They’re easier to slap around than pussies,” she replies.
I pinch my lips together and breathe to keep from making noise while Declan laughs.
“Fair enough,” he says.
“Good. Now, we want to flatten it and push it back down,” she says, demonstrating on her own wheel.
Declan bites his lower lip as he watches her, concentrating, not paying attention to the fact that his own clay is still spinning.
Or that Flow has risen and is crossing over to sniff it.
Verona notices.
I’m positive she notices, because she’s talking far more than necessary to explain to him what she’s doing, but her eyes keep flickering at me, and there’s a mischief in her expression that I feel in my soul.
It speaks to my inner voices telling me to throw clay and mix the glazes and cause destruction.
But Verona—her mischief is harmless.
Channeled.
She can make a mess and cause havoc here because it’s her space.
And clay—clay can be cleaned up.
And when Flow noses Declan’s spinning clay tower and makes it start to bend from the middle, the clay tilting and spinning and wobbling precariously at the top, she stops mid-word and chokes on a laugh.
Declan squints at her, then at me, and then—
Then the spinning wilted dick slaps him in the arm.
Once.
Twice.
“Oh, shit,” he says, grabbing for the flaccid clay without taking his foot off the pedal.
It spins faster, hitting him harder, and I laugh so hard I snort.
“Stop! Stop!” Declan says.
Flow grumps at him.
And the clay—the clay has had enough.
It can’t hang on any longer.
It snaps off at the bend and goes flying, straight at the camera.
I shriek and dive out of the way as the tripod tilts and topples back toward me, landing on my clay creation and sending the tripod legs spinning too as my wheel draws to a stop.
The stand wobbles on my crushed bowl, then, to the soundtrack of Flow whining, it slides off and clatters to the ground, camera facing Declan.
I clap my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing audibly again, but my hands are covered in wet clay, and now my face is too.
Verona is laughing so hard she’s crying, but unlike me, she’s using the back of her clean forearm to wipe her eyes.
Declan stares at me.
I stare back, laughing and snorting and spitting the taste of clay out of my mouth.
He looks down at his creation, then back at me.
I sink onto the stool at the wheel beside mine, absolutely wheezing.
Declan looks at Verona.
“I didn’t think Foxy was going there,” he says to her.
She doesn’t answer.
She’s laughing too hard.
Declan grins, shakes his head, and rises. “That’ll get some views.”
Views.
For his show.
On the internet.
And you know what?
I don’t care.
It doesn’t bother me.
Because Declan is all that’s good and right.
In person.
On the internet.
In my bed.
He deserves success and it won’t go to his head.
He won’t sell me out for views and for the ratings.
He’s—he’s the absolute best.
“So we need to start over?” he says to Verona as he holds the limp clay dick up for inspection in one hand, the tripod holding his phone in the other, undoubtedly getting the perfect angle.
“We can’t put dirty clay—” She stops, snort-chuckles, then clears her throat. “Ah, clay that’s been on the floor could have picked up things that will make your piece explode in the kiln. Yes. Let’s start over.”
He sets the phone and tripod down, then slides me a grin. “Darn.”
Flow grins.
I keep laughing. And spitting a little.
This might be the best night of my life.